Tuesday, 23 November 2021
Continued to Wednesday, 24 November 2021 — Volume 756
Sitting date: 23 November 2021
TUESDAY, 23 NOVEMBER 2021
TUESDAY, 23 NOVEMBER 2021
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
karakia/prayers
karakia/prayers
ADRIAN RURAWHE (Deputy Speaker): E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi mātou ki te Kuīni, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmene.
[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 Eathan Stevenson requesting that the House ensure that politics is available as an optional subject in NCEA levels 1, 2, and 3
petition of Patrick Szetey requesting that the House pass legislation to ban any vaccine passport system in New Zealand
petition of Kenneth Orr requesting that the House reject the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill
petition of Save Women’s Sport Australasia requesting that the House urge Sport New Zealand to extend the consultation on the Draft Guiding Principles for the Participation of Transgender Players in Sport (April 2021).
SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.
Ministers have delivered papers.
CLERK:
Tupu Tonu Ngāpuhi Investment Fund
Annual Report 2020/2021
Statement of Performance Expectations 1 February 2021 to 30 June 2021 and 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022
Statement of Intent for 1 February 2021 to 30 June 2024
Te Hiringa Hauora Health Promotion Agency
Statement of Performance Expectations 2021/22
Genesis Energy Ltd Annual Report 2021
Report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill.
SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House.
Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.
CLERK:
Report of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the Plant Variety Rights Bill
report of the Environment Committee on the Report of the Controller and Auditor-General, Using different processes to protect marine environments
report of the Justice Committee on the Rights of Victims of Insane Offenders Bill
reports of the Petitions Committee on:
the petition of Cancer Society New Zealand and
the petition of Mark Ross
reports of the Regulations Review Committee on:
the complaint about E-Scooters (Declaration Not to be Motor Vehicles) Notice 2018 and
COVID-19 Public Health Response orders and
report of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the Construction Contracts (Retention Money) Amendment Bill.
SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading. The report of the Controller and Auditor-General and the reports of the Regulations Review Committee are set down for consideration.
The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of bills.
CLERK:
Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, introduction.
COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations Legislation) Bill, introduction.
SPEAKER: Those bills are set down for first reading.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Question No. 1—Finance
1. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The Government has provided significant support to businesses and workers in response to the Delta COVID-19 outbreak. I received a report yesterday that told me that we have paid out over $6 billion through the wage subsidy scheme and resurgence support payment since August, when the outbreak began. Under the wage subsidy scheme, 1,116,851 applications have been approved, totalling a payout of $4.3 billion. For the resurgence support payment, the payout has been $1.76 billion. We know that it has been particularly tough for those businesses in Auckland, and as we move to the new COVID protection framework we will ensure that we provide support to businesses through this transition.
Dr Duncan Webb: What other reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Statistics New Zealand reported that seasonally adjusted retail sales fell by 8.1 percent in the September quarter, due to the Delta outbreak and higher alert levels. The decline in spending affected all categories other than groceries, while Auckland experienced the largest fall by region. On an annual basis, however, retail sales rose 8.6 percent. ASB’s economist said the fall was not as sharp as had been feared, and it highlighted the New Zealand economy’s resilience. Westpac’s economist noted that, while retail spending did take a knock in September, the slowdown looks temporary. They pointed out that spending has recovered since then and that they expect it will firm heading into the Christmas period.
Dr Duncan Webb: What reports has he seen on the impact of the recent change in alert levels on retail spending?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Auckland retail sector experienced a boost in spending with the easing of restrictions at alert level 3, step 2. Kiwibank reported that the number of credit card transactions in Auckland rose 35 percent over the first five days at step 2, with the value of spending rising 62 percent. The BNZ reported that for the week ending Tuesday, 16 November, card spending rose 27 percent on the previous week, which brings it 7 percent higher than pre-Delta levels. Economists say the lift we have seen in retail spending indicates that a solid rebound in activity will occur as the country moves into the COVID protection framework in the next few days.
David Seymour: Has the Minister of Finance seen any reports about New Zealanders increasingly concerned about the cost of living in New Zealand; and, if so, what is he doing to get inflation under control?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Throughout my entire time in politics and in this Parliament I have seen people concerned about the increasing cost of living. On this side of the House we have continued initiatives throughout our period of time to support low-income New Zealanders particularly, and I look forward to the member’s support for any upcoming minimum wage increases.
Question No. 2—Environment
2. Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Does he consider that trees in our cities and towns are appropriately protected; if so, why?
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I agree that the protection of mature and ecologically significant trees in urban areas is an important consideration and the Government is actively considering this as part of the reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA). It’s also important that protections don’t create excessive compliance costs for routine pruning or the removal of smaller trees. I’m advised that prior to the changes to the RMA that occurred under the last National Government, there were an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 resource consents required to prune or remove trees per year, which is around 10 percent of total resource consents issued. In addition, many people thought the rules requiring consents were sometimes absurd and ignored them, bringing the RMA into disrepute.
Hon Eugenie Sage: From a climate perspective, is he concerned that in the Waitematā Local Board area alone, at least 12,879 trees were removed in the 10 years from 2006 to 2016?
Hon DAVID PARKER: From a climate perspective, no. You know, a few hectares of trees elsewhere would more than offset that.
Hon Eugenie Sage: Does he consider that increasing housing density and protecting urban trees are complementary changes that enable livable cities?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes.
Hon Eugenie Sage: Will he commit to urgent action to protect urban trees on private land as denser housing is developed, so people can enjoy the benefits urban trees provide, including sequestering carbon, creating shade, reducing the urban heat island effect—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! The member’s got quite a few questions in there.
Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, those decisions are delegated under the Resource Management Act for councils to take. Sometimes they have to take difficult decisions. When they go through a process and they consider it and then they give an authorisation for a tree to be felled—for example, for a new housing development—then that process should be respected.
Hon Eugenie Sage: What tools is he considering providing councils to enable effective urban tree protection on private land and how is this work being prioritised?
Hon DAVID PARKER: The work is being progressed as part of the reform to the RMA through the Natural and Built Environments Bill, which we propose, and I’m working with Minister Twyford on that issue as an Associate Minister for the Environment. The ministry is, I’m aware, working with councils not just in Auckland but also across the land to try and land this in the right place.
Question No. 3—Prime Minister
3. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government’s statements and actions?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Government’s plan to carefully reopen while continuing to protect New Zealanders’ lives and livelihoods. New Zealand will move into the COVID-19 Protection Framework from Friday, 3 December, with Cabinet confirming the settings for each region on 29 November. As we prepare for the introduction of the COVID-19 Protection Framework, the free NZ Pass Verifier app to scan and verify My Vaccine Passes is now available to download. For customers entering a business requiring proof of vaccination status, their My Vaccine Pass can be scanned by the verify app. The verify app will show a green tick recognising the official QR code that is embedded in the customer’s pass.
The Government has also announced a simplified vaccination assessment tool that will be able to be used mid-December to help employers decide if they’d like to require or believe they need to require vaccination for different types of work. Employers and employees have been asking for certainty on what roles may need to be done by vaccinated workers under the COVID-19 Protection Framework. This tool provides a clear legal framework to help businesses make decisions about vaccinations in the workplace and it builds on the guidance provided by WorkSafe and has had input from Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.
Hon Judith Collins: Why, from 15 December, will a New Zealander be able to fly from Auckland to Wellington with just a vaccine pass, but a Kiwi who wants to fly from Queensland will need to win a slot in managed isolation and then spend a full week in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We’ve indicated that before the end of the year we will be making further announcements on the way that we intend to change the arrangements at the border. We have indicated that MIQ and the requirement to see through an isolation period in the Government facilities we do expect and will be changing, and we will be focusing first on citizens and residents. But the second point that I would make is we are making significant changes at present domestically. I know that there is actually considerable anxiety about some of those changes, and it is upon us to make sure that we get those right domestically whilst also then very carefully stepping through changes at the international border, as well.
Hon Judith Collins: Is she aware that Auckland has more than 4,000 active cases of COVID in the community while the entire state of Queensland has four?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I refer the member to my previous points: that we will be making changes to the way that we’re operating at our international border. But I would make the point to the member that, of course, it’s not just about picking off individual states at any given time. Queensland intends to open its borders to the rest of Australia. So I don’t think it’s fair to just simply say one state can be seen as their own individual entity at this current juncture, when they will be reopening themselves to other parts of Australia.
The second point I would make to the member is we do need to think about the entire group of New Zealanders who are currently offshore for whom we need to set out the plans and expectations for their ability to come home. That does not represent just single individuals from Queensland, but actually represents between 40,000 and 50,000 people who will be looking to return home. So we need to do that safely.
Hon Judith Collins: Why are travellers from Queensland, a state with just four active cases and closed borders with the rest of Australia, still taking up space in MIQ when we now have more than 4,000—in fact, 4,614—New Zealanders right now in the community with COVID?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I again refer the member now to my two previous questions. Again, I would highlight that my recollection is that Queensland is opening up to the rest of Australia on—I believe it’s 17 December. So that will no longer be their status as a closed state to the rest of Australia. The second point that I would, again, highlight for the member is that we do intend to change the way that we’re operating at the border, but we will continue to have in place measures to ensure that we have checks, because we know that with some of the modelling that’s occurred around cases that are likely to come in from offshore, even with pre-departure testing, vaccination checks, and even with a period of self-isolation, modelling suggests that we will have a not insignificant number of cases seeded as a result of that.
Chris Bishop: How many?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: And as Dr Verrall—up to 60, potentially, Mr Bishop—that’s with those protections. So yes, we have risk tolerance, but we still need to be cautious because, as Dr Verrall has said, just because you are managing a domestic fire doesn’t make it OK to go around a forest lighting matches.
Mark Cameron: Does she believe it acceptable conduct of a Minister in her Government to label tens of thousands of New Zealanders attending Groundswell protests as a “mixture of racists, [and] anti-vax,” and how does this not fit into the proposed definition of hate speech—that is, to use words that are threatening, abusive, or insulting and likely to excite hostility or ill will?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I reject the premise of that member’s question.
Mark Cameron: Will she agree to meet the Groundswell organisers this Thursday, when they deliver their petition on behalf of tens of thousands of New Zealanders to Parliament?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I conduct and will continue to conduct regular engagements—in fact, some of the most regular engagements I have are with Dairy New Zealand, Beef and Lamb, our horticulture representatives, and Federated Farmers. I will continue to meet with those representative bodies, as I have done throughout my time as Prime Minister.
Hon Judith Collins: What is her response to the managing director of Flight Centre, who said today, “It’s been over 100 days since the Government released its plan to reopen New Zealand. Since then, there has been absolutely no guidance on when the reopening might commence.”—when will she provide that guidance?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Actually, we said it at the time: in August, we set out our plans, and we’ve actually followed through on each of them. We said that we would undertake a self-isolation pilot. We have done that, and we are doing that. We have said that we would look at shortened MIQ from 14 November. We have done that; MIQ is now shortened. We said from the first quarter of next year that we intended to move towards self-isolation. We have committed to that, and, as I say to the member, I look forward to sharing more details of that before the end of the year to provide greater certainty for New Zealanders offshore.
The other point I would make: this is not a zero-sum game. There is no country around the world that has opened borders and had no consequences. There are choices. If you make choices that you’re going to operate your borders in that way, then you will have greater domestic restrictions. We are working towards a very fine balance in New Zealand, where we have the fewest restrictions possible in our domestic environment whilst, of course, moving towards allowing New Zealanders to return home, and that is what we are working towards.
Hon Judith Collins: So what does she say to Air New Zealand, which has cancelled thousands of flights and explained that “our hands are tied until border restrictions ease, and we receive further clarity from the New Zealand Government.”? When does she expect to provide that clarity?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Air New Zealand, of course, had bookings from 1 December through to 30 December, and, of course, we have indicated that we expect in the first quarter of next year to have self-isolation, which will enable some of the congestion we’ve experienced at the border to change. So, obviously, Air New Zealand has made decisions based on the signals we have given, and we intend to give even further clarity from there.
Hon Judith Collins: What are the criteria for a region to move from red to orange to green under the traffic light system?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We’ve already indicated that at this stage for the transition, the most important factor will be vaccination levels. Obviously, the member will also be aware that because we’ve indicated that Auckland will also go into red, that clearly the outbreak in Auckland is also a factor in a number of cases, and also readiness and the ability of the health system to manage cases as they arise—so predominantly health measures, but that’s not solely the factors we’ll take into account.
Hon Judith Collins: When does she expect to provide New Zealanders with clear criteria, rather than just “predominantly” as part of the answer she’s just given?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Clearly, the member’s discounting everything I said in the answer to that question, including the reference to high vaccination levels. We’ve said those that are sitting well under those goals of 90 percent can expect to go into red, which, I would add, is very similar to the status that most parts of the country are experiencing right now in level 2, but with vaccination passes added. We’ll be talking in more detail about the process for further assessments on 29 November.
Hon Judith Collins: Does the South Island currently meet the green traffic light criteria of “limited community transmission and COVID-19 hospitalisations at a manageable level”?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I can see that that the member, despite saying she wasn’t clear on the criteria, actually has the criteria, which she just read out in the House. What we have already acknowledged, so that there is certainty and people can anticipate what we will do on 29 November, is, yes, that is what we expect to be the status for those that are able to be in green or move into green. However, we are in a transition. We have acknowledged that at this point, where we have a hard domestic border around an outbreak that is being lifted, it does not make sense for parts of the country during that transition to be in green, because they are likely to have to move. So in order to have a bit more stability, we’ve already said that while we’re in a state of transition, we will not have any part of the country in green.
What I would say, specifically about the South Island—and I said this when I most recently visited—fantastic levels of vaccination there. One of the benefits of high levels of vaccination, and the potential of being able to move into orange, is that, actually, the restrictions that are currently being experienced at level 2 of gathering limits go, and so you’ll see a lot more freedom to be able to hold those events.
Hon Judith Collins: When will she release individual sector guidance for the traffic light system that businesses will be operating under next week?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member seems to ignore the fact that the framework itself has been available since October. In fact, in designing it, we had outreach with different sectors—specifically, for instance, hospitality, retail, and so on, in the design of the framework. Some of the specific details that are relevant to some parts—like, for instance, sport, where there are finer details to get into—those will be released this week, but we’ve had upfront consultation, even in its design.
Hon Judith Collins: With seven months since Delta was detected in MIQ, and three months since Auckland has been in lockdown, why the hell hasn’t this been sorted—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! No. The member will ask the question again.
Hon Judith Collins: With seven months since Delta was detected in MIQ, and three months since Auckland has been in lockdown, why are New Zealanders still being played like a fiddle and told we could wait till next week before we find out the answers?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member didn’t actually ask a question that I could not answer, so that demonstrates that, actually, for the most part, the most significant elements of this framework have been provided. The second point that I would make to the member: point to me anywhere in the world that is currently proposing a framework like this that we can just adopt off the shelf that actually is adapted to New Zealand’s circumstances and goals. Point also to a country in the world that has, currently, the vaccination rates that we have at the moment, and the outbreak numbers that we have at the moment. Key to our response has always been that we’ve designed something that is suitable for New Zealand’s circumstance, based on what we’re seeing in a pandemic where there was no playbook. The result has been some of the lowest hospitalisations, death rates, case numbers, and some of the lowest unemployment, solid growth, and an economy that continues to be resilient. So I’d be happy to look at an alternative example, but many point to New Zealand.
Question No. 4—COVID-19 Response
4. Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini) to the Minister for COVID19 Response: What recent decisions has the Government made on New Zealand’s transition to the COVID-19 Protection Framework?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yesterday, Cabinet confirmed that the whole country will move into the new traffic light system at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, 2 December, making next Friday the first day that the traffic light system will be operational in New Zealand. That’s 10 days from now and it’s important that everybody gets prepared. Members will be aware that we signalled that soon after the 29 November Cabinet meeting, the country would shift to the new framework. Setting this date now gives people, communities, and businesses time to prepare, to move safely and smoothly into the new traffic light system. The hard truth is that Delta is here and it isn’t going away, but New Zealand is very well set to tackle that because of our high vaccination rates and the latest safety measures that we’ve put in place, including the traffic light system and the vaccine pass.
Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: When will decisions be made on where regions will move to in the framework and what factors will determine this?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Decisions on which colour each region will move into the framework will be confirmed when Cabinet meets on 29 November. In making these decisions, we’ll be looking at a range of factors including vaccination rates and certificates and the general case rates of COVID-19. As we’ve previously said, Auckland will enter at red and the Prime Minister has confirmed again today in the House that no region will start at green while we are transitioning and managing the current outbreak. We recognise the fact that we’re in a transition environment and we would like to avoid regions being in a position where they’re yo-yoing between the levels.
Hon Gerry Brownlee: Just keep them all red! Silly argument.
Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: What can New Zealanders do to prepare for the transition to the new framework?
SPEAKER: Order! Before the member goes—I know Mr Brownlee hasn’t spent a lot of time with us recently, but there have been some new rules in the last four or five years—
Hon Members: Ha, ha!
SPEAKER: —Order!—about not interjecting while questions are being asked.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. While life will feel relatively normal under the new system, which is simpler and safer than the alert levels, it is time that we prepare to move. The number one thing that New Zealanders can do—and every New Zealander over the age of 12 can do this—is to get vaccinated. If you and your family are due for your second shot, get it as soon as you can. Vaccine passes will operate in the traffic light system, and if you aren’t fully vaccinated, you’ll find that you may not be able to access a range of places like bars, gyms, and restaurants from 3 December when proof of vaccination will be required. Eighty-three percent of eligible New Zealanders are now fully vaccinated, and, armed with their vaccine pass, 3.5 million Kiwis could soon start to enjoy the freedom of the summer season.
Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: What further work is the Government doing in preparation for the commencement of the framework?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Cabinet has also decided that to ensure that the transition to the new system is as smooth as possible, and to iron out any issues with the use of vaccine passes in advance of them being required on a widespread basis, we’ll undertake a trial period by allowing hairdressers and barbers in Auckland to open from this Thursday, 25 November, so long as they require proof of vaccination from their customers. We’ll be posting and sending out detailed sector guidance, but, in short, hairdressers will need to operate with vaccine passes, take bookings only—so no walk ins. We’ve chosen hairdressers to trial the passes because out of all the venues that are still closed, they pose the lowest risk by reopening. There are fewer staff employed, generally numbers in the space are constrained by the number of chairs and hairdressers available, and distancing between customers can be easily maintained.
Chris Bishop: In relation to what he’s just said about hairdressers opening early, is he aware of why the Prime Minister ruled that idea out over the weekend when the Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, signed the gazette—
Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: No, I did not.
Chris Bishop: —notice on Friday last week—
SPEAKER: Order! The Prime Minister—if the member’s made an incorrect assertion, either she can leave her Minister to deal with it or she can take a point of order. She can’t correct errors while he’s speaking.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister made no such claim.
Question No. 5—Prime Minister
5. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her statements and policies?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Government’s decision to request the Commerce Commission undertake a market study of the residential building supplies market. There have been longstanding concerns about potential competition issues, particularly due to the highly concentrated nature of some markets in the supply chain. It’s clear a significant portion of the costs associated with building residential housing is tied to building supplies, and the study will allow the Commerce Commission to investigate any factors that may affect competition for the supply or acquisition of key building supplies. The Commerce Commission will present its final report on residential building supplies in December 2022.
David Seymour: Does she, then, stand by her Government’s policy of the Commerce Commission doing a market study into petrol supply, where Minister Faafoi claimed it would reduce petrol prices by 18c to 32c, and, if so, how’s that one worked out?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously we’re seeing significant issues in the fuel market at the moment, which are not just down to those issues inquired into by the Commerce Commission.
David Seymour: Does she stand by her policy of making New Zealanders returning from Australia isolate in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for a week, and, if so, can she explain why it’s OK for people who have tested positive for COVID-19 to isolate at home but not fully vaccinated Kiwis coming home for Christmas who have tested negative for COVID-19?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I have said to the other Leader of the Opposition, we as a Government are considering changes to our MIQ system as we speak. We’ve already indicated that it will change. We have made domestic changes to the domestic settings, but, of course, the next step is around the overseas border.
SPEAKER: I was waiting for a point of order. I know the Prime Minister is aware of our constitutional arrangements whereby there is only one of that category, and I think it was a deliberate act on her part. Therefore, she will withdraw and apologise.
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I withdraw and apologise.
David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister stand by her statement in question time earlier today, under questioning by the Leader of the Opposition, that she believes Queensland will open to travel from other states of Australia on or about 17 December, and, if so, what has the Government of Queensland done to prepare for that that her Government has not done and, therefore, keeps New Zealand closed to all those other states of Australia?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously, if you want to make comparisons, then the comparison would be the preparation around the lifting of the Auckland boundary, and the preparation that we have undertaken—because the member is making comparisons around domestic border changes. The preparation we have made around that is a testing and vaccination requirement. We are easing our restrictions domestically. That is not to say that we will not ease our restrictions internationally—we will—but we need to step into these changes carefully. We do not want a situation where they are removed in such a way that we see dramatic changes to our ability to manage COVID-19 domestically and that we are unable to then put in place again measures that we may need the protective factors from. Finally, I would say the member only need look at—yes, we are in summer; that places you in a different position, but we only need look at Europe right now, where the World Health Organization is warning about potentially half a million deaths in a region that has access to vaccinations in the same way we do. And, in parts of Europe, there are vaccination levels we would consider high that are moving into lockdown. We need to continue to listen to the best research and advice possible, and that is what we are doing.
David Seymour: What could go wrong with the vaccine certificate trial in hairdressers in Auckland from Thursday that prevented the Prime Minister including the long-suffering hospitality sector in that trial too?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That wasn’t the basis of decision making. The basis of decision making was, of course, that we are then looking to ease an area sooner than we otherwise might. The COVID-19 Protection Framework kicks in from 3 December, and that’s when everyone moves into that model. We expect to have even higher vaccination rates and protective factors than we do now at that point. The basis of the decision was: if we are to move early, what presents the least risk? Hairdressers and barbers were on that list for the very fact that, unlike hospitality, small numbers in spaces—they are, by default, very easily able to separate out individuals. They had public health requirements like, for instance, mask use that, obviously, when you’re in an eating and drinking establishment are different, which is why we have used them.
David Seymour: Does she stand by her decision to introduce the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill today, and, if so, why has it taken 277 days, since the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine was administered in New Zealand, to get the legislation ready for Parliament, leaving only 10 days for businesses to adopt before the traffic light system is scheduled to come into effect?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Firstly, on the latter part of the member’s question, he appears to misunderstand the tool. There is no obligation on an employer to utilise the tool. So there is no 10-day deadline that the member is referring to. At any time, an employer could determine that they wish to use the assessment tool to ascertain whether or not they would like to put in place a vaccine mandate in their workplace. So that’s the first thing I’d just quickly correct the member on. Secondly, around the legislation and the 200-plus days the member is referring to, the member seems to believe that every country around the world has gone into this pandemic believing that they would either use mandates or passes—that has not been the case. Many countries have worked iteratively through the pandemic, putting in place tools that they believe will help their situation. Some countries are still not using mandates; many are using vast ones, including Austria, who are looking to mandate everyone in-country from February. We have always looked, of course, to use the tools that make the most sense for us domestically, based on the uptake that we’ve been able to undertake voluntarily but also undertaking a public health and safety risk assessment, and that is how we’ll continue to progress.
David Seymour: Can she explain what will happen under the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, introduced to Parliament today, if an unvaccinated employee takes four weeks off, paid by their employer, then decides, after all, that they will get vaccinated and come back to work, but the employer counterclaims that it would be an unreasonable disruption to their business; would the person get their job back or not?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If, in that intervening period, an employer, for instance, believes that the individual has given their undertaking that they will not be vaccinated, they’ve had their four-week stand down, and they go out and employ someone else, that could, for instance, be considered to be an unreasonable disruption for that business.
Question No. 6—Finance
6. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Finance: Has he sought advice on the number of businesses that may be forced to close once current financial support is reworked as part of the traffic light system; if so, how many businesses?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The Government moved quickly to put financial support in place for businesses as the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, and we have supported hundreds of thousands of businesses to get through and to keep their employees working. In terms of the specifics of the member’s question, I reject its apparent premise. The advice I do have is that all businesses have the ability to operate under all three levels of the COVID protection framework.
Andrew Bayly: Which businesses will be eligible for financial support payments under the new traffic light system?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I signalled on 22 October, when we announced the framework, it is our intention to move away from board-based supports under the protection framework and move towards more targeted support, looking particularly at specific sectors. We’ll have announcements to make about that in due course.
Andrew Bayly: Why, a month after announcing the traffic light system, has he still not provided details about what financial support will be available to businesses at each colour—and particularly red and orange?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I’ve just said in my earlier answer, on 22 October I outlined the fact that under the green and orange levels we did not expect there to be widespread support for businesses. Under the red level, we would expect it to be much more targeted. I’ll have more to say about that in due course.
Andrew Bayly: Will the financial support under the traffic light system specifically address the 46 percent of Auckland businesses who can’t afford to pay their rent?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We’ve had increasing levels of support under the resurgence support payment. We’ve indicated that there will also be a transition payment. Any future support under the red level we will announce in due course.
Andrew Bayly: Will he be introducing any initiatives to reactivate hospitality businesses—as strongly advocated for by organisations such as the Heart of the City and Restaurant Association—so that they can rely on trade, not Government financial support?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, the member seems to be highly confused, because all of the supplementary questions up until that point had been asking for more Government support. I have met with the Restaurant Association. I have met with Heart of the City. They are aware of the fact that we have heard their concerns. And we’ll have more to say in due course.
Question No. 7—Economic and Regional Development
7. NAISI CHEN (Labour) to the Minister for Economic and Regional Development: What reports has he seen on the state of the venture capital industry?
Hon STUART NASH (Minister for Economic and Regional Development): Last month, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Angel Association New Zealand, and New Zealand Growth Capital Partners released a report that showed New Zealand has a start-up ecosystem that is more self-sufficient and sustainable than at any point in the past. It demonstrated not only resilience but an increase in maturity. New Zealand Growth Capital Partners administers a $300 million Elevate fund and an $80 million Aspire seed fund on behalf of the New Zealand Government. The report stated—and I quote—“Interest in New Zealand startup investment did not diminish in 2020, despite some dire predictions early in the year as COVID-19 struck. $158 million was invested into 108 deals, and this is the third year of $100 million-plus of investment in startups and also the third year of more than 20 percent year on year growth in dollars invested.”
Naisi Chen: What role has the Elevate and Aspire funds made to the successes of the venture capital industry?
Hon STUART NASH: To date, the Elevate fund has made total commitments of $157 million in crowded and over $430 million of private capital, including investments from New Zealand Super Fund and Kiwi Wealth. This has resulted in almost $600 million available to invest in promising New Zealand companies at the venture capital stage, which is, by far and away, the largest amount we have seen invested in the New Zealand venture capital stage in the last 10 years. The Aspire fund invested $10.8 million into 14 new investments in the 2021 financial year, a notable increase on prior years.
Naisi Chen: What are examples of the types of firms helped by Elevate and Aspire?
Hon STUART NASH: One example Kiwi start-up, EnergyBank, raised nearly $2.7 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Icehouse Ventures New Zealand, and the newly created fund, Nuance Connected Capital, which Elevate backed this year with a $17 million commitment. EnergyBank aims to develop a new technology for storing energy, which it claims is better than pumped hydro or lithium ion batteries, and could help decarbonise electricity grids in 42 countries within 30 to 40 years. Another example, deep tech company Aquafortis has developed a technology that uses a fraction of the energy of thermal systems to separate waste water into dry mineral salts and clean water.
Question No. 8—Building and Construction
8. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Building and Construction: Is she satisfied that carbon emissions in the building and construction sector are being reduced fast enough to meet the Government’s emission reduction goals?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for Building and Construction): As a Government, we are committed to improving the quality of our built environment. That’s why the Government’s Building for Climate Change programme is undertaking work to drive long-term change in the building and construction sector to meet the challenges posed by climate change. The policies and measures being developed will ensure that the sector makes a significant contribution to meeting our emissions reduction and other climate change goals.
Jan Logie: Will she amend the building code to have a higher standard for energy efficiency and create a trajectory to near zero - energy buildings by 2030?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: The upcoming changes to the New Zealand building code’s energy efficiency requirements will lift the minimum levels of insulation for new buildings. These changes are expected to reduce the energy needed for heating and cooling by about 40 percent for new homes and by about 23 percent for new large non-residential buildings. This will make new homes and buildings easier to heat and cool, healthier, and more comfortable. The changes will also provide clearer requirements for energy efficiency of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in new commercial buildings.
Jan Logie: Will she provide incentives for those building to higher than code, such as faster building consents and energy performance information for potential buyers?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: We are looking at a whole programme of works, including our Building for Climate Change programme, our Carbon Neutral Government Programme, and also the consultation we’re currently undertaking around our emissions reductions plans. All of these things are designed to build better, build more efficiently and more energy efficient homes and buildings.
Jan Logie: Why has the Government not made it a mandatory requirement to publish an energy rating for any office building, public or private, as they’ve had in place in Australia for more than a decade?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: There are tools available for people to understand, to reduce their buildings emissions. One such tool is the National Australian Built Environment Rating System New Zealand (NABERSNZ), which is a voluntary tool to measure and compare energy efficiency and carbon performance for commercial buildings. While the Government does use NABERSNZ to reduce emissions in cases where it’s appropriate, there are a range of other available tools to help us reduce buildings’ emissions.
Jan Logie: Does she recognise the increased urgency to changing rules to provide for lower emission buildings when we have record construction and new urban density laws about to come into force?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I recognise that we have a programme of work to undertake. The building and construction sector is a key contributor to our emissions reductions plans. We are also key contributors through the Building for Climate Change programme. This Government is looking at all the levers it can pull to ensure that we reduce our emissions.
Question No. 9—COVID-19 Response
9. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: How many fully vaccinated people, if any, who have travelled from Australia since 23 August 2021 have tested positive for COVID-19 in New Zealand, and how many travellers from Australia have completed stays in managed isolation and quarantine since 23 August 2021?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): It’s important to remember that the entire outbreak that we are dealing with right now, which has over 7,000 cases associated with it, stems from a single traveller traveling from Australia to New Zealand. I’m advised that between 23 August and 15 November, 2,544 travellers from Australia have completed stays in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ); three of these people tested positive—none of those people were vaccinated. While that’s a small number, it still signifies the risks that exist with overseas returnees. To put this into context of our overall experience of MIQ returnees: we’ve had 92 cases amongst 26,000 returnees since 23 August, 50 of whom had received some form of vaccination, and 46 of whom were fully vaccinated. So these numbers reiterate the importance that any decisions around the border must ensure that risk is carefully managed to reduce any potential impacts on vulnerable communities and the New Zealand health system. That is why we’ve taken a phased approach to reconnecting with the world, and I look forward to giving more details on that in the coming days.
Chris Bishop: So can he just confirm that the number of fully vaccinated people from Australia to have travelled to New Zealand and subsequently tested positive for COVID19 from 23 August 2021 to 15 November is zero?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: If the member listened carefully to my primary answer, yes, that is the answer.
Chris Bishop: In light of that answer, why can a vaccinated Aucklander leave Auckland after 17 December and travel around New Zealand without a COVID test, but a vaccinated person in Australia with a negative pre-departure test can’t travel to Auckland?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think if the member was listening to the Prime Minister’s answers to his leader’s questions a little earlier, he will have seen that we are taking a staged and phased and managed approach to increasing the risk to the rest of New Zealand of COVID-19 cases coming into their community. There’s no doubt there will be COVID19 cases making its way into other parts of the New Zealand community, but we still want to reduce the risk associated with that, and, therefore, staging that and managing that to ensure that we’re not piling a whole host of additional risk all at the same on the rest of the country is an important public health measure.
Chris Bishop: In light of the fact that zero people who have been fully vaccinated have travelled to New Zealand and tested positive in the last two months, would a phased approach to the reopening of the New Zealand border just simply allow people from Australia who are fully vaccinated and have passed a negative COVID test to travel to New Zealand?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: If the member listened to my primary answer, the statement that he made at the beginning of his question is factually incorrect: 50 people who have been vaccinated have tested positive for COVID-19 on arrival in New Zealand.
Question No. 10—Workplace Relations and Safety
10. IBRAHIM OMER (Labour) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: How is the Government supporting businesses to get their workforces vaccinated?
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Vaccine requirements in the workplace are a common tool in many countries around the world that are being used to stop the spread of COVID-19, to protect their workers and customers from the virus. Today, we have announced we are supporting businesses—
SPEAKER: Order! Sorry to interrupt. There are two members over there, one of whom is slightly louder than the other, and the one in front is slightly more frequent than the other, but they’ve both been very noisy today. I don’t understand the reason for it, but I’m just asking them to wind it back. Michael Wood, can you start again, please.
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Vaccine requirements in the workplace are common tools in many countries around the world being used to stop the spread of COVID-19 and to protect workers and customers from the virus. Today, we have announced that we are supporting businesses to help get their workers vaccinated and keep people safe by providing them with a new vaccination tool, a clear legal framework to help them make decisions about when vaccines might be reasonably required in the workplace. The tool will specify four key factors, at least three of which must be met before it would be reasonable to require vaccination for particular work.
Ibrahim Omer: How will this benefit business?
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: We’ve had calls from both businesses and unions to make the process around worker vaccination as clear as possible. This simple four-step tool will make it much easier for businesses, particularly small businesses without large legal and HR support. This new process won’t override existing risk assessments that businesses have already done under existing health and safety guidelines, and businesses will continue being able to choose which one they use—either the new vaccination tool or health and safety risk assessment processes.
Ibrahim Omer: How was the tool developed?
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Over recent weeks, we have worked collaboratively to develop the new vaccination tool, to ensure that it’s well informed and is able to be used in a very practical way on the ground. We have consulted extensively, including with Business NZ and the Council of Trade Unions; we’ve taken public health advice; and we’ve worked closely with WorkSafe as the regulator in this area. As such, I have real confidence that the vaccination tool is going to be of significant benefit to businesses and workers in providing much needed clarity.
Question No. 11—Housing (Public Housing)
11. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): Does she have confidence in the way Kāinga Ora is implementing its “sustainable tenancies” policy, and what advice, if any, has she had about whether Kāinga Ora’s policy to “preserve and not terminate tenancies” has placed it in breach of its obligations as a landlord under the Residential Tenancies Act 1986?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing)): To the first part of the member’s question, yes. The sustaining tenancies policy was initiated in early 2017, and it provides Kāinga Ora with a range of tools to address issues of disruptive behaviour, which include working at a local level to provide the support needed to resolve these issues. It can also include the relocation of tenants, and, as I advised the House last week, this has occurred on 159 occasions in the past year. In answer to the second part of the member’s question, I’ve received a briefing from Kāinga Ora on recent incidents of disruptive behaviour and how they are continuing to implement the sustaining tenancies policy. However, it’s a longstanding convention that Ministers do not comment directly on individual judicial matters or provide legal opinions to the House.
Nicola Willis: Has she directed Kāinga Ora to review how it deals with abusive tenants, following a series of harrowing stories in which innocent tenants have been persistently terrorised by their neighbours, and, if not, why not?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Kāinga Ora takes issues of disruptive behaviour seriously, and I encourage anyone with concerns to raise them with Kāinga Ora. There’s no doubt that the current situation that tenants are experiencing in Whangārei, in particular, is particularly distressing. This is a hard situation that we are facing here. Kāinga Ora has taken the sustaining tenancies programme, they’ve improved it, they’ve added tools to the tool kit. But if I can quote the member herself, evictions are not always the answer. It is a requirement of this Government to support people to sustain their homes, because the alternative would mean children being homeless and people living in cars.
Nicola Willis: Why should frightened tenants take this Minister seriously when, despite warnings about their case last week, an elderly Whangārei couple were, this weekend, forced to cower inside their home after their abusive Kāinga Ora neighbours held a Black Power party at which a police officer was allegedly assaulted and a patrol car compromised?
SPEAKER: Order! Order! That question doesn’t go to this Minister’s responsibilities.
Nicola Willis: Mr Speaker, a point of order. If I just clarify what I said in the question, I asked her about why tenants should take the Minister’s expressions of concern seriously—
SPEAKER: That is exactly where she missed, because she has no responsibility for their views.
Chris Bishop: Good grief.
SPEAKER: Order! Was that Mr Bennett or Mr Bishop who made that comment then? There was a comment made by one of those two members. Mr Bennett, did you make a comment?
Chris Bishop: I said, “good grief”. That’s all.
SPEAKER: You said what?
Chris Bishop: Good grief.
SPEAKER: At my ruling?
Chris Bishop: Well, I muttered it—yes.
SPEAKER: The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.
Chris Bishop: I withdraw and apologise.
SPEAKER: And the loss of one supplementary as a result of that.
Nicola Willis: Is it sufficient for Kāinga Ora to just relocate chronically abusive tenants when one such relocated tenant, now living in Naenae, has gone on to terrorise his new neighbour, including reportedly threatening to kill him while wielding a spade?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: It’s never acceptable behaviour. Kāinga Ora work very hard to ensure that all tenants can ensure safe and peaceful tenancies. They use the sustaining tenancies tool, which wraps support around tenants and neighbours to ensure that, in the vast proportion of cases, situations are resolved. These are difficult, hard, complex cases, but I can advise the House that by and large, the tools that Kāinga Ora uses in this regard have worked. They have been improved since the time the National Party introduced them, and they continue to work in most cases. However, there are cases where they are very difficult—they are very hard. That is when Kāinga Ora insists that if the sustaining tenancies initial policy doesn’t work, then they move to relocate. If that doesn’t work, then termination of tenancies will occur.
Nicola Willis: Supplementary.
SPEAKER: No. Well, the member’s actually had one extra supplementary, which I’ll deal with tomorrow, but question No. 12: Willow-Jean Prime.
Question No. 12—Conservation
12. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland) to the Minister of Conservation: What progress has been made on establishing a marine mammal sanctuary in the Bay of Islands?
Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Conservation): On 17 November, I announced that a marine mammal sanctuary will be established in Te Pēwhairangi, the Bay of Islands, coming into effect on 15 December. The sanctuary has been established after a public consultation process and aims to not only reverse the decline in the numbers of bottlenose dolphins in the area, but better protect visiting orcas and fur seals as well. By designating this area as sanctuary, we are creating an environment where the human/animal interaction coexists rather than disrupts while also protecting an amazing taonga for future generations.
Willow-Jean Prime: Why is the sanctuary being established?
Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: The bay’s bottlenose dolphin, which are a nationally endangered species, are known to spend an average of about 86 percent of their daylight hours with at least one boat nearby. They are cheeky little things and extensive studies have shown that the near-constant presence of people in boats disrupts the normal behaviours critical for their survival. They like to play so they don’t get as much rest and kai as they need. The new speed and distance restrictions where people in boats are interacting with marine mammals aim to protect the mammals while also providing sustainable tourism opportunities through maintaining one of the major drawcards for visitors: the presence of the dolphins in the bay.
Willow-Jean Prime: What public feedback was received on the proposal?
Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Public consultation has been a big part of the process over the last six months, and I want to acknowledge the 645 submitters, and note that over 66 percent of those submitters were in full support. In particular, I want to acknowledge Ngā Hapū o te Pēwhairangi, who have been constant guardians of this project and who have worked in an exemplary way with the Department of Conservation on our collective journey to protect the dolphins. I also want to acknowledge the local boaties who will continue to use and enjoy the beautiful waters of Te Pēwhairangi over the summer, which includes fishing throughout the area, because there are no restrictions specific to that sanctuary on fishing, and will do this in a way that allows our marine mammals to thrive.
Sittings of the House
Sittings of the House
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That the sitting programme for 2022 be as follows:
February 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, and 17;
March 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 29, 30, and 31;
April 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, and 14;
May 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, and 31;
June 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29, and 30;
July 26, 27, and 28;
August 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 23, 24, 25, 30, and 31;
September 1, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, and 29;
October 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, and 27;
November 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, and 24;
December 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, and 15.
Motion agreed to.
SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for the consideration of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill.
Bills
Moriori Claims Settlement Bill
In Committee
Part 1 Preliminary matters, historical account, acknowledgements and apology, and settlement of historical claims
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, the House is in committee on the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. We come first to Part 1.
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I have a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), which is SOP 95, in my name, and for the benefit of the many Moriori who will be watching this broadcast by live streaming and other means, we have a small part of the bill that enacts their settlement to have to correct. It just relates to a number of place names that have been negotiated since the deed was signed and, indeed, since the Māori Affairs Committee has considered the bill. They’ve been agreed with the national geographic board, or whatever the entity is that looks after—the New Zealand Geographic Board—that looks after these things. So this is simply an SOP that has a number of minor amendments to place names referred to in the bill, and that therefore brings all the correcting matters in the bill to a close. It has been subject—
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the Minister, but that SOP is in Part 2. We are on Part 1. Would some honourable member like to, if we want to move it as—
KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): Point of order, Mr Chair. I seek leave for all questions to be taken as one debate.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. Therefore, the question is that Parts 1 to 3, Schedules 1 to 4, and clauses 1 and 2 stand part.
Parts 1 to 3, Schedules 1 to 4, and clauses 1 and 2
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I’m assuming that I don’t have to repeat the speech—the well-prepared speech—that I’ve just delivered about Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 95. However, it is a correcting SOP for those last minor technical amendments, or minor amendments, of place names in the bill. It has been subject to consultation with the relevant agencies and they have all, naturally, been agreed to by Moriori. These changes will conclude the bill, ready for its third reading.
JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you, Mr Chairman. Minister, just a brief question: there was some concern and questions raised about the protection of Te Ana a Nunuku, and I know, having been on the committee, that that was outside the scope of this bill. But I just wondered if you would explain briefly, for the benefit of those watching, why it was out of scope in terms of this bill.
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): Mr Chairman, I actually didn’t hear the beginning of the question. If the member could just repeat that bit again?
JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Oh, sorry. A number of people questioned whether Te Ana a Nunuku, Nunuku’s Cave, could be protected. And I note, having been on the select committee myself, that that was outside the scope of the bill, but I was just wondering if you could explain, for the benefit of those watching, why it was out of scope.
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): As I understand it, there is not a designated name registered with the New Zealand Geographic Board for that landmark, and therefore there was no legislative basis on which, without having gone through a completely different process, to do that. What we were left with with the deed set up agreement about a number of places that have place names that are recognised by the New Zealand Geographic Board. It was the desire of Moriori, and the Crown, indeed, to change those, but that place did not have a designated name and, therefore, could not be changed through this process.
JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I note that the overlapping interest is a matter that was considered in terms of this—and it will be considered again, no doubt—as the Moriori are one group of inhabitants on the Chatham Islands and Ngāti Mutunga are another group of inhabitants. I’m just wondering if you could explain for the benefit, again, of those watching where things are tracking in terms of how to address the overlapping interests on the Chatham Islands and surrounding islands.
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): Notwithstanding that as we head towards the third reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, this is Moriori’s day. We don’t normally talk about other iwi, including those with overlapping interests, on what is Moriori’s day, but to assist the member briefly, the Crown is still negotiating with Ngāti Mutunga. We’ll continue those discussions, and where there are overlapping interests with what is agreed with Ngāti Mutunga and with Moriori, there will be discussions on those overlapping interests with Moriori.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that the Minister’s amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 95 be agreed to.
Amendment agreed to.
Parts 1 to 3, Schedules 1 to 4, and clauses 1 and 2, as amended, agreed to
Bill to be reported with amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
SPEAKER: In accordance with a determination of the Business Committee, this bill is set down for third reading forthwith.
Third Reading
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill.
SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and it can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill be now read a third 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 begin by acknowledging the people of Moriori today. E te imi Moriori, tena kotou.
[To the Moriori people, you are acknowledged.]
I’d especially like to extend my welcome to the Moriori representatives who have travelled to Parliament today, some from Rēkohu and some from other parts of New Zealand, who are watching this final reading of their bill by live stream. So we welcome them here, we feel them, and we know they are here. This is their day, and it is a very special day.
Today marks the final stage in the progression of Moriori’s Treaty settlement bill. One hundred and fifty-nine years ago, Moriori karāpuna—their tūpuna—petitioned Governor George Grey, remembering the trauma of the 1835 settlement of Rēkohu by Ngāti Mutunga and seeking the Crown’s protection. This day is the culmination of the struggle for truth and justice that began then. It’s testament to the years of hard work by Moriori and dedication towards negotiating a deed of settlement, and a long-awaited day of celebration at the end of this legislative period that has lasted nearly two years because of the delays caused by the COVID outbreak. I well remember being on Rēkohu at Kōpinga Marae towards the end of February 2020, and it was just when the world was waking up to the existence of COVID-19. The passage of this legislation has been affected by that nasty virus, but we are here today with this bill in its third reading, even though COVID is still around.
The fact that Moriori could not be physically present in the House to see this, as so many other iwi are when their bills are going through, is another sacrifice that they have had to make in a long line of sacrifices in order to achieve settlement, in order to achieve that long fought for justice that they have been struggling for. I thank Moriori for their fortitude and their patience in reaching this significant milestone.
It’s now time for the Crown to make redress to Moriori for its breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and I’m pleased to be here to support the enactment of their bill. I remember and pay tribute to Moriori karāpuna on this occasion for the grievances they have suffered and the legacy of peace, which serves as a cornerstone for the identity of Moriori to the present day. I also pay tribute to those who initiated this Treaty settlement process who cannot be here today to celebrate this milestone. Moe mai, moe mai, moe mai rā e ngā ieriki-ieriki.
[Sleep, sleep, sleep peacefully great leaders who have passed on.]
I acknowledge and thank Moriori chief negotiator, Māui Solomon, for his life’s work advocating for justice for te imi Moriori, and for his able leadership through this settlement process. In 1984, as the newly elected chair of the Hokotehi Moriori Trust, Māui made a promise to his karāpuna to tell their story. With the enactment of this bill, that promise comes to life. I also acknowledge the wider Moriori negotiation team, Tom Lanauze, Paul Solomon, and Grace LeGros, and claims manager Susan Thorpe for their efforts in bringing about this settlement.
On the Crown side, I acknowledge the Hon Dame Fran Wilde for her able leadership as chief Crown negotiator. I thank my ministerial colleagues for their work and support, particularly the former Minister of Conservation the Hon Eugenie Sage. Thank you also to the officials who worked tirelessly to pull the redress together. I acknowledge the Chatham Islands Council for their support, as well as the Chatham and Pitt Island communities.
The Moriori Claims Settlement Bill gives effect to the deed of settlement between Moriori and the Crown which we signed on 14 February 2020, and it settles all the historical Te Tiriti o Waitangi claims of Moriori. The bill, like the deed of settlement, acknowledges the Crown’s historical breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It also goes some way in providing Moriori with a cultural and economic base to support future revitalisation.
The historical claims of Moriori are significant. When the Crown annexed the Chatham Islands in 1842, it extended protections under Te Tiriti o Waitangi to Moriori. At that time, Moriori were living in a state of enslavement, with severely depleted numbers on Rēkohu as a result of settlement there by two iwi whose traditional rohe was Taranaki. The Crown was aware that Moriori had been subjugated and that many had died at the hands of their captors. Moriori karāpuna pleaded for the protection owed to them, but for many years, the Crown failed to act to end Moriori subjugation. As a result, even more karāpuna suffered greatly and died in oppressive conditions, including some who died of an illness known to Moriori as kongenge, a deep despair of the spirit.
In the period that followed, the Crown’s continued acts and omissions eroded what little autonomy Moriori had, causing them to lose their connection to their language and culture and to suffer severe social and economic deprivation. In the late 1860s, the Crown did not consult Moriori karāpuna when promoting the native land laws, nor did it devise a just solution for Moriori regarding land on the Chatham Islands following the Native Land Court’s determination of land title in 1870. As a result, Moriori were left virtually landless, their tribal structures were undermined, and Moriori were severed from their land, their wahi t’chap, or wahi tapu, and their responsibilities as guardians and hosts. Over a period of many years, the Crown, through the Colonial Museum, collected, removed, and traded kōimi t’chakat, or Moriori human remains, from Rēkohu. This was but one example of the cultural degradation faced by Moriori.
By the beginning of the 20th century, ta rē Moriori had been lost as a living language due to the Crown’s failure to protect it. The Crown also contributed to the wrongful stigmatisation of Moriori as a racially inferior people who became extinct—a myth which caused great suffering and hardship, particularly to generations of children of Moriori descent.
No settlement package can ever fully compensate Moriori for the magnitude of loss they have suffered across generations. It’s a testament to their extraordinary grace and their dedication to Nunuku’s covenant of peace that they have chosen to accept the current package and move towards a period of reconciliation with the Crown. I thank Moriori. I thank them for their generosity of spirit, and I am hopeful for what the shared future holds. The Moriori Claims Settlement Bill seeks to give effect to the Moriori settlement package as outlined in the legislative statement. Today is a day for looking back and looking back at the origins of the Moriori-Crown relationship; for acknowledging the past in order to fully recognise the significance of the journey since.
It’s heartening to see the wider effects of Moriori coming to the fore in the public space we have brought. I acknowledge the renaissance of ta rē Moriori and the significant efforts of imi to revitalise their language. In addition to the work being undertaken outside the House, the interest of members of the House in engaging with ta rē Moriori with the support of imi, particularly during the select committee process, has been truly heartening. It has given me great joy in seeing ta rē Moriori being spoken in the House through this legislative process and entering formal parliamentary written records. This is an example of what the renewed relationship between Moriori and the Crown could hold. It is this spirit I’m hopeful will continue to grow with the enactment of this bill. I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tena kotou, tena kotou, me rongo kotou.
[Therefore, acknowledgments to every one of you, and may peace be upon you.]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ko te pātai ka whakaaetia te mōtini [To begin the debate on this bill], I call Joseph Mooney.
JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to rise this afternoon on behalf of the National Party to speak on the third reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill.
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e rau rangatira mā, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
[To the authorities, to all the voices, and to all the esteemed leaders, greetings one and all.]
E te imi o Rēkohu, tēnā katoa, tena koutou.
[To the people of Rēkohu, you are all acknowledged.]
First, I wish to extend my sincerest greetings and acknowledgments to all the people of Moriori imi who are watching and listening to these proceedings and, unfortunately, cannot be here in the House today, but we feel you in spirit. One of the unique features of a third reading of Treaty settlement legislation is usually the strong presence of members of the imi, or iwi—the claimant group—in the gallery. However, because of the COVID-19 situation, they cannot be here with us today, but despite their not physically being here, it is our privilege to continue this forward in the spirit with which this began many, many, many years ago to provide a solution, to provide a settlement, and to provide a basis for which Moriori can continue forwards.
As always, I wish to acknowledge the many years of hard work that have gone into this, both of the Moriori negotiators and on behalf of the Crown. I wish to acknowledge all the officials who worked on this. I wish to acknowledge the chief negotiator, Māui Solomon, who’s worked very, very hard on this over many years. I also wish to acknowledge Minister Little for his work in bringing this here today, and I acknowledge the Hon Christopher Finlayson, who worked on this under the previous Government.
The settlement package legislated for in this bill provides a Crown apology to Moriori for the acts and omissions which breached the Crown’s obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi and for the damage that those actions caused to Moriori. These include the failure to have acted in a more reactive and proactive manner to end the enslavement, the failure to protect ta rē Moriori, the failure to protect Moriori from become virtually landless, the collection and trade of Moriori human remains, and Crown’s contribution to the stigmatisation of Moriori as a racially inferior people who became extinct—all incorrect. Various mechanisms, including the transfer of eight sites, will be offered as cultural redress, and $18 million plus interest will be offered as financial redress in this bill.
I wish to speak briefly to the history that has led to here. No settlement package can ever fully redress or compensate Moriori for their losses and for the prejudice which they experienced over generations, but through this settlement, the Crown, on behalf of all New Zealanders, hopes to atone for past injustices and alleviate the acute sense of justified grievance experienced by Moriori and to provide resources to lay a foundation for a brighter future for imi.
Moriori were the original inhabitants of Rēkohu, Rangihaute, Hokorereoro, and the other nearby islands that make up the Chatham Islands group, arriving some time after 1,000 CE. Moriori developed a unique culture on the islands, where there was little differentiation of rank, and warfare and killing were outlawed. It wasn’t until 1790 that there’s a record of European bringing the islands into sight, when Lieutenant William Broughton, the commander of the armed tender Chatham, on 29 November 1790, sighted the islands.
In 1835, Ngāti Mutunga travelled to the Chatham Islands, and that began the history which has brought us to the House today. They were one of two iwi who had travelled from the Taranaki region, and the Moriori customary laws of peace meant no resistance was raised to the iwi when they used force to overcome resistance and take over the Chatham Islands.
While the Chatham Islands became part of the Realm of New Zealand in 1842, the Crown took no action to free Moriori from the enslavement that ensued subsequently, and it wasn’t until 1862, after repeated petitions from Moriori, that any steps were taken to address the plight of Moriori. Further, in the 1870s, the Native Land Court ruled that 97 percent of the land of the Chathams belonged to the iwi, and only 3 percent to Moriori. So, effectively landless, the Moriori population, once numbering in the thousands, fell to just 31. But for more than 100 years, individuals and institutions, including Crown institutions, collected Moriori remains taken from the Chatham Islands. These remains were tapu, or tchap’, in the Moriori language.
Finally, during much of the 20th century, New Zealand school journals falsely taught a history that the Moriori were the original inhabitants of New Zealand before being driven to the Chatham Islands by the Māori. This whole history used the Moriori to create false impressions about the history of Māori in New Zealand, and portrayed Moriori as an inferior race. This false history had a significant impact on Moriori, especially Moriori children, who learnt this history at school.
As a result of these myths, generations have been reluctant to identify as Moriori, but I’m very pleased to say that having been part of the select committee that travelled to the Chatham Islands, to Rēkohu, and having spent time on Kōpinga Marae, what I saw, experienced, and heard was the proud revitalisation of the Moriori imi, a proud revitalisation of their history, and a very proud and promising future, which they will see and which this bill will help lay a foundation for. An enduring memory for me will be standing in the kōpi groves on the Chatham Islands in front of the carvings in one of the kōpi trees, and listening to the stories being told of the history of Moriori, of the bones of their people, which is just over the sand on the beach, and the sense of peace and the sense of history that I felt and heard in the kōpi groves, those ancient fruit forests of the Moriori people. It gave a real sense of the history of Moriori, and also listening to and seeing both the elders and the young who care for those forests and care for that history, and who will care for the future of Moriori.
Moriori have given something, I think, very special to the people of New Zealand, which is Nunuku’s covenant of peace: the decision taken by the Moriori not to engage in warfare and killing. But they’ve handed down this story, this ancient covenant, which is something which is quite unique and quite special for our country, and they’re certainly not a conquered people. They are people with a proud past and a proud future, and we certainly saw and heard that as well when we spent those days at the Kōpinga Marae, which is built as a monument to the legacy bequeathed by their ancestors as a place for gatherings for the people from Rēkohu, from New Zealand, and from all over the world.
Since the late 1970s, Moriori descendants have been working hard to rebuild and revitalise their identity and their culture as a distinct people with a unique heritage, and what has been achieved over the past 40 years is a testament to their resilience as a people, their determination to reclaim their rightful place in the history of Rēkohu in Aotearoa. Notwithstanding the tragic past and oppressive environment that Moriori had to operate in for many, many decades, they are proud as a people in honouring their ancestors, their legacy of peace, and their values of sharing, inclusivity, and commitment to high standards of human behaviour. Moriori have been able to overcome impossible odds and emerge, once again, into the sunlight of Rēkohu. This is a testament as much to the vision of their karāpuna as it has been to the resilience and determination of their mokopu—their grandchildren—to right the historical wrongs of the past.
On this side of the House, as on all sides of the House, we hope and we anticipate that this bill lays a foundation for the continued restoration of the social, the cultural, and the economic wellbeing of Moriori. In progressing this bill this afternoon, we look forward to a new relationship between Moriori and the Crown, one that is founded on cooperation, mutual respect, and respect for the Treaty and its principles and for the relationship between Moriori imi and the people of New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēna kotou, tēnā kotou, me rongo kotou.
Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): E ngā mana, e ngā rē rau ieriki-ieriki mā, e ngā morehu o te iwi Moriori, tēnā koutou. E ngā iwi taketake o te motu a Wharekauri, kei te mihi. Nei anō tētahi o ngā uri whakaheke o Ngāti Tama o Ngāti Mutunga e tuku ngā mihi ki a koutou, ā, tēnā koutou.
Ahakoa ko te aha o ngā kino nō muri rā ka panonihia te ao, he ao rerekē ināianei. Me waiho ērā momo āhuatanga i te ao kōhatu. I tēnei wā e taea ana te kite ko te oranga tonutanga o te ahi kā, o te iwi whānui o Moriori. Tēnei te mihi ki a koutou, ki a koe Māui, e mihi ana ki a koe, e hoa, mō tō kaha ki te kōkiri tēnei kaupapa mai i te tīmata.
Maumahara au, maumahara tātou o te iwi Māori, tō kaha ki te kōkiri tēnei kaupapa me hoki ki te kōkiri ngā kaupapa Māori, koirā tō mahi, Māui, i ngā wā o mua, tēnei te mihi ki a koe. Koutou e whakarongo mai nā, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou. He Hōnore nui ki te tautoko, ki te tū, ki te kōrero e pā ana ki tēnei kaupapa i tēnei wā, nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā anō tātou katoa.
[To the authorities, to the voices of the esteemed leaders, and to the survivors of the Moriori people, greetings. To the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands, I greet you. Here stands one of those descended from Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga, greeting you, greetings.
Despite past ill treatments, the world has changed, it is now a different world. We should consign those circumstances to the old world. Today it is possible to see the continued survival of the longstanding occupants, the wider Moriori tribe. This is a tribute to all of you, and to you, Māui, I acknowledge you, my friend, for your strength in driving this issue right from the start.
I remember, as all of Māoridom remembers, your strength in driving this initiative as well as other Māori initiatives. That was your role, Māui, in the past, I acknowledge you. To you who are listening, I greet you. It is a great honour to support, stand and to speak on this matter today, and therefore I say greetings, greetings one all.]
It’s an honour and a privilege to speak in this third reading. For myself, as a descendant of Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga, it is without doubt a privilege and an honour. Some people might think it’s not right for someone like me to speak, given the mahi and what happened with my ancestors, but I’ve always said to a number of Moriori who I grew up with—some of the Solomon whānau in Māngere—that I couldn’t be held responsible for the acts of some of our tīpuna and some of our ancestors, as a lot of people would argue today, perhaps, with regards to what their ancestors did to Māori. But I certainly have an opportunity to get and be part of the redress, and that’s what today’s all about. I have a part to play in terms of the justice side, the humanity side, and that’s what third readings are all about.
So when I did tell some of my Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga whanaunga that I would be having a kōrero on the bill, they were a bit worried. But I’m certainly not, because the Moriori story is one of the most fascinating stories, as the previous speaker Joseph Mooney said—well said, too. One of the most wonderful stories in terms of this country’s history and, in fact, in terms of world history, and the peace that has been exhibited by our people down there—and I say “our people” because that’s how I see things in terms of Moriori. It’s something for all of this country to be proud of. Ironic, really, that we had such a peaceful resistance in that area, and in a different area, in Taranaki, we also, believe it or not, had huge peacemakers and resistance from tohunga like Te Whiti and Tohu. So it’s ironic that we celebrate and support our Moriori history and, at the same time, remember what happened with our Taranaki tīpuna.
I’ll never forget travelling to the Chatham Islands for the first time, in 2018, when we honoured the passing of the last Māori Battalion officer, Alfred “Bunty” Preece, who was 96. Those were the first military honours that were ever accorded to people on the island, and it was a wonderful trip—first time I’d ever been there. I took my whānau down there with Minister Ron Mark at the time. Joseph Mooney was talking about the wairua and the spirit of that place. It very much is a special place, isn’t it? You felt the wairua. We felt it all, and we got it from Bunty Preece’s tangi, who was a former mayor, and his son, Alfie Preece Junior, was also a mayor. We felt the wairua there, the support, and the peacefulness from a people who have been so ravaged by the Crown. Their story, like the Māori story in terms of what has happened, is something to behold. Left landless; basically, at times, mutilated through the years.
So it’s appropriate that I salute the negotiators, particularly Māui Solomon, who’s fought for his people and fought the fight for his people of the Chathams, the Moriori. But the other side of Māui is he’s fought the fight for Māori people. He’s fought for a lot of groups. He’s been a long-time legal person. These are the types of people who will work in our world, who can work with everyone. I mihi to him for his kaha in terms of fighting for Moriori people, and the other negotiators who were involved who the Minister mentioned today.
The Moriori history is so fascinating because not only do we talk about the peaceful resistance, the wairua of the people, but we’re talking about a group of people who’ve been used and abused by everyone—politicians, historians—when they talk about history. There was a whole divide and rule strategy that not just the Crown embarked on; too many of our own people embarked on: Māori, Pākehā, historians, politicians.
We all heard the type of kōrero that said, “Oh, you Māoris weren’t the first here. The Morioris were the first here, and you murdered everyone. Really, you’re not the tangata whenua; the Morioris are.” We’ve heard those types of stories for ever and a day. We heard them when we were at primary school, and we heard them for so many years. It wasn’t funny, and it took away so much in terms of that unique Moriori history. You know, we should not have bought in to the nonsense that was being pushed out by some ill-informed historians. We had Don Brash going on about it about a couple of years ago. It’s just ridiculous, and it took away the fact that what happened was sad and what happened was part of history in terms of Māori going down there and invading and taking over a whole group of people and enslaving them. It took away their rights. It took away the way the Crown treated them. It took so much away, and we bought into all that nonsense.
As someone who worked on radio and who worked on TV through the years, I got so sick and tired of the continual racist kōrero that we kept hearing about Māori murdering the Moriori and Moriori being the first here. We’re way past that. As a Government and, as a Parliament, we’re way past that, and I salute the previous Minister, Minister Christopher Finlayson, who took this up. It’s good that in the House we haven’t bought into those arguments about who was first here or who wasn’t first here. We just focus in on the compensation and the support that the Moriori have deserved, and I thank everyone for that because this has been such a rich history.
What I’m looking forward to is how we go forward now. How is that Moriori history going to be supported and converted in the 2020s? What’s the next move for Māui Solomon and his team? You see, $18 million can never buy justice. The Treaty settlements process, as acknowledged by most Treaty Ministers, does not deliver full justice for the different groups—for Māori, for Moriori—so how is Morioritanga going to play out in the 2020s? It’s going to be fascinating to watch how these young groups come through from Wharekauri and to see what type of contribution they will make to New Zealand society.
Being in Parliament gives one the opportunity to salute the mahi that’s been done by people like Māui Solomon, who’s been doing this since the mid-1980s. It gives us a time to remember the sad tragedies that they went through in terms of Wharekauri but it also gives us the opportunity to celebrate the mana, the strength, the kaha of a people who have risen again, and I mihi to them one more time and thank them for their contribution. Congratulations, this is your day. Mihi nui ki a koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā anō tātou katoa.
HARETE HIPANGO (National):
Tō reo iho rā te tohinga o Rongo
ki runga o Rēkohu—Mūwheke ka eke ko Rongomaiwhenua
Toitū te whenua, toitū moana, toitū te tangata, mano tau—rongomau.
Rēkohu haumako e me rongo.
The ancient covenant of peace rises again
and casts itself over the island of Rēkohu—originating from Mūwheke and Rongomaiwhenua.
Hold fast the land, hold fast the sea, the people in peace and tranquillity for a thousand years.
Rēkohu flourishes in peace.
E te imi Moriori, te waina pono o Rēkohu, te tchakat henu, tēnei te mihi, tēnei te tangi ki ō koutou karāpuna, ō koutou mokopu, ki a koutou katoa. Ka huri ki te ao, ki a koutou ngā manuhiri tūārangi, nau mai haere mai ki te Whare Pāremata. E karanga au ki te pānuitanga tuatoru o Te Pire Whakatau Taunga Kerēme a te Imi Moriori. Ināianei, i tēnei rā, te moemoeā o ō koutou karāpuna, te moemoeā o te imi Moriori i konei.
[To the Moriori people, to the original inhabitants and people of the Chatham Islands, I greet you and weep for your ancestors and your grandchildren, for all of you. To return to the living, I welcome you visitors from afar to the House of Parliament. I welcome the third reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. Now, today, the dream of your ancestors and the dream of the Moriori people is here.]
Today, this is a moment in Moriori history, a moment in New Zealand history, that has traversed centuries: the third reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. A moment in making since mai ra ano, a time long, long awaited, a time long, long hoped for. Since 1835, the invasion of the Chatham Islands, the whenua of Moriori. Since 1842, the annexure of Moriori whenua, wai, moana, culture, and heritage to New Zealand. Since 1862, when the karāpuna petitioned Governor George Grey—131 pages. Since 1870, with the Crown turning a blind eye to the people of Moriori when it sat on your lands as a Native Land Court, confirming the pre-1840 conquest legitimate, awarding 97 percent of the land to the newly arrived conquestor, the Taranaki tribes, and delegitimising tikane Moriori of Nunuku’s covenant.
I stand not only as a member of the National Party but as uri of W’anganui, and I relate to the people of Moriori Rēkohu, who have travelled this journey and borne the anguish and the mamae of descendants, of people, for time past. But those people are living on in the descendants of Moriori Rēkohu. I have no depth of the anguish that Moriori feel. I have an understanding based on my people’s journey of W’anganui with Te Awa Tupua. However, this story of Moriori has been denied its legitimate place in New Zealand history.
I turn to a book where a segment has been penned in here by rangatira Māui Solomon. In this book labelled Māori Peoples of New Zealand Ngā Iwi o Aotearoa, there’s a segment in chapter 13, “Moriori”: “Hundreds of years ago, the Moriori of the Chatham Islands took a solemn vow of peace known as Nunuku’s law. Their decision to uphold this sacred law in the face of aggression in 1835 had tragic consequences. The people were slaughtered, enslaved, and dispossessed of their lands. Nevertheless, Moriori people survived.”
I marked the placement in this pukapuka—this book—with a feather when I was walking this morning and I stopped and looked down, and there it was. It was a tohu—it was a sign. It is not the albatross feather. But those of us who know the history of Parihaka, which is well enshrined and written into New Zealand history—many do not know the history of Moriori and the covenant of peace of the karāpuna Nunuku and the significance of the albatross feather and how that was carried by the people of Taranaki who invaded Rēkohu and took that symbol back with them. We well know and associate the white feather of Taranaki with Parihaka. The rightful place in New Zealand history is that the albatross feather has its origins with the people of Rēkohu, te imi Moriori.
Turning to the bill, the third reading is significant. I’ve traversed part of the history, never the depth of the mamae, but I’m saddened that the people of Rēkohu are not able to be present in the Chamber. However, technology is facilitating the connection by some means of reaching out to pass and convey this message.
The bill will be covered by members in this House and the significant portion that I turn to, as is appropriate with this third reading, is the apology: clause 10(a). In that apology offered by the Crown as is set out in the deed of settlement, it expresses “To … tchakat hanu (tangata whenua) and waina pono (original inhabitants) of Rēkohu … karāpuna”—the descendants, the tūpuna—“and mokopu”—the grandchildren, the mokopuna—“the Crown is profoundly sorry that … it failed”—it failed—“to uphold the partnership and provide the protection [which has been] sought by Moriori karāpuna since the 1840s.”
In clause 10, it goes through and it outlines an apology which covers the main grievances: the Crown’s failure to intervene to end enslavement, the Crown’s failure to protect Moriori from becoming virtually landless following the 1870 Native Land Court, and the failure to protect ta rē Moriori—the Moriori language. The Crown atones for its role in the collection and trade of kōimi karāpuna, or ancestral bones and remains, and it had a role in promoting myths that stigmatised Moriori as the racially inferior, who became extinct—the furthest from the truth.
I now turn to acknowledge, significantly, those who were part of the journey in negotiating on behalf of Moriori, and I turn, importantly, to a person who, as a young man in his 20s, stood upon the shoulders of his karāpuna to carry the burden, to carry this journey through to this legislative passage into law, the recognition and protection and the legitimising of Moriori. He is a man who, back in 1984, whilst reading and learning much of the history of his people for the first time, said—I quote him—“I made a promise to my karāpuna … that I’d do all I could to have the truth told about Moriori and to have justice done by them, so as to honour my Moriori ancestors and ourselves, their living descendants.” Māui Solomon, I pay respect and immense regard to you as an honourable man, as a man of respect, a Moriori man, a rangatira. As you said back in that interview on 15 December 2019, “From that day to this, I’ve dedicated my life to seeking justice for Moriori and to ensuring that our stories are told.”
In closing, I mention and bring to the attention of New Zealanders the importance of this, a significant chapter in history. It can be accessed on the parliamentary website. It was depicted in the TV documentary series on Māori Television. I commend the bill to the House.
Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā, e ngā mema katoa o te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa.
Moriori mana, Moriori reo, Moriori tangata, nōku te Hōnore e tū ki te kōrero i ō koutou pire. Nō reira, ōku rau rangatira mā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.
[To the Moriori authorities, to the Moriori voices, to the Moriori people, it is my honour to stand and speak to your bill. Therefore, to all the chiefly authorities, greetings one and all.]
It is indeed an absolute honour to speak on the third and final reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. Can I add my appreciation and acknowledgment to the chief negotiator, Māui Solomon, for his hard work and his diligent work over the course and passage of this settlement. Can I acknowledge the team behind him and those that filed the original claims, the many members of the Moriori iwi who are no longer here with us. Can I also acknowledge our Crown negotiator Dame Fran Wilde, the officials, the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Andrew Little, and, of course, my Māori Affairs Committee members, who worked very hard over examining this particular bill.
It is a great time to celebrate, but great in acknowledging the contribution and the generosity and the patience of the Moriori people, and their story should be told. Their story should be told in our school history. Their stories should be shared not only on Rēkohu but throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, because they’ve got a story to tell, and in the passing of this bill—very quickly, as we all appreciate with settlements—you want to tell the full extent of your history. But in the bill, particularly under the summary of the history account, I draw members’ attention and the attention of those that are watching this debate, it talks about what happened on Rēkohu in 1835. It talks that in 1862, the Moriori people wrote an extensive petition to this Whare—to this House—seeking recognition of their land rights—their ancient land rights—and then, of course, it talks about the Moriori’s customary land tenure and the interpretation of it being held communally, whereas the Crown title individualised land titles, hence the problem that we are seeing in the passage of this particular bill.
As with all Treaty bills, there is the conflict between communally owned and guarded whenua versus individual title, but it’s in this particular bill that I acknowledge the Moriori’s passion for retention, despite all odds. When we talk about Treaty settlements and when we talk about the Waitangi Tribunal, it can only go back to 1840, and so many of the hurts that Moriori and, I would say, our northern tribes had, which happened pre-1840, have never ever been addressed by successive Governments. But I want to make the point in the third and final reading about the Moriori situation and its concern of what happened to them in 1835. So the redress package, as the Minister spoke, doesn’t do justice—like most Treaty settlements—for what was sacrificed and what was lost. But we are here acknowledging the conclusion of a long-drawn-out negotiation period, which acknowledges and attempts to rebuild to support the absolute development of Moriori people as they see fit.
In the time I’ve got left, I want to talk about my connection with Rēkohu. I want to talk about Rēkohu in so far as it is the birthplace of the Ringatū faith. On 15 November 1865, as a result of the Waerenga-a-Hika siege in my own home region of Tai Rāwhiti, Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki, along with his followers from Rongowhakaata, Ngai Tāmanuhiri, Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki, Te Whānau a Kai, and Ngāriki Kaipūtahi, were imprisoned at Rēkohu without trial. So hence the relationship, and on that journey, one of the followers that went with Te Kooti was my great-great-grandfather Te Warahi Poutini. So for our people of Tūranganui a Kiwa, going to Rēkohu and being manaaki-ed—and so, as a descendent of the Tūranganui people, I want to record my appreciation to the Moriori people who looked after my tipuna at that very trying time in our history.
One hundred and fifty years later, in 2016, a delegation of our people from home re-travelled back to Rēkohu and were hosted by the Moriori people. They got taken to where Te Kooti and his followers camped, and got shown around the island, and I want to record, again, my appreciation to the Moriori people for their manaaki of our people 150 years after Te Kooti and his followers were incarcerated without trial on Rēkohu. I thank the Moriori people for the generosity, their hospitality, their manaaki, again, of our tipuna.
In 2018, I was lucky to travel with a delegation of Crown Ministers and officials to open and launch the wharf on the Chatham Islands. It was my first trip to the Rēkohu and I enjoyed, again, the hospitality of the local people, of the Moriori people, and I, too, got a visit to where Te Kooti was in prison. They took me to the lands where his followers—and I can say, the shivers across one’s spine when you are retracing your tipuna’s footprints over such a significant period could only be realised, like I said, by the generosity of the Moriori people. Again, I want to acknowledge my appreciation and thanks to them in this third and final reading of their bill.
It is important that we acknowledge and tell the Moriori story, and I have every faith that we will do that, led by the Moriori themselves. There are huge opportunities on the island. I want to also acknowledge the surrounding islands of Rēkohu and their contribution to the wellbeing and the welfare and the opportunities of the people that reside on that island. I am looking forward, and we continue to work with them, with the people of islands on a number of fronts. But for today, for this afternoon, in the third and final reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, it is an honour to acknowledge this third and final reading. I wish the people of the Moriori the very best. I know that they will take this day as one of celebration but also of remembrance of the enormous sacrifice they have made. Without hesitation, I commend this bill to the House.
TEANAU TUIONO (Green):
Ko Rangitokona tokona i tche rangi
Ko Rangitokona tokona i tche ātā
Ka tu ta pou ki ru pakira o ta rangi
Ki ru pehore o ta rangi
Ka tu ta mēmēa-a-nuku
Ka tu ta mēmēa-a-rangi
Ka tu ta kahi-a-nuku
Ka tu ta kahi-a-rangi
Ka tu ta pou
Ta pou, ka tu ta pou, ta pourangi e
[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 holds, it holds the sky]
E ngā mana, e ngā rē, e ngā rau ieriki-ieriki mā tēnā koutou. I te tuatahi me mihi atu au ki te imi, te imi o Rēkohu, tēnā koutou. Auē te aroha, auē te pai. I tae rātou, i tae koutou ki te taumata o te puke. He wā anō mō te okioki, kia whai anō te oreore, ā, ngā moemoeā o te tchakat henu, te imi Moriori, otirā tēnā koutou katoa. Koia ngā karāpuna i noho waina pono, i tiaki i ō rātou nei wāhi tiaki?
Me mihi au ki tērā karāpuna, ki a Hirawanu Tapu, e ngā rangatira taumata, i te mea ko ia te tuatahi i, i titihia ki Te Kāwanatanga i te tau 1862. Mai i tērā wā tae noa ki tērā wā i haere te imi Moriori ki te whai i te pono, i te tika, ā, te aroha ki roto i ngā tukanga o te Pāremata, ki roto i ngā tukanga o te kōti.
Haere, me pēnei ana ki a te imi Moriori, kei konei koutou, kei konei, ahakoa te rūkahu kei roto i ngā pukapuka hītori, ahakoa i hinga ētahi o ngā tūpuna, kei konei tonu koutou. Ahakoa i rangona whānui ki roto i ngā taupatupatu āhuatanga o te hītori ngā takahanga o te wā, i rangona koutou tēnei mea te kaikiri, kei konei tonu, kei konei tonu, ngā oreore o ngā karāpuna nā Rēkohu.
E manawareka mai te hunau i a rātou e whakatau i ā rātou nei, i tiaki i ō rātou nei mīheke. I kitea anō mātou ki tērā mai i te wā o te haerenga mātou Te Komiti Whiri i ngā Take Māori ki te Ana a Nunuku. I rangona mātou te mauri, i rangona mātou te hītori, i rangona mātou te oranga o tēnei mea te rongo ki roto i ngā āhuatanga katoa. I rangona hoki mātou, i tautoko au ngā kōrero ki tō Joseph Mooney, i te mea, i reira tahi mātou ki roto i te uru kopi. I tiro mātou ki runga i ngā rākau ngā waitohu o ngā mātua tīpuna, ngā waitohu o ngā karāpuna, ngā kōrero tuku iho i mahue ake mai rātou. I rongo mātou i te wairua, i rongo mātou i te mauri. He mauri anō e ora ana ki roto i tēnei o ngā pire. Ehara i tēnei pire, ākene ka ture nei, te tīmatanga me te whakamutunga o tēnei hīkoi o tō tātou nei whānau imi Moriori. Kāo. He wā anō, he wā anō kia whai ō rātou nei moemoeā katoa.
Me mihi atu au ki a, ki tērā whero o rātou, ki a Māui Solomon, i te mea kua whakapau kaha ia ki roto e hia kē ngā tau ki te whawhai ki ngā motika, ki te hāpai atu i te tuakiritanga o tana rē, o tōna imi, heoi anō, i hāpai ana ngā moemoeā o tērā tūpuna, o Hirawanu Tapu. Me mihi atu au ki tōna hunau whānui, te Hokotehi Moriori Trust. I reira rātou i kōkirihia, i whiriwhirihia tēnei kerēme, arā ko Tom Lanauze, Paul Solomon, Grace LeGros me tā rātou nei kaihāpai a Susan Thorpe.
Me mihi atu au hoki, kua rangona ngā mihi ki te taha o Te Karauna i kōkirihia e Dame Fran Wilde i tōna wā, otirā, ki ngā Minita Hon Chris Finlayson me Hon Eugenie Sage me ō rātou nei āpiha, i te mea ehara tēnei haerenga i te haerenga māmā, he haerenga nā te ngākau, heoi anō he haerenga nā runga i te waka e ekeeke ana ki runga i te moana.
Ko ētahi o ngā kōrero i puta mai i a mātou e haere ana ki te Rēkohu, ko tēnei pire he pūtake, ko tēnei pire he tūāpapa, he tūāpapa i taea te hanga i tō rātou nei whare, te whare o ngā imi Moriori. I kite ā-kanohi mātou i te ātaahua o tō rātou nei marae, Te Kōpinga. I rangona mātou te manawa reka o te kai, i rangona ō mātou nei puku te reka o te hōhonu o te kai moana, ā, nō reira, ko tērā te tauira ka whakaturea ki roto i tēnei pire, heoi anō, he nui ngā mahi ki mua i te aroaro ki tēnei o ngā imi.
Ko tētahi kōrero i puta mai ki te whakangungu i tō rātou nei rē, i tō rātou nei reo, ki te whakangungu anō hoki ki roto i ngā āhuatanga o te marau ki roto i te Tāhuhu o Te Mātauranga, nō reira, e harikoa ana ahau, kei konei te Minita Tuarua o Te Tāhuhu o Te Mātauranga, ki konei ki te whakarongo ki ngā kōrero, i te mea, mēnā ka whai wāhi tātou ki te whakatika i te hītori, te kino, te rūkahu ki roto i ngā hītori, kia whakahōnore tātou i ngā kōrero tuku iho o ngā imi Moriori ka tika tō tātou haere o te waka.
He uri anō tēnei nō Te Tai Tokerau, otirā he uri anō hoki tēnei nō Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. I reira, i te wā i tae atu au ki tērā o ngā whenu, kei te whakaaro ake au ki aku nei hononga i te wā e haere ana au ki ngā wāhi kē atu ki Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. I mea mai ētahi o ngā mema i te wā i te uru kopi me te mea atu “Ehara tēnei wāhi ko Aotearoa—ehara tēnei wāhi ko Aotearoa. Nō Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa kē tēnei wāhi, nō Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa kē ngā uri o te imi, o ngā Tchakat Henu o Rēkohu.” I a au e haere i rongo au i tērā mauri i te mea i hoki ngā mahara i te wā i haere au ki ētahi o ngā moutere puta noa i Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, i a au e haere ana ki te tihi o te Tapa Whā o Poronēhia, ki Hawaii, te noho tata me ngā kanaka Maoli. I a au e haere ana ki ētahi atu o ngā moutere ki roto i te Tapa Whā o Poronēhia me te whakaaro ake, ahakoa kei tawhiti rātou kei te rongo tonu i tērā wairua, i tērā mauri ki roto i te whenua o Rēkohu, i te mea ko te whenua, kei te whenua tōna reo, kei te moana tōna reo, kei te uru kopi tōna reo.
I a au e whakarongo ana au ki te rē o Rēkohu ka whakaaro ake au, ko te whenua tēnei e kōrero ana ki a tātou i tēnei wā. I a au i rongo ki o te take o ō rātou nei kupu ko te rē o te kohu, i whakamārama mai tētahi ki a mātou, ko tērā anō ko te reo o te kohu, ko te reo o te kohu e kōrero ana ki a mātou i te wā i haere mātou Te Komiti Whiri Take Māori ki Rēkohu.
Nō reira, me mutu au ki runga i te hari me te koa, me mutu au ki runga i te hari, i te koa, me whakaaro ana ahau i te mea ka whai wāhi ō tātou nei hunau imi Moriori mō tēnei pire te whakatū tūāpapa, te whakatū pūtake kia hāpai atu i tō rātou nei tuakiri, kia hāpai atu ō rātou nei rē ki roto i ngā marau o Aotearoa whānui, kia hāpai atu i ō rātou nei uri e noho marara ana ki ngā moutere o Aotearoa nei, kia whai wāhi kia hoki mai rātou ki Rēkohu. Me te whakaaro anō ko tēnei pire e turehia i tēnei wā i whakarite i tētahi waka anō mō rātou, i whakarite i tētahi waka anō mō rātou.
Nō reira, me oti au ki runga i tērā o ngā kōrero. Ko te tūmanako ko tēnei pire e turehia ana i tēnei wā kei te whai ngā oreore o ngā karāpuna, kia whai okioki ki roto i ngā taumahatanga o tēnei haerenga, kia hāpai ake ō tātou nei hunau imi Moriori. Tēnā tātou katoa.
[To the authorities, to the voices, to all the esteemed leaders, greetings. Firstly, I wish to greet the people, the people of the Chatham Islands, welcome. Oh the love, oh the goodness. They have gained, you have gained the summit. There are times appropriate for rest, so that activity and the dreams of the indigenous people, the Moriori, can be pursued once more, and so I acknowledge you all. They are the ancestors who remained faithful in caring for their sacred places.
My distinguished chiefs, I must acknowledge a certain ancestor, called Hirawanu Tapu, because he was the first to be a scribe to the Government in 1862. From that day to that time the Moriori people have continued to pursue truth, justice and compassion within the parliamentary and judicial processes.
So, I must say this to the Moriori people, you are here, you are here, despite the lies found in the history books, and, despite the fact that some of your ancestors have passed away, you are still here. Although the transgressions of that time were widely heard in debates about the history, you have experienced hostility, yet you are still here, you are still here, the reverberations of the ancestors of the Chatham Islands.
The family of the Chatham Islands seemed pleased when they welcomed/decided upon their, they took care of their taonga (treasures). We saw that again at the time when we, the Māori Affairs Committee, went to visit Nunuku’s Cave. We felt the life force, we heard the history, and we sensed the wellbeing of peace in everything. We also felt—and I support the comments to Joseph Mooney, because we were there together in the karaka grove. We saw on the trees the symbols of the old people, the symbols of the ancestors, the traditional messages/narratives which they left behind. We felt the spirit and the life force. There is life force as well living in this bill. This bill, which will soon be enacted, is not the be all and end all of the journey for our family, the Moriori people. No. There will be a time, another time for them to pursue all of their dreams.
I must acknowledge their chief, Māui Solomon, because he has given his all over many, many years to fight for their rights and to elevate the identity of his language and people, and so shouldering the dreams of the ancestor Hirawanu Tapu. I must also acknowledge his wider family, the Hokotehi Moriori Trust. They were there negotiating and driving this claim forwards, namely Tom Lanauze, Paul Solomon, Grace LeGros and their supporter, Susan Thorpe.
I must also acknowledge, and we have heard those acknowledgments to the Crown side, which was driven by Dame Fran Wilde in her time, and also to the Ministers and, indeed, the Hon Chris Finlayson and the Hon Eugenie Sage with their officials, because this journey is not an easy journey, it is heart-driven, however a voyage on a vessel which is traversing the ocean.
Some of the things that we said when we were travelling on the Chatham Islands are that this bill will be a base, a foundation upon which they can build their house, the house of the Moriori people. We saw the beauty of their marae, Te Kōpinga, in person. We tasted the satisfaction of the food, our bellies tasted the deliciousness of the vast seafood, and, therefore, that is the example which is being legislated within this bill. However, there is much work ahead for this people.
One of the other themes that came up was to protect their language, and also to protect it within the features of the Ministry of Education curriculum, and so I am pleased that the Associate Minister of Education is here to listen to the discussion, because if we have an opportunity to correct the history, the harm and the falsehoods in the histories, to honour the traditional narratives of the Moriori people, then our vessel will progress well.
I hail from Te Tai Tokerau, and also hail from the Pacific. Over there, when I arrived in that land, I thought about my connections when I was travelling to other places in the Pacific. Some of the members said to me while we were in the karaka grove, “This place is not New Zealand—this place is not New Zealand. This place belongs to the Pacific Ocean, as do the descendants of the tribe, the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands.” As I was travelling I felt that life force because it reminded me of the time I travelled to some of the islands all around the Pacific Ocean and when I was travelling to the tip of the Polynesian square, to Hawaii, to stay with the indigenous Hawaiians. While I was travelling to some of the islands in the Polynesian square I thought, however distant they are, I still feel that spirit and life force in the land of the Chatham Islands, because the land, the land has its language, the ocean has its language, and the karaka grove has its language.
When I am listening to the language of the Chatham Islands I think this is the land talking to us right now. When I heard the origins of their words “language of the mist”—“rē o te kohu”—someone explained to us, that is also the language of the mist, the language of the mist was speaking to us when we of the Māori Affairs Committee went to Rēkohu.
I finish with a sense of joy and delight—I finish with a sense of joy and delight—and thinking because our Moriori people family will have the opportunity through this bill to build a base and a foundation to elevate their identity and their language in the wider New Zealand Curriculum, and to also support their descendants who are living scattered around the islands of New Zealand, in order to find a way for them to return to the Chatham Islands. And also with the idea that this bill being enacted at this time will provide another means for them—will provide another means for them.
Therefore, I will finish on that comment. I hope that this bill currently being enacted is equipped with the movements of the ancestors, so they can have rest within the difficulties of this journey, to elevate our family of Moriori people. Greetings one and all.]
TONI SEVERIN (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak in support of the third reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, a bill that allows provisions for the deed of settlement to be made into law. It’s been a long process. This bill acknowledges and apologises for the massive loss that the Moriori people have experienced. Not only were you subject to the loss of your people, land, culture, and language historically but even in the present day you still have to deal with the entire history being effectively ignored, erased, and rewritten.
I have enjoyed listening, but sadly, to the second and third reading of this bill, as I have learnt much about New Zealand’s history of our Moriori people. I look forward for more New Zealanders to understand the correct story of what has occurred to the Moriori people. I also learnt about the limestone caves on the Chatham Islands, which have carvings, and I encourage all the parties to come up with a great solution to protect these carvings in the caves because it is very much part of New Zealand’s history.
But despite the many injustices that have occurred to you and your families and experienced here, like my colleague Nicole McKee mentioned in her first reading speech, you have fought hard. You have fought with determination. You have fought with effort, bravery, and courage and have made sure that none of these deaths have gone unnoticed, and, thanks to you, they will be recorded for ever in our legislation.
As we are aware, the right action of this country to take is the one that rights a wrong that happened in our past. ACT has long supported the Treaty settlement process. This position is deeply rooted in the principles that underpin our party. We believe in the importance of property rights, justice, and the rule of law. For those reasons we are proud to stand on the side of history, and I commend this bill to the House.
TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Madam Speaker, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to contribute to this debate today. It is the final reading. Here in the houses of Parliament, in the Banquet Hall, sit many Moriori who will be listening intently to the contributions of all of the members in this House, and to them can I say me rongo, me rongo koutou.
It has been a journey, actually, through this House for us, but it’s certainly been a very long journey for the Moriori people. Can I acknowledge the Hokotehi Moriori Trust; can I acknowledge you, Māui; can I acknowledge Susan Thorpe, who’s back home on the island; Grace LeGros; everybody that’s travelled here; everybody that can’t be here; and all of your karāpuna who have been part of this process in days gone by but have passed on to the other side.
The Chatham Islands are a very special place, Rēkohu is a very special place, and Wharekauri is a very special place. They’re all the same place, but, actually, over the generations, people have fallen in love with the Chathams for lots of different reasons. Most of it is actually the environment. It’s a beautiful place. The people that live there are connected to the environment—and we here on the mainland could learn a thing or two from them. They fish from the lagoon. They get their food out of there. It is their food basket. They get kahawai. They get flounder. They get mullet. They get whitebait. All of that helps to sustain them as a community, and it’s a beautiful thing to see.
The Chatham Islanders, the Moriori, they live off the land. They show sustainability. They have a connection with the island through fishing and hunting, and over the years, things haven’t always gone right. The sealers and whalers showed up back in the day, and they took what they needed to take and a little bit more. Over the years, as well, things have been stripped from the land and stripped from the waters as well, and that has also set the islands on a very different pathway. But the thing that they’ve got is their history.
I want to acknowledge Hirawanu Tapu and, actually, my colleague from the Green Party Teanau Tuiono also mentioned the work of Hirawanu Tapu. From 1868, it was his job to collect Moriori history, to collect the traditional stories, the chants, and the vocabulary, and he did that by talking to the elders at the time. So this is intergenerational passing on of knowledge that has only been made possible because this very gracious man became an historian for the tribe. For that reason, his work went into the Journal of the Polynesian Society back in the 1890s, and, in 1911, there was a book published called the Moriori People of the Chatham Islands: Their History and Traditions. Had we not have had the benefit of his work, we may be in a very different situation today, and we would have an imi that would be soul-searching, probably with very few answers. But the fact is that history is everything, and those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. So I dedicate this speech to Hirawanu Tapu but also to te imi o Rongomaiwhenua, who are our Moriori whanaunga that live over there and live and breathe their life.
Whilst we reach a certain point in this journey, for us in the House, of passing the bill, of making this legislation in not too far a time from now, I know that our Moriori whānau are on a journey. They are on a very big journey, because whilst their history has been—I heard my colleague say “wonderful”, and I’m sure there were wonderful parts of it too. But, actually, “tragic” is also another word that springs to mind, as well. They and their ancestors endured battle; many of our ancestors did. But, actually, in this particular story it had tragic consequences and it almost led to the decimation of a tribe. For that reason, they are on a path of revival—that’s what they’re on—and they’ve grabbed it with both hands.
To those people who haven’t yet watched the documentary, I encourage you to go on to Māori Television and to check out the Chatham Islanders TV series, because there’s a lot that you could learn about the good people that inhabit those islands. I encourage you to go on and watch the whole series, and it will give you a snapshot, but only a small snapshot, of the life that they live over there and the past that they’ve had but also the future that they’re looking forward to as well.
I celebrate with the imi and I lift them up because their future’s looking good. They have got a long road ahead of them, but they’ve started right. The TV series is out, but on top of that their app is also downloadable on the phone. For all those people that gapped it from the Chathams all those years ago and are living in other various other parts of Aotearoa—well, to those people, I say, download the app, whānau. You can find it on the Google store. Just have a look for the Moriori language app and you’ll be able to learn a little bit as well, maybe as a precedent for your eventual trip over to the Chathams, and I know that they would love to see you.
They are an island that also welcomes tourists, and as we’ve all been shut down by COVID-19, so have they. So I encourage New Zealanders, if you’re thinking about somewhere to go over the summer period, go over there. There’s some Moriori whānau that will be welcoming and are looking forward to your visit.
On top of their grasp for the future, as I found out at lunchtime—thank you, Māui—if you go to Spotify, you can also check out some new music which has actually been crafted from some old music. I wanted to take a moment of the House’s time—just a minute—to be able to listen to some of those old songs which have been made new again by some young, talented artists. So, as I play that, I ask that we just take a moment to consider the beautiful rē Moriori and their waiata Moriori. If you go on to the Spotify app, you’ll find it on the Hokotehi Moriori Trust, and the first song up is called “Hokotehi Me Rongo”. I’m not sure if this has been done in the House before, but, anyway, let’s go. [Member plays song on phone] And it goes on—“Hokotehi Me Rongo”—and there is my place to finish this speech.
To our Moriori imi that are here in the building, that are listening from all around the country, and that are listening over on Rekohu, we stand next to you. We look forward to your journey, we look forward to your history being recorded, we look forward to more of your songs, and we look forward to embracing your rē and brushing up on our own cultural capability when it comes to your language. I commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call.
TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, and I think it was particularly beautiful, actually, to note that last moment from the previous speaker Tāmati Coffey. I’ve always loved seeing the unique aspects or learning more about the unique aspects of different cultures, and sharing that with us was quite special.
I also am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to have travelled out to the Chatham Islands, and it is a magical place, an amazing place, a beautiful part of New Zealand. It is rugged, windswept, and it gets a bit of rain, too, out there, but it is a really unique part of what it is to be in New Zealand with some of this diversity, these unseen, unspoiled parts of the country that most people don’t have the opportunity to travel to. So I can imagine what it may have been like for the Moriori travelling out there and establishing themselves on that beautiful part of the world.
Of course, when we look back in history with the benefit of hindsight, we understand that just about every culture goes through significant challenges in its time. Today, we have the ability to address some of the challenges that the Moriori faced, some of the suffering that they went through that they should not have, and I think we’re fortunate as a country to be able to make some of these retrospective considerations that do help to bring peace and enable the next step in a journey to be taken for people. So, on that basis, we absolutely support the bill on this side of the House as well.
Obviously, the historical account of the events that occurred under Part 1, as well as the apology offered by the Crown—no culture, no community, should have to suffer enslavement and suffer the challenges that the Moriori did, and there was a slowness to act from the Crown. After the 1842 signing, that should not have taken so long for the inequities to have been addressed. Unfortunately, it did. The enslavement by Māori tribes of the Moriori was unfortunate, and it should have been addressed by the Crown sooner.
Having said that, we are now in this place where we have taken those points on board: the historical account; the commercial redress as well, under Part 3. Obviously, some financial contribution towards that of course doesn’t fix the problem in and of itself, but is a contribution towards enabling those next steps that I mentioned to be taken for people to draw a line in the sand and to say, “Now we can move forward and we can carve out our own future as we see fit for us, with some additional support to achieve that.”
So, on that basis, as I said, we do support this bill. The Chathams is a beautiful part of New Zealand. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t had the opportunity to take that opportunity, to find the opportunity, to go out there to experience what it is to be a part of that most eastern part of New Zealand and to embrace the culture. The people there are unique, they’re hospitable, they’re friendly. They’ll give you a bit of a tough time, but it’s all in jest and good fun, and it is absolutely worth the trip. So we support it. We support the ongoing success the Moriori, I’m sure, will enjoy off the back of this as well, and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.
DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā koutou e ngā hau e whā ka huri noa o ngā motu, ā, ka nui taku mihi ki a koutou te iwi Moriori o Rēkohu, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
[Greetings, Madam Speaker. Greetings to those here from all around the islands, especially to the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands, greetings, greetings one and all.]
It is an honour indeed to rise and speak to the third reading of this legislation, the Moriori settlement claim—the final stage, but the new stage of hope and recognition of you. Te Paati Māori support Moriori in the endeavours through your reinvigoration. We remember and pay homage to your karāpuna. We acknowledge your resilience as an uri of Aotea waka. I bow in humility for your pain and perseverance. As an uri of Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāruahine, Ngā Rauru, Pakakohi, without knowing all of your history, we have been blessed and felt your karāpuna. You have led our wellbeing and the spiritual significance of pacifism for my whānau, hapū, and waka within Taranaki, with the extension of your tikanga—values—into Parihaka. Because of you, we wear the raukura. Because of you, we have the strength of pacifism and forgiveness. You have led the example of absolute resilience and tenacity. You are the reminder of humility, often seen in tuakana. We have learnt and we have continued to learn from the example that you showed, the strength of unity, and that we will learn to know and never forget what is so wrong. We stand here to remember the biggest lesson, of aroha ki ngā tangata.
So we have a short call to say that we are here to affirm this settlement process and we remind that it should not be full and final. This is a small percentage—1 percent—of what was taken and what’s owed as the breach of Te Tiriti. Te Paati Māori will continue to fight in hard support for the next generations returning for the remaining 99 percent.
I turn to all your rangatahi and all your mokopuna who we have felt rise in their whakapapa, who we have heard rise in their reo, who we have seen stand side by side with their mātua in this process. May you continue to grow strong and confident; know we will always be here to support you. We commend this bill to the House.
Nō reira, he Hōnore, he kororia ki te Atua. He whakaaro pai ki ngā tāngata katoa, tēnā koutou. Kia ora koutou katoa.
[Therefore, honour and glory to God. Goodwill to all people, greetings, and be well, one and all.]
RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou ōku rangatira. E te imi Moriori, tēnā koutou. Nau mai, whakatau mai ki te ana o te raiona e takatū nei. He rā nui tēnei, he rā, nō koutou tēnei, he rā nui whakahirahira. He Hōnore nui ki te tū i tēnei pānuitanga tuatoru.
Ka huri tū, me mihi atu ki ngā mate huhua o te wā, kua whetūrangitia koutou, haere, haere atu rā.
Hoki mai ki a tātou te kanohi ora e pae enei me ngā mema Hōnore huri rauna i tō tātou Whare, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
[Greetings to the Speaker. Greetings to my esteemed colleagues. To the Moriori people, greetings. Welcome, welcome to the lion’s den, which is prepared for you. This is a great day, this is your day, a very significant day indeed. It is a great honour to stand at this third reading.
I now turn and must greet the many deceased of this time, you who have become stars in the heavens, may you rest in peace.
Returning to the representatives of the living sitting here and the honourable members all around this House, greetings, greetings, greetings one and all.]
It is such a privilege to be able to speak in this third reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. I have sat through many Treaty settlements over my years in this House, both as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee and also just witnessing the debate, and they’re all very special.
I believe, just like all Treaty settlements, the Moriori settlement casts a shadow over the history of our country, of Aotearoa, over the atrocities which have taken place. We have a very colourful history in this nation, and to be able to see the history that has now been written down through the deed of settlement and now reflected in this bill, the history of the Moriori people, it’s very poignant that we mustn’t forget. We celebrate these occasions, whereby we can now use this as a marker to be able to ensure that there is a new relationship between the Crown and Moriori that can move forward, because we know there have been terrible acts of omission of the Crown.
There were terrible events that took place between Māori and Moriori, and Māori and Māori. We hear this in every Treaty settlement, but it’s captured—it’s captured. This is the history of the Moriori people. It has been painstakingly—every word of the deed of settlement, the historical account, and likewise—reflected in the bill. Every word, every phrase, is the history of their people, which has now been recorded for all time through this settlement, which marks this new era of a Treaty relationship with the Crown.
So I want to acknowledge the Moriori people. I want to acknowledge the many years that have taken place in this long, long journey. I think of all of those that have passed on who were part of the journey in this recent time. Yes, this day is a day of remembrance. We must remember all those that have played a part, a significant part.
I’m very privileged: a big part of this settlement and of the terrible wrongdoings that were committed against the Moriori people was about the portrayal or the stigmatisation of the Moriori people, but I never ever encountered that. I’m so fortunate. I’m so fortunate that since I was a young lad, I have had nothing but the most awe-inspiring images of the Moriori people. I’ve gotten to know the people and gotten to spend time on Rēkohu as a young child, and, indeed, as I’ve grown up through life, I’ve had the privilege to be able to be engaged in various activities, mostly iwi-to-iwi activities, with the Moriori. So I have had just wonderful memories.
My first memory of Moriori, I do believe, was a TV show. It was like a documentary, and it was Māui Solomon and his brothers. They were, I think, dressed in nothing but a loincloth, and they were clambering over the rocks on Manukau, I believe. They were finding these turtle-sized pāuas, and they were eating those pāuas and chewing on those pāuas, and then they were handing it on, and I was just absolutely bedazzled by these Moriori warriors. I thought, “Wow, that’s amazing.” They were able to eat raw pāua off the rock, and so that inspired me.
I was so fortunate that just a couple of years after that, I was able to go to the Chatham Islands to celebrate the unveiling of the statue of Tommy Solomon, the tupuna of Māui and his whānau. It’s still standing there beautifully, the statue there, and that really marked the renaissance of the Moriori people. That momentum has just continued over the years, when I think back to the efforts of Māui in fisheries negotiations for the Moriori imi right through to the establishment of their beautiful marae, Te Kopinga Marae, through to the acquisitions of significant assets on the island which they have required to build up their commercial base, and through to, now, the completion of this settlement. It’s been a very action-packed past 35-plus years—close to 40 years—of this particular journey, and so this is a real milestone for Moriori.
I think of the relationships that we have, and I know I’ve mentioned that in previous speeches, but I have a fond memory. It’s such a long journey, these Treaty settlements, but I remember I was in the Wellington Airport, and Tom Lanauze and a dear kuia that was with him, who were on the negotiating team, were holding some consultation hui, I believe, with Moriori whānau. It was just wonderful to see them. So we got talking and, as all good Ngāi Tahu whanaunga do, I gifted them a bucket of muttonbirds, much to Tom’s joy.
Hon Simon Bridges: Is that legal? That doesn’t sound legal.
RINO TIRIKATENE: I’ve always got muttonbirds handy, always at the ready, as the member for Te Tai Tonga. I gifted the bucket of prized muttonbirds that we have down in the South to Tom Lanauze and this dear kuia, and they were very much appreciative, because I recognise and we recognise, as Māori, the importance of the mahi that they were doing. It’s so important, and it was that expression of just goodwill and whanaungatanga that we have for our relations on Rēkohu.
So we have been involved in so many things over the years, and this is a really important marker. I want to acknowledge all those that have been involved in this settlement on both sides: te imi Moriori and, obviously, the Crown: Dame Fran Wilde and all her team, all the officials. There’s more to come—there is more to come—because we know there are some shared settlements that are yet to be coming through for Wharekauri Rēkohu, and I’m really looking forward that we can once again, as a House, come together to acknowledge those shared settlements that will also be given effect to by legislation between Moriori and Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri.
So there is much to celebrate and, just in closing, I want to acknowledge the waiata that the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, Tāmati Coffey, played for the House. That is a first—that is a first. He might have set a trend. We’ll be coming out with the old boom boxes and letting it rip. But I do want to acknowledge that beautiful waiata because I think it just captured, in the beautiful ambiance, in the wairua, of that waiata—we could feel the wairua of the Moriori people coming through, from their own uri singing forth their beautiful waiata, which was, no doubt, composed by their rangatahi.
So that is what we want to base this celebration day on: the future for their rangatahi, the future for Moriori imi. I congratulate them all. Me rongo, me rongo, kia ora mai anō tātou katoa.
[In peace, in peace, thank you one and all.]
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Oh, this has been a great debate. We’ve had music from Tāmati Coffey, and I’m not sure that was within the rules, to be honest, but it seemed culturally inappropriate to stop it. I’m just going to say to Tāmati Coffey, don’t go doing that with Snoop Dogg. You know, it’s probably not the right thing to do, but it was good.
I also very much enjoyed what I heard from Rino Tirikatene there. I loved that image of him gorging on the pāua. He really got into it with his hands—you could almost taste those pāua when he was telling that story, and then the buckets of muttonbirds. I’m not sure: is there a limit on those muttonbirds? Is that like undersized crays that he’s been getting? “Pretty legal”, as Steven Joyce used to say, I think is the expression there.
It was a great speech, from a great member of Parliament. I think that the member Rino Tirikatene, who’s just sat down, along with Mr Eagle, are actually like co - local members of Parliament for the area—is that all right, Mr Eagle?—because Rino Tirikatene, of course, is MP for that whole area. So it’s good to hear from him, and also from Mr Eagle, I’m sure. I think he’s limbering up to give a speech on this.
I spoke about him in my last speech in this House on this, and, like Rino Tirikatene, he’s a fine local member of Parliament. He doesn’t know this, but when he’s Mayor of Wellington, I’m actually—from a hundred yards, we look very similar. So when there’s like protests—[Interruption] No, not you; you too, actually—you too. One of us is a little smaller, but we won’t go there—it’s all that pāua you’ve been eating. I digress.
Hon Member: Back to the bill.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: No, no, the bill’s coming—the bill’s coming. At a hundred yards, we look the same, so when those Extinction Rebellion protesters are coming for you, I will insert myself and they will think that it’s me—they will think that I am you, that is, and I will keep you safe.
It’s been really good to speak on this bill at each stage. I haven’t been on the committee, but in a sense one doesn’t need to to get a sense of the flavour of the law and to read it and get a sense of what it’s all about. You know, all jokes aside about some of the members in the Parliament who have played us music and told us tales, this is, I think, a nice part, if I can say that. It’s a good part of the House.
These bills are non-contentious. We’re not bickering about them, as the House does on a number of laws. We come in agreement to settle and provide redress for past injustices, and here we have a situation where for the Moriori people, we are righting gross historical injustices, and I’m not going to retell those. We’ve spoken about them at length now in this House at various readings of this bill, but they are there, and so the redress that is provided by the Crown in terms of apology redress, cultural redress, and financial redress—I think it’s around circa $17 million to $18 million worth—is token. It doesn’t, in fact, accommodate what has happened. It’s not like for like—not apples for apples, if you can put it that way—but, nevertheless, it is some redress.
I think one theme that’s come through in the discussion in the first, second, and third readings of this bill is that one of the greatest injustices here has been one that in a sense—I’m 45. I know the members opposite find that hard to believe. Not a lot of grey hairs—a full head of hair that I have. But even a young buck like myself can remember when growing up that the Moriori people had myths and stigma around them. I can sort of remember, bluntly, that they were the ones that had been made extinct, even though that wasn’t actually the truth. There was a sense of—and I’d say this in quotes; it’s not what I believe now and it’s certainly not what I know to be true with the passage of this law and the historical record that is encapsulated in this law—“inferiority” there.
So we, in this law, put that right. In doing so, we are in a sense righting the worst, or one of the worst, injustices that have happened to Moriori people—those myths, those stigmas, that were untrue and that were perpetrated by many, including the Crown. For the Crown, it wasn’t simply what was done, although there were injustices done in the Māori Land Court—or the Native Land Court, I think it was at that time—but also in what was not done: what was taught and what was not taught in our classrooms. So we in our way, in this law, put it to rights.
It’s sad, I want to say—and I appreciate it’s probably because of COVID and restrictions; I presume that’s right—that the Moriori people aren’t here today to be here for the third sum-up. Well, I’ll put that right if I see them in the gallery—
Hon Member: Next door.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Oh, they’re next door—I see. We won’t hear the waiata in this House, at least, and I always enjoy that. It’s a fitting endnote, if you like, to these sorts of bills.
National, when it comes to the Treaty process, I think’s got a proud heritage—a whakapapa, if you like—on these bills. We started it, and I simply say that to say, you know, we may not get the votes in this area, but we are part of the heritage, the whakapapa, the mahi, when it comes to the Treaty settlement process, and that is important, I think.
So, with those remarks, it’s good to have been part of this journey in a small way at the first, second, and third readings. I am gratified that we are, in a sense, in some tokenistic ways, righting the wrongs that have been perpetrated on the Moriori people from those Chatham Islands out to the east of where we are here in Wellington. As I say, it’s a pleasure and a privilege.
PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. What a pleasure it is to be the final speaker on this, the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. There is a sense of excitement in here, as there always is when we talk about Rēkohu / the Chatham Islands / Wharekauri, and what excites me most is that, finally, I am getting every single member in this House excited about a small part of the Rongotai electorate but also of Te Tai Tonga, where Rino Tirikatene and myself represent the good people of Rēkohu. I want to just acknowledge that despite this excitement, there is pain, and can I acknowledge all those who identify as Moriori and those who are about to go on their journey to identify themselves and say, “Hey, I too am Moriori in the karāpuna and all of those who have gone before.”
I want to just also acknowledge everyone involved, as the last speaker. There have been many. I say I’m privileged for a good reason, because in the Banquet Hall there is a small part of the Moriori community here—not everybody. I had hoped to look around the green leather seats up top and see it full, and I’m sure, though, that they too would have liked that as well. But we have the Moriori negotiating team. It’s not all members, but we have, of course, Māui Solomon, who has been mentioned in many a speech. It’s been his life’s work, backed up strongly by others who have been part of that negotiating team on both sides. Tom Lanauze isn’t here, as is the claims manager Susan Thorpe, but I did see Grace LeGros there, I saw Paul Solomon there, and I saw the back-up team who have been with them all the way.
These settlements are no easy feats, and Māui reminds us of that when he speaks. He outlines the pain, as it’s taken so long. I’ve got a document here that outlined the deed of settlement signing ceremony, which I was privileged to attend back in February of 2020 at Kopinga.
On the Crown side, Dame Fran Wilde is there with the team from Te Arawhiti, and I mention them because, as we know, these things take a long time. They take perseverance, and so they are part of the process, too. I want to acknowledge those Ministers who have been here before, like Dame Annette King; the Hon Chris Finlayson, who helped and who was the former Treaty negotiations Minister; and, of course, our own Hon Andrew Little, who has led this through to its completion.
Some of you may not know that there are others on the island who have played a key role. We’ve heard about Alfred “Bunty” Preece—the late Bunty—but also Alfred Preece, a former mayor; the current mayor, Monique Croon; and the Chatham Islands Council. There have been many leaders, many people on-island, and it was great to see the new members of the Hokotehi Moriori Trust. They will become the entity that takes this forward, and that’s why I’m most privileged.
Often, I get the honour of going across to the Chatham Islands / Rēkohu, and I’m reminded how warm they are to receive me. Every trip has meant some new experience. What I most enjoy is when I get to visit the primary schools. They have three. One of those, and the biggest, is Te One School, and I’m constantly enlightened by their demands. They are small but important. One child, Brodie, who’s now a little bit bigger and is boarding at St Bede’s, said to me once, “If you could do one thing, Mr Parliamentary Member, that’s bring me a peanut slab.”, and so my trips there have been to bring some mainland food of goodness to them. Whilst we’re outside the gifting season, and the Kilbirnie KFC doesn’t quite cut it, it does remind me how the little things really matter. For me, the little things that come back to me are the fact that they in some way have, I guess, a trilingual experience—English, Moriori, and Māori—and they’ve got the most fascinating school song. But that is for another day.
But I extend that warmth to the experiences that people on the Chathams open their doors to me. They educate me a little bit more. I might get two different stories, but what I do generally get is that this is the feeling of Moriori people and this is what happened, and this is why this is so important. So, today, we are capturing everything we can through this settlement, but can I just say to you that there is so much more. That’s the excitement I talked about when I stood up and I heard several people say, “Look, something that’s not seen is their commitment to many things, and one of those things is the environment.” Right now, on-island, there is a project called Recloaking Rēkohu. That’s their commitment to looking after what we’ve often seen, and that’s the kopi tree art. For those that get the privilege of going to Hāpūpū reserve there, there’s no longer those trees where the art is, and that’s happened during my short time as the member.
They’re big into tree planting. One of the things I most enjoyed when I took over representatives from Trees That Count, the Project Crimson Trust, and I saw the enthusiasm that members had in terms of planting trees, regenerating the land, and making sure it was sustainable for the future, not to mention—and, dear I say it, one of my favourite people there is Loretta Lanauze. She’s actually the chef, Mr Bridges. So she’s the chef at Kopinga Marae, cooking up to fine perfection, in true Moriori style, the pāua, the crayfish, and the many other delights that some members here have experienced.
My point there is they are on that journey already. Settlement in approval stages or not, they’ve started, they are moving, and they are doing a good job, and every week there is someone from Rēkohu needing some help—just like any other constituent for those of us who are electorate MPs—who comes through the office, and we have dedicated resource and communication lines into the island. There’s only 12 phone lines and the internet’s not too flash, but any day now the first mobile phone call will be made, and I’m hoping the Hon David Clark will take that call with Her Worship, the mayor there—
Hon Simon Bridges: No, he’ll be mountain biking.
PAUL EAGLE: —and just show that we are moving. There could be a cycleway trail too, but that’s for another day.
But those hui at Kopinga are about ta rē Moriori, the language revitalisation. They hui often at that marae, and this is all part of their revitalisation, in a sense, for all Moriori people: having a place, a tūrangawaewae, that they can call home. So when people do return home, there is a whare, Loretta’s cooked the warm, healthy kai for them, and they have history being told. We saw Tamati Coffey give a wee snippet, and I bet you Heather Beaton has been working hard there on the app and Spotify to make sure, using technology, to truly transmit, literally, their language, their values, and what makes Moriori strong.
Can I say, I know the next stages for them are going to be in ensuring that the governance of the island truly reflects the partnership with both Moriori and Māori. I know that our governance review being led by the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and the Hon Jan Tinetti will allow them to truly be in a position to make decisions for the future of Rēkohu, Rangihaute, and the other islands that make up the Chatham Islands group for ever and ever.
As I bring this speech to an end, can I finish just by saying thank you to the Māori Affairs Committee for shepherding this report through. I know it was a truly significant experience for many, and, as I said at the start, I’m hoping every single member now understands a little bit more when they hear about the Moriori / Chatham Islands / Wharekauri. Kia ora.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2)
Third Reading
Debate resumed from 18 November.
Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. “Days without sleep, hallucinating, vomiting and extreme paranoia is not what festival-goers were expecting when they consumed MDMA over the summer.” So this is the beginning of a Newshub story that was released earlier this year, and it talked about the experiences of festival goers over summer. It was a summer that KnowYourStuff found that 68 percent of samples that they were testing at events weren’t what the person submitting the sample thought they were.
Often when we think about drug testing, we think about the people that are submitting their substances to be checked, but I also think we need to step back and think also about those working in the emergency services, so those in the A & E departments and those in our ambulances. Often what they’re confronted by is a young person who has consumed a substance and this young person themselves isn’t sure what they’ve taken. So in that context, obviously, if you’ve had a substance checked, then the person will know, but often they don’t. So what’s incredibly useful is also to have some understanding of the underlying statistics and the information from previous tests from other people attending festivals in similar areas about what some of those unexpected substances might be, because part of treating and assessing a young person is knowing what that substance was because that determines the next steps for management.
So for me, it’s a real pleasure to speak on this third and final reading of this bill, because what it will mean is that, again, this summer, those drug checking services can operate with legal certainty. I think drug checking is about harm reduction, and I think some of the changes that the Health Committee made have made this a much stronger bill. I think one of them was making sure that not only do people get their substances checked, but they also will consistently now have access to quality harm reduction advice about the substance that they have had tested.
So just summing up, again, that the select committee had 56 written submissions and we heard 11 oral submissions. Some of those submissions did make a difference in terms of some of the changes that we’ve made. One of them that was pointed out and where we did recommend change was making harm reduction advice mandatory because, basically, as I was saying, it’s not just about the physical testing of the substance; it’s about that harm reduction advice that’s going to go along with it. Because, while KnowYourStuff suggests that a high proportion of young people who find that the substance they’ve got isn’t what they thought it was do choose not to take that substance, a small number do still go on and take the substance. In that context, also making sure there’s advice around having support around you, about making sure that alcohol is not used, and about other substances not used in a non-judgmental way is really, really important.
So, basically, when the bill was introduced, 35DB stated that “The functions of a service provider [were] to do 1 or more of the following:”, and providing information about harm reduction advice was only “1 or more of the following.” What that meant was that it wasn’t mandatory and so you could potentially have some people that were setting up as drug and substance checking services who would test the substance, but then, theoretically, not provide any advice, and, actually, it’s probably the advice that’s the most crucial part of this. So, basically, what we felt as a committee was that following testing, such advice should be mandatory and we added a new section recommending a new 35DDF to that effect. But it was also noted that if, despite the best efforts, that the person said, “No, I don’t want to receive that advice.”, then that was also respected. So it wasn’t that you had to continue giving advice if it was unwelcome, but certainly making sure that that advice was available.
We’ve made another number of changes that were recommended, and I think two of those were around the use of personal information and collecting that and also about the admissibility of test results in court proceedings. Because, when the bill was introduced, basically, the idea was that you couldn’t use those test results in terms of criminal proceedings because you didn’t want to discourage people from using those services. However, basically, it didn’t cover civil cases and it didn’t cover the fact you used the testing services and so we’ve made some recommended changes to make sure that those are covered so people have that sense that they can use that without legal consequence and there’ll be confidentiality. So this is a really important bill, and I’m really happy to commend this bill to the House.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): You know, the member who has just sat down and spoken—
Hon Chris Hipkins: I just said, “I came down just for this.”
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, you’re only human. The member that has just taken her seat, Dr Liz Craig, she started her contribution by saying, “Well, you know, someone who has taken a pill, they’ll be sleepless, they will be sweating, there will be paranoia.” You know, I can agree with the member quite readily. Those are negative effects, and we would want to do something about that. But the problem is, I can’t understand from the member’s speech how on earth this bill does a single thing that stops those things. Because the reality is, basically, when we’re thinking about this bill, it’s the MDMA. It’s the actual, main substance of the pill that is causing those effects. It’s not the additive or what have you that the politically correct pill testers are going to be testing for that’s causing those things. So when that side of the House pats themselves on the back because they say, “Well, we’ve fixed things here, and everything’s going to be OK now. Hallelujah. We’ve passed this law on pill testing and we’ve slipped in a few things along the way that do a lot more than we said it would, by the way.”, actually, I say, and the National Party says, tragically, they’re not actually solving very much at all.
So it won’t surprise you, and it’s been our position, both on the temporary regime and now on this one, that we oppose this law. It’s well intentioned. I think the member that’s just sat down—you know, she’s a medical doctor. I know other members on the other side of the House, they’re well intentioned about this, but I say that, look, it’s not going to achieve the sort of things that they say it will. In fact, it could be that it does quite the reverse.
So I just want to—I don’t think I’ll take the full 10 minutes. I do, though, want to recap on some of the arguments that have been made. The first argument, I think, that we hear so loud and clear from the public health lobby, from Andrew Little, and from the Labour Party, is that this is all evidence-based. Well, the only study—I keep asking Chlöe Swarbrick. I kept asking Andrew Little. I kept asking other members on the other side of the House for their studies, the evidence base that they relied on. The only Kiwi study they could rely on—by the way, they never referred to anything else from around the world that I could see, not a specific study. The only study they could rely on was a Victoria one. By the way, it was self-selecting. It was a sample. It wasn’t within cooee of being what I would consider a proper evidence-based, scientifically selected study of what is happening in New Zealand. It was self-selected. It was a sample.
The reality of it is this: testing increases usage. You’re testing, you’re giving people a sense of confidence—I believe false confidence—therefore, usage goes up. What we have seen from actual studies on the ground in Australia and the United Kingdom—I believe in the United States; I’m not quite so familiar with the United States—is that, actually, fatalities have gone up, because I say again, it’s not the additives that are being tested for that kill. So it’s a false confidence in this bill that we are giving.
Actually, the only message that really stops fatalities is that no pill is safe. There’s no such thing as a safe ecstasy or a safe dose of some of the other drugs that may in time be able to be tested. That’s, in effect, what the coroner has said very recently. I acknowledge in the case for the coroner in the last month or so it was ecstasy and water, but they nevertheless made the point: actually, this isn’t safe. That’s a message that needs to get out there, because it’s a popular drug, and people think, certainly, with the kind of kaupapa they’re getting in this House from the other side that it’s all OK, and it’s not.
The member opposite, before she sat down, said, “Well, but there’ll be all this wonderful advice from the pill testing stations.” What a load of nonsense. It’ll be politically correct, a kind of a spiel that does not make clear that actually no pill is safe. It’ll be “It’s been tested. It doesn’t have any of these other greeblies in it. Here you go. Go on your way, son. Go on your way.” That is not enough assurance, it seems to me, for young New Zealanders.
The other thing, and the thing I’d say to David Seymour is this—because ACT is doing a good job at the moment, and I say, “Good on them.” They’re cornering the market at a level in politics. They are doing a good job of being urban wokester and Groundswell, right? But I say quite clearly to the ACT Party: actually, when it comes to this bill—when it comes to this bill—actually, the people of Groundswell, they don’t want to have to pay for other people to have their pills testing, which is exactly what Andrew Little has done. He started this bill; it was just at festivals. Then it became pill testing everywhere. Then it became that the taxpayer’s paying for it. I say to ACT: actually, if it really was the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, it would stand up for taxpayers and say, “You know what? You don’t take drugs; you don’t have to pay for other people to do so either.” Because I reckon—
David Seymour: Maybe farmers go to festivals.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, there’d be the odd one, but actually, I say to him, he can’t be Chlöe Swarbrick and the farmer down the road. At the moment, that’s what David Seymour, with respect, is trying to be. He’s trying to be Herne Bay and Invercargill. I think, actually, as he gets close to the election, he’s going to find that difficult to do.
So I say drugs aren’t just a health issue. Yes, they are a health issue, but they’re also—and I think, frankly, we’re the only party in this Parliament that knows this—a criminal justice issue, because of the harm they cause, the misery they cause. It is not a victimless crime, as some would have you believe. The referendum on cannabis that we saw at the last election made that quite clear, actually. That’s how New Zealanders see it as well.
David Seymour: Why doesn’t Simon want to be popular everywhere?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, it’s all relative.
David Seymour: Why can’t you be popular in Herne Bay and Invercargill?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, Mr Seymour probably can, for a time, right? Until he’s in Government—for a time. But I think it’s hard to do that. I say once more before we sit down that, actually, one of the big problems with this bill has been that for the Government and Andrew Little in particular, when he first came to this House, he said it would just be for festivals. It then grew and it was pill testing everywhere that we’re legalising. It then became that actually not only are we testing the pills but the taxpayer is going to pay for it everywhere. I just say—actually, National is the only party that does in this House—that’s not right. That is not a good use of taxpayers’ money. Actually, the evidence base isn’t behind this bill. This is more than just a health issue. No pill is safe.
Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s been a long time since I’ve had an opportunity to be in the House—a long time to take a call—so it’s great to be here and I say, “Kia ora koutou” and also “Talofa lava” to all my parliamentary colleagues. During the lockdown, it’s not like we were doing nothing in the community. I know a lot of our Aucklanders and South Aucklanders were doing the hard job of getting our vaccination rates up, and there was the opportunity for myself to volunteer at the testing sites or vax sites, and also managed isolation and quarantine as well, doing our part in that mahi.
To be the last speaker on this bill, the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2), in the third reading, it’s an opportunity to also wrap up as I wasn’t here during the second reading and also the committee of the whole House, but also just to acknowledge all the work that’s been put into this bill.
The submissions from our community, and organisations—it was great to hear from St John as well, and the awesome work they do, and also their wanting to include this as part of their service as well. To the clerks and officials who went back and forth, and also to our colleagues across the House on the Health Committee—yes, we know that only one party does not support this bill—but also, I guess, the work done to make sure that this bill was up to standard, and that’s why we did not see any changes to the bill at the committee of the whole House.
One of the things I want to point out is we’re always looking for a pathway or a place where we can intervene when it comes to harm reduction, and this is one place where we can ensure that there is that pathway, and where there is a bit of innovation to do so, because, like my select committee chair, Dr Liz Craig, has mentioned, the advice that you give can be very useful in terms of engaging. So that’s why I support this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) be now read a third 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 third time.
Urgency
Urgency
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the passing through all stages of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill and the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill; the first reading and referral to select committee of: the Māori Purposes Bill; and the third readings of the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and the Education and Training Amendment Bill; the second reading of the Maritime Powers Bill; and the committee stages of the Commerce Amendment Bill and Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill.
The Government’s priority in this urgency motion is to pass the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill and the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill. The first bill allows for the traffic light framework to be put in place, including the requirements around vaccination certificates. The second bill increases the level of support available to businesses and to individuals and families as we move into the next phase of our COVID-19 response, hence there is genuine urgency around getting both of those pieces of legislation passed through the House.
It is the Government’s intention that, if both of those pieces of legislation have been completed by 1 p.m. tomorrow, that urgency would end and then we would have question time and general debate and member’s day tomorrow. In the event that those pieces of legislation have not completed their passage at that point, the Government wants to make sure that the House doesn’t find itself in a position where it runs out of business part-way through what would normally be the sitting hours tomorrow. Hence those additional items of business have been added to the motion in order to make sure the House can continue to make the most efficient use of its time. In the event that those first two bills do proceed past 1 p.m. tomorrow, it is our intention that, if they have completed their passage by 10 p.m. tomorrow night, that we would finish the House sitting at the normal time of 10 p.m. tomorrow night. In the event that those two bills have not passed, we would continue on until midnight and come back on Thursday morning under the urgency motion. But, as I’ve indicated before, the other items of business have only been included in the urgency motion to ensure that the House doesn’t run out of business in the event that the urgency is not completed by 1 p.m. tomorrow.
A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.
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.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill
First Reading
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I present a legislative statement on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill be now read a first time.
New Zealand’s preparing to move to the next phase of our response in the fight against COVID-19, a global pandemic that has confronted the world and presented a series of challenges around the globe that are unprecedented in our lifetimes in terms of the public health response that has been required. The next phase of our response here in New Zealand focuses on the framework that allows for much greater freedom due to the success of our roll-out of the vaccination. The vaccination programme is the greatest public health tool that we have now in our fight against COVID-19, and it is the most effective way for us to open up the country again safely, without the need to resort to the restrictions we’ve had in the past.
It is worth, at this point, very briefly recapping where we found ourselves just under two years ago as we were grappling with the onset of the global pandemic. There was no vaccine. There were very few treatments available that had been proven to be effective, and therefore the best way of keeping New Zealanders safe was to stamp COVID-19 out completely and to keep it out of the country. And that has been our focus for most of the last year and a half since we found ourselves in that first position.
The vaccine roll-out has changed things. The arrival of Delta, the new variant that has proven to be almost impossible to stamp out in every country that has experienced an outbreak of Delta, has also changed things. And so now we enter into the next phase. So this bill clarifies the framework for the management of COVID-19 in our community—and we have to accept the reality that COVID-19 is here in the community to stay.
The bill includes the ability to make orders that differentiate between people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 and people who aren’t, and so to achieve that, the bill amends the order-making provisions in the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. The orders that will be made will provide for the issue of COVID-19 protection certificates to use within New Zealand, which will be known as My Vaccine Pass. It’ll allow us to specify the information required in the process for people to get a vaccine pass. It will prohibit people from entering certain places if they’re not vaccinated or exempted from vaccination—i.e., if they don’t have a vaccine pass. It will specify that proof of vaccination can’t be required for accessing certain life-preserving services—so the ability to go to the supermarket, to go to the pharmacy, to access core educational services, compulsory education services, to access health and disability services, or Work and Income support. We will be preventing people from requiring vaccination in order to access those critical services, and we will have orders that specify the COVID-19 vaccination exemption criteria that will exist under the framework.
Provisions have been made in the bill for enforcement officers to direct the production of evidence to demonstrate compliance with an order. That’s important. The bill will support our future vaccination mandates where there’s a strong public interest in doing so, rather than solely for public health reasons—and this is something that employers have asked for clarity and greater certainty on for some time now, and we’ve been working very hard to provide them with that greater certainty. So to do this, the bill will allow for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to make orders regarding vaccination and testing for specified work where it’s in the public interest to do that.
But vaccination is a really important tool for mitigating the risk in workplaces, and we’re seeing greater demand from employers who want greater clarity about their ability to require vaccination or not, and we’re also seeing a much greater demand from workers who want to see that requirements are put in place so that they know whether or not the people that they are working alongside have been vaccinated. So employers need the ability to manage the risks associated with COVID-19, and this bill goes a great deal of the way to giving them the certainty that they are looking for.
It will assist employers to decide whether they should require vaccination for their workers. The bill provides the framework for an assessment tool that will help them conduct individual assessments for their businesses and their circumstances to determine whether vaccination is warranted for the work that is being done. The tool will be prescribed further in the regulations and we will have those in place as soon as we can.
The bill amends the Employment Relations Act. It provides important certainty for employees in situations where their work could end up terminated because they have not been vaccinated, and they have made the decision that they don’t want to be vaccinated but where a vaccination requirement for their workplace is in place. So the changes to the Employment Relations Act clarify the requirement for a paid four-week notice period in these situations if employees aren’t vaccinated. If they get vaccinated before the end of the notice period, the termination notice is cancelled, unless it would unreasonably disrupt the employer’s business—and we had a conversation about that in question time today.
These amendments also seek to support employees to be vaccinated by providing reasonable paid time off for the purpose of being vaccinated. That will apply to all COVID-19 vaccination rounds, including future booster doses of the vaccine, and that’ll help to increase our vaccination rates amongst people in less flexible working conditions or working in less flexible workplaces so that they can make sure that they can get vaccinated if they can’t get vaccinated outside of the work hours.
Cumulatively, these amendments create the framework that we need to provide better protection for New Zealanders in a variety of different settings as we move to a less restrictive environment in the way that we are managing COVID-19. They’ll bring greater freedoms to us. They will ensure that those who are vaccinated can be recognised for the extra protection that their vaccination is providing to themselves and those around them. These restrictions will help us. They are justified given the situation that the pandemic and the public health response requires. They’ll help us to better manage the public health risks that are caused by those who haven’t been vaccinated, because the reality is, now, the key thing to bringing greater freedoms for us all is to encourage those people to be vaccinated.
My hope is that all eligible New Zealanders will take up the opportunity to be vaccinated, and I hope that while we disagree on many aspects of the COVID-19 response, as we have done over the course of the last year and a half, Parliament will remain unified in its very strong message, that all parties in Parliament have sent so far, that the vaccine is safe, it is effective, and everybody should make the informed choice to be vaccinated.
So I want to acknowledge the effort of all New Zealanders in the fight against COVID19. I want to acknowledge the 91 percent of eligible New Zealanders who have been vaccinated so far with at least one dose of the vaccine, and send an encouragement to that last 9 percent to come forward and to do that. The bill creates the new legal framework that will allow us to transition into a world that is more open, that has fewer restrictions, and that recognises that vaccination is the greatest tool that we have in the toolkit in our fight against COVID-19.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is set the motion be agreed to.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I want to start by echoing the comments of the Minister, the Hon Chris Hipkins, in relation to vaccination: COVID is here. It is not going away. This summer, Delta will spread throughout New Zealand, and I encourage everyone listening to go and get vaccinated. This pandemic is a pandemic now of the unvaccinated and Delta will find you if you are unvaccinated. And if you doubt that, just have a look at who is in hospital. Overwhelmingly, they are the unvaccinated. So we support strongly the idea that people should get vaccinated, but we do not support this bill, and I want to explain why that is.
The first thing I want to do is to examine what the Minister made mention of in his speech in relation to the Government’s response in the last six months. Because there has been an assumption, I believe, by the Government that the elimination strategy would continue forever. The evidence for that is littered throughout the Government’s response this year. There was no backup plan, and that is why we now come to the traffic light framework developed on the fly and scrambling. And if you doubt that that is the case, I invite you to read the departmental disclosure statement, which makes it very clear that there has been very little consultation, very little analysis, and very little work done in advance of this. In fact, the drafting instructions for this bill were only issued on 27 October, five days after the actual framework was announced. And now we find it’s not going to a select committee. In fact, it will be law sometime this week.
Again, if you doubt that this has been developed in a rush, I point you to the legal advice given to the Attorney-General for the consistency of the bill under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I quote, “This advice has been prepared in an extremely short time frame due to late receipt of the bill that was not in compliance with Cabinet Office Guidance.” I’ll tell you what that guidance was. The guidance says “All bills or all policy proposals that go to Cabinet have to have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.” Guess what? The traffic light framework when it went to Cabinet on the Monday preceding the Friday announcement had had no such analysis done on it by the Ministry of Justice officials. How disgraceful. And if you doubt that this bill has New Zealand Bill of Rights Act implications, just read the legal advice, because it impacts at least eight, and you could probably think of more.
So this has been developed in a rush and it reflects a Government that was in denial about the potential failure of elimination. They had no backup plan—they had no backup plan. And I point you to the fact that the official Government documents released to me and to others under the Official Information Act show that the Government only started doing the planning for Delta when Delta arrived—the start of August. They didn’t do the specific managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) upgrades until after Delta had escaped. They only established the COVID-19 Testing Technical Advisory Group in August. That’s the group that said, “We’re too late on saliva testing. We’re too late on rapid testing. We’re behind the eight ball.”; and the vaccine certificates that are the subject of this bill, Cabinet only authorised their development in July, and they only signed the contract with the IT provider a month ago on 13 October. It has been obvious to any reasonable, fair-minded observer for the better part of this year that we would need vaccine proof, we would need a form of vaccine pass. But the Government was on the go slow on it, only approved the work in July, only signed the contract in October.
The Government had to scramble on mandates. I remember sitting here in the Estimates in September saying to Chris Hipkins, I specifically asked him, “Is the Government considering mandates for teachers?” Because every other country, or many other countries, were doing exactly that in response to Delta. And he stood up and said, “We’re not considering that right now.” That was literally just over two months ago, and then a month later, the Government had to quickly scramble on vaccine mandates for teachers—
Barbara Kuriger: Making it up as they go.
CHRIS BISHOP: Caused enormous unease and anger in the sector. Exactly—and my colleague Barbara Kuriger says they’re making it up as they go, and that is precisely the point. Because there was no back-up plan, we have had to scramble in response to Delta, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Why is it, 18 months into a global pandemic, that there are fewer ICU beds now than there were in April 2020? Why is that the case? When I explain that to people, they literally say, “Well, that can’t be true.” People cannot believe it. They say, “Well, that can’t be correct. The Government’s borrowed all this money, they’ve borrowed $50 billion for the COVID fund.”, and I say, “Yeah, but the official numbers don’t lie. There are fewer resourced ICU beds now in November 2021 than they were in April 2020.” How remarkable is that? Only Labour could borrow $50 billion and end up with fewer ICU beds. Only the Labour Party could do that. It’s just unbelievable.
This bill has some useful elements to it, and my colleague Scott Simpson, our workplace relations spokesperson, will talk about the vaccination assessment tool when it comes to business, because we acknowledge that business wants certainty and clarity when it comes to how to apply vaccine mandates in the private sector. But, generally, this has gone through a repugnant process. You just have to read the departmental disclosure statement. Some of these comments are absolutely laughable: has any further impact analysis become available for any impacts of the policy? No. For the policy to be given effect by this bill, is there any analysis available on the size of the potential costs and benefits? No. The potential for any group of persons to suffer a substantial, unavoidable loss of income? No. For the policy to be given effect, are the potential costs and benefits likely be impacted by the level of effective compliance or non-compliance with obligations or standards? No. All of these things are deeply contestable, and it’s just unbelievable the level of work that has—or actually in relation to this, has not—gone in.
This bill is so shoddily done that the legislative purpose statement says it will require vaccination where the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries has determined this is necessary. It’s not even in the bill. It’s literally not in the bill. The legislative statement that the Minister has tabled makes reference to the minute the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries—it’s not in the bill. There is no reference, as far as I can see, unless I’m looking at an old copy of the bill, that that is the case. This has been done as a rush job. It has been done in a very, very poor manner.
In relation to some of the substantive items that we object to—and there will be many opportunities to get into many other substantive aspects during the committee of the whole House stage, a lot of questions that the Government will have to answer. The Opposition does not object to the concept of vaccination certificates. In fact, we’ve been calling for them since February. The question is this: should it be the Government that goes around and says to private businesses in hospitality or hairdressing or retail or whatever that you must do the following things, or should it be individual enterprises and individual businesses and individual people who make up their minds? That should be the starting point for any proper analysis of rights and benefits in a free society.
We say, on this side of the House, that private property and free enterprise should be the guiding principles behind which we examine any legislative proposal. It should be over to individuals to decide for themselves. So it may well be that a bar decides that they only want to allow fully vaccinated individuals into their bar. If I was running a bar, I might well consider that. But that is very different to the Government saying that they have to do that. If I’m an individual and I choose not to be vaccinated—and regrettably, there are some people out there who have made the decision not to be vaccinated. I think they’re wrong, but that’s over to them, and at some level they will bear the consequences of that decision. If I choose not to be vaccinated, then it’s over to me to choose how my interaction exists with the rest of the world. If I find I can’t go to a bar or a restaurant because they only allow vaccinated patrons, then I will bear the consequences of that in the same way I will bear the health costs. That should be the starting point, not this massive legislative overreach which is the Government’s shoddy proposal.
Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Over the last 18 months, New Zealand’s COVID response has resulted in some of the lowest hospitalisation and mortality rates in the world, but the issue we’ve got now is that our vaccine roll-out has got to a point where we can transition to a framework which allows us to benefit from some of the individual protections that vaccine offers. Just based down in Invercargill, what I’d like to acknowledge is the 93 percent of eligible Southerners who have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and the 85 percent who are now fully vaccinated, because that incredible effort will significantly reduce the risk to our community of COVID-19 and also serve to protect our health service capacity. But, building on the success of that, what this bill does is allow us to introduce a protection framework that will allow us to use the benefits of vaccination.
I’d just like to talk briefly about what the bill allows us to do, and the first thing is create orders that will provide for the issue of COVID-19 vaccination certificates and allow those certificates to be used for entry into businesses and events. Basically, those orders specify how you apply for a vaccine certificate, how they’ll be issued, renewed, and extended. But another thing we need to make sure and point out is that it’s important to note that the orders will also specify that proof of vaccination won’t be required for certain premises, and that’s to make sure that people can still continue, irrespective of their vaccination status, to access essential services like supermarkets, pharmacies, Work and Income services—so, basically, it’s really important to have that in place. Also, the director-general can make notices specifying what the exemption criteria are so people have got clarity around that, and we’re also making sure that there are protections for people’s privacy, and a number of those elements have been built into this bill. So this is a significant bill, and I’m very happy to commend it to the House.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Here we are, just 10 days out from the implementation of the provisions that this bill seeks to create, debating under urgency a bill that was supplied to the Opposition less than 24 hours ago—a bill that will have no scrutiny at a select committee and no input from stakeholders, and there will be no opportunity for members of the public, vaccinated or unvaccinated, to have a say. People are therefore right to ask, “What is this Government doing? What have they been doing for the last 18 months? Where was their planning?”
Barbara Kuriger: Not much.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: “Not much” my colleague Barbara Kuriger says, “Not much” she says, and she’s right, because they’ve been asleep at the wheel.
I want to start my contribution on this first reading of this bill under urgency in much the same way that my colleague Chris Bishop did, by reconfirming that, on this side of the House, we support vaccination. We encourage New Zealanders to be vaccinated, to be double vaccinated, and we understand the benefits that come not only to individuals from being vaccinated but also to us as a community and as a society. We understand that often the greater good is achieved by individual actions taken by us as individuals. But this is a bill that provides the Government with an incredibly wide-ranging tool kit of regulatory power over the lives, the workplaces, and the day-to-day activities of New Zealand citizens. And for that reason alone, it needs the scrutiny that goes beyond the short process of a bill presented to this House that is going to be passed and rammed through every single stage by the Government’s use of their absolute majority.
One of the areas that I want to focus on are the impacts in relation to the workplace. Now, we understand—I think most New Zealanders understand—that businesses need certainty about issues relating to vaccinated and unvaccinated staff in their workplace, and also issues relating to what to do if they have customers or suppliers or contractors who are unvaccinated. What are those issues? This is a Government that has had more than enough opportunity over the last nearly nine months—since the vaccination programme in New Zealand commenced, albeit very late—to have got their act together and to have done some serious thinking on this issue. The Government needed only to have a cursory look at international media and debate and commentary about what was happening in other jurisdictions around the world—countries that actually started their vaccination roll-out programme months and months ahead of us—to see that issues relating to the workplace were going to be a crunch point in terms of eventually rolling out a vaccine programme that was focused on managing and living with Delta in our community and in our society, rather than trying to hang on and cling to the elimination strategy that they did for as long as they did.
Now, for all sorts of reasons, Delta is in our communities. It’s coming, sadly, to a home, a neighbourhood, a community, a town near us all soon. And the best option for the health and safety of not only workers but of all citizens is to be vaccinated. So issues relating to who decides and how decisions are made about employers confronting employees who choose, for whatever reason, not to be vaccinated, are primary and fundamental to the legislative and regulatory regime that a Government, a good Government, a careful, prudent, and thoughtful Government, should have put in place a long time ago. But no, we are now in a position where businesses are going to be given 10 days to get their situations sorted.
So it’s been obvious now for quite a long period of time that an employer actually did have a right to exclude from the workplace non-vaccinated employees, as long as they had gone through an appropriate and detailed health and safety risk assessment. WorkSafe provided guidance for that process, and, actually, many businesses have gone down that path. I note, for instance, that The Warehouse, one of the country’s large employers, has actually done that—they have developed a process using that health and safety risk assessment model and that tool. But, for many businesses, that prospect was going to be difficult and challenging in terms of the process, the formula that needed to be applied, and the dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s. So there is one good thing that’s come out of this piece of legislation, and it is the tool that the Government’s established that will give employers another option other than that formal process. Now, it’s not going to be a tool that is going to be a silver bullet panacea for every single situation, but it will be of help. Businesses have been calling out for months now for some certainty, some clarity, from the Government and some clear sense of what the Government’s direction was going to be. Well, finally, this morning, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, Michael Wood, did provide at least that, but it’s been very slow to come. So for those that choose not to be vaccinated for whatever reason, what this bill does is actually provide an opportunity for regular testing. And I think that’s not a bad idea either, but it’s been a long time coming. And it’s been obvious for a very long period of time that this was needed, but we’ve just had a big, big silence.
Now, one of the aspects that’s not so good of this piece of legislation is a provision that will mean that once an employer has gone through the process—either the health and safety risk assessment process or the tool kit process that is provided for in this legislation—and a decision is made that an employee can’t be redeployed into another role within the business or can’t do a different type of job in maybe a different geography or a different building, or somewhere that is going to separate that person away from vaccinated either customers or other staff members, eventually, that employee can have their employment terminated. But what this bill provides for is a situation where that employee will be given, then, paid four weeks’ notice—effectively gardening leave for four weeks at the expense of the employer. It’s another cost, just another cost. In a year when employers have had so much to bear and such difficult trading circumstances, this Government decides that another four weeks of paid leave for an unvaccinated employee is appropriate and right. Well, I don’t think that is right. I think that’s wrong, and I think that’s unnecessary. But then there are a whole lot of questions about what happens during that period of time.
So the process—and we’ll get into this during the committee of the whole House stage of this bill and we’ll ask a whole lot of questions. But what’s the situation if an employee goes through all that process and then maybe resigns halfway through it? That employee then is still able to bring an action for constructive dismissal, and that will mean a long time in the courts, expense, and uncertainty for the employer. Even if the employee goes through that process and a termination ensues, this piece of legislation still means that a personal grievance claim can be brought by that employee. And that, again, means uncertainty, cost, litigation, lawyers’ fees, all that sort of thing for that business. I think that’s unfair. So, on this side of the House, we have said for a long time that if a business goes through that process of a health and safety risk assessment and comes to a determination that the employee, the unvaccinated employee, needs to be terminated, then that business should be protected from constructive dismissal and personal grievance litigation action. Because we think that’s the fair and right thing to do. But what happens if that employee, halfway through that process—say they’ve had two weeks of the four weeks’ paid leave—then suddenly decides to get vaccinated? Does the employer have to rehire them? Do they have to be reinstated? Will that effectively be a two-week holiday that they have just had? These are questions that the bill doesn’t answer and that aren’t made clear in the regulation.
So, on this side of the House, we think that businesses should be given the choice. They should be given an opportunity to make sensible, prudent business decisions not only for their unvaccinated employees, but for the employees that are vaccinated, for their customers, for their stakeholders, and for their suppliers. We think, on this side of the House, that these are issues that go to the very core and principle of free enterprise, of property rights, and of the rights of businesses to conduct business as they see fit with whom they see fit. And they will make choices about who they wish to trade with and who they don’t.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, these amendments provide the legal framework that essentially enables better protection for New Zealanders as we simply transfer to a less restrictive response to COVID-19 and as we move towards what is a careful reopening and one that we’ve all worked so hard for.
We’ve seen, as has been mentioned previously, the incredible efforts from all New Zealanders in the fight against COVID-19 and, in particular, the strong uptake of vaccinations across the country. And it’s because of that strong uptake and the sheer number, the vast majority, of people who have chosen to protect themselves and their communities that we can progressively reopen in this safe way. So this bill assists with the implementation of the COVID-19 Protection Framework, the traffic light system. It provides for orders to be made that will, as the Minister has expressed earlier, differentiate between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and it provides for the use of the vaccination certificate process in terms of affording proof of vaccination for entry into those certain places and premises.
Vaccination, as we’ve said, is an increasingly important tool to mitigate risk, and it’s particularly important in the workplace. Employers need the ability to manage their risk, as the previous contributor has already said, and decide for themselves whether they should require vaccination or not. So we’ve developed tools, risk assessment tools, which are unique to each of the types of work that are being undertaken.
I would note, however, that the previous contributor talked about paid leave instead of notice periods and managed to mangle several basic industrial relations sort of tenets and parts of that legislation. So I would encourage people and employers to have a closer look at what’s just been previously described.
This is an important bill. I don’t need to hold it up any further other than to say that I again encourage people to take up the opportunity to be vaccinated, and I commend this bill to the House.
Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green) Kia ora. I rise in support of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, because the Greens have stood by a strong health response, which vaccinations, of course, are a major part of. We have historically been very cautious about the use of urgency, and while we consider that this matter is urgent, a more open and transparent process would have been more effective, we think, for upholding public trust in the Government’s COVID-19 response. The businesses and people responsible for rolling out much of this bill could have been available as advisers beforehand, instead of potential protesters and complainants later. In the future, we hope any future amendments and COVID bills will at least be referred to the Health Committee.
We note this bill more explicitly sets out vaccination requirements. Part of it clarifies where people can and cannot go, depending on their vaccination status. Clarity is really, really important, because this is currently in a constant state of flux, and many people are confused about what they can do. Can they hug their family? Can they go into a particular place? What happens when they can’t breathe properly under a mask? It also stops people going to specific areas, places, or premises unless they comply with specific measures—that might be wearing masks, socially distancing, or using a vaccine pass to prove they have been vaccinated. Another part requires services to permit individuals to enter a place regardless of vaccination status—so that means that unvaccinated people can still access essential services, such as supermarkets and pharmacies.
So while the Greens support this vaccination effort, we’re concerned that people who are not vaccinated are becoming more and more stigmatised and that they’re being shut out of many other services because no alternatives have been provided so that the average person can prove they do not have the virus when they need to go shopping for their whānau. We’re setting up a place where our unvaccinated are, essentially, going back into level 3 and level 4, along with many immunocompromised people.
I think there’s still been insufficient time to educate people about the vaccine. Many have fallen prey to misinformation, and many are genuinely scared. We need to keep that space open for people to get that good information to make those good decisions.
So, in terms of workplace requirements, the Greens think it’s really important to have good-faith processes for introducing new workplace requirements. Unfortunately, this has not been able to happen in some places in relation to mandated vaccinations in some workplaces. It’s going to take some time, I think, for our workforce to recover from what is happening right now. The Greens are very clear that these requirements should not breach any other law, especially our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We note that the Minister will determine whether mandated vaccinations in a workplace is a justified limit on the freedoms guaranteed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act..
After we received a copy of this bill yesterday, we raised a concern about whether workplaces will be able to require testing as an alternative or addition to vaccination. It was confirmed that the workplace assessment tool will help workplaces decide whether vaccine or testing requirements would be reasonable in the context of that work. We hope that that workplace assessment tool is easy to use and that people have somewhere that they can ask questions about it and clarify what is the point and how it’s actually going to work. We note that the person in control of a business or undertaking—a PCBU—would retain discretion on whether to use vaccine testing or vaccine exemption requirements and any other control measures along with that. This bill also covers keeping track of all that personal employee information that’s wrapped up with this, and all these processes have now been added to the administrative workload of businesses and workplaces.
So our second major concern was about how that privacy will be protected when collecting the records from employees. We received confirmation that the privacy requirements in the relevant clause are stronger than the Privacy Act and that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner had been heavily involved in the form of those requirements.
So with those key concerns addressed, for now we commend the bill to the House. Kia ora.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of the first reading of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. As a lot of people here will know, there’s three votes on a piece of legislation and the hope is that if you support it at the first, it will be improved and maybe as a party you can carry on supporting it further through the second and third votes. On this piece of legislation, we don’t have a great deal of hope for a number of reasons that I will cover in this speech. We believe it’s important that we at least give some hope and take some sort of constructive approach to a Government that most certainly needs help.
This legislation addresses some very serious needs and we have said throughout this pandemic as a party that ACT would be there to make constructive suggestions when possible, constructive criticisms where necessary, and ask the questions on behalf of New Zealanders that should be asked of this Government and its COVID response. I think that we’ve played an honourable role in doing that so far, and we certainly will continue to do so. When it comes to this piece of legislation, it is designed to solve a series of problems that people do actually need solved. The most obvious one is what business and employers up and down this country are facing when it comes to vaccine mandates.
I was talking to a hairdresser just yesterday who is looking forward to reopening in Auckland because there’s a lot of mops to chop up in that city. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, they’re very excited. But one of the additional challenges that they face as a business is that they have some employees who are unwilling to be vaccinated and others who are unwilling to work in a place where there are unvaccinated. Most of their customers want to be assured that the staff are vaccinated and the legal framework for achieving that is very challenging, because under health and safety law they have an obligation almost to ensure vaccination is in place. The Health and Safety at Work Act requires a business or a person conducting a business undertaking—a PCBU, to use the jargon—to identify what risks there are, identify what mitigations there are to reduce the risk, and if there’s something they could do to reduce the risk, then they have to do it. So they sit there and say, “Well, COVID-19 is a pretty obvious risk around the world right now. Vaccinations have been shown to dramatically reduce the risk.” There’s a 96 percent reduction in the chance of serious illness by taking the Pfizer vaccine, according to recent research in The New England Journal of Medicine. The world’s greatest medical journal says that. So you see a strong case that as a PCBU, perhaps as a hairdresser, you’d really want to make sure that you were introducing a requirement to be vaccinated in that workplace.
But, of course, businesses face other legal hurdles. They also have privacy law. It’s not clear if they are able to address the issues with privacy. So that’s a real problem. This legislation, in fairness, does set out the use of vaccination data and any information about vaccination that an employer might have and how they can and can’t use it. So that’s a big tick. It also offers to have a framework or a tool that businesses can use to work out what their real risk to each employee is of COVID so they can work out if a requirement for that person to be vaccinated is necessary to fulfil their health and safety rules. There’s also a conflict between the health and safety rules and employment law, because it’s possible to say that a new employee must be vaccinated—if that’s your business and that’s your rules, you can do that. It’s a very conflicted situation for a business that wants an existing employee to be vaccinated. It’s not in their employment contract, they don’t necessarily have to be vaccinated to continue working. So that puts employers in a very difficult space.
This conflict between health and safety law, on the one hand, and privacy and non-discrimination in employment law, on the other, is something that ACT has been raising for a long time. On 8 October, almost two months ago, we stood up and presented our white paper on this. It actually suggested most of the things that are in this bill to resolve those problems. So we’ve tried to play a constructive role, and we think that it’s necessary that there’s legislation that allows business to solve those kinds of problems. So you might be thinking, “Well, this bill does a lot of stuff that ACT has been saying is a problem that needs to be done. Why not support it?” Well, indeed.
There’s more. ACT has been saying for the last couple of weeks that vaccination mandates should be vax or test, and people thought this was some crazy thing to say that testing should be a substitute for vaccination. Well, actually, it’s Air New Zealand’s policy, it’s Denmark’s policy, and it’s now the policy for the Auckland border of the New Zealand Government. Now, in this legislation they’re saying that there should be a requirement to be vaccinated or tested. So if you can get a negative test and you show that you’re not a threat to people around you, then that can be, in some circumstances, as good as vaccination. So that’s another idea that we’ve put forward that is now here.
So why not support it? Well, there’s a few problems with this legislation. The most obvious problem is the one with what happens with employment. You see, if you go to the back of this, on the final page, it says that if somebody is working for you or if you’re working for someone and you decide you don’t want to be vaccinated for whatever reason—like perhaps you think you might like four weeks off in December—you get four weeks to think about it, and, of course, that’s paid. Paid by the employer. So the employer has to foot the bill of having someone that wants to have that time off.
Then there’s the question—Tracey McLellan over there, she said, “Oh, the Opposition doesn’t understand this, they’ve missed some very fine legal concepts.”, and then she sat down before she explained what they were. I think that’s the life of a Labour backbencher. You’re so clever, but you’re not allowed to tell anyone. That’s just the way it goes for them. Now she’s impotently heckling over there. She’s got nothing else to say. So much for her.
You see, the thing is that you get four weeks paid by your employer. Well, there you go. Then at the end of it, you think, “Oh, well, you know what? I think I might get vaccinated anyway.” Well, then you’re allowed to take your job back. Except here’s the thing: if the employer says “No. That would be an unreasonable disruption.”, then actually you’re not allowed to come back. So can anyone on the other side—and the Prime Minister couldn’t answer the question. Does the person get their job back or not if they decide to take the four weeks and then decide maybe they will get vaccinated having had four weeks paid, and then the employer says, “No. For you to come back would be an unreasonable disruption.”? What does this law actually mean? Who pays? How much time? Do they get their job back or not? We asked the Prime Minister in question time—she can’t say. But I’ll tell you who will be prepared to say for a tidy fee: it will be the employment lawyers of New Zealand. They will be salivating at this, not the business people who have been paying and paying through these lockdowns and restrictions and now get this other law dumped on them.
But there’s one more reason why we’re very hesitant to support this legislation beyond one vote. The reason is this: it is just abominable that a Government which started vaccinating people in this country on 19 February, 277 days ago, has only today decided to put legislation up to be debated in the House, only last night was able to publish it and show the world before we had to vote on it, and now is giving 10 days before the traffic light system comes in for employers and businesses to be able to digest what it means, start fulfilling all the obligations to keep records, for example, of who’s vaccinated in their organisation, to put in place their assessments, assuming the regulations are published—all of the things. They get 10 days. This Government had 277. They didn’t even get it checked against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
The problem was this Government spent so long doing victory laps that they forgot to ask simple questions like: “What if Delta gets through managed isolation and quarantine and there’s an outbreak in New Zealand? What on earth would we do then? Maybe we’ll have a world where we need people to be vaccinated and interact and people will have a conflict of rights.” They weren’t doing the basic work and that leads to so much uncertainty that it’s very unlikely we can keep supporting this legislation, but if they clear a few of these issues up, who knows? We might change our mind. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the time has come for me to leave the chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 o’clock this evening.
Sitting suspended from 5.58 p.m. to 7 p.m.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Kāti rā, tēnā rā tātou katoa. The House is resumed. Members, before the dinner break we were debating the first reading of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. We’d just completed call number seven and I believe it’s call number eight.
Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Fa‘afetai lava, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this particular bill, the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, first reading.
Many of my colleagues have mentioned that this provides a framework in managing the ongoing risk of COVID-19, but I want to speak specifically to why we are in this position, and that’s because of the successful vaccination campaign that we’ve had. It’s always a good opportunity to acknowledge the many health providers that have done so well in getting our vaccination rates up, specifically down in South Auckland, Takanini Vaccination Centre, with Whānau Ora Community Clinic, as well as our many Pacific and ethnic providers who are doing the mahi to increase that. I also want to acknowledge the churches, the temples, as well as the sports organisations who have rallied together to increase the vaccination rates for their organisations as well.
This bill sets out the different orders that will provide direction and also clarification, and it is all about the safety of our whānau and ainga and fanau. It goes on to talk about the vaccination certificates, also the process of applications for it, and also prohibiting people from going to certain places if they’re not vaccinated and don’t hold a certificate themselves. I know it is hard. I’ve received many emails from both sides of the fence as well, but, again, it is all down to the foundation that keeping our community safe is the number one priority.
I know we’ve spoken about the Employment Relations Act and how this amends that Act. I want to acknowledge the part where it allows employers to have their employees have time off to go get their vaccinations. And I want to again acknowledge those people and also health providers who have done so to provide and cater for them. So that’s why I support this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Penny Simmonds—five minutes.
PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise to take this split call to speak in opposition to the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. After spending much of last week amending the legislation when it was already out of date, we have another bill to amend it, and this bill and the processes to pass it are absolutely indicative of the Government’s whole approach to COVID: confusing, lacking in planning, haphazard, slow, self-congratulatory, arrogant, and an affront to democracy in New Zealand.
Let’s have a look at each of them. Confusing—well, we’re moving from alert levels to traffic lights, which the Government’s own research has says people don’t understand.
Planning: this Government did not plan for Delta. Every advantage that we’ve had, it’s squandered by not planning when we had the opportunity to do so. They spent last year basking in the glory of their success over COVID, which turned out to be not so successful after all, and they should have been spending time getting our population vaccinated so that when Delta hit, we were not sitting at 20 percent of our population vaccinated.
Arrogant: because they see no need for people to have a say in this. For something that is potentially life-changing for many people, they don’t feel that they need to have any say in it. It is something so fundamental to the rights of New Zealanders, but they don’t need to have a say in the select committee process.
So this bill impacts on both vaccinated and unvaccinated, and my colleague Chris Bishop was at pains to say that National is fully supportive of getting as many people vaccinated as possible, but it’s really important for this Government to understand how life-changing this is for some people. I spoke to a young man living with a very serious physical disability, in Dunedin last week. He needs to have 24-hours-a-day care to stay alive. Three of his five caregivers are unvaccinated. He has spent two months advertising to get caregivers and hasn’t been able to. For another young adult with Down syndrome, his parents are his paid carers. They are not vaccinated, and so he faces the prospect of being taken from his family. This Government needed to hear from these people to understand the impact and think about how their bill needs to be implemented so that it does not put these people at risk in the way it is going to.
The traffic light system is confusing. Green is meant to be fairly well “Go ahead” if there is no COVID in the community and it’s not going to threaten to overrun our health system, yet the South Island—and, particularly, the lower South Island, which doesn’t have any COVID in the community or in the health system—won’t be at green. The Prime Minister has said that no region will be at green, so what does a region have to do to get to green if not having COVID doesn’t let them be at green?
So all the people impacted by this: the people with disabilities, the people running businesses who will have to implement the vaccine pass verification, and who knows whether they have to just visually see that or use the app, because the Prime Minister tells them one thing and the Ministry of Health tells them another thing—all these people deserve to be able to have a say. They deserve to be able to scrutinise the legislation, to submit on it, and to have their say. But this Government has said, “No, we know best. We know all, and you people out there, you don’t need to be heard on these matters that are going to impact on you. You will just do as we tell you. You will remain controlled by us, without any input.”
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.
DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā koe e te Pīka, tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak to the first reading of the COVID 19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. Te Paati Māori will not be supporting this bill. Experts and tangata whenua leaders have warned the Government about imposing one-size-fits-all vaccine mandates; they risk dividing Aotearoa and undermining the public health response. Mandates are an important tool that whānau, hapū, iwi, businesses, and communities should be empowered to use where and when they determine a need. We support them setting their own tikanga; rāhui are widely used in our communities. Informed consent must be a guiding principle, so that people can make the best possible decisions to protect their whānau from the virus and fully participate in society. Te Paati Māori are opposed to this Government’s vaccine mandate system. The Crown does not have the constitutional right to impose mandates on tangata whenua, as our tino rangatiratanga to make these decisions for ourselves is enshrined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
This bill is not compliant with Te Tiriti. The process for developing the traffic light system, which received the explicit opposition of many Māori leaders, is a breach of Te Tiriti, as it does not have the active consent of tangata whenua. Upholding Te Tiriti rights and ensuring we can live together collectively is a fundamental part of who we are and how we live. It is the difference between individualised Westernisation and indigenous peoples. This Government has forgotten tangata whenua are the most protocolled people in this country and we always have been. We understand the need to adapt and evolve tikanga to deal with pandemics.
This Government’s consistent failings in rolling out an equitable vaccination programme, which didn’t acknowledge 70 percent of its tangata whenua were under 40 years, has us now 20 percent behind the general population. This Government’s failure to provide data that it gives to Pākehā organisations is another reason why we had to go to court, to get it seen and to get it out. This Government’s failings to protect its most vulnerable community in tangata whenua, as warned by health experts, now has us making up nearly 50 percent of those infected with the Delta variant, despite only making 18 percent of the population. We make up the highest numbers of cases, 50 consecutive days. We are now past the 3,000 mark. Six Māori deaths, three Māori men between 40 and 50. All this was unnecessary, and now, due to your failings, we have mandates. And then, we add, we are forced into this urgency while you continue to scapegoat Māori; to divide, marginalise, and, indeed, demonise our communities and whānau.
A much fairer, durable vaccine system that fully acknowledges Māori public health models would have included: requiring hospitals and medical clinic workers to be vaccinated; requiring all front-line health workers not in hospitals and medical clinics to declare their vaccination status to patients and provide a negative test to patients upon request; requiring all unvaccinated front-line Government workers to do the same; supporting mandates put in place by tangata whenua organisations and businesses; strongly opposing any moves to impose sanctions or penalties on workers or beneficiaries who are unvaccinated; requiring all businesses, organisations, and schools to publicise their vaccine rules on the vaccine passport application and across a range of other platforms.
There will be other opportunities to delve further into the detail of this bill, but I want to close my call today by saying how completely unacceptable it is that the Government introduced this bill today, barely hours before it had its first reading. I understand they intend to pass this bill into law this week under urgency, without even a shortened select committee process. The Government has been talking about mandates and the traffic light system for a long time, and yet here we have this shocking process. We will continue to hold you to account and remind our whānau that this Government ended elimination knowing Māori were 26 percent behind the general population, just as they opened up traffic light system knowing Māori are still stuck at the roadworks they set up. Shame on you, Labour, for undermining the democratic and tino rangatiratanga process of tangata whenua in this way. Nō reira, nō reira, tēnā tātou katoa.
SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. Forgive me; I’ve got my mask stuck on my earring. Just give me a sec. I’m standing here this evening and I find it barely believable to hear from the member opposite in the National Party—barely believable to hear—an argument against mandating vaccination for caregivers for people with severe disabilities, people that go from house to house to house like Typhoid Mary potentially infecting those who are most vulnerable. The reason why I find this barely believable is because, if you are unvaccinated, you are far more likely to become infected or to infect others, and if you do become sick when you’re unvaccinated, you are far more likely to become extremely unwell, because vaccination gives you 97 percent protection from ICU admission—97 percent. You are 32 times more likely to die if you are unvaccinated when you get COVID-19 than when you are vaccinated, because we do know, unfortunately, as with all vaccinations, you are going to get breakthrough infections, and that’s why I am not going to stand here and apologise for a vaccine mandate or for passing legislation that enables us to protect the most vulnerable.
On that note, if you do want to get a vaccination on 27th in Bryndwr, please do. We’ve tried to find a space that’s accessible in the village church on 27th for our lower socio-economic area in Ilam. So vaccination is an increasingly important tool to mitigate risk in workplaces.
Matt Doocey: It’s going well in Ilam, we hear.
SARAH PALLETT: Mr Doocey, Ilam is doing well overall, but we have the second-largest social housing area in Christchurch. I know that the National Party is unaware of those who live in poverty in my electorate, but let me tell you, Mr Doocey, I am not unaware of those living in poverty in Ilam, and I would like to commend this bill, which gives a framework, an assessment tool, to employers to enable them to move forward to keep people safe. And that includes, Mr Doocey, those living in poverty. I commend this bill to the House.
SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, listen to that across the road. You can tell that already they’re starting to freckle and panic on this bill. I’m here to talk about the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill at its first reading, obviously as the member of Parliament for North Shore.
Well, I want to cover three key elements this evening, and I think we’ve heard from a number of speakers already from the National side and also from the Māori Party in terms of some of the challenges and issues that we have with this legislation. But I think the first aspect that we really cannot ignore is the process by which this legislation has come to this House. What an absolute shambles this legislation represents, a process in which this was only brought to our attention or given to us yesterday—after how long has this country been facing such a significant issue in terms of the management of COVID-19? This Government continues to be asleep at the wheel.
This bill is a process which is showing that they do not have a plan. Back in September, National released our plan. Here it is right here. If only that side of the House had started to adopt some of this and some of our recommendations, we wouldn’t be in the position we are in. What we’ve heard from the other side is a whole lot of graphs and a whole lot of flip-flopping around, but we haven’t seen a plan and, as a result, Kiwis are confused.
I was having a chat to my local hairdresser this afternoon—actually, just during the dinner break as I came in—and she was confused in terms of what they need to do in order to reopen on Friday. I went on to the website and I tried to see if there is any clear guidance in terms of what are their requirements. But no, there’s nothing simplistic around this process. This is legislation made up on the hoof and this personifies what we’re seeing across the other side in all regards.
On Sunday, there was a poll undertaken of Kiwis about whether they understand or not the traffic light system.
Hon Member: And what did it say about the leader?
SIMON WATTS: And I can hear the other side—the Ministers are all grappling there. Well, they can’t even take their full calls, with respect.
Hon Kelvin Davis: The Newshub poll?
SIMON WATTS: If they’ve got some comment, stand up, Mr Davis, and have a chat, because I’d love to hear your comments.
Hon Kris Faafoi: What did that poll say about your boss?
SIMON WATTS: But the polling that came out during the weekend—they’re still gravelling on. The polling that came out in the weekend was very clear, but they don’t want to hear the facts. The problem is they don’t want to hear the facts. They can’t handle the numbers, but when asked, “Do you understand the traffic light system?”, 31 percent of Kiwis said yes, that they understood it—31 percent. Well, two-thirds of Kiwis said they do not understand it and they’re confused about it. And so what that shows is the voices of Kiwis out there in our community saying “We are not sure what’s happening here. We’re not sure where this plan is going. We’re not sure in terms of how this is going to work in practice.” That is a real disappointment.
We’ve also had a number of comments, just looking at some of the media that’s come out about this bill today. Dr Dean Knight from Victoria University has used the quote “constitutional disgrace”—that’s what they referred to this legislation as. This legislation is being passed urgently without adequate consultation and that is unacceptable.
This is legislation that impacts all of our communities. It impacts Kiwis across this country. It impacts businesses across all of our electorates where we are. My home electorate of the North Shore is not protected from that. They are also confused. This process should have gone through a select committee process, a process in which we could have got experts to come in to provide feedback, to provide comment, to get stakeholders to articulate how this legislation could impact it, and work with officials to iron out the mistakes. Because I can pretty much—and I’m not a betting man, but, if I was, I could pretty much guarantee that we will be back here in the early part of the new year fixing the mistakes within this legislation.
I’ve nearly lost count of how many times that I have been in this House—and I haven’t been in the House very long in comparison to some members in this House here—in terms of how many times we’ve come back into this House in order to fix mistakes on legislation because it was passed under urgency, it was passed without due consideration, it was passed without getting the stakeholder input and the feedback from our communities and stakeholders in terms of that legislation, and, as a result, it’s got errors and we have to subsequently fix it. What a waste of opportunity on something of such importance in terms of a topic.
The other aspect that I want to get into is absolutely around the fact that this legislation is completely unnecessary. It provides a burden on Kiwis that is not necessary. National articulated in our plan, back in September, quite clear guidance in terms of when this country should begin to reopen. We talked about the quote “around 85 percent vaccination on the 1st of December.” Well, I’m sorry, we don’t need a traffic light system if we reach the levels of vaccination which we have articulated. It is completely unnecessary. Why is it that when I was fortunate to have a haircut down here in Wellington a couple of weeks ago, I could walk in—
Hon Member: Just checking it out.
SIMON WATTS: Just checking it out—not bad, obviously. I didn’t have to show a vaccination passport when I went into that barbers down here in Wellington. But when I go back in two weeks’ time in Auckland, I’m going to have to show a vaccination certificate—more procedure, more bureaucracy required, yet our vaccination levels across this country will be significantly higher than where they were in the past. When I go to a cafe and get a coffee in the morning, I’m going to spend half my time scanning in with my COVID Tracer app, and then I’m going to have to scan in with my vaccination app, and then I’m going to want to order my long black and go through a whole lot of process and bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, the business is actually just trying to do what they’re meant to do. And again, it is unnecessary. It is not based on a clinical requirement in terms of risk mitigation, in terms of vaccination. It is a completely unnecessary piece of legislation. And again, if that side of the House had actually read some of the recommendations that we made in late September in terms of introduction of rapid antigen testing—how’s that going, Mr Bishop? How’s this Government’s rapid antigen testing policy going, eh? Have we seen any progress on that, eh? Even though it’s available in pretty much every other country in this world, but not here. No, it’s still illegal. It’s still banned unless you’re one of those big corporates that has been able to get a special exemption.
Again, that side of the House do not trust Kiwis. They don’t allow Kiwis to take personal responsibility for managing their own healthcare, for getting on and doing what they know is right, for taking some responsibility, and to allow our businesses to get back on their feet and to trade is the only sustainable way that we should be able to help our businesses to get back on a front foot.
I also want to go into some of the aspects around the confusion around this vaccination passport—and we all saw the issues pretty much when that came out. The system pretty much crashed immediately and continues to have a number of system issues around that. We have had a significant amount of time in order to prepare for where we are today. There are no excuses for why we have not done the adequate planning required to put in place these processes and procedures and framework. The other side all say, “Well, old Delta came along. It sort of, you know, was all very different.” Well, I’m sorry, that is absolutely rubbish. They have simply failed to plan, and they have failed to get ready for what we are faced with at the moment, and they lack that sense of urgency that is absolutely fundamental in the survival of our businesses. And they just simply do not understand some of the implications that this legislation will impact.
Hon Kris Faafoi: I preferred Maggie.
SIMON WATTS: Lastly, Mr Speaker—I’m looking forward to that call!
Hon Kris Faafoi: Bring back Maggie!
SIMON WATTS: You can hear the Minister. He’s yapping and he’s loving it—I’m hopeful he’ll take a call later on. But the other aspect is around the length of this legislation. There is no end date in terms of when this will finish up. When will these restrictions end? I’ve articulated already that there’s no basis in terms of these undue regulations in terms of when they come in. But again, this bill fails to have any clear articulation in terms of when this will actually end up finishing and when Kiwis can get back to real life.
So, as I’ve said, this legislation is being passed through urgency without adequate consultation. It is a constitutional disgrace, and National oppose this bill.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, what a pathetic form of hyperbole that we’ve just heard from the member who’s just resumed his seat, Simon Watts. He started off talking about a shambles. I’ll tell you and the member what is a shambles. The shambles is the position of the Opposition on what is a significant and important piece of legislation. They lecture us on the importance of vaccination, yet they’re not prepared to actually do anything about it.
Now, I also know that while Mr Watts and I are both new members of this House, I will give the member a little bit of free advice, and that’s this: it is not a good move to start quoting recent polls when actually the trend doesn’t look as rosy as it should be. The member should look closer to his left as members on his left continue to get closer and closer, day by day.
I am proud to be a member of a Government that is looking to continue to protect and provide a level of safety for all members in our community. You know, I really want to acknowledge, actually, my colleague Dr Leavasa. He has acknowledged that he has returned to the House, and I want to welcome him. I know that he has been working hard on the front line alongside other members who are out in our community. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the good, strong work that people like Dr Leavasa and others are doing.
Hon Member: Dr Sharma.
TANGI UTIKERE: And Dr Sharma. Thank you, Miss Pallett. Because they are making a difference. This particular bill that the House is spending its time on at the moment will make a difference as we transition to a new protection framework that will be vital, that will be so important. Members opposite have queried, have asked, “What has the Government been doing over the last 18 months?” Well, perhaps they’ve been asleep—perhaps they’ve been asleep. Because this Government has been working hard to protect our communities, the communities that I love, the communities that my whānau love and that will make an absolute difference.
So it is absolutely shameful that at first reading members opposite are not prepared to support this bill. I am, and on that basis I commend it to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 85
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 35
New Zealand National 33; Te Paati Māori 2.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
Second Reading
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill be now read a second time.
Let’s just quickly recap what this bill is about. It does two things: it allows for the introduction and the use of vaccination certificates, and it provides greater certainty for businesses who are looking to impose vaccination requirements on their workforces. It makes it clear who can and who can’t, by allowing a very clear framework to be put in place for that, something that businesses have been asking for, and now they are getting it through this legislation. They wanted greater certainty. They’ve been very clear they want greater certainty. This legislation provides the certainty that business has been asking for.
The only thing people who have been following this debate will be confused about is exactly what the National Party’s position is on it, because, on the one hand, they think that vaccination certificates should have been done by now and then, on the other hand, they’re opposed to the legislation that allows for them. On the other hand, the member opposite—Simon Watts, was it?—said that we lacked a sense of urgency and then devoted most of his speech to opposing urgency to bring this legislation before the House. The members opposite have argued that employers need greater certainty around the introduction of vaccination mandates, and that’s presumably the reason why they’re voting against giving those businesses that very certainty that they claim they need! This particular bill does many of the things that the Opposition have been arguing for. They’re voting against—again; not for the first time in the last few weeks—their own policies in the House. So I think members of the public following along might be a little confused about what the Opposition’s position on that is.
So let’s be clear about what the bill is all about. It’s about saying that vaccination matters—that vaccination is how we can turn down the risk as COVID-19 spreads through the community—because Mr Bishop himself, in his contribution earlier, made the very accurate point that COVID-19 is with us and it is going to spread across the country, and it is going to find its way to those who are unvaccinated. The more we can do to slow that spread, the more we can do to ensure that our case numbers stay manageable, the more we can do to reduce hospitalisations, then the better everybody will be.
Now, for those who say it’s all about personal choice, let’s just talk about that for a moment, because we’ve got about 9 percent of eligible New Zealanders, as of now, who have at this point made the choice not to be vaccinated. So, for the 91 percent who have been vaccinated, you could take the view of the Opposition and say, “Well, the 91 percent, they have made their choice, and now the 9 percent live with the consequences of not choosing to be vaccinated.” Except, the 91 percent who have been vaccinated and all those who cannot be vaccinated because they are children do suffer the consequences if COVID-19 starts to spread amongst the unvaccinated and, therefore, is more likely to be spreading amongst the vaccinated as well. And that does mean that those personal choices have an impact on other people.
So the regime that we’re putting in place here says, “Yes, actually, we should be able to say that there are some things that unvaccinated people can’t participate in the same as a vaccinated person, in order to reduce that risk for the whole population.” That is appropriate, and that is what this legislation allows for, because unvaccinated people can still spread the virus, they can spread it to children, who can’t be vaccinated, and they can spread it to those who are vaccinated, who can then spread it to others. Vaccination turns down the risk of people ending up in hospital, but it’s not an absolute guarantee, and, therefore, the more unvaccinated people there are the more risk there is.
And then we could say, “Well, what if the consequences are, in terms of health, only amongst the unvaccinated people?” Well, when someone shows up at hospital to get treatment that is completely unrelated to COVID-19 and finds the hospital is full of unvaccinated COVID-19 people, it will have an impact on other people as well. So people’s personal choices not to be vaccinated have an impact on others, and that is why the Government is saying, “If people make those choices, that’s their choice, but there are consequences of those choices.” And one of those is that they won’t be able to participate in those events that could see them contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to others, and spreading it in such a way that it would become uncontrolled in the community.
Unlike the Opposition—who seem to think that we’re reaching the point with COVID19 now where we should just give up fighting it and let it rip—the Government is taking the view that all New Zealanders, vaccinated or unvaccinated, are still going to be better off if we seek to suppress COVID-19 as much as we can, because COVID-19 is still a deadly virus. COVID-19 has not gone away. COVID-19 has not stopped mutating; that’s what viruses do. There is still a risk. There is still a global pandemic. The pandemic is not over, despite what members opposite might like to think, and so we still have to act responsibly. The Opposition get the luxury that they can change their position every week, as they do in this House, and of course there’s never any consequences of that, because they’ve never had to implement any of the multitude of positions that they have taken since the global pandemic began.
I stand behind the Government’s record on this. We have seen one of the lowest rates of hospitalisations, one of the lowest rates of mortality, one of the best economic recoveries, some of the fewest restrictions of any countries in the world. The results speak for themselves. This is the next step in our COVID-19 response. It is a sensible step. It is a measured and managed step that will ensure that we can transition to an environment where people do have more freedom, where people do see the benefits of high rates of vaccination, but not at the expense of our health system and our health workers, and not at the expense of our children.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. One could be forgiven for listening to the Minister for COVID-19 Response and his remarks around how this is the logical next step, it’s all part of this well-coordinated Government approach to COVID, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was all very well thought through. The reality is the exact opposite. This is a bill that was thrown together hastily in the last month or so, basically at the last minute. It’s been dropped on the Parliament with six sitting days to go before Christmas, and the Parliament is being asked to put it through all stages under urgency with no public scrutiny whatsoever. And that just goes to show what a mad scramble the Government’s response has been in the last six months. I will give the Government credit for their response last year, we entered 2021 with freedoms that many other countries did not have, and we should be proud collectively, as a community, about that. But what we cannot be proud of as a Parliament or a society is what we have seen in the last six months. This bill is emblematic of the Government’s mad scramble, basically making things up as they go.
The COVID-19 framework was announced on Friday, 22 October, but the drafting instructions for the bill weren’t issued until five days later. No New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis, scrambled through the Cabinet and the various legislative processes. So hastily done that the legal advice for the section 7 report that didn’t end up materialising says that the time frame was so short that it was not in compliance with the Cabinet Manual. This is not a bill that was put together in a comprehensive, well thought through way.
I want to address some of the remarks of the Minister in his speech. He said that there’s a contradiction in the National Party position between arguing for vaccine certificates but voting against this legislation. That is a trite characterisation—with respect, a very superficial and trite characterisation of the position. Because we had been arguing, on this side, for proof of vaccination since February. That’s when Judith Collins first asked the Prime Minister about it, and she was assured that the work was under way. Well, as we now know, that’s actually not true. The work hadn’t begun. Cabinet didn’t actually authorise vaccine certificates to be developed until July, and the Government didn’t sign the contracts with the IT providers until a month ago. So we are on the record in favour of vaccine passes and vaccine certificates.
The second thing he pointed to was this idea that we want vaccine certificates as a matter of urgency, but we voted against the urgency. Of course, the real point is that this is not an appropriate way to make extremely significant, far-reaching decisions. We want things done quickly, but we wanted them done quickly in July, in August—not in late November 2021. We wanted them done in July and August, when Delta first turned up, not at the very tail-end of the Parliament for the year 2021 in a mad scramble to get things underway for Auckland and the rest of the country on 3 December, when the country will begin to open up again. So a sensible, competent Government would have been working on this during the year. They would have been developing the certificates and would have been developing the framework.
As Dr Dean Knight from Victoria University of Wellington Law Faculty has said, this bill is a constitutional disgrace. It should have been worked on for quite some time. And the reason for that is actually the reason highlighted by the Minister in his contribution around choice. He made the correct point, which is that the decisions that some people make to be unvaccinated have externalities. He didn’t quite phrase it like that, but in economics terms, that’s what they are. They have externalities. My decision not to be vaccinated has a consequence, not just for me—that’s true, in a personal sense—but it also has a consequence for the health system and for others, because kids can’t be vaccinated and there are other people who can’t be vaccinated. And it’s worthwhile having a debate about that.
The level of intrusion on personal freedom and civil liberties because of the impact that a decision by an individual to not be vaccinated has is worthy of debate and it’s worthy of ventilation. But the appropriate place to do that, I’m sorry, is not at 9 o’clock at night on a Tuesday with six sitting days to go while we try and figure it out and basically yell at each other about the bill for a while—that’s not the appropriate place. The appropriate place is before a select committee, with legal experts turning up, with public policy scholars tuning up, and with health advice and health experts. What the Government’s saying, through the very quick passage of this bill, is that they know it all, that they’ve got all the answers, they’ve got all the solutions. Actually, there’s quite a lot of people out there in the public domain who don’t agree with that. As you will have seen from people’s email inboxes, in relation to mandates and passports and things like that, actually a lot of people don’t agree with all of those particular measures. And all of that is not an argument to say that those people are right, that is an argument to say that their concerns are worthy of respect, they are worthy of discussion, and they are worthy of listening to—not necessarily agreeing with, but they are worthy of discussion, debate, and a voice. The whole point of the select committee process is to allow those concerns to be ventilated.
But there’s a further the point in relation to this, which is that when you allow people the chance to be heard and to have their concerns addressed, you can engage in a dialogue in which you can actually persuade people that what they are saying is wrong. I’m sorry, the people who are opposed to vaccine passports, their views will be entrenched and solidified by the very quick passage of this bill. I can see my inbox right now, there’ll be people emailing and they’re going to be emailing backbench members opposite too, including Tangi Utikere, who’s been here a year and decides to hand out free advice from the backbench of the Labour Party. Well, thanks very much, champ, but I don’t really need your advice. I’ll tell you what, Simon Watts, who was the deputy CFO of a DHB doesn’t need the advice from someone who doesn’t understand the health system, so thanks very much, but we’ll leave that one alone.
So I’m telling the Government backbench now, and Government Ministers as well: the people who are opposed to vaccine mandates and vaccine passports are not going to change their mind as a result of the fast passage of this bill. In fact, it will be the opposite. You are actually just entrenching the divide in society between those who are opposed to mandates and those who are opposed to passports. A sensible, competent Government that was trying to take people with them rather than divide them—trying to take people with them—would have moved expeditiously to develop the framework, but then sent it to a committee for debate and discussion. Because I’ll tell you the one thing about select committee processes, it can shatter some myths and it can allow people to have their views heard and allows people to have their say. And, actually, you can do some persuasion through the select committee process.
I believe in vaccination. I believe in vaccine certificates, I believe in private property rights, and I believe in free enterprise. I believe that, in 2022, there will be businesses out there who decide to limit their customers to being vaccinated. They’ll say, “You have to be vaccinated to enter my restaurant”, “You have to be vaccinated to go to the Shihad concert down the road”, or whatever. You know, frankly, I would probably agree with businesses doing that. I’ll tell you what though, there’s quite a few people who do not agree with that, and the very fast, expeditious passage of this bill tonight without any public scrutiny whatsoever will not change the minds of those people. In fact, it will just entrench them.
Finally, in relation to Mr Hipkins’ remarks about the Opposition just wanting to give up: nothing could be further from the truth. Most of our 17,000-word document is about the opposite of giving up. It is about adopting tools and techniques that other countries are using that we are not. I’ll give you the example of rapid antigen testing. I can walk into a supermarket in Melbourne, Victoria right now and buy a rapid test. It’ll give me a COVID result in 15 minutes. Can I do that in New Zealand? No. Can I go down to Thorndon New World and buy a rapid test? Absolutely not. You know why? Because the Government’s decided in its infinite wisdom that they should be banned—unless I work for Wellington Airport or Mainfreight or one of the 30 large corporates that the Government has deigned to give a rapid test to. Why can I not buy a rapid test? And, actually, it’s not just me who thinks that we should be able to do this, there is a variety of public health experts out there who agree with me as well—including the chair of the Government’s own testing advisory group, who came and told the select committee last week that what we’ve been saying about rapid testing was completely correct. That’s in our document.
So it’s not about giving up on COVID, it’s about using modern tools and techniques like rapid testing and like saliva testing—I don’t know, like pulse oximeters, for example, as well. If you ask the Government, you get four different answers to the same question as to whether or not people get pulse oximeters in home isolation. The answer is: we probably don’t know. But Dr Bloomfield says one thing, Grant Robertson says another, Jacinda Ardern says another, and Chris Hipkins says another. So there are sensible things we should adopt like that.
This bill is a constitutional abhorrence, and we will continue to oppose it on those grounds.
Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. So while New Zealand has done incredibly well over the last 18 months, what we’ve found is that a number of workplaces have become locations of interest. On a number of occasions, we’ve actually seen transmission happening in the workplace. So while we’ve got a whole lot of tools that we can use to reduce the risk—we’re talking about mask wearing, we’re talking about social distancing, working from home, and we’re all pretty much familiar now with Zoom—what we’ve also become increasingly reliant on is vaccination protections as the vaccination roll-out has occurred.
But when I’ve talked to a number of employers over the last few months, one of the things that’s really, really on their mind is: how do they protect their workers, how do they protect their customers from COVID-19? One of the things they’ve really, really been grappling with is: do I need to require my workers to be vaccinated? I think that’s a really important conversation. So what this bill does is it provides that framework for the assessment tool to be developed that helps employers to assess whether it’s reasonable to require their workers to be vaccinated. While we’ve already provided some guidance on that, what this bill will allow is regulations to be developed, which then, basically, provide a mechanism for people to weigh that up in a very, very firm basis.
I think the other thing that this bill will do is ensure that workers, if they are required to get vaccinated, can actually go out and do that in paid work-time. So it puts a requirement or an onus on the employer to make sure that the employee can go and do that. There’s a very, very narrow range of areas where they may not be able to do so, but, basically, it means that we can get workers going out and getting vaccinated.
But one of the other things I’m just wanting to highlight is the protections of privacy. We’ve already addressed this with contact tracing and just making sure, now, that any data that’s collected—identifiable information—for the purposes of vaccination or complying with the Act is protected so that it cannot be used for any other purpose.
So this is just an important bill that takes us through to the next step in our COVID protection framework. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Slow and late—slow and late—that has become the hallmark of this Government in their response to the Delta outbreak that now besets our nation. Nine months ago, when the vaccine programme was first being rolled out—slow and late compared with other countries of our sort—they should have been considering some of the aspects of the legislation that is now before us tonight under urgency, which is without the scrutiny of a select committee, and without the input from stakeholders, academics, businesses, and people who have a role in considering the constitutional matters that are going to impact on the lives of every single New Zealander once this legislation becomes law.
There was a time when the Labour Party used to speak proudly about constitutional democracy and the efficacy of select committee process and the shamefulness of legislation that was passed quickly and without scrutiny by our democratic processes, but not today—not today. They have long ago forsaken those lofty principles that they once held so dear and that they once aspired to, because these days they have an absolute majority in this Parliament and they are determined to make the most of it and put to one side all the checks and balances that go with our historic processes in this Parliament and benefits that come from that analysis and interpretation and scrutiny.
So this piece of legislation, as one academic has said, is a constitutional embarrassment—I think, was the exact term, Mr Bishop. It was a constitutional disgrace, I think the academic has said, and part of the reason for that is if members choose to have a little look at the rather thin material that accompanies this piece of legislation, the Ministry of Health has prepared a departmental disclosure statement. Well, it doesn’t take long to read, and it doesn’t contain much.
Most of the elements of the departmental disclosure document refer to things that haven’t happened. One of the questions is about the regulatory impact analysis. “Were any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this Bill?” Answer: “NO”. “Extent of impact analysis available … Has further impact analysis become available for any aspects of the policy to be given effect by this Bill?” Answer: “NO”. “For the policy to be given effect by this Bill, is there analysis available on: (a) the size of the potential costs and benefits? NO (b) the potential for any group of persons to suffer a substantial unavoidable loss of income or wealth? NO”, and so it goes on. The level of detail is practically non-existent.
I want to concentrate on the matter in the bill that relates to workplace relations and the ability for this piece of legislation to provide a tool. I’ll be fair: I think it’s a useful tool that employers and businesses will probably welcome, because the process that has been available to them to date is a little bit complicated and it’s a little bit cumbersome, but it’s a process none the less. That’s using the existing workplace health and safety risk assessment process, and some of our bigger firms have actually already done that—organisations like The Warehouse are using it.
But for many small businesses—and remember we are, of course, a nation of small businesses—they have been grappling with the conflicting issues that they find themselves in in terms of what to do if they are a small employer and they’ve got, say, 20 staff members and one of them chooses for whatever reason not to be vaccinated. That then puts the employer in a very challenging situation, because under the workplace safety legislation that we have in New Zealand, they are required to ensure a safe working environment for their employees and their customers and other stakeholders. So the question that they then need to confront is: “Is having a non-vaccinated employee in my business a risk to the other employees in the business who have chosen to be vaccinated? Is it a risk to my customers? Is it a risk to the people that I trade with, the suppliers, the contractors, the people who ensure that the services that my business need are going to be safe and secure as well?”
So the tool that is provided is, I think, at least a start along the way, but it should have been in place and been thought about months ago—months and months ago. Here we are—as my colleague Chris Bishop has said—with only six sitting days of this parliamentary year yet to go, this legislation will become effective for businesses in 10 days’ time, and they are only today being given the details of it. If nothing else, it’s a completely disrespectful and also hopelessly shambolic process.
The analysis done by the Ministry of Health goes on to say that in relation to the provisions regarding the Employment Relations Act, “Amendments are also being made to the Employment Relations Act 2000 to provide for reasonable paid time off for employees to be vaccinated.” Well, most prudent employers would, I think, already be doing that. It would be a very unreasonable employer, in my view, that wasn’t allowing an employee paid time off to be vaccinated. But it goes on, and it says, “In addition, a four-week termination notice to be provided if the employer requires vaccination, but the employee is unvaccinated.”
Now, members on the other side might choose to dance on the head of a pin about what that is called, but it is, effectively, paid leave. It is a period of grace paid for by the employer in which time—four weeks—the unvaccinated employee can then have a good think about whether they want to be vaccinated or not.
But the real, detailed problem in this legislation is that questions remain unanswered about what happens if halfway through or three-quarters of the way through, or even on the very last day of that four weeks of paid leave, paid and funded by the business owner and operator—who, let’s face it, is already struggling under incredibly difficult economic conditions—that employee then decides, “Oh well, I’ll get vaccinated after all.”, three weeks and four days into the paid leave. Oh well, it’s all OK, except that there is a provision that says that’s unless that decision creates an unreasonable impact on the employer’s business. Well, that’s going to be deeply problematic and—as a previous speaker in the first reading debate made the point—it’s going to be an employment lawyers’ field day.
Not only are there issues and questions to be answered about what happens in that four-week paid leave period but this bill provides for legal ramifications that are, effectively, a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the employer. If they make a decision using either the tool or the workplace health and safety risk assessment model and they decide to actually exit an employee from a position, that employee can still, under this legislation, take out a personal grievance case. If the employee decides halfway through the process that “No, I’m not going to stick around. I’m going to resign.”, well, that means that there is still an action around constructive dismissal that will be available to them, and, again, it’ll be the employment lawyers who are smiling all the way to the bank over this piece of legislation.
What will it mean for the poor employer? Well, what it means is more time, more resource, more energy, and more focus distracting from the core business and into legal matters that will have to be litigated either in the Employment Relations Authority or the Employment Court, and, then, probably on to higher judicial authorities as well for further judicial interpretation and a decision.
That’s going to be deeply problematic, because the 9 percent of people who, at this stage, have chosen not to be vaccinated are probably people who have now had an opportunity to give their personal position very careful thought. They are probably increasingly feeling that they are locked into a position that they feel they have to defend, and if it means for them that they are going to lose their job, well, some of them will be prepared to make that sacrifice. It’s not a choice that I think that they should be making, because I would actually like them to be vaccinated. But some will choose not to, and when they don’t, it has consequences not only for themselves, because any decision we make as individuals—whether it’s about vaccination or not—has both consequence and responsibility, and those consequences and responsibilities actually go far beyond us as mere individuals.
So this is a piece of legislation that is a bit like the curate’s egg. It’s good in parts, but in terms of the process and in terms of the parliamentary scrutiny, it is an abysmal failure and one that we do not support and will not support.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. This bill is a pragmatic bill. It’s a very necessary bill. It, quite frankly, is the logical next step because it provides the mechanisms now for us to safely reopen.
The bill primarily makes amendments to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020, and in doing so it affords provisions for broadening the orders to better reflect the new measures and intentions under the new COVID-19 Protection Framework. It also provides for forms of acceptable evidence of compliance with those particular orders.
As the Minister said earlier on, the fundamental intentionality here is to support and encourage increased rates of vaccination, because we know that that’s an absolute important tool. It does so by doing two things: it allows for vaccine certificates to be used, and I note that more than well over a million people have downloaded that already, so there’s clearly appetite and support; and it also allows for greater certainty for businesses about who and how they can operate to safely reopen, which is something everybody is looking forward to.
I also agree with the Minister when he says that he’s prepared to stand behind this Government’s response. I too absolutely echo that and stand behind this Government’s response, not just last year but this year and all of the work that’s gone into balancing the myriad of complex issues that are at play here. You know, certainly, when we’re looking at metrics, the lowest mortality rate, which, you know, let’s not forget is the death rate—one of the lowest case rates and some of the best examples of economic recovery.
Also, I’d just like to note that when we talk about consultation, in the development of this bill, consultation was undertaken with business and community groups, the Council of Trade Unions, Business New Zealand, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the Small Business Advisory Group, Retail New Zealand, the Ministry of Justice, and various other bodies, including the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, who was also consulted on these proposals. All of that feedback was taken into account. So I am very happy to commend this bill to the House.
Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai. The Greens are very big on appropriate decision making, that the people most affected by a decision should have a say in it. Generally, when I rise for a second reading, I refer to what happened in the select committee—the issues raised by submitters who are engaging with our democratic process, the advice that the Health Committee received to make its considered and usually unanimous report on how to make the bill better. Even under urgency, this has generally been able to happen in some form: a week turn-around of submissions—pretty outrageous at the time—or just advice, even, from the Minister and key officials. Instead, I stand up again to speak on the second reading, but, of course, nothing has changed.
So far, we have stood by the Government and its strong health response to the pandemic, despite some misgivings on how that response has rolled out, particularly to Māori. However, the Greens will be calling for a select committee review after this bill inevitably passes, with refinements based on that review.
On the second reading, I’ll consider how these vaccination requirements will affect Māori and rainbow people. As most people here know, not only do Māori have the poorest health in this country based on every measure available, as my colleague from Te Paati Māori pointed out earlier, Māori are half of the COVID cases. With the nature of our underlying health conditions, our shorter life spans, we are more likely to get infected, we’re more likely to be hospitalised, and we are more likely to die. We see those numbers are happening right now. I look at some of the family that I have who are refusing to get vaccinated, and I wonder what tangi I’ll be attending myself.
So we have the lowest vaccinated rates in the country, particularly in the 20 to 40 age group. According to the latest statistics on the Ministry of Health website, nationally, we’re at about 65 percent second dose and 85 percent first dose. In the Tai Rāwhiti and any place where there are large numbers of Māori, though—and a large proportion of Māori—those numbers are much, much lower. For us in the Tai Rāwhiti, 62 percent second dose, and 78 first. While 11 of the 20 DHBs have reached that first dose of 90—the magical 90 percent—none of them have done so for their Māori populations. None of them. This is significant because the framework introduced through orders under this legislation will significantly curtail the freedoms of people who are not vaccinated. So Māori will become even more stigmatised, and, I would say, even less inclined to get vaccinated.
As the Government transitions away from the elimination strategy, we acknowledge vaccination requirements are the most reliable way to keep our people safe. We suggest that that would include more spot-checking provisions at the Auckland border over the holiday period to reduce the risk of spread to areas outside of Auckland and into the areas where there are high populations of unvaccinated Māori. Of course, our position is that the traffic light system should be fully tested before Auckland opens its borders at all.
As I noted earlier, this bill covers how business and employers keep track of all the personal employee information related to their vaccination status because of the requirements of their position or of that particular workplace. It’s not very common that an employer would have all of this personal health information of every single one of its employees. So privacy is a real issue. We have been assured that, as with the contact tracing information, that information will be kept very secure.
The risk for trans, intersex, and non-binary people, takatāpui with diverse genders and sex characteristics is that a lot of these requirements and the things that appear, particularly on your vaccine pass, is what’s in our National Health Index database, and that doesn’t always match the name they use in the workplace. It might not match the gender marker that they use in their life. So having an employer, and presumably some people in the HR department, depending on the scale of the operation, having access to all of that information, (a), not having a pass that reflects who they are—that’s bad enough—but that some people in our community will be put at risk and experience additional discrimination because those documents are no longer matching with who they are.
So we’re concerned some people will still get left behind with this bill because they’re on the wrong side of the digital divide. People who will struggle obtaining a vaccine pass include the approximately half a million New Zealanders who do not have regular access to the internet; elderly people; people with learning difficulties or other disabilities; people for whom English is not their first language, including recent migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers; but just people without the suitable ID. So we recognise this has been rushed through, but there’s a whole lot of infrastructure, a whole lot of administration, operational things that need to be put in place for this to actually start working, even though people are going to need to have those passes, probably by next week.
Finally, we believe that everyone should have free and equal access to these passes and that everything needs to be put in place in hope that it’s going to happen. We commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to the second reading of this COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. Now, only a few hours ago we supported the first reading because we entered into this debate with a spirit of goodwill in hope that even in this compressed time frame, the Government might come forward in the same conciliatory way saying, “Actually, we accept we got a few things wrong and we’re going to be prepared to clarify and make it better.”, and what did we get from—
Hon Scott Simpson: Delusional optimism.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Scott Simpson from the Coromandel, he says that’s delusional. Even the Labour Party deserves hope and forgiveness, Mr Simpson! Never forget it.
I have to say that when I heard Chris Hipkins get up in the second reading speech—having raised a few questions about, for example, what happens if somebody takes four weeks off then decides they did want to get vaccinated but their employer says, actually, it would be an unacceptable disruption for them to come back to work, do they keep their job or not? I thought maybe Chris Hipkins, the Minister for COVID-19 Response, would get up and say, “Yes, this is very difficult. We’re asking Parliament to operate under extraordinary circumstances, passing a law overnight with far-reaching consequences and no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act accreditation or check on whether it’s consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.” What did Chris Hipkins, the Minister for COVID19, do? Well, he stood up and he spent most of his time criticising the National Party.
Now, how is that helping the future of New Zealand or the welfare of New Zealanders to have somebody who is put in a position of being the Minister for COVID-19 Response in, as he said, a global COVID-19 pandemic to get up and give a six minute speech playing politics? So it’s become very clear that we have a Government that is not serious at all in changing any aspects of this bill, in making any improvements, or conceding that it might have got anything wrong despite this incredibly rushed process. We just can’t support that. You know, we’re good guys and girls. We’re trying to be user friendly and help people work together when we can. But the truth is that it’s a two-way street and the Labour Party is not prepared to meet anyone halfway. So we’re opposed to this bill from now on.
This has to be seen in a much wider context, where free societies are grappling with the challenge of trying to fight an enemy that is a different species; that is a virus attacking humans. It matters because we live in a global world where there will be more epidemics. There may even be more variants of this virus next winter that are more challenging than what we’ve faced so far. But even if we beat COVID-19, there will be more in my lifetime and yours, Mr Speaker—probably within the next decade. And the question is how will free and democratic societies respond in comparison with totalitarian ones? Because, right now, the only society that’s really managing an elimination strategy is the People’s Republic of China, a totalitarian state that, for example, just had a case of COVID-19 in Disney world and locked up 10,000 people and wouldn’t let them leave till they were tested. Now, the facts are that we need free societies—
Hon Scott Simpson: Don’t tell Labour!
DAVID SEYMOUR: —to be able—the National Party is saying Labour might do that, too. Don’t give them any ideas, Scott Simpson! You could find yourself spending an extra few days at Rainbow’s End next time you visit!
This is a serious topic. We need free societies and democratic societies to work through the challenge of facing down a pandemic, and we need them to do it better than totalitarian societies and, right now, it’s not obvious that we are if you just measure effectiveness of fighting pandemics. It’s critical that we do better than them because they have so many other problems, whether it’s democracy or civil liberties or whatever. One of the things that a free society needs to do is to be able to maintain its social cohesion, maintain its democracy, maintain its due processes and its consultation, its bill of rights analysis, and its regulatory impact statements. It needs to keep doing all the things that democracies are supposed to do while fighting COVID-19.
What we’re seeing here tonight is a bill being rushed through under urgency with none of the things that a democracy should do when trying to make laws and fight a pandemic. Have they done public consultation? No, they haven’t. There will be no select committee process, not even a shortened one. They’re just going to skip straight from the first reading to the second reading. In fact, we’re on the second reading already. Even I missed it. Have they done the regulatory impact statements—the regulatory impact analysis that is the hallmark of good Government, asking what are the costs, what are the benefits, who pays the costs, who gets the benefits of this law or regulation? Well, the attempt at a regulatory impact statement says, “We don’t know. No information was available because we were forced to do it so rapidly.”—
Hon Michael Woodhouse: The bill says it’s not even required.
DAVID SEYMOUR: —and there’s Michael Woodhouse from Otago, he’s reading it out. He knows how bad it is and he’s been shocked. He’s clearly so indignant he took his mask off, that’s how angry he was.
Have they made sure that this legislation is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? Well, no. They said, “We didn’t have time to think about that because we were so rushed.” This is not the way that a free and democratic society should be acting when making laws against a pandemic. If we can’t do it better and fairer with greater consultation and analysis than the other guys, maybe we should just join them. It’s not what I want for this country. I want our freedom and democracy to be maintained even as we rally to fight against a pandemic.
Some people might say, “Ah, but it’s an emergency.” Well, actually, this Parliament has been incredibly generous to the Government, incredibly understanding throughout this pandemic, and incredibly good at accepting that the Government needs room to move and needs to move rapidly. We’ve allowed them to make orders that are binding on all New Zealanders and said, “Don’t worry, take it to the Regulations Review Committee, Parliament will sign it off later. You can do it any time you like as much as you like.” We’ve let them do that. We’ve had the Parliament shut down, unable to come here and ask questions of the Prime Minister at various times. We’ve done an Epidemic Response Committee by Zoom. We’ve been incredibly supportive and constructive throughout this pandemic; putting forward ideas, offering constructive criticisms where necessary and helpful suggestions whenever possible, asking the questions that New Zealanders need. But can we honestly say that the Labour Party has joined into the spirit of an open and constructive democratic response to COVID-19? I don’t think we can. I think we saw it in Chris Hipkins’ speech on this second reading that the ACT Party opposes.
Did he get up and say, “Look, other members of this Parliament have raised questions about how this will really work and when the regulations that this legislation allows Government to make will be ready.”? Did he get up and say, “Look, I need to explain what will actually happen if someone takes the four weeks to get vaccinated, gets vaccinated, tries to come back, and the employer says that’s an unacceptable disruption to their business. I understand that might confuse some people and I want to clear it up.”? No. All Chris Hipkins did was get up and play politics by attacking another political party. That’s not the tradition of a free and democratic society facing a crisis. That is a Government and a political party that has spent too much time doing victory laps or doing a little dance, as the Prime Minister likes to say, and not enough time getting prepared to pass the laws in a proper and democratic way with analysis, with consultation, taking people with them and having the debate using persuasion instead of coercion to maintain New Zealand’s social cohesion and to keep this country together so we actually come out of this crisis with more social capital than we went in.
Instead, we’ve got a Government that forgot to order the vaccines—and that will come out sooner or later—eventually started vaccinating people after the rest of the world, and, even with all that extra time, forgot to do really basic things like maybe if we’re going to vaccinate people, they’ll want some proof of purchase. You know what they could have done? They could have engaged RUSH, the people that did it for the NHS. Oh, and they made the COVID-19 tracer app for the New Zealand Government and then they got dumped and disengaged—don’t need anything more from you. We could have had our vaccine app and our scan and tracing app in the same app, but, instead, New Zealanders are going to have to go to a pub or a hairdresser, wherever, and get out one app to show they’re vaccinated and another app to scan in, and that in itself is going to weigh heavily on New Zealanders. It’s going to show them the Government just wasn’t organised. Not only are they disorganised but they are sacrificing democracy and the consultation and analysis of a free and democratic society that goes with it, and that’s why—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.
SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise for the second reading of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill with great pleasure.
I just want to begin by just addressing a couple of points that have been brought during the evening, and, in particular, I absolutely need to address the question of rapid antigen testing that was brought forward by Mr Bishop. Mr Bishop, it is incorrect that the COVID19 Testing Technical Advisory Group, led by Professor Murdoch, said that the National Party were right. The reason why they did not say that, as they explained, was that the rapid antigen test has a 30 percent sensitivity rate. What that means is that three out of—
Hon Member: That’s not true.
Hon Member: That’s not correct.
SARAH PALLETT: As low as—as low as 30 percent. They said that. Please check Hansard. A 30 percent sensitivity rate for rapid antigen testing, which means that three in 10 of positive tests can be missed. We’ve seen the impact of this this evening in the news where negative rapid antigen testing has been shown to be a positive COVID test on polymerase chain reaction. So please, I just need to correct that point because it’s really important. It’s really important that the National Party is strongly advocating vaccination today, and I’m very glad to hear that.
I’d also like to talk to the My Vaccine Pass, which is actually addressed in this legislation. It has been enormously successful in the first few days, with one million people logging on successfully. But I do recognise, as my colleague Elizabeth Kerekere said earlier, that for some people who maybe don’t have a smartphone or easy digital access, it’s going to be challenging. There will be, and there are, very good ways of responding to those concerns and questions. So I do encourage people not to have any anxiety around that, but merely to call the 0800 number when they can.
The NZ Pass Verifier app is now live. I took 30 seconds to download it just now. It’s working very well. So I’d just like to say in closing, I commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Penny Simmonds, five minutes.
PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to address a comment that the member who has just sat down, Sarah Pallett, made when I gave the example of the gentleman that I had been discussing his issues with, the gentleman living with a disability, because her comments and her criticism perfectly illustrate why this bill should have gone to the select committee process. That young man that I spoke to is an employer. He has individualised funding and he is an employer of his caregivers. So he had the right, as an employer, to choose whether those people who fed him, bathed him, toileted him, and dressed him could continue even if they weren’t vaccinated. But this Government has taken that choice from him, because his funding would be withheld if he carried on with carers who were not vaccinated.
Now, had that matter gone to the select committee, we would have asked for health advice, we would have asked for legal advice, and we would have shown the due concern that we should show when an example like that comes up—where there is going to be an impact and implications that have clearly not been thought of by this Government. That is what a select committee process is for. Instead, this gentleman faces the prospect of having no caregivers when he needs them. That is not a good alternative.
The other example that I gave was the young adult with Down syndrome, whose parents are his caregivers—a young man who is not verbal; he can’t articulate his concerns. Has the member who criticised this any idea how distressing it is for that young man and that family, thinking that they may be separated because this bill did not go through due process and did not have the opportunity to consider nuanced responses that need to address these kind of concerns?
People are genuinely worried about their civil rights. Everyday people are worried that this Government is giving itself more control than is necessary over their lives. And this Government prides itself on being kind! Well, if anybody had listened to Stuart Nash casting aspersions on those good Groundswell people last week, they would know this Government is not kind on anyone who threatens to have opinions other than theirs. People are genuinely worried about how controlling this Government is, and this most transparent Government ever is doing nothing to quell those concerns. In fact, they are stoking the fires of suspicion and conspiracy theorists by taking away people’s opportunity to have a say.
We know, from years of managing people, that you give as much opportunity to get on board as possible, to take people with us. Taking their voice away is not giving people that opportunity. Taking their ability away to explain the impact on their lives, to explain where there will be anomalies that need to be addressed, takes away any power that they might have to influence this legislation and to get those minor tweaks and changes that would ensure that they understand and they are confident about the legislation going through. But this Government has wiped away the opportunity to take people with them, and has instead pushed even further the concerns that people have, has made those people who were a little bit anti absolutely dig their toes in—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. Kieran McAnulty, five minutes.
KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): What we’re seeing tonight is politics at play. What we are seeing tonight is the National Party desperately clinging to any possibility of regaining support in the community that they possibly can. Right up to this point, they have said to the public that they agree with the vaccine mandates. Then the Government introduces legislation to allow those to occur and the National Party say they oppose it because it is going under urgency. Here is a fact that the House should reflect on: in the nine years that that party was in Government, they used urgency far more frequently than this Government ever did. And then when we bring it in, they use that as an excuse to play politics. I’ll explain why: because, as the next 12 months plays out, they want to be able to say on one hand they supported the mandates at every opportunity they could, and then, if things don’t play out as we would like, they would like to say, “That’s why we voted against it.” This is politics at play. This is the negative, the divided, the desperate National Party clinging on to relevancy.
I do not, when we consider this bill, criticise the ACT Party, because, actually, their position is consistent with their values. But the National Party, when you consider their public statements, this is totally inconsistent. They are trying to play it both ways, and I think what the New Zealand public is seeing tonight is the two sides of the National Party playing out in public. But, once again, it is the fundamentalist conservative side that is winning out, and I commend the types of Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis for actually putting aside their values and just standing up for the party’s position. I don’t believe they believe this, because right throughout they understand that this is the right thing to do.
Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just want to go back on to a point I made earlier regarding how the bill amends the ERA—or the Employment Relations Act—by supporting the employees to be vaccinated by providing reasonable paid time off for this purpose.
I just want to highlight that many of our health providers have been trying to cater for our shift workers and those with less flexible time. So this particular clause in the bill will actually help our health providers who are dealing with business as usual as well as testing, as well as vaccinating, and also trying to cater for our community who work these different hours. So I like this particular clause in the bill.
I also look to the four-week termination notice period for the employee to be able to have that time, and we’ve heard the different reasons why we would vote yes or no on this particular clause. I would just like to focus on those employees that need that time because some of our employees would make an easy choice to take the vaccination, and others would have to consult with other people.
I’d just make the point to our employees: please, speak to your trusted medical health profession first, your GP or your clinic nurse whose been looking after yourself and also your whānau—for these employees—so why would they give you the opposite advice against the vaccination? So, I guess, that’s my sort of plea to our employees: to make sure that you speak to your trusted health professional before you make that decision.
There are different things in the bill that I like to support, and that’s why I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.
SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I rise on behalf of National as the member of Parliament for North Shore. I must say, when I listened to the Minister get up and provide an opportunity to articulate some simple responses to the many questions that we’ve heard from this side of the House, all he could do is make comment in a negative way in terms of the members sitting on this side. He could not articulate at all any explanation for why this is rushed through without proper consultation.
He also mentioned about these people who are not vaccinated who could pose a risk to other Kiwis, and he’s right, but what he failed to mention was that we are in this situation because this Government has been complacent—that has led us to this position. Their failure to act throughout this year to get our population vaccinated has put us in a position where we are vulnerable, and we are paying the price for that. That is disappointing, and that has implications on all Kiwis across this country.
I also wanted to just come back to a point that was raised before around the select committee process. We had the technical committee in around COVID testing last week. I’m a member of the Health Committee and it’s a good committee. We’ve got many members across the House who are a part of it—good, smart committee. It’s a shame that this bill did not go through due process; it did not go through a select committee process. And while we have different views from the political spectrums around that table, generally we can come to some consensus in terms of improving legislation and avoiding the reality of which we’ll be faced with early next year when this bill comes back and we will need to correct a huge number of errors.
We heard before around rapid testing, and Mr Bishop mentioned quite earlier about the Government’s failure in terms of rolling out rapid antigen testing to this country—testing, of course, that’s widely available internationally but is still not available in New Zealand. We heard a number quoted across this side. She had the audacity to say that we were misquoting, I think was the point. Hon Scott Simpson, I think you were quoted as misquoting—
Hon Scott Simpson: Oh, it was a shameful attack.
SIMON WATTS: A shameful attack. Well, I’ve actually got the Hansard in front of me from that select committee, Hon Scott Simpson, and do you know what this Hansard says?
Hon Scott Simpson: Do tell.
SIMON WATTS: Well, I tell you what. What she’s quoted there was Mr Murdoch at the committee stated that the lowest point at which rapid antigen testing could be effective is 30 percent, but what she failed to advise is that the highest point is 80 percent. It is a range. So she is scaremongering once again in terms of saying these percentages were not providing the whole picture. And that personifies the lack of transparency from that side of the House, and it is a disgrace.
Legislative change that seriously implicates or has implications on the rights of Kiwis needs adequate consultation; that is from commentators around this bill around this country. Well, that feedback has fallen on deaf ears by this Labour Government. It is an indictment in terms of the fact that they do not want to take due process, they want to rush this bill through without due consultation, and the implications of that are that mistakes will be made, errors will be had, and this legislation impacts Kiwis across this country. It’s going to impact everyone across this summer break that’s coming up and beyond, because, of course, we have not had articulated in terms of when this will end.
So 8 percent of Kiwis at the moment have not had a vaccination, so that is hundreds of thousands. And, of course, on this side of the House, National strongly recommend that all Kiwis should be vaccinated, absolutely, it makes sense. But this legislation will affect a large number—thousands and thousands of workers. And, again, this process hasn’t been through due consultation with select committees and hasn’t had an opportunity for members to provide comment and to improve it.
We heard before the fact that this legislation does not have a regulatory impact statement. No costs and benefits. Well, I tell you what, I’m not surprised. That seems to be the status quo from this Labour Government in terms of when it comes to passing legislation through this House. No signoff in terms of implications around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, right? Aspects that should be part and parcel of legislation that comes through this House. Well, I’ll just ask a question. I might ask, again, the Hon Scott Simpson. Has this been through the human rights commissioner, do you think?
Hon Scott Simpson: I doubt it.
SIMON WATTS: Do you think this legislation would have been through that?
Hon Scott Simpson: It should have. Surely yes.
SIMON WATTS: Well, how much do you want to put on it? A little bit of it? Well, I’ll tell you what, it hasn’t. The Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt has said that the use of urgency was a considerable concern—and I quote—“and given the human rights implications of this, this is critically important to go through due process”, another example of the fact that this bill has not been consulted at all widely with a number of stakeholders to ensure that this is correct.
I want to spend a little bit of time on the Kiwis that this legislation will impact: those hospitality businesses that are across our electorates and particularly in Auckland where I come from—a hospitality sector that has had nearly a hundred days with no revenue. The consequences of this legislation in terms of that sector has been significant. Members of that community—members that I have been speaking to on the phone, members that I have significant numbers of emails from every day, and I’m sure across the House we would get that—still remain confused in terms of how this will work in practice.
The other aspect that this legislation touches on is managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). And I don’t think we’ve talked much about that this evening, but I want to spend a little bit of time around the implication. This bill adds layers and layers of complexity in terms of that MIQ situation, and yet we’ve got thousands of fully vaccinated Kiwis that are trapped overseas in that lottery of human misery that is MIQ.
Hon Stuart Nash: Oh, for goodness’ sake!
SIMON WATTS: And they’ve got an opportunity—and I hear one of the Ministers saying, what was that? What did he say, Chris Bishop? Did you hear that?
Chris Bishop: “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” he said.
SIMON WATTS: “For goodness’ sake.” I think we were picked up earlier on today around that language, but anyway.
Chris Bishop: Another faux pas by that Minister.
SIMON WATTS: Ha, ha! He’s right, it is. It is an absolute travesty that Kiwis are overseas, who are fully vaccinated, who can be getting a negative test before departure, and come over to this country, and can they home isolate, Christopher Penk? Do you think that would be reasonable? No, of course not. They have to go into MIQ. They have to go into MIQ and spend a seven days and then a further three days, yet someone who is positive for COVID has to go into the MIQ situation. This bill touches on some of that legislation. In December, any Aucklander with a negative test result can pretty much move around this country. They can go anywhere around this country, but, as I said, Kiwi expats, negative test before they leave their offshore country, double-vaccinated, don’t have COVID, aren’t allowed to go into our community because they are—and I challenged the director-general on this. I said, “What is the clinical risk difference between those two individuals?” And he said, “Simon, it’s not a clinical risk, it’s a public health risk.” Well, what is that?
Chris Bishop: There’s been zero cases.
SIMON WATTS: Absolutely. There is no basis. And what we’ve heard also is that that shows a lack of consistency in terms of the application of processes and procedures for Kiwis within our community, and that level of inconsistency causes confusion.
I want to go back to that Health Committee, because it was raised before in terms of some of the feedback around that. We had Professor Murdoch come to our committee, and he stated that the Government had been very slow in terms of its adoption around the rapid antigen testing, which is such an important tool in our arsenal. So I just wanted to reinforce that that’s what some of our technical experts have said around this.
I think the issues with this legislation run much deeper than what we’re going to have time this evening to be able to grasp, because, of course, we haven’t had a select committee process to be able to go through this and provide commentary and feedback and get that input from officials. But what this bill reflects is a Government that does not have a plan, a Government that is making up legislation on the hoof, a Government that is not providing certainty to the people that need it most, and that is our business community, particularly in big cities such as Auckland. That is an absolute disgrace, because that is avoidable. If they had planned earlier in terms of where we should have been by now, that would have been sorted. They could have dealt with that if they had been in control and were over the detail, and they were not.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take, I think, the final call at second reading for this bill, obviously in support because this bill does focus on the framework, the COVID protection framework, and how risk can be managed to allow people more freedoms and a more open environment. So it is significant as it is a less restrictive response to COVID-19.
The bill itself does align with an ability for orders to be made for the issue of COVID vaccination certificates, and colleagues have already referred to that. I know Dr McLellan and my colleague Sarah Pallett have talked about the high uptake in terms of the My Vaccine Passes. And just a plug there to remind people that the 0800 number is obviously available and that the support is there to support the community through that.
But when I look at the bill and the definition as to what actually is a COVID-19 vaccination certificate, it is outlined as part of clause 4, amending section 5, the interpretation section. When we look at that, it means “a certificate that is issued to a person in accordance with … [an] order made … certifying that the person is—(a) vaccinated; or (b) an exempt person.” And the bill then goes on in its interpretation to define who is classified as an exempt person—someone who is obviously granted a vaccination exemption—and there is a process around that.
So it does provide for those who are vaccinated, and it’s always pleasing to see that those rates are increasing, even in my own community within the MidCentral DHB area, but also for those who have, for whatever legitimate reason, received an exemption—and noting that the criteria is specified. So that is one aspect of the bill, and I think it’s an important one as we move towards increasing vaccination. I continue to commend this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill be now read a second time.
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.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill.
In Committee
Part 1 Amendments to COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The House is in committee on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I welcome this opportunity to get into the detail during the committee stage. We haven’t had the opportunity at select committee, but it is very important we do what we can in the limited time we have to get to grips with some of the detail here. I’ve a number of very genuine questions that I want the Minister to just spell out for the committee.
The first is—it’s kind of a minor one, but I think it is of note—the legislative statement that’s been presented to the House under Standing Order 272 says that the bill amends the original Act to require vaccination where the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries has determined that’s necessary to facilitate access for specified products. I can’t find that in the bill. Maybe it’s an old copy of the legislative statement that may have been deleted from the bill, but can we just have a bit of clarity around exactly how that works, and maybe we can tidy that up for the third reading.
The second question is in relation to how the vaccination passport system will work with the mandate system for businesses that are affected by the traffic light framework. So what I mean by that is: the Government has said that businesses that have limits placed on them unless they use vaccine certificates as part of the traffic light framework, at orange and green—that use vaccine certificates, people who work in those businesses will be required to be vaccinated, and that makes some sort of sense. You’ve got the corollary of: if you can only enter if you’re vaccinated, you can only work in the business if you’re vaccinated. That makes sense. I can’t find in the bill the empowering provision that allows the Government to do that. I thought it was new section 11AB, which allows the Government to make orders for specified work, but if you look at “specified work”, it’s around the public interest in terms of continuity of services essential for public safety, national defence, or crisis response. So I don’t think that is the provision that the Government is relying on when it comes to authorising orders for, basically, levelling up vaccination mandate requirements alongside vaccination passport requirements. In fact, I’m generally interested in what the purpose of new section 11AA and new section 11AB is generally.
How exactly—I suppose this is the third question—are those sections different from the existing empowering provisions in the current Act that allow the Government to impose vaccine mandates for specified industries? So, just to give a bit of context, the Government has already promulgated, pursuant to the existing Act, vaccine mandates across the health workforce, teaching, and border workforce. That was the first one, they’ve been well in place, they enjoy, generally, widespread consensus. What I don’t understand is, given that those mandates have already been put in place pursuant to the existing Act, what is the purpose of new section 11AB in clause 7 of the new bill? What is the purpose of it? Why does the Government need to give itself those powers—genuinely interested in exactly what the purpose of that is?
A couple of other questions before I hand over, because I know my colleagues will have things to say as well. Is it envisaged that the—and I’m referring now to clause 4 and subsection (3)(a) in relation to the vaccination exemption criteria. So the bill proposes the director-general may make a notice, for the purposes of any legislation under the Act, what the vaccination exemption criteria will be. Now, my understanding is that the Government has essentially shifted the criteria to the director-general, and he is exercising those exemption criteria already. Is it the Government’s intention that that just carries over once the new bill becomes an Act, that the director-general will just continue to do that pursuant to the criteria that he has published already? Or is it envisaged that there will be some further clarification on that?
There’s quite a lot to cover in that contribution, for the Minister to respond to, so perhaps I’ll just leave it there. Thank you.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Thank you, Madam Chair. It may assist members to know that I’ll answer as best I can any questions on this bill, but I also have my colleague the Hon Michael Wood, who is also one of the Ministers named in this legislation, and he is also available in the Chamber to answer questions on those provisions in the bill that relate to his portfolio as well.
With regard to the last question that Mr Bishop raised—which is irrelevant, I think—to the top of page 5, which is the COVID-19 vaccination exemption criteria, this formalises something that the director-general has already been doing. Perhaps if I could deal with—actually, maybe I should deal with an earlier question that he raised first, which is why we have, on pages 6 and 7, those provisions set out in new sections 11AA and 11AB, and it does relate to some signalling by the courts, I think it would be fair to say, where, in recent court cases, they found that vaccination requirements were justified, and the case of some challenges to those vaccination requirements, but sent a reasonably strong hint, I think, to the Government that they would prefer to see those vaccination requirements mandated in primary legislation rather than under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, as it existed.
So it was the courts’ view—and I can’t remember which of the judgments it was in, off the top of my head, but I can certainly recall reading it. There was a signal there from the courts that they thought it would be better if there was a specific provision in the Act that related to vaccination mandates, rather than using the more general provisions of the Act, which is what the orders have previously been made under. And, therefore, these amendments, and the one that I mentioned about the vaccination exemption criteria, formalise arrangements that have already been put in place using the more general provisions in the Act, but make those more specific and make the legal footing for those more specific.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I hope we get, through the committee of the whole House, the opportunity that we haven’t had through the regulatory impact statement or the select committee process, to tease out what it is the Government is actually doing with, effectively, a piece of legislation that gives them a huge amount of regulation-making power. There are a number of questions about what those regulations are going to look like. I think it behoves the Ministers who are responsible for this bill to make sure that we at least know what is being planned.
Now, one of the things that staggered me through the last eight to 10 months of this process is the almost complete ignoring or overlooking of a very important piece of legislation that I was the responsible Minister for, and that was the Health and Safety at Work Act. It really surprises me that the Government hasn’t taken the opportunity to remind persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) of their obligations under that piece of legislation. Instead, they have, effectively, run over the top of it with this bill and many others, I have to say. But I want to remind the committee, before I ask my questions of the Minister or Ministers, what the primary duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work Act is, that is for the PCBU to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of the workers who work for the PCBU and whose activities, in carrying out that work, are influenced or directed by the PCBU. In paragraph 36(3)(g) “that the health of workers”—the health of workers—“and the conditions at the workplace are monitored for the purpose of preventing injury or illness of workers arising from the conduct of the business or undertaking.”, and the fact that the Government has completely overlooked this, I think, speaks to the low level of trust that they have in business to do the right thing.
One of the things, I think, having been the Minister that ran the gauntlet for 18 months in the passage and introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act, is that not a single word of that Act has actually been changed by this Government in the four years they’ve had the opportunity to do so. Indeed, the previous Minister has said that it was actually in very good shape.
Now, here’s my first question, and I should add, and the Minister was quite rightly pointing out that he’s responsible for parts of it, even in Part 1—but the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is available, I note, and I would encourage and welcome a response through a call from the seat that the Minister’s in, rather than being in the formal chair, if that’s appropriate. But in clause 4, “Section 5 amended (Interpretation)”, the definition of an “affected worker means a worker who was employed or engaged by a PCBU to carry out specified work”. And that key word there, I think, is “engaged” because the definition of “a worker” under the Health and Safety at Work Act includes a contractor or an employee of a contractor. So I’m assuming, and I need this confirmed, that the affected-worker clause in this bill means also contractors and employees of contractors and subcontractors. That’s important because what we’re then setting a regulation, potentially, to do is to extend the reach of a workplace beyond one’s own employees and into the employment relationships of other businesses. So my question is: is that what’s intended, and, if so, what is the expectation on the requirement for somebody to be vaccinated and then be, effectively, put off. Because it’s easy to say, “Well, I don’t want that subcontractor in my workplace.”, but it’s another thing altogether to then have some kind of obligation for a four-week notice period and a payment of compensation.
The second question in this call is relating to proposed new section 11AB “Orders that can be made under this Act”, and this is where, really, we’ve got to get to tin tacks. “The Minister may … make an order for 1 or more of the following purposes: (a) specifying work, or classes of work, that may not be carried out … unless the affected worker is vaccinated,”. Then in subclause (b) “specifying work, or classes of work, that may not be carried out by an affected worker unless the affected worker reports for and undergoes medical examination or testing for COVID-19 …”. So we’ve got a class of workers where they must be vaccinated and a class of workers where they could be vaccinated or tested regularly. What I’d like to know, I think the committee would benefit is: what would the jobs—[Time expired]
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Rather seamlessly, I’d like to follow on from that and just ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Chris Hipkins, about clause 4—Part 1, clause 4—which amends section 5 of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. It changes the interpretation. There’s quite a number of new terms introduced into the legislation. There’s a “vaccination authorisation”, a “vaccination certificate”, a “vaccination exemption”. There’s “exempt person means a person who has been granted a COVID-19 vaccination exemption”, “specified COVID19 vaccination exemption criteria”, “vaccinated”. These are all the new terms that are introduced.
Now, what I find interesting, what I really want the Minister to address, is where do these testing requirements come in? Because, as Michael Woodhouse, who was speaking just a second ago, pointed out, the bill very clearly contemplates that some people who are required to do work will be able to meet the criteria by being vaccinated or tested. And this is not only important in the context of the bill, which contemplates vax-or-test, it’s important in the context of the response to COVID-19 globally. Because, in quite a number of different theatres the requirement is to be either vaccinated or tested, not just vaccinated. And once you think about that, you have to start asking, well, what is the purpose of this piece of legislation?
Now, some of the Labour members—and I don’t know if they were reading the bill notes that they were provided or they’re confused or just not sure how to fill in their whole two minutes, but a number of them said that the purpose of this legislation was to raise overall vaccination rates. Well, the Minister should tell us, is that the purpose? Is this legislation there to incentivise the wider public to get vaccinated? Because, if that’s the case, I would suggest there are other ways to achieve that, and, at the margin, we’re pretty much as far as we’re going to get. We need incentives and persuasion, rather than coercion.
But I think the Minister should tell us, you know, the underlying purpose. I mean, there’s no purpose statement, there’s no amendment to the purpose statement of the principal Act. The purpose is really helpful to know, and once you know that purpose—if it’s to increase vaccination rates overall, then what we’ve seen in the interpretation section makes sense: it’s all about vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate. But, actually, there is another purpose that the Minister himself has raised. He stood up and said, “Well, actually, this is about protecting people from harming each other.”, that a person who is not vaccinated is more likely to have a bigger viral load and pass it on to someone who, you know, may be either a child who can’t be vaccinated or somebody who is vaccinated—but, as we know, even those of us who are very strong proponents of vaccination against COVID-19, it’s not the 100 percent sterilising immunity silver bullet that some of us had hoped for. You know, you can harm somebody else.
So, if the purpose of this legislation is actually to stop some people harming others by carrying COVID-19 and potentially affecting them, then you’d have to ask: is the way to address that purpose not to ensure that somebody is actually vaxxed or tested? Because, you know, if vaccination protection is not 100 percent, then there must be some frequency of testing that actually gives an equivalent guarantee that a person you meet is not going to pass on COVID-19. And I wonder why, in the interpretation section, there’s no mention of what it means to be tested. It’s all about vaccination, even though testing is mentioned elsewhere in the bill.
It’s also important in the wider context of a response to COVID-19—and Madam Chair, this is important, so I hope you’ll grant me at least a few more minutes on this call. You know, you look around the world, the vax or test idea is being widely embraced—Denmark, for example. I mean, they have an app that says if you show that you’re either vaccinated or tested, to demonstrate that you’re unlikely to harm somebody else with COVID-19. Air New Zealand, much closer to home: for domestic flights they’re not insisting on vaccination only; they’re saying it’s vax or test. And then there’s the New Zealand Government, even closer to home: the Minister himself is saying that when people leave Auckland—and I know this is a bit of a sore point, so I’ll try not to bring it up too much for this Minister—but people will be able to show their credentials for leaving Auckland and that they’re either vaccinated—[Time expired]
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I note that the Government has already dropped its own Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) on to the floor of the House, SOP 100. In fact, the Government had an SOP on the floor of the House before the Opposition did. That’s how poorly and shambolic this process is. So I suppose my question is to the Minister, Michael Wood: what is the purpose of SOP 100? And if he could enlighten the House as to how that missed out the bill drafting process? And you know, if it’s OK with us, it’d be good to know what the other SOPs are that are coming down the line, if, indeed, there are any further amendments.
One in particular that I’m looking for, that we didn’t get an answer from the Minister in the chair before in relation to, is, again I go back to why the legislative statement that’s been tabled makes reference to the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries. It’s a genuine question. Why is that person mentioned in the legislative statement when it’s not in the bill? So we look forward to finding out exactly what’s happened there; something’s gone awry there.
But, of course, this is what happens when Parliament is put into urgency to pass a bill through all stages. I’m going to make a prediction now. I’ll make a prediction: we will be back at some point in the next six months to fix up this bill. There’s just no doubt about it. I mean, the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill, I understand, needs fixing as well. That’s the one that we only passed two weeks ago, and we made a mistake in passing that, too.
So, anyway, a further question is a very genuine question, and I asked it before and we haven’t had an answer yet. But I want to know what particular part of the bill allows the Government to make rules in relation to vaccination mandates for specified workers. And I’m reading from an article in which the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety, Michael Wood, is quoted this morning—in fact, it’s based largely on a press release that he issued—which is that unvaccinated staff and businesses where vaccine mandates will not be able to continue their work unless they are fully vaccinated against COVID 19 by 17 January. The Government, on Tuesday, set out new requirements for workers to be vaccinated at businesses where customers need to show My Vaccine Pass under the new traffic light system. Makes perfect sense, in some ways. If you have to be vaccinated to enter the business, you have to be vaccinated to work at the businesses; that make sense. It brings things into line. It’s the logical corollary of having a vaccine certificate system for some businesses. The question is just this: where is the provision in the bill that allows the Government to make rules regarding that? That’s fundamental—that’s critical. The Government put out a press release about it this morning and has made much of those requirements. And I may be missing something here, the Government may be relying on clause 6, which is the new section 11—well, section 7 which is amended—but I can’t see it in the legislation. We’ve got the shadow Attorney-General here, Mr Penk. He may want to comment on that, as well, but I can’t see it. And so it’s a genuine question from officials as to what is the empowering provision in the legislation?
A final further question before I hand over to other colleagues is in relation to the risk assessment framework. Now, again, we had a press release from the Minister this morning saying, “Don’t worry about it, guys. There’s a risk assessment framework coming, Parliament will legislate for one when it comes to businesses making up their minds as to who needs to be vaccinated and who doesn’t. It’s all under control. Don’t worry, we’ll publish the regulations in mid-December.” And, of course, this has all been done very, very hurriedly.
Hon Member: Another announcement of an announcement.
CHRIS BISHOP: Well, yeah, exactly. Another announcement of an announcement. And there’s no constitutional problem with Parliament passing an empowering provision to allow the Government to pass regulations, obviously. But it is a bit unusual that the Parliament would give the Government the power to promulgate something and put out a press release simultaneously on the same day without getting any real indication as to what will be in the framework. That is slightly unusual. And so I suppose one real question is: would it be better for the risk assessment framework to actually be in the primary legislation? In fact, that is a really genuine question: why the risk assessment framework is not actually in the primary legislation.
SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. I’d like to just ask a few questions in regards to clause 7. And I guess my first question to the Minister is: we’ve heard a lot about the traffic lights which have been announced by this Government. And my question here is: is the new section 11AA the empowering provision which the Minister and the Government intends to put New Zealand into reds and oranges and greens—I hear Auckland’s meant to be the great red light district next Friday, is what they’ve announced. The rest of the country is going to be the orange light district, but we still don’t know what green means. The question I’ve got for the Minister—I’ve got a number of questions, actually.
Chris Bishop: That’s Wellington Central.
SIMEON BROWN: Wellington Central, well, maybe that will be Green. That’s where the Greens hang out, isn’t it?
But I’ve got a number of questions here. New section 11AA starts by saying, “(1) The Minister may make a COVID-19 order under section 11AB in accordance with the following provisions: (a) the Minister must be satisfied that the order does not limit or is a justified limit on the rights and freedoms in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990;”. My first question relates very much to that point, which is the fact that all New Zealanders have accepted their rights being limited in the past 18 months in regards to COVID-19. And I think most New Zealanders would accept the need for their rights to be limited in some way going through what has been a global pandemic. But the question I’ve got coming through this is when it comes to how the Minister is satisfied going forward—because we’ve spent the last 18 months dealing with what initially was a major crisis, a new disease which no one knew much about. Now we’re moving into a traffic light system, which is apparently safer, and we’ve, obviously, got the vaccine, we’ve got boosters, and we’ve got rapid antigen tests. We’ve got so many tools that we didn’t have 18 months ago to be able to manage and address COVID-19. And so my question here in regards to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is: how is the Minister going to be satisfied that an order does not limit or is a justified limit on the rights and freedoms in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act?
I do just note that this process that we’re going through tonight does not give me much confidence that this Government is actually going to take this seriously. On 23 November, the Hon David Parker, which I believe was today, got sent the Consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990: COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill report. And it says in paragraph 2, “This advice has been prepared in an extremely short timeframe due to late receipt of the Bill that was not in compliance”—not in compliance—“with Cabinet Office … [guidelines].” It’s not like this bill doesn’t address or impact on many people’s human rights at all. I mean, it only impacts on your right to refuse to undergo medical treatment. It only impacts on freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom from discrimination, right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. That’s all the rights which are impacted by this piece of legislation, and the letter was received this morning, or maybe it was this afternoon. But that’s how much thought this Government put into how much impact this has on people’s rights and freedoms.
We’ve had 18 months to be thinking through this—well, at least if you think Delta arrived in New Zealand in April, from April to now to think through what’s the framework, given vaccinations, given all the other tools that have been developed since this pandemic started, all that time since April to actually think this stuff through, but their letter arrived this morning. So can the Minister give me some confidence and answer the question: what it means to be satisfied that the order does not limit or is a justified limit on the rights and freedoms? And what consultation is the Minister going to undertake with Government departments? Or what legal advice or opinions is he going to seek?
Chris Penk: Will he release it?
SIMEON BROWN: Is he going to release—it’s a very good question from my colleague Chris Penk. Will he release that opinion or that legal advice? Is he required to get legal advice as to whether it is a breach or whether there’s a limit or how that’s being balanced up? These are questions I think New Zealanders would actually like to have an answer for. These are the types of questions which should have been fleshed out at a select committee, but we are having to ask these questions here during this process in the committee of the whole House.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I’ll run through a variety of the issues that have been raised so far, and perhaps if I start with some of the general themes first.
The provisions in this bill that relate to vaccinations very much follow a similar format—or, effectively, the same format—as the existing legislation, which is that they are quite broad, empowering provisions that do allow those questions of detail to be established through the orders that can be issued under the Act once it has been passed. And I would note that, when the original legislation was passed by the House, there was actually broad support across the House for that, recognising that these rules are complicated and that, in dealing with a global pandemic, you are often dealing with a situation that changes quite quickly and that there are a lot of unknowns and you do need to be able to change and adapt. You do need to be able to fix things, because almost everything related to COVID-19 has been done quickly—more quickly than would be done in a desirable set of circumstances—and, therefore, there will be areas where we need to go back and where we need to correct things, or we need to change things because the circumstances have changed. So, by having reasonably broad, empowering provisions, we create the flexibility to be able to do that.
I’ll run through some of the questions. In terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the requirement for the Government to follow the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, we still have to do that. The obligations upon Ministers in implementing orders under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act do still continue, and the same requirement exists in these provisions as for all other provisions in the Act. And I note that many of the orders already made under the Act have been supported by the Opposition, and, in fact, in many cases over the last 12 months or so, they have been demanding to know why we haven’t been more limiting of people’s rights in some of the provisions. I think about some of the debates we’ve had around managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), for example. I know they want to suddenly do away with it now, but it was literally, it feels like weeks, it may be a few months ago now, they were thundering, demanding in this House, why we weren’t being more strict in our MIQ arrangements. So the existing provisions that apply to existing orders apply to the new orders.
In terms of the empowering provisions for the vaccination certificates and the workforce mandate, section 11 will be done as an amendment to the existing vaccinations order.
In terms of the purpose of the Supplementary Order Paper to ensure absolute clarity for employers about how the paid notice of termination provisions operate, it’s to ensure that the payment is just for the notice and that there’s no notice compensation on top of that. So it’s a clarity issue.
In terms of the Government policy statement—the statement that I tabled in the House referring to the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries—the members are correct; that does refer to an earlier version of the bill, and those sections were decided to be not required. So they’re not in the version of the bill that is tabled. So the version of the bill that is tabled is correct.
I’ll let the Minister concerned speak to the issues around a person conducting a business or undertaking—or PCBUs—that Michael Woodhouse has raised.
If I run through quickly now, because it is a good opportunity to do so, the Supplementary Order Papers tabled by the Opposition and set out the Government’s views upon those. The first of them is in the name of Chris Bishop and concerns changes made in the House under a different piece of legislation last week, regarding COVID-19 testing consumables. I would argue that that is outside the scope of the legislation, although that’s not my decision to make. But I would say that it would directly contradict a decision made by the House just last week.
In terms of the requirement suggestion, by Chris Bishop again, that the House of Representatives be required to review the Act, of course the House is the master of its own destiny; it does not need a legislative requirement to do that. If the House wishes to conduct a review of anything, it can do that. And if the select committee wishes to conduct a review of the Act, it has the power to do that now. So, therefore, those provisions are unnecessary.
In terms of Simeon Brown’s suggestion that the vaccination provisions exclude religious places of worship, I would note to him that, actually, some of the biggest clusters of COVID-19 cases that we have dealt with in the time that I have been leading the COVID-19 response have, sadly, involved places of worship. And, in some cases, people have died after contracting COVID-19 at a place of worship. So I would oppose that. In terms of within the traffic light framework, people will still have the ability to attend places of worship if they are unvaccinated, but there will be limits on the number of people who are able to participate in those services. And that applies to a number of the amendments that are proposed by Simeon Brown.
He has also proposed that tangihanga be exempt from the vaccination requirements, which I think is interesting from somebody who, in this House, has been questioning why the Mongrel Mob, in their tangi, didn’t have to follow the COVID-19 public health response guidelines. He now suggests that that should be enshrined in law—that they wouldn’t have to follow those guidelines. The Government does not believe those amendments would be in the public health interest.
In terms of the remaining issues that, I think, Simeon Brown has proposed, a series of amendments that relate to human rights, as I’ve already indicated, the Government continues to follow the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in making its decisions under this Act. In terms of the process questions that the member has raised, the Government gets advice from Crown Law on every order that we make under the Act, or every order that I make I get advice from Crown Law on that. And I also get advice from the Director-General of Health on every order that I have made under that. Crown Law advice, as the members opposite who have been Ministers will be aware, is subject to legal privilege.
CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak in this, the committee of the whole House stage of COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. Like colleagues on this side of the House, from at least a couple of parties, we do have significant questions about a piece of legislation that is being rushed through. The ink is barely drying on it, and we have the prospect of this becoming the law of the land in a hugely complicated, hugely significant way, potentially in less than 24 hours plus the time it takes to have Royal assent given.
I have very significant misgivings, which I would like to be allayed by the Minister’s responses to questions I have in relation to the courts and tribunals of New Zealand. This is a portfolio area of mine, but should also be of interest to every member of Parliament and all those who care about the reasonable conduct of public life in New Zealand as protected by the courts. So my question, which is an overarching one, which I’ll break down into a number of more specific points, is: what effect does this legislation have on the courts of New Zealand? For example, are judges who are duly appointed—and are not subject to political or, indeed, other branches of Government interference as to their employment—affected by the vaccine mandates or the operation of these orders in a way that would cause them to conduct the affairs of their courtroom in a way that is, effectively, directed by the Executive? For example, is a witness to a court case required to be vaccinated, and if he or she is not, is he or she able to participate or not participate in accordance with this so-called traffic light system, which we’ll use by way of shorthand? Likewise, defendants, plaintiffs, those who deserve to have their day in court—a constitutionally protected right under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which, along with other rights and freedoms contained therein, you would not necessarily know if you’re a casual observer, but which we were assured by the Government, it bears in mind, as the Minister has stated, perhaps in slightly patronising tone, those on this side of the House who have been Ministers before know that such advice is privileged. Well, others know that too, and that doesn’t lessen our desire to see the working, see the justification, at least to understand where the Government’s head is at in terms of some of these restrictions.
Of course, it may be possible that there are justified limitations, but the thing about justifying limitations is that one has to justify them. If one doesn’t spell them out and if one spells them out in the form of a letter that is arriving on the desks of the legislators, indeed, the Attorney-General himself only received today, presumably—23 November 2021 being today—the advice in relation to the consistency of this legislation with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, it begs belief that we should be expected to believe that a robust scrutiny has taken place in relation to consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
What about jurors? Can either of the Ministers, indeed, any of the Ministers—and I note that the Minister for Courts is here in the House, I don’t know if it’s within the rules of the committee to allow him to comment in that capacity. Certainly, I would welcome him taking a call, even unofficially, to provide his advice in relation to this, if, indeed, he’s turned his mind to it. What about jurors who are supposed to be selected? “Twelve good men and true”—of course we’d say “good people” in this day and age—randomly selected by way of population, not subject to limitations as a zealous Government might impose for, you know, perhaps perfectly valid public health reasons. What is the impact? What is the effect of that? The work that they would be undertaking, you know, affected work, perhaps, specified activities—who knows?
How are the courts and tribunals of this country to be conducted in relation to this? Are they separate because it’s a separate branch of Government and it’s not for the executive or, indeed, Parliament to interfere with that? Or will they be required to play ball along those lines as well? Do the dictates of open justice, which would allow, all things being equal, that members of the public can attend court hearings? What if we have more than 100 warm bodies in a courtroom—a number of whom would be, sort of, participants proper, others who might be observers—does that fall foul of the traffic light system in certain levels, according to this legislation?
Huge constitutional implications. I would be surprised but delighted if the Ministers opposite have given any thought to it, and I would certainly welcome the opportunity to hear from them now about what provisions they’ve made for that, if indeed any at all, and I look forward to then being able to ask a number of other questions in different relevant areas.
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thought I’d just take a fairly brief call at this stage to address a couple of the specific points that were raised earlier on in the debate by the Hon Michael Woodhouse relating to the relationship to the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) in terms of the bill that the committee is considering. I take the point of the member on board that the Health and Safety at Work Act remains the primary vehicle that we have in place that places a primary duty of care on employers in respect to the health and safety of workers for whom they are responsible. The assurance that I would give the member is that that does remain, and that is not affected in any way by the provisions of this bill. In fact, I’d note clause 33AB on page 11 of the bill. I’ll just quote directly from it, which might provide some assurance and clarity here: “To assist a PCBU in meeting their primary duty of care under section 36 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, the PCBU may, in accordance with the assessment tool, conduct an assessment of the work carried out by workers”. So we have a very clear link here between this piece of legislation and that primary duty of care that employers do owe.
Just to delve further into that point: the issue that the Government is attempting to address here through the creation of the vaccine assessment tool is not to replace any requirements under HSWA but to give greater support and clarity to employers who are trying to exercise their duties under HSWA.
We’ve heard a very, very clear message from, actually, interestingly, both employers and unions largely in unison around this, that while there are existing health and safety assessment tools that employers can use, and some are—particularly larger employers are making use of them at the moment—that especially for smaller employers who might have more limited access to HR and legal resources, a simplified assessment tool will be extremely helpful for them in terms of coming to reasonable judgments about whether it is reasonable to require a vaccine for certain kinds of work. That is the intention of the vaccine tool that is enabled by this piece of legislation. Again, I just affirm that that links through to the primary duty of care under HSWA, as set out by clause 33AB.
The second point that the honourable member raised related to the definition of “affected worker”. I think he was really just seeking clarification as to whether the definition of “worker” that we are using within this piece of legislation is consistent with the definition of “worker” that we use under the Health and Safety at Work Act, and I can confirm that that is the case. We do want to have consistency between the legislative regimes. If I can just point out why that’s important, if we think, for example, about the provisions that we’re working towards when orders come into effect that will require workers in COVID-19 vaccination certificate worksites to be vaccinated, we would most certainly want there to be a consistency of application by someone who might be employed as an employee or a contractor. If, for example, we’re talking about a hospitality venue, regardless of whether you, as the customer, are being served by someone who is an employee or, if for some reason, that person is a contractor, we would want consistency in terms of the way that the vaccination requirement plays out across both of those people. So that’s why the definition of “worker”, consistent with HSWA, is the one that we have used there.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to take a call on what is a very important piece of legislation, the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. The Minister in charge, Chris Hipkins, referred to the fact that the Opposition has supported some of the COVID orders in the past. And I just want to put on record a couple of things. Firstly, when the outbreak first occurred last year, there were lots of elements that were unknown, and the Opposition was very careful in carrying out its responsibility to support the Government as much as possible, at a time of crisis when it was a national emergency, to ensure that New Zealanders understood the importance of what was occurring. I think the difference, in terms of where we stand here—and my colleagues on the Opposition benches at this point in time—is the fact that this is a Delta outbreak, which, of course, the Government has known about for quite some time and had a lengthy period of time to plan and prepare for.
So to be here on 23 November, debating legislation under urgency that will have a significant impact on New Zealanders’ rights and freedoms with zero opportunity for the public to be involved, is quite abhorrent. That is why the Opposition will be ensuring that the voices of the public are brought into this Parliament, if not by the Government—who, in many peoples’ view, the fact that it is the first majority Government ever places a higher bar of responsibility on ensuring that power isn’t abused. And in legislation like we are debating today, there is a serious obligation—one that in my view, and the view of the public, the Labour Government is not discharging with any form of responsibility.
So I’ve got a couple of questions—
Dr Duncan Webb: Oh good!
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: —for the Minister, and I think the senior whip should be a little patient and shouldn’t trivialise a debate in this House under urgency.
Dr Duncan Webb: You’re halfway through.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: I’m not clock watching, and I suggest that that member doesn’t, because that member is trivialising every single person in the New Zealand population who has on multiple occasions contacted every member of Parliament and Opposition members—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of emails, thousands of people who have signed petitions, shocked and disgusted at some of the decisions that the Labour Government is making and ramming through in Parliament tonight.
So a couple of my questions, one is reflecting on my colleague Chris Penk’s comments that were related to the courts. I note clause 7, inserting new sections 11AA and 11AB, which is all around orders in relation to specified work. And as the Opposition spokesperson for social development and employment, I’m particularly concerned about those New Zealanders who have a range of challenges who have to interact with Government agencies, one of which is the Ministry of Social Development. I have not seen any confirmation—I’ve not been reassured in any way, shape, or form that no New Zealander will be excluded from a Work and Income office if they are not vaccinated. I think these are the sorts of practical issues, when we’re passing legislation like this, that New Zealanders want to be reassured about. So I’m specifically asking a question—actually, I want a guarantee. I want a guarantee that no New Zealander will be excluded from a Work and Income site. As we know, many people have had to interact online or by phone, and for many people that is not the way they are most comfortable. So to be able to turn up to a Work and Income office—and many people have complex challenges that they want to discuss with someone face to face—I want an absolute reassurance and commitment from the Government—[Time expired]
MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. And I’ll apologise to my colleague the Hon Louise Upston who actually had quite a lot to actually say, no doubt—like most of us.
It seems a little bit ironic, me standing in this House to debate something in the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, because it is almost like Groundhog Day, where we are actually dealing with certain things that I thought were, apparently, dealt with completely and utterly 100 percent securely last week. But we have new legislation which actually fixes something that we apparently passed last week.
So I have a question for the Minister: does the Minister stand by his statement to the New Zealand Parliament during the committee stage of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) that, and I quote, “The advice that the Government has had is that this provision isn’t actually necessary because the existing provisions that are in place already make that clear. However, we have heard the concerns from others that they would like to see that explicitly stated in the Act. That is the reason why we have agreed with the committee’s recommendation to insert these additional provisions.” These relate to my speaking in the House in relation to my Supplementary Order Paper 85 and my concerns regarding data protection and privacy concerns related to the bill that was actually passed last week.
So I’d like to ask the Minister if he actually stands by his statement. If so, why? If not, why not? There are also a couple of other questions that I’d actually like to ask. In terms of that, I note that the new legislation will amend the recently inserted section 34A of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 that was only just debated last week, as I said, Groundhog Day. In particular, it amends subsection (1) to add the following further subsection as new subsection B, and I quote, “enforcing the Act or a COVID-19 order (including for the purposes of proceedings against a person for non-compliance)”. Why does the Minister actually believe this new section is, in fact, needed, when he said we didn’t need to actually amend anything last week?
Also, did the Minister make a mistake when he informed the House that new section 34A of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) provision isn’t actually necessary, as he said last week? When the Minister stated during the committee stage of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) in this discussion of new section 34A that he wanted to “underscore the public’s desire for clarity.”
Why is he now further confusing the public through additional amendments under urgency just one sitting week later? Does he believe that he made a mistake last week; if not, why not?
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to thank the Minister for answering some of the questions that were asked, but sometimes it’s the questions that the Minister doesn’t get up and answer that are the most revealing. Now, I just want to restate, as I was asking last time I had the call on this committee—I want to understand what the purpose of this bill is. Is it to get overall vaccination rates up, as some Labour Party members have claimed during this debate? Or is it to protect people from each other, acknowledging that some people who are vaccinated are less likely to infect people who are not? And if it’s the latter, which is what the Minister said, and I think that’s what should be the purpose of this legislation, then why is there so much reference in the interpretation section, and, indeed, most of the bill, to “vaccination”, but very little reference, certainly in terms of interpretation and definition, to what it means to be tested and what sort of testing regimes might be put in place?
So that’s one question the Minister hasn’t answered to date about the purpose of the bill and what the relationship between testing and vaccination is in achieving the purpose. Has, for instance, the Government got any guidance on what frequency of negative tests might give a person equivalent assurance that a person who is not vaccinated is just as unlikely to pass on COVID-19 to them? It’s a very important number, and you’d hope the Government sought some data on that, so I’ll leave that for now. But that’s a question that hasn’t been answered and that the Minister should get up and answer.
The second question has been alluded to by a number of people who have gotten up and given speeches, but I’m not sure that it’s really been put together the way it might be, which is: how does this piece of legislation connect with the traffic light system? Because we’ve got a Government that almost seems to be confused between governing by press release and governing by statutes—you know, primary and secondary legislation made by this House and passed under the authority of the House as regulation by Ministers. They seem to be confused by the two things.
I think that’s why the Prime Minister frequently announces that she’s going to make an announcement. It’s almost as though an announcement is, in fact, a policy or a solution, and forecasting one of those is as good as forecasting doing something.
Chris Bishop: Real Fitzgerald and Muldoon.
DAVID SEYMOUR: And we saw it—well, we saw it with the requirement—
Dr Duncan Webb: Talk about the bill at any time you like, David!
DAVID SEYMOUR: —for people to be—we saw it—what was that?
Dr Duncan Webb: You can talk about the bill, at any point.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh—ha, ha! Now, you can see why Duncan Webb was a law professor, because if he had to make his money as a comedian, he’d be broke, you know. Good old Duncan Webb. Look—do you have something else to say?
Hon Member: He’s gone all red.
DAVID SEYMOUR: No, he’s gone red behind his mask. It’s pretty hard for someone to show that their face has gone red through a mask that’s coloured black, but Duncan Webb has actually managed it. In any case, thanks for playing.
Look, there’s some serious matters to be debated here, and one of them is: how exactly does this legislation fit with the traffic light system? Because we saw, in the case of the mandate for medical workers, the Government did the announcement that medical workers had to be vaccinated, and it was another two weeks before the order was actually passed into law. That was a real problem, because people who are actually in the business had enormous practical difficulties. You know, they’re saying, “Well, which staff exactly are covered and what’s the consequence if they’re not vaccinated? And, you know, how do we actually verify that they are or aren’t?” All of those things. It took two weeks to sort that out.
In the end, the law only dropped on the Monday, and I think it was the Friday that actually the first dose had to be had by. That’s a real problem when you start doing announcements or lawmaking by announcement or by press release, and I worry that it’s going to be kind of the same with the traffic light system. We had the big announcement, although I’m not sure that it was as politically effective as the Government hoped, but that’s another story. But only now are we getting legislation that might help bring it to pass. And yet, you know, there’s so many serious questions around how it will work—for example, I asked the Prime Minister in question time today, “What’s going to happen when the regulations haven’t been drafted?” [Time expired]
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to join Mr Seymour in acknowledging the Minister’s attempts to address at least some of the questions, and I agree that it’s not what he answered; it’s what he didn’t answer that’s important. I think that as we try and tease out what these regulations might look like—because all we’ve got is another bill to create a regulation-making power, the details of which we are unaware—I’d remind the Minister that as far as I can tell, he didn’t answer the question of which classes of work will be required to have a worker vaccinated, or vaccinated and tested. We didn’t get an answer to that, and I’ve found it fascinating that he spent more time in his answers addressing the National Party’s Supplementary Order Papers than he did on answering substantive questions on the bill, as if he’s as busy as Dr Webb is—a bit busy and important to be bothered with the, sort of, technical details—and he just needs to be somewhere else. Well, I’m afraid we need better answers than that, Minister.
I want to continue the line of questioning from my friend the Hon Louise Upston, and for me it relates to section 11(3)(h), which inserts a clause “requiring persons to permit individuals to enter a place or receive a service whether or not those individuals are vaccinated,”. So the majority of the bill is actually about preventing certain things and constraining people’s freedoms if they are not vaccinated, and then we have this mysterious clause in here, which basically says, “Oh, by the way, for some individuals, they’re going to have to just let an unvaccinated person come into their place of work.”
Now, we have that already, albeit, actually, vaccination status isn’t yet a barrier and it will be by Friday week. So, actually, everybody can go and get a haircut down my way; by Friday week, they won’t be able to. Everybody can go to the pharmacy. I presume this is what this clause is about, Minister, but it would be quite good to have a better clarification about who is intended to be affected—
Hon Chris Hipkins: Which clause is this? Remind me which clause?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: This is clause 6(3)(h), amending section 11(g), on page 5. It’s, basically, saying that even if they’re not vaccinated, they can come in. Now, for a private organisation, I think that’s a really big reach into the autonomy and decision making that a business may make not to allow an unvaccinated person to come on to their premises.
Now, it may have what the Minister believes is good intent. It may relate to a healthcare setting, for example, but even then, I think we need to know what we’re empowering the Government to do. Take a GP practice. A GP practice may make a decision not to allow unvaccinated people on to the premises. Maybe they’ll do consultations by Zoom. Maybe they’ll get blood tests picked up by an authorised test-taker. The hospital I used to manage in Dunedin has already issued a policy that says that patients must be vaccinated before they are admitted. Visitors can’t come in unless they are vaccinated. Now, that’s a pretty big step. I’m not sure I would have taken it quite so black and white. But is the Government now going to pass a regulation that forces them to accept an unvaccinated patient or an unvaccinated visitor? Does it apply to the pharmacy? Does it apply to the supermarket?
At the moment, supermarkets, or dairies, or whichever convenience store it might be, haven’t been prevented from having an unvaccinated person—service stations. We have no idea what the reach of this regulation-making power is. We don’t know, under clause 7, new section 11AB, who is going to be specified as needing to have been vaccinated, vaccinated and tested, or tested, and we equally don’t know what the Government intends to do in respect of requiring people to be accepted, even if they’re not vaccinated. We’ve got to tease this out. We’ve got a few short hours to get the best understanding about what the Government is intending, and these are important questions.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Thank you, Madam Chair. If I run through a variety, or as many of the questions as I have not already answered. A number of members have questioned about whether or not the bill allows for a vaccination or test requirement, and, yes, the answer to that is: it does. So it’s not specific on the context in which a vaccination or a test requirement should be required. It allows the orders to determine, though, that a test requirement could be put in place in lieu of a vaccination requirement. So the legislative framework that the Parliament is being asked to pass now absolutely allows for that. So that, as the orders are drafted, if the decision was to allow, in a particular context, people to be either vaccinated or have a test, an order made under these provisions, that Parliament’s being asked to enact, would be allowed for there.
In terms of Louise Upston’s question, the Government has been very clear that no person would be excluded from a Ministry of Social Development Work and Income office on the basis of not being vaccinated. That falls into the category of, effectively, what we’re calling, loosely, “life-preserving services”, where a vaccination requirement should not be in place. So that also includes supermarkets, healthcare services, pharmacies, and so on.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Private healthcare services?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Any healthcare services, health and disability services, broadly defined, where people rely on those, they should not be excluded from those by a vaccination requirement.
In terms of Melissa Lee’s questions around privacy provisions, do I stand by my statement? Yes, I do stand by my statement. They were very good statements, in fact. And, in fact, the position that I put forward was that people have asked for additional clarity and just additional certainty. That was absolutely the case when we passed those provisions last week. The reason that we’re inserting additional provisions in this bill is because we’re inserting additional requirements, and so we’re providing additional reassurance there.
In terms of David Seymour’s question around what the purpose of the legislation is, a tip for the member, he’ll find that on the front page of the bill, under the “General policy statement”, “The amendments make vaccination a more prominent part of New Zealand’s COVID-19 response framework.” I am being a little facetious to David Seymour, and I think he knows that.
But the wider questions that he had around this particular topic around, for example, what level of testing would be sufficient to provide people reassurance that it was a satisfactory alternative to vaccination, the answer to that question is it very much depends on the context and on the frequency of the testing, and that that situation can actually change as the situation we’re dealing with evolves. So the frequency, for example, of our border worker testing has recently changed as a result of the changed risk profile that we are dealing with there.
In terms of his comments around announcements of policy, and he quoted the oft-referenced Fitzgerald v Muldoon case. I think it’s worth remembering in Fitzgerald v Muldoon, Muldoon was making an announcement with no reference to Parliament or no delegated ability by Parliament to do that, and, in fact, he was doing so whilst not allowing Parliament to even meet. So I think the Government is a long way away from that threshold. The Government that—
David Seymour: How is this different? It’s not different at all.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, we’re here in Parliament debating the empowering provisions that will allow the Government to be able to issues orders around vaccination, around testing, and so on. So that is exactly the purpose of these provisions.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I thank the Minister genuinely for that engagement. Just in relation to one of the points he made in relation to my colleague Louise Upston’s argument, the Minister just said that the Government’s been very clear that there’s a range of life-preserving entities and settings where people will not be required to be vaccinated—and I’m assuming he’s relying on clause 6(3), which says, “After section 11(1)(g), insert (h) requiring persons to permit individuals to enter a place or receive a service whether or not those individuals are vaccinated, have a vaccination certificate”, which is fine; that’s great. That gives the Government very broad power. My question is: would it not be better for Parliament to specify the range of circumstances that those orders should be made to? That would be Parliament spelling out for the Government the powers with which the Government should act, and also giving some direction to the Government around which scenarios the House thinks that people should, essentially, be able to access.
That is also the second question I have, which relates to the legality of what the Government proposes to do once the bill passes. The Minister, earlier on in his remarks, made mention of one of the judgments to do with mandatory vaccination at the border, and he made mention of one of the judgments of Justice Cooke. I’ve gone and read those judgments—or I read them a while ago, but I’ve now re-read them—and the critical point that Justice Cooke made, in relation to the border mandates, was that he found that they were, in the legal parlance, vires. So he found that they were legal—Parliament had authorised them—but that was not a slam-dunk argument. That was not something that the court found definitively. In fact, if you read it carefully, he’s quite worried about them. So, at paragraph 76, he says that the applicant’s arguments are not ultra vires, but, at 77, he says, “I note … that this is not a self-evident conclusion. It is perhaps of some surprise that such an important aspect of the response to the risk of COVID-19 has been implemented through a section that makes no express reference at all to vaccination.”
Now, the critical take-home point from that is that the courts are saying to Parliament: “Parliament, you must be very clear with what powers you are giving the Government, and the Government has to follow the law that Parliament lays down.” And the Government has turned up here with new section 11AA and 11AB—and the Minister made reference to that before. And I accept that those new provisions will make it easier for the Government to impose vaccination requirements for some industries later. But here’s the critical point: I am worried about the overall legality of the framework. And I can’t see, in the legislation that is before the House right now, the empowering provisions that allow the Government to, firstly, impose the various restrictive settings at each traffic light colour, for want of a better phrase—red, orange, and green. And then, secondly, I come back to the point I’ve made before, which I haven’t really had an answer to, and I think we deserve one, which is: what is the provision in the legislation that allows the Government to set in place a rule that you have to be a vaccinated worker or employee to work at a place where vaccination certificates are required?
So, to use the vernacular, if I’m a hairdresser and I use vaccine certificates to say that you have to be vaccinated to come and get a haircut at my salon, what is the bit of the legislation that allows the Government to say, “To also work at that salon, you must be vaccinated.” It’s a very, very important point, because, if the bill doesn’t allow the Government to do that, then the Government’s got a massive legal problem on its hands, because the whole framework and the architecture that they are purporting to establish will fall down. So we need to know what the provision is, and if it turns out that a Supplementary Order Paper is required and the Government’s overlooked something, well, then we’ll have to have a look at it, but we need to know what the answer is.
Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I just want to acknowledge that fine contribution from my colleague Mr Bishop, because I think you are raising—and I’m talking to Mr Bishop here—a very strong point about the legality of this bill.
I also just want to ask about the same clause, clause 7, which inserts new section 11AA. I note that the Minister may make a COVID-19 order under new section 11AB in accordance with the following provisions: the Minister must be satisfied the order does not limit or is a justifiable limit to the rights or freedoms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and the Minister must have consulted with the Prime Minister, the Minister for COVID-19 Response, the Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Health, but may have consulted with other Ministers. But before making the order, the Minister may consult with the director-general and must be satisfied that the order is in the public interest.
So I just want to clarify: as I understand it, we haven’t yet had a bill of rights consideration of this bill, and I’m just looking at Mr Bishop there. It is one of the issues I would have thought that was pretty paramount. When you are talking about a Government that is looking to make quite significant changes to an operating framework for businesses and individuals, I would have thought that raises quite significant issues.
So one of the questions I’d like to put to the Minister is: given these overarching powers to create new regulations on the hoof, in effect, why was consideration not given to specifically make any changes subject to consultation? And it may be a “must” or a “may”, but I’d prefer if it would have been a “must”. First of all, the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Paul Hunt, would have been a natural person to specify in that case, as a way to make sure that any of these provisions are actually appropriate for New Zealand and for New Zealanders who, some are, quite naturally—and I know that my good colleague from the ACT Party is very much on the same line of thinking here that people do have freedoms. I think it’s important that they are protected and that bills like this do not overreach and actually unnecessarily impinge on people’s activities to be able to go about things that they like to do on a day-to-day basis.
And the second one is: why wouldn’t the Opposition be subject to consultation on this? Why wouldn’t the Leader of the Opposition, and maybe the leader of ACT, but certainly Opposition parties be at least consulted on this? It may not mean that they need to be involved in the actual determination, but at least the requirement that the Opposition parties be consulted about some of these far-ranging elements that could be passed under these regulations.
And the third one is: why wouldn’t the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, John Edwards, be part of that consideration? That is really important, because privacy issues are, again, a major consideration around COVID issues. I think I would like to ask the Minister just to respond why none of these issues or parties were deemed to be appropriate.
The last point I want to do before closing out, because I’m very conscious that we’re getting close to 10 o’clock—but why is it, before making the order, the Minister “may consult the Director-General of Health”? I would have thought of all of them that there would have been a requirement for “must”. So why is it only a “may”? Because all we’ve heard from the Government over the last 18 months is that they listen to science and, of course, the science has been provided in advice from the Ministry of Health. So that’s been the underlying reason why the Government has chosen to take certain actions, because, in essence, it’s been subject or as a result of advice provided by the Ministry of Health. So why the sudden change of plan? Why does it become appropriate that Ministers think that they can now do whatever they want without having regard to the Ministry of Health?
And so I am very much looking forward to the Minister at least discussing these issues, because I think it cuts to the core of what New Zealanders want to know, and they want to make sure that regulation is not slipped through at the dead of night, at three minutes to 10, which is what’s happening tonight, and that their positions are protected, and they can go about doing their daily work, as they so wish.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The time has come for me to suspend the committee for this evening. The committee will resume at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.
Debate interrupted.
Sitting suspended from 9.58 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday).
TUESDAY, 23 NOVEMBER 2021
(continued on Wednesday, 24 November 2021)
Bills
COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill
In Committee
Debate resumed.
Part 1 Amendments to COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020, and Schedules 1 and 2 (continued)
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Mōrena mai tātou katoa. The committee is resumed. Members, we are on Part 1 of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, committee stage.
SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Mr Chair, and thank you, Minister, for being in the Chamber to answer a few questions. The two areas that I want to get into are in regard to clause 4, “Section 5 amended (Interpretation)”, in Part 1 of the bill, and in particular the term “vaccinated”. Why I ask about that, I say to the Minister, is in regards to the fact that the requirements under having to be vaccinated for individuals says that the term “vaccinated” is something that the Director-General of Health will specify. I think most Kiwis out there will be thinking that “vaccinated” means having two doses, right? Yet under this legislation it is now for the director-general to define the term of whether someone is vaccinated.
I think that poses and interesting question, because we’re obviously aware of the need to be double-dosed and that, but we are also now aware of subsequent booster shots that may be required for certain individuals. So taking into account that this legislation is not time-boxed—it is open-ended—and the fact that the reality of the future in terms of the way in which we’re managing COVID within our communities from a vaccination point of view is initially a double dose but then subsequently, potentially, follow-ups, how is this definition of “vaccinated” going to be interpreted by the director-general, and, I guess, how are we going to avoid this being confusing, because, as has been referred to quite a bit throughout, that is one of the big challenges. So that’s the first question I have for the Minister.
My second question is in regards to clause 14, “Section 34A amended (Protection of contact tracing information). I guess why I raise this is that to date the provision of the private and personal information that is within the COVID-19 quick response (QR) scanning app has very much been protected from a privacy point of view. However, what I acknowledge here is that now, under this bill, aspects of that look to be changed, and I again refer to section 34A(1)(a), (b), and (c). In effect, the information stored or disclosed in terms of the QR scanning app or paper forms can be used for enforcement of the Act or for a COVID-19 order, including for the purposes of proceedings against a person for non-compliance.
So I’d like the Minister to provide some explanation in terms of what actually in that regard is changing. Is people’s personal information still private in terms of when they scan in their QR code, or is the reality now that the Government is looking to broaden their ability to use that personal information to undertake enforcement activities and prosecutions, and how far will that go in terms of what looks in effect to be potentially a track and trace system? I’m really looking for some clarity from the Minister in that regard.
So the two areas—just so that he’s clear—are section 34A in clause 14, in regards to privacy, and the other element is in terms of the interpretation under section 5 in clause 4, around a vaccinated person.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I have a couple of questions for the Minister for COVID-19 Response, the Hon Chris Hipkins, just to help the House. In respect of the date of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that was criticised by Opposition members yesterday, is the Minister aware that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets have to be changed every time the version of the bill changes and that, accordingly, the date on the final New Zealand Bill of Right Act vet reflects the date of the final version of the bill rather than earlier versions of the bill—not that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet was, as has been asserted by others, just sort of whipped off at the last minute?
The second issue I would like a comment from the Minister on is in respect of the issue of access to the courts. Now, an issue has been raised, quite properly, by the Opposition about whether we’re contemplating using vaccine rules imposed by central government in respect of access to the courts. This is a very, very important issue, because it’s very important that we both maintain public confidence in the court system, including the ability of the courts to scrutinise the actions of the executive, independent from accusations that they’re somehow in league with the executive in respect of the issues of access to the courts and vaccines.
The importance of this goes to the integrity of the justice system and the courts being able to hold the executive to account. Members will be aware that in the COVID response Act more generally, we have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provision there that limits the power of the executive to make COVID orders, and it is the courts that are the body to whom citizens who are dissatisfied with executive decisions as to whether they go too far in respect of New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues—it is the courts to whom they go to resolve those issues—
Simeon Brown: What about juries?
Hon DAVID PARKER: —and there’s been quite a bit of jurisprudence already on some of those issues.
Now, the issue of access to the courts, of course, goes further than that, because we have to ensure that people can see that justice is done. People have to be able to have access to the courts, whether they’re vaccinated or not, as an accused, and there are different and quite complex issues as to who has the responsibility for, in the face of those imperatives, keeping other people in the court system safe.
What do we do with jury trials? Members will be aware that jury trials have been suspended in Auckland for some time, and we’re way behind in our jury trials as a consequence. If you have an empanelled jury that is a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people sitting next to each other for long periods of time, what does that do to the ability to get vaccinated jurors to do their work? On the other hand, what do we do in respect of unvaccinated jurors? Do we do this at the time juries are empanelled? How do we control access—
Chris Bishop: Well, what’s the answer?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, the answer to these issues is that we’re working these issues through with the judiciary in a very careful way, because we don’t want there to be an implication that it is the executive that is making these decisions.
There are some complications where the inherent jurisdiction of the court to control the conduct of processes in their own courts may have been inadvertently constrained by other legislation—not COVID-related legislation—and we’re considering whether the better remedy to enabling the court to deal with these issues is to remove those inhibitions on the inherent powers of the court to control processes in their own court.
The final point I would make is that there is a difference at law between access to court precincts and access to courtrooms, and what occurs in the courtrooms. So I’m interested in the Minister’s view as to whether he thinks that the bill cuts across that in any way, or whether it is the intention of the Government to allow that discussion to proceed with the judiciary via me, as Attorney-General, in a way that makes sure that whatever needs to be done in respect of vaccines for jurors, for the accused, for court staff, for the public accessing the courts, for journalists covering these proceedings, etc.—that that’s been worked through outside of this legislation.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Thank you, Mr Chair. Can I begin with the Attorney-General’s comments and thank him for that contribution. Yes, he is correct around the New Zealand Bill of Rights vet. They are often updated and dated relatively close to when the bill is introduced to the House. That is very common.
In terms of the issues that he’s raised around the courts, he is quite correct that it raises a variety of quite significant dilemmas both for the executive, for the Parliament, and for the courts themselves around access to justice, confidence in the independence of the judiciary, and the independence of court proceedings but also some of the dilemmas that the courts themselves will face from people who are reluctant to participate in court proceedings if they are having to do so alongside people who have not been vaccinated. This is particularly the case in jury trials, where we could face a situation where vaccinated jurors are unwilling to serve on a jury with unvaccinated jurors. That is something that I know the courts are particularly attuned to the risk of and is something that they have been turning their minds to. These issues haven’t been resolved, and I think it’s important that we don’t rush to resolve them. The best way to do that is to continue an open dialogue with the courts to make sure that whatever agreements are reached, whatever arrangements are put in place, we can preserve the independence of the courts.
One of the factors that has been raised with me which I think is a really important one is if the courts are to use a provision around requiring mandates when they themselves are having to consider whether those requirements are, in fact, justified, that could potentially undermine the confidence in the court’s impartiality when it comes to that, and of course these mandates are being challenged in the court. So there’s a dilemma for the courts there that I think we just need to step our way through very carefully, not rush decisions about that, and make sure that we get that right.
So the bill does not specifically reference courts. It is possible—it is possible—for requirements to be put in place around courts. The Government would certainly not do that without the agreement of the courts, and so that is something that we’ll have to work our way through carefully.
In terms of a couple of questions that were raised both this morning and earlier in terms of the definition of “vaccinated”, one of the reasons that that has been delegated to the director-general is that there is a potential that that will change in the sense that additional vaccines will come on to the market, and we need the ability to be able to add additional vaccines to that schedule. We need to be able to add different combinations of vaccine to that as the research continues to evolve there, and we need to be able to factor in booster doses and frequency of booster doses as the science around that becomes clearer. So allowing that definition to be updated as necessary through a delegated power to the director-general is the sensible way of doing that.
In terms of the purposes of sections 11AA and 11AB in clause 7 and how they’re different from the current section 11 and why, in particular, in exercising these provisions the Minister “may” consult with the Director-General of Health as opposed to “must” consult with the Director-General of Health, as is required under the existing section 11 provisions, it is because sections 11AA and 11AB as inserted by this bill have a slightly different purpose to the original section 11.
So section 11 was about a public health response, and it meant that any requirements there were justified based on public health grounds. Sections 11AA and 11AB actually expand that wider to include “the public interest”. There can be other factors other than just public health grounds that are taken into consideration in imposing those, and so it may or may not be appropriate to consult with the Director-General of Health. One of the examples that actually came up in the debate last night was if the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries was to introduce a requirement based on international trade obligations, it would not necessarily be necessary or required to consult with the Director-General of Health about that, because it wouldn’t be a public health ground upon which such a requirement would be introduced. So hence there is a “may” requirement rather than a “must”, because it won’t be appropriate in all circumstances to consult with the director-general on those.
In terms of advance notice around people and around the requirements, we made some announcements on 26 November that indicated how the Government intends to apply vaccine requirements at different levels of the COVID protection framework, so people have had notice of this. Yesterday, we announced that workers in these businesses will need to have had at least one dose of the vaccine before they go to work under the COVID protection framework—so they’ve had advance notice of that—and they’ve been told that they’ll have until 17 January to have their second dose. How we give effect to those is through amending the existing COVID-19 public health response vaccinations order. As I indicated yesterday, it is through the amendments to the vaccination order that’s currently in place, made under section 11 of the Act, and this bill now allows for the requirements under section 11 to be broader than just exclusively public health grounds. It is through that existing vaccination order that we will, through amendments to that order, introduce the extra vaccination requirements under the COVID protection framework, which I think addresses the question that Chris Bishop was alluding to last night.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Well, thank you very much, Mr Chair. Now, it’s great to have the Attorney-General in the House. I think he was trying to be helpful, but I think he has actually broadly confused matters, and I’d encourage him to take a call and potentially address some of the matters that the Opposition wants addressed.
So the first issue is in relation to this issue to do with the courts and unvaccinated and vaccinated jurors. To paraphrase what he said, basically, he said, “It’s really complicated.”—and it is—and that is an argument not to pass the bill this morning or this afternoon, but to send it to a committee to ventilate these very complicated issues. So, indirectly, in trying to be helpful and ask the Minister to address the issue to do with jurors and how the courts will figure all that out, he’s basically made the argument of the Opposition, which is that the bill is complicated and the factual scenarios with which the traffic light framework will be applied are very complicated.
It’s not that we can’t work through them as a country—we’ll be able to do that—but, actually, bills like this need time to breathe, need time for people to get their head around them. It got dropped on the Opposition on Monday night, and I thank the Minister for at least giving us half a day to look at it, rather than Tuesday morning—
Hon Member: You mean half a night.
CHRIS BISHOP: —half a night—but, actually, the public need time to do that too. So I’m not sure Mr Parker was being very helpful.
The other point in relation to the courts is—and it’s just been occurring to me now, and, potentially, the shadow Attorney-General may want to have comment on this as well—how does this relate to the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court? I mean, if the Government says, as the Minister’s just indicated, that they’ll work through the issue of jurors, vaccinated and unvaccinated, what happens if a High Court judge says, “Well, I don’t really care what the Government says. I’m allowing unvaccinated jurors on my panel.”? What happens if a High Court judge says that? A High Court judge has inherent jurisdiction over their courtroom. We know that the judiciary are very protective of their inherent privileges, and various journalists and others have discovered to their cost that there’s lots of things you can and can’t do in a courtroom.
This really does raise an issue of comity between the Parliament and the judiciary, and, in fact, between the Government and the judiciary in the separation of powers. I mean, what is the legal position if the Government says that only vaccinated people can serve on juries, which the Minister has indicated is an open question and up for debate, and a High Court judge says, “Actually, you know what? I believe that tramples on the right to a fair trial, and I’m not doing that.”
Actually, if you’re unvaccinated you have a right—in fact, in some cases you have a duty—if you’re called, to serve on a jury, and if a High Court judge, “Justice ‘Insert name here’ ” down the road, says, “I don’t really care what the Government’s mandate says. I have inherent jurisdiction over my courtroom. I believe that it’s an affront to the right to a fair trial for unvaccinated members of the community to not serve on a jury.” They are members of the New Zealand community, like everybody else, and the fact that they have made a choice not to be vaccinated—I would say it is the wrong choice, but it is a choice that they have at law, and no one is supporting mandatory vaccination here across the entire community.
So choice is preserved for a large chunk of people and it may well be that they get called up to serve on a jury, and the question is a really tricky one. It’s a live issue. What is the position with regards to the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court? So the Attorney-General may wish to comment on that.
Just in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act situation, with respect, the Attorney-General is somewhat gilding the lily. Yes, it is true that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets happen right up until the bill gets introduced—of course, that is the case—but the point is the bill was drafted in a hurry. I just refer him to the legal advice that is public that’s directed to him from the Ministry of Justice, which is the section 7 vet report, at paragraph 2: “We have not yet received a final version of the Bill. This advice has been prepared in relation to the latest version of the Bill … This advice has been prepared in an extremely short timeframe due to late receipt of the Bill that was not in compliance with Cabinet Office Guidance.”, and we know it wasn’t in compliance with Cabinet Office guidance because when the framework went to Cabinet on the Monday before it was announced on Friday, 22 October, it had not had any New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis done, and that’s what that reference is to.
As the Attorney-General knows and as the Minister knows, all Cabinet submissions have to have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act framework applied through them and some analysis done. The Ministry of Justice did not do that, and hence we find ourselves in this lamentable situation where we have the legal advice prepared at the last minute, and that legal advice is of course contestable by the Parliament. So I want the Minister to address the questions I’ve raised.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Once again, we get yet another contradictory position from the Opposition, who have spent the last couple of weeks demanding that the Government move quickly to give people more freedoms and are now saying that we should slow down that work so that the select committee can pontificate about the contents of the bill. In fact, the bill is required in order to move to that situation where people get more freedom and where people are able to go about their daily lives with a great deal more flexibility than they have under the current alert level framework. So I’m not really entirely sure what the Opposition’s position is—whether we’re moving too fast or too slow—because they seem to be arguing both of those things simultaneously.
In terms of the issues around the courts: as I indicated, no decisions have been made around the courts. The bill allows for decisions to be made around the court. None have been, and the very dilemmas that the member Chris Bishop raised are ones that we need to work through, including, for example, whether it would be a fair and representative jury pool if we were to exclude either unvaccinated or vaccinated, bearing in mind that if you require people to be vaccinated you’re excluding the unvaccinated, and if you require that unvaccinated people are in there, some vaccinated people will choose not to be.
So those are issues that are quite complex and that we will need to work through quite carefully, and I don’t think that this is necessarily the place where we are going to get measured argument and debate about that. But I think the judiciary need to be involved in that discussion, as they will be. So no decisions have been made. So let’s be very clear: no decisions have been made about that.
In terms of the other question that was raised before about whether, under section 34A, personal information is still private or will this be used for prosecution, the bill is very clear: contact tracing information can only be used for contact tracing for ensuring compliance with COVID-19 orders or those made under the Health Act. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner, I can also say, has been involved in the drafting of those clauses.
SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to take a call on this. I just find this debate fascinating, because you’ve got the Minister there saying, “Oh, I’m not sure about these things. It’s not quite something we’ve given much thought to, but we’ll get to it.” It just raises so many questions from this side of the House as to how this legislation is actually going to work. What we see in this piece of legislation is a Government which is giving itself a huge amount of more powers, but hasn’t actually done any thinking, despite the fact that next Friday we’re going to be moving into this red light, green light, orange light—whatever it’s going to be—system, a stop-go system which they’ve already announced, yet they haven’t actually decided all of these details.
There’s so many scenarios which we could be putting to the Minister, to ask questions. I’d like to just run through a few scenarios or questions around how this law and this section which empowers the Minister to make these orders is actually going to work. I mean, we’ve got this division between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. How’s this going to apply to outdoor gatherings? In my electorate, in Howick, we’re coming up to Christmas. There’ll be outdoor events. We don’t put big fences around big outdoor gatherings for Christmas carols, or whatever it is, to check people’s vaccination statuses. Is that going to be required under this legislation to check people walking to the local markets, because that’s potentially considered an outdoor gathering?
I’ve put a Supplementary Order Paper on the table around the issue of funerals. I mean, when we get to red light in Auckland, are we going to end up in a situation where, if you check people’s vaccination status, Uncle Bob has just died, and his brother—you know, there’s always someone that’s not going to be vaccinated in the family—can’t come along because you can have 100 people if they’re vaccinated, but you can only have 10 if one person is not vaccinated. So we’ve got a scenario now where this piece of legislation is going to mean that Uncle Bob’s brother can’t go to his funeral, because that means 90 other people can’t come if he does turn up.
These are the decisions and the inflexibility which this piece of legislation empowers the Government to make decisions around how New Zealanders will be living their lives or not, under this piece of legislation. We’ve got situations where, as I said, outdoor events where community groups—are local councils now going to have to put fences around every single outdoor gathering? I’d like to ask the Minister: is that something that the Minister has considered? Is every outdoor gathering now going to need to require a fence around it to ensure that there’s a gate whereby people can have their vaccination statuses checked before they before they walk in for the Christmas carols at the park?
What I see in my community is event after event being cancelled—just being cancelled, cancelled, cancelled—because there’s no clarity around how these decisions are actually going to be made. There’s no clarity around what’s going to be required for indoor gatherings, outdoor gatherings—particularly outdoor gatherings. So we’re seeing huge amounts of things being cancelled, and this is from a Government which said that they were going to be making sure they’d saved summer. Well, this is the summer of cancelled activities, and the question is, well, who is it being saved for if everything’s going to be cancelled?
So I’ve got a number of Supplementary Order Papers on the table which I think try to address some of these issues and try to actually give the public a little bit more information as to how some of these decisions are being made. One of my tabled amendments requires that after the new section 11AA(1)(c), the Minister must, after an order under section 11AB has been made, table to the House of Representatives all the advice that was considered in making that decision, because, currently, we haven’t even seen the advice behind the so-called traffic light system. We’ll get that some time next year.
Well, now we’re going to pass legislation which is going to give the Minister more power without any requirement for that information to actually be tabled in Parliament. The public won’t know the rationale behind those decisions. The public are now going to have to somehow wait for an Official Information Act request which gets delayed and delayed and delayed and then redacted, and then finally released six months after the decision is made, and people will go, “Oh, OK. That’s interesting, but it’s a bit late, because we’ve had three new orders made since then.”
So I think this tabled amendment should be supported to require, at the time the decision is made, the information. The advice behind that decision should be made public because there is going to be so much division, so much uncertainty caused by these orders. The public should be informed and should have that information so they understand the rationale, and that will also put the pressure on the Government to actually be transparent, once and for all, over how they deal with COVID.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I thought this committee made a very good start last night, but there are many questions remaining for today, and one thing we’ve noticed is a pattern here, which is that it’s not the questions the Minister answers that are important; it’s the ones that he either doesn’t answer or hesitates to answer. One of them that I was getting to last night was what is the purpose of this bill in relation to the traffic light system, because the Government’s had nine months to get this ready and employers have 10 days until the traffic light system comes into being.
I put that question to the Prime Minister yesterday, and the Prime Minister said, “Oh, the member misunderstands. We don’t need this legislation for the traffic light system. It’s optional.”, or at least the safety assessment tool is optional for the traffic light system. Well, a lot of people think this legislation is necessary so that the traffic light system could come into being, and the question is that if this legislation is not necessary for the traffic light system, why is it in urgency, and if it is necessary for the traffic light system, why wasn’t it done nine months ago, when the Government started vaccinating people?
So I think the Minister needs to explain exactly why we are here under urgency. The Minister gets up and he says, “Oh, a select committee would just be pontificating.” I find that ironic for two reasons: number one, since when was parliamentary due process pontificating? The second thing I want to say—and Scott Simpson, of well-educated stock, will know this—is that that’s a derivative of a Latin word coming from the Minister who got rid of Latin from the curriculum. You know, next time, he’ll say that “Select committees are just bridging.”, because he won’t have that background or richness of language, or at least the next generation won’t.
We need to understand: is the Prime Minister correct when she says that, actually, we don’t need to have this in place for the traffic light system to work because the safety assessment tool is optional? It would be helpful for the Minister to tell us when the safety assessment tool will be set down in regulation, as this law allows, and then maybe he could get up and tell us how long’s that going to take and why has it taken so much longer, and why the safety assessment tool isn’t in the legislation so that people could use it now. It’s no good for the Minister to stand up and say, “Oh, they want us to go faster and they want us to go slower.” What we wanted was a Government that was organised months ago—that’s the difference.
Of course we want it to be ready now. The criticism is not that we’re rushing now; the criticism is that the Government wasn’t prepared nine months ago, when it stared vaccinating people. The criticism is that people will need two different apps on their phone: one to show they’re vaccinated and one to show that they have scanned in with the COVID-19 tracer app. It’s about a Government that has had months and months, has spent it doing a little dance, and it didn’t get organised to have things like this in place, and it’s now making a mockery of democracy, saying, “Going to a select committee to hear from the people would be pontificating.”—there’s that word again.
So I want the Minister to stand up and say how much of this legislation is necessary for the traffic light system to work, how long employers will have to put it in place, and why the Government didn’t get ready earlier so that we wouldn’t be rushing under urgency, desecrating democracy in this House today. Those are the basic questions that people want to know about, because I can tell you the phones are ringing off the hook. The email in-box is dinging with people up and down this country asking, “What is this Government doing in Parliament? Why has it taken them so long to get themselves organised, and why did they leave so little time for us to get organised?” Those are the sorts of questions the Minister should be getting up to answer.
Is this Government still committed to democracy, or should we take from the fact that they didn’t even do a proper regulatory impact analysis, they didn’t compare this bill with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and get it signed off there—does that mean that they don’t really care about civil liberties? This stuff matters because we need to show that free and democratic societies can deal with pandemics consistent with freedom and democracy as their values, rather than throwing those away because the Government wasn’t organised. That’s what we need to do. That’s what the Minister needs to get up and answer, because it’s always the questions he hasn’t answered that are more revealing than the ones he does. Thank you, Mr Chair.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): I would ask the Minister if he’s able to confirm in response to a point that Chris Bishop made in his last contribution that this legislation does not purport to override the inherent jurisdiction of the courts, that even if it tried to it would be very hard to achieve that by legislation—and we certainly wouldn’t want to—and that, indeed, the Government, through the Attorney-General, is trying to enable to the courts to control these processes through their inherent jurisdiction to control their own court spaces, in part, because the rights of people who are being tried are very, very important, and if they believe that their trial is unfair at the behest of anyone, including a judge, we want them to have appeal rights to higher courts so that the courts can consider these issues through those normal appellant processes, rather than through the executive trying to determine all of those things through executive orders.
CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’m grateful for the interaction that we’ve had this morning. In the way that a committee stage operates, of course, it’s the relevant Minister who answers questions, and others can participate. I do want to acknowledge that the Attorney-General has come down to the House to participate, albeit in the form of questions that he’s putting, of course, to the Minister in the chair. Between them, they’ve certainly attempted to allay some of the concerns that I initially raised last night, and there’s others—for example, my friend and colleague Christopher Bishop—who have been continuing to ventilate this morning, but the trouble is we don’t have any more clarity in terms of what the law says.
So it might be the case that Government Ministers give assurances that they don’t seek to do certain things that would tread on the toes constitutionally of other branches of Government, but my question to the Minister is why does the law not specifically say that, because there is nothing in the law to suggest that the courts are not subject to this legislation. It might be with reference to the inherent jurisdiction that the Attorney-General says, reasonably breezily, “Oh well, of course we wouldn’t want to, and no one would think that we would.”, but the question then remains: what about other quasi-judicial settings—for example, various tribunals and perhaps lower courts that wouldn’t claim the lofty heights of inherent jurisdiction in the way that perhaps the High Court would? Are those settings subject to this law as well? So, for example, the Tenancy Tribunal, the Employment Relations Authority—all kinds of professional bodies—conduct disciplinary - type settings. Access to justice must be considered in a broad way, and I’m not convinced at all that the Government has considered it even in a narrow way until such time as the Opposition has raised these issues.
So that’s the first point, and it comes with a question: what other parts of the court system, which, yes, includes all those other bodies and decision-making fora, are subject to this bill—number one. Number two, any that are not should be excluded explicitly, and will he contemplate doing that or would he agree to support a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that I or someone else on this side of the House were to put forward along those lines?
My next line of inquiry is when exactly these discussions are going to resolve—particularly, my question is will they be resolved by the time that this system comes into force, which I’ve heard is Friday week? I haven’t looked at the calendar, but in any case, it’s pretty jolly shortly in the context of discussions that the Minister quite rightly acknowledges are complex. They are complex discussions—of course they are. He’s absolutely right to do that. But it’s one thing to diagnose a problem as being complex and another thing entirely to solve it, or even commit to solving it, by a certain time frame, the time frame by which it’s needed, and, by the way, it’s not just a matter of litigants and witnesses and prospective jurors and so on rocking up to a court and finding out what the rules of the day are. They need to be preparing now.
The system is already, I’d say, probably reasonably clearly in some sort of crisis, and, to be fair, a longstanding one, even before COVID hit. Utter chaos now—huge delays, as the Minister again has quite rightly acknowledged, now that we’ve put him to it. There have been jury trials deferred, and that’s understandable as far as that goes—of course it is—and we wouldn’t suggest otherwise in terms of the public health imperative, for a limited time. But what’s the future beyond that? We simply don’t know, and we also don’t even know when we’re going to know.
So we’ve got these unknown knowns, or, rather, these known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns as well—I’m not going to go down that path. But for even the crucial question of timing of when we can expect these complex discussions to be resolved, it is just extraordinary. We absolutely need that certainty right now, or, in fact, a long time before that, and the Minister can get out of jail free with this at least by saying by way of SOP that, just to be clear, to avoid any doubt, etc., the legislation doesn’t purport to affect courts, tribunals, etc. in the meantime, until such time as a new framework is put in place or perhaps orders are made under this. But in the meantime, we’ve got no certainty in that regard, and that’s simply not good enough.
Also disturbed, of course—and I think Mr Bishop did make this point, so I won’t dwell on it. But the idea that this committee of the whole House is not a place where we’ll get measured debate about these issues is, I think, actually quite offensive from a democratic point of view. My own feelings are not hurt personally. I think, actually, in fact, we’ve had a good debate on these issues, but it’s the irony of the thing—that we’ve had to raise these issues late in the night on the day that the bill is introduced, shortly before it’s about to be passed into the law of the land, even to have the discussion. It feels very reactive that they’ve even committed to engage to the extent that they have.
Goodness knows, a select committee would be an even more measured place, and to Mr Seymour’s point about pontificating—he’s right, of course. The Latin root is actually connected, dare I say it, with that of the office of the Pope, and he might be said to be infallible, but this place isn’t. The Government isn’t. It shouldn’t pretend that it is. It should actually get on with doing some proper scrutiny and allow us the time to do that.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Just in relation to the last comment the member Chris Penk made, I think he misinterpreted what I had intended by my comment. It’s not that I don’t think members of Parliament aren’t perfectly capable of having views on this; it’s that I don’t think Parliament should be determining the operating procedures of the court without actually having a conversation with the court about that. So that is the reason why I don’t think this is the appropriate place to resolve it, because I think the judiciary should be actually leading that conversation, not us—which I do believe is actually the point the member is making himself in his contribution. So I just didn’t want him to misinterpret what I’d been intending to convey in my earlier comment.
In terms of when those issues will be resolved, to some extent—well, to the largest extent—that is down to the courts. I mean, the Government did not require the courts to end or to stop doing jury trials; it was the courts themselves that made that decision, and, in fact, they made that decision before the first lockdown was even enacted by the Government. These were decisions that the courts made independently of the Government, and that is quite appropriate.
In terms of how much of this legislation is needed for the transition to the COVID protection framework, we did go through that quite extensively last night, but just to recap on that, there are two aspects of the bill. The tool kit is not required for the traffic light framework to be put in place, but the additional provisions the changes that particularly allow for additional factors other than exclusively public health criteria to be considered in the making of the orders is required to pass through the House before the protection framework can be put in place.
All of the questions David Seymour raised other than that were addressed last night. I accept that he may not have liked the answers, but they were, in fact, answered last night. As I also indicated last night in terms of the release of advice, the Government will release advice. We will proactively release the advice and, of course, people can—there are already enactments of Parliament around the access to official information that will continue to apply. We will of course also be releasing detailed guidance for each individual sector on what the protection framework will mean for them. So there will be absolute clarity in that case.
In terms of the issues around funerals, we have to acknowledge that funerals are quite high-risk settings and can be quite high-risk settings, so hence, yes, these requirements should still apply to funerals and tangihanga. It’s not the Government’s intention to exempt them from the framework.
Most of the other questions that have been raised this morning relate to provisions or rules, if you like, that will be made under the empowering provisions here. So they’re questions of detail and, therefore, they are not specific to the bill. They are specific to how the bill may be used in terms of the orders that may be put in place under the bill, but the bill itself is a very broad empowering provision, and it does not turn its mind to most of the other questions of detail that members have been asking.
MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to come back to the committee and continue the discussion and debate on this bill. I just want to refer back to some of the comments that have been mentioned by members in the committee this morning, talking about the confusing nature of some of the comments that the Minister has said. For me personally, the Minister says that he has provided greater clarity in the case of this bill when I asked him the question in relation to the amendment he’s made to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2), which was finished last week—but I see that in the new bill that we are actually debating, the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, there is an addition.
The question that I raised last week in my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) was in relation to the security question, where other countries—for example, in Indonesia—exposed the data of more than 1.3 million users because there was no proactive update of the app, or the fact that there were authorities and Government entities who promised not to utilise data collected for COVID tracing for prosecution purposes. Yet I see that in the new bill, it is inserting a new section 34A(1)(b). The concerns may be raised that law enforcement will now have access to COVID-19 tracer data for ulterior purposes not related to the COVID public health response. I just want to ask the Minister: how can the Minister reassure the public this will not be the case?
I kept mentioning that there are a lot of people who do not use the tracer app because they are worried about what the Government will do with that data. Will the Minister confirm he will not further expand section 34A and will he actually provide a guarantee to New Zealanders?
Even when, in relation to the COVID data—and we now actually have the COVID tracer app, where people use it to scan the quick response (QR) codes. We also now have the New Zealand My Vaccine Pass, and now we also have the app that verifies that people have the vaccine pass and that they are, in fact, vaccinated and they can actually come into their businesses or organisations or events that they are holding.
The problem is that there are so many people in New Zealand, including New Zealand permanent residents, who do not have documentation that can actually prove their identity, and so they’re having difficulty getting their vaccine pass. To prove that they’ve been vaccinated, they have to make a phone call, and you sort of wonder, with one phone call on the other end of the phone, how do the officials know that these are the people? Why did the Government not actually think of including the visa that was issued by Immigration New Zealand as a form of identity, or utilising foreign passports as a means of providing proof of identity for these people? There are, effectively, thousands—tens of thousands—of people who will not be able to participate in everyday life activity because they will not be able to prove their vaccination status or their identity.
Going back to that whole data issue, what was the reason for the Minister to suddenly, after only one sitting week of the House, urgently—under urgency—rush through this additional subsection, when his comments on the 17 and 18 November sittings made it absolutely clear that his officials didn’t actually think it necessary to expand the clauses, which I had actually prepared an SOP on as well. Should members of the public be concerned about the Minister’s remark made during the House’s sitting on the COVID19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) that section 34A provides—and I quote—“an additional layer of certainty”, when the Minister has further amended this section to expand the reasons for the expansion of the COVID tracer app as well.
I just want to say to the Minister, will the Minister give absolute surety to the House that he won’t further expand the powers of accessing COVID-19 data again, as he is doing in new section 34A(1)(b), to extend the reach of the Government to track and trace the movement of New Zealanders, who are absolutely worried as to what the data is providing to the Government? For the purposes of COVID tracing, they’re happy to give their data, but they are really, really worried about what the Government’s reach could do.
BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thanks, Mr Chair. The question that I have is on something that the Minister raised earlier today. In the legislative statement that the Minister presented to the House, it said, “In addition, the Bill amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 to:”—one of the bullet points says—“require vaccination where the Director-General for the Ministry for Primary Industries has determined this necessary in order to facilitate access for specific products or classes of products to specific overseas markets.” The question I would like to ask the Minister is: there’s nothing specific in this bill that works the Ministry for Primary Industries or, in fact, the director-general’s decisions in here—it’s a health bill rather than a market access bill. I know that the Minister talked before about orders that sit underneath this bill, but I would require a bit more explanation from the Minister as to how he sees this happening, because it’s very difficult to actually explain that when it’s not in the bill. I would be really appreciative if the Minister could please give us an explanation on that one. Thank you.
NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to seek some more details from the Minister regarding some comments he made around my colleague Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment that the House of Representatives release all advice that was considered in making an order, particularly in relation to a health order.
We in the South Island feel incredibly abandoned by this Government. If I just go back in time a little bit, when Delta first hit, we complied and got on board. We had absolutely no cases in our community whatsoever. We sat through the level 4; we complied. We sat through the level 3; we complied. Inexplicably, we have been languishing in a level 2 environment for two months now. We, the National Party’s South Island MPs, wrote to the Prime Minister and asked her to release the technical advice that she’d been using to base this decision on, bearing in mind we had no community cases. We had not had any community cases for over a year.
The Prime Minister never responded to us. She transferred the inquiry on to the Minister himself, who did respond—thank you, Minister—about a month or so, I think, after we’d written. We received this most extraordinary letter from him that was just so incredibly vague, saying something along the lines of “Cabinet had been looking for evidence of the effects of the measures on the economy and society more broadly.”
Well, let me tell you something for free, Minister: the effects have been extraordinary. I say this with deep appreciation and sympathy towards all the businesses in Auckland that have just literally gone through hell, but businesses in the South Island are going through hell as well. If you’re a hospitality business, you are being requested to double your staff but halve your patronage. I tell you now, hospitality businesses throughout Christchurch have liquidated in their droves. There are about 500 businesses—members of the Christchurch Central City Business Association—that want to know why we are still in level 2.
I refer to the bill; yes, I understand we are changing the framework. We’re heading into the “red light, orange light, green light, go” framework, which absolutely nobody understands. But, Minister, you did comment before to my colleague Simeon Brown that you would release this health information in future, and we do very much appreciate that, but we’d also like to know: with what regularity? Is it going to be proactive, or are we going to have to make an Official Information Act request? Is it going to be on Friday at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, or will you be free and frank with the advice on which you are making this decision to keep us in lockdown, so that we know, so that we can get on board with it—so we can get on board with our businesses and get on board with our lives?
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I do appreciate being given the opportunity to take a call. There are a couple of questions and matters that I want to ask Ministers in relation to this legislation.
One relates to the beginnings of a conversation that was started by my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse last night. It’s around the word “engaged” in clause 4(1) of the bill, where it says an “ ‘affected worker’ means a worker who is employed or engaged by a PCBU to carry out specified work”. The question really relates to the definition of “engaged”. That is a word that has quite potentially wide ramifications in terms of definition, and I’m keen to know from the Minister his interpretation of what engaged might mean. Does it, for instance, include contractors? Does it include people who may be delivering product or services to a premises? Although the Minister attempted last night to give some kind of indication, he really ended up—[Knocks over a glass of water]—just making more confusion than he did anything else. And, as is often the case when you have a glass of water, there appears to be about 10 gallons of water in half a glass of water, but that’s just the way it goes—[Barbara Kuriger passes paper towels to Hon Scott Simpson] Thank you very much to my colleague Barbara Kuriger. So there we go.
The second matter that I wanted to raise relates to clause 6, which sets out some changes to the principal Act under section 11 of the principal Act. These are the provisions that require people to “stay in a specified area, place, or premises or refrain from going to any specified area,” and then also to “refrain from travelling”. Now, these are matters that are of deep, significant importance to constituents and people in my part of the country, in the Coromandel. Of course, the Auckland border has now been in place for several months, and it’s very clear that there has been an impact not only on Aucklanders wanting to travel to the beautiful Coromandel but also upon people living and doing business in the Coromandel, who have not had the benefit of visitors coming and spending time and money in the region.
So these are two clauses that make changes to the principal Act, and what I’m keen to know from the Minister is why the changes are necessary and what, particularly, are they. They seem to be broadening the already very wide parameters that the Government has and the ability that the Government has to enforce people to stay in a specified area, place, or premises, and that is obviously in relation to managed isolation and quarantine facilities, but it’s the refrain from travelling that is of concern. So what I’m keen to know from Ministers is: what is the reason for the change, and how has the principal Act been amended? What are the differences and why? Those are the principal questions that I have—while I sort out the water issue, Mr Chair.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to pick up on the comments of my fine colleague the Hon Scott Simpson from just before, because my electorate of Port Waikato obviously spans the southern border, so I’ve had to live daily with businesses who have literally had to deal with trying to get their key staff across the border—their principal business might have been in Pōkeno or Pukekohe, but one of their key staff members is based in Te Kauwhata, as an example. I’ve got many live examples I could refer to, but I think the point that the Hon Scott Simpson made about the travel is very important.
So I’ll give you an example of what I’m very concerned about. A roofing company who is engaged doing work for Kāinga Ora or a marae would in many cases be able to get exemptions to get workers across the border, but a building company—and I’m not trying to highlight any particular organisation, but we have many, many building firms, particularly in places like Pōkeno, which is growing like billy-o, where you have people who cannot get builders. I’ll give you another example: a roofing company trying to complete roofs over houses during the winter could not get their key roofing person from Te Kauwhata to Pōkeno, because they were deemed not to be doing essential work.
So we’ve got this differentiation between building companies working for the Government—Kāinga Ora—who would get permission in many cases, but building companies trying to build houses for ordinary New Zealanders or needy New Zealanders or New Zealanders trying to buy their first house can’t get their staff across the border. So I am concerned about this new amendment in clause 6 to section 11, about travel.
I’ll give you another example. I had the example of a quality-control person, who is actually a lady, who worked for a meat company that is an export business, so you’d think that was quite important economically to New Zealand that we’ve got support for our exporters, because, after all, who’s paying for Grant Robertson’s $60 billion of additional debt that he’s piled on over the last 18 months?
Simon Court: Our children, our grandchildren.
ANDREW BAYLY: Well, mainly our farmers and our exporters, isn’t it? But, of course, we’re going to leave that legacy, as my colleague from ACT is quite rightly saying, to the next generation. But, no doubt, Mr Robertson and the Labour Party will be long gone by then. But the point about that person coming from Onewhero, trying to get to that meat-processing business, that exporting company, is that, actually, most of their 50 staff live inside the Auckland zone, but this one person did not, and because that meat has to be subject to quality control because it’s a requirement of the market they export to, the 49 people were, effectively, held to random because the Government would not give that person the right to travel across the border. Of course, this is what section 11 is about.
So, what we’re doing is choking New Zealand businesses, even those who are trying to build new houses for first-home buyers and exporters, from actually getting on with their lives, and, here we are, we’ve got another piece of legislation. “Hey presto, we don’t know what’s in it, but let’s give ourselves this generic power of restricting and people travelling across the border.”—and I’m looking specifically at new section 11(1)(b)(i).
Here’s a Government that just loves regulations—it just loves regulations—“Let’s put in as many regulations as possible.” Well, why doesn’t the Government just have a different view, which is “We need to let businesses get on and do their livelihoods, allow those people to continue to be employed.”, because the result is that many of those companies are going broke because they cannot get their workers across the border. I can tell you that as the MP for Port Waikato, I was dealing with hundreds of cases—hundreds of cases—like this. It was all about how we could construct and make sure that if they were doing a job for the Government, they could get across the border.
I think new section 11(1)(b)(i) needs better explanation from the Minister. I’m glad to see Minister Wood in the chair, because if it’s going to be more constraint and that Minister trying to tell businesses what to do, that is a really bad outcome.
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I thought I would just take a call and address a few of the points that have been made in debate over the last half hour or so. A number of these are points that were made and addressed in the debate last night. I’m conscious that a number of members may not have been here for that, but for the benefit of the committee I’m very happy to come back to those particular points.
The first one that I do want to speak to is the point that was raised by Barbara Kuriger in terms of the provisions around market access. This was a point that Minister Hipkins addressed last night. He explained that earlier documentation had made reference to the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries, but it was determined not to carry that forward into the legislation itself. The relevant point here that I will just draw attention to—and I hope it is actually of some comfort to Barbara Kurger and also other members who are particularly connected—
Hon Members: Kuriger.
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: —my apologies—to the primary sector—is that in new section 11AA in clause 7, we actually have clarification here that the definition of “public interest” can include issues around maintaining access to overseas markets. This is actually about providing some direct support, some direct ability to take that into consideration. If, for example, an export partner put requirements on products coming into their markets, that is a factor that can be considered in the public interest, and that’s something that’s been developed specifically in response to engagement and representations from the primary sector.
The second point that I’ll address again is one that was explicitly addressed last night by myself, and that was a point raised by the Hon Scott Simpson—it was the same point that was raised by the Hon Michael Woodhouse last night—and that’s around the definition of a worker who is engaged. We discussed this last night and discussed the fact that these definitions come from the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) framework, because we are wanting to have consistency across the two frameworks, and I discussed in some detail last night the way in which HSWA is still relevant under this legislation in terms of the primary duty of care that employers have. The reason that we have the specific definition around engaging a worker is because the definition of “worker” under the HSWA does include a slightly broader category than just employees.
The example I gave last night, which I’ll repeat again for the benefit of the committee now, is that in a COVID-19 vaccination certificate environment—for example, in hospitality—we have the requirement in place, which I think is accepted by the Opposition, that people who are working in those environments should be vaccinated to, effectively, match the requirements on customers. Well, we would want that requirement, therefore, to apply to the person who was serving you your drink or your food, regardless of whether they are an employee or if perhaps they were in a contractor arrangement. So that’s why the definition of an engaged worker is in there, because it covers off those scenarios. As I say, we talked about that last night, but I’m happy to reconfirm that for the committee again this morning.
Mr Seymour raised a question about why it is that the details around the vaccination assessment tool will be set in secondary legislation rather than in the primary legislation. That is for the same reason that often these things are set in secondary legislation, which is that they are things which can be contingent and based on public health advice, which can potentially change in terms of the risk assessment and new information coming in. So the primary legislation empowers the Minister to set the vaccination assessment tool, but I do think it is more appropriate that it sits within secondary legislation. For example, if a different variant emerged and that changed the risk profile of the virus and possibly changed who we might consider a vulnerable person to be—which is one of the factors under the proposed risk assessment tool—you wouldn’t necessarily want to have to go through a full legislative process to deal with that. It would be more appropriate to deal with it in secondary legislation, and I think that’s consistent with the way that we often deal with these things.
Finally, I’ll just come to Mr Bayly’s point. Most of his comments appeared to relate to his concerns, no doubt genuinely as a local member of Parliament, around the Auckland boundary and its operation. I do have to say that’s not particularly relevant to this piece of legislation. Those decisions are not being enacted through this piece of legislation. But if I—[Interruption]—he attempted to draw a link to section 11. I’ll just, for the benefit of the committee, make it clear that section 11 doesn’t in any way broaden the powers of the Government in this area in any particular way, so I don’t think there’s anything there that the member should be especially concerned about.
SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Chair. That was a feeble attempt, I think, by Minister Woods to try to cover over and not answer the questions whilst trying to say he’s actually answering the questions. The reality is I don’t know whether he’s actually read the piece of legislation he’s partially responsible for, where section 11 is amended in clause 6, and it does include new restrictions and new powers given to Ministers around travel and requirements to make people stay in specified places or refrain from staying in specified places.
I’d like to ask a couple of further questions around clause 6 in relation to this. I guess the first question I’d like to ask is: why are we needing to put in place travel restrictions around particular places where we’re going to allow people to, for example, refrain from leaving an area unless the person has a COVID-19 vaccination certificate?
We all remember the Auckland border debacle, where the first proposal put forward by the Government was that they were going to stop Aucklanders leaving this summer unless they could produce a vaccination certificate, and then, of course, we all saw on social media the pictures of that great checkpoint in Beijing, where we had hundreds of thousands of cars lined up in about 50 different queues, and, of course, there’s always the motorway on the side, which I guess that’s what the gangs use to get past all the traffic. But everyone else has to queue up to show their papers to prove that they’re vaccinated.
Hon Members: “Papers, please—papers, please.”
SIMEON BROWN: “Papers, please.”—that’s right. Then they backed down and they said, “Oh well, we’ll get proof of vaccination or a negative test and we’ll just do spot checks. We’re not going to stop everybody.” It’s still very uncertain around this, but now we’re putting in place a power that gives Ministers the opportunity to, effectively go back to their plan A, which is that only vaccinated people will be able to travel through checkpoints. That’s what this says, and that means, therefore, they want to have big checkpoints which will be stopping every single car to check: “Have you got your papers?”
So I have an amendment that, effectively, amends this, I think, to allow for a bit of common sense. Firstly, I think we’d question why this is here. I think one question the Government should be answering is whether the Government anticipates putting in place level 3 or level 4 lockdowns once we move to the traffic light system, because my understanding was that regional boundaries weren’t required once we got to that point. So is the Government still going to be putting in place level 3 or level 4 restrictions? I think New Zealanders would like to know. Do we anticipate more level 4 lockdowns in New Zealand, even though we’re going to have one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world?
The secondary question then is: why are we having this power put in place? The third question then is: why does it not specify it should be a case of being vaccinated or having proof of a negative test, which is the requirement that the Government has put around the Auckland boundary—and, therefore, is the Government potentially going to renege on what they’ve said for the Auckland boundary, which is actually, “Now that we’re passing this legislation, we’ll have a power to basically say, once again, we’re only going to have vaccinated people leaving for Christmas.”, because that’s what this power allows the Government to be able to do. It is to be able to restrict movement in that way and not actually allow those who aren’t vaccinated—despite the fact that we may not like their choice, if they can prove they haven’t got COVID, we’ll let them travel.
It comes back to the basic point, which is actually that if you haven’t got COVID, you ain’t going to be spreading COVID, so why are we not allowing people to use rapid antigen tests? Why are we not allowing people to go down the road and get a test, like we’re going to allow people this Christmas to be able to travel with a negative test? There’s choice in that and there’s ability for the Government to stop the spread by stopping people who’ve actually got COVID and making sure they stay home whilst saying “We’re going to put sensible checks in place to ensure that we’re not allowing the spread to happen willy-nilly.”
So this clause, though, basically says we’re going to go back to plan A. we’re going to have Beijing-style checkpoints around districts which are, potentially, going to be in level 3 or level 4 lockdowns, because, from my understanding, this legislation doesn’t actually restrict New Zealand from going back to level 3 or level 4 lockdowns. Then our police force are going to be, basically, making sure everyone’s got their papers before they can travel in and out of these checkpoints and these geographical boundaries. Who knows when they’re going to be in place or where they’re going to be in place, and guess what? Under this legislation, they don’t even have to consult the Director-General of Health. Even though the actual Act that we’re amending is called the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, we no longer have to actually consult the Director-General of Health. It’s just a “may have to” consult the Director-General of Health.
So there are a number of questions there I’d like to ask the Minister to actually stand up and answer, rather than fob us off, because we don’t have a select committee stage. We need actual answers at this stage in the committee of the whole House.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to continue the conversation that the Minister was holding in regard to the work assessments, because I think this is fundamental to what we’re doing here. I do acknowledge that last night he did attempt to answer some of the questions that I had about the definition of worker, the degree of engagement, and the relationship between workers and subcontractors, in particular, although I point out that thanks to a piece of legislation passed by Kieran McAnulty—a member’s bill, actually; the triangular relationships bill—the convoluted relationship between a contractor, a subcontractor, and a subcontractor’s employee means that if, for example, a cleaning company has to put off a staff member because a business has decided that only vaccinated cleaners can come into their office, then the potential for the cleaner, who isn’t even employed by the business, to take a personal grievance against that business is very, very real.
Now, I’m deconstructing the words the Minister has used both here in the House, in the bill, and on media this morning about the degree to which the work assessment tool is a prescribed tool that needs to be followed, or what would happen if a business either doesn’t use that tool or makes a different decision. What we heard last night, and the words he used were that a business may conduct an assessment—that’s what the bill says. It’s not “must”, but “may”. What I would like to know is that if that’s the case, why are we putting it in secondary legislation?
The WorkSafe website is replete with guidance for business and for persons conducting a business or undertaking to use tools to assess risk. Farm safe is the best example of that, where the farming community go online and develop, using that tool, their health and safety guidelines for people coming on the farm and for people working on the farm. There’s dust guidelines, there’s how to write a guideline guideline—none of it is actually in secondary legislation. So my question is: why are these four criteria needing to be passed under secondary legislation if, indeed, it’s a “may”, not a “must”?
Now, in media this morning, in response to a challenge from a person on the radio that the guidelines were open to too much interpretation, the Minister said that they were very simple for businesses to follow. These are the words he used: “Only four things the business needs to look at. They’re quite objective measures, if three of four have to be met”—those are the words he used—“so that a business can reasonably require that workers can be vaccinated.” So my question is this: what would happen under health and safety legislation if three of those four criteria were met, but a business decided, on balance, not to have a vaccine mandate for reasons other than those four—supply of workers, for example—and that to enforce a compulsory vaccination would destroy the business, and if somebody, a stakeholder, coming on to the business then contracted COVID, would they be liable under either this legislation or the Health and Safety at Work Act? The more likely scenario, actually, is a more cautious approach by business.
So I can think of many businesses that have indoor spaces greater than 100 metres where people are working more than a metre apart and are not in close proximity for 15 minutes at a time, where the business could quite reasonably assess that they should have a vaccine mandate for the staff—it’s their business. My question is: if that happens, and a staff member refuses to be vaccinated and then a dismissal process is followed, would a criterion for a personal grievance be the failure of the business to follow this assessment tool?
That’s a very real prospect, given—and I acknowledge that I think it’s in Part 2, Madam Chair—the personal grievance provisions set out in Schedule 4, which is enacted by Part 2, which, basically, says—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Can the member come back to Part 1, please.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It’s very relevant to Part 1 because the criteria for these assessments are prescribed in new section 33AB in clause 13 in Part 1. This is a really important thing to clarify, because what business wants to know is what are the rules of engagement and what are the risks that following those rules, either more cautiously or with a higher-risk profile—or lower—that they’re not going to actually get their butts sued off because of poorly drafted legislation. Is it “may”, or is it “must”; do they have to be met, or can they be a guideline; and if they’re a guideline, why on earth are they going to be in secondary legislation?
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I do just, one final time, want to come back to a couple of the points. As I said before, I do think we have traversed them, but I might be able to find a bit more clarity to satisfy some of the questions that have been raised again by members opposite.
The first one I do want to come to is to return back to this issue around the vaccination assessment tool. The member Michael Woodhouse asked the question—it’s a different question to the one that was asked before and sort of the opposite. The question that was asked by one of his colleagues was, effectively, why wouldn’t we just put it in primary legislation? He’s, effectively, asking, why have it even in secondary legislation? Why not just leave it at the level of guidelines? The response to that is that we have had very, very clear feedback from the business sector, and actually from unions as well. There’s been a lot of agreement between the two of them about wanting to have as much clarity and as much simplicity in the way that employers can make these decisions and come to reasonable assessments that will be legally robust. So part of the reason about embedding it within secondary legislation is that employers will be able to have a high level of confidence that it has clear legislative backing, rather than simply guidelines coming from the regulator, and that there are some clear and as close to possible objective measures that they can make very simple assessments against.
I just draw the member’s attention to some of the comments that have been made, for example, since that announcement yesterday from Business New Zealand from some highly respected employment lawyers, who have commented that this vaccination assessment tool will create much more certainty and clarity from employers in terms of how they apply that tool. It’ll be much simpler than using broader health and safety risk assessments, but, to be clear—and I want to underline this—if businesses still choose to use health and safety assessment processes, they will be able to do that. We’ve seen, for example, Countdown make announcements in that area today. In respect of his question about if an employer goes through that process and then, for various reasons, determines that maybe they don’t want to then proceed with the decisions that they’ve made, that is a matter that we intend to address through the order that will be created to provide clear and legally robust guidance around that particular question.
The other point that I want to come to, and, again, it’s coming back to the question about boundaries. Again, I think the specific concerns around the current Auckland boundary do fall a bit outside of this debate. But, actually, to be really clear, the broad effect of section 11 in this bill actually is not a broadening of powers around boundaries, but, effectively, a clarification of how section 11 orders can work, and, actually, in some respects, it will somewhat ease up on the current situation that we have—by, for example, making the link between boundaries and the operation of the COVID protection framework much clearer.
The member’s questions about alert levels 3 and 4 decisions are not actually a part of this piece of legislation, and the Government has commented on that separately. So, again, I think that probably clarifies some of the points that have already been discussed in debate, but I hope that that is of some benefit to the committee.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, before I get on to it, I’d just ask a few questions. I think what we just heard from Minister Wood sums up everything that’s wrong with this legislation and the process behind it. The Minister was happy to stand up and say, “We’ve got business groups and employment law experts who say that this new tool will make it easier to assess the risk of COVID and set mandates and policies within businesses.” That’s true. Then he said, “You know, we’ve just had, for example, Countdown”—I think it was the example; he could have used The Warehouse Group as an example—“We’ve just had businesses that have set their policies.”, and the one glaring problem with all this is that the tool doesn’t exist yet. So he’s giving examples of why the tool’s actually not needed, apparently.
Hon Member: Yeah, they all love the tool they haven’t seen.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Yes—well, exactly. Of course, given that the tool doesn’t exist, people haven’t actually seen it, so all that those experts in employment law and those business groups have said is: “It would be great if a tool did exist.”
I think about a comment someone once made about New Zealand’s healthcare system. They said that we’ve got First World professionals in a Third World system, and that reminds me of Michael Wood. He’s a First World Minister in a Third World Government. He’s getting up there, he’s making the best case he can, and he’s selling it, but, unfortunately, the tool he’s selling is a non-existent tool. He’d be better to get a rabbit in a hat and say “Abracadabra!” than actually try and argue for the policy.
Madam Chair, I’m sorry. I know this is a serious matter, but I just had to point that out.
I actually wanted to ask the Minister about clause 7 of this bill in Part 1—specifically, the new section 11AA. It says that “The Minister may make a COVID-19 order under section 11AB”—which we can get to—“in accordance with the following provisions:”. It goes on to say, “the Minister must be satisfied that the order does not limit or is a justified limit on the rights and freedoms in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990;”. Now, that’s really important. It says “the Minister must be satisfied”, and then I go back to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it says that there are justified limitations on the rights and freedoms in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act: “Subject to section 4, the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights may be subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Now, the thing is, up until now, what is “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”? Well, there’s been some ambiguity. Is that up to the Government to decide for itself? I mean, it says that if the Minister can satisfy himself, that’s good enough, or is it up to the courts to decide? Now, I think it’s really important, because before the Privileges Committee at the moment, there’s actually a bill about what exactly should happen if the courts make a declaration that Parliament has passed a law that is inconsistent.
I guess the question is: what will happen if a Minister makes an order under this law and the Minister says, “Well, we’re satisfied. I’m satisfied.”, and, you know, it goes on to say they have to have consulted the Prime Minister, the Minister for COVID-19 Response, the Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Health, and consulted any other Minister, and they may have consulted the director-general. They’ve done all of that and that they’re all happy, so how do the courts interpret that? Should the courts come along and say, “Well, Parliament’s passed a statute saying that if the Minister is satisfied that the order is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and, what’s more, they’ve followed the laws of consulting everybody that they have to consult and they may consult, being the Director-General of Health”, what then happens? Do the courts interpret that this statute overrides the requirements in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, or do they then say, “Actually, we’re not so sure about that. We’re going to strike it down and declare that this order which has been made under this law is inconsistent.”?
So is it that the courts decide if an order is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and what’s acceptable in a free and democratic society? Or has this law just given the Minister a new standard that as long as the Minister is satisfied and consults a few other Ministers, then that is consistent with a free and democratic society?
Now, I might just take this opportunity—I know we’ve heard the point made, but it bears repeating—to say that this is exactly why, if you find yourself in a global pandemic and you start vaccinating people in February, you don’t wait until November to legislate how the vaccine passports work, because you may find yourself rushing through issues that are extremely constitutionally important and that the Privileges Committee is currently considering and maybe not know the answer to. I hope the Minister does, and he’ll get up and tell us now.
KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I take the next call, can I warn members that the issues and the questions being raised are beginning to be repetitive—since last night.
MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I find it a little bit disappointing that what we’re actually trying to do here is considered repetitive. I have sat here since last night and this morning, and every single question points to a problem. I do not feel that it was actually repetitive, and I actually find it quite offensive. When the Ministers attempt to answer a question—and some people have tried say that it is telling when the Ministers don’t address the question—it is the bigger answer. I guess we get a bigger picture when they don’t address the question.
I’d like to raise an issue in relation to new section 23A, “Power to direct person to produce evidence of compliance with specified measure”, in clause 12. I’m guessing that when the police or anyone else in authority want to make sure that people are vaccinated in order for them to enter a premises or whatever, the issue that we have—and I completely empathised with my colleague Nicola Grigg when she mentioned the issues that the South Islanders were facing. I have complete sympathy and empathy with them, because they have been in lockdown, almost—in level 2—because the businesses could not operate in the same way. Hospitality, particularly—level 2 doesn’t even cut it when they’re having to provide extra staff, but not enough people come in.
Similarly, Auckland businesses have the issue that, whether it is a shop that was able to operate recently, they could open their stores, but people would walk in with passes saying that they’re exempt from wearing a mask. How does a business know that that exemption certificate or pass is, in fact, legal, or the genuine article, because there are like five people in a row, all come in with a pass wearing no mask, and the operator is actually quite concerned that these people might be spreading COVID-19 and they may not have been vaccinated? They may even be positive for COVID-19, but they actually hold the exemption certificate.
The issue that I keep raising in terms of the privacy issue and the security issue of data is that even the vaccine pass, the COVID pass, that we now have and the verifier app—I haven’t actually tested the verifier app too much. But the thing is that the vaccine pass could also be screenshot. It could be used by somebody else pretending to be myself—not that anybody wants to, mind you—but someone could easily replicate the app and the certification that the Government doesn’t even show which one is actually authentic. I have had many inquiries from businesses saying, “How do I know which one is, in fact, the genuine article? I can’t tell if these exemption certificates are genuine.”, and I feel—
Hon Scott Simpson: Well, who’s using your phone?
MELISSA LEE: Exactly. The thing is that, when the Government does not provide information to the businesses, I feel like when the Minister actually put in extra clauses in new section 23A to give power to the authorities in new section 34A(1)(b)—“enforcing the Act or a COVID-19 order (including for the purposes of proceedings against a person for non-compliance);”—people start worrying. It’s not just the people who are breaking the laws, because in Auckland we’ve been in lockdown for God knows how long—how many days is it? We forget.
Hon Member: 99.
MELISSA LEE: 99 days. I was thinking it was 101 days, but maybe my calculation is out. For 99 days we have been in lockdown, and people are getting fatigued. They’re breaking the law. They’re breaking the rules. There are many reports. I get phone calls from constituents who are saying—you know, they didn’t want to report it to the police but I get the phone calls—“My neighbours are having a party. There are more than 10 people in their house; they’re inside their house.” It is fatigue, and the Government is not helping the communities. There are people who do not know the rules and it is not clear.
When the Minister says, “This legislation is needed.”, this is the clarity that the people of New Zealand actually need. I think it was Mr David Seymour who actually gave a couple of examples which I found quite humorous. When the Minister says, “This is the clarity that I’m providing to this House.”, I feel like saying, “Well, it’s like going to a pizzeria and ordering a pepperoni pizza and you get an old shoe.” It is just not good enough. I think the Minister needs to provide more clarity and give assurances to New Zealanders that they are prepared and they have been preparing, and it certainly shows that they haven’t.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Chair. This time I don’t have a glass of water on the desk, so that’s at least a good thing.
I want to raise an issue that has been brought to the attention of the House by way of an amendment from my colleague Simeon Brown, and it relates to the provisions of clause 7 in Part 1, where there are new sections inserted—sections 11AA and 11AB—into the principal Act. These are the provisions that require, when making COVID-19 orders under new section 11AB, that the Minister must consult. Now, consultation with ministerial colleagues is a logical and sensible thing, and I don’t think anyone would argue against that, but amongst the list of people or office holders that must be consulted, it says that “the Minister must be satisfied that the order does not limit or is a justified limit on the rights and freedoms in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990;”. These are serious situations that are being considered.
So the Minister “must have consulted with the Prime Minister,”—that makes sense—“the Minister for COVID-19 Response,”—I think that makes sense—“the Minister of Justice,”—that makes sense—“and the Minister of Health;”—that makes sense. Then, at new section 11AA(1)(b), it says the Minister “may have consulted any other Minister as the Minister thinks fit;”, and that’s good as far as it goes. But there’s one very notable omission from that list of people that the Minister must consult with, and that is, of course, the Leader of the Opposition.
We are in extraordinary times, where the proper inspection and due diligence of parliamentary scrutiny has been put to one side, and this piece of legislation that we’re considering under urgency this morning is an example of that. One would have thought that in a Westminster democracy of the sort that we operate—or we thought we operated—under, it would have been prudent to include in this piece of legislation at least an opportunity for the Leader of the Opposition to be consulted on matters that potentially impinge on the freedoms, rights, and obligations of New Zealand citizens.
My question to the Minister is to why it would be that the Leader of the Opposition, and, potentially, leaders of other political parties in the Parliament, should not be consulted. What is the reason? In a democratic society, in an open and transparent Government, why wouldn’t the Government of the day want to consult on these serious matters with the Leader of the Opposition and, potentially, leaders of other political parties represented in this Parliament?
So my colleague Simeon Brown has an amendment on the Table that would move the following amendment, and that is an amendment to clause 7. In that clause 7, he suggests, at new section 11AA(1)(c)(ii), to insert a third option, which is “must consult with the Leader of the Opposition”, and I think that that makes perfect sense in a democracy where so many of the rights of individual New Zealanders are being put to one side.
One could argue that there are good justifications for limiting the ability of New Zealanders to travel and for creating rules that insist that they be kept in a particular premise, place, or space for the benefit and overall safety of the wider community and all New Zealanders. But we must never forget that these are actually rights and obligations that are being impinged, and we must do so sparingly and carefully and with due consideration. I would have thought that there is a very good argument that in this section of the legislation that we are considering today under urgency—without scrutiny of a select committee, without input from other stakeholders or interested parties—it would make very prudent sense for the Leader of the Opposition to be included. So I think that my colleague Simeon Brown’s amendment in this regard makes perfect sense, and I’m keen to see whether the Minister agrees with us on this side.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m very pleased to see the Minister for COVID-19 Response in a position to answer questions, because my question relates to clauses 4 and 10 around the authorised person. But before I do, I just want to add my comment to the response by Michael Wood on the support, apparently, from business and the unions for the framework for the assessment tool. What he, basically, told the House was that business went to him and said, “We want more regulation.” Well, I don’t know what businesses he talks to, but none of the businesses that I have heard from say, “We want more regulation.” Actually, they don’t mind illumination. They definitely want clarity out of this Government, but they ain’t asking for more regulation. In fact, there were protests down the main street of just about every metropolitan and urban area in this country asking for fewer regulations.
So with that point made, my question is this—and I think this is emblematic of this bill. We are seeing an amendment at section 5, under clause 4, to the definition of an “authorised enforcement person”. It means “a person authorised under section 18”, and then we go to the change to section 18, which says to replace in the heading of section 18 “Authorised” with “Authorised enforcement”. Effectively, what we’re doing is changing a title, because there are no other changes to section 18. Effectively, all we’re doing is saying, “An authorised person is now called an authorised enforcement person.”
So my question to the Minister is why on earth is this change being made? It feels like one of those Yes Minister moments where a committee of bureaucrats have sat around going, “Well, we haven’t described the authorised person correctly. We want to call them an authorised enforcement person.”
So the question is this, Minister: am I correct in assuming that the only change being made to the COVID response Act is to a title and that there are no other powers, constraints, or benefits being conferred on a person now known as an authorised enforcement person, who was previously described as an authorised person? If the answer to that question is yes, for me, that sums up the ham-fisted approach to this bill.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just want to tautoko what Scott Simpson said, sort of—half. He said that—
Hon Member: Too close to the Greens.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Beg your pardon?
Hon Simon Bridges: Sitting with the Greens.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh, here we go. The National Party are stunned to hear a word of te reo Māori and it’s really knocked them for six. He said, “Kia ora.” That’s two words—well done. But I want to go back to what Scott Simpson said about the idea of consulting other parliamentary parties and the Leader of the Opposition.
Scott Simpson may be aware that back in 1992-93, there was a series of referenda where the New Zealand people brought in an electoral system called MMP, and it’s made the New Zealand Parliament a multiparty Parliament. I think it’s actually an excellent idea that Parliament be respected and that these kinds of orders do have consultation with other political parties. Usually, what we do is we trust the Government to govern for three years, but in giving them extraordinary powers like this, consultation across Parliament—and, obviously, I might seem a bit self-interested, but consulting other party leaders would be a very helpful addition to democracy. Some of the National Party leaders say maybe we should do the Leader of the Opposition based on polls. Well, I’m not in favour of that; I think it should be by the membership of the House. That’s a side issue.
I’d like to ask about clause 7 of the bill, the new section 11AA(2), which is very interesting because I think it gives a bit of a window into the Government’s priorities through COVID-19. What it says is that “For the purposes of subsection (1)(c)(ii),” which is the previous section, when making an order under this legislation to tell someone to stay in a place or do a kind of work if they’re vaccinated or whatever, or to not do a certain type of work if they’re not vaccinated or whatever, or not tested, then “the Minister—must be satisfied that the order is in the public interest and is appropriate to achieve the purpose of this Act.” It then goes on to say “ ‘public interest’ includes (without limitation)—”, and then it gives some examples. So it’s unlimited, but it gives some examples, and the examples it gives are: “ensuring continuity of services that are essential for public safety, national defence, or crisis response:”—OK—then it says, “supporting the continued provision of lifeline utilities or other essential services:”; then it says, “maintaining trust in public services:” as though this may be something that the Government senses is in danger recently; and then, finally, “(d) maintaining access to overseas markets.”
Now, I’m not opposed to that. I think New Zealand is a trading nation and certainly, as a party, ACT has been very consistently in favour of New Zealand’s status as a trading nation, and recently, to their credit, so has the Labour Party. But it’s not so long ago that the Labour Party was running around with the anti - Trans-Pacific Partnership crowd—you might call them the racists and anti-vaxxers of 2016—and yet they’ve managed to come round to that.
So being in favour of access to overseas markets both as importers, consumers of overseas goods, and also as exporters is very, very important, but it raises the question of what happens with domestic markets. If it’s important to be able to buy and sell goods that are presumably non-essential with foreigners, then isn’t it important to be able to trade within New Zealand as well?
I’ll just give a couple of practical examples that I’ve dealt with as a local MP. I had until recently a case that’s, thankfully, been resolved after two weeks of back and forth with various Government agencies. A constituent had a small group of lift engineers—elevator engineers. They needed to travel from Auckland to Tauranga to inspect and enliven those elevators so that they could pass a disability inspection and a $200 million residential and retail complex in the Tauranga CBD could open. It was the only thing that was holding it back for several weeks. It was really, really difficult to get the officials to agree that these half a dozen lift engineers should be able to go to Tauranga. The same lift engineers had just recently travelled to the Waikato and actually into the Bay of Plenty to help fix a lift at a retirement village. Now, how is it possible that one of those is essential and the other one is somehow not?
So the question to the Minister is: when they made this list of things that are in the public interest, why did they include trade with foreigners but not trade with other New Zealanders? Surely, our economic wellbeing is important, too.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): I move, That the question be now put.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.
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.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Chris Bishop’s tabled amendment inserting new clause 4A to require a review be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Chris Bishop’s tabled amendment to clause 6 inserting new clause 6A to repeal provisions in the principal Act relating to laboratories be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 6(2) to amend the new section 11(1)(b)(iv) relating to having received a negative test for travel be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 6(3) inserting new section 11(1)(ia) to exempt places of worship or religious premises be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 33
New Zealand National 33.
Noes 85
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; ACT New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 6(3) inserting new section 11(1)(ia) to exempt funeral services or tangihanga be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7 to replace “may” with “must” in new section 11AA(1)(c)(i) be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7 inserting new section 11AA(1)(c)(iii) requiring consultation with the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7, inserting new section 11AA(1)(c)(iii) requiring a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7 to insert new section 11AA(1)(d) requiring the Minister to table all advice considered in making orders under section 11AB be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7 to insert new section 11AA(2)(e) relating to protecting individual human rights be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7 to insert new section 11AA(2)(e) requiring restrictions to be the least restrictive as far as reasonably practicable be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7 inserting new section 11AB(1A) to exempt places of worship or religious premises be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 33
New Zealand National 33.
Noes 85
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; ACT New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simeon Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7 inserting new section 11AB(1A) to exempt funerals or tangihanga be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 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 agreed to.
Part 2 Amendments to Employment Relations Act 2000, and Schedules 3 and 4
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we now come to Part 2, which is the debate on clauses 19 to 22 and Schedules 3 and 4, “Amendments to Employment Relations Act 2000”.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. You know, it was Geoffrey Palmer in 1979 who said we were the “fastest lawmaker in the West”, and it was also said later on that MMP had changed that, but we’ve now discovered that that is not really the case. In just the last two hours, Parliament has given the Government enormous, sweeping new powers to impose all sorts of restrictions, and we’ve barely had a debate on it, actually. And I predict, as I said earlier, we will be back at some point, probably in 2022, to fix up this debacle of a situation. But we come now to Part 2 of the bill, and the major part that this deals with inserts Schedule 3A relating to the Employment Relations Act 2000. This whole COVID public health Act, by the way, is actually highly confusing to navigate—because we had the original Act passed last year, we’ve just passed another Act, literally last week, that has just come into force, and now we are passing another piece of legislation. It’s yet another example of legislation done very quickly in a very confusing way.
So we now have Schedule 3A relating to COVID-19 vaccinations, and I know my colleague Scott Simpson will want to get into this, our employment relations spokesperson. But the critical question here is in relation to personal grievances and legal proceedings in respect of dismissal. Subclause (7) of clause 3 of Schedule 3A says “nothing … prevents an employee whose employment agreement is terminated [under subclause (3)(a)] from bringing a personal grievance.” And so the question is this: business, we’re told by the Government, wants certainty and clarity about how all this will work and the requirement for people covered by mandates to go and get vaccinated. They want certainty and they want clarity, but the Government is preserving the ability for personal grievances to take place. Well, what sort of certainty and clarity does that provide? I would put it to the House, not a lot.
So the real question that we need an answer to from the Government is to why that provision has been put in this bill. I understand that my colleague, Scott Simpson, has a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to that effect—he’s nodding and confirming. So far, sadly, none of the SOPs put up by the Opposition in good faith have been accepted, including the very reasonable point that Parliament should have an opportunity to review this legislation, given we’re passing it in literally less than 24 hours. How about a select committee has a mandatory review of the legislation after it’s passed? Now, normally we do things the other way around. Normally, bills go to a committee, we ventilate the issues, and then we have a look at it. But how about we just do the—not unreasonable—thing where the Health Committee has a look at this massive new power, or powers, plural, that we are giving to the Government?
We raised a whole series of issues earlier on in this debate that have never really been addressed. The most obvious one is: do the powers the Government claim that they are giving themselves, to give effect to the traffic light framework, actually exist in the bill? The Minister claims they do. I think, in light of various High Court judgments, that is up for debate. The time for that debate is sadly gone because it’s all finished, apparently. The Government’s decided that they’ve given themselves the powers, and that’s all that we can say about that. Well, actually, the courts will have a say on that in the end, and maybe others will as well.
But we move on to Part 2. And, as I say, the critical question here is in relation to personal grievances and legal proceedings in respect of dismissals for people who have had the opportunity to get vaccinated: why is that still there? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I will take the opportunity early on in the debate to comment on the two Supplementary Order Papers that have been tabled by the Opposition and set out the Government’s reasons for opposing both.
The amendment proposed by Scott Simpson, and I’m not sure if this was his intention—the advice that I’ve received is that the amendment proposed by him would oust all personal grievances under the Employment Relations Act, not just those related to vaccinations. So I’m not sure that that’s his intention, but that is a relatively big change to be making by way of a last minute tabled amendment in the House. So the Government is opposed to that amendment.
In terms of the amendments put forward by Michael Woodhouse, similarly that’s a relatively broad provision that would mean that an employer can, effectively, require vaccination, without the use of the assessment tool. It means that there is no criteria then. It is completely at the employer’s discretion, which seems to be, again, another position from the National Party and not one that they’ve previously asserted, when in fact they’ve had their own leader saying that she’s opposed to vaccine mandates, except for those issued by the Government. So I’m not sure what the National Party’s position there is on this.
But, anyway, we think that if an employer is going to require vaccination, they should have to have a good public health ground for doing that. That’s what the tool is designed to do. So the Government is opposed to that amendment as well.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to talk a little bit, if I can, about Schedule 4 of Part 2, which introduces the new Schedule 3A into the Employment Relations Act 2000, and specifically clause 2 of that Schedule 3A.
It says, “Employee entitled to paid time off to be vaccinated.”, and subclause (1) says, “An employee is entitled to reasonable paid time off during their normal working hours to receive a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine if providing the time off would not unreasonably disrupt—(a) their employer’s business or (b) the performance of the employee’s employment duties.” Then subclause (2) says, “Before taking paid time off under subclause (1), the employee must notify their employers of—(a) the date and time on 1 or more days on which the employee intends to receive a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine; and (b) “the amount of time that the employee expects to take as paid time off in order …”—and so it goes on.
Now, what I want the Minister to explain is a couple of things. Number one: how did they get to the decision that it’s an employer whose job it is to pay for someone to go and get vaccinated? Supposedly, this is a public good; vaccination is to keep all New Zealanders safe. Why has the Government chosen to fund a public good by putting the cost on to someone that happens to be the employer? If you think about the perverse outcomes of it, for one thing, if somebody’s paid more, they’re, effectively, getting paid more to get vaccinated, even though a highly paid person or a low-paid person getting vaccinated is presumably of the same value to the rest of society. So that doesn’t make sense.
And, actually, we know the Labour Party is questioning itself on exactly this issue, because just last month, a new Labour member, one Terisa Ngobi, who I think is from somewhere north of Wellington—perhaps Mana—had legislation that said that employers would have to pay employees to go to their parent-teacher interviews. Perhaps the Minister’s not responsible for the Labour Party, and that’s probably a good thing sometimes, but the Labour Party has said that, actually, they wanted to withdraw that legislation. They put it into Parliament, then they pulled it out. And I guess there’s a reasonable question of why employers should be responsible for paying parents to go to parent-teacher interviews. It’s a good thing that you go to parent-teacher interviews, but that’s irrelevant.
Hon Chris Hipkins: It’s also not in the bill.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, the Minister’s saying it’s not in the bill. Well, I mean, look, I know it’s not in the bill, and I know the Minister’s tired, but this is called an analogy. It’s a comparison, a parallel—it’s called context. This is a frequently used debating technique in New Zealand and other Parliaments around the world. The question is: why does it make sense to make employers pay to get people to get vaccinated—that’s the first question—if it’s a public good? And here’s something else: I talk to people who say that the difficulty is the vaccination centre closes at 3 o’clock, so people finish work at 5—maybe not Labour people; they finish at 4—and the vaccination centre is closed. Maybe it would be better if vaccination centres were open for people that worked different times.
But here’s the next issue: not only is there the question of why the employer has to pay but why put all this rigmarole—as I read out earlier, the employee has the right to take paid time off, but it has to be reasonable, and it can’t unreasonably disrupt the business. Then they have to notify that they’re going to take time off and which day and how much time, and the employer has to agree to that. And this is a problem that pervades the New Zealand economy. We spend more and more time negotiating and arguing and getting permission to do things, and not enough time getting on with it.
Now, considering the Government is always boasting that 91, 92 percent of eligible New Zealanders have already had a dose of the vaccine—we’re getting into the 80s, as a percentage, of people that are fully vaccinated already—why on earth are we putting in another complex rigmarole where you have to have a negotiation under law over whether or not you get vaccinated, when the truth is that most people would just say, “Look, you know, you need to get vaccinated. Run down the road and get it done—half an hour—come back.”? That would be a much more efficient way to do it, but instead, the Government is putting this huge bureaucratic rigmarole on to employers, and it’s the wrong place to put the costs, and Labour knows that because they’ve taken out other similar bills recently. And the question for the Minister is just: why? Why not just take that out of the bill, keep lives simple, and get the same result?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate Mr Simpson deferring because he is, of course, our workplace relations and safety spokesperson, but I could not let the comments from the Minister for COVID-19 Response pass in respect of his commentary on my tabled amendment around Schedule 3A. Now, his comments actually underscore the confusion—I’ll call it confusion; that’s the kindest thing I can say about the Government’s position—on what’s really going on here about whether or not the assessment tool that has just been passed in Part 1 is compulsory or optional. What we heard from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, Michael Wood, was that it is a guide, a tool, that a business can use but is not compelled to use, and indeed in Part 1 that’s exactly what it says. It says that a business “may” use the assessment tool, and when questioned about that the Minister was kind of all over the place, particularly when compared with what he said on Newstalk ZB this morning. But I certainly interpreted his response as it’s an option, it’s a tool they can use, and they can use other tools. But what the Minister has just said is that it’s not an option, and not only is it not an option but if a business determines that there should be a vaccine mandate and hasn’t used the tool or hasn’t used it exactly in the way the Minister has described it—and we have to just go on the Minister’s words, because we still haven’t seen the Order in Council or any detail of what’s actually going to go into secondary legislation—
Hon Member: Nothing there. It’s a straw man.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It is—it’s a straw man, another straw man. We still have to estimate, guess, what this mysterious secondary legislation might look like. Now we’ve got Minister Wood saying it’s optional, it’s assessment. We’ve got the bill saying that but Minister for COVID-19 Response has said, “No, no, you can still take a personal grievance if a business, complying with its obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act and this piece of legislation, determines that their staff could need to be vaccinated and could be terminated as a consequence of not getting it.” They’re going to be subject to a personal grievance. So my tabled amendment is kind of belts and braces with what Michael Wood said, not in accordance with what Mr Hipkins said. But it simply says this, “For the avoidance of doubt, a personal grievance or legal proceeding cannot be taken under subclause (a) if it solely relates to an assessment by a PCBU that it was reasonable for workers to be vaccinated where they have not made that assessment in accordance with the assessment tool”. They could’ve used another tool.
Hon Member: So they do have to use the assessment tool.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, it sounds like it. That’s pretty much what Mr Hipkins has just said, which is in marked contrast to what Mr Wood said. Mr Hipkins then went to say that somehow this position is at odds with the Leader of the Opposition in respect of vaccine mandates. Not true—another straw man argument from the Minister for COVID-19 Response. This party has been very clear about mandates. We support them at the border. We support them in healthcare. We support them in education. Everywhere else, we trust business. We trust business to do the right thing for its customers, for its stakeholders, and for its staff. That’s the difference between this side of the House and that side of the House—we trust business. And if they did, they would support this tabled amendment. I don’t personally think—and I don’t agree with the Minister’s assessment of what deleting clause 7(a) would do, but nevertheless, if we’re going to have this and we are going to lose it, then at least the Government should be putting its cards on the table, confirming, by supporting this tabled amendment, that the assessment tool is a guide only, it’s not compulsory, that businesses can be trusted to make those risk assessments even if they are different from the framework that eventually the Minister will bring into a regulation—use it as a guide, but trust business to do the right thing by its staff.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Chair. The situation with this part of the bill, Part 2, relates to situations for employers who are put in the position, having gone through either the health and safety assessment process that has been the tool that’s been available to date, or using the new tool that this legislation creates—for employers who find themselves in a position, having gone through all those options of looking at alternative work, redeployment, encouraging employees to get vaccinated, but at the point where none of those options are available and an employer is forced to terminate the employment of the employee who is unvaccinated, this part of the bill comes into effect. As David Seymour was saying, it creates several new burdens upon the employer, each of them costly, each of them adding to the lack of productivity that comes from a Government that really doesn’t understand business and thinks that businesses have an infinite capacity to pay. Well, that’s not the case; they don’t have an infinite capacity to pay. But this part of the legislation places further costs and obligations upon them.
Now, we’ve suggested, on this side of the committee, that if an employee who chooses for whatever reason not to be vaccinated and a termination is required, the employer, having gone through due diligence and process using either of the two options that are available now to them—if they go through that and they determine that the job needs to be terminated, then that should be the end of it. That should be the end of the risk and obligation to the employer, because it is unconscionable, really, that this piece of legislation specifically provides that further legal action will be available to that terminated employee by way of personal grievance.
But what the legislation doesn’t make clear is that if during that four-week stand-down period, and there’s some debate over what the term of that should be referred to—is it an entitlement; is it a paid leave; is it as a stand down, or whatever? But it’s going to cost the employer four weeks of leave. If the employee changes their mind partway through that process, what happens? And what happens is that the employer then has to look and see whether there has been any unreasonable impact on their business, and if there hasn’t been unreasonable impact on their business, and we don’t quite know what “unreasonable impact on their business” might be, then that employee gets to come back, having had potentially nearly four weeks of paid holiday, leave—we’ll call it what you will.
But there will be people who will try that on, for sure—almost certainly that will try that on, for sure. So we say, on this side of the committee, that, actually, once that process has been done, once it’s been completed, there shouldn’t be a further risk, a sword of Damocles, hanging over the head of the employer, relating to personal grievances. And if halfway through that process, an employee decides, “Well, I’m out of here and I want to resign.”, still, then, there is the potential for litigation relating to constructive dismissal. That’s also a risk to a business that I don’t think should be placed on the business going through this process.
So there are questions to be asked about what is reasonable and fair to employers who are actually trying to do the best, as they are statutorily required to do under the health and safety at work legislation. They are required to provide a safe working environment for other staff members, and if they have an unvaccinated member of staff, then they have to weigh the balance of the impact of that unvaccinated staff member’s role in their business against those that are vaccinated. And then they also have to take into account the obligations that they have to provide safety for people who they do business with—for their customers, for their stakeholders, for their suppliers, and for their contractors—and that too places a burden upon them.
We will speak further in this debate about some of the specifics of it, but I’m keen to know from the Minister why it is that he thinks that employers should have this further risk, sword of Damocles, hanging above their head when they’ve gone through a very careful, thorough process to determine that an unvaccinated employee should be exited from that business. Why, then, should they be further at risk of litigation, of further cost of drawn-out experiences that are not of their making?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to talk about clause 22, proposed new Schedule 3A. I want to start by saying, though, normally a bill in this House produces a fair degree of somnambulance from the wider electorate. This is not such a bill. This bill that is going through Parliament in lightning speed, faster than Sir Geoffrey Palmer even envisaged, accretes more power to this Government than any other bill I can think of that’s gone through this House in peace times. That is plain wrong. It’s egregious.
I want to talk about three things. I want to talk about the process, whether it relates here to traffic lights, whether it relates to vaccine mandates, or whether it’s in relation to the absolute specifics of proposed Schedule 3A and the employment provisions set out therein. I appreciate people back home, they will be awake, they will be listening, and they may say, “Well, process, that sounds a little bit boring.” But the reality is the process in this bill and in this part is the substance of the law. Because what this Government is doing is it’s not passing rules around traffic lights, around vaccine mandates, around employment provisions, for the most part. What it is doing is giving to capacious, capricious—
David Seymour: That’s a good word.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —carpaccio-loving Ministers, David Seymour—it is giving them the powers to do whatever they want. It is giving them those powers on employment laws in this here clause. It’s not setting up the framework. It is an undemocratic skeleton, passed in record haste, and that’s plain wrong. That’s why I ask, actually, in relation to this—to the Minister over there—why don’t they actually put the substance in the bill? Is it because they’re too lazy? Is it because they are too capricious, actually?
Hon Member: He’s auditioning for something.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Actually, they want it out for themselves. Well, the member over there would know full well what that feels like, so let’s not go there. Why not actually enact what’s in this or should be in this law rather than do it up in the Beehive late at night? Well, actually it won’t be late night; they don’t work that hard.
I want to also say this, in relation to proposed Schedule 3A that what we are talking about here, and also the wider issue around that traffic light. I say, personally, why do we need this? Actually, why do we need this? Why when we’re going higher in vaccinations, when we’re encouraging people to vaccinate—why don’t we simply set a date and open up? Be clear, we want to test, we want to vaccinate. There will be other precautions. But the downsides to this approach throughout this bill outweigh, I think, the upsides.
So we come to the precise nature of proposed Schedule 3A, around employment provisions. Of course, the reason those employment provisions are in this bill is because of the vaccine mandate and the reality of the vaccine mandate. I am sceptical about that. I’m not anti. I believe I’m pro-vaccination. I am sceptical about the mandate in terms of its workability, in terms of how divisive it will be for New Zealanders. OK, but I do say this: why in proposed Schedule 3A, when everything else seems to be there, Minister, don’t we have a use-by date for the mandate? Why is there no use-by date? Why is this an open-ended thing? An undemocratic bill that goes on for ever without any end-by dates. I ask the Minister: why don’t we have use-by dates on these things? Managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), New Zealand has seen, has gone further and longer than it ever should have. I don’t want to see that in relation to these mandates or the employment provisions that we’ve got here in this proposed Schedule 3A.
We are giving the widest powers any Government in peace time has had to Ministers, and there’s no time limits. I say in relation to proposed Schedule 3A, not only that point around the time limits and why aren’t they there, but actually, OK, they’re putting in place a mandate. If they’re going to do that, as Scott Simpson has said here, why on earth would they, if they want to make it simple—and I come back to it, I think it’s going to be unworkable—why are they putting in place personal grievance provisions and allowing for that? Because, actually, it goes against the very logic of what they’re doing. So this is a bad bill, rushed through, it’s undemocratic, and we will have to come back and fix it, and that’s plain wrong.
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you, Madam Chair—very happy to take a call and address a few comments. I do understand some of them have been touched on by Minister Hipkins previously, but happy to address some related further questions. I do say I did enjoy some of the performance of the previous commentary, and I do also enjoy the study in contrasts that we sometimes see in this House, because what we’ve had over the course of this debate are accusations that the piece of legislation before the committee reaches too far into removing rights that New Zealanders might enjoy, that it might not be consistent with New Zealand Bill of Rights Act obligations. But the main critique that I’ve heard from speakers in the debate on Part 2 so far has actually been that those members wish us to oust existing employment rights that New Zealanders already enjoy. That is a fundamental line that we are not prepared to go down.
Now, in respect of the risk of legal risk for employers using the vaccination tool, this is exactly why the tool has been developed. We’ve had very clear feedback from employers—we worked with Business New Zealand, the Employers and Manufacturers Association, industry groups—that they wanted a clearer and simpler assessment tool that they can use. This particularly goes to the needs of smaller businesses who might not have the legal or HR resources that larger organisations have to conduct broader, more complex health and safety risk assessments. So the tool which we have clearly indicated and will be enabled through this piece of legislation will be a very simple tool for them to use.
In terms of the legal risk questions, there is a high degree of legal certainty that employers can have for using this tool. I do just draw members’ attention—it does go back to the previous part, but to new section 33AB, inserted by clause 13, which does state that employers have an “absolute discretion” to use this tool. So there is a strong degree of legal protection for employers who choose to utilise the tool—that is absolute discretion, which can’t be challenged.
But the point that members opposite are trying to make is that, then, that tool should be able to be used and there should be absolutely no protections or legal comeback for an employee if the tool is used in a way that is unreasonable, that breaches duties of consultation or good faith. That is what those members are arguing with their position that there should be an absolute ouster of any rights to personal grievance. That is a position that we do not hold to, that is not reasonable, that goes a step too far, and that is completely contradictory to the other assertions that they have made in this debate in terms of their position that the bill overreaches in its position around rights. So we do believe that we have struck a balance here.
I just make the point that with all of these questions, when this kind of legislation comes forward, in a situation like the one that we are dealing with, we do deal with a complex intersection of rights. Generally speaking, the answers to those questions are not simple. We need to work through what is reasonable. We need to work through what helps us to advance important public policy objectives that keep people safe. In this respect, we do believe that the appropriate balance to strike is to provide a simple tool to protect employers from challenge from using that tool but to have an ongoing, reasonable requirement that it is utilised in a reasonable way in accordance with the principles of good faith and other practice that, frankly, nearly all employers do adhere to, actually. But we don’t think it’s reasonable to strip legal rights away from employees about reasonable treatment as a tool is being put into place that could ultimately result in the end of their employment, which is a very serious matter indeed.
In respect of the four weeks’ notice period issue that was, I think, raised by the Hon Scott Simpson, look, I just point out here that the objective of what we are trying to achieve here is not to make it as simple as possible for people to be terminated from their employment. The objective here is to try and make sure that we provide tools that clarify this situation and that enable as many New Zealand workers as possible to be vaccinated. So the best way that I would think about the four-week notice period that is referred to in the schedules of this piece of legislation is that it effectively sets the clock ticking after the employer has made the decision, which they can make using either the tool—and I’ll be clear about this for the benefit of Mr Woodhouse—or using existing health and safety risk assessments, and there is absolutely nothing in the bill which requires the tool to be used. To be very clear—and I put it on the record again—employers can use the tool if they wish to, they can use existing health and safety risk assessments if they wish to, and they can use neither if they wish to. They don’t have to have to engage in any of these processes.
But if the employer has gone down that track and they’ve made a determination that certain work should be vaccinated, and they have then considered whether there are other options such as redeployment and come to the decision that that is not the case, there is, effectively, then, a clock that ticks down over a period of four weeks. Given the serious consequences of the loss of employment, we do think that the right thing to do is to say to that employee, “Here’s a last chance before you lose your job and your existing livelihood.”—that if you get vaccinated in this period and it’s reasonable for your employment to be maintained, then that is actually an outcome that we would want to see. Actually, for most employers, that will be the right outcome as well because, as we all know, particularly in a tight labour market, the challenges and the costs of then having to go through a recruitment process, get someone back in and trained up are probably going to be more burdensome than retaining that person in the first instance.
So that’s the outcome that we’re trying to achieve. It’s a nudge to get people vaccinated. If they do, why wouldn’t we want them to keep that job? I think that’s actually a good outcome, and that’s what we have built into the legislation.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just want ask about clause 3 of the new Schedule 3A that Schedule 4 of this bill inserts into the Employment Relations Act 2000. In clause 3, it says, “The termination of an employment agreement for failure to comply with relevant duties or determination”. And then it then goes on to say this clause “applies to the following employees:”, so the people that can have their employment terminated. I note the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety said the point is not to terminate people. I agree with that; it’s terminating the employment agreement that we’re trying to do. And that gives me real worry when the Minister’s rushing this kind of legislation about people’s rights through the House and he is talking about being the Terminator.
Anyway, I think it’s important that they’re terminating the employment agreement, not the person. And that can happen if they have a duty imposed under this Act not to carry out work unless they are vaccinated, required to undergo medical examination or testing for COVID 19, or otherwise permitted to perform the work under a COVID-19 order. Now, the thing is, in that clause where it says they’re required to undergo medical examination or testing, now, I just wonder—you know, people are going to potentially lose their job based on whether or not they were adequately tested. I asked the Minister for COVID 19 Response earlier. I said, “Look, what’s the story? Is this legislation about vaccination mandates and only vaccination or is it vax or test?” And the Minister got up and said, “Oh no, no, no. It’s OK. We’re going to make regulations. You’ll be able to be tested or vaccinated.” And we thought, well, that’s kind of a good thing, because you hear about 2 percent of all DHB workers quitting because they don’t want to be vaccinated. And I just—I guess we all have to repeat we’re in favour of vaccination, of course. But the question is: why do we agitate people to the nth degree and lose people from the workforce when actually a lot of them would probably be happy to get a test and be fine? But there’s issues around that.
So I asked the Minister in the Part 1 debate, what’s the story with the frequency of testing and what kind of testing? Because I think it would be fair to say that the Government has had a pretty difficult time around test methodologies. I remember back in February, I asked the Prime Minister if the Government was open to using saliva testing. She said, “No, no, no, no. We’re using PCR testing.” Obviously unaware that saliva testing is a way of collecting a sample to run through a PCR test. And then, of course, there’s been the long-running spat, as I call it, between Rako Science and the Ministry of Health over saliva testing. Then there’s this question of rapid antigen testing, which, if you live in a free society like, I don’t know, Australia, you can actually just go to a pharmacy and buy a COVID test off the shelf for a couple of bucks. I mean, it must be glorious freedom, living in Australia, being able to do that. Here, the Government has actually banned rapid antigen testing, and only a select number of approved importers are allowed to use rapid antigen testing. But this stuff’s really going to matter, because now whether or not you keep your job, in this legislation, appears to depend on whether you’ve fulfilled a test requirement. If you’re somebody who doesn’t want to be vaccinated, you have got to get tested instead. And do you keep your job or not? This stuff’s quite important, and the legislation is suspiciously silent.
I asked the Minister in the Part 1 debate—you know, there’s lots of definitions in the interpretation section, the glossary, of this law. The glossary of this law says, you know, that there’s lots of definitions around vaccination, but there’s no definitions of what it means to be tested. God knows what a medical examination for COVID-19 means. But there’s certainly no definition of what sort of frequency of testing, what sort of testing technology, and who does the testing. Can it be a point-of-care test where it’s done here right in front of you or would it have to be a test where you send the test away to a laboratory and they do the examination and give you the results? And then there’s the question: are you testing for antigens; i.e., the actual COVID-19 virus in your body? Or are you testing for antibodies? Because a world-leading, very impressive New Zealand firm, experts out of the University of Auckland—great place I might add—called Orbis, well, they’ve been developing antibody testing or immunity testing and they’ve been snubbed by the Government as well. So, really, the Minister needs to say if you can get sacked for not being tested, where in this legislation does it describe what testing actually means? Because at the moment it appears to be nowhere, and I think people would love some clarity on what the Government means by “testing”.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a problem here with my mask. Very tricky business; it won’t come out. Oh, there it goes.
Right, this is my first opportunity to speak on this bill, and so I just wanted to say some broader comments on that. I think all New Zealanders have been struggling—particularly those living in Auckland and Waikato—for a very long period of lockdown in the city and that’s put a lot of pressure on families, put a lot of pressure on kids missing out on school for a long period of time, and, obviously, for the relatively small group of society, small-business owners in retail and hospitality, it has been devastating for many of them. So my thoughts are with them. We share the frustration that we’ve had a Government that has spent the first half of this year telling us that the rest of the world needs vaccines more than us and there’s no rush and we’ve got all the time in the world. After that long period of complacency, we now come towards the last four months of the year in lockdown, struggling and racing around, chasing our tail.
Then this legislation is just one of many that we’ve had before the House, bringing in rules under extreme urgency to try and deal with elements of it. Now, as it happens, New Zealanders have responded very quickly to the call for vaccination once the—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can I invite the member to come very quickly to Part 2?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes, thank you. But, like I say, this is my first speech on the topic and I’m just sort of warming into it.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I think the member would like to come immediately to Part 2.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes. Well, OK. The fundamental question that I have in relation to Part 2 is—and the Minister, we just—
David Seymour: Where’s the aggressive intent?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yeah, well, that’s right. The Minister has just said in response to the changed suggestions from our side of the House—in terms of Supplementary Order Papers in relation to the personal grievance issues and in relation to the timing of the amount of notice given to employers—that it’s complex. It’s not a simple matter. I’m quoting from him that “We’ve got to get the balance right between the needs of employees and employers, and we’ve got to operate in a reasonable nature and work out what is reasonable and what is good faith.” All these things are quite complicated, and that raises the obvious question: given that this is quite a difficult area of public policy, why are we ramming it through in two hours on a Wednesday morning and expecting to get a good result?
So why is it that a Government that’s had more than a year to figure out and predict that we’re going to have a Delta outbreak in this country—we’re going to have to deal with these sorts of issues. Why is it that having had so long to prepare, we find ourselves in a situation that we’re trying to get through difficult, complex pieces of legislation in relation to how to regulate the employment of our country, deal with personal grievances, find a balance between what is right between employers and employees—why is it that we’re rushing it through under extreme urgency and not taking the time to actually have a select committee process and understand it? So that is my fundamental question to this group.
If we step back and ask ourselves, having got vaccinated—we’re nearly 90 percent; over 90 percent of first doses. Our simple view is that we don’t need any of this at all any more. We can move on to a stage where the vaccination rates are high, we don’t need traffic lights, we need to just open up and accept that people have had the opportunity to get vaccinated—most of them have—and let’s get back to a semblance of normality. So that’s why we oppose the bill, full stop.
But we do appreciate that there are employers that are looking for some measure of certainty on the legalities of the employment relations, which is what we’re talking about here in Part 2. So what we’re doing is we’re dealing with this law in a very fast method through the House. We’re going to get it wrong. We haven’t had a chance to debate it properly. The Minister has said—only 10 minutes ago in the House—that “this is a difficult issue, it needs to be balanced, it’s complex, but we’re not going to provide the time to deal with it properly in this Parliament.” I want him to justify that, and I, secondly, want to know what the purpose of this whole exercise is. If it is the purpose, as he says, to provide a measure of certainty to employers, then why on earth would you leave such a massive area of uncertainty with everyone having to have the potential of a personal grievance?
CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m very grateful for a chance for a call, and it might just be a short one, but I think it’s an important point in relation to Part 2, and when I say “short call”, I mean only five minutes.
I do have a question, which is a very serious one, for the Minister in the chair, and it relates to the fact that we’ve got an Employment Relations Act amendment in this part of the bill, but I’d like to know about workers who are not covered by the Employment Relations Act. The Minister may or may not know what I am talking about, and I’ll happily explain in a minute, but there is at least one colleague of his on the other side of the Chamber actually present now who, hopefully, will know exactly what I’m talking about, and I refer to the Minister of Defence—and I acknowledge the Hon Peeni Henare is noting these words, as we speak.
The Employment Relations Act does not apply to members of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), so I would like to know how the traffic light system, to use its name in common parlance, is going to apply to the activities and the operations of the New Zealand Defence Force in a way that is contemplated by this legislation, given that Part 2 will not apply to those members. My first question is whether, for the Defence Act or other legislation that has an equivalent effect on the employment rights—and I use the term loosely—of our soldiers, sailors, and air force personnel, there will be an equivalent amendment—
David Seymour: What about submariners?
CHRIS PENK: —because I don’t see it in there. I’m asked, “What about submariners?” It’s a question I often ask myself, Mr Seymour, and others ask it, too. So the question then is whether there will be an equivalent amendment to deal with the rights that are being afforded to other New Zealanders, and I’d use, for example, the leave, or rather the notice period—paid—for four weeks. Other members have sort of talked about the relative merits of that, and I don’t intend to rehearse that ground. But paid time off for vaccinations—and, again, we can have a view on whether that’s necessary or not. But suffice to say that in sticking up for the good men and women of the New Zealand Defence Force and those workers, albeit they’re not employees in the sense of the Employment Relations Act, what is being provided, if anything, for them in relation to this legislation?
On a related note, I’d like the Minister to turn his mind to and give a bit more detail about how this relates to civilian contractors and others who would access New Zealand Defence Force bases, notwithstanding that they’re not covered by the exemption to the Employment Relations Act, and also just how that interacts with the intention of Part 1. I don’t want to go into that, and I know I’m not allowed to, Madam Chair, but I would note there is a general flavour in the legislation whereby national security, public safety, and crisis response are matters of public interest, as defined.
So I’ll leave my contribution there. But I do very much hope for a response from the Minister along those lines regarding NZDF personnel and their rights and responsibilities in relation to vaccination mandates and other areas that are covered by and contemplated by this, albeit not specifically in the bill.
ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve got some quite specific questions around new Schedule 3A in Schedule 4. We heard earlier from the Hon Scott Simpson about the period of gardening leave, or whatever we refer to it as: the four weeks if a termination is to be undertaken of the employee’s job, as Mr Seymour’s pointed out.
But I want to just go back to the part right before that, where we talk about, “the employer must give the employee reasonable written notice”. I’m keen to know from the Minister what he believes “reasonable written notice” is—whether that’s two weeks, three weeks, four weeks—because then we also have the situation where, if the employee decides to get vaccinated, if we are assuming he does decide to get vaccinated, then he or she would need another three weeks on top of that. So we might be talking about at least a minimum of, say, five weeks—maybe six, possibly more. Now, if that employee then decides not to get vaccinated, there is, of course, the four weeks’ paid leave. But if you go back to that original waiting for them to get vaccinated, if a company has decided that it is risky for that person to be on the premises, because they’re in close contact with vulnerable people or they’re in close contact with other people working with them and they decide that it’s a risk—I assume the Minister can answer this—I assume that, then, the business would put them on some sort of paid leave, to manage the risk in their business to their employees and also people coming on to their premises. So then the cost to the employer is not only the four weeks paid out at the very end upon termination but also, possibly, the five or six weeks prior to that, making the total cost to the employer much greater. So I’m keen to know what “reasonable written notice” is, and what he expects that to be.
Furthermore, I also want to know whether or not, if an employee makes it very clear right from the get-go that they do not want to be vaccinated—that it is not going to happen under any circumstances—that notice period to get vaccinated can be waived. It is a significant cost on the employer, if they’re trying to keep their people in their business safe and their customers safe. If that person says, “Not on your nelly! It’s not happening,” has the Minister thought about that period being able to be waived? Because it will be a significant cost on the employer.
I want to just go on to talk just a little bit more. I’m keen to hear the answer to those questions, but I’m also keen to talk a little bit more about the fact that there hasn’t been a provision for waiving personal grievances. I hold the early childhood portfolio. When we saw the health order for early childhood centres, the very first thing that we saw was the very litigious nature of some people in that sector—actually, it was Sue Grey and others—writing to everyone in the sector, all the teachers, saying, “Don’t quit, because you won’t get any Work and Income payment. Here’s what you need to do: you need to hold out. You need to bring a personal grievance.”
We saw that, so I expect, especially with people who are very resistant to being vaccinated, that they will be very ripe for the picking when it comes to these litigious people like Sue Grey, who will target them and say, “Hey, it’s really important that you follow these steps and bring a personal grievance.” It’s happened before; we saw it. I’ve seen the letter that these people sent to the early childhood teachers, and this will happen again. We know that.
The Minister pointed out himself just earlier that small to medium sized enterprises don’t have the human resources capacity or the legal capabilities or the funds to be able to fund these types of actions against them, and they are really scared of that. So having a provision, and the amendment that Scott Simpson’s brought is a very good one that I’ll support, takes that risk off there. If the intent of the bill—if we go back to the intent of the bill—is to “make vaccination a more prominent part of New Zealand’s COVID-19 response”, then we want to encourage these businesses to take these steps, not discourage them because they are really scared of the fact that there will be, potentially, a personal grievance taken against them. We’ve seen it already with the health orders, and it will happen again.
So my point to the Minister is I understand his arguments, but my question to him is: doesn’t he think that it would be better to encourage more businesses to take up the tool and go through the process to try to encourage people to be vaccinated than to put them off at the thought of the huge cost that will be put upon them, potentially, and that most likely will happen if there is the ability for personal grievances to be brought?
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have to say that I’ve noted in earlier parts of this committee that sometimes it’s the questions that the Minister doesn’t answer that are the most revealing. You haven’t answered any of the questions I’ve asked yet about the definition of testing which is absent from the bill; haven’t answered any questions about what the public policy basis for making employers pay for people to go and get vaccinated when it’s a public interest; haven’t answered any of the questions that I’ve asked about why they’re putting this rigmarole of negotiating a specific time to get off when most people in most circumstances would just say, “Yeah take half an hour, go do it.”, when actually the Government makes much of the fact that 91, 92 percent of New Zealanders who are eligible are vaccinated anyway; haven’t answered any of those questions. I just put that as a reminder. I know that the two Ministers have been swapping in and out, so if Michael Wood, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, does want to get up and answer any of those questions, he’ll have an opportunity shortly—and also one more.
There’s a question about what is going to happen with this dismissal order. Because what it sounds like is that, basically, you can say that you don’t want to get vaccinated, take four weeks’ pay, do what you like. Somebody said it’s effectively gardening leave, and I thought about that. I thought: what if they put on a vaccine mandate at Palmers Garden Centre? Then you wouldn’t be able to go and it could ruin that concept! But, none the less, you’d get four weeks off. The problem that you’re going to have is that people are going to take advantage of it. You have no doubt that there will be people who are organised and will take advantage of this. They’ll take their four weeks and say, “Oh, you know what? I’ve read some new stuff, I’ve decided to go back.” Then there’s the question of how the employer decides if that person is going to unreasonably disrupt their business.
It seems to me that if the over-arching goal of this legislation is to provide businesses with clarity, which is what the Government said, might it have just been a bit easier to say, “Here is the date by which mandates come into place if people choose to make them” and your employment is terminated on that date? Because, instead, the Minister said the clock starts ticking. Well, you basically get four weeks off. That’s the issue that I think people might ask, “Well, how is this not gameable?”.
There’s also a couple of other issues around how a person is supposed to get a new employee in an incredibly tight labour market. That’s not strictly just a problem with this legislation, but it is going to be exceedingly challenging for a lot of businesses. And then here’s the other question. You might say, OK, well, how is a business going to pay for that? Because I think part of the issue with the Prime Minister not having visited Auckland in any meaningful way, more in an Instagram way than anything else, is that she doesn’t appreciate the kind of pressure that businesses are under. I talk to people up there in Auckland and I visited a whole lot of them—people are under enormous pressure.
Dr Duncan Webb: Back to the bill!
DAVID SEYMOUR: You can tell when Labour are getting a bit antsy, they say “Talk to the bill, talk to the bill.” I don’t think they understand the effects of their bill on real people. They don’t like being reminded of it, but here we go. You’re, effectively, saying that you’re going to lose an employee and you’ve got to pay for an extra four weeks when your business is already broke. I was given one example from the real world. An accountant I was talking to last week, he’s got a hairdresser on their books, that hairdresser went into the lockdown on 18 August with $100,000 cash reserves—very, very hard-fought and hard-won, built up since the last lockdown decimated them—and they’ve now got nothing, and they’re now potentially going to have to pay out a worker for a month even though they’re not going to do any work.
Now, interestingly, I was discussing this with a backbench Labour MP—I talk to all sorts of people—and they were under the impression that actually a worker would just continue to work and serve out the four weeks, so there wouldn’t be any real loss. The Minister’s got up and said, “Yes, the clock is ticking. So I think it would be really helpful for the Minister to get up and say—does he envisage that when someone gets their four weeks to be vaccinated, do they actually keep reporting for duty and doing their work unvaccinated during that period then leave, or do they, effectively, take gardening leave? It might not be such an idle joke that they will find Palmers has a vaccine mandate and they can’t take gardening leave. Are they going to be at work or not for that four weeks?
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, happy to respond to a number of the questions that have been raised over the last 20 minutes or so of the debate, noting that some of these have been touched on already. But I’ll just go through sequentially the members who have spoken recently.
Colleague David Seymour’s raised a couple of queries there. The first is around the testing requirement, and I do believe that this has been addressed in the debate to date. He gave a number of comments providing his views on the appropriate methodologies around testing. To be very clear, the provisions that he’s talking about in Part 2 relate through to those people who might have testing requirements put in place via orders that are captured within Part 1 of the piece of legislation. And, as has been described in this debate at various points, those orders will be made by the relevant Minister. They will receive advice from the Director-General of Health and others. And the reason that testing requirements go in orders rather than in primary legislation actually kind of goes to one of the points that the member raises—that we might actually want to have some flexibility there as new technologies come on stream, as our understanding of testing methodologies develops. It might well be the case, as in fact it is, under the current required testing order, that we want to vary up the frequency of testing depending on risk levels, the kind of workforce, the nature of their work—that kind of thing. So those things are captured in the orders that are issued under Part 1, and that’s what he’s referring to, in respect of the provisions that are in Part 2.
The member, I think, wrongly characterises the right that is provided in this piece of legislation for paid time off to go and receive a vaccination as being rigid in some way. I think that is absolutely wrong. There is no specific requirement here that it’s done in a certain way. There is no new entitlement to a kind of leave that is created. We simply lift and use a well-understood provision from the Employment Relations Act, that’s used in respect of other things at the moment, that the employer must provide, in a reasonable way, the ability for that employee to get vaccinated on paid time so long as it doesn’t unreasonably disrupt their business operations. That is a form of wording in a system that employers are very familiar with that exists in the Employment Relations Act at the moment.
I think the member’s partly right. It won’t necessarily have wide application and the vast majority of employers are enabling that to happen, which is good. But I’m aware of some who haven’t, and I think that that is a reasonable requirement of our shared ambition to make it as easy as possible for employees to go and get their vaccination. I would certainly characterise that new provision as being very flexible. It’s about reasonableness rather than the Government prescribing exactly how it happens.
To Mr Goldsmith’s contribution, it was a relatively general contribution. He made some points, which is fair enough in the course of this debate, but I didn’t particularly discern any questions that he wanted me to address. Well, he made a particular point about him having a view around the select committee process, which is a reasonable point for him to make, but it doesn’t actually go to the substance of this part of the bill.
Mr Penk, on the other hand, did have a number of particular questions that he raised. He raised a number of points, and in particular he raised them in respect of how this might apply given the specific nature of employment, engagement in the defence sector, which, for the most part, does sit outside of the provisions of the Employment Relations Act. So, I mean, to some extent, he answers his own question there in that the provisions of this part of the bill are about the Employment Relations Act. Ipso facto, they don’t apply to people who are not covered by the Employment Relations Act, and some people in defence, therefore, will not be covered by these provisions. I do understand, however, that vaccination is already a requirement for baseline service requirements across defence. So their normal processes including discharges will continue to apply there.
In respect to the second part of his question, it was, effectively, the question about what is Defence’s ability to make decisions about contractors who might be coming on to their bases or sites who are unvaccinated. The answer there is no different to any other employer that where there is a commercial arrangement that an employer, in fact any other private individual, has, they’re able to make reasonable rules about who might come on to their property, including bases. It’s not an issue that goes to Part 2 and the Employment Relations Act reforms here, but they are able to make reasonable decisions there, and I understand the Chief of Defence Force, in fact, already has done that—
Hon Peeni Henare: That’s right.
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: —in defence areas. And I’m just hearing that affirmed from the Minister of Defence. So good to have the clarity there.
Erica Stanford asked a number of questions as well. She inquired about what is reasonable written notice. This is another one of those areas where we think it is important to have a requirement that is about the employer behaving in a reasonable way rather than to be completely prescriptive about what applies there. But I think we would all understand, in a common-sense term, what it means to be reasonable. It’s about making sure that someone is able to get that information that this process is under way, that they have sufficient time to read that, to understand it, to seek advice, and to provide a reasonable response. These are well-understood concepts within the broader field of employment law, and I don’t think that any reasonable employers will have any particular problems adhering to them.
To the question about whether employers can put people on paid leave, sort of separate to the specific provisions around the four-week notice period, the answer is that if an employer wishes to do that, they can of course do that. In fact, I’m sure that some already are doing that out there, and that’s entirely at their discretion.
The member also asked what the scenario is if an employee says they’ve just got no willingness to get vaccinated at all. Effectively, can that four-week period be shortened, I think was the thrust of the question there. The answer is no, that that is a four-week period that is defined in the legislation. It’s a four-week period. It’s very clearly set out in the legislation. It’s not shortened under the provisions of this bill. But the more detailed answer I would give there, and it goes back to a comment I made in my previous contribution, is that the purpose of the operation of this facility is that there is a chance for this employee to have a really good think about this issue and about whether it is really worth the candle to lose their job and their livelihoods because of an unwillingness to get vaccinated.
We have some form to draw on here. We have had a number of mandates which have been introduced by the Government through the process of orders, and what we have found in those cases is that, actually, it’s that period of a final few weeks, which is often the period—I think about, for example, the orders that were made in respect of the maritime border, which mainly applied to port workers, and we had quite a large group of port workers at the beginning of that process who were hesitant around getting vaccinated. But we found in that period of the last few weeks, when it was becoming more imminent, it became real that, “Boy, by this date, potentially my job goes.” And in addition to that, the employer unions involved got active, provided support, advice, dealt with concerns, helped that person to make a good decision around vaccination. We actually found that period of the last few weeks got a lot of those people across the line, and in those sectors we actually had relatively small pockets of people who then fell foul of the requirements, and that’s certainly how we see that four-week period playing out.
I’ll pick up on Mr Seymour’s point here. He makes the point quite reasonably that in a tight labour market, we don’t want to be losing people. So if we can employ a facility like this, that, with a little bit of work all round, helps people to get to the right decision and maintain their employment, that’s good for that employee and it’s actually good for the employer as well.
The final point I’ll make comes back to quite a lengthy discussion that we’ve had over the course of debate on this part. It’s the balance in terms of legal certainty. Erica Stanford raised this point, and, effectively, what she and her colleagues on her side of the House are arguing—and let’s just be really clear about this—is the ouster of all rights that employees might have to contest whether they have been treated reasonably over the very serious matter of whether they lose their employment. We do think that that goes a step far, and I think it contradicts many of the other arguments that we’ve heard from that side of the House in the course of debate on this bill as well.
But what I will say is that the tool that has been created and has been socialised quite widely is very simple. It has subjective measures in place. The decision to actually use the tool is legally protected, and employers who use it in a reasonable way have a very high degree of legal certainty. That’s been affirmed by a number of legal commentators. We’ve had good commentary from Business New Zealand about how much easier it’s going to be to use, and we think that strikes the right balance. But to remove every single right that an employee might have, if they were treated unreasonably, if they didn’t get reasonable notice of what was happening, if they didn’t get a chance to respond to it, if there was not a reasonable process to consider redeployment and they lose their jobs, that side of the House is saying that that person should have no recourse at all. And, on this side of the House, we just do not think that that is a reasonable position or a reasonable balance to strike.
So with that, some of this debate has come up previously—I think I’ve covered off most of the key points that have been raised so far. Thank you.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Oh, thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate Minister Wood’s detailed response to the many questions that have been raised on Part 2 of the bill. Not all of them I agree with in terms of the quality or relevance, but I think he has gone deeply into some of the questions, thought carefully about the answers that he gave, and I think that adds a little gravitas to a terrible process.
I want to just touch on that last point, because the question of the removal of grievance rights more generally in the Employment Relations Act was raised by the Hon Chris Hipkins in an earlier call in response to the tabled amendment by the Hon Scott Simpson, somehow saying that that amendment would override all of Part 9 of the Employment Relations Act. Now, I don’t believe that’s the case. Mr Simpson will seek a call to explain his actions in that regard. But there has been, I think, an amendment to that.
I want to touch on, briefly, the Minister’s response to my tabled amendment because in his reply, he made it absolutely clear, despite Mr Hipkins clouding the argument, that the assessment tool is optional. The assessment tool is not required to be used; business is free not to use it as long as they have serious consideration of what the risk obligations they have under health and safety legislation are. And if that is the case, then the Minister should have no concerns about my tabled amendment, which is a belts-and-braces amendment that says if a business, complying in all other respects, does not use that assessment tool, a personal grievance can’t be taken. Now, he’s indicated, or at least Mr Hipkins did, that the Government will not be supporting my tabled amendment, which further throws doubt about those statements.
So for the record, and for any employment lawyers that might be listening out there who represent business, let me state what the Minister has said so that that can be used in any potential grievance process. And if the Minister is not being accurately reflected by my words, he can take a call and refute them. But what we have been told is that not using the assessment tool as set out in Schedule 3 will not be a problem, and therefore should not, if all other obligations from the employer in respect of the schedule are met, give rise to a valid personal grievance—the key word there is “valid”. Nobody can stop any employee who feels aggrieved for whatever reason from taking a grievance—
Hon Michael Wood: That’s what you’re proposing.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —but it’s not valid.
Hon Michael Wood: That’s Mr Simpson’s amendment.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No, no, that’s not what I’m proposing, Minister. What I’m proposing is what the Minister has said, and that is that the assessment tool is optional. If the assessment tool is optional, it can’t be grounds for a personal grievance if a business chooses not to use it. And those were the Minister’s words—it’s the bill’s words, because the words “may not”, “must”, are in the schedule. So I put it on the record now that that is what the Minister said, and if the Minister doesn’t think that’s an accurate reflection of his view, then he can take a call.
My last point in respect of Part 2 relates to the—if I may find it; here we are, Schedule 1, inserting new Part 3, clause 9(a) and (b). We’ve had a discussion through the committee of the whole House about what should be in primary legislation, what should be in secondary legislation, and what shouldn’t be in legislation at all, because it could be a valid guideline. Now, quite inexplicably—I just think these guys just love passing legislation under urgency or without proper process, because we’ve got in this clause the requirement for the documents that can be issued by the Ministry of Health “before commencement day must on and from commencement day be treated as COVID-19 vaccination certificates”. And then they list them—(a) My Vaccine Pass: and (b) International Travel Vaccination Certificate.”—as if that’s it, as if forever and all time these will be the only two documents that we need.
Well, we don’t know what’s around the corner. We don’t know what further requirements might be imposed by overseas jurisdictions on New Zealanders travelling. We don’t know what other variations of a vaccine pass might be necessary, but if there are, we’re going to have to come back here and change it. Now, I’m a big fan of due process, good process, but, actually, this is a case, I think, where these documents could have actually been scheduled in secondary legislation, not primary. And I would like the Minister to explain why that hasn’t happened. Because this is actually why secondary legislation is important, because it is much more nimble than primary. I’d like an explanation for that.
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Much of Mr Woodhouse’s comments have gone back and forth. He may not agree with the responses that have been given but I believe they have been responded to. I just want to respond briefly to the final point he has made, because I can give a specific and quick response to that. Part 9 of Schedule 1, which is new Part 3 inserted into Schedule 1 of the COVID Act, that’s a transitional provision, and so the vaccine pass and the international travel vaccination certificate are considered to be valid for that period. But into the future, the appropriate form will be captured in orders. So I think we are largely agreeing with him there, that that is the appropriate way to carry it forward.
SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you, Mr Chair. The committee can decide whether or not I’m wanting to make a valid contribution or just have five minutes with my mask off. Look, I want to actually speak to Part 2. I’m looking at clause 22, which is inserting New Schedule 3A. It’s possible that the Minister has addressed some of these, but I think we need to get absolute clarity.
The first is picking up on a little bit of what the Hon Michael Woodhouse said, and it’s around businesses who choose to not use the tool. Basically, to put it in plain English, can businesses, employers, choose not to use the tool without fine and without penalty?
Hon Michael Wood: Yes. Yes.
SIMON O’CONNOR: And if yes is the answer, then in a strange way, what is the whole point of doing this? It becomes a little bit strange.
Second is the use of the tool itself. We’re dealing here, Minister, with a rather—I think he would agree—complex issue, which is going to be quickly and simply defined through a tool. There’s a dissonance there that so much reliance has been put on a tool, and I’m wondering what analysis has been done and what surety can the Minister give the committee that this tool is going to be able to address every situation sufficiently.
I ask that because, worryingly, to me, he used the word “subjectively”—the Minister, that is—earlier to describe the tool. The thing about things which are subjective is that they’re open up to multiple interpretations. Why that becomes even more important in relation to Part 2 is the tabled amendment of my friend and colleague Scott Simpson, which is trying to close off a real problem here that we could end up in a very litigious environment between employee and employer that is an incredible cost. So, again, how much reliance does he have on the tool—and I might just point to other tools the Government has put forward; I’m thinking about heating one’s home and how complex and disastrous that was—to give us confidence there?
I’m interested, too, if he might—and I think David Seymour and others have been touching on this—tell us why there are not testing options as well. It’s great and good for people to be vaccinated—go vaccination; jolly decent—but actually there are other options, and New Zealand should, you would think, be following this. Why has that not been incorporated into this New Schedule 3A that an employee can go through the nuisance, if you will, of daily testing as required? And that’s particularly around elements of proportionalism, which, again, this Part 2 and new schedule is not addressing?
And these are the final two questions. When we are talking about the ending of a person’s livelihood, their ability to feed their families, pay their mortgage, why would we not give an option—vaccination or testing. So, then, the final question’s a simple one: what analysis, if any, in relation to the provisions in New Schedule 3A, have investigated the advantage of the higher vaccination rates, beyond, potentially, 91 percent, to actually the enormous damage that’s going to be done to those particular New Zealanders?
So, again, I want to be really clear: vaccination is a good thing, but, actually, the proportionate consequences to those New Zealanders is huge; it’s absolutely massive. What analysis has been done to show that that enormous cost to those Kiwis is going to see a significant advantage to the health aspects of New Zealanders? Because my suspicion, for what it’s worth, Minister, is that the health benefits of further vaccinations will be wanted, but the health benefits are almost negligible in comparison to the absolute pain which is going to be caused to those New Zealanders losing their jobs. So, I know, an array of questions there, and, if I might, I’ll just leave that to the Minister.
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): We are getting to the point of the debate where members are filling time and not actually reading the legislation at its most basic level. If I can just point very specifically—and I want to address the question that the member raised here, because it would have required about 20 seconds of reading—new section 33AB(1) makes it very clear that the vaccination tool can be utilised to come to a conclusion that either vaccination or undergoing a medical examination or testing for COVID-19 can be required. So we specifically dealt with that question; it’s there in black and white in the legislation.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate you giving me the call, because I want to just pick up on a point that my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse made in relation to my tabled amendment relating to Schedule 4, clause 3(7), actually. Now, as is often the case when legislation is being rushed through the House under urgency without the benefit of scrutiny at select committee or the input from stakeholders and others who would want to make a contribution to this legislation, sometimes small errors can occur. In fact, we actually had a Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper before the debate on this bill even commenced, and so that gives us the sense of how rushed and quick this is.
But earlier today, I did table an amendment to provide for cases where termination has occurred, either using the tool or using the risk assessment option through the primary legislation, or indeed some other method. But we think, on this side of the House, that once a process has been undertaken by an employer and a decision to terminate employment has been made, that should be the end of it, and we think that the employer should no longer have to face the risk of pending litigation.
In my first amendment, I probably made it a bit wide, and that would have, as the Minister rightly pointed out, given cause to provide for no redress for personal grievance for any matter under the principal Act. That was not my intention. So what I’ve done is I’ve withdrawn that amendment and replaced it with an amended one that simply says that, “For the avoidance of doubt, an employee is not entitled to bring a personal grievance or other legal proceedings in respect of a dismissal under this Schedule.”, which I think clarifies it appropriately, makes it sufficiently narrow, makes it very clear that my amendment would limit the ability to prevent a legal action that results from a termination in this case.
Now, I think it’s important that we understand that with nearly 91 percent of New Zealanders vaccinated, we’re actually probably dealing with a relatively small number of people who have chosen, for whatever reason, to remain unvaccinated. Now, some of those people will, in the course of the next few weeks—I hope and I implore them to—take advice from trusted friends or professional advisers and get vaccinated, because on this side of the House we are encouraging vaccination. But there will remain a small number of people who choose, as I say, for whatever reason, not to be vaccinated.
Now, those of us that have been receiving emails and correspondence and representations from some of those people know that they are increasingly strident in their view, in their determination to remain unvaccinated. That’s not a position that I agree with or members on this side of the House agree with, but that is a reality of the situation that I think the Government and we face as a society. So I’m convinced, absolutely, that there will be employees who go through this process and do have their employment terminated and, not to put too fine a point on it, they will want to make an issue of this. They will want to bring as much heat and attention and focus to their situation as they possibly can, and they will use every tool that is available to them to make life difficult for their employer, if they can, and they find themselves in a position where their employment has been terminated under this piece of legislation.
So I think it’s only fair and proper and right that those employers who are putting the best interests of their other staff members, of their customers, of the wider community in balance against the rights and obligations of an unvaccinated employee—I think they shouldn’t then have to suffer the potential sword of Damocles hanging above their head over further expensive, protracted, drawn-out litigation. So I’m suggesting to the committee that they adopt my amendment.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Point of order, Mr Chair. Thank you, Mr Chair. This is slightly unconventional but please give me a moment. I would like to seek the leave of the committee for the committee to return briefly to debating Part 1 in order that an amendment be made after this part is concluded.
The amendment is one that I’ve given to the Clerk but he can’t accept without the leave of the committee. It would, basically, allow employers to use information that they’ve got about their employees’ vaccination status for the purpose of advertising that their business is 100 percent vaccinated or for advertising and communicating with potential replacement employees. Because my interpretation and some quite high level advice I’ve had about proposed Section 34B is that at present every shop that says that they are 100 percent vaccinated, having acquired that information from their staff, will be breaking the law. Anyone who says to a prospective employee “There’s a vacancy because the person that was doing the job won’t be vaccinated.” would be breaking the law.
So I’ll give the Government a moment to think about it. But it might be worth, unless they are very, very sure, at least giving the leave of the committee to return to debating Part 1 for the specific purpose of this amendment, which I’ve just tabled with the Clerk, and also allowing the Clerk to accept that amendment when we return to that particular part, if the leave is given. I understand that the House in committee are masters of their own destiny, and there’s no reason under the Standing Orders that they couldn’t do it. But whether or not they do will be a decision of the Government. If the Government wants an opportunity to resolve this problem with advertising vaccine status, then they can allow it right now.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): OK. I’m simply going to put the leave. The leave is sought for that purpose? Is there any objection? There is objection. Who wants a call?
Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.
Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very happy to stand and take a call on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. I just want to reiterate some of the earlier comments. I just think that bringing this bill to the House like this and laying it on employers that are already under enormous financial pressure and stress in relation to ongoing lockdowns and the measures that had to be taken to try and contain and fight COVID-19 and then, of course, the Delta variant—which they’ve done in many cases, recognising that there is a responsibility on all of us to do the best that we can. However, they have carried a much heavier load than any of us sitting in this House because when we go into lockdowns, we all still have the peace of mind and the security in the back of our minds that we’re still going to get paid in a fortnight and that, actually, we’ve got a bit of job security.
Small-business owners don’t have that. They’re worrying about making payroll. They’re worried about how they’re going to make up for the revenue that they’re losing. They’re worried about their staff. They’re worried about their customers or their clients and about how they’re going to continue to provide the products that they have done. So what we need to be doing as a Parliament is focus on the best measures and steps that we can take to support them and make sure that they keep their heads above water, make sure that they can continue to employ and keep people in work, and make sure that they can continue to provide the services and make the products that they have been and to support and prop up this country and our GDP, because there’s no way to pay for a health system and there’s no way to pay for a police service or for our teachers if we haven’t got those businesses in the productive part of the country out there, supported and working.
So what does this Government do? It brings a bill to this House, which we’re debating now, that tells an employer—and I didn’t believe this when I first saw the announcement. People were asking, and I said, “No, that can’t be right. Government support will have to kick in.”, but it hasn’t. The fact is that now, if employers have an employee who is not vaccinated and who is still going through the process of deciding whether or not they will be vaccinated, they can take a month’s leave and the employer has to pay for that.
As we try to emerge out of one of the longest lockdowns that the world’s seen and as we try to get back on our feet, what does the Government do? The Government gives them another upper cut—small to medium sized businesses get another upper cut—and it says, “You’re under strain and pressure in terms of trying to get your businesses back up and going again, trying to get that revenue going, and trying to get people back to work, and, by the way, now you’re going to have to pay for a month someone that isn’t actually working inside your business.” It’s a ridiculous notion. It just shows how disconnected the Government is, because the Minister knows that he’s going to get paid in a fortnight. The Minister’s got some job security. The taxpayer—the small-business owner that’s out there working hard to pay their taxes—they’re the ones that are fronting this place, and, actually, we should be looking after them. We should be acknowledging them. We should be acknowledging the importance that they play in our recovery as we come out of this long lockdown, trying to fight Delta.
The one question that hasn’t been answered—and if the Minister has answered it, I apologise, because I want to acknowledge, as my colleague Michael Woodhouse said, that he is making an honest effort of actually standing and addressing the issues that are being raised on this side of the Chamber. But the one issue that Michael Woodhouse raised—and I agree with him, because I heard the Minister say this in his opening statements to the House—is that there were large companies in New Zealand, and I don’t know whether it was Countdown or whether it was The Warehouse. I don’t remember. But he said that they’re already using current health and safety law in the legislation to put plans in place, and he said that that’s great and that they can do that. They’ve got the option. They don’t have to use this legislation.
So if that’s the case, that means that the legislation contains within it the ability for an employee to take action against the employer, and the Government says that “Although we’re laying this new requirement on the employer, we still want to keep those protections in place for the employee, who can choose to take a month off while they debate whether or not they want to get vaccinated, and the employer is going to have to pay them.” David Seymour has come to the committee and asked permission to debate Part 1 again, because he—[Time expired]
Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.
Ayes 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.
Motion agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 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 2 agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 1 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.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 2 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.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 3 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.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that the Hon Michael Wood’s amendments to Schedule 4 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 100 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 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Amendments agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The Hon Scott Simpson’s tabled amendment to Schedule 4 to amend new clause 3(7) relating to prohibiting personal grievances is out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.
The question is that the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s tabled amendment to Schedule 4, to insert new clause 3(7)(c) relating to prohibiting personal grievances when the assessment tool is not used, be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 4 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.
Schedule 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 1 and 2
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, we now come to the final debate. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2, title and commencement.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I intend to move an amendment to clause 1 of this bill. It’s currently called the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, and isn’t it interesting? It’s not called the “Traffic Light Bill” or the “COVID-19 Response Traffic Light Legislation Bill”. And that in itself is highly revealing, because if you read the bill—and it’s reflected in the title—there is not a single mention of traffic lights. The word “red” does not appear there.
Now, Auckland goes into red next Friday, and the definition of “red”, according to the published documents from the Government, is that the health system is facing an unsustainable crisis. We can’t cope. The health system can’t cope. We’ve got to have a red setting for a particular region. In the Prime Minister’s own words, the health system’s coping fine. She’s got no concerns about the health system. Things are going well and things are going to go well into 2022, according to the Prime Minister. But despite that, Auckland enters at red. It’s not actually clear why that is, because it contradicts the Government’s own criteria. There’s no COVID in the South Island, or Southland, anyway; they enter orange. Why? Don’t know.
But when you try and look through the legislation, to try and find out exactly how that all works, you won’t find it. You’d be lost, because the word “red” doesn’t appear, the word “orange” doesn’t appear, the word “green” does not appear. I think the Government is going to run into serious legal difficulties in relation to this bill because the powers it has given to itself are way too broad in relation to the legality of what it actually wants to do. That is a major reason why the National Party is opposing the legislation. And it’s something that has actually only been ventilated by the committee of the whole House stage. It was actually the back and forth with the Minister for COVID-19 Response and, to some extent, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that revealed the extent of what the Government is looking to do does not at all mesh with what they want to do, at least on paper or at least as has been announced by the Government.
So I’m going to move an amendment to rename the bill the “Traffic Light Framework Bill”, because that is apparently what the bill does. But, as I say, there is a mismatch between what the bill actually does and what the Government says it does, and there is no more fundamental thing for Parliament to do than to make sure that bills are named properly. It’s going to be very interesting to see if the Government votes for my tabled amendment to rename the bill to what they say it actually does, because the Prime Minister announced the COVID-19 Protection Framework and it immediately became known as the traffic light system. Everyone went, “Oh, yeah, that makes some vague sort of sense at a level.”, and then we get the legislation finally, and actually the legislation bears little resemblance to what’s actually been announced. In fact, even if you read the general policy statement in the explanatory note to the bill, there is no mention of the traffic light framework at all.
So I’m going to move to have it renamed, and it will be intriguing to see what the Government does in terms of the name. There’s a variety of other things I could try and rename the bill. Most of them would be ruled out of order, I suspect. But one could also think about renaming the bill the “COVID-19 Response Broad Sweeping Mandates Bill”, because that’s what the Parliament is giving the Government the power to do. Forty percent of the workforce, in the Government’s own words, are going to be covered by vaccine mandates—40 percent of the workforce. And you know how long the Parliament has spent—
Hon Michael Wood: Are they against those mandates?
CHRIS BISHOP: No, no, no. It’s not a question of that, Mr Wood. It’s a question of the appropriateness of the scrutiny that the House has had to do on this bill. Forty percent of the workforce will be covered by vaccine mandates within the space of 10 days, and guess how long the Parliament has spent debating it? Well, four or five hours—not even a day. We only started debating the bill yesterday, late afternoon, and here we are a day later, just before lunch, and it’s going to be law by the end of the day. That is a disgrace. That is a constitutional disgrace, and I’ll have more to say about that at third reading. But I want to know from the Government whether or not they will support my attempt to rename the bill.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. I listened very carefully to my colleague Chris Bishop who, I think, raises very good points because I had written down here “Traffic Light Legislation Bill” so there’s a degree of synergy in terms of what this legislation should be called. Part of the problem for the Government over the last 18 months or so is that most New Zealanders who wanted to be responsive and positive and encouraging about reactions to the COVID pandemic have actually almost been now numbed into confusion by mixed messages, words that all sound very similar, and actually most New Zealanders, I think, now are literally rolling their eyes wondering: what does it all mean?
There is widespread confusion about the vocabulary that’s being used, the mixed messages that are coming out of the Beehive, the way that the conversation is now being framed because, initially, I think New Zealanders did understand what the Government’s plan was, they did understand what the communications meant, and they did understand the vocabulary that was being used. But when we have a piece of legislation of this sort, introduced under urgency, being rushed through the Parliament in less than 24 hours, and it’s called—I even have to go back and refresh my memory—the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, most New Zealanders would not have a clue what that entailed, and the whole purpose of a title in a bill is that it should be, by definition, I think, somehow explanatory of what the contents of the bill actually are. And this bill, the name that has been given to it by the Government, just speaks volumes about the confusion and the state of anxiety and uncertainty that the Government has amongst their own ranks and that officials have in terms of advising them what the title should be, because, actually, it’s meaningless. It’s been rendered meaningless and confusing to ordinary New Zealanders who have to try and understand and get their heads around it.
This is a piece of legislation that’s actually really important, and it speaks to some control, some restrictions, and some fairly hefty, burdensome obligations, particularly on the part of non-vaccinated people, but also employers of those non-vaccinated people. But there’s no hint or suggestion of any of that in the name, in the title, of this bill. And so I think that the Government would be well advised to take the advice of my colleague Christopher Bishop and take some of his suggestions.
Another suggestion for the title of this bill, because it’s going to absolutely mean this to businesses—maybe it could be called “Another Cost to Business Legislation Bill”, because that’s, effectively, what it is: another cost to business. And again, once again, businesses are being burdened with the weight of Government policy, and it’s businesses that are having to bear the responsibility and the cost. None of that is mentioned in the title of the bill. And so, I’m hoping that others of my colleagues—and on this side of the House I know that there are representatives from other parties who want to take a call on this, and I’m going to be looking forward to their sense of whether they agree with me or not about the widespread confusion and misunderstanding of what the Government’s plan is, not helped at all by a bill that is referred to as the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill.
I’d be interested to know from the Minister how many other pieces of legislation and regulation and rules and proclamations have emanated from the Beehive and from this Chamber in the last 18 months that actually start off with “COVID-19 Response …” and then—fill in the gaps—because I suspect the number of the pieces of regulation, the pieces of legislation, now is getting pretty much out of hand and to a layperson, frankly, the title is meaningless. It means nothing to someone who is trying to grapple with the implications of the legislation contained in this bill and what it might mean for them, for their families, for their communities, and for their businesses. So I think this is a situation where if the Government was very keen on plain language legislation and to actually walk the talk of plain clear language, then wouldn’t they do that? But to name a bill of this sort the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill adds nothing to the content of the bill or to a layperson’s understanding of what it might mean to them.
MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, I’m staggered by this, Mr Chair. As you’d be aware, we’re debating the title of this piece of legislation, and if you’re one of the million and a half people living in Auckland, you’ve absolutely had a gutsful of the uncertainty that we’re all now living in.
To speak to the title, COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, and Hon Scott Simpson alluded to the fact—you tell that to Auckland right now. If you’re a subcontractor or a contractor, you’re trying to make the determination, listening to what this piece of legislation will mean for your business, notwithstanding the environment is constantly changing. We’ve got new variants, apparently, offshore that are due to arrive, and we have this expeditious piece of legislation being pumped through the House in a matter of hours. I think it’s egregious. I couldn’t even imagine what would be an honest title that this bill deserves, but I support the member Mr Bishop, when he suggested the “COVID-19 Response Broad Sweeping Mandates Bill”. It certainly fits.
Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.
Ayes 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.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that Chris Bishop’s tabled amendment replacing clause 1 to change the title to the COVID-19 Response (Traffic Light Framework) Legislation Bill be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 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.
Clause 1 agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 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.
Clause 2 agreed to.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The committee has considered the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill and reports it with amendment. Mr Speaker, I move, That the report be adopted.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the report be adopted.
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.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
Speaker’s Rulings
COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill—Third Reading Debate
SPEAKER: Members, before I proceed to the third reading I have some comments to make. I will explain that during this forthcoming debate, I will allow a much wider and looser approach than is normally the case at the third reading stage of a bill.
Urgency of this type used to be common. It isn’t any more, for good reason; it resulted in bad law. Taking a bill one stage per day and using even a truncated select committee process improves the understanding of legislators, allows for informed public and specialist comment, and, generally, improves the quality of the legislation.
This policy first became public on 15 October. The policy decisions, the drafting instructions, or an exposure draft of the bill could and should have been made public and preferably considered by a select committee, either through reference through the House or using committees’ inquiry functions. The failure for that to occur is primarily the Government’s responsibility. But I do note that I have enquired of the Health Committee, the Governance and Administration Committee, and the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and no member of the House requested any use of the inquiry functions at any of those committees, and, therefore, it is a matter which has widespread responsibility.
Having said that, the rules of the House are clear; we will proceed to a third reading. But in interpreting the rules of relevance, in particular, and repetition, if necessary I will take the widest possible approach to allowing full debate.
Bills
COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill
Recommittal
CHRIS BISHOP (National): I move, That the bill be recommitted to the committee of the whole House for further consideration.
SPEAKER: There’s not an order of the day; it’s one of the problems with the approach that we have. There’s not an order of the day currently there to be discharged.
Third Reading
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety) on behalf of the Minister for COVID-19 Response: I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill be now read a third time.
The bill that has made its way through the House to this point is a very important part of New Zealand’s evolving response to COVID-19. New Zealanders have worked hard over the last two years. We’ve been through some tough times, and I stand here as an Auckland-based MP who’s experienced that with people over the last three months. But the work that we have undertaken, the shared commitment of New Zealanders to keep themselves and one another safe, and the clear guidance that has been provided by the Government through the COVID alert level framework has meant that as we stand here today, New Zealand as compared to many other countries around the world has lost fewer of our citizens, has seen fewer of our citizens become seriously ill, has a record low rate of unemployment, and has extraordinary economic resilience. None of that diminishes at all some of the very real challenges that people, organisations, and businesses have experienced, but collectively we have done well.
But now, as one of the more highly vaccinated countries in the world, we have the opportunity to move to the next phase—to build on our successes; to build on our high rate of vaccination, which is now close on 92 percent first dose across eligible New Zealanders; to move into a new framework that helps to keep people safe, that deals with the realities of Delta, an enormously transmissible virus, and at the same time allows Kiwis, having done the enormous hard work of the past two years, to get back to the things that we love. That is what the COVID protection framework offers.
We’ve heard a lot in the debate so far about the challenges and the difficulties. I think we all accept those. This is the way that we move forward. This is the way that businesses can operate. This is the way that people can attend social gatherings. This is the way that everyone can go back to work. I think one of the enormous disappointments of this debate is that, actually, what we have heard from the other side is opposition to moving forward. The position of the other side, by definition, is that they want to retain the current settings that they complain so much about. We have heard no alternative whatsoever, and their position is confused, because if I recall rightly several weeks ago, none other than the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon Judith Collins, said it was wonderful—the word was “wonderful”—that we are moving to introduce vaccine certificates. Well, one cannot just leave it at words; one actually has to have a legislative framework to bring that into legal effect. That is what this Government is doing today, and that is what that side of the House has opposed. So they have no credibility at all to stand to try and draw political capital from noting, in some cases rightly, how difficult the current settings are but to oppose anything that actually helps to move us forward, socially or economically, to do things in a different way. But that is what this piece of legislation does.
There are two core things that the legislation achieves. The first is that it brings measures in to enable the COVID protection framework. It provides clarity to enable us to issue orders—for example, to be able to enable those workers who are working in COVID vaccine certificate areas to be required to be vaccinated. That is something, again, that I’ve heard support for from the other side of the House, that we should do that—that when people go to have a meal or have a drink or go to the gym in a COVID vaccine certificate area, which they support, the workers should also have to be vaccinated. That is what we are enabling, but, again, they vote against it.
This Government is showing leadership in putting the framework in place. It’s not easy. There are complex rights issues to balance—
Chris Bishop: Exactly!
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: —but we are moving forward with that, and he says, “Exactly.” Their demand is to push, to go as fast as possible, and to complain why things weren’t changed yesterday, but then they want us to spend more time and delay it further.
The second core part of the legislation, which is in Part 2 of the bill, relates to giving employers a vaccination tool. This is about enabling employers, through a very simple mechanism, to be able to make decisions about whether work can reasonably be required to be done by vaccinated workers only. This is a very important provision. It’s been raised in this debate, including at the committee stage, that the Government mandates are a very strong and very blunt tool, and we have used them, or indicated that we will use them, to date to require vaccination for up to 40 percent of the workforce. We do not take those decisions lightly at all. They are very carefully considered decisions that include public health advice, consideration of New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues, employment rights issues, and broader social and economic considerations. We think that in addition to those tools that are used, it is important that employers have clear, simple tools that they can use with a high degree of legal certainty. There are existing health and safety assessment tools that they can use, but the business sector itself has told us and has requested that we provide simpler tools for them to use.
It was noted by the Hon Mark Mitchell in debate earlier on that a number of larger employers, for example Countdown and The Warehouse, are using those existing health and safety risk assessment tools. But the vaccination tool that this piece of legislation will enable is actually mainly about the small guy. It’s about the small business that doesn’t have an HR department or a legal department to conduct a full and wide-ranging health and safety risk assessment with confidence. It’s about enabling a very simple tool that they can look to that has objective measures in it that enable them to make a decision about quite a weighty matter in a way that balances up the rights of employees and employers.
Here I do have to note the way in which we have tried to carefully balance these matters. There has been criticism from the other side of the House on two grounds, the first of which is that, apparently, the legislation tramples over rights and goes too far and overreaches. But then what we have heard in the debate which has just finished is that we should actually strip, apparently, all employees of their rights if their employment is terminated under this Act, and we do not agree with that. We have tried to strike a balance of providing simplicity and clarity for employers in respect of these issues but continuing to believe that people should act reasonably and in good faith, and that is, I believe, the balance that needs to be struck.
By way of conclusion, I just want to acknowledge all New Zealanders who have been part of this extraordinary and difficult journey that we have been on, along with every other country around the world. The other side of the House acts as though costless decisions can be made, as though we can just remove restrictions without there being any health consequence whatsoever, because that is the level of dialogue from them: it’s to point to the difficulties but never to point to the solutions, to never actually show and describe how we can move forward and get the balance right. Then, occasionally, when they do it, as they did when they launched a policy that at least had some coherence back in September, they then rapidly contradict themselves on that. Again, I note that as this Government proposes a COVID protection framework that enables many of the things to happen that they are asking for, they vote against it.
Well, what I’ve said before and what I will say again is that showing leadership in a time of public health crisis is not just about making the easy decisions that make everyone happy all of the time. There are decisions that have to be made that are difficult. There are trade-offs to be made in those decisions. There are complexities that have to be worked through. There are complex intersections of rights. This piece of legislation, which takes us into the next phase, retains many of the protections we have but enables important social and economic activity to occur. It provides more certainty about workplace vaccination rights, and, after all of the hard work, it enables our country to move forward as one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world, one of the countries in the world with the strongest-performing economy, and one of the countries in which people have now the ability to move forward into a new era in which we deal with COVID-19 in a safe way while getting back to the things that we love. I want to thank everyone for their work in getting to this point, and I commend this bill to the House.
SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption after oral questions this afternoon. The House is suspended until 2 p.m. today.
Debate interrupted.
Sitting suspended from 1.03 p.m. to 2 p.m.
SPEAKER: E noho. The House is resumed.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Question No. 1—Prime Minister
1. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government’s statements and actions?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, in particular I stand by this Government’s decision to take the next steps in our plan to reconnect New Zealanders to the world. Today, we announced that Kiwis and other eligible travellers will be able to enter New Zealand from Australia without the requirement of managed isolation, that we have been operating for some time now, from 11.59 p.m., Sunday, 16 January 2022. Following that, Kiwis and other eligible travellers will be able to travel to New Zealand from all other countries from 11.59 p.m., Sunday, 13 February. Our cautious plan to reopen the world, including the use of self-isolation, allows us to balance the need to reconnect while ensuring public health measures are maintained during an ongoing global pandemic. We only need look at the rest of the world to see why that is necessary. We know the last two years have been incredibly difficult, especially for those separated by borders. But with today’s announcements, you can see a change in border restrictions is in sight.
Hon Judith Collins: Why is it safe for a vaccinated Kiwi to come home from Queensland on 16 January but not before Christmas?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I mentioned to the member yesterday, but as I’m happy to restate in this House today, we are going through significant changes in the way that we are managing COVID-19 in New Zealand. It falls upon us to ensure that we do that carefully and responsibly. That means that we have the change to the Auckland boundary that is occurring in the middle of December, and from there, we want to then take a phased reopening for the rest of the world, but do so cautiously. I would also note for the member that until recently, of course, up until we’ve used managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), all returnees have been coming in at Auckland. With these changes, there will be returnees across New Zealand. That is also a step change, and whilst we will have self-isolation, there will be cases that will be ceded as a result of these changes and we need to be prepared for that.
Hon Judith Collins: So why will a fully vaccinated Kiwi coming home from overseas in February be allowed to self-isolate, but a fully vaccinated ICU nurse from the UK will have to find a spot in MIQ?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As the member knows, of course, the length of time that we’ll be asking people to isolate will be the same, but we’ve been pragmatic about the fact that those who are returning home, by default, have a home to return to. Many of those critical and essential workers will not necessarily be well established and have the ability to do that. So this enables them, regardless, to be able to come through the system. The other point I’d make is that we have specially designated space in MIQ for critical health workers. In fact, in the latter part of this year, we have had hundreds coming into New Zealand via that designated space to make sure that they can be prioritised.
Hon Judith Collins: Why is her Government not prioritising the highly prioritised ICU nurses?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I totally reject that statement from that member. We have actually been working with DHBs, and, where they have identified that they have critical health workers that they have employed, and that need support to come into New Zealand, that has been provided. As I say, my recollection is we’ve had somewhere in the order of 300 or so designated for that purpose.
Hon Judith Collins: Has the Government finished developing the traffic light system it plans to implement next week; if not, why not?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member will be aware of the system because it was released at the end of October.
Hon Judith Collins: So will businesses in Taupō be operating under red or orange next weekend?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, I can tell the member that every business in Taupō that is open now will be open under the traffic light system. The whole point is that under this system, there is certainty for businesses that they will all be able to open and operate, albeit with a requirement to use vaccine certificates. What we have said is that the level that parts of the country will be in will be determined by the latest public health advice, which will be based predominantly on vaccination status. But any business in Taupō can plan around the COVID protection framework, which has already been released, and if the member were to look at that framework, she would see that we are currently in alert level 2. It is very similar to red, so therefore there is no additional restrictions that someone would likely face as a result.
Hon Judith Collins: If the Prime Minister can’t be certain whether Taupō will be under red or orange next weekend, then how can business owners be expected to be certain whether they’ll be under red or orange?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, let me step through this—again—for the member. Regardless of the level, they will be able to operate as they are now with, of course, vaccine certificates, and we have signalled that since October. The difference between those levels is simply around things like gathering limits. Now, most businesses have had to operate or create procedures to deal with that since the beginning of the pandemic. The reason we have not given the specific level that each part of the country will go into at this stage is because we want them to be at the lowest level of restrictions possible. That means vaccination levels being as high as possible. So we will make those judgments closer to the time based on public health advice.
Hon Judith Collins: So is there a minimum vaccination rate before a region can be considered for a move to green?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as we’ve said, one of the things that will be primary in the minds of the public health advice that we are provided—because it’s not, of course, a decision made solely by Cabinet; we act on public health advice—is vaccination levels, and the level of protective factors in the community will be part of it. But, as the member can also see, it will also be dependent on the level of community transmission, whether or not there is pressure on our public health system and on our hospital system.
Hon Gerry Brownlee: Then South Island green!
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because, though, we are in a situation, Mr Brownlee, where we are transitioning into the new system, we have already indicated that when we first move, no part of the country will be in green initially.
Hon Judith Collins: Will any region be allowed to move to green before the end of this year, and, if not, when is the earliest date she will consider moving any region in New Zealand to green?
Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Two responses to that: we have already said that in the first review, of course, we will announce the decisions on 29 November for where the country will move in. We will at that point set out the timetable for how regularly we will be reviewing the settings for all parts of the country and the cycle that the member can expect from there. But what I would say is that it’s important to note that with this new framework, there is much more flexibility than we’ve had previously. So even if we’ve got a region in orange, events go ahead, hospitality goes ahead, and there are no limits on gatherings for vaccinated people. There is much greater movement and much more freedom from restrictions at orange than even we currently have.
Question No. 2—Finance
2. 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): Recent reports we have seen on our economic support programmes show that the sectors that have received the greatest support from the Government over the course of this outbreak are the construction industry and the accommodation and food services sector. Over time, the amount paid under the wage subsidy for the accommodation and food services sector since 17 August has been $624 million compared with $577 million for the construction sector. For the Resurgence Support Payment, the same two industries were the largest recipients, with accommodation and food services over time accounting for a greater percentage of payments. As would be expected over time, the payments have gone progressively more towards the Auckland region, with the latest Resurgence Support Payment having 71 percent of recipients in the Greater Auckland region, with the next highest being Hamilton, making up 8 percent.
Barbara Edmonds: What other reports has he seen on the economy?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The economic consultancy Infometrics’ September 2021 quarterly economic monitor has reported that New Zealand regional economies were solid despite the setback of the Delta outbreak. The monitor shows economic activity dipped 3.7 percent in the quarter, according to provisional estimates, as Delta temporarily brought parts of the economy to a standstill. However, Infometrics notes that economic momentum has returned as most of the country has moved down alert levels, with people buying and backing local again. Looking ahead, it reports that regional economies remain well positioned to recover from Delta with more spending and activity set to be unlocked in 2022. Nevertheless, the ongoing and uneven impact of COVID-19 means that the environment will remain volatile for some time.
Barbara Edmonds: What reports has he seen on how New Zealand has adapted to the constraints of the pandemic on the economy?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: New Zealand Post’s eCommerce Spotlight shows that New Zealanders have moved online during the pandemic, spending $765 million online in October, an increase of 71 percent on October 2020 and 89 percent on the same period in 2019. This does show that businesses are also adapting during the current Delta outbreak by improving the online function of their websites and introducing delivery and click and collect options. The Government has contributed to this with support programmes for people to move themselves online.
Question No. 3—Health
BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Health and reads as follows. What clinical criteria, if any, are being used to determine whether a person who is COVID-positive and self-isolating in the community should be given a pulse oximeter, and does he believe that the home isolation model—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member’s question—
Brooke van Velden: I’m just reading from the yellow sheet.
SPEAKER: I apologise. The member will continue. The adjustments that had been made to the question appear not to have been given through to the proper people. I apologise.
BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): All right. I can start again?
SPEAKER: Yes. Start again.
BROOKE VAN VELDEN: OK. Thank you. What clinical criteria, if any, are being used to determine whether a person who is COVID-positive and self-isolating in the community should be given a pulse oximeter, and does he believe that the home isolation model is ready for the traffic light system?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Mr Speaker, a point of order. I have prepared my answer on the basis of amendments to the question that were notified to my office late in the morning, so just so you’re aware—
SPEAKER: I hear what the member is saying. What I’m going to do is leave it to the member who is asking the question to decide which of the two questions is to be asked. I think, to be fair to both members, before I intervened to bring the question into what I thought was order, the Minister’s office had been given the original question. So given the fact that through an error—although it was given to the member—it didn’t make it on to the yellow sheet, I think we’ll leave it to Brooke van Velden to choose which of the two versions she goes with. She knows that if she goes with the original one she is likely to have a less prepared answer, but that’s something I take responsibility for. Brooke van Velden—whichever way you want to go.
BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Speaking to the point of order, I’m happy to do the question that we had submitted post—that is, not on the yellow sheet.
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I will do my best to please the member. Pulse oximetry has a critical role to play—
Brooke van Velden: Point of order, Mr Speaker. If we’re going with a different question, should I at least read the question?
SPEAKER: Sorry. I think what we’re going to do is we’re going to get the member to ask the question that she wants again. I’m sorry, I was momentarily distracted, but I think that may have been obvious to all members, and that, again, is my responsibility. I’m not having a good afternoon—that was my responsibility.
3. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Minister of Health: What clinical criteria, if any, are being used to determine whether a person who is COVID-positive and self-isolating in the community should be given a pulse oximeter, and does he have confidence in the home isolation system?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Pulse oximetry has a critical role in monitoring the clinical status of some people with COVID-19, but most people will not require a pulse oximeter to safely monitor their health. People who would benefit from having one are identified during their clinical assessment, which includes assessing against clinical criteria such as their vaccination status and any medical risk factors such as other diseases, age, ethnicity, and complex and dynamic circumstances, such as their housing. These criteria reflect a scale, highlighting that often, for example, young, fit people do not have the same level of care needs compared to those who may be older, with comorbidities or other factors increasing their risk. However, our model enables clinicians and COVID-positive individuals to continue to assess their care needs and deliver the appropriate level needed. In response to the second part of the member’s question, yes. As our vaccination levels have increased, this has given us options as to how people can recover, and more people can recover at home. I’m confident that work that the Ministry of Health and the DHBs have been leading, in partnership with the primary care sector, means that as we move to the COVID-19 Protection Framework, we will have a care in the community model that enables more people to be cared for as appropriate to their need, including by isolating at home.
Brooke van Velden: How is the clinical assessment or judgment being made—for example, over-the-phone conversation or face-to-face conversation, or from looking at health records—and would it not be simpler to give a pulse oximeter to everyone when we know there are thousands available?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well, a pulse oximeter cannot give a full clinical assessment of a person who has just been notified that they’ve tested positive for COVID. It’s important that somebody who’s just got a positive test gets, as quickly as possible, a clinical assessment to assess whether it is safe for them to recover at home. So the way the model is set up is that they will get that clinical assessment, in most cases, from their GP, but if not from their GP, then another competent clinician, who will go through the factors that they know. If it is the person’s GP, then that GP will have access to that person’s health records. If it is not the person’s GP, it will be for the clinician, through questioning and assessing that person, by and large, over the phone, to work out what is in the best interests of that person.
Brooke van Velden: Is the Director-General of Health correct when he says that the metrics to help measure whether the system is working well won’t be ready for a couple of weeks, and, if so, when will the metrics be ready?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well, it might depend on when the Director-General of Health said that, because this is a programme that has been put together over the last few weeks. But we do have metrics about the time that we want people to get that first clinical assessment and the social assessment and any public health assessment, and to make sure that, depending on the health profile of that person and the nature of their health at the time they test positive, they’re getting the right clinical oversight for the time that they are recovering at home.
Brooke van Velden: How many COVID-positive people have been home isolating to date, and how many have been given a pulse oximeter?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I recall, the figures roughly: 1,700 COVID-positive patients have been recovering at home; roughly 900 pulse oximeters have been issued to households with a COVID-positive patient.
Brooke van Velden: Has he asked for projections of how many people will be home isolating in the community at Christmas, and, if so, what are the minimum and maximum projections?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The problem with trying to get modelling on these things is that there are a whole range of factors that come into play, and we don’t know where the vaccination levels, for example, will end up in the next couple of weeks before we’re going to cut over to the system, and there are a range of other mitigations that are in place. But we are preparing for an increase in the number of COVID-positive patients. That’s why we have, roughly, now nearly 27,000 pulse oximeters available throughout New Zealand to be deployed, as and when needed. I’m not sure that we’re going to need all of those, but with that measure and also the work that the DHBs have been doing with the Ministry of Health, I am confident that New Zealand will be prepared for once the COVID protection framework is put in place, the restrictions on people’s movements around the country are reduced, and people will start to move throughout the country, as will COVID.
Question No. 4—Agriculture
4. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister of Agriculture: Is he satisfied with the contribution the agriculture sector is making towards meeting the Government’s emissions reduction targets; if not, why not?
Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Acting Minister of Agriculture): On behalf of the Minister, New Zealand is undertaking a world-leading task in identifying a way to price agricultural emissions. We knew it would be a challenging task and it is. In 2019, agriculture was proposed to enter the emissions trading scheme at the processor level, but an agreement was made with the sector that they could develop an alternative pricing mechanism through the collaborative partnership, appropriately called He Waka Eke Noa, as we are all in this together. We appreciate the Green Party’s support for this, and, on behalf of the Minister, we acknowledge Minister Shaw’s key role in coming to this agreement and his ongoing contribution to He Waka Eke Noa as the Minister of Climate Change. We have set this sector an ambitious objective and this is their chance to rise to that challenge. The new pricing mechanism must be designed to reduce emissions, be practical to implement, and be consistent with actions to reduce emissions by other sectors. Sector leaders have worked very hard over the last two years to design a new pricing mechanism that covers off how agriculture emissions will be priced, how farmers will need to report their emissions, and what secretions might be recognised. I am informed He Waka Eke Noa has already exceeded their first milestone. Approximately 60 percent of farms by the end of this year will know their annual total greenhouse gas emissions. This far exceeds the target of 25 percent by the end of the year and He Waka Eke Noa is on track to meet the milestone of one quarter having written plans to manage their emissions.
Teanau Tuiono: Is he confident that the options presented yesterday by the He Waka Eke Noa partnership can deliver agricultural emissions reductions at the speed and scale required to meet the Government’s level of ambition, and, if not, why not?
Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: As the member has acknowledged, the discussion document has only just been released and all sectors have been asked to meet these targets, not just agriculture. The Government is working across the board and the Minister is satisfied with the work being undertaken by agriculture. I want to also acknowledge the Minister of Climate Change, who is also doing a great job in coordinating this approach across all sectors.
Teanau Tuiono: Is he concerned that New Zealand’s international reputation on agriculture and climate change will be impacted if this sector does not tackle its emissions footprint quickly?
Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: It’s too early to make that call. Like I said, a discussion document is out there. We have every faith in our partners of He Waka Eke Noa, that they are doing the right thing. They’ve put out the proposal. It’s out for consultation and there are still decisions to be made by Ministers in the new year.
Teanau Tuiono: Is he considering banning palm kernel expeller (PKE) imports as an emissions reduction measure; if not, why not?
Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: As I’ve answered that question previously in this House, the New Zealand Government will not support the importation that is linked to illegal activity in foreign nations. New Zealand businesses need to ensure the integrity of the supply chains and that they are operating consistently with the laws of the relevant country. The Ministry for Primary Industries and industry are working together to show farmers how they can farm without PKE. This work will continue. We are also leading the way in terms of our investment in regenerative agriculture.
Teanau Tuiono: Does he have confidence that the ingenuity and innovation needed to thrive in a low emissions future is alive and well in New Zealand’s farming sector?
Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: Pricing provides an incentive to reduce emissions. However, it is only one part of a broad programme of work to reduce agricultural emissions. To help farmers reduce their emissions, the Government is also investing in emissions mitigation technology and research and development. The Government has made significant investments in world-leading research on reducing agricultural emissions. In Budget 2021 the Government committed $24 million over four years towards agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation R & D.
SPEAKER: Order! Before I call Sarah Pallett, I just want to remind my friend in the gallery of the requirement to wear his mask. I think we do need to learn to wear masks and use our phones at the same time.
Question No. 5—COVID-19 Response
5. SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What recent announcements has the Government made on reconnecting New Zealand to the world?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Today I announced the next steps in our plan to reconnect New Zealand with the world, with a staged approach to removing the requirement for most incoming travellers to enter our managed isolation facilities. The first step will see Kiwi citizens and residents, along with those with current border exceptions, able to arrive from Australia without staying in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) from 11.59 p.m. on Sunday, 16 January. The second step allows Kiwis and other eligible travellers from all other countries not considered very high-risk to bypass MIQ from 11.59 p.m. on Sunday, 13 February. Finally, from 30 April onwards, fully vaccinated foreign nationals will be able to travel here. This step will likely be phased in, depending on visa categories, and in line with our immigration reset. We’re making this announcement today to give families, businesses, visitors, and airline and airport companies certainty and time to prepare. It’s really encouraging that, as a result of high vaccination rates and the protections offered by the traffic light framework, we as a country are now in a position to move towards greater normality at our international border.
Sarah Pallett: What requirements will be applied to travellers who do not have to enter MIQ?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We’ve always said that we would open up in a controlled way to provide continued assurance around new arrivals. That’s why we’re retaining a seven-day home isolation period for those fully vaccinated travellers arriving under the three steps that we announced today, which is, of course, the medium-risk pathway that we’re opening. All of these arrivals will also require a negative pre-departure test, proof that they have been fully vaccinated, they will need to complete a passenger declaration about their recent travel history, they’ll need to do a test on arrival at day zero or one, and they’ll need a final negative test before they’re able to move about freely in the community at the end of their self-isolation. Those who don’t meet the requirements for the medium-risk pathway, but are still permitted to enter New Zealand under our current border settings, will continue to enter managed isolation upon arrival. That will include unvaccinated New Zealand citizens and those from very high-risk countries.
Sarah Pallett: Why is the Government taking a staged approach to reconnecting with the world?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Closing our border was one of the first steps that we took to keep New Zealand safe from the global COVID-19 pandemic, and it will be one of the last things that we do as we open up. There continues to be a global pandemic, and cases are surging in Europe and in other parts of the world, so we need to be careful as we look to reopen our border. A phased approach is the safest approach; it helps us to ensure that risk is carefully managed and to reduce the potential impacts on vulnerable communities and the New Zealand health system. The opening of our borders logically flows from the bedding in of the new traffic light system, the removal of the boundary around Auckland, the time that regions need to get their vaccination rates higher still, and, of course, for booster shots to be rolled out to people who received their vaccinations first. It’s worth acknowledging the difficult trade-offs we’ve had to make to keep our country as safe as possible and the toll that that has taken on New Zealanders overseas and New Zealanders who have been separated from those who are overseas. But the end of heavily restricted travel is now in sight, and as we shift to the new phase of the pandemic, the time is right to carefully reopen our borders, just as we said we would and just as we have planned for.
Chris Bishop: From what date will fully vaccinated Australian citizens be able to travel to New Zealand without going into MIQ?
Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Those Australian citizens who are normally resident in New Zealand will be able to travel to New Zealand from 11.59 p.m. on Sunday, 16 January. For those Australians who are coming here to visit—for a holiday, for example—where they’re not covered by a current border exception, they’ll have to wait a little longer.
Question No. 6—Health
6. Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Health: How many inpatient procedures, as they are described in answer to written question No. 51279, have been deferred since the start of the current Delta outbreak, and how many people, if any, are now waiting more than four months for a specialist appointment?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): The Ministry of Health’s latest reporting for the week ending 14 November estimates that approximately 7,070 inpatient elective procedures were deferred nationally due to COVID-19 since August 2021. As the member will be aware from my answer to his written question, these are estimates subject to revision by DHBs. In response to the second part of the question, the Ministry of Health reports on a metric for first follow-up specialist appointments within four months of referral. Results for September 2021 show that there are 27,433 patients waiting longer than four months for a first specialist appointment; this compares to 19,182 in July 2021. As I’ve said in the House previously, the reality is that pandemics disrupt health systems; all services reduce procedures in order to keep patients and health workers safe. Every effort is being made to reduce the disruption of planned care. Since the alert level 4 was lifted, many of the DHBs outside of Auckland have reduced waiting times in their planned care schedule; however, DHBs like Auckland and Counties Manukau have been at the centre of the response to the latest outbreak and continue to see disruption to their schedules. The Ministry of Health is also working with DHBs as we move into the COVID protection framework to enable the delivery of more planned care and to further reduce backlogs.
Dr Shane Reti: Point of order. Mr Speaker, in the primary question, I specifically asked for inpatient procedures as they’re described in answer to a written question. That includes not just the procedures that the Minister has just talked about, but also radiology, first specialist assessments. I specifically asked in that format consistent with that question. They haven’t been addressed.
SPEAKER: Does the Minister have those figures?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well, talking to the point of order, the answer to the written question that was lodged provided the very answer I’ve just given. It answered the question that the member has just asked orally: 7,070, as he described them, inpatient procedures have been deferred in the period that he describes.
Dr Shane Reti: Did officials provide him with any options to manage coronavirus that would have resulted in fewer cancelled procedures than he has just prescribed? And if so, what were those options?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The nature of the pandemic, and particularly the outbreak that warranted the country being put into level 4, is that health services are disrupted, and hospitals in particular, because they are exposed to a particular vulnerability—that is to say, unwell people turning up to get healthcare—amend their procedures to keep both those people safe, the patients turning up, as well as healthcare workers. And so it does cause disruption. Once the level 4 was lifted, then many DHBs were able to get back to, as close as possible, life as normal, restore their planned care schedule, but hospitals in Auckland were not, because hospitals like Counties Manukau and Auckland, who have been carrying the heaviest patient workload—at least, for those afflicted with COVID19—have had to slow down their planned care in order to keep, again, COVID19 patients and other patients and healthcare workers safe.
Dr Shane Reti: At any time over the past 20 months, did he ask officials to estimate how much it would cost to reduce the number of cancelled procedures; and, if so, what were the costs?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well, two points on that: the member refers to cancelled procedures, and that is the way they’re categorised, but, actually, most of them are postponed. So, for many of those procedures that have been postponed, many have actually been picked up since. But we saw from the experience last year, and the disruption that an outbreak causes, that DHBs are capable of catching up. That is why the Government provided them with an additional $282.5 million over three years to help them to manage their catch-up programme for planned care. Additional funding has been provided this year as well, and I’m confident that DHBs, particularly those outside of Auckland, are working very hard to clear the backlog, and those DHBs who are in Auckland and can refer patients to other DHBs are doing so. And every effort is being made to make sure that those backlogs are being reduced.
Dr Shane Reti: Were all of the deferred procedures from last year’s outbreak caught up prior to this current outbreak starting; and, if so, why were there 30,000 still waiting for a first specialist assessment?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I recall from the reports I received, certainly in the month or two just prior to the latest lockdown and outbreak, actually a large percentage—the majority—of procedures that had been postponed last year had been caught up with. There were still some outstanding; in some cases, it was because other circumstances had arisen for some patients. That meant that it was not propitious to carry out the planned care for that particular patient, but they are still on a waiting list. And I imagine the same will happen as a result of the most recent outbreak.
Dr Shane Reti: Why are GPs in Christchurch, a city with barely any COVID cases, already being told by Christchurch Hospital general surgery that as they have no chance of seeing new patients, they will be declining most referrals; and when will he finally admit that this is because he failed to prepare the health system for coronavirus?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The health system has been responding to and adapting to the coronavirus for some considerable time, but I think that member will know, and his colleagues on that side of the House will know, that from the time they were in Government, the health system had been underfunded for a considerable period of time. Buildings had not been invested in, space had not been expanded, staff had not had pay rises that kept pace with the cost of inflation, and this is a Government, in the last four years, that has had to play major catch-up to make sure that we have a health system that is capable of responding effectively.
Question No. 7—Health
7. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) to the Minister of Health: How is the Cancer Control Agency driving long-term outcomes for men’s health in relation to prostate cancer?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): We know that prostate cancer is a serious issue for men’s health, being the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in New Zealand for men. Every year, nearly 4,000 men are diagnosed and about 650 die from the disease, the third highest cause of death after lung and bowel cancers. I acknowledge the work of the team behind Movember, and, indeed, some members in this House are participating—including that member and his very handsome moustache that he’s growing for the cause—in advocating and bringing awareness to men’s health and in particular prostate cancer. The Cancer Control Agency has a key role in modernising our approach, alongside broader reforms. The agency’s strong leadership supported the creation of the prostate quality performance indicator monitoring report. This report is the first of its kind in New Zealand. It compares DHB performance to others of a similar demographic and can be used to support specific improvement where there is variation. We know that insights and awareness allow us to better deliver prevention, screening, and treatment, and, overall, make greater progress in reducing the harm cancer can cause to our men, their whānau, and communities.
Dr Duncan Webb: Thank you to the Minister. What actions are being taken to improve prostate cancer outcomes for New Zealand men?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: In early 2021, the Cancer Control Agency held a forum in Wellington with lead clinicians from around New Zealand to get agreement on actions to support required improvements, including best practice diagnostic guidelines. This has formed the base of our quality improvement action plan, to be implemented over the next two years by services which are monitored by the Cancer Control Agency. Some of the recommended areas set out in the prostate cancer action plan to guide improved outcomes include focusing on ensuring appropriate, up-to-date evidence-based practices are followed, with regard to chemotherapy for prostate cancer patients; ensuring men receive evidence-based and personalised information about their treatment options from the relevant treatment specialists; and encouraging and supporting primary healthcare providers to undertake prostate specific antigen—or PSA—testing and digital rectal examination of men who have lower urinary tract symptoms or symptoms of metastatic disease.
Dr Duncan Webb: What work is being done to improve cancer-related health outcomes for Māori men?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The Wai 2575 Māori Health Trends Report in 2019 identified that prostate cancer is the most common cancer for Māori men. We therefore acknowledge that when looking to improve prostate cancer health outcomes, there is an inequity here that has to be addressed. This is one of the key reasons that the prostate quality performance monitoring report is published with ethnicity data and is used to drive service improvement for this year. This way we can identify how we’re tracking for tāne Māori and make sure the actions we take are improving outcomes for them. In addition, the Cancer Control Agency also ensured Māori representation on the working group that identifies indicators so that this group continues to drive improved health outcomes in an equitable way. More broadly, the Cancer Control Agency has also recently completed 13 community hui and 30 Māori-leader hui around the country to hear the voice of Māori, co-design Māori cancer actions, collaborate with cancer stakeholders, and support the delivery of cancer actions across the continuum of care.
Question No. 8—Finance
8. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Finance: What will be the criteria for businesses to be eligible for business support under the new traffic light system, and how many businesses, if any, does he expect to be operating under the red setting next week?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): As the member will recall from my answers to his questions yesterday, on 22 October I announced the in principle decisions on the support to be provided under the COVID protection framework. This includes a transition grant that will particularly support Auckland businesses as they transition into the new framework. I also said on 22 October that the criteria for that would be similar to the Resurgence Support Payment. Final details of this will be announced shortly, and obviously before the framework takes effect. I also noted on 22 October that we’d be looking to replace the existing economic supports when the framework takes effect, as broad-based supports are no longer appropriate in a framework where businesses can operate at all levels. In answer to the second part of the member’s question, the decisions on which areas of New Zealand and therefore which businesses will be operating at the red level will be taken on 29 November, but we have already indicated that the Auckland region will be entering the framework at the red level.
Andrew Bayly: When he said yesterday that the Government was going to move towards targeted support for specific sectors, what will be the criteria for selecting those sectors?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the member will be aware, there are certain sectors of the economy who cannot operate to the fullest extent possible under the conditions that we currently have. Throughout the pandemic, we have targeted sectors such as the tourism sector in order for them to be able to be supported.
Andrew Bayly: Will he compensate business owners for stock that goes to waste if they are told at the last minute they will be operating under the red restrictions?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, as the Prime Minister said in her earlier answer, even under the red level, if we take, for example, hospitality, they will be able to operate. At every single level of the framework, businesses can operate.
Andrew Bayly: Why is he still figuring out the details of the system that he announced more than a month ago and is due to be implemented in eight days’ time?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, throughout the pandemic we’ve adopted an approach of using the latest possible information, making sure that we consult across the board with all affected sectors, and making sure that we adapt our approach to the circumstances that confront us. As I said in my answer to oral question No. 2 today, we’ve seen around $624 million go to the accommodation and food services sector just since 17 August. The Government stands by its record of supporting businesses through this pandemic.
Andrew Bayly: When will he inform bar owner Tāmati Coffey whether his bar will be eligible for COVID support under the traffic light system and whether it will be operating under an orange or red level next week?
Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I can’t speak for Mr Coffey, but I know that he is an excellent business owner who runs an extremely profitable business, and I’m sure he will take stock of all of what has been provided in terms of support and make any decisions he makes about applying for future support. On this side of the House, we’ve been consistent about the way in which we’ve provided support to business, unlike members opposite, who can’t decide whether we should put more money in or less money in. I am proud of our record of supporting businesses and supporting lives and livelihoods consistently.
SPEAKER: I didn’t stop the question, but I just want to put a general warning to members that bringing the private businesses of other members into the question period is something which I’m not going to rule out absolutely, but it could get pretty unedifying if it became common.
Question No. 9—Transport
9. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) to the Minister of Transport: How will transport support the economic recovery over the next three years?
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): We’re making good progress on a number of projects around the regions to keep New Zealand moving and to support the economic recovery. I am pleased to report that one of our regional New Zealand upgrade programme projects, Takitimu North Link stage 1, now has enabling works under way. At its peak of construction, up to 400 people will work on the Takitimu North Link stage 1 at any one time, so the people in the Bay of Plenty will be seeing real progress on this project, which includes a safe expressway and shared walking and cycling path to provide better transport choices while also supporting employment and economic development in the region.
Shanan Halbert: What other regional projects have reached important milestones?
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Our Queenstown New Zealand upgrade package reached another milestone recently. Geotechnical investigations have been carried out for the State Highway 6A project that’s part of the overall package. These will feed into the design of the project which will improve public transport services and enhance walking and cycling connections along Frankton Road. And construction is already under way on the linked town centre upgrades we’re funding through Crown Infrastructure Partners, creating jobs and supporting the region’s recovery.
Shanan Halbert: How are other transport projects supporting the regions?
Hon MICHAEL WOOD: While the New Zealand Upgrade Programme is supporting hundreds of jobs across the country, it’s also useful to highlight some of the small projects that will make a big difference for New Zealanders. The first stage of safety upgrades on State Highway 1 at Five Mile Bay just south of Taupō will be installed shortly. A wide centre lane will be painted on the freshly resealed section of the State highway between Taupō Airport and the Lake Terrace roundabout and Tawhaa Road later this week. That separation will help reduce the likelihood of head-on crashes and will no doubt be welcomed by many people travelling that stretch of road over the summer. Waka Kotahi is also investigating options such as flexible median and roadside barriers on State Highway 1 from Taupō Airport to Hatepe excluding the local township and work is expected to begin next year. This is a Government that invests and delivers in our regions in economic development.
Question No. 10—Social Development and Employment
10. KAREN CHHOUR (ACT) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Does she believe that she is achieving results for New Zealanders currently not in the workforce and receiving income support who are looking to enter the workforce?
Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs) on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Yes. The last three quarters have seen record numbers of people move off benefit and into work. In the September quarter, 28,152 people cancelled their benefit and moved into work. This was a record for the September quarter. It builds on the March and June quarters, which saw the highest number of people moving into work since records began in 1996.
Karen Chhour: Would the Minister expect the number of people claiming the job seeker benefit to decrease as unemployment drops from 4.8 percent in September 2017 to only 3.4 percent in September 2021, and, if so, why did the number of people on the job seeker benefit increase by 70,000 over the same period?
Hon JAN TINETTI: There are many different reasons for why the benefits move around, and some of those are around the fact that the Household Labour Force Survey doesn’t take into account those people who are in part-time work. So when that is picked up, the 11,000 job seekers—the numbers more closely align.
Karen Chhour: Why is there another 70,000 people on the job seeker benefit, according to the Ministry of Social Development, since 2017, despite lower unemployment and record difficulty in finding labour for New Zealand firms?
Hon JAN TINETTI: As I said in the previous question, there are a variety of reasons for what are the causes behind this, but one of the things that I will say is that when—on behalf of the Minister—she took over as the Minister for Social Development, she was shocked at the state of front-line services. It is very clear that what is needed in these times is early intervention to get people back into work, and that is why we have put in place programmes such as Mana in Mahi and He Poutama Rangatahi, which, under the previous Minister of Employment, the Hon Willie Jackson, has seen a number of people come through, and we will see people that are coming through those programmes go into employment from those programmes.
Karen Chhour: Would the Minister be able to explain why annual social security and welfare spending, according to the Treasury, excluding super and the wage subsidy, has increased by $6.4 billion since Labour came into power, while at the same time unemployment has fallen to record lows and difficulty finding labour is at record highs?
Hon JAN TINETTI: I don’t have those figures in front of me at this time, and I know that the Minister would really welcome that question. If the member would put that in writing, she would be happy to answer that.
Karen Chhour: Why should New Zealanders have confidence in this Government’s ability to transition Kiwis away from long-term benefit dependency into work when, under their watch, 70,000 extra people are on the job seeker benefit and annual social security and welfare spending, excluding super and wage subsidy, has increased to $6.4 billion?
Hon JAN TINETTI: When the Minister took over as Minister for Social Development, she was shocked at the state of the front-line services. National had abandoned work-focused case management in favour of punitive and non-effective sanctions. Case managers were overloaded and unable to dedicate enough time to the early interventions required to get people into work. The strong growth in people who have been on a benefit longer than five years is an example of the failure of the previous Government. These people came on to benefits during the previous Government’s time at the wheel, and they did not get the early interventions required, that were failed by the previous Government. We inherited a shambles.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I tried to wait until the end of the answer, but it kept going on. You are aware and have rebuked members under Standing Order 390, “Content of questions”. I would point out that the exact Standing Order, Standing Order 396, applies to the content of replies and I suggest to you that many of the comments made by the Minister fall well outside that Standing Order.
Hon Chris Hipkins: Speaking to the point of order. I don’t have the exact number of the Speaker’s ruling to hand, but I’m sure you probably know it. There is a Speaker’s ruling that indicates that it is perfectly in order for a Minister to be asked about and to answer questions about the challenges they encountered when they became a Minister.
David Seymour: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker. On behalf of ACT—
SPEAKER: If the member takes his mask off, we might be able to hear him.
David Seymour: On behalf of ACT, we were very happy for the Minister to keep going.
SPEAKER: Well, I am happy to rule, and I won’t go to the specific previous Speakers’ rulings on the matter. I think if that had been a Government supplementary question designed to attack the Opposition, then I would have foreshortened the answer, because I think that would have been outside the spirit of the Standing Orders. But a general question, as this started around whether the public should have confidence in a particular Minister, from the Opposition, I think it’s perfectly acceptable for the Minister to outline why the public should have confidence in her.
Hon Member: That’s right, start again.
SPEAKER: No, no. I think notwithstanding all of that, I think we’ve probably had enough.
Karen Chhour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I would be quite keen to hear the rest of the Minister’s answer. May we please hear that?
SPEAKER: Well, I know, Ms McKee, that you’re not normally a naughty member of Parliament, but I had pretty clearly indicated that I thought that the question had been adequately answered and that we will move on to the next question.
Question No. 11—Pacific Peoples
11. ANAHILA KANONGATA‘A-SUISUIKI (Labour) to the Minister for Pacific Peoples: What recent announcement has the Government made about supporting Pacific communities in their transition to the COVID-19 Protection Framework?
Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): Yesterday, I announced that $10 million would be provided to support Pacific health providers and communities transition to the new COVID-19 Protection Framework. The Government recognises that there is a clear need to prepare new systems and healthcare approaches to protect and empower Pacific communities to lead and respond. The funding will also enable increased and more coordinated community engagement and education to enable greater reach into Pacific communities that the system struggles to engage with.
Anahila Kanongata‘a-Suisuiki: What support will be provided to Pacific health providers?
Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Our Pacific providers have proven time and time again that they are an essential part of the Government’s response to this outbreak for our Pacific communities. The providers are known and trusted by their communities and have the language skills and the cultural intelligence to be most effective. I’ve acknowledged them as the heroes of our front lines against COVID. Eight million dollars will be provided to Pacific health and disability providers to address capacity pressures, accelerate ongoing protection measures, and adapt their business models to respond to the additional responsibility of rising COVID-19 infections and supporting care in the community. This investment will also allow the continuation of targeted vaccination and testing activities for vaccine hesitant and hard-to-reach Pacific groups. The funding will help Pacific health providers to better support Pacific communities during the shift to the COVID-19 Protection Framework whilst ensuring that Pacific health inequities are not further exacerbated in the process.
Anahila Kanongata‘a-Suisuiki: How will the funding support Pacific community outreach with the transition to the COVID-19 Protection Framework?
Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Two million dollars of the funding announced will help maintain Pacific community outreach engagement by the Ministry for Pacific Peoples to underpin the whole-of-system transition to the COVID-19 Protection Framework. This will enable the continuation of community engagement and education, targeting groups such as Pacific churches, community-based groups, young people—autalavou—businesses, and community leaders, especially clusters with lower vaccination rates. The engagement will also help inform communities about the new settings that will apply to church services, funerals, large family gatherings, sporting and cultural events. Our aim is to keep everyone in Aotearoa safe and encourage our families to be well prepared for the global and national COVID environment. I also want to ensure that our providers and front-line workers can have the confidence to take a well-earned break in the Christmas holidays.
Question No. 12—Housing (Public Housing)
12. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): Is the Minister concerned about the Tenancy Tribunal’s warning that Kāinga Ora is being compromised by its own “sustaining tenancies” policy, and how much compensation has the tribunal ordered Kāinga Ora to pay due to breaches of their duty under section 45(1)(e) of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 to ensure that none of their tenants interfere with the “reasonable peace, comfort, or privacy” of other tenants?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing)): As the largest housing provider in the country, Kāinga Ora takes its obligations under the Residential Tenancies Act seriously. Those who require public housing can sometimes have complex issues in their lives that may lead to behaviour that is disruptive. That’s why the sustaining tenancies policy was initiated in 2017, to ensure that all practical steps are taken to address these issues and ensure everyone can live safe and secure in their home. When this does not occur, I expect Kāinga Ora to take all necessary actions to resolve these situations, and, as such, they have terminated 159 tenancies in the past year. It’s important to note that when the Tenancy Tribunal makes a ruling around matters of compensation or breaches, it does so on a case by case basis. I’m advised Kāinga Ora complies with this ruling and seeks to learn from these cases, however, any information on financial payments is kept on individual tenancy files and is not centrally located.
Nicola Willis: How does she reconcile her statement just now that Kāinga Ora has terminated 159 tenancies in the past year with answers to written questions she has provided to me that show they have evicted zero tenants in the past three years?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: The member is confused about evictions versus tenancy terminations. The past approach of evicting children out on to the street or into motels did not work. Relocations ensure that children remain housed and that the individuals concerned are moved into more appropriate housing.
Nicola Willis: When did she first learn that Kāinga Ora had been found by the Tenancy Tribunal to have failed its legal obligations to protect its tenants from being abused by their neighbours; and when she learned that information, how did she act?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Kāinga Ora appears before the Tenancy Tribunal in a number of instances. As I advised the House this week, Kāinga Ora has a number of tools in their tool box to ensure that they meet the obligations under the Act. Kāinga Ora does, and has, on 159 occasions, this past year, terminated tenancies where necessary. I just want to make it clear that Kāinga Ora discharge their obligations as required, when a ruling is made by the Tenancy Tribunal.
SPEAKER: Order! It was a very specific supplementary question with two parts. While the general issue was addressed, neither part of the supplementary question was addressed. Nicola Willis, I’ll ask you to ask it again.
Nicola Willis: When did she first learn that Kāinga Ora had been found by the Tenancy Tribunal to have failed its legal obligations to protect its tenants from being abused by their neighbours, and how did she react?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I have to say that the Tenancy Tribunal hears matters involving Kāinga Ora on a range of subjects. The member is not being specific enough about a specific issue. If she would like to put that in writing, we could pass that on to Kāinga Ora to respond. As I say, Kāinga Ora appears in front of the tribunal on a range of issues, and the member has failed to provide specificity in this case.
SPEAKER: No. I’m afraid that the supplementary question is in the context of the primary question. It’s not a general question about any old appearance for Kāinga Ora in front of the tribunal. If the Minister does not have the detail about when she was first informed of this, she should just say so, and that will address the question.
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I do not have the answer to that specific question.
Nicola Willis: Does she think it is acceptable that a solo mother and her children living in a Kāinga Ora property were terrorised for so long by their neighbours that they had to go to the Tenancy Tribunal to get the Government landlord to wake up to its responsibilities and compensate her accordingly?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I do find unacceptable is the current commentary that it’s OK to put families out on the street, including children. It’s never OK to make children homeless, and I hope that no member of this House supports those views.
Nicola Willis: Can the Minister confirm that I wrote to her outlining a number of cases at the Tenancy Tribunal where Kāinga Ora was found to have breached its legal obligations to its tenants, and can the Minister advise this House whether that letter was the first time that the Minister became aware that the public landlord was breaching the law with regard to its tenants?
Hon POTO WILLIAMS: To answer the first part of the question, yes.
Bills
COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill
Third Reading
Debate resumed.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Well, here we are on Wednesday afternoon, and the House is about to pass one of the most far-reaching and significant pieces of legislation that this Parliament will consider, and the House has had precisely 24 hours to look at it—24 hours for the first reading, the second reading, the committee of the whole House stage, and now the third reading. As Dr Dean Knight of Victoria University, that very fine law school, says, it is a constitutional disgrace. The Human Rights Commission has criticised it. The Council for Civil Liberties has criticised the speed with which this bill is being passed, and it reflects an arrogance of the highest order from this Government, that they think they can pass this legislation in just 24 hours without scrutiny. I put it to the Parliament that this is contemptuous of the Parliament. It is contemptuous of the people of New Zealand, and it is contemptuous of the rule of law.
The Government says in its own press releases that 40 percent of people working will potentially be covered by vaccine mandates as a result of this legislation—40 percent. That is hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. A bill that significant deserves scrutiny. We deserve to get the details right. This bill gives the Government enormous, broad, sweeping powers, in some ways never seen before, to create different categories of New Zealanders. The vaccinated will have different rights and freedoms compared to the unvaccinated. Now, there may well be a justification for some of those limits and for some of that differential treatment, but those are issues for Parliament to consider properly through a robust select committee process. This bill allows the Government to say that if you are an unvaccinated person in a red area of the country—because it also allows the traffic light framework, apparently—who wants to go and get a haircut in Auckland, you can’t. It says if you’re an unvaccinated person who wants to go and buy a beer and meet someone in a bar once the red system kicks in, you can’t.
Now, there is an argument as to whether or not that should be allowed, but the point is there should be a debate about that. We should have a thorough investigation of those issues. These are not issues that are open and shut, where the Government necessarily has it right. But what the Government is asking the Parliament to do is just to assume that the Government does have all the answers and that the framework is correct, and that everything they want to do is going to be fine, and, actually, we don’t necessarily agree on this side of the House.
So I want to lay on the record of the House exactly what has happened. We got this bill on Monday night—Monday night. It’s now Wednesday. It was introduced on Tuesday and put through its first and second reading. There was no select committee process. There is no regulatory impact statement on this bill. The departmental disclosure statement is cursory at best. If you read through it, there’s no detail—absolutely no detail. It’s basically the general policy statement in the explanatory note of the bill, and that’s it. It’s very cursory. The section 7 legal advice—there’s no section 7 report but the legal advice to the Attorney-General explicitly says, at paragraph 2, “This advice has been prepared in relation to the latest version … . The advice has been prepared in an extremely short timeframe due to late receipt of the Bill that was not in compliance with Cabinet Office Guidance.”—that’s the officials themselves saying to the Attorney-General that the bill was done in a rushed way.
We know that there was no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis done before the framework was considered by Cabinet, and we learnt yesterday that the policy papers, the underlying policy rationale, the Cabinet papers and the policy advice to the Minister will be made public but not until January 2022. So we are being asked by the Government to take on trust what they are doing and that it’s based on good, sound public policy advice from the officials. We are being asked to take it on trust. And the thing is, the Government had time to get this right. They did—COVID has been in New Zealand since August and we are now in late November, and the reality is the Government did not have a back-up plan in place if elimination failed, and now we are bearing the consequences.
There was plenty of time to put this out for an exposure draft, for example—to publish the details so people could get their heads around it. And to make matters worse, there will be no post-enactment review of this legislation. I moved during the committee of the whole House stage a very sensible amendment. I said, OK, it’s being passed through, and there’s not a lot we can do about that because we don’t have the numbers, but how about the Health Committee conducts a post-enactment review of the legislation? We could do that really quickly. We’re a pretty hard-working committee. We’ve done it before, as Michael Woodhouse says. Let’s do a post-enactment review. Let’s get the officials in, let’s get the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission in and let’s go through it with a fine-tooth comb—just make sure we’ve got the details right. The Government voted against it. So within 24 hours this bill’s been introduced and it’s going to be law.
Let me deal with a couple of substantive pieces in relation to the bill. The first is in relation to a theme I’ve already covered, which is the power this hands to the Government. I think there is real legal doubt about whether or not the bill actually introduces the power for traffic lights for various regions, because if you read the bill, there is no mention of traffic lights in the bill. And there’s a reason why it’s not called the “COVID-19 Response Traffic Light System or Framework Legislation Bill”. There is no mention of it, and so that is going to be something we’re going to have to have a look at. And again, if we had a select committee stage, we could have gone through and examined that, but we can’t.
On the issue of where and when vaccination certificates will be accepted and in relation to the corollary that applies to people who have to be vaccinated to work in those industries, it is not clear to me from reading the legislation that that is authorised by the bill. So I think there is a real, to use the legal parlance, vires issue here as to whether or not the Government is actually going to have the power that it thinks it’s going to have once the bill passes. Now, that will no doubt be tested by the court, and if I’m right and the Government’s wrong, we’re going to have to come back and legislate again—again—an issue that could have been sorted out.
I think there are real issues of legality here. Justice Cooke, when we discussion around this during the committee of the whole House, made it clear in relation to the mandates that already exist for border workers, that the Government has to get the empowering provisions right. The Government cannot just point to broad sweeping powers and say, “Oh, well, Parliament said we can do that, therefore we can.” Actually, Parliament has to authorise the Government to act in accordance with properly constructed provisions of legislation. That’s the whole point of Justice Cooke’s various comments in that specific case before the High Court. So I really worry that this bill doesn’t actually do what the Government thinks it does.
The final point I want to make is a very important point, and it is that I really worry about the divides that will appear in this country. My inbox is full of people emailing me, telling me that vaccines don’t work, that they don’t like the idea of vaccine mandates, that they don’t like the idea of using vaccine certificates, and that they don’t like the idea of division, to use a vernacular phrase. They don’t like division. If there was one thing a Government could do to solidify and entrench those divisions, it would be this bill. This is not a bill that has been well-thought-through and well ventilated and where we’ve had an argument and a discussion about mandates. It’s not a bill that makes the case for vaccine certificates and carefully calibrates the intrusion on the right not to have medical treatment, and it’s not a bill that carefully calibrates the various rights about discrimination. It’s not a bill that does that. Those are real, legitimate, critical issues, as the legal advice in the section 7 report makes clear.
This bill allows the Government to intrude on all sorts of rights, and it’s not an argument that those rights are not justified; it’s an argument that we have to have a discussion about it. I tell you what happens when you don’t have a discussion about it. It entrenches that division. To do something in a secretive way like this, in a non-transparent way, to ram it through without a select committee process and without any post-enactment scrutiny sends the message to the anti-vaxxers out there and those concerned about mandates and those concerned about certificates that they do have something to fear, that there is something to hide—because, after all, if there wasn’t something to hide, why wouldn’t the Government just do the normal proper process.
This bill will backfire on the Government, not help the Government, and it is wrong in principle. We oppose.
Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. So, looking back to when we entered alert level 4 for the first time, last year, we had very limited tools in the tool box to protect us against COVID-19, and our alert levels were the main way that we did protect ourselves. But what’s happened since then is we’ve got 91 percent of eligible New Zealanders having now had their first dose of vaccine, and 84 are fully vaccinated. So we can start to take advantage of the protections that confers. But I think, for me and for many of us that are reading what has been happening around the world, reading the stories online is quite distressing, but what, to me, it says is that, while vaccination is important, we’re also going to need other measures if we’re going to prevent our hospital systems getting overwhelmed. So what this bill does is provide those tools that can move into the new COVID protection framework.
I think, as we’ve already heard from some of the debate, while what this bill does is allow the issuing of COVID-19 vaccination certificates so that people can enter into particular businesses or events, it also makes sure that such proof of vaccination is not required for some of those essential services like supermarkets, like healthcare facilities, like pharmacies, and like Work and Income services—so, basically, making sure we get that balance right. And it also makes sure that businesses have the tools they need to assess the risk of COVID-19 to themselves, their business, their customers. And, basically, what it means is they can then weigh up whether they should require their workers to be vaccinated. So this is a very, very significant bill that will underpin the new COVID protection framework, and I commend this bill to the House.
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. What a constitutional disgrace this piece of legislation is—and those aren’t my words; those are the words of none other than Dr Dean Knight from Victoria University. A constitutional disgrace is how he has labelled this piece of legislation: produced under urgency, the Government using its absolute majority in this House to pass it; a piece of legislation that has wide-ranging ramifications for every single citizen in this nation; passed without the scrutiny of select committee; passed without the input of stakeholders, of people who have an interest, of experts who would like to make a contribution to making this piece of legislation better than the shambolic piece that it is; and a piece of legislation that almost certainly will have to be, sooner or later—and probably sooner—revisited by this House because of its sloppiness.
This piece of legislation creates the so-called traffic light system. It’s a system that very few New Zealanders understand, that very few New Zealanders can get their head around, and that very few New Zealanders create any kind of sense of direction on from the Government that they have elected to lead them and guide them. It was the case some months ago, probably a year ago, that New Zealanders did understand what the objectives of this Government were in relation to the COVID pandemic, but, actually, this Government has lost the room. They’ve lost the nation, and they’ve lost the sense of direction and focus and clarity of communication that New Zealanders are seeking and looking for as we go into the summer and Christmas period.
So, with them having lost the room, they are now floundering about passing under urgency legislation that was presented to the Opposition parties only 48 hours ago and then debated through the House last night and then through this morning’s stages at breakneck speed, with Government Ministers and Government MPs taking only very short calls, not effectively answering the very good and fulsome questions that were being put to them by members of the Opposition. That is a constitutional disgrace, as Dr Dean Knight says.
I want to focus mostly in my contribution on the impacts for business, because it’s been business that up and down the countryside has actually taken the biggest hit and had the biggest impact in terms of their day-to-day operations during this entire COVID pandemic episode. All through the last 18 months or so, the Government has taken the view that business has an infinite capacity to pay, an infinite capacity to absorb, and an infinite capacity to do the Government’s bidding in the hard graft and hard work at the coalface that the Government itself pretends they don’t need to do.
So it once again is going to fall to businesses in terms of how they manage non-vaccinated employees. It’s going to be business who have to make those decisions, and those decisions are tough decisions for any business to make. The vast majority of people in the country—91 percent, we hear—have had at least one vaccination. By definition, the number of people that are going to be impacted by the provisions in this bill, that create a tool kit for a streamlined process for employers to make a decision about whether an employee should ultimately be exited from employment in their business, is going to be relatively small in number, but those people have had ample opportunity to get vaccinated. On this side of the House, we have been encouraging them from day one to get vaccinated—we still do. We hope that those people will take the opportunity to get vaccinated and that the provisions of this bill, in terms of employers being able to exit staff from businesses, won’t need to be put in place. But the grim reality is that some of those people have come to very firm, determined views about their vaccination status, and many of them are not for turning. They will simply put at jeopardy their employment. In some cases, they’ve been employed for many, many years, and they’re prepared to risk that and sacrifice it to stand on their principles of choice. No Government is going to prevent them from doing that.
But with choice comes responsibility and consequence, and one of the consequences that this bill establishes is that there is a potential—and there always has been—that a non-vaccinated employee can ultimately be terminated from the employment with their employer. So it’s back to business that actually has to make that call, the call about where the line is between the health and safety and wellbeing of other employees in their business versus the health and safety and wellbeing of a non-vaccinated employee in their business, and how that relates to their customers, their suppliers and their contracts, and the people that they do business with.
On this side of the House, we trust business to make those decisions. We trust business to make a sensible, prudent decision, as difficult as it may be. But to give them such a short time to prepare themselves is absolutely unconscionable by this Government. The Government has had at least nine months to be preparing for this piece of legislation. From the minute that the vaccination programme, albeit late and slow, was commenced in New Zealand, the Government should’ve been talking and thinking and doing the hard work on this. Had they been doing that? Absolutely no. Had they been doing it, this piece of legislation would not have needed to be introduced under urgency without select committee scrutiny and without input from submitters. But, no, the Government seemed so full of itself that they were happy to rest on their laurels, hoping that managed isolation and quarantine would keep Delta out of New Zealand and failing to realise that, sooner or later, Delta would arrive. Well, it’s here now, and the fact is that this piece of legislation is a hallmark of their lack of preparedness, their lack of foresight, and their lack of work in preparing New Zealand and our legislative and regulatory regime for it.
Just today, we’ve had a situation in the Employment Court where an employer who had been stood down, in fact exited from employment at Auckland international airport some months ago—well, today the Employment Court has decided that that employee needs to be reinstated on paid leave for an indeterminate period of time whilst further discussions and negotiations are completed between the employee and the Auckland international airport. That goes to the very problem that this bill is failing to address, and that is that this is going to be an employment lawyer’s gravy train. The only people who will really benefit out of this piece of legislation will be the employment lawyers, who are going to have an absolute field day. If there is a situation where Auckland international airport can’t make stick the decision that they had made some months ago, then what hope is there that even when this piece of legislation becomes effective, and that’s not going to probably be for some time yet—what will it actually mean if employers can’t rely on the judgments they make and litigation is going to continue? We know that litigation’s going to continue because this bill specifically provides for an option for personal grievance cases to continue to be heard.
Now, we’ve heard the Minister say, “Oh, well, that’s about balancing rights.”, but we heard nothing about the balancing of rights of the business owner, the operator, or the small-business person who has already had to endure and suffer so much over the last 18 months. This is a Government that doesn’t seem to care about business and doesn’t seem to care about the implications for business at all.
We on this side of the House have taken the view that, actually, if a business goes through a formal health and safety risk assessment process, or if they use the tool that this piece of legislation establishes, or if they use another formal process, which they are entitled to and can do, then once that has occurred, that should be the end of it and the business should not have to suffer the further prospect of a sword of Damocles hanging above their head, potentially with long, drawn-out, expensive, draining litigation going backwards and forwards from an employee who has decided for whatever reason, not to be vaccinated and is determined to see it through to the nth degree in terms of stating their case, making their position well known, and, frankly, making it as difficult and hard and complicated and expensive for an employer as is humanly possible. Those will be relatively few in case, but a number of businesses will have to confront that.
So, on this side of the House, we do trust business. We think that business should be able to make those decisions without the prospects of being further dragged through the employment courts or, indeed, into higher jurisdictions once they are challenged on appeal. This is bad law, it’s bad process, and, actually, I think Dr Dean Knight is completely right, as are other commentators when they call this a constitutional disgrace. They are exactly on the money.
Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the chance to say a few words on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill—it kind of says it, what’s written on the tin. This bill assists with the implementation of the protection framework. The amendments provide the legal framework that affords us the chance to move into the next phase of our COVID-19 response; one that is less restrictive, because it is based on recognising the protection that vaccination has now given most people. It allows for vaccine certificates to be used. It allows for businesses who want to be able to use vaccination certificates to ensure that their staff are, in fact, vaccinated. As we heard in the committee stage, in dealing with the global pandemic, you’re often dealing with a situation that can change quickly and you need to be able to change and adapt; so, by having reasonably broad empowering provisions, this bill accounts for that and creates the flexibility that’s required. It’s a pragmatic bill about vaccinations, it’s the next logical step, and I commend this bill to the House.
Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora, e te Māngai. On behalf of the Greens, I rise in support of this bill in its final reading. We’ve consistently stood by the Government in its strong health response to the pandemic, even as we have raised our concerns about how the detail of some strategies, and especially the upcoming traffic light system, will work, just because of the potential impact on Māori, regional, and rural communities with lower vaccination rates. We have no doubts that the Government and its agencies are working very, very hard on this; so are our iwi, Pasifika, health, disability, and community providers on the ground. They need every resource we can throw at them. We recognise there are many moving parts in addressing COVID. We still see that it’s less of a waltz and more of an awkward robot.
We have supported agency in this case because it is urgent, but we are very clear that this speed is necessary because the Government set arbitrary dates for opening the Auckland borders based on people travelling for Christmas, not based on equity, which would have seen Māori and Pasifika vaccination rates equal with our tauiwi counterparts, not based on the traffic light system being effectively trialled for national adoption, and not at all based on the case numbers in Auckland coming down. I have sympathy for my colleague Nicola Grigg, who spoke eloquently this morning about safely opening up Te Waipounamu, the South Island. It’s another three weeks, but come 15 December, anyone travelling south by plane or ferry will be required to present their brand new vaccination certificate or pass, and this law will provide the rules for them to do that. We absolutely support that.
As much as we support reuniting whānau across the country, we are worried about all the people who will be able to travel by car throughout the North Island. Checking vaccine passes can work really well one on one, or where there’s security on the door. Spot-checking for vaccine passes will not be sufficient for the deluge of people who may or may not be vaccinated coming to a low vaccination area near you. It will not be sufficient for immunocompromised people, who will, effectively, go into a self-imposed level 3 or 4 to stay safe until summer is over. I note that he identified that no members had raised an inquiry of the bill at any of the relevant select committees. For the record, I did raise this in my speech in the second reading last night and this afternoon at our truncated Health Committee. I’ve just been waiting for the end of our other agenda items.
This bill will provide clarity on where people can and cannot go depending on their vaccination status. It will allow people to some places if they meet those rules, and it will require some services to permit people in regardless of their status. We welcome this clarity because people are really, really confused. We hope this framework will be flexible enough to cover the changes that will inevitably come. We hope it will address how especially young staff will be supported when they have to face belligerent people who are not happy they’ve been refused entry or service. As much as we want people to be vaccinated to protect all of us, the Greens do not support forced vaccinations. We do not want to see a two-tier summer because some people cannot and will not get vaccinated. We hope that on certain occasions, such as weddings especially, and tangi, people are able to put sensible precautions in place to allow people who are not vaccinated to celebrate the occasion or mourn with their whānau.
The Greens support the development of the workplace assessment tool to make decision making better for our employers and our business people. We felt that there wasn’t enough emphasis on whether testing would be available in that space, so we did ask and had that confirmed that it will just help businesses decide what’s going to be feasible in their situation. So we hope that that good support will be available for them as they’re going through and using that tool. We also support very solid privacy measures to make sure all this new health data that employers will be required to record and report on will be safely held.
So the Greens believe everyone should have fair and equal access to these vaccine passes. We’re concerned some people will struggle with obtaining it. I will reiterate what I’ve said, which is that approximately half a million New Zealanders do not have regular access to the internet: elderly people, people with learning difficulties or other types of disabilities, people for whom English is a second language, including recent migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. This also affects people without a suitable ID and takatāpui, trans, intersex, and non-binary people whose name or gender marker do not match what is on their National Health Index record.
In conclusion, we agree with requirements that keep our people safe. We support a collective public health approach, and this is one piece of it. Nō reira, we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. I welcome the Speaker’s invitation to have a looser than normal debate on the third reading of this bill. He’s expressed his displeasure with the way that the Government has rushed it through Parliament with no due process whatsoever—no consultation, no regulatory impact statement, no proper New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis, nothing.
Did we think that maybe the Minister would come down to the House with some humility and say, “I’m here to listen and work with other members in order to get the best bill possible in the tight time frame we’ve given ourselves.”? Of course he didn’t; he stood up and used most of his speeches on the first and second readings to politically attack another political party, mainly the National Party. And what about the Labour backbench? Those Labour members of Parliament, some of them very intelligent people who are actually here on the same salary as everyone else in the Parliament, were they there to question the Government, to question the legislation? No. Were they there to give support and say why they think it is good legislation? No. They gave two-minute speeches of platitudes at best—and, recently, only one minute. Well, I kind miss the two minutes because, as Bret and Jemaine used to say, “Two minutes in heaven is at least better than one minute in heaven.”!
But this bill, which is being called a constitutional outrage by legal experts, that has wiped out so much of the credibility of democracy and due process in New Zealand, is actually part of a pattern. If we think about the way that this Government has managed the pandemic, let’s go back to last February or last March. New Zealand was the 63rd country to have a case of COVID-19. New Zealand had more natural advantages in facing a viral pandemic than any other country. And we know that’s true because I’ve asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response to name a country that was more isolated, had a more spread-out population, had a younger population, was wealthier, had a more cohesive population that was prepared to act together to beat a virus. He couldn’t name one country that had more natural advantages than New Zealand. That’s the backdrop that this Government went into COVID-19 with—and add to that record low interest rates and more borrowing of money and taxpayer stimulus of the economy than any other OECD economy but one, being the United States, and ain’t they in some fiscal and monetary trouble right now.
That’s the background of a country that was lucky and was prepared to borrow more and use low interest rates more than any other. And even then, we didn’t have a plan, because back in March when we went into lockdown, the rhetoric of the Prime Minister was “Let’s flatten the curve.” She didn’t think we could achieve elimination. It was only several weeks into the lockdown they thought, “Oh, if we keep going, we might get to zero cases.” And once they did it, stumbled upon success, did they think “That was lucky. We should start preparing to safely reconnect with the rest of the world.”, as people like, say, Helen Clark—we’ll come back to her—was suggesting; the way that many medical experts and public health experts were suggesting we might need to do? No, they were not. Instead, the Prime Minister did a little dance and spent the summer that we had to prepare, instead of mending the roof, celebrating and doing victory laps and thinking, “If we’re successful, it must be all due to us.” Not luck, not debt, not cheap money, not isolation—it wasn’t any of those things! It wasn’t the efforts of a cohesive population of New Zealanders; it was all them! And they thought it was so easy and they were so good that they didn’t do anything.
If you doubt that, let me give you an example of what I mean. I asked Chris Hipkins back in July, “Minister, have you done anything? Can you tell us anything that this Government’s done to prepare for Delta? Because, you know, it’s out around the world. It’s just wreaked havoc in India.”—as it had at that time—“What sort of preparations has this Government done to prepare for Delta?”, and he couldn’t name one. In fact, when the Delta outbreak occurred in Auckland, they had to shut down the vaccination centres because they hadn’t considered the possibility that they might have to vaccinate people for COVID-19 while COVID-19 was out and about. They literally had no plan B. They thought they were going to hit a home run, isolate the country, Delta would never break through managed isolation and quarantine, vaccination would give population immunity, and they would open up sometime around now like nothing had happened.
And now it has all gone completely wrong and they don’t have a clue what to do. You can feel the panic. They’re making it up as they go, and they are making Kiwis pay the cost. They are making our constitutional arrangements pay the cost. They’re ramming stuff through Parliament in a way that even the Speaker is admonishing them, in an extraordinary way that I’ve never seen in the seven years that I’ve been in this Parliament. And what does the Labour backbench have to say about that? Crickets, nothing, nada—can’t hear a word from them.
Actually, their handling of COVID is nothing new in the context of this Labour Government. Remember when this Government was going to bring kindness? This Government was elected because “Climate change is my generation’s nuclear-free moment.” This Government was going to fix the housing crisis. At one point, Stuart Nash went on ZB one morning and said they had fixed the housing crisis! That was only six months ago. Everything this Government has promised to do they have profoundly failed at and somehow managed to paper over the cracks.
Take “my generation’s nuclear-free moment”. Well, what has happened to New Zealand’s emissions under this Government? They’ve gone up. And have they confronted their failure? No, they’ve gone off to Glasgow and set an even more ambitious target that they also will fail to reach in order to distract failing at the last one. What has happened with housing? Do we remember KiwiBuild? It’s almost unfair to talk about KiwiBuild in the context of this Government, because it’s become unfair.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to interrupt the member. I know the Speaker made a ruling at the beginning of this debate, but I’ve listened very carefully to the member. He should really talk about the bill. Housing, all of these other matters, important as they are—climate change and all the rest—he should actually speak about the bill.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, the thing is they are also failings of this Government, and what a time to talk about them. And the other thing this Government has done, just like this bill—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I’m having another ruling on that one. The member knows very well he should not be giving a narrative or commentary on the ruling, just get on with his speech.
DAVID SEYMOUR: This bill has been described as a constitutional outrage. You might remember, in pursuit of climate change being “my generation’s nuclear moment”, the ban on oil and gas exploration, the kind of legislation that is eroding the constitutional underpinnings and the faith that people around the world have in this Government and in this country’s institutions. Throughout this COVID pandemic, we’ve had legislation, before this bill was rushed through, where we legislated in this House—or at least those guys voted for it—that a private business can have their property taken away from them; that we can have contracts for commercial rent that were made when the law said one thing—now the legal backdrop for those laws is different and you’ve actually got retrospective legislation.
This Government is constantly eroding the capital that they have inherited for New Zealand because they simply don’t know how to plan ahead; they simply don’t know what to do. And New Zealanders up and down the country are at a loss to explain this phenomenon. How can governance that is so practically inept, that fails at everything it sets out to do, fails at COVID, fails at housing, fails at reducing emissions, fails at controlling the cost of living, which is now ramping up for every New Zealander—people ask, “How is it possible that this Government can carry on?” And the truth is that we are witnessing a very special phenomenon, not only in New Zealand politics but in world politics. What we are witnessing is the world’s first “Instagram Prime Minister”. The American people have until recently suffered the world’s first “Twitter President”, and that leader and our leader right now actually have more in common than people realise. The “Trump of the South Pacific” is dividing people with her rhetoric, separating people, and dividing not only people but dividing wealth as well, instead of creating the conditions to unite New Zealanders behind good ideas to create a wealthier, more cohesive, and more prosperous country, exactly like our friends in the United States.
Well, the good news is that the polls aren’t usually wrong, despite what some people say. People are wising up. They are seeing that, after four years of promising, this Government simply can’t deliver. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but this Government cannot fool all of the people all of the time. I say today is a turning point when people are seeing it more and more. And you mark my words: this Government has two years to go if they’re lucky. Change is on the way. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Mr Speaker. That was interesting! I would just like to thank Mr Seymour for his comments around Dr Tracey McLellan’s minute of heaven. I think that one minute of relevant conversation at this point would have been very welcome.
I’m rising to speak to the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill at its third reading, and I’m delighted to do so, because this bill allows us to move forward with clarity together. Because we are together: 92 percent of eligible New Zealanders have received their first dose of the COVID vaccine, which is an extraordinary sign of unity that I think we should celebrate. One million people have accessed their vaccine pass, which is, again, another sign of efficiency and unity. And I would just speak to my colleague Dr Elizabeth Kerekere in just encouraging people who are struggling to access their pass to call the 0800 number—which is 0800 222 478—for support if they need it.
So, with that, I would like to commend this bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Simeon Brown, five minutes.
SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in opposition to this bill, the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, alongside my National Party colleagues. I stand in opposition because this piece of legislation is not needed for New Zealand as we come out of this COVID-19 lockdown. This piece of legislation is not going to unite New Zealand in our fight against COVID-19. This legislation is going to confuse New Zealanders, it’s going to cause chaos, and it’s going to divide New Zealanders rather than bring us together.
New Zealanders have all played their part in the fight against COVID-19. We’ve stayed home, we’ve shut our businesses, we haven’t gone to school, we have got our tests—we’ve done all of the things which this Government has done. We’ve got vaccinated. We’ve done everything this Government has asked us to do, but now we have come to a point where we are beset with a piece of legislation which is not about saying, “New Zealanders, you have played your part, and now it’s time for the Government to step back and give you back control of your life.” It’s about saying, “We’re going to impose a new set of restrictions, a new set of rules, and to continue to impose and impinge on your freedoms in a significant and substantial way.”
Instead of debating these points and this piece of legislation, this cowardly Government has not even put it out to a select committee. They’re dictating to New Zealanders rather than debating this legislation through a select committee and having the guts, and having the braveness of their convictions, to actually let the public have their say. Instead, we’re having announcements and then we’re having legislation rammed through this Parliament in less than 24 hours, without New Zealanders being able to have their say around what it’s going to do. Instead of giving New Zealanders the tools to make their own decisions around their own health, they are forcing these decisions upon New Zealand by giving themselves massive empowering provisions under this piece of legislation, which will change New Zealanders’ way of life for many, many months, if not years, to come.
We’ve had the divisive language from the Prime Minister, saying, “You can’t get a haircut if you haven’t been vaccinated.” We’ve got the restrictions around funerals and weddings and places of worship, which are highly restrictive, which continue to confuse, cause chaos, and divide New Zealanders. It causes division in our community rather than bringing New Zealanders together. This piece of legislation should be about giving New Zealanders the tools they need to make their own decisions. It should be giving New Zealanders the tools and businesses the tools to say, “If you want to do this with a certificate process, that’s your choice, but the Government is not going to dictate to you and your business how you should operate and what rules and what things you should be doing.” It should be about ensuring that New Zealanders have the vaccinations, the boosters, the rapid antigen testing, the ability to get the therapies if they get sick—those are the things this Government should be doing.
The Government is spending all of its time trying to control and dictate rather than giving the tools to New Zealanders as to how they should be doing. They should be making sure we have the ICU beds. The number of ICU beds in Counties Manukau, where I am from, has gone up by one—one additional bed—since the pandemic started last year. What has this Government been doing in the last 18 months if they can’t even grow the number of ICU beds in Counties Manukau by more than one? That’s an absolute failure, and that is until we even get to the point around human rights considerations, which this Government didn’t even consider when announcing this policy and which it only got advice on yesterday morning, before the legislation came to Parliament in the afternoon.
And that advice was very clear: this advice has been prepared in an extraordinarily short time frame due to the late receipt of a bill that was not in compliance with Cabinet Office guidelines. And it impacts on so many rights and freedoms: the right to refuse to undergo medical treatment, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom from discrimination, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty—all of these substantial rights, and the Government didn’t care until yesterday morning. That is an absolute constitutional outrage, which I think New Zealanders will not look upon lightly.
We live in a free and democratic society. We live in a country where New Zealanders should be debating these issues, not having them dictated to us. And this Government has spent the last 18 months sitting on their laurels rather than actually being prepared for this eventuality. Rather than debating these issues, they are dictating them, and New Zealanders will not look upon this lightly. The National Party does not support this legislation. It will cause chaos, confusion, and division. We do not commend it to the House.
DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā koe e te Pīka—thank you. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak to the final reading of the COVID19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. As we already outlined last night, just in case you couldn’t hear over Minister Kelvin Davis’ yelling, Te Paati Māori will not be supporting this bill, and our reasons are simple: Te Paati Māori could never support legislation that attacks our mana motuhake through imposing mandates on tangata whenua. We would never support legislation that sidelines Māori leadership in times of crisis, that tramples on our tikanga tangihanga processes, that lumps Māori in with everyone else, leaving us behind, or that intends to enact warrantless searches of our marae. This legislation does not move us forward. It takes tangata whenua back to an era that divided and negatively profiled us.
I refer to the Crown’s convenient amnesia of the history here in Aotearoa. It was only a hundred years ago that we, as tangata whenua, were officially on the brink of extinction, marginalised on the outskirts. To feather the dying pillow of the Māori race then, Government policy framed it to help us die quietly, easing the politicians’ conscience. We were being pushed to the brink of extinction because of disease: the common cold. This was my grandparents’ generation. During my parents’ generation, Māori had to sit on the floor in Māori theatres and were not allowed to see the same hairdressers as Pākehā, and now, today, three generations later, for my mokopuna, we find ourselves similar as their tūpuna were. Rather than feather the pillow this time, though, the Government has determined to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, knowing health experts warned that something designed for an individual could never fit a collective indigenous people such as tangata whenua, and that is where this Government and this legislation have failed Māori and where this has left us.
As of yesterday, Māori make up the highest number of COVID cases for the 50th consecutive day. We make up the highest number of cases in Aotearoa, surpassing the 3,000 mark. Six Māori have now died from COVID-19. Three of these were men between the ages of 40 and 50. Māori are 3.7 times more likely to catch Delta, 2.3 times more likely to suffer severe sickness and be hospitalised, and 3.1 times more likely to die from Delta. Our health experts, whose advice this Government has consistently ignored, are telling us that we will have 6,400 Māori cases by Christmas. You have willingly unleashed this virus into our communities, knowing that Māori are 20 percent behind the general population, and hearing the heed of our leaders in Tai Tokerau and Tai Rāwhiti to not visit our regions that have low vaccination rates. When one of our foremost public health experts, Dr Rawiri Jansen, left the Government’s pandemic advisory group in April, it was symbolic of what was to come—tangata whenua choosing to opt out of a response programme that sidelines our rangatiratanga, that ignores our needs, and that does not acknowledge our mana motuhake.
This Government has let tangata whenua face the prospect of losing their livelihoods over mandates. We must show aroha to those of our people who don’t trust a public health system that has never turned up in their neighbourhood and that they have suffered from because of the systemic racism that saw this very Government establish a Māori health authority, because, as we have illustrated, these seeds of mistrust were sown generations ago. The trust has not been rebuilt since. When you leave tangata whenua out of the equation, you leave us behind. I’ve been on the front line and heard whānau mistrust of your approach, their mistrust of the public health system that has never ventured into their world but is telling them now what to do. I’ve also seen the opportunities communities and iwi are owning, which you have not included in your traffic light system. How can our people be at the traffic lights when they’re still caught up in the mess of the roadworks you had left when you decided that 70 percent of our population did not matter in your vaccination programme?
This bill is cruel. It will never gain Te Paati Māori support. You have forgotten your tangata whenua. You have forgotten to honour Te Tiriti. Nō reira, e te whānau, kia haumaru te noho, tēnā tātou katoa.
[Therefore, family, stay safe, greetings one and all.]
Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Fa‘afetai lava, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this third reading of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill.
This bill will help to reopen safely for our whānau and vulnerable communities. Again, I want to highlight why we are in this position, and that’s because of a successful vaccination campaign. Specifically looking at where I’m from, in Counties Manukau, 92 percent having their first doses, and also 85 percent having their second doses. So I just want to say a huge thankyou for all the mahi from all our health providers, our nurses, our social workers—all the wraparound services—in order to help that rate go up.
I always want to look at freedoms. I know everyone wants those freedoms to come about, and I know for sure that my electorate of Takanini is also looking forward to those greater freedoms. But we must do it with safety in mind, especially when we look to our vulnerable communities. That’s why I support this bill to the House. Thank you.
SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I rise on behalf of National, and as the member of Parliament for North Shore, on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, third reading. National opposes this bill. I want to recognise Chris Bishop, the Hon Scott Simpson, and Simeon Brown, and all the members on this side of the House for their valiant effort, I think, in terms of articulating to this Government what a shambles of a process this has been in terms of that. I think we will get into a little bit of the detail in terms of the process that we have been through to get to this point, but I say, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and today and last night are examples that are completely against that principle.
This is a bill that has been rushed through without due or proper consultation. “Constitutional disgrace” is how it’s being described from commentators outside of this party. Multiple and major issues are within this legislation, and this is being passed through with that sense of urgency, without the right level of consultation and engagement from the many stakeholders around this country that could have inputted, could have added value, and could have made this better.
This bill is being described as complex by the Minister, but also, in the same breath, articulated that it provides greater clarity. Well, I’m sorry, those two things don’t go in the same. The reality is that a bill that is being seen by many New Zealanders at the moment as something that is very complex is exactly the wrong thing that we need right at this critical point. Auckland has been in lockdown for 99 days, and as an Auckland MP representing my community—and I recognise the other MPs here around the country—it has been a significant burden on them. This bill will introduce a traffic light system which will bring further pain to those people because of a lack of certainty and lack of direction.
This bill impacts every single Kiwi in this country. It has implications on their rights, and we have been through a process that does not allow them due consideration to input into that process, and that is a disgrace. We have heard that there has been no regulatory impact statement, no impact analysis undertaken in terms of costs and benefits and implications around that. We’ve discussed the implications around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act this morning, and we heard some feedback during the committee stage in terms of that, but I don’t think it went at all far enough in terms of providing any comfort around the issues and the complexities that this bill has. And I want to point out Christopher Penk, who raised some significant issues around the court system through that committee stage. I think that, as a small example, highlights the multitude of issues in what is a bucket with multiple holes that is leaking across the place.
The human rights commissioner was quoted, and it has been raised multiple times, in terms of having grave concerns. I mean, those are not light words. They are not sort of, you know, “It’s OK. I have a few issues.” Grave concerns. And that is because of the urgency with which this bill is being pushed through and the implications, most importantly, on the rights of New Zealanders—rights that this House should do everything in our power to protect. We have failed New Zealanders in terms of protecting their rights, because this bill has been rushed through this House without due consultation.
The second aspect of this bill that I want to cover is the fact that this is unnecessary legislation. I covered this in terms of the words that we spoke through in the second reading and during the committee stage, but it sets a framework for a traffic light system that is not necessary. I referred to National’s plan that we articulated a couple of months ago—detailed plan and considerations around the actions that this country should have taken in order to avoid being in the positions that we are faced with today. A system that is not necessary—we have articulated that, at 85 percent vaccination level or 1 December, New Zealand should be in a position to begin to open up, but what we’ve seen from the other side of the House is a flip-flopping in terms of where we are around that position. This bill does nothing in order to provide any level of confidence that they have a plan, that they have any idea in terms of what is coming forward.
That is the single-biggest issue that businesses within my electorate of the North Shore are crying out for—they’re crying out for certainty. It is not a complex thing to do—providing guidance, providing an indication of what that future looks like. They are asking for something very simple; they are asking for certainty in terms of what their future looks like. Why are they asking for that, in terms of that certainty? Because they are running out of cash, and for many of the businesses in my community, they have run out of cash. This bill impacts on all of those business owners. I want to just put a little reflection in terms of that.
I also want to acknowledge some of the comments made by my colleague and year group member Nicola Grigg in terms of the contribution around other places outside of Auckland. She referred to the impacts in Christchurch and her home electorate of Selwyn. I think that just, again, reinforced the fact of the wide level of implication of this specific bill on the members of our communities across this country. It is not just Auckland that is impacted by this Government’s lack of plan and lack of certainty; it is everyone across this country. The real disappointment is that, while COVID-19 is a complex area to manage, it’s difficult to predict and difficult to control—I acknowledge that. We all acknowledge that. No one is arguing. But this bill fails to deal with those complexities. It tries to be specific in areas where we should be able to stand back and say, “Actually, you know what? Businesses have the capability, experience, foresight, and attitude to make their own way in terms of the future and be able to cut their own path.” We are not trusting Kiwis, and that’s why this bill, again, has failed.
We are in this position with this legislation because this Government has been complacent. They have failed to take the action at the time in which it was required—months ago. I’ve articulated we were planning around two months ago, nearly, that we had articulated recommendations. We are still waiting for actions. We seem to be myopically focused on vaccination, but we’re not even getting moving around the treatment aspects that are there, and the other public health considerations. There are three elements of managing COVID, and we are still focused squarely on vaccination. Well, I can give you a prediction in terms of this bill. In the beginning part of next year, we won’t be talking about vaccination anymore. We’ll be talking about why we have not ordered those COVID treatment drugs and why they are not in the country now, and why they’re not being prescribed to those 2,000 to 3,000 Aucklanders who are in self-isolation right now with COVID-19. Why have they not got access to that medication to treat their illnesses? That is a failure by this Government, and it is a failure that we will reflect on in the early part of next year and say, “That was another example of where this Government was asleep at the wheel.” They are taking a long lunch every single day, and they are failing to take the action required, and that is another disappointment from this bill.
The implications of what I’ve outlined in my short amount of time this morning and this afternoon were really about who will pay the price for this. Who feels the implications of the failure to deliver and the failure of accountability by this Government? Well, I can tell you who feels that. It is the businesses within our electorate. It is the hospitality sector. Earlier this week, or actually as of today, it is still all those hair salons and barbers across this country. It is the multitude of businesses that are trying to get across that Auckland border to trade and to do that. And outside of Auckland, obviously, it is the many people across this country that are just trying to get on with their lives. This Government is set on introducing complexity in regards to a traffic light system that isn’t even required, and that is such a waste.
National will seek, via the Health Committee, to put a motion in front to undertake an immediate post-enactment review of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, including a full public submission inquiry. Listening to the Speaker’s comments in terms of the dissatisfaction that he noted before he left the Chair around this bill, I expect that all parties across the House will support those movements. This bill has real-world consequences and, for people, they will suffer because the planning has not been done, and the planning has been done on the fly. National opposes this bill.
TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Madam Speaker; thank you. I rise to take the final call on third reading. Just reflecting on some of the contributions in the committee of the whole House, yes, this does allow for the existence of vaccination certificates, but also confirmation—in the committee—around the access to life-preserving services being regardless of vaccination status.
The bill clearly has a focus on vaccination. We’ve heard contributions from members opposite that suggest that some vaccination opportunities actually are only available from 9 to 5. Well, we know that that is far from the truth. Actually, I find the commentary about general failure coming from members opposite to be absolutely disrespectful—disrespectful to all the hard work that health and community providers are doing to increase vaccination rates. They’re working hard around the clock to do their bit to support members of our Māori, our Pasifika community to make a difference.
This bill will allow greater freedoms as we transition to the new framework. It gives certainty. I commend it to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill be now read a third time.
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.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill
First Reading
Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Point of order, Madam Speaker.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): I present a legislative statement on the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill.
Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I’m sorry to interrupt, but in the spirit of fairness Elizabeth Kerekere sought a point of order. I don’t think Madam Speaker was aware.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. Did the member call a point of order?
Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Aroha mai, yes.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Apologies. Dr Elizabeth Kerekere.
Debate interrupted.
Motions
COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Act 2021—Health Committee Inquiry
Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Deputy Musterer—Green): Kia ora. I seek leave to move a motion without notice instructing the Health Committee to inquire into the operation of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Act 2021 together with subordinate instruments made through orders and regulations under empowering provisions introduced through the Act.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.
Bills
Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill
First Reading
Debate resumed.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.
Hon DAVID PARKER: I move, That the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill be now read a first time.
This bill will support New Zealanders through difficult times. COVID-19 has been tough for many people, some more than others, and if you put yourself in the shoes of low to middle income families who have to provide for children, many sole parent families, you can imagine how tight budgets are and the pressures that brings. Reducing child poverty is critical to the Government’s priority of improving child wellbeing and laying the foundations for the future. Child poverty is a long-term issue affecting New Zealand children, and increasing support for low and middle income families is necessary. It’s a fair thing to do, it helps those families to live better lives, and it creates opportunities for them and for the betterment of society more broadly.
The changes we are proposing through this bill contribute to the welfare overhaul work programme, which itself lays foundations for the Government’s vision of a welfare system which ensures that people are treated with dignity and can live in dignity, with an adequate income and standard of living, so that they are able to participate meaningfully in their, and our, communities. The bill therefore proposes to increase the family tax credit rate by almost $15 per week for the eldest child in the family, and $13 per week for subsequent children, from 1 April 2022. This family tax credit increase combines a $5 per week per child increase on top of the Consumers Price Index (CPI) increase for the family tax credit which was scheduled for 1 April 2022. The bill also makes two additional Working for Families increases for 1 April 2022, providing for a scheduled CPI-indexed increase for Best Start from $60 to $65 a week, from $3,210 to $3,388 per annum, and an increase to the minimum family tax credit threshold from $31,096 to $32,864.64. People currently receiving a family tax credit or Best Start payment will be better off from this change. The changes are targeted towards the lowest-income families—[Receives glass of water] Thanks very much. Excuse me, Madam Speaker. Sorry, I had a tickle in my tonsils there. The changes are targeted towards the lowest-income families so that those with a family income of less than $40,000 benefit the most, with an average increase of $26 per week.
This package is estimated to lift another 6,000 children out of poverty. As we do that through supporting those most in need, we’re also increasing the abatement rate for the family tax credit and the in-work tax credit from 25 percent to 27 percent, and this kicks in for a family whose income is over $42,700. In addition to the Working for Families tax credit increases, the bill also makes a minor remedial amendment updating the CPI measure used for the indexation of the family tax credit and the Best Start tax credit. As a result of the Working for Families changes in the bill, it’s estimated that a further 6,000 children will be lifted out of poverty, and that’s in addition to the up to 33,000 children who will be lifted out of poverty by the increase in benefit levels earlier this year. Under this Labour Government, these are solid gains for people in lower-income brackets, and we placed a real Budget emphasis on this because we really do believe on this side of the House that ending child poverty is justifiably one of the highest, if not the highest, priorities for Government.
If I could turn to COVID-19 support payments and the framework for them, this bill also makes some changes to the resurgence support scheme, which continues to provide financial support to businesses struck by the effects of COVID-19 and, through that, helps to save jobs. It’s a good scheme, it’s worked well, and it has been a valuable aid not just to the businesses in receipt of it but to the confidence in the wider economy. We want to ensure that we can continue to provide this support, and to enable us to do that we need to adjust how the resurgence support scheme, or the resurgence support payment—or the RSP—is activated. Legislation relating to the RSP contains specific references to support eligible businesses if there is a “resurgence in New Zealand of COVID-19 or an escalation in COVID-19 alert levels”. Because we’ve now got a shift from the alert level framework to the COVID-19 Protection Framework, as well as a shift of focus from elimination to an approach based on minimisation and protection, this means that the current legislative framework requires amendment.
The proposals in this bill are aimed at adapting the resurgence support payment legislation into a more flexible COVID-19 support payments framework. The new framework will retain the overall objective of supporting eligible businesses affected by COVID-19 restrictions, but it will no longer be specifically linked to the alert level framework nor be limited to an escalation in COVID-19 alert levels. Instead, the amendments will allow the Government to be responsive and provide support to businesses in a variety of scenarios. The amendments will allow Inland Revenue to make payments to eligible persons financially affected by a public health measure, business circumstance, or other matter related to COVID-19.
Hon Member: How many? How much? To whom? How will we know?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, the detail of that, in response to the member’s interjection, will be set out in Orders in Council that the Governor-General will be able to authorise, by payments—
Hon Member: That’s not good enough. Last time we did this, we knew what we were doing.
Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, this time you do too. This Government stands on its record of properly supporting businesses, and it’s evidenced in the fact that we’ve got amongst the lowest unemployment rate in the world, we’ve had very high growth rates, notwithstanding COVID, and we think we’ve got the balance about right. But, as with the existing RSP provisions, the new COVID-19 support framework will provide the activation criteria. Eligible persons, circumstances of payment, and calculation of payments may be set by Order in Council, as they currently are for the current scheme.
The bill is about alleviating financial stress. It helps keep business afloat. It does this by ensuring that vital COVID support payments can continue to be made, and it ensures also that families are better off. It’s a bill that recognises the reality of economic conditions today and the role of the Government in helping to relieve some of the financial stress. I thank the House for giving this bill its urgent consideration and commend it to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Well, it is my pleasure to be leading off on the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill. Now, I have a lot of respect for the Hon David Parker, but, gee, all I can ask today is that we’ve got a long time here and you’ve got to show—and I’m saying this to David Parker; I ask him to show some passion for this issue, because that was one of the most boring speeches I’ve listened to for a while. And I’m just surrounded by high-functioning ex-Ministers of tax or revenue. I’ve got the Hon Michael Woodhouse and the Hon Todd McClay here, and I don’t know which one was more exciting and dynamic, whether it was honourable Todd or honourable Michael, but, gee, at least they showed something; they had passion. They wanted to make a change, do the right thing—but that was just boring. We’re going to be here a long time tonight, so let’s settle in, let’s have a ride, because there is a lot in this bill that we need to discuss.
Now, I noted that the Minister talked extensively about the tax changes and the Working for Families and, look, in the main, we agree with most of those things; they are mainly driven by inflation. Of course, we have just seen a Government oversee a massive amount of inflation, 4.9 percent up to September, and it is sky-rocketing. A lot of it has to do with not only policies they put in, like changing minimum pay rates, and all the encumbrances they put on small businesses, but we’ve also seen so much wasteful spending going into the economy and just exploiting it. And that’s meant that we have an economy that’s overheating; of course, the outcome of that is inflation. And that is why they are having to put up all these benefits. As the Minister said, family tax credit going up, the family credit abatement going up, from 25 to 27 percent. We will be asking the Minister about that because the effect of that is that it increases the marginal tax rate for working families and therefore actually provides a disincentive to work. And I think that’s a question that the Minister will have to answer in the chair.
Best Start tax credits—another one that’s going to go up, the minimum family tax credit. All that, in the main, is OK. But this bill is not so much about that; this bill is about the second stage of the COVID delivery element that we’ve been debating all last night and all this morning. And what a shambles—what an absolute shambles we have seen today, and the earlier COVID debate. It’s all being done on the hoof, and this is another example of that. This bill is one where it sets out no details—and we’ve taken the opportunity to ask the Hon Grant Robertson, over the last couple of days: what are the details about these revised payments that are set out in this tax bill? All this tax bill does is it enables something to take place, but it never says what is going to take place. And he’s been noting that the Government announced the change on 22 October, over a month ago. We’ve only got eight days before these changes come into play—eight days. That’s why this Government is trying to ram through these two pieces of legislation today and tomorrow, to make sure that we can actually have the mechanism in place for the end of next week. And, of course, Parliament doesn’t sit next week.
It’s an absolute shambles. Everyone knows that we’ve been having this issue for 18 months, and they talked about it a month ago, and yet Labour has only fronted up with a bill today that has no more detail than actually enabling something to happen at some point in time. What certainty does that give the small businesses? I heard Simon Watts talking about his businesses in the North Shore. I’ve got thousands of them, every electorate MP, and I bet you some of the Labour members have got them as well, crying out for help. “Give us certainty. No, tell us what’s going to happen.” And not a skerrick of detail at the moment—not a skerrick. This is what’s wrong with this bill.
So what’s going to happen in this bill? All it’s going to do is say that the Inland Revenue commissioner is going to be able to set the criteria. So that’s going to be one of the points of dispute in this debate. Why would you empower the IRD? That should be a legislative function. But, actually, the legislation gives the commissioner the right to set the eligibility criteria, and that is wrong. We will be testing the Minister on that. Then we’ll be asking, “What about the whole mechanism?” We know that there’s going to be a change of the payment system, we’ve heard that, but we don’t know whether it’s still based on revenue drop. And, of course, many of those businesses that we’ve been talking about will have suffered, and will continue to suffer, from revenue drop. I know Grant Robertson says it’s all going to be nirvana by the end of next week; it’s not, actually. A lot of those businesses will have run out of cash and, actually, it won’t be that quick to take up. Of course, we’re going into January, holidays, and a lot of businesses are simply not going to be able to see the upturn in business they are hoping for. And, of course, they’ve got to pay provisional tax in January, they’ve got to pay terminal tax in February, and then, of course, they’ve got more tax payments to make in April. That is a bleak outlook for many of our companies, and that is why we need to have much more clarity. So we don’t know whether it’s going to be based on a revenue drop, and I think that’s a really important principle.
The second thing: the Minister wasn’t able to say which six sectors were going to be targeted, because he has made it clear that specific sectors will be targeted. But, when asked today, he was unable to answer that.
Hon Member: He doesn’t know.
ANDREW BAYLY: He doesn’t even know what areas—we don’t even know what areas are going to be in red, orange, or green. It is just chaotic—it’s absolutely chaotic. This is the issue with this bill, and that is why we are very worried about it.
Then, there’s an element of this bill which is the Shane Jones mark 2, or version 2.0. What I’m referring to is that the bill empowers the Government to provide any person or organisation to receive payments under the framework, without a clear and consistent approach as to who should receive the Government financial support. Now, up to now, the payments have been directed to businesses. Suddenly, in this bill, we see a reference to “any person or organisation”. What’s that about? We’re talking about financial support to people, or are we talking about financial support to businesses? And, actually, all the support, to date, has been to hard-pressed businesses. It is unusual and unclear why there’s this big change in this part of the bill, and, of course, that will be an issue of what we want to test the Minister on today.
We also think there should be a greater focus on those on the job seeker benefit. Coming back to the issue of the changes, there’s been a lot of emphasis on changes to the benefits, but we’ve got 190,000 people on job seeker benefits. We need to make sure that they are looked after, but also we want to make sure that they’re back in business, back getting a job, because that is the thing that will help people get out of poverty. When the Minister says that this package will lift up 6,000 children out of poverty, the best thing this Government could do is to create the framework for more jobs and to get those 190,000 people back into work. And just to remind the Labour members, there are currently 32,000 people who went on the job seeker benefit 18 months ago, after the first lockdown—
Hon Member: How many?
ANDREW BAYLY: —32,000 who are still on the job seeker benefit. And they are the people that we need to have back in work. It is appalling that they’re sitting on the job seeker benefit 18 months later.
So this approach, what the Government keeps wanting to do, every time inflation goes up—mainly as part of the Government’s own making—is to do the only thing, which is to push up benefits—push them up. What this Government should be doing, and what we should be debating today, is a system where we’re allowing businesses to get under way, to trade their way out of the current plight that they find themselves in. That means removing the traffic light system as soon as possible. We don’t accept it. We don’t think it has validity, now that we’re getting very close to 90 percent. Once we get to that point, open up New Zealand, allow businesses to flourish, allow them to hire more people. Let’s get this economy much more rocking. This is a poor piece of legislation. It’s going to be a long night tonight.
Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Oh, thank you, Madam Speaker. Just really sad to hear the same old tune from the National Party that the benefits are a bad thing and that supporting our most vulnerable is something that we shouldn’t be doing. Well, this Government will continue to do it. And because we have picked up, four years ago, the nine years of neglect of that sector, off the National Party, we’ve had a lot of making up to do. This is just one further step in alleviating the abject poverty that the National Party left a lot of people in. And I’m very proud that this small step will lift 3,000 more children out of poverty, will help 30,000 more families, and our child poverty reduction targets are all on track—on every measure, we’re improving it. This is part of it. We’ll continue doing it, and we will make no apologies for helping those in our society who need help the most. I commend it to the House.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): One minute and one second is all that the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee can offer on a very, very poorly prepared process. An important piece of legislation that hasn’t had any consultation. It hasn’t had any exposure draft. Parties only saw it—what, last night, the night before? It hasn’t gone through his select committee and all he can do is offer one minute and one second and talk about nine years of neglect. That’s the quality of the debate that we’ve been hearing over the last 24 hours.
But as Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” We’re back here again in a first reading again of a bill that we’re expected as a House to give due diligence to and have passed into law without any of those processes. I want to quote my favourite lefty Professor Andrew Geddis from the University of Otago, a fantastic jurist—
Hon Member: At least he’s principled.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: A very principled fellow. And he said in an article that quoted, of course, the Victoria University professor Dean Knight describing the previous bill as a constitutional disgrace—he concluded in his blog piece today—this is Professor Geddis—“But here’s the thing. When you’re the government, you’ve got to do better than ‘just enough’. Putting rules in place to allow society to function in the new COVID normal matters. But how you put those rules in place also matters. And in that respect, the government has failed us with this latest bill.” I suggest that the Government is going to fail us—us, being the people of New Zealand—with this bill and its process.
Now, on the face of it—I’m going to talk about Part 1—it looks very similar to the bill that we passed under urgency in February this year with National’s support; in fact, I think, with the ACT Party’s support, albeit that we were critical of the process even then. We were a little bit more forgiving of what we were actually doing, because we knew what on earth we were doing—we knew what we were doing, because the Minister of Finance, who moved the bill at first reading, told us exactly what we were doing. And referencing Hansard from that first reading, we knew that business resurgence payments will be triggered at higher alert levels, at alert level 2 or above, that the payments for business resurgence would be $1,500 per applicant per firm plus $400 per fulltime-equivalent (FTE), up to a cap of 50 FTEs. We knew that the payment would be made by Government to business that have a revenue drop of 30 percent or more, calculated by comparing a seven-day period at alert level 2, etc., etc.
Now, I would like to know what on earth we are supporting in terms of business resurgence payments. I was expecting the Minister of Revenue to come into the House, knowing that we’re having to pass this under urgency for a new business support framework that starts in eight short days’ time, and give the House, and indeed the public, the businesses that are going to the wall right now waiting for the answers to the questions of when they can open up again, what alert level they are going to be at, when we’re going to see overseas tourists, when international students will come back—and we had nothing.
We are being asked to pass a piece of legislation that gives the Government extraordinary powers by Order in Council to pass secondary legislation that will cost the taxpayer billions of dollars—money that I don’t begrudge when it’s well targeted. And of all of the $60-odd billion that this Government has spent, mostly under the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, my party supports those payments that are a direct response to COVID. So that is beefing up the health system’s ability to respond, getting the personal protective equipment, the vaccinations, the intensive care unit beds—not that we’ve been that successful at that—providing the wage subsidy and the business resurgence payments. But it behoves this House and the people who are in it to scrutinise the amount of spending, and we’ve had no transparency whatsoever on what the Government did announce.
We got that information in February, and nine months later we’re still none the wiser about what the total cost of that is, because the Minister clings steadfastly like a comfort blanket to the Public Finance Act and says, “Well, we’ll find out all that information on Budget day next year when the Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations are released.” That’s not good enough. But I’ll give him credit for this: Mr Robertson did come to this House in February and give a detailed description of what those business resurgence payments would be and when they would be qualified for by business.
So I turn to the departmental disclosure statement and the regulatory impact statement. Now, one would think when they pick it up that at 54 pages long there’s a reasonable amount of detail in it about what we’re doing, how much it’s going to cost, and when it’s going to be triggered. Actually, 38 pages of that are actually about the family tax credit and Working for Families changes, which my colleague Louise Upston will talk about through this debate. Nearly nothing is being said about what the support framework for business is going to be. Indeed, testing of the legislative content on page 10 of the regulatory impact statement says, “No formal steps have been taken to determine whether the policy to be given effect by this bill is consistent with New Zealand’s obligations.” Is it consistent with the Government’s Treaty of Waitangi obligations? Well, “No formal steps have been taken to determine whether the policy is consistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.” And I bet the Hon Willie Jackson, the Minister for Māori Development, should have been roaring in Cabinet when he heard that—absolutely no scrutiny of the degree to which this bill is compliant with the Treaty of Waitangi.
What about external consultation? Because the thing that really annoys me as a chartered accountant and as a former Minister of Revenue is the insidious watering down of good consultation process. It’s a process called generic tax policy process, actually. It’s a different TLA—three-, four-letter acronym. That’s the good tax policy process, where the IRD actually was required by the previous Government—I don’t think this Government even knows it exists—to go out and engage with the sector, the tax sector, through the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand Corporate Tax Group, through the Tax Advisory Committee, and the Small Business Advisory Committee, and say, “This is what we’re thinking. Tell us about what you think back.” Because the best tax experts, actually, great though they are, don’t work for the IRD; they work for KPMG, Deloitte, Findex—all of those—and they used to advise IRD on what they thought.
Now, they didn’t always agree. But at least IRD was able to take those views into the Cabinet room when we see papers proposing changes to the Income Tax Act and the Tax Administration Act. Nothing has happened in that, and the Government said, “Oh, well, it’s only a technical change. In fact, it’s crazily simple in its application. We’re taking sections 7AAB and 7AAC of the Tax Administration Act and replacing it with new sections 7AAB and 7AAC.” One could argue that the words in that are very, very minor changes, but what’s not said is the big problem with this bill. What’s not said is what the Government’s going to do with that power. When are they going to do it? For whom are they going to do it? In what circumstances are they going to do it? And how much is it going to cost the New Zealand taxpayer? None of that detail is available, and we’re eight days out from—what is it called? The COVID support framework or the COVID something framework—the traffic light system, and the consequential benefit, or otherwise, particularly down my way, on business and what that means.
Because, despite any perceived relaxation of the lockdown rules, the Government is still standing in the place of commerce. What business really wants to know is when the Government’s going to get out of the way and allow them to trade safely and normally, because there’s two ways that businesses can earn income. It’s by corporate welfare, which I thought this Government would have been strongly opposed to, or it’s free trade—the transactions between a willing buyer and a willing seller that creates the economy that enables the Government to pay for the social services we so badly need. And instead, it’s intervened in a socialist roundabout in the name of safety with no apparent end. Apparently an announcement, now, that Kiwis can come home. Well, whoop-de-doo! They should have always been able to. But no Australians, no Brits, no Europeans, no Americans, no international students, no tourists. The commerce that we need to make this support redundant is still an uncertain future. This is terrible process. I’d love to be able to support support for business. This isn’t it.
BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I just want to speak really briefly on why these changes are needed, and it comes down to people. As said in the regulatory impact statement, Māori, Pacific people, people with disabilities, and women are overrepresented in low-income earners, and evidence indicates their groups are likely to be among the hardest hit by COVID-19 economic impacts. Māori and Pacific women in particular are overrepresented in low-wage employment as well as casual, temporary, and other forms of insecure employment. COVID-19 has only exacerbated the situation for these groups, who are also more likely to be in the industries impacted by COVID-19 restrictions.
Women with caring responsibilities, especially sole parents, are also exposed to the adverse effects of economic recessions that can lock in long-term unemployment and poverty, including in-work poverty, and lead to increased rates of poverty. Changes to the family tax credit considered in this bill provide increases to families with the lowest incomes. They are therefore likely to disproportionately benefit—benefit—Māori, Pacific people, and women. That is why I support this bill and I commend it to the House.
JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll rise to take a call on the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill at this, the first reading. I suspect there’s nobody that would say this debate and the conditions around it are ideal. I suspect everybody would have wanted more time for this process and for the consideration of this bill. I’ve heard the Government say, in terms of that, that this is necessary for getting it done. We would have liked to have seen the work start earlier so that we could have had the normal process and still get it done. We recognise the tension and the urgency that the Government is under, albeit self-imposed.
Specifically to talk to this bill, there are a few points, and I do want to address some of the points raised by National in relation to the resurgence payments and the points that they read out from the regulatory impact statement—or departmental disclosure statement, I think—saying that the work hadn’t been done around this and the impact on rights. I would also point to the part of that same document that said, in relation to the COVID-19 support payments framework amendments, the Treasury considered that the regulatory impact statement was not required, on the grounds that they have no, or only minor, impacts on businesses, individuals, and not-for-profit entities. So I understood the point that was being made, but, really, this is about not setting up a new scheme; it’s about recognising that when we are shifting to having an endemic presence of COVID in our communities, resurgence is not the framework that we need to work within, and that our alert levels will no longer be in place, so we need legislation that will enable Government to respond.
I do also want to point to the sense of discomfort of listening to the point of saying that while this is corporate welfare—and the Greens share a kind of perspective around that—but that the alternative is free trade and opening things up. Like, where would we have got to if that had been our response to COVID? When there’s 8 million—I heard recently—people that have died around the world, and we—every single life meaning something—have lost around 40 people. That’s significant in our communities, and even one more death than that, through that opening up and relying on businesses to make that decision for themselves, when we have heard, sporadically, even at the toughest times, businesses calling for that. So I’m all for protective measures that actually support our communities to make the right decisions for the safety and wellbeing of people in this country. While we have criticisms in terms of, maybe, how some of the money has ended up and where it’s gone, that, actually, we do recognise that businesses needed that support to be able to make the right decision.
Now, we are also—I’d like to speak to the changes around Working for Families, and I’ll spend most of my time on that in this debate. Just registering a really deep disappointment with this, that it is just as I think the Child Poverty Action Group noted in their response to the Government’s announcement that the Government’s family income tweaks are “out of touch” and “deeply disappointing”, they do not go anywhere near to address the need within our communities. I just want to step through, in terms of that context that we’re in, in relation to COVID, that COVID came along at a time when we had an established, entrenched housing crisis—that the Government at least, now, is starting to address, rather than denying—and of inadequate incomes across many of our communities, deeply entrenched poverty, that is evident in the rates of rheumatic fever, as one example. Then we had to go into lockdowns, and people lost their jobs. They lost hours of work, particularly people in casual employment that may have supplemented their benefit, in terms of their ability to support their families. The most vulnerable, we know, and particularly in terms of disabled people, what we’ve heard from the community is that many of them lost their jobs first. While their need for electricity went up, their need for food went up, and the need for internet went up, particularly for people with children. We’ve seen, as a consequence: debt increase, unprecedented queues for food parcels, and people having to reach out for additional support because our social safety net was not and is not adequate.
That is where we are at now, where people are deeply struggling. Our services, as a result, are also—they’ve done an incredible job, right? Our marae, our Whānau Ora providers, our community organisations are trying to knit together that safety net to stop people just crashing and burning. But there is only so much those organisations can do. The best-placed people to actually look after people and strengthen that safety net: that’s this House, and that’s about getting really strong income support measures in place that also support people to transition into employment where that is an option and available.
Now, these changes for Working for Families of $5 per child, that may happen—the regulatory impact statement says there are significant statistical uncertainty over the child poverty reduction estimates, which show between 4,000 and 6,000 children may be taken out of poverty—just doesn’t even enter the ballpark of what we need and what we should expect for our families. The worst bit is that it’s coming at the expense of our middle-income families who are actually still struggling to be able to put down some roots and get some stability for their families, because the Government is increasing the abatement of Working for Families for those families who have managed to increase their income a bit.
So they wanted this policy to be fiscally neutral in a pandemic, in a housing crisis, where the cost of living is going up, they wanted to address child poverty in a fiscally neutral way by taking that money from middle-income earners, which is what this piece of legislation does. That goes exactly counter to what the Welfare Expert Advisory Group—that we hear the Government is one day going to implement their recommendations. This is 100 percent counter to their recommendation, which was to have work towards a more universal scheme. They’d recommended that the Working for Families payment was increased for the first child by $57 immediately, this was 2019, and that for subsequent children it be increased by $29 immediately—2019. Here we are, getting a $5 increase, and they recommended, further, most critically, a lowering of that abatement rate to 10 percent for those earning between $48,000 and $65,000, and then up to 15 percent for those earning between $65,000 and $160,000. To reduce that effective marginal tax rate, that is being exacerbated by this decision to increase the abatement rate.
This is creating a cliff-edge for families who are wanting to increase work. This is incentivising families to choose to only have one parent in work and the other one not to go into work, because this will punish them for getting both into work. We know historically who suffers from that, and it’s women, because traditionally—we still haven’t closed that gender pay gap yet—that it’s men who are more likely to be on higher incomes. Most two-parent families will be a male and a female—not all. So this policy goes counter to that intent of supporting people into work, and it is also counter to the process of recognising that we all have a role in supporting children in this country. Who was it, was it Whitney that said, “Children are our future.”? Could have been said better, but it’s an important point.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this COVID-19—oh, sorry; wrong one—the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill. This is the second bill in 24 hours that the Government is attempting to pass under urgency, without the usual consultation. And the interesting thing about it is it doesn’t come into force until midway next year. So you’d have to wonder whether this is being put through under urgency because of some dire need to avert an emergency, or because it’s politically expedient to make a law more rapidly and with less scrutiny and hand out money to people that the Labour Party thinks will vote for it, under cover of urgency. In a way, it’s kind of worse to rush a bill through under urgency for that reason than it was to do the COVID19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill under urgency. I mean, at least there are some practical problems with the COVID-19 response in terms of vaccinations that they arguably do need to rush because they’re so far behind in the response. Whereas doing extra taxpayer handouts under cover of urgency—that is the height of cynicism.
I have to say, I often find myself, for some reason, giving a speech on a bill after Jan Logie. And that often gives me a lot to unpack—and let me just try to get through some of the things that we’ve just heard. Jan Logie said that it’s absolutely critical that we keep the borders closed, that we don’t open up, and that we prevent one more person from dying—she said that even one more person dying from COVID would be a tragedy. I agree with that: every death is a tragedy. It’s also important to have a bit of perspective: 30,000 people die in New Zealand every year, 100 people a day, many of them from things that are preventable—if, for example, we could afford more cancer medicines or make the roads safer or have better nutrition for people or a higher quality of housing. This is where, I think, the Greens often lack a sense of perspective. Actually, in a way, they kind of acknowledge that, because shortly later in Jan Logie’s speech she said, “Well, people have lost their jobs because of the lockdowns and restrictions.” Well, she’s absolutely right. I mean, doesn’t that tell us that there actually need to be trade-offs and that when you make policy, you’ve got to consider that there are different impacts on different people from decisions made by Parliament. But it seems she didn’t recognise that, because she then said, “The people who are most able to help vulnerable New Zealanders are the 120 people in this Parliament.” Well, that is not only completely unrealistic, but it’s also, frankly, insulting to the many New Zealanders who wake up each day and try to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of those around them and actually help people.
Some people would say that real kindness and generosity is not putting your hand in someone else’s pocket and through this Parliament and its power to tax, but putting your hand in your own pocket and giving up your own time and money to help your fellow New Zealander. What an extraordinary world view, where we don’t want one more COVID death, we’re prepared to lose our jobs and lose more people to other things as a result of the endless restrictions and the borrowing and the spending, and the way to help people is to go into Parliament and take money off one person and give it to another—an affront to all of the people who are actually practically helping each other.
I say all that because, in a way, the Green Party is a caricature, or an extreme rendition, of the Labour Party’s position on this issue. This Labour Government went into COVID with more natural advantages than any other country. One of the biggest advantages it had was access to cheap credit. And it borrowed money—$60 billion—second-biggest fiscal stimulus in the OECD to get through COVID, second-biggest before the latest lockdown, all of which seemed viable because of record low interest rates. When the interest rates couldn’t go any lower, because it is difficult to go lower than zero—some countries have managed it, but it’s difficult—they started the large-scale asset programme, and then they started the funding for lending programme to try and pump even more money into the New Zealand economy.
And now, at exactly the time when we need to start reconnecting and give people the opportunity to earn a dollar, all this Labour Party can do is rush through, under urgency, a legislative initiative to push more money out of the Treasury and into some people’s—not all, but some people’s—pockets, because that’s all they know how to do. They don’t know how to unite New Zealanders behind good ideas to create more wealth, but they do know how to divide people, they know how to commodify people into identities, they know how to divide wealth, they know how to take off one and give to another—robbing Peter to pay Paul, hoping to pick up some votes on the way through. That’s the Labour Party style of Government, and they’re doing it right now under urgency, under cover of COVID, to advance their longer-term political goals.
I just wonder how many of the Labour backbenchers are going to earn their salary today and stand up for more than two minutes and actually defend their Government; or better still, critique it. And as that great New Zealand artist Scribe said, I’ll take a bet, “Not many, if any.” That’ll be the answer to how many of them will get up. The difficulty is that while they’re failing to do that, the New Zealand Government is putting on New Zealanders tremendous pressure in terms of the cost of life and the cost of living—that’s what we’re hearing from people. What we’re hearing from people is prices are going up, and that in a way explains why they’re rushing through this law to try and give more money to some people, but the difficulty with the Government’s strategy of printing money, using low interest rates—not so low anymore; just went up 25 points, quarter of a percent on the mortgage today from the Reserve Bank—
Hon Michael Woodhouse: There’ll be more where that came from.
DAVID SEYMOUR: —and that’s going to keep going and it’s going to keep going. As Michael Woodhouse says, “There’s more where that came from.”
Their strategy of borrowing cheap money and pushing it out the door to try and fund people that they think might politically favour them. It might help with the cost of life in the short term, but it doesn’t work in the long term. What the Government needs to do, if it wants to make it easier for people to afford things at the petrol pump and at the supermarket checkout, and afford homes and afford rent, is not print, borrow, and redistribute for politically expedient purposes at every opportunity, including under urgency, under cover of COVID. They actually need to start uniting New Zealanders behind better ideas to produce more wealth. They need to make it easier to build homes. They need to work out how to plan and finance infrastructure so there’s more land you can build on. They need to make it easier to get competition into the supermarket industry. They need to make it easier to get foreign investment into New Zealand. They need to make it easier to build stuff, period. They need to make it easier to employ people. They need to make it easier for people to come to New Zealand and fill skill shortages. They need to fix the broken Immigration New Zealand system. They need to find a way to safely reconnect with the world, not next month, not next April, but when it is safe to do so, and it’s safer to do it right now.
That’s what they need to be doing—that’s what this Government should be doing. If they were going to use urgency to find a way to get some actual tourists back for the tourism industry, that would be very welcome, but instead they are using urgency, flipping and swiping away the usual democratic processes and procedures that people in a free and democratic society like New Zealand were taking for granted—I suspect they’ll be taking it for granted less—in order to rush through legislation so they can try and demonstrate their kindness by putting their hand in someone else’s pocket to pay off people that they think are more likely to vote for them. The cynicism is extraordinary. They’re buying into the rhetoric of Jan Logie, who spoke before me, who seems to believe that the best way to help people is not to create the conditions for people to work and do smarter, more innovative things; it’s actually the people that are most able to help people are the 120 people in this House with the power to tax.
Well, let me give you a few predictions. Over the next year, all of these inflationary, big spending, and big printing policies, they are going to come to an end; they’ll be unsustainable. And mortgage rates and interest rates are going to have to go up to arrest the inflation. People are going to see their pocketbooks squeezed. People are going to realise more and more that this is the cost of COVID under Labour. And the Labour Party are going to stand there, and their only strategy they’re going to have to fix it will be “We will borrow more money, we will print more money, we’ll take it off someone else and give it to you. We will have a wealth tax. We will do this; we will do that.”, but the people will see right through it, because New Zealanders know that, ultimately, you can’t spend what you don’t earn for very long. And this legislation and the way that this Government’s going about it will be their political death nail, because bad policy is always bad politics in the end. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I had hoped to speak about the most exciting part of this bill, which is raising 3,000 more children out of poverty, and that’s on top of the 33,000 that were raised out of poverty earlier this year with the changes we made. However, it would be remiss of me not to respond to the comments from Mr Bayly and Mr Seymour regarding inflation—inflation that they know is temporary because, in fact, we have one of the strongest economies in the world. The Reserve Bank in its snapshot this afternoon, in fact, talked about the strength of the economy and the fact that our relatively high inflation is expected to drop incrementally as our borders reopen. Today, we heard the reopening announcement. We heard the reaction from Export New Zealand, who said today’s announcement will allow exporters to start reconnecting to their customers, get back out into the world, and win more work. And may I remind the House that fully vaccinated Kiwis will be able to travel to and from Australia from 16 January, to other countries from 13 February, and all other countries to and from New Zealand from 30 April, with a reopening staged over time.
So the inflation, we know, is temporary. It is a direct result of COVID. COVID is why we are introducing family credits to support our lowest-income families, and the only divisiveness that is being created in New Zealand is coming from opposite benches in the House. We have a very high approval rate thanks to the team of 5 million. A recent survey showed that 70 percent of New Zealanders agree with the direction of travel—that’s 70 percent advantage points. So I will look forward to speaking about lifting children out of poverty the next time we speak on this in the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call the Hon Todd McClay.
Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Well, there you have it. You heard from the Labour Government: we’re going to go early, we’re going to go hard on inflation, and it’s only temporary. In fact, they’re going early and hard on inflation by having policies that borrow money and spend it without direction in the economy, which drives up interest rates. I would say to the members opposite: the 0.25 percent increase in the interest rates from the Reserve Bank today, for the average house price in Auckland, is $2,500 a year extra, and that’s before there are more increases this year. And they’ll shrug their shoulders and say, “Nothing to do with us, the Government.”, except they have borrowed $97.5 billion for COVID and spent it on most things except for COVID.
This is a Government that only shows urgency on COVID when they’re forced to and it’s too late. This isn’t a bill that says, “At the beginning of this year, we’re going to roll out vaccinations as quickly as we can.” The reason there wasn’t one of those is they forgot to order the vaccinations. You can’t vaccinate Kiwis if you haven’t got the vaccination—and, by the way, here’s a headline: you can’t give them their boosters until you order and get the boosters, either. So it doesn’t matter what the app says, that it runs out in six months’ time: if the Government haven’t ordered them, you can’t give them to people.
That’s the reason we’re standing here today, seeing this rushed through Parliament, this piece of legislation that will borrow and spend more under the guise that it’s good for business and good for the taxpayer and will raise some children out of poverty—forgetting that they didn’t say that since Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister and made this one of her biggest priorities, “We’re not leaving a single child behind.”, there are more children in poverty today than when she took that on. In fact, some of those families wish she hadn’t had said anything and she actually just got on and did the job.
Well, here’s the challenge that we have with the reason we’re here rushing this through in urgency, it’s because, on every step of the way since the Government put New Zealanders into lockdown last year, asked them to sacrifice and to do everything that they should—Kiwis lost their homes, they lost their businesses, their debt levels went up—the Government has kept talking and hasn’t done the hard work. When we look at the support that was available to businesses, it only came afterwards, when they were forced to because the public pushed them and the media pushed them and the Opposition pushed them.
So today before us in this House, we’ve got a piece of legislation that says we’re going into a traffic light system; for anybody that’s paid attention, it is going to be red. The difference is, actually, what this Government will do is get the police to police it more stringently than everything else, and any poor business person that’s unsure of the rules, doesn’t know what they mean—can open today but actually has extra restriction on them in a week’s time—if they want to run Jacinda Ardern’s red light, they will get caught. The problem we have with that is this bit of legislation says, “Actually, we’ll look after you. We’ll get the Inland Revenue to come up with some rules to give you some support, some money.” Do you know what New Zealanders want? They want the Government out of their businesses. The vaccination levels are up; they’ve done it, despite the Government not ordering those vaccines early enough. They want to trade their way out of this problem. The member opposite said ExportNZ thinks it’s wonderful, they can re-engage with their customers—in six months’ time.
Do you know what Jacinda Ardern announced today for the tourism sector? She said, “Wonderful: on 1 May next year, a family of four from Australia can come to New Zealand for a holiday and spend seven days in self - managed isolation and quarantine on their holiday and then go home again.” They won’t be spending any money anywhere. When you say to people around the world, “In six months’ time, you’re welcome to come to New Zealand and hide away in a hotel.”, they will not come. The tourism sector didn’t get any help today. The tourism sector doesn’t get help in this piece of legislation. It doesn’t do enough for them. They needed it a long time ago. What they want now is Kiwis and Aussies to be able to come here.
Here is a simple question for the next speaker from the Government that will stand up and take all of 30 seconds to tell New Zealanders how lucky they are: why is it that a New Zealander has to wait until 15 January and can’t come home on 24 December? Why is it more risky on 24 December for a double vaccinated New Zealand Australian to come home and see his family than 15 January? When you ask the Prime Minister, she says, “I don’t know.”, and that’s why they’ve been fighting in Cabinet.
This is not a good piece of legislation. It doesn’t do the things the Government says. The help was needed months ago. Now they want to trade their way out, and all the Government wants to do is borrow and spend.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Oh, point of order—point of order. I’ve just noted that the member Helen White—she had her fingers in her ears that entire speech, and I find that rude. I mean, I thought we came to this House to listen to the debate. [Multiple members interjecting]
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! No, sit down. That’s not a point of order.
Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’ve taken offence to that, but I move that the member be allowed to keep her fingers in her ears for the rest of the debate.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh, order! Sit down—sit down. We’ll have the next caller, Shanan Halbert—five minutes.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Mr Speaker Amongst all the yelling and shouting this afternoon, we have a very important bill that does change the lives of many New Zealanders and, unlike the former speaker, I’m very, very keen to talk very briefly on the taxation bill that’s before the House this afternoon.
We know that COVID has been difficult for many and we’ve heard lots of discussion and we’ve talked about the needs of businesses, and I absolutely agree; I’ve seen it firsthand myself. But at the other end, while over the three months of lockdown and our challenging times in Auckland, while delivering food packages and getting out and supporting our vaccination effort, we’ve seen the bottom end of town and the needs, the desperate needs, that are in front of us. That is what this bill is about.
Mr Seymour referenced a song about not many, if any. Mr Seymour, I will stand by the Government’s record on supporting our most vulnerable and doing what is needed. One year into the game, and we have done an incredible job under the most difficult circumstances, and when we look at such bills like this, 346,000 families will be better off. I stand by that, Mr Seymour, and am incredibly proud of the work that this Government does, and I commend this bill to the House.
GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I presume that members opposite, like members here, are out and about in their electorates and that they’re speaking with tradies, in particular, and business owners. One of the biggest problems they all have is that they’re not complaining about no money, no work, no orders; what they’re complaining about is an inability to get workers. That’s the one common denominator, which would certainly make a lie of much of what we’ve heard from the opposite side today.
So the country is actually doing particularly well when we get to that stage, with this being evidenced by the unemployment rate. However, there are always going to be those that are left behind, and “left behind” means we will never fill those vacancies, because of a lack of education or a lack of opportunity. The fact I would like everyone here to reflect on is that this is actually only going to add $20 a week to the budgets of many of these families. Well, that you can be in a position where $20 a week will make so much of a difference just shows that there are those that do need all the help that they can get so that they can be part of this country’s move to ensuring that we do get the workers we need. This is a bill that’s needed, and I commend it to the House.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, in this first reading, in yet another piece of legislation that the majority Government is ramming through this House in urgency, with no public consultation, I’m going to talk about some things that, clearly, this bill isn’t, rather than what it is.
Because if you talk to people in our communities, what do they want? So, for the first half of the bill, you talk to businesses. What do they want? They want certainty. They want clarity. Do they get this in the bill? No. They want to know, with this confusing change to the traffic light system, which National doesn’t even think is necessary: what support would be available due to the restrictions still in place? There’ll be some over the other side that are saying, “Well, actually, businesses are free to operate in the traffic light system.” Well, I’m sorry, but for many businesses in my electorate where hospitality and tourism are the key element of the town’s success, we heard from my colleague the Hon Todd McClay, who is our tourism spokesperson, that they won’t be coming any time soon.
So where in this bill do we hear about specific, targeted assistance to the sectors who will need it most? Oh, no, we don’t. We don’t see that at all in the bill, in this taxation—supposedly—COVID-19 support payments bill. It is not there. What do businesses desperately need? They want certainty. They want clarity. They want to be able to get on and plan.
The other thing—because this bill also purports to support workers. There are thousands and thousands of Kiwi workers who are locked out of their jobs today because of restrictions, who also want certainty, who also want clarity. What we’ve seen in this House earlier today is potentially thousands of New Zealanders who will be locked out of employment and their ability to earn an income, because of a divisive, toxic piece of legislation around vaccinations. But oh, no, they’re very quiet on that side of the House now—they’re very, very quiet. New Zealanders want to get back to normal.
So the other side have also said this bill is about low-income New Zealanders, because COVID has been really tough. Well, my question is this: if COVID has been so tough on those households—because of COVID—why hasn’t the Government, instead, provided temporary support to ease the burden now? Oh, no, no. They haven’t done that. They haven’t put the thought in. Haven’t put the effort in. Haven’t looked at how to target support to those who need it most.
Let me give you an example: so of the thousands of families who have struggled because they’ve been in lockdown, and their children have been at home rather than at school, at school they would have been supported either with breakfast in schools or the Fonterra programme for milk in schools, fruit in schools, lunch in schools. So those families, what would have been far more helpful to them would have been to have given a direct credit to each one of those households that was struggling at the time during lockdown. And Auckland will be 100 days tomorrow. That’s the support that families needed, but instead, what do they do? They put out a headline that says, “Incomes lifted for 346,000 families”. Well, guess what! Most of it was the Consumers Price Index (CPI) adjustment that happens every year on 1 April. I’ll say that again: CPI adjustments happen every year, which are reflected in increases to Working for Families tax credits, Best Start payments, and guess what! They’re going up anyway, other than $5 a week. So yet another flashy headline that is actually pretty meaningless—doesn’t come until April. Yet here we are debating under urgency with no ability for the public to have their say yet another piece of legislation. Oh, but they put the COVID banner on it, and they just slip this particular bill in so that it looks like it’s COVID support. Well, it’s not. So at least be honest about what this bill does and what it doesn’t do.
The other thing that is really not upfront about this legislation is this—and different members have talked about different numbers, so they haven’t even got their facts straight: 3,000 children out of poverty, 6,000 children out of poverty, 10,000 children out of poverty. Well, guess what! You’re starting from behind—you’re starting from behind. Here’s why: Ardern promised in 2017 that 100,000 fewer children would live in households earning less than 50 percent of the median income—2017, remember that? Remember that? That was a key debate. Guess what! Fifteen hundred more children in poverty on that measure. So whether it’s 3,000, 6,000, or 10,000, you’re not even getting back to where it was in 2017. So the reality is, if that side was seriously interested in the wellbeing of those children and lifting children out of poverty, instead they would be focused on those who are without work. They would be focused on the 190,000 New Zealanders who are currently on the job seeker benefit. Just about any business you go into, they’re looking for workers. They are looking for people to fill roles in their organisations, and there are a wide range of what those jobs are.
But what’s worse than that, what we are seeing under this Labour Government is the crisis of benefit dependency, because what we are seeing is people going on to benefit and staying there longer. So if we want to have an honest conversation in this House about children in poverty, where are they? They are in the households where there isn’t a parent in work. So the single focus, if this Government is serious about lifting children out of poverty, should be on those households—it should be on those households. Yet they’re all quiet now—they’re all quiet, because it hurts. The truth hurts.
Actually, what we do want to do, you know, if we’re serious about supporting children, is support their families. Actually, this side of the House, our clear solution is actually allow them to keep more of what they earn. It’s their own money in the first place. So rather than take it off them in tax and then churn it and give it back and spit it out in different labels, actually why not just let them keep it in the first place? That was what we put in our Back in Business plan, because we do believe, fundamentally, if you’ve worked for your income—and this bill is about Working for Families tax credits, so we are talking about people in work—then, actually, why can’t they? Why can’t they just keep more of what they’ve earned in the first place, rather than churning taxpayers’ dollars, spitting out less by the time it’s been swallowed in the tax administration system, and giving it back to people and making them feel incredibly grateful and desperate that they’ve got another $5 a week from the Government.
But no, what is clear—what is clear—in calling this support for COVID—it’s not—what it is doing is growing the amount of money and the amount of people and households that are reliant on getting some form of income from the Government or other taxpayers to pay their bills every single week.
Hon Member: Cruel.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: It is cruel—it is absolutely cruel and unnecessary. Instead, the focus should be: supporting businesses to get back up and running, actually opening up, rather than pretending to; allow our businesses to function and function well, and actually give them some credit for the tough times they’ve already got through. They’re chomping at the bit to open up, serve their customers, and allow their workers to get back to work and for everybody to get on and earn an honest living. So, instead, if that side was going to jam some legislation through under urgency, perhaps something along that vein would have been more satisfactory. But no, we’re here debating, under urgency, all stages.
Actually, I think, since this Minister has been the Minister for Social Development, we’ve had more pieces of legislation slammed through under urgency or with shortened, curtailed report-backs than I’ve ever seen before. So they clearly don’t care; they only pretend to. Let’s be very clear about what this bill does and what it doesn’t do: $5 a week is what it really is, and it won’t lift any children out of poverty.
HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise in support of this bill and I’m just going to take a short call because it’s all it requires. This is a bill that supports at both ends. This is a Government that has recognised the need for resurgence payments, and it has made sure that when it has changed its system, it has made that system even more flexible. So this is a system that will allow the Governor-General, by Order in Council, to authorise grants that will be able to make the system that we now have respond to the needs of our small businesses. As an Aucklander, I know how much of a crisis they are in and I know that this Government will recognise and support those areas where there needs to be the most support at this stage. That might be called, by some, a handout. I do not believe it is. I think we’re all the team and what we’re doing here is we’ve got one side of the equation with those businesses but we’ve got the other with beneficiaries, and I’m absolutely proud at the real work we are doing in the area. I commend this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a first time.
Second Reading
Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Courts) on behalf of the Minister of Revenue: I move, That the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill be now read a first time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ah, no—second time.
Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Second time.
This bill is about supporting New Zealanders through tough times. COVID-19 has been tough on all of us—[Interruption]—except for that lot. For low and middle income families who have to provide for children and for many sole parent families, it can be tougher still, which that lot doesn’t seem to recognise. Reducing child poverty is a key priority for our Government and our aim to improve child wellbeing and lay the foundations for a better future. Increasing support for low and middle income families to help cover the basics is the fair thing to do, and it is the reason why the House is considering this bill under urgency.
The changes we are proposing contribute to the welfare overhaul work programme, which lays the foundations to achieve the Government’s vision of a welfare system that ensures people are treated with dignity and can live in dignity, and that means that they have an adequate income and standard of living and can participate meaningfully in their communities. This bill will increase the family tax credit (FTC) rate by almost $15 per week for the eldest child in a family and by $13 per week for subsequent children from 1 April 2022. This family tax credit increase combines a $5 per week per child increase on top of the Consumers Price Index (CPI) increase for the family tax credit scheduled for 1 April 2022.
The bill also makes two additional Working for Families increases on 1 April 2022, providing for a scheduled CPI index increase for Best Start from $60 to $65 per week, from $3,210 to $3,388 per annum, and an increase to the minimum family tax credit threshold from $31,096 to $32,864 per year. People currently receiving a family tax credit or Best Start payment will be better off with this change compared with what they receive now. The changes are targeted towards the lowest-income families, so those with a family income of less than $40,000 benefit the most, with an average increase of $26 per week.
We also want to ensure that we provide support to those that most need it; so the bill provides for an increase of the abatement rate for the family tax credit and in-work tax credit from 25 percent to 27 percent, with the abatement rate being the rate at which these tax credits reduce once a family has income over $42,700. This change means those on the lowest incomes will receive the most, and no one will be worse off compared to what they receive now.
In addition to the Working for Families tax credit increases, the bill also makes a minor remedial amendment updating the CPI measure used for the indexation of FTC and Best Start tax credit rates. As a result of the Working for Families changes in the bill, it’s estimated that a further 6,000 children will be lifted out of poverty. That’s in addition to the up to 33,000 children who will be lifted out of poverty by the increase in benefit levels earlier this year. These are solid gains for people in lower-income brackets.
Turning now to business support, the Resurgence Support Payment (RSP) scheme continues to provide financial support to businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and helps to save jobs. It is a good scheme and one which has been a valuable aid to our economy. We want to ensure that we can continue to provide this support; so we need to adjust how the RSP scheme is activated. The legislation relating to the RSP scheme contains specific references to supporting eligible businesses if there is a resurgence in New Zealand of COVID-19 or an escalation in COVID-19 alert levels. The shift from the alert level framework to the COVID-19 Protection Framework, as well as a shift of focus from elimination to an approach based on minimisation and protection, means we need to amend the current legislative framework.
The proposals in this bill are aimed at adapting the RSP’s legislation into the more flexible COVID-19 support payments framework. The new framework will retain the overall objective of supporting eligible businesses affected by COVID-19 restrictions but will not be specifically linked to the alert level framework or limited to an escalation in COVID-19 alert levels. Instead, the amendments will allow the Government to be responsive and provide support to businesses in a variety of scenarios. The amendments will allow Inland Revenue to make payments to eligible persons financially affected by a public health measure, business circumstance, or any matter related to COVID-19. The Governor-General will be able to authorise payment by Order in Council, and, just as with the existing RSP provisions, the new COVID-19 support payments framework will provide that the activation criteria, eligible persons, circumstances of the payment, and calculation of payment amounts may be set by Order in Council.
This bill is about alleviating financial stress. It helps keep businesses afloat by ensuring that vital COVID support payments can continue to be made, and it ensures that families are better off. It is a bill that recognises the reality of today’s economic conditions and the role the Government plays in helping to relieve some of the financial stress. I want to thank the House for giving this bill its urgent attention, and I commend the bill to the House.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you. I think I want to start off by saying I’m actually finding the debate today incredibly disrespectful to business people in Auckland, the Waikato, places like Queenstown, Rotorua, who have suffered incredibly over the last 18 months. We’ve got a bill that’s being rammed through under urgency, and yet we’ve got a stream of Labour members standing up and talking about the impact on how this is going to solve poverty for New Zealanders. That is certainly part of the bill, but I would suggest to you that that is not why we’re doing this under urgency. When I listen to Dr Duncan Webb, who’s the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC), and other members of the committee who stand up and speak for less than, or about, a minute on this bill that is being pushed through, rammed through under urgency, I think it is absolutely a gross misuse of this House—to callously disregard the debate about this bill, which is about looking after New Zealanders going forward, and particularly those people who have suffered incredibly. In total, in the first reading of this bill, of the members—and we think there’s six—the members would have spoken for no more than a combined total of eight minutes.
We’ve just had a fill-in Minister speak and open the second debate who couldn’t even get the 10 minutes on his second reading speech. He didn’t even know it was the second reading; he kept talking about the first reading, right? And he stands up there, delivers a speech which he reads off notes prepared by some lackey, and doesn’t really understand the bill. We have the original Minister who was responsible talking on this bill, and, unfortunately, what we’re missing in this debate is high quality debate around why and what the merits of this bill are, and putting forward both the view from the Government side as to why we should be doing it under urgency, and, of course, the Opposition and what our position is. What we’ve got is flaccid Government members sitting in the House, not participating in this debate and just talking about a rote thing that someone’s prepared for them, just talking about the benefits of increasing Working for Families. We acknowledge that. We acknowledge that the bill—
DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, that’s good, because you’ve just spent three minutes telling us about that. How about talking about the bill?
ANDREW BAYLY: So we acknowledge that—that the bill does increase some of the Working for Families benefits, and that is fine. But to sit there and then say that’s going to lift a whole lot of people out of poverty is an outrageous assumption, and I’ll tell you why. If you increase the benefits in line with inflation, that doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help anyone; it just keeps pace with the costs of living that they face. It doesn’t do any real improvement. The only improvement is the extra $5—$5!
Then we heard the Minister, in his opening speech, say it’s going to lift 6,000 people out of poverty, and then everyone else on the Labour side started talking about 3,000. Obviously, the officials who wrote their prep speeches, their prep notes, didn’t actually listen to what the Minister said. You can’t even get the figure right! So let’s assume it’s 3,000 people. I don’t believe a $5,000 increase in benefits per week is going to lift anyone out of poverty, particularly when you’ve got inflation going like this. It’s 4.9 percent. Even their Reserve Bank—and I heard one of the members talking about the inflation projections—they expect it to increase further.
That means, every day, working families are going to fall further behind. This is not going to get them out of poverty. This assumption that you’re going to lift all these people out of poverty is an incorrect assumption. I listened carefully to my colleague the Hon Louise Upston, who said that, back in 2017, the Prime Minister proudly announced that she was going to lift 100,000 people out of poverty—100,000 children. And what’s the result today? Fifteen hundred. Fifteen hundred—1,500. And you say you’re going to lift 6,000 or 3,000—whatever figures you want to quote—today as a result of a $5 net increase. That is wrong. You are wrong in your assumptions, and it’s a silly proposition to be making.
But the much more important reason why we are debating this today under urgency, as we have with the previous COVID bill, is that this is a way of slipping through a new arrangement that is meant to support struggling businesses, business owners, and their employees through a most difficult time. It all comes off the back of a new traffic light system that 65 percent of New Zealanders do not understand—65 percent do not understand this system, and, by the way, it comes into play in eight days’ time. It’s outrageous. It is outrageous that we’ve got a bill that is meant to be what’s called an “enabling bill” to allow these changes to take place. We’ve known all about this. We had Grant Robertson and the whole array of Ministers making this announcement on 22 October, over a month away, and then, because tomorrow is the last day of Parliament before we have a recess, before they have to announce something next week, we have to ram this through. How incompetent can you be as a Government? That is outrageously incompetent. Outrageous.
Then we’ve got members on the other side from the Government who don’t even know what’s in the bill. It is a shocker. And then, Dr Duncan Webb, professor of laws of taxation, this is a tax bill. Speak up, Dr Duncan Webb. And what about the other members of the FEC? Some of them actually know something about it. Stand up and fight for what you’re putting up today, because this is what you’re meant to do as Government people, right? This is a weird, weird, weird situation.
So we’ve got this thing that’s going to come into play in eight days’ time and we know nothing about what is the new form of payment. Well, I heard the step-in Minister, in his speech just before, talk about a new form of payment. Well, is it based on a drop in revenue? Because all those struggling businesses in Auckland, Queenstown, the Waikato, Rotorua—wherever, right?—if the Government is going to change the arrangement and say it’s not based on a drop in revenue, I think that’s pretty major. But, of course, have we got clarity on that? No! No, we haven’t got clarity on that. We don’t even know what the new payment system is! At least the Minister could have outlined what it was, what the new transitional payment arrangement was. What is it going to be based on? What is it? How are you going to pay it? Are you going to pay it weekly? Are you going to pay it fortnightly? Who are you going to apply to? What businesses? What sectors? The Minister of Finance got asked that today. He couldn’t even talk about that. He couldn’t even tell us which areas are going to be in red next week, which are going to be in orange, which are going to be in green. It is just chaos.
If you own a business and you’ve spent the last 18 months to try and keep it alive, try and retain your employees in your business, and you’ve had to mortgage up against your house, and you’re in your late 50s and you’ve mortgaged yourself to the hilt, what you’re now looking at is a situation going into a bleak Christmas. Do you continue to keep that business alive or do you commit yourself to not at 65 retiring but possibly working quite late into your 70s so that, when you do retire, you’ve got some money that you can retire on. That’s the type of choices we’re talking about. This is what this bill is about, changing that framework. And yet there is not a skerrick of detail in it, and that’s why the Government members can’t talk on it. But you need to stand up today and give confidence to those hard-pressed business owners and their staff, because they’re the ones hurting. This bill is meant to be dealing with it, and you’re not in this bill. This bill does not provide any clarity, any confidence to them. It is an outrageous bill to be pushing through in urgency.
Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I’ve got, really, one thing to say to Mr Bayly about that speech: please don’t shout so much. Your colleagues need hearing protection; it’s quite harmful. But, look, the fact of the matter is that this bill is going to enable this Government to continue to support business the way that it has to date. The fact is that we want to be able to remain nimble and alert, and so this is exactly the right situation to create powers so that we’re not constrained, that we don’t have to follow a strict, constrained regime of payment. We can look where they’re needed, when they’re needed, and how they’re needed, and that’s what we’ve done to date. So we’ve been able to adapt the Resurgence Support Payment so that it’s not a one-off; it’s regular. We’ve been able to extend the wage subsidy and increase it, and a whole lot of other measures which have supported all of those businesses which are so important to our economy. This bill is an important part of moving that forward into the traffic light framework. It’s absolutely going to work, it’s the right thing to do, and I absolutely commend it to the House.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I heard it said once that one day in Government was better than three years in Opposition. I must say whoever said that was not a member of the 53rd Parliament of New Zealand, because I aspire to be a Minister again but, in the meantime, I would much rather be over here, debating the real issues, than the lily-livered cannon fodder for the Government that sits on those backbenches. I cannot believe the intellectual firepower that is the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s Labour members being so badly wasted in this bill debate.
Dr Webb comes up with one minute and one second in the first reading and one minute 20 in the second to tell us what? Who knows. At least in the second reading he said, “Well, it’s going to be, next week, the way it is today.” Well, that’s not true, because we’re debating a bill to change it, only we don’t know what we’re changing it to. We don’t have any details of what the business support payments are going to be from next Friday. I would have thought that Barbara Edmonds might have knocked on the door of the Minister of Revenue, being the good former IRD staff member and tax lawyer that she is, and said, “Give me something to work with. Give me some sort of message that I can give in the one minute and 20 seconds that I’m going to speak in the first reading.”
Ingrid Leary transfers from Waiheke Island to represent the good people of Taieri in order to do what? Spend one minute and something saying very little or nothing. And I’m not quite sure what Helen White did in a previous life. I think she’s a lawyer as well; I’m sure she was a very good one. I bet she wishes she was back there now rather than standing up and spending one minute and four seconds making no contribution whatsoever to such an important issue. Even the Minister moving the second reading couldn’t be bothered getting a new speech. He dusted off the speech read by the Hon David Parker and then couldn’t even make the change from “first reading” to “second reading”. That’s the laziness, the ambivalence, and the disrespect that we’re seeing by the Labour members for this House, for democracy, and for this Parliament. I’m deeply, deeply disappointed.
So let’s just actually drill into what some of the issues said. I found Greg O’Connor, the ultimate strawman arguer, to be all over the place on this. We heard seven or eight speeches from Labour members saying how important this was and how it wasn’t needed, but the good people of Ōhāriu apparently have got the opposite problem, because they can’t get labour in the construction industry. Well, that may be the case, and very nice though Ōhāriu might be—I used to live in Johnsonville many, many years ago—it isn’t a tourism hotspot. It isn’t a centre for international education. It isn’t a place where there are high levels of staff who are affected by this, although many of them live there and work in other places. He’s talking to the wrong people, because there is pain out there. And the Government says, “Well, the way to do that is to provide more business resurgence payments.” And that, essentially, is what the Minister in his—I say “second reading” loosely—speech talked about when he said, “It’s about alleviating financial stress.” Well, the best way to alleviate financial stress is to stop businesses and their staff from getting in that situation in the first place. Former Prime Minister John Key very often was quoted as saying, “Don’t judge a Government by how much support they give to people who are poorly off; judge the Government by how many people they put into poverty and how many people they take out of poverty.” That’s the key to this. That’s what we should be debating here.
Now, I want to talk about Jan Logie’s contribution, and it’s going to be a slightly oblique walk-around to get back to the point, which is: we don’t know what level of business support is going to be provided through this bill. We did in February when we first passed a similar piece of legislation, albeit it wasn’t in the bill. The Minister did offer it. Now, I don’t think Jan Logie and I are too different in our aspirations for all New Zealanders. We actually want every single New Zealander to live their best life—actually, I would say, independent of unnecessary influence by the State. And when people do fall into hard times, it is incumbent on the State to do two things: to support them on that journey and to lift them back out of those hard times. Now, how we do that, we may differ in our political philosophy, but I think, in terms of our goal, we have very similar aspirations.
But I was fascinated by Ms Logie’s comments around—I think, in response to me or David Seymour in the first reading—what we can do to lift businesses out of the rut that they’re in and actually get out of their way and allow them to trade. I think that was pretty much what I said. To which Ms Logie was critiquing on the risks that that poses—the risks that someone might die. And I think that’s a tragedy—I agree with Mr Seymour’s commentary on that. But here’s the point, and I think a number of leaders—the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Seymour—have all struggled with media questions about how many lives are we prepared to lose by relaxing restrictions that have been on our country. And I think that’s a really important question, but I refuse to answer it until all of the cards are on the table—until all of the impacts of the decisions Government have made are in the calculus.
Now, I used to work in the health sector and I’ve got qualifications in health service management. When we think about decisions, policy decisions, we talk about—health policy makers talk about—quality adjusted life years, disability adjusted life years; that’s a common currency for assessing whether an investment in a certain drug will have an outcome and reduce morbidity or mortality, or increase. And so, yes, having no lockdown would have caused a high level of death and serious illness, and we didn’t do that. Total lockdown may save all lives—probably not, but it saved a hell of a lot of them. But here’s what we don’t factor in and what we need to talk more about: what about the non-COVID health issues? What about what Dr Chris Jackson called the non-COVID cancer casualties when he came before the Epidemic Response Committee last year? What about the diabetes, the heart disease, the mental health issues on our business owners, on people in financial stress? The poor educational outcomes. The developmental delay of our pre-schoolers. What about our secondary schoolers who are leaving now without a leavers dinner, without a graduation ceremony, without the school formal or ball in the middle of the year? What about the people who are on IVF treatment at the moment—or who aren’t, because of the cancelled elective treatments in our DHBs? I’ve read research that has said that the costs in non-COVID health and societal effects are five times greater than the costs of lockdown.
So why do I raise that in the context of this bill? It’s because we need to reinforce that the gold standard is to safely—so the rhetorical question is: what’s the right level of business resurgence payment? I would say: zero. I would say: get the building blocks in place faster than we have to enable businesses to open sooner than they have and more freely than they have, vaccinate quicker than we did, use rapid antigen tests where we haven’t, and get rid of the traffic light system. That’s what will alleviate the financial stress, Mr Sio, and Ms Logie will quite rightly say that will come at a cost—a cost in the morbidity and mortality due to COVID, but it’ll come at a hell of a benefit to all those non-COVID things that we haven’t even bothered to measure, according to Treasury. When Cabinet considers lockdowns, it hasn’t considered the cancer, the diabetes, the heart disease, the mental health, the educational outcomes, the social outcomes, and the social isolation of our elderly. These are real costs, and the best way to fix them is to enable people to get back to their normal lives—as much as the new normal will look like—faster than we are.
And that’s the shame of this Government’s response. They did well last year. We’ve said that repeatedly. But resting on their laurels, and thinking their best in class, and not dealing with those things, and not having an open conversation with the country, who are very smart about these things, because they live these issues every day, has, I think, been a neglect, and that’s a terrible shame. We shouldn’t be debating this.
BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m going to spend my time to answer a couple of the questions that the other members on the other side of the House were firing at us on this side. I’m sure the Minister will also cover a lot of it in the committee of the whole House. I don’t need to shout to make my point across. Perhaps if they spent more energy actually reading the bill, the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, the Tax Administration Act (TAA), the documents that came with the bill, then their own questions would be answered if they actually read it.
So, to their question “What does the grant look like? Who receives it? When do they receive it?”, the Tax Administration Act that this bill is changing, Section 7AAC, that particular section never had that information. In the primary legislation, it allows for an Order in Council, which then covers that information. So, therefore, Treasury said that this bill, for those changes, didn’t need a regulatory impact statement (RIS). The reason why it didn’t need a regulatory impact statement was because it was minor—it was technical. So, therefore, the policy hasn’t significantly shifted. Therefore, those questions about the “who, what, when, why” will still be covered in an Order in Council just like it is currently under the TAA.
The second question around urgency, “Why do you need urgency?”, it’s right throughout the disclosure statement. It says on the back page—easily said on the back page—it needs the preferred option to include an urgent primary legislation prior to December 2021. That is to allow for sufficient time for the IRD and the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to implement the necessary system changes. Why do you need the urgency for the COVID protection framework? It comes in two weeks’ time. So, if you don’t put this legislation in, if you don’t have it ready for the COVID protection framework, businesses will have nothing—absolutely nothing. Because there is no grant framework that comes with it.
So, therefore, if you don’t support this bill, you don’t support businesses, you don’t support Māori, Pacific people, women, family, and children, and that’s why I commend this bill to the House.
JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take another call at the second reading of this bill, the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, and it’s hard not to respond to my new best friend: the Hon Michael Woodhouse—it was news to me, but it’s nice to have that friendliness—around his promotion of, I guess, consideration in saying, “Well, what about the counterfactual in terms of deaths?” and the research that he had been reading.
I think, you know, the evidence I’ve seen is that New Zealanders have actually been very pleased with the response up to this point and the very low rates of COVID, and we’re struggling at the moment, to be honest, because of that earlier success, and the shift to an endemic presence of COVID in our communities is, frankly, frightening. You know, the Greens wanted us to hold on to actually elimination for longer and kind of double down on that to see if we could get rid of it, and part of that is because of the inequities around the vaccine roll-out and the history of flu in this country and what that has meant for Māori and for marginalised communities. When we talk about “Yes, there might be some lives lost, but what does that mean in terms of this and this?”, we’re talking as if it’s a generic population, and it’s not. This terrible disease impacts different communities more profoundly and they are more at risk, and that requires us to take a precautionary and responsible approach, and that, for the Greens, needs to be up front.
In terms of “What are the other costs?”, we’ve also seen that the member the Hon Michael Woodhouse didn’t seem to account for the impact of long COVID as well, which the science is just catching up on but has to be part of that thinking, because the impacts of that are really severe. It’s not just about people getting this disease and, tragically, dying or getting better, or just not, you know, being sick; this goes on for a very long, long, long time and will have lifelong impacts for some people. So that also has to be part of the equation. The latest numbers I heard internationally were that the underestimation was about five million people had died just of COVID, or is about four million—like, underestimates—but eight million had died in terms of the health systems’ inability to respond to other illnesses. This wasn’t just about responding to COVID; it was about our health system being overwhelmed and not being able to respond to those other needs.
I wasn’t hearing that reflected in the “We shouldn’t have a resurgence payment. It should just be open.”—like open, open, open, as if there is no threat that comes with that. And so I think that’s quite out of step with most New Zealanders’ thinking, to be honest. And though that is not the core part of this bill—actually, I agree with the previous speaker, Barbara Edmonds. A lot of my time won’t be spent on the resurgence payment because, actually, this bill is just a very minor change to that, because all of that sits within Order in Council at the moment, and that will remain in that context. It’s really about recognising that we’re shifting from a tiered response to a traffic light response.
So I would like to spend the rest of my time talking about the Working for Families aspects of this, and I do have to now take issue with the Minister, who, in his second reading speech, said that this was about, I think, implementing, he said, the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s recommendations. Well, that would have been nice, but, actually, if I read directly from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s recommendations, they say, “We take the view that the Family Tax Credit should move closer to being universal, available to all except high-income families. The rationale for this is that all of society benefits from the next generation and should contribute to the costs.” They called for the abatement rate on the family tax credit to be reduced from the 25 percent that it is now to 10 percent, and this bill increases it to 27 percent. This bill puts in place, I think, a 57 percent effective marginal tax rate for families earning $48,000. That’s not a wealthy family when you’ve got kids to care for in this world where rents are what they are, let alone the cost of living.
I also want to talk to the point about “No one will be worse off.”, and the numbers of people that we’re hearing who are going to benefit from this policy. I just really want to speak to the feeling that that’s misrepresenting this, because the inflation adjustments were locked in—so, in effect, this legislation and what is up to the Government and what the Government is doing has nothing to do with that. So we’ve been hearing those numbers of—what is it?—$14 per child and $12.83 per child. Actually, the majority of that was locked in from previous decisions and has nothing to do with this Government’s decision. It really is a $5 per child increase because the rest of it had to happen anyway. So it feels a bit—there’s a word that I’m not allowed to use. To be honest—it sounds like that word but means something the opposite. So to be suggesting that the numbers are higher and that large numbers of people are going to benefit—and I also want to point to what the regulatory impact statement tells us: the rate change will be $5 per child; there will be the increase of the abatement rate to 27 percent; between 4,000 and 6,000 children might be lifted from poverty. And there is a footnote to those numbers of lifting children from poverty saying that there is really significant statistical uncertainty with those numbers. So we cannot rely on those numbers.
And then it tells us there will be 223,000 winners from this and they will gain an income from an average of $8. So that to me, if the Government was being upfront about what’s happening, would be what they would be telling us, and that is a story to tell, and that is consistent with what they’re doing. But it also tells us that, because of that change to the abatement rate, 91,000 families will be worse off than what they would have been without this bill, without that change, and they will be worse off by an average of $6 a week. And that’s those people who are working, who we want to be encouraging and supporting to be able to manage their life as a family and work, because that’s tough. Childcare, transport, just the logistics of time—it is not an obvious thing and it is not right for all families to be in paid employment as opposed to being at home caring for their kids. That is not an automatic “Yes, this is best for children.” It is only best for children if you get enough financial benefit from that work to be able to make that juggle and the welfare of your kids better off. So pulling money back from those families earning over $48,000 a year is counterproductive and goes against the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s recommendation.
I also just want to touch on—like, the Prime Minister wants New Zealand to be the best country in the world to bring up kids. Our tax credit rate is so much less support for low-income families than even Australia’s, and I don’t think of Australia as a radical country. A low-income family in Australia, even with these changes, will be over $7,000 better off through tax credits than our families, than our children, when we are supposedly aspiring to be the best country in the world to bring up kids. But this Government is not getting behind that. They’re not putting the money where their mouth is, and they need to change that.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.
Sitting suspended from 6.03 p.m. to 7 p.m.
DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): I was reminded of when I first came to Parliament and was watching people’s maiden speeches, and watching the then MP, now Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern talk about her one goal in Parliament and how, if she didn’t achieve it, then she should go, which relates to this bill today and the support payments around child poverty. It was a pretty substantial statement to say that her main goal was to lift everybody out of poverty that needed to be lifted, and, to this date, it still hasn’t been achieved. And, in the bill today, there is not much progress on that, where we can only see, of the 100,000 people she promised to come out of poverty, that maybe 1,500 people will benefit, with a net increase of $5 and a loaf of bread to support their families and to actually look at the cost of living index, which, with inflation rising 5 percent, means that, no matter what is paid under this scheme, the families will not be better off.
So we suggest that, if this bill does go ahead, which we will not be supporting in the ACT Party, we have a post-enactment inquiry of the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, including a public submissions process to get to the bottom of how we lift all these and rise the boats with regards to families and people in situations which have become even more extreme in New Zealand. In the ACT Party, we believe the best way to do that is to create opportunity, to create a tax break that allows people to get thousands of dollars as opposed to $5 in a period. And we also believe that creating these opportunities is the only way forward, under a new Government.
Something happened today and yesterday that I think has set a rot in with regards to passing laws in this country. Passing under urgency bills like this has brought this House into disrepute. It’s brought our perception as MPs into disrepute as well, and it means that the confidence in the public about our willingness to solve issues around giving business confidence with support packages, where they have moved on and are doing their own thing, and also us supporting people with disadvantaged families, has become almost a lost cause in the minds of New Zealanders.
We actually believe that, in eight days’ time, we’ve got a situation where nothing much has really changed, and these have been passed under urgency without any consultation with the Opposition parties, which would have been easy to sit down and resolve. This seems to be a growing trend with regards to COVID matters and COVID bills, and doing it under urgency just makes it worse. So when do we stop doing it under urgency? When do we build in proper time frames? When do we build in proper regulatory statements, cost-benefit analysis that actually works, and when do we start getting real about the fact that it’s not enough just to keep saying no, but we actually need to work as a Parliament to solve these major structural issues that just aren’t going away?
So, with regards to the bill itself, it is something that is not quite necessary right now; life would go on without this, and whether “Dr No”—Dr Parker—respects this or not, the recommendations here are an admission that we are moving into a new zone of COVID management, which requires more sophistication, requires more ability to look at the macro levels of poverty and actually achieve something that is long standing as we walk through this COVID-mare. We are wanting to create opportunities for families that isn’t just giving handouts, and people are insulted by the quantums of money. They don’t know why this is happening and coming through, but it’s certainly not making an impact when a petrol tank has gone up $20 from where it was two to three months ago.
So we would actually like to be able to sit down with this Government in the future and actually work out what is the best scenario. But why not get the public in to talk about this, and why not get businesses in to talk about this and wrap them in a process that actually builds confidence and stop talking to a few pet groups like BusinessNZ, talking to associations that are, really, just there to reinforce the status quo, and actually have a democratic Parliament where the people have their say about these matters and actually want to be involved with the solutions as well.
So we believe that we need to get thinking really hard and fast about the amount of debt that we’re racking up and the value that we’re getting. The solution long term is not just to keep handing out money, but it’s to create value for money and opportunities that, even if it’s thousands of dollars as opposed to single dollars, the country can look itself in the eye and say, “Yeah, that is contributing to economic and particular value.” and to family and households, enjoyment for children or parents.
One of the things that we would ask—the whole issue of urgency under COVID—is that a special taskforce be set up to talk between the parties and actually give people a head’s up that allows not this standoff that’s happening across the House today but something that’s more integrated, something that’s more sensible. We are in a pandemic, and we need confidence that everybody steps out of this building into constituencies with solutions that appear sensible and actually add value to people’s lives.
We will not be supporting this bill, but we will actually want to work in the best spirit that we can. One of the things we’d like to do is just really look at the whole Working for Families tax credit system and really start a new process and add some sensibility into it.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I’m rather surprised to hear from that member, Damien Smith, who I enjoy sitting on the Finance and Expenditure Committee with, telling our Prime Minister off for her ambition to lift children out of poverty. I do not apologise for absolutely supporting that ambition; that is why many of us on this side of the House are in Parliament. That member knows, as well, that Treasury has spoken to us recently in very glowing terms about the Government’s handling of the pandemic and the economic response.
This piece of legislation must be considered in terms of the trends and what this Government has done over a period of time to support our most vulnerable. It is not about the small, incremental changes; it is about what has happened since we’ve been in Government. Since 2017, changes to the welfare payments and tax credits have lifted the incomes of 100,000 families and whānau with children by $175 a week. That is no small measure. That makes a real difference, and I absolutely commend this bill to the House.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Hon Todd McClay—five minutes.
Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): The last speaker in the debate, Ingrid Leary, misunderstood my colleague from ACT, Damien Smith, and what he was saying. He wasn’t being critical of the Prime Minister for her ambition to lift children out of poverty; he was being critical of her because she’s put more children into poverty than she actually has lifted out.
So we just heard a hundred and something dollars—$175—a week more for an average family since Labour came to Government. What they didn’t tell you is that, if you look at what’s happened to rent and mortgages and the cost of food and the cost of petrol and the cost of almost every single thing in the country, that family that the Government has not helped with lower taxes when they work so they can keep more of what they earn and spend it on things that they want—no, no, the $175 that the Government took off hard-working Kiwis in tax to then give back to those families to tell them they’re better off and they should be grateful—are worse off because all of their costs have gone up.
There is such a thing in the country today that has not been here for as long as I can remember: the working poor—people who get up every day and drive our trucks; and they go to our factories, they go to our shops, and they work hard, work hard to earn money, to pay their bills and pay for their family. They are poorer today than they were when Labour came to Government, because the cost of living has gone up so very much. It has nothing at all to do with COVID. The Government would love to blame everything on COVID: “Because of COVID, we have to do this. Because of COVID, we have to borrow $97.5 billion and use some of it for the arts and a little bit more for cameras on fishing boats.”! Everything that the Government has done, they say, is because of COVID. But, to mum and dad at home who are the working poor, who are paying their tax and they can’t afford to pay their bills—and for some of them that are having to choose to pay the bills rather than buy the food for the kids—the Prime Minister is ambitious for them, but she is costing them dearly, and there are more children in poverty today than there were when the Prime Minister took this on as one of her ambitions.
We support businesses in New Zealand. We want them to be able to get out and to trade their way out of the mess that Labour has created. We want them to know with certainty what the plan is. We don’t want the Government every single day to come up with another COVID rule, a restriction, or another change, because nobody in the country, particularly the Prime Minister, actually knows what’s going on. We actually believe that, if 85 percent of the population are vaccinated—higher in many parts of the country—actually the Government’s foot can come off the throat of small business and of households so they can start trading their way out.
I ask the Government members this when they stand up and speak for 30 or 40 seconds on this bill—that’s all the time that they’ve got available to them; 30 seconds to be self-congratulatory about what a wonderful job that they have done, 30 whole seconds as we do this in urgency—can they please tell the New Zealand public why it is that when, for the majority of the country that’s currently under level 2, the Prime Minister’s traffic light system comes in, nothing will have changed other than greater restriction, more cost, and it’s harder for them to run their businesses? How come today somebody can walk into a hairdresser here in Wellington to get their hair cut whether they are vaccinated or not? It’s not so dangerous that they can walk in today, vaccinated or not, and have their hair cut, but, as soon as the Prime Minister puts in the traffic light system that she has just rammed through Parliament in one day, it’s too dangerous all of a sudden! Why is it a Kiwi on 15 January can come home to see their family from Australia if they’re double vaccinated but, on 24 December, it’s too dangerous for New Zealand for them to come back here to see their family on Christmas Day? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up. It is a policy that’s being made up on the hoof.
It’s worse than that. It’s every time there’s a bit of criticism, the media says something, or there’s a little bit of public movement from their polls or from their working groups that they make a change. And, I’ve got to say, I think mum and dad at home know that the very small amount of this bill the Government is giving them won’t actually help with the large costs going up. In the committee of the whole House stage, we’re going to look at this in quite some detail, because the support the Government wants to give businesses in this is not clear to them. They’re virtually saying, “We can give you support if we feel like it, but we might not, and we want a carte blanche to do so.” And $97.5 billion has been borrowed by this Government to be spent because they say it’s about COVID. It’s these hard-working Kiwis whose cost of living has gone up so much that they don’t know if they can pay their bills who are the ones that are going have to pay that back—and their kids and their kids. It’s so much money. You can’t borrow and spend your way out of a tragedy, the tragedy this Government has created. That’s what they’re trying to do. This isn’t good legislation; it’s bad. We’re voting against it.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Dr Liz Craig—five minutes.
Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Reducing child poverty is a big priority for this Government. If you look back, what we see is that child poverty really, really increased really rapidly in the early 1990s, and it’s been slow to come back down. But, once we got into Government, we started to turn that around. Just thinking through the things that we’ve done since coming into Government: Best Start payment for newborn babies, which was $60 a week, and this bill will bring it up to $65 a week; increases in Working for Families; we’ve looked at putting in place the winter energy payment, which means that families can afford to turn the heater on in winter; and we’ve increased benefits, and we’re going to do that again with further increases next year.
So this bill here actually just increases more, in terms of extra little bits for family income, because I think each little bit—what we used to see, historically, is that gradual erosion of family income with a bit taken off here or there. What we’ve been doing since coming into Government is putting extra in across a whole range of areas, which will make a big difference in terms of having enough money in the pocket to put food on the table, to pay for the heater. So I’m really happy to commend this bill to the House.
Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I am delighted to stand up, take a very short call, and bring this bill home in its current reading. For the members opposite to suggest that this means nothing to the average parents trying to make a living, it shows just how out of touch they are. This is incredibly significant. As my colleague Liz Craig has just said, this is one more of the small, incremental changes we are making that make a big difference to the average small New Zealand family. And, what’s more, it makes one heck of a difference to our average employer, because I just on Monday night got off a phone call with about 18 of my local businesses, and this is exactly what they were asking for. This is exactly the certainty they wanted. I commend this bill to the House.
CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to speak to the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill. Often one would stand up in the House and say either one had been part of the select committee and reflect on some of the submissions and thank those who had been part of the process, or, of course, alternatively, one would say that one hadn’t been part of the select committee process and, therefore, one was at somewhat of a disadvantage compared with one’s colleagues, but at least one had read some of the submissions. I wasn’t part of the select committee process, but then again, no one was! There hasn’t been one. So I’m not able to acknowledge any such contributions, much as I actually would have liked to have heard from the New Zealand people on the subject of the taxation bill.
These are pretty serious matters, and, if the other side of the House believed as strongly as they say they do on doing things that are right for people, perhaps they would not be so afraid of hearing from the people whom they say that they wish to assist. One is put in mind of that classic dictum that there’s no more scary set of words than, “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” Well, no doubt the intention is to help. The intention, as always—or at least is usually the case, we can discern—may be a good one, but that’s not the same as to say that the outcome is a good one. And, in relation to this bill, a number of proposals are made—a number of claims are made in the bill—that I think we can pretty readily stack up versus reality and see that it doesn’t, in fact, provide all the benefits that it claims, and all the benefits that the other side of the House, no doubt genuinely, would like it to provide.
So the first thing I’d say is that often we hear about increases and improvements, and, for example, the Working for Families amendments provide for increases to the family tax credit, Best Start tax credit rates, and so on. There are proposed increases that will apply from 1 April of next year. Well, that’s great, but these will not be increases in real terms if any such increases are swallowed up by inflation. By inflation, of course, I mean not only in the obvious monetary sense with the increase of the Consumers Price Index—and that’s a matter that is bedevilling New Zealand, yes, and other countries around the world, but I’m not particularly taken with arguments on the other side of the House that say, “Well, look how much worse things are in some other countries.” in relation to inflation or national debt or whatever, because the fact of the matter is that, in this House, we should compare ourselves with the best New Zealand that we can be. We should be comparing our circumstances now, as they were, but, more importantly, as they can be if the best possible policy making takes place in this place—and in the Beehive, of course.
So, in real terms, the improvement in the situation of families and individuals and businesses is not all that it is claimed in this bill. Of course, inflation in monetary terms, as I’ve talked about, which even in itself is perhaps a limited way of viewing the increases in the cost of living, if we take into account housing costs—which are often excluded from calculations of inflation and yet the most inevitable costs that human beings will have, along with, I suppose, clothing and food, because, of course, shelter is a basic human need. And, of course, housing, whether one is paying rent to a landlord or paying an equivalent amount, perhaps, to a bank by way of repaying mortgage principal and interest in one’s own home—either way, housing costs are a considerable part of any household or individual’s budget; likewise, actually, of course, in the commercial sense, for businesses operating a retail premises. For those costs which have been escalating in the last four years, there has been some criticism—or lots of criticism—and, perhaps, with some justification about the increases in the previous nine years; so, huge extra cost pressures that the bill will do very little to ameliorate. The danger, of course, is not only that it doesn’t keep up with these inflationary pressures but also that, in fact, families and individuals may even fall behind—so, in real terms, not much of an increase at all, and, possibly, even going backwards.
The proposed increases to apply from 1 April of next year: obviously, more than three months away. That’s a lot of extra time for inflationary pressure to continue to push hard up against households and businesses. This is doing a great disservice to Kiwis, who might feel as though they are better off with a greater number of dollars next to their name, but, of course, that’s entirely illusory in the case of increased cost pressures, which are not only in that sort of general inflationary sense but also in specific items with supply shortages around the world. Yes, some of that is to do with COVID-19 and beyond the control of any Government, and, yes, these are global problems to some extent, but the fact of the matter is that, because these are things outside our control, that is all the more reason for the Government of New Zealand to do all the things that are within its control to avoid inflationary pressure. A big-spending Government that does not have sound priorities in terms of return for investment—and I don’t mean that in a cold, hard, calculating way, necessarily, in the balance sheet, but investment in terms of the position of humans and the way that we can create a better New Zealand with infrastructure that we would actually benefit from, not pie in the sky stuff such as the proposed and then de-proposed, “deposed” even, plans for a cycle bridge over the Auckland Harbour, for example.
But I did want to speak, also, about the schemes that are being made available here, because, of course, the largess of Government—by which I really mean, of course, the largess of taxpayers and the funds that they’ve provided to the Government to spend on their behalf, whether willingly or otherwise—is only as useful and only as meaningful as the support actually becoming available actually is. I’d like to give a couple of examples in relation to constituents of mine who have had difficulty accessing the COVID-19 resurgence support payments, because this scheme is specifically mentioned in the bill, and it’s the amendments to that, as well as the Working for Families and so forth, that the bill is concerned with.
The issues faced, for example, by a business that has effectively been continuing throughout a period of time, throughout a period in which a lockdown has vastly reduced the revenue-generating ability of the business, has been denied the benefits that they should have been made available to them under the COVID-19 resurgence support payments. The reason from the officials doing the will of the Beehive is that the business was bought and sold during the relevant period. So the determination from the Inland Revenue Department was that the business was a new business, and because a company had been incorporated and established for the purpose of buying an existing business, a going concern, one which was making a certain amount of revenue that was impacted by the lockdown, the decision—and it’s a real head-scratcher—was that there was no qualification for the payment on the basis that a loss of income hadn’t been established, because it was a new business, when it was exactly the case that it was an existing business, albeit under a new name.
So the implication is that no businesses should be bought or sold, and somehow the good people of New Zealand should have the foresight, literally in the case of this business, of needing a crystal ball. I’m not talking about prudent planning; I’m talking literally to be able to guess, as one would guess Lotto numbers, and with about as much success! So that just seems, to me, extraordinary. The Government needs to have a hard look at the way that they are administering the scheme in a way that actually excludes rather than includes those who are deserving of it and meet the spirit and, I would argue, the letter of the law as it stands.
The other situation is the one of a business that was newly set up around the time of the great lockdown in Auckland. I say it in a way that sort of makes it sound quite historical, as though it’s in the past; it’s very much still in the present up there, I can tell you. For a constituent to have her application denied in relation to her new business because it wasn’t her income-generating ability that had been affected but her capital-raising ability seems, to me, extraordinary. These are, effectively, the same things for a new business. I won’t go into the detail—I don’t have time for one thing, but also not to be too specific in relation to this person’s individual case—but, again, the point remains that the Government has to make available support if it’s serious about doing the things that it says it wants to do in this bill.
HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise in support of this bill. One of the things that I’ve heard repeatedly today is that the Government got it right a year ago but it’s not getting it right now. It’s the very same philosophy that’s the essence of this bill. So rest assured, too, New Zealanders who are listening tonight, this is a response to a change in a system which is changing because the vaccination numbers are up as high as they are. It means that we have another tool in the toolbox. From the end of this week, we’re going to be in a position where, actually, businesses mainly stay open.
Now, some of those businesses will be affected in some more subtle ways. This system that we’re introducing tonight means that those people in those businesses can have a response. Without it, actually, the support that the Government could give would all be hedged around an old system and an out-of-date linguistics. So, right now, this bill is really important to put through to support the businesses that are suffering the most. I recognise that those businesses support workers. I’m very proud of the fact that we have maintained our employment in this country. I support the bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill be now read a second time.
Ayes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill.
In Committee
Part 1 Amendments to Tax Administration Act 1994
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the House in committee for the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill. We come first to the debate on Part 1, which is the debate on clauses 3 to 7, “Amendments to Tax Administration Act 1994”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.
CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Oh, thank you very much, Madam Chair. What an unexpected pleasure to be National’s first speaker on this, the first part—
Andrew Bayly: And a good looking man too, with a fine haircut.
CHRIS PENK: Thank you very much. I’m not going to respond to any comments that are being made in the Chamber, Madam Chair, for fear of getting them into the Hansard.
I have a couple of questions first of all, and a little bit of it is my desire to be useful to the committee by asking the Minister to take an opportunity to explain clearly a couple of matters that might benefit from such clarification, and that forms part of the public record of course. And a little bit of it is that I actually genuinely don’t necessarily understand all the different parts. I would be embarrassed to admit that, except that, of course, with such a newly introduced piece of legislation, and one that has not been subject to much ventilation—as we’ve been saying in the last 24 hours in relation to another bit of legislation—I do genuinely think that I would benefit from understanding a bit better some of the way that the schemes intend to operate.
So, if I can take you and the rest of the committee first of all to clause 5, which is to replace sections 7AAB and 7AAC within the Tax Administration Act, which is, of course, one of the pieces of legislation being amended, I’d like to turn the committee’s attention to subsection (1), which talks about the purpose of the section being “to authorise the making of payments under the COVID-19 support payments scheme”, and so forth. It talks about a matter that is related to COVID-19, or a “circumstance, or matter, that is related to COVID-19”, and then it’s defined in brackets, in bold “(a COVID-19 circumstance), or by a group of COVID-19 circumstances.” Well, the second bit is probably easy enough—that would be, you know, a plural, more than one of a COVID19 circumstance—but I must confess I am still interested to know what a “COVID-19 circumstance” is. I presume that that’s a matter that’s defined in the parent legislation and, hence, in this amendment we are able simply to refer to that, or cross refer to that. But I wonder, apart from that relatively straightforward matter that I could probably look up myself, whether there is scope for that to change over time—and, for example, for the Government by way of policy that’s promulgated by Ministers and may be in a way that would be often the subject of secondary legislation, whether we might have the opportunity for updated circumstances that change in the way of a global pandemic and the Government’s response to it and the response of the people to the Government’s response, and so on.
So my question, in essence, is whether there is scope for the understanding of what constitutes a “COVID-19 circumstance” to change over a period of time. I wonder if the Minister can give some thought to that—in particular, whether the structure of the way the legislation is put together allows such a change, such an evolution of our understanding of a COVID-19 circumstance, and also, if he can give some examples of what a COVID-19 circumstance might be, particularly with reference to the current Delta outbreak but also with, potentially, subsequent future outbreaks, maybe variants. And I’m not going to embarrass myself with exposing my lack of knowledge of the rest of the Greek alphabet. But while I could, and anyone, in fact, with access to a Greek dictionary, and of course who doesn’t have one of those—we could all predict the names of the future variants. We don’t know when they’ll come. We don’t know exactly what challenges they’ll pose. We don’t know, in other words, what exactly a COVID-19 circumstance would be going into the future, to which such legislation would apply.
So that’s my first question, or a set of questions, if I may, and I’ll just sort of test with the Minister if he’s in a position to be able to answer them before I resume my seat, which I shall now in fact do.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Thank you to the member Chris Penk for the question. Clause 5 of the bill inserts a new section 7AAB that makes it clear that the new COVID support payment system has to be related to a COVID-19 circumstance. It’s broadly defined, but if COVID-19 was over as a pandemic, the right to make resurgence payments would fall away too, effectively.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. Gee, we’re in for an exciting tonight. We’ve got Christopher Penk here, freshly shorn, looking good, Brylcreem in his hair, and we’ve even got the Minister in charge of the bill in the House, and it’s very good to see you, Minister Parker.
Hon Member: I bet he’s got the right speech.
ANDREW BAYLY: He has. I want to talk about one of my tabled amendments. I’ve got four of them tonight, and I’m looking forward to talking on each of them. The first one, the first one—
Hon Member: We’re looking forward to it as well.
ANDREW BAYLY: I’m just—again?
Hon Member: We’re looking forward to it as well.
ANDREW BAYLY: Oh very good! Thank you. I’m honoured. The first one I want to talk about is a change to clause 5(1), and it’s a new section 7AAB(3)(C). I want to insert and I’m proposing that we insert after (b)(i)—this is, I’m just looking at the Minister here just to help him reference it, 7AAB(3)(b)(i)—insert a third element which is to say that the change to the COVID payments needs to be made and announced by no later than 11.59 p.m. on Thursday, 25 November 2021.
As the Minister’s well aware, the Government has signalled its intent to shift to a new COVID framework at 11.59 p.m. on Thursday, 2 November. We think that it’s very, very important that businesses have the opportunity to know what’s going to happen to them. It is too late to leave it until 2 November. We think this should be brought forward so they’ve got the ability to plan much more quickly. We’re going into a Christmas period. People are going to have a huge amount of staffing issues, and they’ve got stock issues—how they get sufficient stock—because, at the moment, many of those businesses won’t even know whether they can open or not.
Of course, we’ve talked today with the Minister of Finance asking questions of him—both today and yesterday—about giving us certainty, giving business owners certainty around will they be operating and will they be operating under a red alert level or orange level? There’s no certainty. So we think it’s imperative that the business owners and their staff have much more clarity.
The Government has had a long time to prepare for this; they made the initial announcement on 22 October—that’s over a month ago. This is saying that it is wrong that the Government is still passing pieces of legislation without knowing and without telling people what to expect. Because we don’t even know what type of payment’s going to go forward and what they are proposing, because we do know that there will be a change; that is clear. But the changes are very unclear. So we think it’s important that this happens as speedily as possible so that businesses have got time to prepare. Businesses are not like armies and Government servants who can just swing into action; they have to make sure they’ve got everything in place if they’re going to be able to trade. As I said before: stock, people, marketing, booking media if they’re going to have to do it, all that type of stuff, all the key requirements if you need to reactivate your business quickly. Many of them have been in lockdown. As we know, I think tomorrow’s the 100th day of lockdown.
This is what we think should be happening. I’d love to hear the Minister’s response on this—whether, in fact, we should be bringing it forward—and if he’s not prepared to do that, can he tell us why he’s not prepared to do it? And, more importantly, when is he going to let business owners and their staff know what the new COVID rule changes and the financial support arrangements are going to be? Because most people wouldn’t have one iota, and, as the Minister knows, 65 percent of New Zealanders do not understand the proposed new traffic light system.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Sorry to disappoint the member, but we won’t be supporting that amendment, because it would ruin the legislative scheme and would effectively prevent decisions being made after Thursday, 25 November. It would, effectively, mean that future resurgence support payments, if needed, could not be made.
Hon Member: Only if you don’t activate.
Hon DAVID PARKER: That’s not correct.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to raise a couple of points in response to the Minister of Revenue’s last intervention. I think I heard him say that the tabled amendment in Mr Bayly’s name requiring the details of the resurgence payments to have been set out by tomorrow night would prevent the Government from making decisions—I think he then said—should they be needed. Now, that’s a quite interesting statement, because it suggests that at the moment, the Government isn’t convinced that they are needed. So my question to the Minister is a slightly hypothetical one, but it will segue into where else I want to go, and that is: does the Government foresee getting to 3 December having made decisions around the traffic light system—who goes to red, who goes to orange; nobody goes to green—and determining that as a consequence of that, no business will need support through this legislation?
That is a very important question. I know it’s hypothetical, but it is important to understand how much time we’ve got, because if that’s the Government’s start position—[Interruption] Huh?
Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, the Prime Minister’s said every business can be open.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, she has, and I listened to the Prime Minister, Mr Brownlee, but I also listen to business. I listen to business and I listen to my colleagues who have come from Auckland and they tell me these businesses are about to go to the wall and continue to need help, and it’s no surprise given the 100-and-something days that they have been under lockdown.
So we do need to hear from the Minister, but I also want him to confirm my understanding of Part 1 that clause 5—which is the meat and drink of Part 1—which replaces the existing 7AAB and 7AAC of the Tax Administration Act, which we put in in February for the first bill. The only change that’s, effectively, being made to this is to change the words “COVID-19 resurgence support payments scheme (the CRSP scheme)” by replacing those words with “a COVID-19 support payments scheme (the CSP scheme)”. So all we’re doing in this clause is changing from “CRSP” to “CSP”. We’re taking one letter out of the Act.
Now, I may be wrong, but I’ve had a pretty good look at it and I can’t see any other difference. So we’ve been debating for hours the removal of the letter “R”. I feel like an episode of Sesame Street. Now—
Nicola Grigg: The Muppets.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The Muppets—yeah, The Muppets. Better than Sesame Street, Ms Grigg—I quite agree. So we’re removing an “R” and we’re debating hours of House time to remove an “R”. If that were all it was, well, we’d just lampoon them and go home, but, actually, the elephant in the room is what can business expect.
I go back to, when we did pass this in February, the same regulation-making framework was put in place—I accept that—in sections 7AAB and 7AAC. But what the Minister of Finance did in the debate was give the House, the public, the tax advisers, and those businesses—most importantly—a very clear framework for what they could expect and what we were doing. There was a plethora of references to what alert level it would be, how much they would get: $1,500 per applicant; $400 per firm, up to 50 fulltime-equivalents. They would have to have had a drop of revenue of 30 percent or more, it would have to have been calculated by comparing a seven-day period at alert level 2, and on and on and on. It might not have been in the black-letter law, but at least this House was able to debate what we knew the Government was intending to do, and at the moment, we’re flying blind.
We’re being asked to take an “R” out of the Act: resurgence.
Simon O’Connor: Ridiculous.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: “Ridiculous” is a much better word. I think there’s a steer for the title and commencement debate, Mr O’Connor.
Hon Gerry Brownlee: Maybe it was for “required”—they don’t want it any more.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: But we’re doing—“ridiculous” is probably a better word, I think. I’ll come up with a few other “R” words in a minute, but they probably aren’t going to be very parliamentary.
Minister, we need to know what we’re debating here. The idea that the regulatory impact statement doesn’t have a fiscal impact because taking an “R” out is costless belies the fact that this could be costing the Crown, or the taxpayer, hundreds of millions of dollars. We need better information.
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): It’s a shame the Minister of Revenue didn’t take a call to give a greater clarity on what the bill actually does, because on the reading of it you could simply say that what this does is it shifts the ability of the Government to give financial support to businesses under certain circumstances—[Takes off mask] Sorry, I’m so used to wearing the thing, Madam Chair. You get addicted to them and I think you start to enjoy the lack of oxygen, and I’m sure it’s causing idiot behaviour all over the country.
It would seem that the bill is supposed to extend the Government’s ability to offer financial support to businesses under certain circumstances. Well, at the moment, we know those circumstances are tied to the alert levels. But what we have here is a bill that may be activated by an Order in Council at some point, but it also goes beyond just businesses to anybody, apparently, who is financially disadvantaged due to the COVID health restrictions that might be in place at the time.
Overlaying that is the very strong assertion made no less than three times today in the House by the Prime Minister that says that under every traffic light colour, businesses will be able to operate. Of course, it’s easy to say that a business can open its doors. That doesn’t mean that under, say, a red system or the orange system, the normal custom that they might have expected would come through the door, but there’s no explanation here, no clarity in this bill, about where the parameters of that support might begin and end.
So a question I’ve got for the Minister is: what sort of advice was given to Cabinet when the bill was put to Cabinet for consideration? What sort of advice did the Minister get from, presumably, Treasury—some of the most clever people in the country, by their own proclamation—that made him decide this bill should go ahead?
There must have been some estimate of how many businesses were likely to need the support under the traffic light system, whether that be at the red level or the orange level. What is also not clear in here is: would the provisions of this bill, should it become an Act, still apply if the traffic light is at green, because there’s no prohibition here on any particular level inside that system?
We’ve heard repeatedly today just how much everyone should appreciate that traffic light system. Well, I can’t believe that there are no Labour members on the other side of the House who aren’t getting the same calls that we are from people asking the simple question: “How does this work? What are we supposed to do? How do we check people when they come through the door? What’s our legal authority to require people to show us their status? And if someone slips through and we suddenly got a drop in a hospitality venue from the several hundred that might be there down to the mere 100 or the 50, who do we choose to go out—how do we do all that sort of thing?”
So for anybody to say that there’s clarity in that traffic light system, there is a huge amount of delusion in their own assessment of that position. So it’s a simple question for the Minister, and I hope that he will take a call and answer it: what was the advice that made the Government say—even though the Prime Minister can stand up and say that under the traffic light system, every business can operate with no problem at all, what was it that the Government or the Cabinet considered? What were the numbers they considered that made them decide that we needed to have a bill in the House today under urgency so that it’s ready in time for the implementation of the traffic light system, so that there can be claims made for that assistance, and then, what are the levels of the assistance? Are they exactly the same as they are now? Is the criteria the same?
It’s very clear in here that they have to meet criteria, but there’s nothing in the bill to suggest that the criteria is any different to the bill that currently operates. But the current bill, of course, is only operational with the alert system. So perhaps also the Minister might be able to clarify what legislative advice they got that said that, actually, this is all that’s needed to transfer from one system to the other, and then we might be able to get an idea of whether or not this is just a have to sort of convince people that the Government cares, as opposed to a genuine COVID measure.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): If I could respond to a number of the questions that have been raised, the Hon Michael Woodhouse asked me to confirm whether we thought it would ever be necessary to use this new framework—
Hon Michael Woodhouse: No, no, it’s not “ever” but next week.
Hon DAVID PARKER: No, you asked me to confirm if we thought it would ever be necessary—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not the Speaker, though.
Hon DAVID PARKER: —sorry; not the Speaker, but the member did—and, obviously, we wouldn’t be passing this legislation if we didn’t think it might be necessary to use it.
In respect of the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s question before he took his seat, the main change here is to enable a similar scheme to the Resurgence Support Payment scheme to be activated under the traffic light system, should it be needed. It cannot be activated for the traffic light system unless these amendments are passed, because the current legislative code ties it to changes in alert levels.
It was designed to be an instrument in respect of the resurgence of COVID associated with alert level changes. That now changes, as we have moved from elimination to minimising the virus through the traffic light system. As other members have already referred to, the Prime Minister confirmed on a number of occasions today that under the traffic light system, businesses can operate, albeit in circumstances that they can’t under the alert level system; albeit with vaccine certificate requirements on occasions. So these changes need to be accommodated in the compensatory payments that can sometimes be made by Order in Council, by changing the legislative framework to allow that in the future.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I don’t want to get in the way of my learned colleagues, but I appreciate being able to take a call to clarify the question that I asked, and I apologise if it wasn’t clear to the Minister. It was not whether the Government envisaged never making resurgence payments, or whatever the current nomenclature is—I think that’s an “R” word, so it probably isn’t in the new bill—but whether it envisages a scenario where we get to 3 December, the start line for the traffic light system, and there is a scenario where support payments would not be required on that day, because that was the argument that Mr Bayly was putting up for having clarity for business by the end of play tomorrow, and the Minister’s answer implied, or at least I took the implication that that meant that the Government was contemplating no support payments at that time.
I absolutely understand that the circumstances with the virus and with the need to further constrain businesses in the future, even under the traffic light system, may warrant the creation of a support payment framework after that when circumstances change. But the way the Minister was describing it suggested a lack of urgency, because, actually, the Government wasn’t contemplating business not needing that from next Friday, and I think that if that’s the case, well, at least let’s be honest with business about that, because what I have been asking for is actually some clarity about what we can see in the way we got it in February. If that clarity involves “OK, business, you’re opening up. You’re not going to get support from the taxpayer. That’s where we going to have the start line. If things change, we’ll change.”—if that’s the message we’re sending to business, that’s fine.
But I apologise if I wasn’t clear in my initial question. It wasn’t that there wouldn’t be support for all time; it would be the envisaging of no support on 3 December.
NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to ask a couple of questions of the Minister on behalf on behalf of South Island business operators, but I’m sure the MP for Waitaki will understand why I’m doing this.
Minister, I spoke earlier this morning in the first part of this bill about the deep, deep ramifications that this protracted period of alert level 2 has had on South Island businesses. If you wouldn’t mind, I want to run you through a couple of scenarios that I’ve got in my own electorate. One is a health-based business that deals primarily in elderly clientele. She has not been able to have her clientele through her doors, but by definition of an alert level 2, she has to remain open. This woman has been paying her staff and her rent out of her life-savings for the past 12 months.
Another example I have is what was once formerly an inbound tour operator who dealt with high-end clients from India, had a range of Mercedes-Benz vans, bought in high-end clients, took them on luxury tours around the South Island—a really good little business. Overnight, when our borders were closed, that business ceased to exist, effectively. This person paid for all of his drivers to go and get their Uber licensing to try and keep their heads above water. He has on periodic occasions sold off his vans, one by one by one—I think he’s now down to one van left—just to pay his own rent and live his life. He hasn’t been able to apply for any form of Resurgence Support Payment under this alert level 2.
So what we in the South Island want to know is: where does this bill provide for what was once alert level 2, what is that going to become, and what is the payment support framework that will be attributed to these new red, amber, green - type alert levels?
Let’s, for argument’s sake, say that what was once the alert level 2 framework now becomes the amber light framework but that those businesses did not meet the criteria or standards to get any form of Government support. If we are to remain in a protracted period of the amber colour, for sake of argument, how are these businesses supposed to survive? Is there any discretion within this bill for these people to be able to get some kind of Government support?
Minister, when these people come back to me next time, and when this tour operator says, “I’ve sold my last van. I’ve got nothing left.”, what do I say to them?
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): I think we’re all sympathetic for the plight of people who are adversely affected by the virus. Some of those people have suffered terrible consequences for their businesses, and that’s caused by the virus; not by what the Government has done.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I just want to acknowledge Nicola Grigg for her contribution. I too have a similar case in my electorate, but it actually relates to a bus company. The owners, a husband and wife team, are in a similar situation where they are about to lose a lot of their life’s earnings. They have a big fleet of buses and for them to get through the process, they have been looking at disposing of buses, and, of course, every time they do that, it means that one less person has a job, or perhaps, if they have a couple of drivers, a couple of people. So this is the immediacy of what we’re talking about tonight.
This is actual, real stuff that is happening on the ground. That just highlights the importance of the Government being clear about its intentions, and that’s why, with eight days to go, I still think it’s outrageous that the Government’s not prepared to say what the new arrangements are under the new traffic light situation.
So I want to turn to my tabled amendment, because the Minister sort of slightly sideswiped me and said, “Well, we’re not going to make an announcement by 25 November.”—tomorrow night. I suppose this gives rise to: is this a question of could, should, or would? I think, if we ask ourselves, “Could the Government make an announcement tomorrow?”, well, of course they could. The Government came out with an announcement on 22 October, with great fanfare, saying, “We’re going to do something.”—right?—as they always do, and, of course, everyone in New Zealand heard about this announcement of the announcement of the announcement that they were going to make this change. Over a month later, it still hasn’t made the announcement.
Now, I think it would be appalling if it is really the situation, with eight days to go—and we’re getting close to midnight; it will be seven days tomorrow—that the Government really hasn’t worked out what the new arrangements will be. So could they make that announcement by tomorrow night? Of course they could.
The second issue is: should they make an announcement by tomorrow night? I’ve got to say, we’ve just heard Nicola Grigg talking about a story, I’ve just related one from my area, and I would imagine that if the backbench members of the Labour Party were to stand up and contribute to this debate, which is highly unlikely, but if they were, and be honest about their situation and the calls they’re getting and the emails they must be getting—unless they’ve chosen deliberately and callously not to respond to people, not to listen to people’s plights, and not to act like real electorate MPs, they would have to be tone-deaf if they were not getting the same situation. I see all of them looking down—all of them looking down. The reality is that everyone’s been affected across all of New Zealand, and so should they make an announcement by tomorrow night? Of course they should make an announcement—the Government, I should say. The Government should make an announcement by tomorrow night.
So the question then turns on would they make an announcement tomorrow night, and that’s the big issue. We have a Government here who just loves making announcements, keeping people on the hook, and then letting out a little bit more information. I would suggest to you, Minister, that you could make the announcement—you should make the announcement—the question is why you wouldn’t make the announcement tomorrow night.
The other thing I’m a little bit worried about is that I heard the Minister say before that—and he implied “should financial support be needed”. Now, I’m just hoping that that was just a slight slip of the tongue, because my first question is: can the Minister confirm that the Government will be putting in place a new financial support package for businesses, business owners, and their staff, and that the reference to the possibility of it was incorrect? The second question is: could he confirm that they could and should make an announcement but that they’ve chosen not to make an announcement? That’s a big issue, and that is the issue that most New Zealanders and their business owners and their staff are most concerned about right now.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): What I can confirm is that the scheme that has been in place until now, which has been linked to alert levels, has been utilised on a number of occasions over the last year. The next scheme needs to be durable for the new traffic light system for a long period of time, and I can confirm that if the committee was to vote for Andrew Bayly’s amendment, it wouldn’t work.
SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have some questions for the Minister about the premise of the bill. I just want to return to the regulatory impact statement initially, just to refresh the understanding of the committee as to what this bill proposes to do. In the regulatory impact analysis, when it talks about the COVID-19 support framework, the Treasury considered that an impact statement was not required, on the grounds that this legislation is likely to have no or only minor impacts on businesses, individuals, and not-for-profit entities.
Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, they’re not going to pay it.
SIMON COURT: Mr Brownlee is correct. It appears that while this legislation is being rushed through under urgency with much fanfare and described as being absolutely vital to align the new traffic light system to the old COVID alert framework—or in Auckland, we’re not quite sure. It’s “COVID-19 alert level 2 or 3.haircut”. Last week it was “level 3.Mitre10”. As far as Aucklanders are concerned, it’s “level 3.Let’s get out of here”.
Chris Bishop: What about “3.picnic”?
SIMON COURT: Well, “3.picnic” was some months ago, Mr Bishop, and you can guarantee that Aucklanders, who are freedom-loving people, took that very, very seriously, to get out there, have picnics, go and talk to friends and family, and support them.
Now, when we’re thinking about whether this is actually going to work, what’s the point of it, and then we come to the next stage of the regulatory impact assessment, at paragraph 2.5: “For the policy to be given effect by this Bill, is there analysis”? Well, on the COVID-19 support payments framework, no further analysis is available.
So what the ACT Party always asks is: what are the costs and what are the benefits? The second question we ask is: who pays the costs and who receives the benefits, and that is simply not clear from this legislation. It’s a sketch, it’s a charcoal imprint, and it’s not clear whether this legislation will actually benefit anyone. But by forcing it through under urgency, this House costs over $20,000 an hour to run, and so all of those hours spent this morning under urgency were to pass legislation which it appears may not ever be used or not used in the way that it’s intended.
Then I want to come to the matter of what do businesses actually need. Well, what they need is clarity. What they’ve been given is a traffic light system.
Now, I’ve run a few roadworks in my time as a civil engineer. I know how badly a stop-go can go when it goes wrong, particularly in summer on a dusty road when all the workers decide that they’re going to take smoko at the same time and they just put the sign to “Stop” and they all wander off and sit under a tree—and that’s not just in Fiji; that’s here in New Zealand as well. So my impression of this legislation is that it’s going to be more like a stop-go somewhere out in the regions with not a lot of supervision from the Government.
As the Prime Minister has said, “Look, you all have to do the contact tracing and you’ll all have to have the vaccine passport on your phone, but, gosh, don’t worry about checking it. As long as someone thinks they’ve seen it when you walk into the bar, well, that’ll be enough.” Look, you know, I’ve had a number of boys go through high school in the past few years, and if they thought they could pass exams by waving a piece of paper like this in front of the teacher, I tell you what, they’d be through with scholarships by now. They’d all be on their way to med school, or probably off to the Manukau Institute of Technology to learn how to build rockets.
So what businesses need is certainty. This piece of legislation gives absolutely no certainty to businesses, because it actually doesn’t qualify who will get to be a business, what is a business circumstance or matter, or who is the group who might be affected by such matters, and then what they do about claiming any benefits.
Now, what I’d like to do is offer a bit of an example. I have a very dear friend who mortgaged his home, bought some trucks, hired some people, including people who you might say at first glance weren’t going to be the people that you’d want to trust with your brand new truck and all of your brand new power tools. But he took a chance on those people, and he has a landscaping business. That business has contracts in the south of Auckland, delivering landscaping for very large housing developments. Now, my dear friend has a business, and some of his staff live outside of the Auckland level 3 alert level zone. One of the ones who has the truck with some of the tools on it lives in the Waikato, and despite the fact that alert levels have bumped around and hopped around and tripped from here to there, the staff who sometimes were in level 2 in the Waikato and sometimes were in level 3 haven’t been able to return to their place of work in South Auckland with the truck and the tools for months and months now.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I’m just going to invite the member to come to Part 1 in this committee stage.
SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Chair. So I’d like to return to who is financially affected—
Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order, Madam Chairperson. Earlier this afternoon the Speaker made it very clear to the House that there would be a great deal of leniency taken on these two COVID bills, and recognised that because of the shortened process and the importance of these bills, there would be a straying away from some of them and that sometimes speeches might have been slightly extraneous. I think—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you for that.
Hon Gerry Brownlee: —the committee would be very interested to know Mr Court’s story.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you—thank you for that. The Chair is, as the member knows, the sole judge of relevance. I am indeed very mindful of the short notice and time frames and urgent nature of this bill. I am cognisant of it and I’m keeping it in mind.
SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, for the benefit of the committee, I’m always prepared to accept the friendly but forceful advice of the Chair, in this particular case to come back to the bill.
Look, businesses like my friend’s landscaping business are financially affected by public health orders. His staff are awaiting the opportunity to return to work. His contract is unfulfilled. His client is saying, “If you can’t deliver the landscaping so I can hand the site back to the developer, then you’re going to have your contract nullified. You will then be liable to me to pay my costs, even though your workers are excluded from coming to work by a Government health order.”
Unfortunately, despite writing many letters to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment seeking permission and then trying to seek cost recovery through the Government’s current support schemes, he remains unfulfilled in his ambition to have the costs imposed by Government—the cost of managing the public health response which this Government has outsourced on to New Zealand businesses, and outsourced in the most deeply cynical way, whether it’s by imposing contract clauses into commercial tenancy agreements, or whether it’s by telling businesses that they must check the vaccine passport, but, “We won’t check you, but if the hair salon wonders if somebody’s turned up without the right documentation, they should call the police.” This combination of friendly advice and the billy club held behind the back is an example of this Government’s cynical behaviour, just like this piece of legislation is.
So what I would ask the Minister is, instead of all of this pantomime around pretending to care about business, why don’t you just do what business is asking you to do? Open New Zealand up—open up on 1 December. Let businesses manage their own risk, just like construction businesses and transport businesses, who have drivers and operators and customers and who are at risk of trucks crashing or forklifts tipping over. I mean, COVID19 to them is simply another health and safety risk that they need to manage.
What they’re asking for is “Let us out of here. Set us free. Stop wasting our time with your good intentions but obvious hopeless delivery, and let us get back to business. Let us open our doors without all of this.”, because none of this would be necessary if businesses were actually able to open, to welcome their customers, and to manage their own health and safety risk. They wouldn’t need the Government to be standing over them, saying, “Oh, we’ll save you when you need saving.”, because it turns out—particularly in the Auckland CBD and the Auckland region—the time for saving businesses is long, long gone. The “For lease” signs are up, the shops are emptying out, there are tumbleweeds blowing down some streets in the wind, and no amount of pretend caring from this Government is going to change that. I’d like the Minister to answer all of those questions, please.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): The idea that if we had given in to the prescription that we heard again from the ACT Party and have heard repeatedly over the last year and a half that we should just open up—the idea that that would have had a better outcome for New Zealand is nonsense. The economic outcome would have been poorer as well as the health outcome, and many more people would have died.
SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m going to be speaking to a tabled amendment of mine, Minister, on what is a very particular circumstance coming out of the Tāmaki electorate. In effect, it’s based on the premise of a particular consideration that I’d like you, Minister, to give to a particular line of businesses—particularly new business owners—being able to access the COVID support payments, with the premise being that this bill is widening the scope, effectively, or giving you, Minister, great powers to discern who can and who cannot access this scheme. So I’m trying to highlight tonight, on behalf of my excellent business owners of Tāmaki and, I’m sure, others around the country, a failure in the current system.
So the long and the short is you can get a COVID recovery payment at the moment if you’re an existing business owner and you can demonstrate that your business is not doing well. Unfortunately, if you are a new business owner—so you have gone and bought that business; you’re a new owner—strangely enough, you don’t have a history and, therefore, you are ineligible to obtain the COVID payment. So this tabled amendment is going to make a suggestion in clause 5, and I’m not going to get into the technical wording, but it’s, basically, wanting to instruct the Minister to bring those new business owners to mind.
I’m allowed to share an example. It’s called the Mission Bay Cafe. Fortunately, the tumbleweeds are not running by. It is the most popular cafe in Mission Bay, if not Tāmaki. After 23 years, the former owners have just sold, Minister, and Hassan and Eco have bought it, and, unfortunately, as new owners, they don’t have a service history. Therefore, they’re ineligible. I think that’s wrong in itself but, importantly too, business is hard enough at the best of times, and these two have taken a punt and are just wanting some help and fairness, to be honest.
So this is why I’ve put this very particular tabled amendment out. Fundamentally, it’s saying we need to be able to tie these payments as much to the business as to the owner, because, using the Mission Bay Cafe as an example—but it’s not the only one—the business has not changed. As I say, for 23 years it has served the good people of Tāmaki, including myself. It hasn’t changed since the ownership moved. It would be different, of course, Minister, if the business went from being a cafe to—I don’t know—selling furniture, and I suspect you, or officials, may want to consider that how one vets that. I can imagine how it could be gamed. But this is a very particular situation. New owners Eco and Hassan have taken a chance. They’ve bought a new business. They want it to do well. They’re going to do the absolute best that they can, but they can’t access this payment.
I want to acknowledge I have written to you, Minister. It’s only been in recent weeks, so that’s not a statement in reply, but I have written to you. I have also, today, decided on behalf of these business owners in my electorate and on behalf of all my businesses to ask that you consider this tabled amendment. It’s going to make a change to clause 5. Fundamentally, it’s allowing new business owners of existing businesses to claim for future support payments. So thank you, Minister, for your consideration.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Thank you, Madam Chair. I am aware of the issue that the member raises, but not the individual case that he refers to, because there are a number of people in New Zealand who are in a similar situation. The terms of eligibility and comparative periods for revenue loss are set out in the orders rather than in the Act, so we won’t be supporting the amendment because it would sit better in an order than in the Act. That said, we’ve already moved to reduce the period of trading that is necessary under the existing Resurgence Support Payment from a six-month trading history to a one-month trading history, but the member is quite correct that that still excludes the purchaser of a business who doesn’t qualify on that basis. For that to be fixed, in our view, if it were to be fixed, it would be better fixed through an order made under the empowering legislation rather than through the empowering legislation.
I would also note that when the Auditor-General looked at some of the support payments that were activated soon after the start of COVID, the Auditor-General made the point that we do need to be careful to have some integrity measures to stop the system being gamed by people, effectively, pretending that they’ve got a new business, or not pretending that they’ve got a new business but pretending that they’ve suffered a loss that they haven’t. That means that there is some line that has to be drawn, and on some occasions people are on the wrong side of that line, even though we feel very sorry for them. But we’re not proposing to fix that in the primary legislation, and if that was to be fixed in the future for future support payments, it would be done through the terms of orders, rather than through the primary legislation.
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): That was an interesting contribution from the Minister. With regards to the Auditor-General’s concerns, I would have thought that GST records would have pretty quickly shown whether or not a business was making it up or not, and other Government compliances, similarly, along with the requirements for accountants to be appropriate in their dealings with tax agencies, etc. So I think that in response to Mr Simon O’Connor’s request, that last part is not so good. I hope the form of it, talking about an order to perhaps help some of these people, would be a good thing.
But I want to just take the committee back for a minute to the response that the Minister gave to Nicola Grigg’s question about people in the South Island who have had to put up with the level 2 restrictions but who, as a consequence of level 2, have not been able to access some of the supports that might be there had it been level 3 or level 4. The response that came from the Minister was “Well, look, of course we care about these people. Naturally, we care about them. But, look, we’re moving forward and we’re coming down in line with this traffic light system.”, but that doesn’t for a minute explain where the support that this bill would allow would kick in under a traffic light system. No one’s got any idea whatsoever. Is the Minister telling us that the same conditions for the four levels under the alert system would be the same for the three levels under their traffic light system, and can he tell us where the differentiating line would be?
Earlier, I asked if the Government had received any advice from Treasury or any other agency of Government—perhaps the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—about the expectation for the call on this sort of support once the traffic light system was put in place, and there’s just silence on that. There must be something somewhere. Mr Court asked a similar sort of question, but no answer was forthcoming. So did the Government just decide to put this bill through to line it all up a little bit without knowing exactly what was being lined up? If there are New Zealanders out there tonight concerned about what’s going to happen when the new announcement is made about the traffic light system and they’re living in Auckland and they’ve already been told it’s going to be red, what’s it going to mean for the assistance that they might now be getting, given that the Prime Minister has come in and said, “No, the big difference will be that even though they’ll be at red under the traffic light system, they’ll still be able to operate.”? So does that mean that if they’re down by the 30 percent even though they’re operating under the traffic light system, or the application applied here according to the traffic light system, they can make an application for a continued grant?
It’s not unreasonable that those questions are answered when there is no select committee process that might tease out all of that sort of information. There would be an expectation that in a select committee, there’d be a departmental report. So a departmental report will generally cover off all the questions that are raised at a committee by submitters or by committee members, and things like this lack of clarity that’s here tonight would be sorted out. But the Government has said, “No, it’s not important enough to send it to a select committee. We don’t need to hear from the general public, don’t need to hear from any of the various ranges of experts out there in tax matters, etc. We’re just going to put it through because it just lines up one system with another.”, but there is no clear alignment.
So, Minister, is it possible to tell the committee what advice the Government got about expectation for calls upon assistance once we go into this traffic light system, given that there are so many businesses out there who want to open and who want to succeed, so many business operators and owners who have put their own capital in to their business over the last 12 to 18 months to keep it afloat, and so many businesses that don’t like having to call on the Government support but know that without it, they shut the door and the people they employ go down the road. So I wonder can the Minister please answer that question, because for so many people hoping that this bill tonight is some sort of indication of ongoing support, it will be necessary to know how it kicks in and where it links in with existing systems.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): What I can confirm is what I’ve previously said, and that is that there are many imponderables that have arisen from COVID. The consequences for business have in part been alleviated through the Resurgence Support Payment, and if this amendment does not pass there is no way that a Government in the future can do similar things under the traffic light system, because the current system relies upon alert level changes under the alert level system, which is replaced with the COVID protection framework.
ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to read out a text message to Minister Parker, which I received earlier this week from one of the Auckland hospitality businesses that Christopher Bishop, Christopher Luxon, and I visited last week. I think it sums up the feeling of Auckland businesses quite well. He says, “Hey Erica, can you give me a buzz? Hearing that Auckland might be in red till mid-January, which would be catastrophic.” Now, the reason that he’s texted me is because he has absolutely no certainty over what the support payments will be under this system, whether he will get anything at all, how long it will be for, or what are the criteria.
I’ve got a number of questions for the Minister, but I want to just give some context around this, because Auckland businesses who have not been able to operate under level three, the hospo businesses and the personal service businesses that have been doing it the toughest—the first to go into lockdown, the last to come out; the ones who have lost the most—have a lot riding on this, and there is nothing in this bill to give them any confidence, hence, why they’re sending me these messages. All they want to know is what will the criteria be, what will the payments be, and how will they be able to survive.
Now, I want to specifically ask the Minister, because this came through really strongly in those hospo businesses and personal service businesses that we visited. They said to us, “It’s great that we’re going to be able to operate for December. Four weeks—that’s all we’re going to get, because once Auckland borders open, Aucklanders will leave, and for January and February there will be no business. We will be dead. There will be no Aucklanders here to visit the hairdresser, the beautician, the restaurant, the bar—nothing.”
So what I want to ask the Minister specifically for is: is there any criteria? Will there be any criteria for these businesses to get support payments to pull them through January and February, when there is absolutely no business in Auckland, because I get the feeling that the Government just believes that if they start with the traffic light system in December, then everything is going to be fine in Auckland under red lights. Well, clearly, from this text, it’s not going to be fine. Even if Aucklanders stayed in Auckland, red still means for hospo limited numbers of people because of the social distancing and the limited numbers allowed in the business, let alone the fact that there will be no Aucklanders there to support them through January and February. But under this system and under this bill, there’s absolutely no guarantee that they will have any support, and that’s why they’re really upset.
I visited a beautician in my electorate, who started her business when she was 19. For the last nine years, she has been living in a flat beneath her parent’s house to save for a deposit on a house. She has lost all of that through paying her staff and paying her rent and paying her bills and paying the council—all of those ongoing costs—through level 3. She now is staring down the barrel of being able to open, and do a few facials and massages and the things that she does, for December, and then nothing. She will have no business in January and she will have no business in February, because, as Aucklanders well know, no one is going to be around. The question, again, for her is: in this framework, will there be any support for her?
What will the criteria be for those businesses who are staring down the barrel of nothing for those few months? They’re worried about their provisional tax that they have to pay early next year, and they’re really concerned because they’ve got no certainty over what the level of support will be, when it will kick in, or what criteria they will have to meet, and they are really worried that this Government has no idea about the situation that Auckland businesses, especially those hospo businesses and personal services businesses, will be in when Auckland empties out.
I would like the Minister to answer the question: is there any support? Is he thinking about that scenario, and will there be any support, or any criteria for those businesses to get support, through the traffic light system, because they are terrified. They’ve already lost everything, and they’re staring down the barrel of losing more, which is why they’re texting us in a panic, because they’ve got no certainty. That’s all they’re asking for, and there is nothing in this bill.
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak on this bill, which we don’t support, and this item in Part 1 relating to the complex—well, not complex; the lack of any detail around how any support payments would exist. My colleague Gerry Brownlee was asking questions of the Minister around “Does the Government actually plan to make anything or are they just going to wing it?”, and I can give him an answer because I’ve heard the Minister of Finance many times in this House say, “No, we actually think, when we move to the traffic light system, that there won’t be the need for ongoing, wide-ranging support.” That’s their view—they’re just going to can it. They think that everything’s back.
Now, our political point on this side of the House is that the best way that you can help businesses: small businesses, employers, people who are trying to stay afloat in their businesses, such as we’ve heard in the cafes and the beauticians, the tourist operators—the best way you can help those people is to allow them to do some business. That’s how you help people in business. You let them do their job and actually serve some customers and give people what they want, and be able to sell them the coffee and the ice cream and so forth—let them actually live and get their lives back.
That’s how you help people, and this Government just continues to find every reason to keep us, in some way or other, locked down, notwithstanding the fact that the promise was made to the people of New Zealand that if we went out and we got vaccinated and we got up to 85 percent—we’re nearly at 90 percent. We’ve reached one of the highest vaccination levels in the world. Well, they said that we needed to, because the Government spent the first six months of the year saying we didn’t need the vaccines and other countries needed them more than us, but we’ve finally got there.
New Zealanders have gone out, they’ve got vaccinated, they’re at high levels of vaccination, and yet, still, what is the benefit for Aucklanders? We go to red. Nobody in Auckland can understand the most weird reward for effort ever in the history of this country, which is that we all do our bit, we get vaccinated, and the reward is that we go red—we go red—and we still have to live on with all these controls and difficulties. That makes business difficult, and then the Government says, “Oh, don’t worry—don’t worry. Businesses can all trade under all the traffic lights.”, yet they miss the most important word, which is they can trade but can they trade profitably or can they trade sustainably? There’s no point being able to open your business if there’s no possible way, given the rules and the numbers of people that can come and the requirements, that you can actually make a living. That is the issue.
So we’re forced into this ridiculous situation. The Minister of Finance stands up and crows about the fact that he’s spent $6 billion over the last four months helping support businesses because of the lockdown that has been imposed, and thank goodness that some resources have gone to those businesses who were in desperate need of them, but it’s nothing to be proud of. It’s $6 billion that could have built six hospitals. It could have done amazing things for this country, that kind of money—that sort of investment. Well, it could have probably covered the cost of a third of that Minister over there’s crazy light-rail transport. Now, that wouldn’t be good money, because it is the most ridiculous project ever put forward. But, nevertheless, that’s the scale of the money that would have the biggest transport proposal in the history of Auckland: a slow tram down Dominion Road, which nobody thinks makes any sense whatsoever. I’m getting distracted, but that is the scale of the money that’s being spent.
Now, the answer is not just to keep on pouring it on and keeping us locked down for ever—waiting until April to allow tourists to get back into this country, effectively, which is what we’ve heard today. For goodness’ sake, are they saying that the tourist industry is not going to be affected now that we move to the red traffic light? No—they’ve got no tourists. You can’t trade if you’ve got no tourists, and there’s nobody here because they have to go into isolation for seven days. Nobody is going to do that. The rest of the world has moved on. Australians are not going to say, “Oh well, I know—here’s an idea. I could go to New York for a week, or I could go to Queenstown for a week and I’ll spend my week in self-isolation at home. Oh yeah, why don’t we do that? We’ll go to Queenstown.” I mean, it’s so nonsensical it’s not even funny, but that’s what’s being proposed, given the fact that we’ve all got high vaccination rates.
So the Government, in this piece of legislation—why we oppose it is because it’s imposing a framework that makes no sense. Our view is that at high vaccination rates, we need to allow people to get their lives back and trade. Then, when we look at this bill, it sets up—having ignored that and having decided to keep us locked down and decided to keep all those businesses to carry on struggling in various ill-defined ways, it then brings in legislation implying that it may provide—[Time expired]
MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you. I am really grateful that my name was called, because I’ve been trying to take a call all evening. Maybe it’s because I was a little short behind all these tall men in front of me, but thank you. I appreciate the call.
I wanted to raise the issue in terms of the COVID-19 support payment (CSP) scheme. I know that my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse earlier made a little bit of a joke in terms of how it used to be called “CRSP”, and now, in this bill, they’ve just removed the one letter, the “R”, so it’s now called “CSP”.
But, seriously, I wanted to take issue with Mr Andrew Bayly, who said that members who are electorate MPs should be getting all these complaints from constituents. Let me tell you, Mr Bayly, that as a list MP, I too am getting a lot of complaints from people in Mt Albert. Their electorate MP is otherwise engaged, and around the country, there are plenty of people who are complaining about the Government’s failure to support them.
If I could ask a question to the Minister—I will get to the point. In terms of the Resurgence Support Payment (RSP), one of the problems that a lot of people had—and I know that earlier, Simon O’Connor talked about when new businesses take over existing businesses, they don’t actually have the time period of operation, so it’s very difficult for them to actually get the RSP payment. I know that when I contacted the electorate officials’ line—because MPs could do that—there were some circumstances where they thought they could actually provide the RSP support, and that was only for existing businesses that provided the same kind of food, for example, the same kind of business, same kind of training methods, same time, or whatever. Some of them actually did qualify, so I’m very grateful for that.
Having said that, one problem was that the IRD, in that on 17 August, when we went into lockdown, we went into lockdown at 11.59 p.m., so 17 August was not an affected period because the business hours were over and done with. So the affected period should have really started on 18 August, but 17 August was considered an affected period, so the day’s takings were considered as income for the affected period.
Hon Member: For one minute?
MELISSA LEE: No, no—yes, one minute, but the whole day’s trading is considered as trading. So when you’re comparing affected period with comparative period—the one day’s takings when businesses were actually struggling, and that one day when they’ve done an amazing amount of trading—the percentages mean that some people could not get the RSP payment. It is absolutely unfair that when we did not even go into lockdown until 17 August at 11.59 p.m., IRD’s computer-generated online application process would not let people include 17 August. So if the Minister could actually confirm that those kinds of issues will not, in fact, happen with this CSP when the RSP was actually very, very difficult for a lot of businesses who were heavily impacted.
The other issue that we have is that—I mentioned this particular issue when we went into lockdown on 17 August. The warning the Government gave in terms of “We’re going to go into a lockdown in a couple of days.”—that happened last year. When we went into lockdown the first time, the Prime Minister got in front of New Zealanders and said “From such and such a date and from what time we’re going to go into a lockdown. We expect New Zealanders to come back home, and this is what’s going to happen.”—preparing the businesses and the entire New Zealand population for what was supposed to happen.
This time around, on 17 August, the lockdown happened pretty quickly. We were in the afternoon when the announcement was actually made, when businesses were closed, and there were a lot of businesses who had a lot of stock. I quoted one florist who had $70,000 of stock that she was supposed to courier the next morning. But she could not do that because all of the couriers were closed when the announcement was made and she lost $70,000 worth of stock, and because it’s a pandemic, no insurance will cover that.
So I would like to know in those circumstances what kind of support payments would the Government provide or actually help these people, because these are not rich people. These are business owners who save for a lifetime to run a business, who actually work really, really hard to supply their customers with stock that, often, they can’t afford to lose, and they have, in these circumstances, because the Government went into lockdown very, very quickly. So if I could get the Minister to answer that, I would appreciate it.
CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to make another contribution on this taxation bill. My question is really a series of questions, and it’s to do with the way that the bill is set out and who’s going to get to make these decisions. My colleague and friend Erica Stanford has asked a similar line of questions in relation to particular businesses who just want to know what the circumstances will be, and other colleagues have asked along similar lines. I sort of take a constitutional angle to that because it just seems to me unbelievable that we have so little detail in a piece of legislation for actually how this support is to be provided.
So we’ve heard that Orders in Council—regulations, essentially—are going to be able to be made for the way that the support is to be provided. There’s almost exactly zero detail in here. So, for example, the—
Chris Bishop: Are you surprised?
CHRIS PENK: Well, I’m not surprised, Mr Bishop. I’m sort of unsurprised but shocked at the same time. So “the Governor-General”—OK, read “the Government”—“may by Order in Council—… declare the activation [blah, blah, blah] specify the period … describe a class or classes of persons … specify amendments”—all these things, these are the basic details. There’s literally nothing there. It’s like a blank cheque. But the trouble with a blank cheque is it could end up with a huge dollar figure, but it could also end up with zero. We don’t know the most basic details.
“Declare the activation of a COVID-19 support payments scheme”—that’s the what. “Specify the period for which, or the circumstances in which, the CSP scheme is to operate”—that’s the when. “Describe a class or classes of persons who may apply for a grant”—that’s the who. “Specify amendments to the CSP scheme,”—that’s the how. We don’t have the what, the when, the how, or the where—we do have the where. Actually, we don’t have the where either, because goodness knows where it’s going to apply because that probably depends on the colour of your traffic light in the area that you’re in, and goodness knows how that relates to what’s currently available, and, goodness knows, even that system’s not perfect.
So it just seems to be absolutely extraordinary that we’ve got so little detail, and as a member of the Regulations Review Committee, obviously, I can’t prejudge the discussion that that fine body is going to come to when it examines these things, but I can only imagine that we’re going to have a heck of a time trying to understand the way in which a regulation-making power has been drafted in such unbelievably scant fashion. I mean, there is literally nothing in there that’s in or out, no kind of clue as to the criteria—
Hon Member: Shake it all about.
CHRIS PENK: That’s right—we don’t know what’s in and we don’t know what’s out. It’s like legislative “Hokey Pokey”, and as to whether even more basic details—
Chris Bishop: Oh, shake it all about.
CHRIS PENK: Shake it all about—well, that’s right. Well, that’s what we’re trying to do. We are trying to shake it all about, so to speak. I’d better not go too far down that line.
Simon Court: You’ll end up on Dancing with the Stars if you’re not careful, Mr Penk.
CHRIS PENK: There’s a Dancing with the Stars - related comment made from a member of the ACT Party, and I know that could lead us to a dark place. But if you’re watching, producers of Dancing with the Stars, look elsewhere—I’m sure you already are.
But even more basic details—I mean, is there an appeal right for people who have applied under this scheme and been knocked back? I mean, that would be an extraordinary thing not to be able to have, as the Minister of Revenue will know, because he’s a legal man as well as wearing a revenue hat tonight. He will know that one of the Standing Orders grounds on which we can decide whether regulations are reasonable, essentially, is whether there’s a right to review other than by the decision-making authority themselves. So if “The Commissioner, on behalf of the Crown, may make a grant”, but, obviously, may not make a grant because they might exercise their discretion against the criteria that we don’t yet have, and then get knocked back—as various constituents of mine have found, and Mr Simon O’Connor has identified a similar kind of situation in relation to constituents of his—where’s the natural justice? Where’s the due process? I mean, it’s just absolutely unbelievable.
Then you’ve got the drafting of this thing, which just seems to me extraordinary. “If a person applies for a grant on behalf of another person, both the person and the person in whose name the application is made must provide information as required by the Commissioner.”—well, that’s just complete duplication. Do they both have to supply the same thing? What does the phrase “on behalf of” mean if not that they can do it in the place of, rather than as well as? I mean, can we not have a tax agent? This is just absolutely extraordinary.
We hear as well that “The person in whose name an application is to be made is [to be] bound by the terms of the … grant.”, and then it says that if the terms include repayment, they must repay it. Well, that’s absolute duplication. It’s tautology and an absolute nonsense.
Honestly, I can’t get my head around it. I’m just absolutely bamboozled and gobsmacked and other things like that. It’s just that I really and truly can’t believe it, and I should know by now, after four years in this place, not to expect much better than this. But, genuinely, I cannot understand that we have such a flimsy law on the statute book, or it’s about to be on the statute book, and it’s just thoroughly disheartening. But it doesn’t really matter from a constitutional point of view. More to the point is that constituents—good, working people throughout the country—don’t know what the hell’s going on, and that’s a real problem.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): I think the irony for listeners hearing this debate tonight would be that when they reflect that the earlier version of the Resurgence Support Payment that this replaces, it’s in virtually identical form, except it links through to the COVID protection framework rather than the alert level system the National Party voted for.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Oh, I think we’ll have a kaumātua view—Ian McKelvie.
IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Chair. Now, I just wanted to go back in time a little bit to 4.15 this afternoon. As I do most nights when I’m in Parliament, as I was eating my couple of lamb chops tonight, I scrolled through the media clippings to see if I could find my name. Needless to say, I didn’t. But as I was scrolling through them, I could not believe that I’d found—
Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, at least it wasn’t in the obituaries.
IAN McKELVIE: I’ve only got one battery left, Gerry. The other one’s gone—I lost it in the garden. As I was scrolling through, I found two articles which I was absolutely intrigued with. It only happened—at 4.15 this afternoon we passed the last of these bills, and, blow me down, there were two articles in the paper already tonight, criticising the previous bill for the mistakes it had made. But that’s not what I want to ask the Minister about, because I want to get very close to the topic Mr Penk was talking about a moment or two ago.
One of the things that worries me about any kind of emergency, and I don’t think it matters whether it’s COVID or whether it was earthquakes or whatever it was, we always put a whole lot of pressure on I’d suppose you’d nicely put it as our bureaucracy, or the Inland Revenue, or whoever we do. We put significant pressure on them, and when you read this bill, it’s quite interesting. I know there’s been a lot of discussion around wage subsidies and the other relief payments that were made in the first series of lockdowns, and, clearly, there’s going to be a lot of pressure as a result of the last 92 or 93 days of lockdown in Auckland and the damage that’s been done to businesses, particularly in the tourism sector in the central North Island and, clearly, parts of the South Island as a result of Auckland not being able to get out, because, frankly, they drive a lot of our tourism stuff in the rest of New Zealand.
So the question I’ve got relates to clauses 5 and 6—well, actually, clauses 6, 7, and 8, really. I guess that enables those businesses that receive grants to then make a decision, whether they’re right, wrong or indifferent. That’s all very well, but we know from history that often those decisions aren’t made accurately. Really, my question for the Minister is whether the commissioner has the capacity to then manage the process as a result of what happens, because there’s a significant number of payments, grants, and, in the case of the wage subsidy, huge amounts of money being put out there by the Government to, effectively, enable business to continue and, hopefully, get going again once the lockdown situation stops and we get into our traffic light system.
I’d have to say that I don’t fully understand what businesses can open and what can’t then, so there’s still going to be a requirement for relief payments at that point. But what I really was interested in the Minister assuring us on was that the commissioner has the capacity to manage this process and that they will, effectively, I guess, be able to audit the process once those grants are made, because it’s quite confusing.
Look, the bits of this situation—I’m going to say “grants”, but it’s not a very good word for it. But where we are allocating money in relief payments and things like that, it’s not altogether clear and it hasn’t been clear right through this process, and it would be difficult to make it clear initially, because these things were put together very quickly. As I said earlier, the last bill was put together so quickly that by 4.15, there were two mistakes already and it’d only been passed a minute or two before. But I’m really interested in the Minister assuring us that there is the capacity in the system to manage the allocation of these grants and manage—I wouldn’t say the “policing” of them, but certainly to manage the way in which the commissioner is satisfied that those payments have been made in the manner that they should be made. That’s me.
WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Assistant Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.
NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Chair. It would’ve been a travesty to have shut this down too early. There’s a lot of questions to be asked.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member shouldn’t comment on such things.
NICOLA GRIGG: I beg your pardon, Mr Chair. It wasn’t directed at you. To the Minister—
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Or comment on the ruling.
NICOLA GRIGG: I’m still learning—like the Government, I make it up as I go along.
I just would like to return to the comments that I made earlier to the Minister around the South Island and the ongoing confusion. Look, I do acknowledge the Minister of Revenue for at least answering most of our questions, because other Ministers that have sat in the chair have tended to ignore them. But, Minister, you said earlier that the enforced lockdown, the protracted period of level 2, that the South Island’s been under was because of COVID. Well, Minister, as you well know, there have been virtually zero cases of COVID in the South Island for a year. We’ve had two recently. It wasn’t COVID, Minister; it was a Government-enforced lockdown.
I refer to the explanatory note of the bill here, Minister, where it talks about the framework to “provide the Government with flexibility to continue supporting businesses” under a variety of circumstances, including the move to the traffic light system. The variety of circumstances is what interests me here, Minister, and if I take the Canterbury DHB, for example, we have just 25 ICU beds. In Selwyn, we have 92 percent double vaccination—
Chris Bishop: How much?
NICOLA GRIGG: —92 percent double vaccination—
Chris Bishop: He said it was 100 percent last week.
NICOLA GRIGG: That was single, Christopher Bishop.
Chris Bishop: Oh, sorry, sorry—100 percent?
NICOLA GRIGG: Can I please get on with my comments? Thank you, Mr Bishop.
Minister, how are these circumstances that I’ve outlined accounted for when assessing applications for future support payments that are outlined in this bill? We still haven’t really had much of an explanation as to what level 2 as we know it now will become. Is it amber? Is it red? Is it green? What does it mean for businesses? Given the protracted period of level 2, most businesses are now really starting to suffer. Is there a clause in this bill for them to seek some redress from the Government?
We are asking these questions, Minister, because, as has been well canvassed, the public has not been allowed to ask them because of this very, very truncated process. There is no select committee process, and we would like these questions answered on behalf of our constituents and business owners around the South Island. Thank you.
CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, it’s a real pleasure to just ask the Minister a few questions. I have to say—I’ll be upfront—I really respect Minister Parker. I think he’s a very intelligent man. He’s very thoughtful, he’s always very engaging, he consumes a lot—too much—of Thomas Piketty for my liking: Time for Socialism. Apart from that I enjoy my interchange with him quite a lot. But there is a lot of problem here, and my colleague Chris Penk talked about it incredibly well. There’s no what, there’s no how, there’s no who, there’s no when—it is legislative “Hokey Pokey” as he said, quite rightly.
We are unclear on a couple of things, and I just thought there’s two areas I really want to ask the Minister some questions around hospitality and tourism, in particular, and how those businesses are positioned here. A couple of weekends ago, my colleague Erica Stanford and myself and Chris Bishop went off and we spent time with 25 Auckland-based hospitality businesses, and it’s really interesting when you sit down with people who actually run a business—not union organisers, not people from academia, not professional politicians, but people who actually do stuff, run stuff, know how to organise things, and get things done. What was interesting was they said to us, “We’re going to have a big problem around getting supply organised, because everything’s been de-inventoried and we’re going to have to re-inventory all in a hurry, and, actually, all our suppliers are going to run out of inventory and stock and it’s going to take us a while to get that up and running.” Then you say, “Well, how are you going on the staffing side?”, and they say, “Yep, well, actually, that’s going to take us a long time too, because many of our staff have been out of action and are not up to scratch or ready to serve.”, and, actually, 60 percent of them are often overseas backpackers, who aren’t in the country. So getting staff rosters together, getting people trained ready to go from day one is going to be difficult.
The other piece was around processes—so having someone in a cafe, who now has to employ a security guard at $30 an hour and man two entrances for many hours each week, and they actually deal with conflict with customers and all those sorts of issues—and that sort of sophistication that’s needed is a real challenge. But the thing they went on to say that was interesting was that “There won’t be that many domestic tourists coming into Auckland, and there certainly aren’t any international tourists.” Aucklanders will empty out, and as they hit January and as they hit February, they’re going to be going to the wall.
The question I’ve got for the Minister is: what in this support package—because it was hard to read when there’s no real specificity around—for these people? They’re Auckland-based hospitality people who have been doing it tough for a long time. How do we extend support to them, and how long will it go, what will they get, what are they entitled to, who is it for—what’s the criteria around all of that?
So that’s one set of questions I’d really appreciate an answer from the Thomas Piketty fan, and the second thing is really around tourism. Really, what we saw today was a total Clayton’s sort of announcement, really—the kind of announcement you have when you don’t really want to have an announcement—because, for tourism, it’s a really big problem, and I know this Government hasn’t been a big fan of tourism. They weren’t a big fan of it in Opposition. They certainly aren’t backing it as an industry here, in Government, and that’s a shame because, actually, tourism was bigger than our dairy sector. It was our biggest industry in this country, generating $42 billion a year, or $115 million a day. What was it—about $4 billion in GST receipts came from international visitors alone. So that industry has been structurally challenged since March 2020, and there hasn’t been enough targeted, dedicated support for those people working so incredibly hard in that industry.
Here’s the challenge, right? If you’re Chuck and Mary sitting in Iowa tonight and you’re planning that once-in-a-lifetime trip to New Zealand and you’ve got a whole bunch of choices to make, you can go to Thailand, you can go to Sydney—you can go anywhere in the world. We’ve got to try and get New Zealand up into that consideration set and make it the No. 1 choice for them for their holiday. The average American gets about two weeks’ annual leave a year. I lived there for eight years; I understand how it works. They’re going to be coming down to New Zealand on a fine service from Air New Zealand, no doubt about it—I’m sure it’s an absolutely brilliant service, as you’d expect. They arrive in New Zealand, and they’ve now got to go find somewhere to sit for seven days in a hotel while they then think about what they can do for the rest of the remaining time they’ve got.
Andrew Bayly: That is a compelling marketing proposition.
CHRISTOPHER LUXON: It is. So the point is in the tourism sector, there have been 380,000 people employed. It was our biggest sector. So we’re having a Clayton’s opening—there is nothing in this bill. There is nothing in the announcements today that says, “Tourism’s open for business. Our biggest sector is back on track again.”, and I don’t get why this Government doesn’t like tourism. I don’t know what it is in the DNA; you’ve just never been big fans of it at all, and yet it’s a fantastic industry with amazing people doing incredible things each and every day. But I can tell you, it’s a competitive market. People have choices about where they go and what they do, and they won’t be choosing to come here. They won’t be choosing to spend their money in our local economy, and it contributes 20 percent of our exports. So that’s a big, big thing.
So I guess, Minister, I just really want to understand what’s in it for the Auckland hospitality people. How long does the targeted support continue beyond the immediate rush, because after Christmas it’s all emptying out—there’s nothing for them there. What are we doing about these great folk in tourism who run awesome businesses, who have stuck with us and done everything we’ve asked of them, but they are structurally challenged in this sector, over any other sector in our economy, and there’s not enough in there to support them and to help them. I’d really appreciate your thoughts around that.
JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): I move, That the question be now put.
CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Mr Chair, and it is a great pleasure to take a call on this part in this bill. I have deliberately not made a contribution so far in the debate because I wanted to see the Minister’s responses and I wanted to see the contributions made by my colleagues. I also did a lot of speaking on the bill that preceded this one, so I wanted to, frankly, just take five and chill out for a bit. It’s great to see the Minister of Revenue here in the chair. He does engage and we look forward to that contribution. As Mr Luxon says, he’s too much of a fan of Piketty, but he’s a diligent and conscientious Minister.
But I wanted to pick up on something that Mr Luxon said about the visit to Auckland hospitality by him and me and my colleague and friend Erica Stanford a couple of Sundays ago, because I’ve got to tell you, it’s not until you actually go and talk to Auckland businesses and business owners that you get a sense of the despair in Auckland, particularly hospitality and retail and places like hairdressers. The people we talked to—without divulging too much detail of their own personal lives—were mortgaging their homes, selling their cars, and maxing out their credit cards just to get through the next week. Yep, they’ve had the wage subsidy and, yep, that goes some way, but we are really talking about people who are just struggling literally to survive week by week.
So the real question for the Government is: what is going to be done about those sorts of businesses as we head into December and as we head into January and the onset of the traffic light framework? Actually, the traffic light framework gives with one hand but it takes away with the other, because, yep, it’s true that there are some more freedoms for the vaccinated and, actually, not so much for the unvaccinated, but there are some more freedoms for the vaccinated under the traffic light system. But Auckland enters at red. If Auckland enters at red, and even at red there are limits on the number of people you can have in a bar and the number of people you can have in a cafe—even for vaccinated customers, you have to be seated, you have to be separated, and you’ve got capacity limits. The very strong point that was made to us—and I’m sure Erica Stanford would agree with me—by people in Auckland hospitality was—
Hon Member: Make it green.
CHRIS BISHOP: —exactly—why are we entering at red, and why are we not entering at green or maybe orange or amber, but they actually want to enter at green.
If you look at the framework, red is defined as when the hospital system is facing unsustainable pressure. Well, the Prime Minister says the hospital system is coping, Dr Bloomfield says that things are basically pretty good, and when they get asked about summer, they say that that’s what the modelling shows as well—that we can cope. That’s the Government’s own criteria, and it doesn’t bode well for the traffic light framework that when it starts, the Government will place Auckland into a setting that isn’t borne out by the evidence.
So then you say, well, what about everywhere else, and I haven’t even covered the point that it’s totally unclear what every other region will enter at. I live in Wellington. There is, basically, no COVID in Wellington. Wellington City is, I think, at 94 or 95 percent double vaccination. What will Wellington enter at? I don’t know—I’ve got no idea. What will the South Island enter at, or parts of the South Island? I’ve got no idea. We’re told it will relate to vaccination status and vaccination numbers. Well, what’s the threshold?
It starts next week. Look, it actually starts next Friday. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to have some sense as to what each city they live in will enter the traffic light framework at. People want a bit of certainty and clarity so that they can plan their lives and plan what they’re going to be doing in the run-up until Christmas.
So there is a massive opacity around how all this is going to work. It is incredibly untransparent, incredibly confusing, and people should not have to turn on the TV every second day to find out the next announcement about what their life is going to be like in a couple of weeks’ time, particularly when it keeps changing. So the take-home point for the Government is: what are we going to do about the businesses that Mr Luxon talked about, because they deserve support, and they deserve some clarity and some certainty, and at the moment they have none of those things.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): In respect of Chris Bishop’s comments and questions, this bill doesn’t set up the COVID-19 Protection Framework or the traffic light system, and so I can’t answer those questions in the light of this particular bill because they are irrelevant to it.
In respect of Christopher Luxon’s questions, he would be interested to know that the support of Auckland through the resurgence payments system under the current legislative framework has meant that 71 percent of the latest resurgence support payments has gone to Auckland, and if the National Party doesn’t vote for this bill, suggesting, as they have said, that they don’t want this to continue for the future, then that level of support could not continue into the future, which I find difficult to reconcile with earlier comments from Erica Stanford, who wanted more information as to what the details would be, but still doesn’t seem to be willing to support the legislative framework that is necessary for resurgence support payments to continue under the new framework.
Finally, I would say that, yes, I am respectful of Thomas Piketty, but I’m also quite interested in the works Esther Deflo, Nobel Laureate, at the moment.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Chair. What an exciting night, isn’t it? We’ve got all our team here making wonderful contributions—yeah, I can see you down the back there, Mr Watts. We’ve even got the exciting, dynamic Minister in the chair, who’s contributing.
The only thing I’ve got to say is that there’s a disconcerting thing happening on the Government bench side. Just above one of the members over there, there’s a light that’s flickering on and off, but most of the time it’s off. I don’t know what the implication is, because, when it flicks on and off, I don’t know whether it’s saying to the Labour backbenchers, “Wakey, wakey! Wakey, wakey! Come on, contribute to this debate.” But now, you see, it’s off—you see, it’s out. Is that darkness? Does it mean it’s darkness for all those businesses that are going broke in Auckland, Waikato, Rotorua, Queenstown? Does that light mean—
Hon Member: It’s going out.
ANDREW BAYLY: it’s out—their futures are extinguished, or does it mean that the Labour backbench has gone to sleep? I think it’s the latter, I really do. So I just highlight this because I think we need to get some people in here to fix that light, because this piece of legislation needs all the light, given that it’s not going to go through a select committee process.
Now, I’ve got four proposed tabled amendments, and I’ve got the opportunity now to speak to the second of my four. So I just want to ask a question—and this relates to new section 7AAB(2) in clause 5(1), and hopefully the Minister can help me on this—about the use of the word “grant”: “The Commissioner, on behalf of the Crown, may make a grant under the CSP scheme … to a person”, and it goes on.
So I just want to ask the Minister what is meant by “grant”, because, of course, we’ve had two schemes. We’ve had the resurgence payments scheme, and we’ve had the employment support scheme—the workers’ employment scheme—but is it intended by the legislation in this piece that we’re going to move to a different type of payment framework, and should we read too much into that word “grant”? From what I understand, this is looking to replace the resurgence payments scheme, and, therefore, what does that mean? Hopefully he can allay our fears. Again, I think we need to bear in mind that we’re not speaking to Mr Parker; what we’re speaking to is the audience of those many hundreds of thousands of people who are affected by the terrible plight they find themselves in.
I do take issue with a comment that the Minister said before. It’s not the virus that’s caused the problem; it is the Government’s reaction and the closure of businesses that has caused the problem. It is not the virus; it is the actions of the Government to impose a lockdown on huge swaths of New Zealand areas and businesses, and that is why this Government is having to put in these types of arrangements—and we welcome that they have—but, of course, as we’ve all said, on many occasions, unfortunately, this bill is absolutely devoid of what that means.
Now, talking specifically to my tabled amendment, it really relates to the issue of who has the jurisdiction to determine the setting of the criteria, and, of course, as the Minister will know, under new section 7AAB(3) in clause 5(1), the bill empowers the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. The IRD commissioner “must set out the procedure required”—she must, if it’s the current commissioner—“for a person to make an application for a grant:”—same word, again, and—“must determine—(i) the eligibility requirements that a person must meet to qualify for a grant:”—and, furthermore—“(ii) the terms and conditions that apply to a grant:”.
Now, my proposed tabled amendment does away with the rights of the commissioner to make such determinations. We believe that is important. These are political decisions set by the executive, and it is important that these are executive decisions. The discretion of the commissioner to look at determining the eligibility requirements that a person must meet to qualify for the grant and terms and conditions, we think, is inappropriate, and, therefore, my tabled amendment deals with this issue. I’d really appreciate it if the Minister could respond on both those issues: the issue of “grant” and also why it should not be the executive rather than the commissioner who is making the determination.
VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): I move, That the question be now put.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.
Ayes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Motion agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that Andrew Bayly’s tabled amendment to clause 4 to amend the definition of COVID-19 Support Payments scheme be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that Andrew Bayly’s tabled amendments to clause 5 to remove the power of the Commissioner of IRD to determine eligibility requirements be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendments not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that Andrew Bayly’s tabled amendment to clause 5 to set a specific date and time for eligibility requirements to be published be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that Andrew Bayly’s tabled amendment to clause 5 to amend new section 7AAC(2)(a)(ii) to replace “6 months” with “2 months” be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that Simon O’Connor’s tabled amendments to clause 5 to allow new business owners of existing businesses to claim future payments be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Amendments not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 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.
Part 1 agreed to.
Part 2 Amendments to Income Tax Act 2007
CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, we now come to the debate on Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 8 to 15, Amendments to Income Tax Act 2007. The question is that Part 2 stand part.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to turn to the question of the New Zealand Consumers Price Index, which underpins a number of the benefit increases, particularly with the Best Start tax credit and the family text credit, etc. In clause 13(1), as the Chair will know, it is proposed to replace section MF 7(1)(a)(i) with “correspond to the movement in the New Zealand Consumers Price Index after the quarter ended … 30 September 2021 that has not yet been taken into account by an increase:”.
So the big question here is: previously, it was pretty clear what the Consumers Price Index (CPI) was, specifically, and all groups, excluding cigarettes and other tobacco products, measure. So what has happened in this bill is that we’re going to revert back to a CPI—a Consumers Price Index—which I’m not quite sure whether it includes tobacco or not, because it just seems to talk about a generic Consumers Price Index. I understand that the rationale for the change is that there was a discontinuance of the annual tobacco excise tax increase that occurred at the end of 2020, and that seems to be the reason why we’re reverting back to a Consumers Price Index, which is the way it’s referenced here in the actual bill.
So what I’d appreciate from the Minister is: does it include tobacco? Because, whilst there may no longer be an annual tobacco excise tax, because that was discontinued, the fact is that if you go into any corner store, the price of tobacco could be, and has been, subject to significant price increases. So is tobacco included—and cigarettes—and, if not, what is included in the Consumers Price Index, and is it the standard measure of the Consumers Price Index or have we got something that has been tailored to this arrangement? Because, I think, in terms of the people that will most benefit from these benefit increases, having a clear understanding of the nature of the types of basket of products and services that are taken into account in the Consumers Price Index is a pretty important aspect to be considering.
So I’d very much appreciate the Minister’s view on that and what other advice he may have received from officials as to other more appropriate alternative indexes to use in terms of continuously reassessing the inflation component of compulsory increases in these benefits. As he knows, once inflation breaches or exceeds a 5 percent increase, that triggers an increase, and that’s why we’re seeing these changes come through in this piece of legislation tonight. But, obviously, there’s a wide range, as he’s aware, he’s got the producer price index, which, probably more likely, is about 15 percent inflation rate at the moment, and there are many types of CPI.
So to what extent did he receive advice on it? What other options were considered? And how do we know that this is an appropriate mix and whether, in fact, it does include tobacco and cigarette products? So I’m looking forward to his response on those issues.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): I’ll do my best to answer that question. As it happens, Corin Higgs, the adviser in my office, has got a Master’s in the Consumers Price Index, and I suspect he’s still in his office, so if I get this wrong he’ll send me a text. That’s the first time that I’ve put his name on Hansard and he deserves to be there.
The member is correct, that the Consumers Price Index (CPI) measure is changing to reinsert cigarettes. The reason that it was previously excluded for a period was the last Government—National Party and the Māori Party—decided to significantly increase excise duty on tobacco as a price-based measure to discourage tobacco use. It was thought at the time, with some justification, that if you just flowed that through to compensatory adjustments to benefits, the price effect would be muted and therefore it wouldn’t have the desired health outcome, which is a reduction in the consumption of cancer-causing cigarette products. That particular policy has now moved through the system and that change to the CPI measure is no longer appropriate going forward, therefore cigarettes come back into the CPI measure that is used.
CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’ve been enjoying this discussion, including Minister Parker’s response on the subject of the way that the CPI—consumer price index—has been calculated and as that relates to the calculations and so on. I do have a question, actually, in relation to that, but perhaps I can come to that after my initial contribution is made in relation to a different clause within the bill—obviously, talking about Part 2.
I’m interested in the Best Start tax credit at clause 14. We see that a figure is to be replaced: “$3,120” is to be replaced by “$3,388”, and no doubt that’s appropriate—I actually haven’t looked into that particularly. I’m not highlighting the quantum of the increase particularly, but I am interested in the fact that that subsection applies for the 2022 to 2023 and later tax years. So what that tells us is that this legislation is going to be on the books for ever, on the face of it, and there is no end in sight to the traffic light system. We’ve already spoken about the fact that it’s like a board game: you’ve got to roll a zero to start. You know, we’re going to start in red and go all the way to green, and even then, in green, we’re not back to life as normal. So the question is, is there any light at the end of the tunnel in relation to the traffic light system?
Barbara Kuriger: A train could be coming the other way.
CHRIS PENK: And my colleague Barbara Kuriger suggests that the light at the end of the tunnel might indeed be a train coming the other way. But as far as the legislation is concerned, this will go on forever and ever.
Now, the Minister might well say, and I invite him to respond—indeed, I’d like him to respond—along the lines that, oh, well, eventually it will be repealed when it’s no longer needed. But surely the smarter approach would be to say that the operation of the legislation is linked to the COVID-19 Protection Framework—namely, the traffic light system—because that way we would have the support in place as long as it’s needed, not less and not more. And I say “not less” because I wouldn’t suggest or advocate, just to be clear, that the support only be put in place, let’s say, for the 2022-23 tax year or perhaps for that one and one more, and try and make an educated guess about how long the global pandemic will last. We don’t know that, of course.
But we do know that the support will be needed as long as the Government response is such that the support is needed. And it sounds quite circular, but that’s the whole point. The two should cross refer. There should be no reason that the legislation can’t contemplate an end of this life as we know it—you know, under the framework. That broader point that my colleague and friend the Hon Paul Goldsmith made was absolutely right: the elephant in the room is that the best way to avoid needing all this extra support is to allow businesses to simply get on and trade in the way that they would wish to, to be able to get themselves out of the hole, instead of giving them a shovel that they might continue to dig it still deeper.
So my question to the Minister, therefore, is has he contemplated, or would he contemplate, perhaps by way of Supplementary Order Paper—it’s not too late; after all, the night is yet young. As we all know, we’ll be here, potentially, until midnight. So is there any reason that we can’t have a formulation in there whereby the legislation applies for as long as the measures in the other bill, which is about to become an Act, apply? So that’s my first question, or set of questions.
My other one is in relation to the Consumers Price Index, often referred to, broadly speaking, as inflation. But my question to the Minister is along the lines of that asked by Andrew Bayly, but it develops the theme a bit further, because, I would note, particular businesses have particular cost pressures, costs that rise in a way that is above the general rate of inflation—with or without the tobacco. So, for example, a business in my electorate that’s involved in construction—a hugely important industry, of course, across New Zealand, because, of course, you know, we all need places to live and it goes without saying that there are housing supply issues that have plagued, you know, all the country for a number of years now.
But the cost pressures in that industry, particularly with regard to timber and other supply issues, would affect a construction outfit in my electorate, or any other, in a way that’s disproportionate to the general rate of inflation. So above even the 4.9 percent that we’ve experienced recently, and goodness knows how much higher that will get, notwithstanding, or perhaps because of, in any case—well, regardless of the intervention of the Reserve Bank, inflation might go higher. But for particular businesses that might be particularly affected by particular price movements, will the Minister contemplate a more generous regime to match that? Or is his mind closed to the point more generally about inflation, being the market?
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): The changes to entitlements to Working for Families and the family tax credit aren’t intended to be linked to COVID. Although they are a benefit to people during COVID, they are intended to endure.
SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. I do appreciate getting the call. Minister Parker has raised a good point that actually this Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill—the Working for Families component is not intended to address the shock, the hardship, the loss of income that families are suffering during COVID-19. It’s part of the Government’s much wider agenda, clearly signalled over the last two generations of Labour-led Governments, to bring more and more New Zealand workers and their families into the welcoming embrace of what turns out to be a permanent and disabling relationship for these people and their families. That’s called Working for Families. A former leader of the once-great National Party described Working for Families as communism by stealth, and what I understand that leader of the National Party at that time meant was that more and more people will become dependent on the State to define whether they will succeed in life and lose their independence and freedom.
What ACT would propose is rather than the State collecting more and more taxation from New Zealanders: in the past year during the COVID pandemic when everybody is doing it tough around New Zealand—everyone who owns a business, who employs people, who is working from home, and even if they’re on a salary and they do get paid every fortnight—the tax take has gone up by over $10 billion to $98.5 billion. What that tells you is that the Government cannot actually keep its hands out of your pockets and now needs to find a way to redistribute the money so it doesn’t end up looking guilty and ashamed by the time it gets to the next Budget.
So when we look at this bill, what this amendment proposes, we look at the regulatory impact statement. What is the problem: “Improve income adequacy for beneficiaries and low-income people”—yes. “Improve financial incentives to work”—yes, says the ACT Party. “Pay welfare support at a sustainable cost to government”—yes, yes, yes says the ACT Party. The problem is clear: people work, they don’t get to take home enough of what they earn, and that’s primarily because the Government has its hands deep in their pockets in terms of income tax; GST, of course; but on goods which are suffering from inflation, so as the price of materials and goods supplied into New Zealand goes up—the inflation rate at 4.9 percent this year—the GST take automatically inflates with the bubble, with the balloon, with the waterbed that is the increase in consumer prices.
ACT does not believe there’s anything in this bill that will actually contribute to getting more people off benefits and off Government support and back into work so they can experience that feeling of making decisions for themselves about where they live, the things that they choose to spend money on, rather than becoming dependent on the Government, on having to go through complicated tables and fill out forms—and I’m going to find one in the back here—which describe just exactly this. This form here describes just exactly what the abatement ratio is, and if you earn a little bit too much, then you’ll lose your entitlements. These things are all disincentives for people to move from welfare and from low-paid jobs, and to seek higher-paid jobs so that they can actually share those economic benefits of working and earning a good wage or salary with their families and with their communities if they choose to give to charity or to spend time coaching a kids soccer team or helping out with the PTA at school—all of those things that they can choose whether to do them or not if they earn a decent salary.
That’s why ACT would propose rather than this Working for Families tax credit—in other words, we’ve taken it and we’ve managed to lose 30 or 40 percent in overheads in Government, now there’s 60 cents in the dollar to give back. What ACT would do is give middle-income New Zealanders a tax cut so that somebody earning $70,000 a year had $2,000 more in their pocket every year. That was their money to start with. They earned it. But the Government taxed it off them—an extra $10 billion in the last year. ACT believes workers should be able to keep more of what they earn. This won’t do it.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Responding to the suggestion of Simon Court, if you go back in history to the time when we had very high income tax rates in New Zealand under the Muldoon-led National Government, income tax rates were 66 cents in the dollar for higher income earners. That was seen to be, by parties all around this House, as excessive, and the Governments of the day changed the tax system so as to have lower income tax rates and more consumption taxes. Consumption tax in New Zealand is a broad-based GST, and it is an effective tax, but it is a regressive tax, in that it’s a higher proportion of the income of low- and middle-income earners than it is of higher-income earners.
After those changes, successive Governments, including the last National Government, led by the Rt Hon John Key, who did, prior to becoming Prime Minister, call Working for Families “communism by stealth”, and then kept it. But he came to the same realisation that we have on this side. That is, if you have a system of lower income tax rates and a quite high consumption tax proportion of total tax take, which we do in New Zealand, then in order to enable families who have got additional responsibilities to raise children, you need to have a tax credit in the system through the Working for Families tax credit system, which is what we believe in on this side of the House, and what this bill improves for the benefit of families who are eligible for it.
JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d like to speak in my contribution in the committee stage in Part 2 to a couple of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in my name. I’ll start with the first one, which is seeking to delete, in clause 2, section 11, which is about the increase in the abatement rate from 25 percent to 27 percent. We’re putting this forward in the hope of gaining support across the committee, because we believe this is consistent with the Minister’s articulation of the intent of this legislation, being to implement some of the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG), which two years ago now said that in terms of immediate steps towards income adequacy, the Government needed to be increasing benefits and also making really significant changes to Working for Families, including moving closer to being a universal system available to all except high-income earners. They were advocating for a reduction in the abatement rate from the 25 percent to 10 percent for those earning between $48,000 and $65,000, and up to 15 percent for those earning $65,000 to $160,000, and then for it to be 50 percent above $160,000.
They believed, and we thought, that the Government—and I do just want to just mention again that WEAG was a group of representative people. It involved voices from business. It involved health practitioners working with families. It involved people who’d had experience using the welfare system and advocating for people in the welfare system. It was a broad representation of our society and found consensus across those groups in these recommendations. So it is, to me, very strange to hear the Minister saying that this bill is about taking a step to implement WEAG’s recommendations. And yet this increase to the abatement rate is going in the exact opposite direction from what WEAG was asking.
So if the Government supports our SOP to remove that clause, it doesn’t actually move them further towards WEAG’s recommendations, but at least it stops them going the wrong way. So this is our contribution to the Government to help keep you on track in terms of implementing the recommendations of WEAG. And one of the reasons we’ve put this forward is because that abatement rate is a disincentive, particularly for second parents working. This creates a really high effective marginal tax rate for still relatively lower to middle-income families, and the regulatory impact statement tells us that there will be 91,000 losers of up to $6 a week from this policy. These are families who—we know times are tough at the moment. Like, people have had their hours reduced; people have lost their jobs. There’s a sense of kind of insecurity, even for those people who have managed to maintain their hours and their jobs, and are juggling a lot, and costs in terms of power etc. have gone up. We don’t need to be pulling money away from those people to put towards others.
Really, for us, that is a really particularly important point, because it is unnecessary. The Government has options in terms of raising income. While we may hear from others that things are incredibly tight and there’s the sense that people were overtaxed—and I heard from the ACT Party member their solution to poverty is reducing tax. The Green Party’s concern with that is that we like schools, we quite like hospitals, we like strong communities, and we really believe in good public services. Those things cost money. We want to be able to pay our nurses. We want to be able to pay our admin and clerical workers and our DHB the wages that they deserve. That has been a strangely long fight to be able to get to that point, and we haven’t even got there yet. And part of the reason for that is the sense of austerity, of having limited options in terms of funding available, of having to trade off climate action with funding our health system. The Green Party believes that we can do a lot more if we just taxed wealth at 1 percent, just 1 percent, which would affect 6 percent of the country—of wealth over $1 million, sorry. At 1 percent, that would affect 6 percent of the country and would enable this country to bring in a guaranteed minimum income. And assessed by other groups, not the Green Party, we could eliminate child poverty by doing that. So I believe that is an option that would serve our families and our communities, because we know that when families have enough money, they make good decisions.
We’ve heard this idea that people are just kind of work-shy. I’ve heard that a lot over many years from that side. What people are ignoring is the fact that over 50 percent of the people receiving income support are doing so because of sickness or disability. Many of those people want to work, but the truth is that, as yet, a Government has not done the work to remove the barriers and discrimination to ensure all those people can get the jobs that they’re able to do, that work for them. The Green Party believes we have a responsibility to those people to the point we’ve done that work to eliminate that discrimination. We should not, as a country, be making those people pay and restrict their lives because of the work that we have not done as a Parliament or as successive Governments.
Another aspect of it, and they intersect, is parenting. You know, it’s a job, and it is an incredibly important job. For some parents, being able to be in paid work and parent is the best way to parent. But not every child can cope with that, and if you’re going to be the best parent possible, you need to be led by what is best for your child. That is also when we know that a significant number—I’ve been hearing this in select committee—of families are not able to get their kids consistently in school, because we have not removed those barriers to those kids being sent home basically every day from their schools because the schools are not able to meet their needs. We have just absolute discrimination through our school system. That is a reality, and those parents have to be there when their kids are sent home.
And yet again, some of the views expressed from the National and ACT Party would suggest that those families should just be getting a job, putting the needs of their children—
Hon Member: A lot of them have a job.
JAN LOGIE: Actually, they’re saying lots of those people have a job. Some of what we’re talking about is the people who are not able to, because they have to go home to be there for their kids, because their kids are sent home every day. Those people who are not able to get a job because they’ve applied and applied and applied, and nobody has even given them an interview. That is a daily lived reality for a huge number of people with disabilities that is ignored when people suggest the answer to poverty is to get a job. It sounds easy. It feeds to people’s sense of anger about the struggle of managing life, right? But not everyone’s life is the same.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Chair. I think I’m going to cause a bit of a stir in the Chamber next, and the reason is I agree with some of what Jan Logie has been talking about.
Hon Member: Future of the National Party!
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: I know. Just hold fire, just relax—just breathe and relax. I also have proposed an amendment to delete clause 11, which is the same as part of what Jan Logie has done. So I’m partly agreeing.
Hon Member: New coalition forming?
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: A new coalition. We’re always open to extending our friendships, and we have with the Greens in the past. If you think back to 2008, we had a great cooperation with the Green Party. But in all seriousness, I am proposing an amendment which would delete clause 11, basically because we already have a high effective marginal tax rate and we actually want to see that, when people are working, they should keep more of what they earn, and they shouldn’t be penalised for doing so.
I also want to say I acknowledge the very real challenge of many parents and families of all shapes and sizes where juggling work and parenting is incredibly challenging, but the National Party believes that the incentive always should be favouring work, and so this is a very simple amendment that we are proposing.
Of course, the interesting part of the changes that are being proposed tonight is if you look at the regulatory impact statement, you know, there has been no consultation, and what is interesting is because many of these changes were part of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendations—and I’m speaking specifically around the Working for Families tax credits part of this bill—I am somewhat perturbed that the Government didn’t take the steps to consult on this ahead of the bill being introduced, or actually take this to select committee, because there’d be a range of views, and very sensible views, on whether clause 11 was necessary or not, and we would have had the opportunity to actually tease out some of the challenges around the very important incentive to be in work. Actually, sorry, I’m just going to try and find the regulatory impact statement—one of the comments in there is that the Government did want to maintain that focus on work.
So I think this is a sensible change that I do want the Government to consider: the removal of clause 11. So I’m partially agreeing with Jan Logie, but the reality of this particular bill is that the largely touted increases in the Working for Families tax credit side of this are just the Consumers Price Index (CPI) adjustment. So I think it is—and I’m careful with my words, similar to Jan Logie being careful before—not accurately representing to New Zealand families the reality of what this package does, because the majority of it is the CPI adjustments that happen anyway and would have happened on 1 April. So the Government pretending to be incredibly generous with $20 a week actually isn’t, because $15 of that would have happened with the CPI adjustment, so we should be clear about what this bill does and what it doesn’t do.
So I will be asking other parties in this Chamber to support the amendment. So Jan Logie and the Green Party, we would support half of yours, so that would mean, surely, you could support all of ours, which might give us the opportunity in this Chamber for the Government to see some sense. I would be interested in the Minister answering some questions in response to my amendment to remove clause 11. Thank you, Mr Chair.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Thank you, Mr Chairman. Can I thank Jan Logie and the Hon Louise Upston for their contributions. I accept that their amendments proposed are similar. We will be voting against both of them. The additional fiscal cost of those measures would be $90 million per annum, and we think the money is better directed in the fashion that we have proposed in this legislation rather than as has been proposed by those members.
In respect of the efforts that we have made to lift children out of poverty, that is one of the cornerstones of the Prime Minister’s commitments to this country that she was elected to pursue. Through a myriad of changes to the Best Start payment—or the introduction of the Best Start payment—which is being increased by $5 per week per child through this bill, but also through benefit increases, the winter energy payment, and changes like the change that we are now making to the family tax credit, thousands of children have been lifted out of poverty; progress continues to be made.
But not all of the recommendations of the expert advisory groups have yet been actioned, and we’re not supporting that amendment tonight.
JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. And thanks to the Minister for responding to our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). I’m disappointed that the Government won’t be supporting this amendment to help make this bill more consistent with the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s (WEAG) recommendations. When the Minister was saying they haven’t implemented it yet, it’s in progress, this particular clause is going in the opposite direction from their recommendation. So that just doesn’t feel consistent with the Government’s messaging about implementing the recommendations of WEAG. And the point around costs—and maybe the Minister will clarify, because, when I’m looking at the regulatory impact statement, the cost of this policy, which I’m assuming is at $66 million, and so the $90 million, I’m assuming that’s just—
Andrew Bayly: $68 million.
JAN LOGIE: Well, it depends which page you’re looking at, Mr Bayly. There are differences on different pages, I have noticed. I’m not quite sure how to explain them. I would point out also to the Minister, saying that this is a flagship for the Government around addressing child poverty and progress is being made and the work around the Families Package, I do absolutely acknowledge the really dire state we were in four years ago, and a sense that just things were contracting and contracting. We were looking at the number of our children who were living in sheds and whose families were not able to have enough food to put on the table, and it was so critically important to have that commitment to change that. We are going in the right direction—but the glacial pace of that, when we know the lifelong costs of child poverty. It’s a horrible thing to see a kid without shoes, to see a kid getting rheumatic fever because of overcrowded homes, to see a kid without food in their belly, and their sense of disconnection to our community—that is a horrible thing to see. The problem I’ve got is I still see that. That is still the reality: the severe child poverty—still 160,000 of our kids are in that place now. I’m not feeling the urgency with a $5 a week increase to the Working for Families tax credit.
This leads me to our other SOP, which is to extend the in-work tax credit, which is embedded discrimination that has been recognised by our courts, and it is justified as being there as an incentive to encourage people to work. But actually, the Greens would argue the biggest disincentive to work is the effective marginal tax rate that comes through the abatement rates. And so how can we increase the abatement rate and not address that inequity between the in-work tax credit and the family tax credit? That shift alone would make a massive difference and would bring thousands more than the 3,000 to 6,000 who might just maybe get brought out of poverty according to the regulatory impact statement on this. They are very clear that they cannot be sure of the statistics around the 3,000 to 6,000 who might be brought out by this $5 a week increase. It just does not feel commensurate to the challenges our families are facing at the moment.
We know those lines for the foodbanks, the numbers of people coming into Work and Income to ask for food grants because the basic core supports are not enough—they are just not enough. And we’re putting people into more debt that actually reduces their core income because we’re making them go into debt to cover their immediate needs. None of that makes sense to the Green Party, and we really would love to see the support for removing the discrimination to incentivising people into work, and to actually showing some real guts in our commitment to reducing child poverty.
KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Wow, I think, if ever there’s an indication that the Government has screwed it up, we have just seen it when we have the Hon Louise Upston and Jan Logie from the Green Party on the same page, talking about the same issue and wanting to make the same change. That just tells me that, if you ever needed a select committee process, now is the time, and that is the best indication, because, whilst I don’t always agree with everything that Jan Logie says, one thing I would say is that she is one of the most earnest, heartfelt people in this House, who will always stand up for the poor, and if she’s standing there saying that Labour has got it wrong, and Louise Upston from National is saying it’s wrong, then there must be something wrong. And I think that the Government should take heed of that. But, of course, they’re going to ram this through tonight, aren’t they? We’ll be here till midnight. It’s going to be an exciting night, isn’t it?
This comes back to a wider issue—and I’m sorry; I also want to pick up on Jan Logie’s issue. Yes, even the departmental disclosure statement, the regulatory impact statement—commonly known as a “RIS” to us MPs—even that, if I take her at her word, the numbers are wrong. The numbers are wrong in it! Wow! The Minister can’t even get the numbers right. The Minister must have done this legislation in such a hurry that not only are we doing a COVID bill today that has to be changed immediately after, but the RIS—how can you actually make a comparison? How can you actually assess the financial impact if the RIS is wrong? What is happening to this Government? What is happening to those backbenchers over there, also?
Anyway, anyway, I want to return to the issue of the family tax credit increase and the proposition—and this is my first question to the Minister. I listened very carefully to his opening speech, way back, a few hours ago—it seems like a time line—when the Minister talked about increasing and lifting people out of poverty, particularly children, and he talked about 6,000 children being lifted out of poverty as a result of all these Working for Families changes. And, of course, all the backbench over there used the figure 3,000. So which figure is it, Minister? That’s the first thing, because we’d like to see a bit of consistency across that Labour Party over there. Not showing much consistency at the moment. But the big issue is how in the Dickens can you lift 6,000—or let’s say 3,000—people out of poverty when all you’re doing is playing catch up with inflation. So all these benefit changes are playing catch up, trying to catch up to the 8 percent inflation rate. Of course, it’s always triggered when it gets greater than 5 percent. So it’s not reimbursing them for what’s gone on; it’s just increasing the current Working for Families component to take that issue into account.
So there is no way that is ever going to remove children out of poverty. The only thing that is going to remove children, potentially, out of poverty is this $5 per week increase. And I know that the Hon Louise Upston, because she’s a hard-working person, has got an amendment on that which is saying, “Why are we putting the $5 per week in there? There’s already an 8.4 percent increase.”
Kieran McAnulty: Here’s your chance, Doocey! Have a go, mate.
ANDREW BAYLY: Sorry?
Kieran McAnulty: I was just saying he should have a go at leadership, because who knows who’s up for it! Come on, let’s go!
ANDREW BAYLY: So a very inappropriate contribution from the Chief Whip there. So the issue here is: does the Minister really think that a $5 per week per child increase is going to lift 3,000 children out of poverty when you’ve got rampant inflation? Of course, we’ve got the Reserve Bank in front of the Finance and Expenditure Committee at 8 a.m. tomorrow, and they have got inflation forecasts going like that, partly because of inappropriate, poor levels of spending by the Government and also the actions of the Reserve Bank. How is $5 per week going to lift children out of poverty? That, I think, is a proposition it put in here, made by the Government, but actually I think it has very little basis, and I’d love to hear the analysis of it.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Referring to the point that Mr—
Andrew Bayly: Bayly.
Hon DAVID PARKER: Bayly, thank you.
Andrew Bayly: I remember you too, David.
Hon DAVID PARKER: Ha, ha! Yeah, thank you—sorry about that. The point as to the difference in two of the calculations by the department as to the cost of this policy arises from the flow-on impact of other Government assistance—all of which is interconnected—and the difference between the annual cost under the two measures that they did was $2 million. That, in the scheme of these sorts of numbers, is almost margin of error. They do recalculate these figures periodically, and when they did the numbers a second time and factored into account some of the interconnections with other Government assistance, they came up with that minor difference.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): I move, That the question be now put.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve just had a wee chat to the Green member and I think on this occasion—there wouldn’t be many—she’s done more homework than I have. So I do want to come back to the point about the abatement rate.
I think the Minister said that the cost was $90 million, which is why that won’t be happening. But I’m somewhat surprised because, on the one hand, the Government is crowing about a really generous package and how this going to be the answer to lifting children out of poverty, and yet $90 million is an amount to quibble over. This year alone, Ministry of Social Development underspent twice that amount, $180 million, on employment programmes. So kind of interesting that $90 million to families, when it’s keeping more of what you earn and reducing the effective marginal tax rate, I would have thought would be quite useful.
But anyway, another question I’ve got for the Minister is, the projections of the number of children that they will lift out of poverty, and this is on the background to a promise in 2017 of 100,000 children being lifted out of poverty when, on that same measure, actually there are 1,500 more children. So I want to ask the Minister, based on the regulatory impact statement that clearly talks about data uncertainty and the fact that there hasn’t been sufficient time to consult on phase one, so, first of all, what is the figure? Because we’ve heard 3,000, 6,000, 10,000. Can he point to the section in the regulatory impact statement or any other evidence as to how those estimates have been derived?
CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’ve got some questions tonight; some of them are relating to the bill and I’m going to ask those of the Minister because that’s what I have come to this place to do.
My questions are in relation to a number of the timings to which the bill applies, and I do want to acknowledge that the Minister engaged with a related question that I had before. I was asking about whether it would not be better to have certain sections that will apply indefinitely tied to COVID legislation. The Minister pointed out, quite rightly, that a number of these provisions aren’t anything to do with the COVID framework. So, for example, I had cited clause 14, which was in relation to the Best Start tax credit. So, fair enough, as far as it goes.
But it does beg the question—in light of the fact that some of the provisions in Part 2 do relate to the COVID-19 support payments and the similarly named resurgence payments, but others do not. So my question to the Minister is, quite simply: why is this legislation—which I understand mostly will come into effect in April of next year—being put through the House now, when obviously there will be many more opportunities to legislate those between now and that new tax year and to be able to do it in an environment that’s not urgency and to allow, for example, a select committee process? Other colleagues have mentioned the desirability of that more generally, and of course I would always agree with that, and particularly to thrash out some of the technical issues as to whether the increased amounts are appropriate, and even the design of the system more generally.
So a reasonably narrow question, in terms of why it should be that we are discussing this tonight, in urgency, as opposed to in a more measured way that’s likely to produce good sound legislation, and I refer to the bits that are not COVID-related within that Part 2 of the bill.
BARBARA EDMONDS (Associate Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. I think there’s still quite a lot around the concept, if the clear intention of this bill is around the reduction of child poverty. I don’t think we’ve heard enough from the Minister in terms of the justification for why he thinks that will occur, particularly given the very different numbers that we heard from members of the Labour Party in the first reading speeches. I also haven’t heard any response in terms of the justification of how those numbers are derived. So I am looking forward to an answer to that.
The other questions I have relate to why it is that when Labour announced these changes they weren’t up front with the New Zealand public about the fact that the actual increase that was included in this package of legislation was only $5 a week. Actually, the National Party had its own solution to this for a similar amount, which would have been to actually allow people to keep more of what they earned themselves. I’d be interested to hear from the Minister of Revenue about the churn, the cost of churn, and the difference between taking tax off people and then returning it to them in another format through transfers called Working for Families, and the efficiency of actually just allowing people to keep their money in the first place. Because, at the end of the day, that would have the same result in terms of money in people’s pockets.
The other part that I don’t think has been addressed much at all in this debate, although I know my colleague Andrew Bayly has raised it on a number of occasions, is the fact that increases in the cost of living really have been an area that the Government could have focused on. Instead of focusing on this miserly $5 a week, which they sold as $20 a week, and why instead—if the focus was on targeting support, what the alternatives were that were considered, in terms of, for example, supporting those on benefit long term that could have been supported with a very intensive case management into employment, which would, of course, provide three times as much income into that household, and would have lifted far more children out of poverty.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Thank you, Madam Chair. The difference between the two figures as to the number of children lifted out of poverty being either 5,000 or 6,000 children depends on which measure is being used. Both figures were calculated by the Treasury. The 5,000 children lifted out of poverty is based on the before housing costs measurement of poverty, and the 6,000 children lifted out of poverty is on the calculation after housing costs.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): I move, That the question be now put.
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.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Motion agreed to.
The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 77, Noes 43.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the Hon Louise Upston’s tabled amendments to clause 10 to amend the calculation of family tax credit be agreed to. All those in favour, say Aye; to the contrary, No. The Noes have it. Party vote has been called for. The clerk will conduct a party vote.
Hon Marama Davidson: Point of order, Madam Chair. Could I please ask the House to correct my vote just then for the Māori Party? It should have instead been “abstain”. My apologies.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The clerk will correct that vote. The Ayes are 75, the Noes are 43, abstain 2. The Ayes have it. The question is that Jan Logie’s amendment to insert new—
Matt Doocey: We’ve still got to vote.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Oh, sorry. We go back to the vote on Louise Upston’s amendments, please.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.
Ayes 53
New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; ACT New Zealand 10.
Noes 65
New Zealand Labour 65.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Amendments not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Jan Logie’s amendment to insert new clauses 10A, 10B, and 10C set out on Supplementary Order Paper 102 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 10
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 108
New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Jan Logie’s amendment to delete clause 11 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 101 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 43
New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; ACT New Zealand 10.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Amendment not agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The Hon Louise Upston’s tabled amendment to delete clause 11 is out of order as the same in substance as a previous amendment.
A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 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.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Part 2 agreed to.
Clauses 1 and 2
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we now come to our final debate, which is on clauses 1 and 2, the title and commencement.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, we are nearing the end of this one. I want to talk about the commencement date—in fact, I want to talk about both, but I’m just going to deal with the commencement date. Look, I think the recurring theme in the debate this afternoon, and going on tonight, and same with the earlier COVID bill that was passed via urgency, is that it is absolutely imperative that the Government lets business owners, their staff, and people, in general, know, as soon as possible, what the new arrangements will be under the traffic light system. That’s just such a big issue.
Madam Chair, I know you were here for a large part of the debate, the heart-wrenching stories, the businesses that are crashing, and the unknown now and the uncertainty and the lack of clarity is just unbelievably bad. As many of us in the House here represent electorates that span areas and represent business owners who are doing it so tough now, I just think the commencement of this bill is a vital part of making sure that we bring to a conclusion, as soon as possible, the long-lingering process that the Government loves to do, which is to make announcements, then delay, make more announcements, and then finally trickle out a bit of information. We just can’t go on. We’ve got eight days; in fact, in a couple of hours—an hour and a half—it’ll be seven days until the new arrangements have to come into force. We have only got one more parliamentary day—tomorrow—where this bill can be passed, and all this is last-minute, harried stuff.
So the bill here, in clause 2(1), proposes that “This Act comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent, except as provided in this section.” Subclause (2) makes reference to the fact that “Sections 10, 11, 12, and 14 come into force on 1 April 2022.” Look, my strong plea to the Government, and I’m looking at the Minister and I’m grateful that he stayed for the debate tonight and has participated actively, is that this bill needs to come into being and people need to know when it is. I’d like to propose that it comes into being by close of play tomorrow, 25 November, because then people at least have certainty that if you’re going to pass this piece of legislation—and the Government is hell-bent on doing that and has the numbers to do it and is ramming it through under urgency—then, at least, put these people out of their misery by actually making sure that this bill comes into force quickly.
I am reminded of my eagle-eyed colleague Chris Bishop, who, quite rightly, identified, which no one else seemed to have identified, that the commencement date on the COVID management bill, which was debated last week—identified the potential that, actually, by waiting for the Royal assent to be signed and the bill to come into play after being signed would, in fact, have meant that it was post the date of implementation, and, therefore, compromised the bill itself. I think that we know we are down to seven days and an hour and a half, I just think that it is inappropriate to let anything like this slip and linger, and that’s why I would highly recommend that a specific date be put in here that means that the Minister can make sure his officials are on to the job, that we don’t have a muck-up like we had last time and another shambolic example of the Government trying to do this last-minute, harried stuff and to make sure that people know what the certainty is around it. That is my strong urging.
I’d very much welcome the comments from the Minister on this issue and whether, in fact, he is open to setting a specific date, or whether, in fact, he’s made any provisions for the Governor-General to sign the bill, and, if so, when and how, and how long after that are we expecting to find the detail that this bill enables.
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): We’re not expecting any delay for the Governor-General to provide the Royal assent.
Andrew Bayly: Do you know that? Have you made arrangements?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Ha, ha! Well, I saw the Governor-General earlier in the week. I’m sure she’s in town. And I’m confident that there’s no faster way to bring this into effect than the date on which Royal assent is provided.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I just have a few comments to make, and maybe put some propositions to the Minister about the title and commencement of this bill. First of all, the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill really should be amended to mention inflation being out of control, because that’s the real reason for the Working for Families tax credits bill, and only tangentially related to COVID-19. But in fact, actually, now maybe the relationship was a bit stronger than we thought. You see, the problem is that we have had a Government that has relied on cheap money to hide a multitude of sins in its COVID-19 response. Its hesitation, its failure to order vaccines, you name the failing, and it has been covered and subsidised by cheap money that has suddenly run out. And the reason it’s running out is that the Reserve Bank is having to raise interest rates. We saw that today—mortgage rates going up 25 basis points, and the speculation was it could have been 50. It has a big effect on people paying their mortgages. And the reason that’s happening is that that ocean of cheap credit that the Government has used is now pushing up the prices that people pay at the pump, at the supermarket checkout, on their rents, when they go to Mitre 10 to buy building supplies, you name it—wherever you go prices are going up and people are feeling it, and that’s this is necessary.
I think it would be a real shame, it would be remiss of this committee, not to put something about out of control inflation as a result of the Government’s lackadaisical COVID response into the title of the bill. That would more accurately reflect what is going on here. And it hasn’t just been monetary policy that has led to that inflation. Ironically, it’s very much connected with the intention of this bill, which is, of course, to splash more cash by making adjustments to the amount of money that is able to be paid out. It’s also the fiscal stimulus that’s been going on. You know, we’ve had a bigger fiscal stimulus, the Government borrowing, taxing, spending, spending more than it takes in to try and stimulate the economy. Well, the Secretary to the Treasury, Caralee McLiesh, is on record as saying that New Zealand had the second-biggest taxpayer funded stimulus in the OECD, behind the United States. And old “Sleepy Joe”, he may not get up early in the morning, but he sure knows how to deficit spend, I tell you. He is getting out there; $1.3 trillion. I don’t even know, I mean—
Hon Louise Upston: How many zeros is that?
DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, Louise Upston from Taupō asks “How many zeros?” Well, it’s less than a billion. You don’t need a billion zeros to make a trillion, but it’s pretty close. So I can tell Louise Upston that it’s a lot of zeros. And old “Sleepy Joe” up there, he’s got the printing press going. So they spent more money in terms of taxpayer stimulus getting through COVID than New Zealand, compared with GDP. But, of course, that speech by Caralee McLiesh was given prior to the latest lockdown, so it’s quite possible that New Zealand now has the largest fiscal stimulus as a percentage of GDP to get through COVID. So we’ve been protected, or at least the Government so far has been protected, by these oceans—the literal oceans, the Pacific Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and the Tasman Sea, have kept COVID out of New Zealand, or at least helped to a large extent.
Then there’s oceans of monetary policy stimulus and oceans of fiscal stimulus. But, unfortunately, they are now washing away New Zealand’s quality of life and standards of living with massive increases in the cost of life in New Zealand—the cost of COVID catching up with people, making it necessary for the Government to splash even more cash, putting in place a bill like this.
So in terms of the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, I say that it might have been smarter to put something about managing the inflation caused by the Government’s mismanagement of COVID in the bill. I also think it is somewhat offensive that the word “taxation” is in there, because while taxation may well be used along with borrowing and money printing to fund the provisions in this bill, a much better way to give relief to people who are really struggling with the cost of life would have been to reduce the amount of tax people pay in the first place, rather than robbing Peter to pay Paul and giving it back. But that’s not what this bill does. And so I think the title, by including taxation, is actually quite offensive to hardworking, taxpaying New Zealanders who get up, make the kids lunch, go to work, and have a third of their income taken away throughout the year by tax. There’s no relief for them, as such, in this legislation, and that’s why I’m not sure it’s—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order. I call on the honourable—
DAVID SEYMOUR: Anyone but me! Madam Chair, thank you. Well, that’s an unexpected but not unwelcome development. As I was saying, when it comes to taxation, it’s important that New Zealand is a place, if we’re going to recover from COVID, that is tax-competitive. The tax measure that really matters for New Zealand is how we compare with our Pacific neighbours. Often, when people do comparisons of taxation, they try to compare New Zealand with a lot of stagnant Western European welfare States which haven’t really had a lot of growth and aren’t really going anywhere. In fact, when you go to Europe, you understand why so many people move to the New World—wonderful places such as New Zealand.
Again, this legislation is not going to give any kind of relief against the inflation that taxpayers are feeling. Funnily enough, while this legislation is going to adjust the brackets for people entitled to get tax credits—people who need to be given money, transferred money—it’s not going to do anything for people who are going to find the main effect of inflation is that their purchasing power is eroded to the extent that their wages also adjust to keep up with the increased money supply. They’re not going to find that they’re in a position where they get more money after they pay their taxes. The reason for that, we all know it, is that fiscal drag, fiscal drift, fiscal creep—call it whatever you will—means that as inflation comes along, in order to buy the same stuff, people need to earn a larger amount of cash, and with tax brackets being what they are, a higher portion of their tax is paid at higher tax rates.
Now, you know, this is called a taxation bill, and I think that’s inappropriate, and, arguably, offensive to people who actually work hard to pay tax, because there’s no real change to taxation in the bill. It’s all about transfers, and those are a totally different concept. I think we need, if we’re to succeed, to first agree and understand what we mean with the terms that we use. When we have a bill that says it’s about taxation but it’s really about handing out money that’s being taxed, but to a large extent, under the current Government, through COVID, borrowed and printed, that’s not actually very helpful for the New Zealand public who want to have clarity and understanding of what this Parliament is up to.
So I would suggest that rather than calling it the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, it perhaps should be called the “Transfer (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill.” If we were to call it that, we would be giving people a much clearer understanding of what this legislation is really being put in place to do. It’s not to give relief to taxpayers. It’s to actually transfer money to deal with the cost of living, even though, ironically, a lot of the current cost of living pressure is being created by inflationary pressure, which, of course, today is now resulting in the Reserve Bank raising the official cash rate. That, of course, is what has come out of the Government’s very slow dealing with COVID-19, cushioned by cheap monetary supply.
So you’re starting to see what a more accurate description of this bill might look like in the title. It wouldn’t have “taxation”; it would say “transfer”. So it would be the “Transfer (Out of Control Inflation Compensation COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credit) Bill”. That would certainly go a long way.
But there’s another element to this, which is the really poor management of COVID. So it could be the “Transfer (Out of Control Inflation Caused by Printing Money to Deal with Lackadaisical Response to COVID-19 by the Government of the Day COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill”.
Hon Michael Wood: This is Churchillian.
DAVID SEYMOUR: That would start to get a lot closer. There’s the great relief of young Napoleon from Mt Roskill calling it Churchillian. He’s finally come out to play. It’s a shame there’s only eight seconds left, but I have to say, it’s a great relief to hear young Napoleon from Mt Roskill—[Time expired]
Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): I move, That the question be now put.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I too want to raise some concerns in the debate on the title and commencement about the title of this piece of legislation, because it doesn’t really reflect anything in terms of what this bill covers. If you take it section by section, if you looked at it in terms of a taxation bill, most people would be expecting that it would be about tax rates and the collection of tax.
The second part of it is around the COVID-19 support payments, and the frustration for many that have been watching this debate will be “What are they? What are these support payments?” So when this traffic light system comes in, what support will be available for businesses that are being hit exponentially with lockdowns? Whether it’s those in the tourism industry in the mighty Taupō, David Seymour, which I know you enjoy so well; whether it is travel agencies, or hospitality, there are some industries that have been hit particularly hard. When the traffic light system comes into place, businesses will want to know what support is going to be available.
So it is interesting in this bill that it has been talking about the resurgence support payment, but many have been asking me about the wage subsidy, so where does the wage subsidy sit in this? So, first of all, in the title of the bill, it refers to the COVID-19 support payments, and yet there is no detail about what that would look like, whether it is targeted, at what traffic light colours it would come in, and just how are specific industries—Taupō is the events capital of New Zealand, extraordinarily hit with both the alert level system and, potentially the traffic light system as well. I think the Government’s forgotten that many events are—
Hon Michael Wood: Point of order. Madam Chair, I’m aware it’s a very interesting night in the National Party, but I am finding the mid-back bench conferencing that’s been going on for a long period of time quite distracting from the address being made by the Hon Louise Upston.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: And he was so riveted! I am flattered. I’m flattered by the member that he was so riveted by the speech around the title and commencement, and so clearly understanding the points that I was making that the title of this bill does not accurately reflect, for one moment, what is in this bill. And that’s before I’ve even got to the third part, which is, of course, the Working for Families tax credits. So anyone who read that would be getting excited, thinking perhaps there is a significant increase in the Working for Families tax credits. Well, actually, no, there’s not. The cost of living is going up, and the Consumers Price Index (CPI) adjustment, which is due on 1 April, would have been happening anyway, and yet here’s a piece of legislation about which my colleague from the ACT Party, as a new MP, quite rightly said, “Why are we debating this in urgency?”
And it comes into effect—because these are the 1 April changes that were planned anyway and were going to be coming into effect on 1 April. So we’re spending time in urgency now passing legislation around a bill that’s called the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments—when we don’t know anything about the support payments—and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, that actually only adjust the CPI, plus $5 a week, and the Government would let people know with their grand headlines and their press releases that people were going to be getting significantly more amounts of money each week, which is, clearly, incorrect.
So I do think that the title of this bill is misleading, and I do think that, you know, for pieces of legislation like this that affect hundreds of thousands of people, albeit in a minor way, there at least should be wording that reflects accurately what is occurring. The National Party would have preferred to have had legislation called the “Reducing Taxation from Hard-working New Zealanders and Letting You Keep More of What You Earn Bill”. But, of course, instead, the Labour Government wants to simply take your money off you, turn it around, recycle it, put a new badge on it, and give it back to some of you.
Madam Chair, I do submit to you, and to the Minister in charge of the bill, that a more appropriate name and title of this bill—
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! The member’s time has expired.
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): I think several words should be in the title of this bill; one is “facilitation”, except that we haven’t really been told what the bill actually facilitates and how it’s to do that, apart from relatively vague comments made by the Minister earlier in the committee stage. The other would be by way of some sort of explanation for exactly what is supposed to happen and why it is that—the words I’d put in there would be “The Bill that Announced What’s to be Announced”, because that clearly also is part of what’s likely to happen in the family tax credit situation.
One of the things that’s come about in the last few hours is that we’ve heard people on the other side of the Chamber say—I heard Greg O’Connor say, “Well, look, $20 a week. It’s not to be sneezed at when these people need it.” Well, no one is doing that, but guess what, Mr O’Connor. There is no $20 a week in this for anyone—not anywhere. It’s less than half that, in fact, for most people. And when you look at just the rise in rent, the average weekly rental rising even in this city about $150 in the last week—$150 per week—and you know that a lot of the people who are in receipt of this particular assistance will be in rented property, then you know that this is nowhere near a catch-up. It is just an announcement for something to be announced, something to make people feel good about where things are going.
The speaker from the ACT Party spoke about the dangers of excessive expenditure when it comes to the so-called fiscal stimulus. Well, no one really would argue at all against some of the assistance that’s been out there over a period of time. No one argues about that. But what is interesting is that if you look at the Statistics New Zealand information about the September quarter—and we heard the Government talking about it today; the economy’s going well, apparently. It grew by some $17 billion in GDP in the year to the September quarter. Well, that’s great. How would you get that sort of growth when we’ve got this COVID thing that we’re trying to deal with and much compromise in the way business activity happens, so much overtime lost by people in their jobs, so much earning capacity for people in their jobs stripped away? This is surely a good result.
But then, you look at the borrowing for the Government and find that in the same period they borrowed an extra $43 billion, taking the total Government debt somewhere close to $100 billion.
Andrew Bayly: $120 billion.
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: So then you’d say—well, a $120 billion, my colleague corrects me—a huge amount. But in that quarter alone, there is a question, “Where’s that $26 billion gone—between the GDP growth and the borrowing, where’s it gone?”, Michael Wood over there can’t answer. I don’t think the Minister’s going to answer. There’s no chance any of the backbench will answer. Where it’s gone is it’s frittered off on all sorts of other things that the Government sees as sort of important projects all over the place.
Now, we’re bound to get a list of all sorts of infrastructure etc., etc., but most of the infrastructure they talk about is just announced; it’s not even under way. We’ve seen the disaster around the expenditure for the Let’s Get Wellington Moving sort of approach today. Well, that’s classic, isn’t it. It actually achieved nothing, moved nothing, but spent millions of dollars talking about moving things. That’s along with the whole concept of announce an announcement so that when you get the announcement you can announce what the next announcement is going to be about. No real activity. So this bill should be called the “Taxation (COVID-19 Facilitation and Support Payments) Bill Once Everyone Knows What the Mickey Mouse Red, Amber, and Green System Means and the Announcement about Working for Families Tax Credits to Come at a Future Time Bill.” That would be a fair description of what the bill does. It doesn’t actually tell us, though, what’s in the bill. Nor was the Minister able to tell us that today when he was taking various calls.
So, yes, we accept that it facilitates some business support for businesses who are struck down or impeded or otherwise, and other individuals, it would seem, in the same category when it comes to the effects of COVID-19. But no parallel between the current alert system, which has four categories to it, and the new system that has three categories to it. So when will that information be available to the public? Because only at that time will people have the confidence to truly open up their doors, get on with the thing that they’re good at, and start trying to recoup some of the extraordinary investment that they’ve made in keeping jobs open for so many New Zealanders.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): I move, That the question be now put.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.
Ayes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Motion agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 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.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Clause 1 agreed to.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Jan Logie’s amendment to clause 2, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 101 be agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.
Ayes 10
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 108
New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Amendment not agreed to.
A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 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.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Bill to be reported without amendment.
House resumed.
CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report adopted.
Third Reading
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): I move, That the Taxation (COVID19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill be now read a third time.
Mr Speaker, members of the House, can I thank members for working on this under urgency. It’s not a long bill—six pages long, including a one-page index. It’s been well traversed in the stages that we have just been through. There are two main aspects to it. The first is increasing the family tax credit by almost $15 per week for the eldest child in the family, and around $13 per week for subsequent children—also, some Consumers Price Index - indexed increases for the Best Start payment and an increase to the minimum family tax credit threshold that have also been explained.
The other main part of the bill relates to amending the legislative framework governing the resurgence support payments. This change ensures that future activation of the scheme is not dependent on a change to alert levels, as is currently stipulated in the framework. And this change is necessary because of the shift from the alert level framework to the COVID-19 Protection Framework.
In addition to thanking members of the House for working on this under urgency, can I thank officials for their work on this bill and commend it to the House.
SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it’s been a long night, and actually a couple of long days debating COVID bills under urgency. I think I just want to first of all acknowledge the Minister in the chair tonight for standing up and being actively engaged in the debate. I think it’s very, very important, particularly as this bill is being passed under urgency.
I am very concerned that Labour members in the main—and there are a number of them sat in the House tonight that made absolutely no contribution to a bill that’s not going to a select committee; there were very, very few contributions. And I think not only does it disrespect this Parliament that a bill that is going to be rammed through under urgency in the case of one day—or, in fact, a matter of a few hours—only by exception did any Labour backbenchers stand up and make a contribution to this debate, and I think that’s appalling, especially when you understand the importance of this bill. We have got thousands of business owners who are just wanting clarity, they want to understand what the process is, they want to understand what the new rules are, and yet the members did not feel beholden to stand up and support the Minister in this bill. Of course this bill was going to be passed by the Government, because it has an absolute majority, but the assumption that you do not have to defend it, you do not have to engage in that debate, I think is appalling, I think it’s really disappointing, I think it will reflect badly on the party, and I just make that comment.
And I do acknowledge that the Speaker of the House has made certain comments about the passage of these bills.
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member may not bring me into the debate.
ANDREW BAYLY: OK. So with that, of course, this bill’s going to pass through tonight with no select committee process, no input from any parties independent of this Parliament. I think the main aspect that the Government is trying behind this bill is it’s dealing with the issue of poverty and increasing the Working for Families components, and there are a whole stack of components that will be improved and will be adjusted. And that will occur. That is a process that always occurs. It always gets triggered when the Consumers Price Index accumulative impact is greater than 5 percent. There is nothing special in this part of the bill, even though that was what the Government members chose to focus on.
The only real difference was the $5 per child increase. I think the argument we’ve heard tonight is that this inflation index adjustment of certain benefits is going to be a game-changer in terms of lifting children out of poverty. And we had this disconnect between the Minister, who in his original speech claimed that 6,000 children would be lifted out of poverty, and then subsequently all the members of the House chose in their very short contributions—the maximum being 1 minute 30—to focus on a figure of 3,000. They couldn’t even get the story around the impact of the improvement to reducing poverty. But the reality is I find the argument spurious that as a result of doing a historical readjustment—or doing an adjustment taking into account historical increases in inflation, a $5 per child increase is going to lead to any substantive change to child poverty in New Zealand I think defies logic.
I think, as the Hon Louise Upston said during her contribution during the debate, the Prime Minister claimed when she first became Prime Minister that she would reduce child poverty by 100,000. The real number’s that about 1,500 children have been lifted out of poverty even with all the benefit increases that have occurred over time. I think the Government members have significantly over-egged that.
But the main part of this bill, as the Speaker will know, is about putting in place new COVID arrangements. This is an enabling piece of legislation and it will bring about changes. As I’ve repeatedly said in the House, we are moving to a new traffic light system—actually, in seven days’ time and one hour and five minutes. In seven days’ time, the new traffic system will be in place and the enabling piece of legislation that has been rammed through tonight, I just have to question why has it taken so long since the initial announcement on 22 October—over a month ago when the Government announced it was moving to the change, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance made it clear we were moving to a new arrangement. Why has it taken to the second to last day of the sitting of this House, because tomorrow is the last day before these rules will have to come into force and the detail about what the rules will mean will have to be announced and put into place? Why the delay?
That was a perennial question through all the debate tonight and this afternoon: why was this left to the last and why have we had to do this under urgency? I think for the many thousands of people out there hurting across all of New Zealand—many of them facing the prospect of losing their businesses, many of them have geared themselves up, mortgaged themselves to the hilt, many of them will be of older age and will be thinking, “How am I ever going to be able to repay this debt to the bank?”, and possibly and probably facing the prospect of having to work well into their late 60s and early 70s to be able to even get to a stage where they have enough financial horsepower to have even a half-decent level of retirement.
I find that callous. I find it callous that the Government cannot give that certainty, cannot give that clarity at this late stage. Even in the rules in this bill it is unclear. There are rules—the criteria are going to be determined by the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. It was a question we asked of the Minister. We didn’t actually get a response on it. Why should the commissioner be determining the criteria? We thought it was important that the Government and the executive determine that but the bill clearly states that the commissioner should be involved in that.
There’s a whole stack of other things that really we couldn’t understand. There was this reference to people in the new arrangements. Up to now, the resurgence payment has been focused on businesses, as has the wage subsidy. Payments have been paid to businesses. For some reason, this legislation talks about making payment to people. It also used new terminology of “grant”. It was unclear what that meant. It was a question we put to the Minister tonight. Does that suppose that we’re going to move to a different payment system to business owners or to people or organisations? And what is the nature of the grant? Obviously, a grant, you can’t get back. Well, we assume you can’t seek repayment from people that you’re going to make the payments to, but, again, the language is unclear. There were just so many questions like that, which I think if we’d had had the time to have a select committee, we could have worked our way through that and actually people would have had the knowledge that it had had proper scrutiny.
We’ve literally passed this bill—I think we started it about 4 o’clock from rough memory. We’re now closing in on it at about 11 o’clock. That is not long, given that we had a dinner break in amongst that. I think it’s a shameful process. I’m disappointed on behalf of the Parliament and what it means for many people out in New Zealand who will be facing a bleak Christmas because in January they’ve got to pay provisional tax, in February they’ve got to pay terminal tax. Many of them will be thinking, “Where do I get that money? And am I assured that I’m going to have continued support for my business?” In seven days’ time, basically, many parts of New Zealand will be at red, but that does not mean that they can fully operate. They’ll be operating under restricted conditions. We need and should and could have provided much more certainty, and this bill does not deliver that.
BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to be able to, first of all, thank the Minister, the Hon David Parker, for futureproofing the ability for there to be support for businesses during the COVID protection framework when it comes in, in seven days’ time. I acknowledge the Inland Revenue officials and the drafters for their work on this bill. The member that just sat down on the other side of the House, Andrew Bayly, said, “Why did it take a month for this bill to come to the Table?” The member, obviously not being a Minister before, doesn’t realise that there are policy reports, Cabinet papers, regulatory impact statements, and then you have to do drafting instructions, and then you have to draft, and then you have to review before it even gets tabled. So the fact that Inland Revenue managed to be able to do that amount of work within about a month’s time is actually impressive.
I said it once in the first reading and said it twice in the second reading, and now I’ll say it three times in case the volume of some of the speakers on the other side of the House was so loud that members didn’t hear me before: the purpose of these rules—and if the members on the other side of the House want to oppose this bill, which quite clearly they’ve done right throughout the stages—it means they do not support businesses receiving support from the Government, if necessary, when we move into the COVID protection framework in two weeks’ time. It also means that members oppose, as set out in the regulatory impact statement, the disproportionate benefit that this bill delivers to Māori, Pacific, women, families, and children. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s taken a smidgeon over seven hours to hear something more than “Thanks to the officials” and “I move that the question be now put.” from a Labour backbench MP, and I’m not surprised that it’s come from Barbara Edmonds. I have a high regard for her and I have had experience of the quality of her work, and, actually, this would have fallen well below the quality that I would have expected from her—she would have done better—and she’s right on one level about the process of Cabinet papers and policy documents and regulatory impact statements. But there’s not a lot difficult about this bill.
In Part 1, we have a cut-and-paste from the existing Act with virtually one change, and that is the removal of the word “resurgence” and the letter “R”. Then, in just about all other respects, with the exception of the comments that Mr Bayly made about the extension of who might be eligible for support payments, this is already in the law. We passed it in February. It actually is an overwrite, which in my experience, with due deference to the excellent policy people at Inland Revenue, wasn’t unusual. If you could say something in 10 words or 10,000 words, I’d expect 10,000 words from the revenue people.
But this was an opportunity, actually, to make a much more straightforward change, and Part 1 was easy. Part 2 wasn’t that difficult, either, because the calculators were already out when the amendments to the Income Tax Act changing the calculation of family tax credits and family credit abatements were made. So we’re actually spending hours and hours and hours filling the gaps that should have been filled by the select committee, with the consultation with the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand advisory group, in the following of a decent generic tax policy process, and none of that happened.
But, actually, what we’ve really been debating was not what’s in the bill but what’s not in the bill, and what’s not in the bill, or in the debate as it was in February, was a meaningful understanding of the level of business support that’s going to be provided once it’s passed. The National Party doesn’t support this because it’s a bad idea; we don’t support this because it’s a bad process. In fact, it’s a terrible process.
Even in Part 2, despite the lauding of the generosity of the Government and the self-congratulations for lifting people out of poverty, almost all of the increases to those family tax credits and supports would have happened on 1 April next year anyway as a consequence of the automatic uplift provided by the existing legislation, and the best calculations are that the greatest benefit is about $5 a week. I’m not going to sniff at that, but let’s not have the Minister of Revenue riding into Jerusalem with palms being laid at the donkey’s feet. It doesn’t deserve that level of plaudits.
Hon Member: That’s very biblical.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yes, I am in a biblical mood today.
So we do, with some regret, on behalf of the businesses who are dying to know, and some of them are literally dying to know, ask what level of support they are going to be able to get under the traffic light framework. We gave the Minister an opportunity to provide that clarity, and that opportunity was not only not taken but, actually, we had greater confusion, at least in my mind, about whether or not any support might be provided from Friday next week to any business anywhere in the country.
Now, it may be that the Government, as is their wont, is going to do a big reveal. We’ll have an announcement over the weekend of an announcement on Monday of an announcement the following Friday. But he didn’t say that. He was much more coy about that. He clarified that we’ve got a framework which will provide a support at some stage in the future if some triggering event occurs or a situation is met. But we’re not clear whether or not that is a situation that will exist on 3 December, and businesses, which rely on certainty, can take bad news. They can take the ability to have to be in lockdown for a set period of time, but what they can’t survive is a tunnel so long with a light so dim that they don’t know when they’ll ever get out of it. That’s how they’re feeling right now, and nothing we’re doing today is going to alleviate that burden or reduce that stress on them, their workers, and their families.
We had a very interesting exchange. I enjoyed my exchange—a thoughtful exchange—with Green member Jan Logie about the risks and benefits of certain policy positions. I hope that we’re actually able to do more of that, because my view is that we’ve spent 18 months talking about one thing and one thing only, the impact of one thing and one thing only, and the costs and benefits of COVID. But we traversed all of the non-direct COVID impacts on our health, our mental health, our education, our relationships, and our children’s experiences as school-leavers and graduates that have actually been decimated by the decisions this Government has made.
I’m not saying they were the wrong things to do—particularly last year—but let’s not pretend that the only cost is money and the only benefit is lives saved and harm reduced because of the COVID virus. There is much, much more happening. We need to be more open and have a broader conversation about cost and benefit now and into the future, including the debt burden that we’re going to leave and the mental health issues that are emerging, and at least between two parties on this side of the House—one has got one foot in Government—we had some kind of acknowledgment that there was much more to our COVID response than just COVID.
But, overall, it’s deeply disappointing that we finish this process none the wiser than we were at the start. I predict the trumpets will bray the tantaras on Monday about some kind of announcement about some kind of support at some time in the future with some triggering event, but we should have known it during the debate on this bill.
GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): That previous speaker reminds me of Donald Trump’s standing saying: “COVID, COVID, COVID, I’m sick of it, can’t we talk about something else?” Well, the reality of it is that I think when we are doing an archaeological dig of our society in some time, they’ll say this time that COVID changed everything, that the world will never be the same again. So we can’t get over it. We have to ensure that those changes—and they’re very unpredictable; it was only this time last year we were predicting unemployment figures in double figures. We were predicting all sorts of catastrophes in our economy. Well, they didn’t come about. It has been an unpredictable outcome, I suppose, where we are now.
The one thing that’s incredibly important is that, whatever happens—and we’re not quite sure what’s going to happens—we bring the least advantaged with us. The mere fact that we’re talking about $20 a week for families, and that will make a difference, shows just how many families have to exist on very little. Twenty dollars a week; most of us will have spent that on a meal tonight, just to put that into perspective. It’s incredibly important we bring people with us. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. This bill allows us to at least ensure hard up families do get considered in the future. I commend the bill to the House.
JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call at the third reading of this bill, the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, and I do just need to pick up on the previous speaker, Greg O’Connor, and it’s a point I’ve made previously, about my discomfort with the discussion of the $20 a week per family, when that is including the inflation adjustment that would have happened anyway and is not a result of Government decision-making—and that that is, in real terms of what people can do with that money, neutral because it’s just adjusting to inflation. It doesn’t enable—so three-quarters of that amount of money, almost, is actually just enabling people to keep up, not do anything extra. And this policy, what the regulatory impact statement tells us, is that the average gain will be $8 a week. If I look at my local Pak ’N Save and I only look at the veggie section and I’m thinking what I’m going to be able to get in a week, if I’m being really healthy and trying to do the best for my family, I might be able to get a cauliflower and a couple of kilograms of kumara.
Now, that’s not to sniffed at—that puts some substance into the belly—but, if I’ve got a whole family, in terms of feeding, and we’re struggling to pay our rent and buy the new shoes because the kids are growing really quickly and they’ve got holes in their clothes because they had a game down the park, then it really doesn’t go very far, and we know that, at the moment, we’ve got 160,000 kids in this country who are in severe poverty. This policy—this $5; actually, $8 for 223,000 people—is going to make a little difference, but it’s not going to provide stability; it’s not going to address the negative harms of poverty for all of those kids. It’s just going to make an incremental difference, and, to be honest, that’s bit gutting. We heard earlier from the Minister when he said that the Government could not support our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to remove the increases to the abatement rate that would actually just mean that we were—the intent of our SOP was to make sure that we were actually just doing something good rather than doing something good and doing that at the expense of middle-income earners, who are, actually, still also quite often struggling to be able to keep up with all the bills. And he said that he couldn’t do that, because that was going to be $90 million that the Government could have spent on other things.
I just want to note: child poverty is one of the headline issues for this Government, but $90 million in this context was deemed too much, yet the Government has been able to find billions of dollars a fortnight for Auckland’s lockdown. And the Greens aren’t challenging that decision, but we are putting it in comparison to looking after our kids—because we put this money into supporting our businesses through lockdown, because we recognised the flow-on effects if we don’t. Well, there are flow-on effects if the parents or caregivers in the family are not able to support their kids, and those flow-on effects are not short term; they can be lifelong, because poverty deprives children of opportunity, and we know that that gradient is incredibly difficult to reverse. So the Greens question the Government’s priorities.
And we’ve heard that this is, again—like, we really struggle with the measly-ness of this policy in the face of the struggle of our families that has been exacerbated through COVID. We know our social safety system was inadequate to begin with, and we’ve seen that heightened through COVID, and more families are going into more debt now. And that will reduce their actual spendable income—in terms of it being spent on repaying that debt—just to be able to cover the basics. That’s how our system has been set up, and we’ve got choices about that. We can change that and give families control of their incomes and choices in how they support themselves and their children. All of the national and international research shows us that they make good decisions when they are put in that position to make those choices themselves, rather than being told what is right for them and their family.
I think, when we’ve heard from the Prime Minister that the desire is for New Zealand to be the best country in the world to bring up our kids, then I just want to point to some recent Child Poverty Action Group research that showed that New Zealand’s rate of poverty for children is 30 to 40 percent greater than Australia’s—we don’t usually look up to Australia and want to aspire to what they are doing—and that, even with these changes, a low-income family in Australia with four children aged five to 19 will be receiving $2,600 more in tax credits than that same family in New Zealand. But if that family in New Zealand receives a benefit, the gap is even wider—of around $7,170 a year difference. And that’s been a decision that that Government has made, recognising that if they invest in their families, then their society is better off. The Greens have really struggled with the paltriness of this, but the fact that it’s at the expense of—and the regulatory impact statement tells us—91,000 families who are being expected to pay for this, at an average loss of $6 a week.
Middle income families are paying for this paltry $5 a week per child increase—that I know will make a difference, but not the difference that is needed in the time that we are living in, and for the future. The problem, as well, is the fact that these 91,000 people who will be losing out, it’s because of the change to—when they start earning more, the Government’s pulling back more. Which is the increase in the abatement from 25 percent when you reach a certain earning threshold, the Government will take 25 percent at the moment, and this Government saying, “Well, actually, we’re going to take 27 percent of that money that you’re starting to earn.” The problem with that is that that actually disincentivises families, particularly two-parent families, from having both people in work. And we know who is more likely, then, to end up in work and who’s more likely to end up at home. It’s women. So again, this isn’t consistent with the values that we’ve heard expressed from this Government, the work that they’ve actually been doing around the empowerment of women, much of which I’ve been really supportive of.
So the Government also declined our SOP around the in-work tax credit, and the rationale for that, and that we see in the regulatory impact statement—apart from not wanting to spend the money—is that it’s an incentive to get people to work. But, actually, the courts have told us it’s discrimination against children whose parents are unable to work. The families whose kids need the most support and will benefit the most are blocked from getting it, because the Government has a theory that, actually, that would mean that people would be less likely to go out to work. But, actually, that tax abatement rate, which creates a really high, effective marginal tax rate, that’s a pretty big disincentive for going to work. And really, we would argue—in the Greens—that if you want to encourage people into work, address that effective marginal tax rate and ensure people have the basics to be able to make the best choice for their families.
We trust people, in the Greens. And that’s borne out by all of the evidence that if you give people the money to make the right choices, then they will. Our kids will benefit from it and we will all benefit from it for generations and generations to come. So the Greens are supporting this for the 220,000 who’ll be eight bucks a week better off, and the Auckland businesses—but, to be honest, it’s a bit begrudging, because we don’t think this is really the way to do it.
DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. There’s an old Chinese quote, “May you live in interesting times.” We certainly do, at 20 past 11, passing a bill under urgency, the second in as many days. In fact, really in one parliamentary day; technically, it’s still Tuesday in the Wonderland of parliamentary paradise, passing this legislation.
It’s a pretty short bill, as the Minister said. He said it’s only six pages, but it says so much about the juncture at which New Zealand finds itself on multiple levels. The fact that we’re up this late at night passing the bill—that’s one thing. The fact that it is a bill that is about transferring Government cash is another. And the fact that it is a bill that if it’s necessary at all it’s necessary because there’s been so much Government cash transferred through this COVID period that the cost of living for New Zealanders up and down this country, at the petrol pump, at the check-out, when they pay their rent and try to build new homes, has been skyrocketing under the binge of borrowing, printing, and spending money that this Government has taken on: 4.9 percent inflation in the last year, only 2.4 percent increase in wages.
That’s why this Government is desperately passing a bill that will increase the amount of cash transferred to select New Zealanders. That’s why it wants to adjust the various amounts transferred and the thresholds for qualifying for a transfer and the abatement rates for receiving transfers under Working for Families. This Government is doing its best to make sure that at least the people it hopes will vote for it are insulated at least partly from the enormous changes that are occurring to the cost of living in New Zealand. I have no doubt that the Government will have picked up from listening to those few New Zealanders it does listen to, and perhaps from its market research, that the things that people are overwhelmingly concerned about now are the cost of living, the cost of life, and the cost of COVID, and that cost comes from the fact that this Government has run such an inept response to COVID 19.
It’s been shielded by cheap credit, but that cheap credit has led to enormous amounts of inflation in nearly everything New Zealanders buy, and the chickens are coming home to roost. That’s why the Reserve Bank has started to put up interest rates. So here’s how this goes in the next year or so. Prices are going to keep on rising. Now, we had one of the Labour members stand up, and I can guarantee you that that member is not an economist, because they’re a Labour MP and just by simple logic, that means they’re not an economist, because no current Labour MPs are qualified in economics. And the fact is—Mr Speaker’s waving his fingers. Don’t worry, Mr Speaker. I’ll check my fingers after the Labour Party’s been around. I don’t want to lose anything. They certainly like to tax and take people’s money, amongst other things, don’t they? And so we can guarantee that there is no Labour MP who is trained in economics, because even if the Speaker was, he wouldn’t be identified as a Labour MP. He’d be presiding in his usual even-handed and dispassionate way over the proceedings—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member, even though I probably invited him, will leave me out of the debate.
DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, there you go, ha, ha! Thank you, Mr Speaker, for that intervention.
SPEAKER: Does that member want to stay?
DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, Mr Speaker, it seems you’re now participating in the debate quite considerably. But we know that the member—as I was saying before the Speaker started debating with me, there was a Labour Party MP who we know is not an economist, by just source of elimination, who said, “Don’t worry, this is going to look through inflation.” I suspect that that Labour MP was looking through the magazine rack at New World and accidentally saw a copy of The Economist and that’s what they picked up on the way through!
Well, I can tell you: when a Government spends an extra $50 billion on COVID, and then the Reserve Bank prints an extra $60 billion or, you know, about 12 percent of GDP—oh, actually, no, about 15 percent of GDP stimulus in 18 months—that has an effect on prices that’s a bit more than something you can look through. But I can understand if the Labour Party is confused about the things that can be looked through, because, members may recall, at one point the Labour Party said they were going to be an open and transparent Government. Now, you can’t look through that. Maybe they’re saying that you can look through this inflation in the same way that the Government was going to be transparent, but I don’t think that that was the case with the Government, and it won’t be with this inflation. You print all that money, inflation is here to stay for quite a long time. And what that means is that people are going to continually find that the prices they pay go up.
And as the Reserve Bank tries to achieve what’s left of its mandate, having been given very irresponsibly, in my view, a dual mandate by this Government, the Reserve Bank is going to start raising interest rates. They’re saying another seven 25 percent basis-point increases. Let me tell you what that means. That means that by the middle of 2023, by election year, we’re going to be facing a 2.5 percent official cash rate and mortgage rates will be pretty standard at 5 percent. Now, for people that were getting used to mortgage rates in the low 2 percents, well, you know, for someone whose got a $1 million mortgage—and some people do in Auckland, under this Government—that’s another 600 bucks a week that they’re paying. That is going to be really, really hurtful.
And that explains why this Government is passing a bill, in the dead of night, under urgency, to try and shuffle as much cash as it can in order to try and get people that it thinks might vote for it onside in the face of these cost of living increases that it has created with its expenditure. That’s the real truth. The problem is that it’s just not sustainable. It creates a spiral of wage and prices as the Government tries to stimulate the economy—the more it does, the worse it makes it.
So what should it be doing? What sort of legislation should we be debating tonight? We should be asking how we stop dividing New Zealanders, commodifying them into identities; how we stop dividing wealth, taking money off one group of people and giving it to another, as the Government so wants to do and is doing with this bill; how we unite New Zealanders behind good ideas to create more wealth. Stop whacking farmers. Stop whacking landlords. Stop whacking small business. Stop putting more regulations on to people. Stop making it harder for people from overseas to spend money. All of those things are things that this Government has done lately. And instead of facilitating real production of real goods and services, things that are valuable that New Zealanders can sell to each other and the world, it’s done things like spent $50 million on a bike bridge that it didn’t build. You know?
I mean, this Government spent $600,000 on a 30-second advertisement, and I kid you not, Mr Speaker, there were no actors, there was no filming in this advertisement, it just zooms in on a series of pictures, and then makes a noise like a camera clicking, and it cost $330,000, and they spent another couple-of-hundred grand putting it on the news. What this ad says is “save energy”. So at a time of record energy prices, this Government is spending even more taxpayer money on ads to tell people to save energy. The great irony is that when the Government spends money on something that’s not actually useful, it puts cash into the economy but not useful goods or services, and that is inflationary, and one of the things people are dealing with is actually inflation of, ironically, among other things, the cost of energy. So that ad, in its own small way, will make people save energy because they won’t be able to afford as much of it, but I don’t think the ad itself will be very persuasive.
Then there’s the fact that Kāinga Ora—I mean, that’s only 600 grand and, you know, whatever, I guess that’s not much for this Government—is going to spend $2 billion bidding against private developers to buy land they would’ve bought and developed anyway, bidding up the price of housing even further in an effort to bring down the price of housing.
Just about everything this Government does now is inflationary and stops production. As a result, they are having to put in place legislation to hand out what cash they can get their hands on to people they hope will vote for them as they are overtaken by a tsunami of inflation of their own making in the two years to come. Well, the ACT Party’s going to be standing in this House, providing real solutions, to create real productivity, so that New Zealanders can really have the things they want, not this hopeless midnight hand-out smouldering. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): There’s been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about urgency from the other side of the House, but can I remind this House that during National’s time in Government, urgency was used no less than 53 times. The principle of not using urgency in ordinary times is absolutely correct, but these are not ordinary times, as Mr Seymour has said. Delta is swift and nimble, and we need to be able to respond.
As the Otago University law professor Andrew Geddis, who has already been named in the House tonight, says, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. I’m sure our business community would rather have us pass this legislation than be stymied by a select committee process that can’t be in on time. I invite anybody who is watching this debate who wants to know the reasons why the process requires urgency to look at the excellent speech from my colleague Barbara Edmonds in the second reading.
This legislation, as pointed out by the Minister, has two key components. One is to support families, especially those who are earning below $40,000 a year, to take them with us. They have been very hard hit by COVID. Everybody has, but they have especially. Secondly, it is to allow the framework to support business as we change from the current framework to the traffic light system. It’s pretty simple. There’s no need for all the drama. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Well, the last speaker in the debate, Ingrid Leary, said that these are not ordinary times. But that was a very ordinary speech on a very ordinary bill from a very ordinary Government. Because, you see, all we have seen for the last two years is any problem that this Government needs to borrow money to throw at is the fault of COVID. No fault on their side at all. It’s always the fault of COVID.
When we come to the House and we say that 28,000 businesses have closed, the finance Minister is very quick to say “Yeah, but that’s not so much compared to last year.” To the people that own those 28,000 businesses, the Government standing up with an answer that they think is smart in this House every day actually does them a great disservice because it’s not the members of this House that have sacrificed. We keep getting our salaries. The Government, under the Prime Minister, says “Let’s take a little bit last year from Ministers and let’s do it from MPs.”, but we were still all OK. It’s mums and dads that get out of bed every day, that run small businesses in this country, that borrow against their houses, that pay their staff before they pay anybody else, who are taking that money that they work hard for to raise their kids and put them through education so they have a brighter future. Those are the ones that are going to pay back the $97.5 billion that this Government has borrowed over the last two years and spent on many things, most of them nothing at all to do with COVID, but said it’s all about COVID.
We heard one of the other speakers over there, who I guarantee in two years’ time when he stands up in his electorate in Wellington will have a very, very different tune. He won’t be talking about Donald Trump then. He will be saying to them, I guarantee you, there’s a road here that they need in this electorate worth $50 million but we can’t have it because this Government borrowed $97.5 billion for COVID and took $50 billion on a study for a cycling bridge in Auckland that they didn’t even build. By the way, if they had built it, for the last 100 days today the people of Auckland couldn’t have used their push bikes on it, even if they had wanted to, because they have been locked down. They’re the ones that are doing it hard.
This is not a good piece of legislation. Members opposite are trying to say that the Opposition is not supportive of business. Actually, we are the ones that have been advocating for and making the case for small businesses up and down the country in lockdown and getting the Government to make the changes. We heard the Minister in the committee of the whole House stage say that actually they saw there was a problem with one of the payments, and if your business was younger than six months you didn’t get the payment, and they made the change of one month. We were here in lockdown arguing for that when they did it. I’m glad they did but they should have done it earlier. This is a Government under COVID that only shows urgency when they’re forced to and often when it’s too late.
The announcement today from the Prime Minister of the opening of the border is more than disappointing. It is misleading in as far as its usefulness for people that want to get home. The Government still cannot tell us tomorrow on television, the Prime Minister will not be able to answer, why it is that a young Kiwi that wants to come home and see a family, that’s been overseas for more than a year because they can’t get back to New Zealand, they live in Australia, they’re double vaccinated, they’ve taken every test they can to show they haven’t got COVID, it’s safe for them to come back on 15 January, but not on 24 December to see mum and dad for Christmas. The reason the Prime Minister won’t answer that, there is not a reason.
The Government says that actually they’re transitioning to the traffic light system. There’s hardly a person in the country, including the Prime Minister, that knows what it’s having to actually do. Do you know what the Government has to do? Stop making up rules day after day after day when members of the public or the media find a problem. Get a plan, explain it clearly, make sure it works, and then get out of the way of hard-working Kiwis. They want to work hard. They want to earn more. They want to run their businesses. They do not want small Government handouts that will amount to $175 for a family when their rents have gone up by more than $100, their petrol’s gone up, their food’s gone up, everything they can imagine has gone up, and now they call themselves the working poor because they have to choose between paying the rent or feeding the kids often. They don’t want handouts from this Government. They want a Government that supports them. This isn’t one.
That was a very ordinary speech. This is a very ordinary bill. This is a very ordinary Government. Hard-working New Zealanders, businesses large and small, deserve much, much better than us standing here just before midnight rushing something through because this Government couldn’t get around to doing their job properly earlier.
SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. In one week’s time, this country will transition into the COVID-19 Protection Framework, and for Aucklanders that is incredibly welcome, but it does mean that some technical changes need to be made to current legislation to enable continued support to take place. Can I start by acknowledging the Minister of Revenue for his work but also the Government for the support packages that they have put in place to Auckland businesses. The businesses that I speak to speak very highly of the Resurgence Support Payments that have been in place and the $1.4 billion that has backed local businesses throughout this very, very difficult period.
But there are two particular elements to this bill—the changes to the family tax credits that will allow increases from 1 April next year. If we don’t make this change now, then that is not able to happen. This is why this particular bill needs to happen, along with continuing the COVID support payment system. It needs to match up with the protection framework that we move into in one week’s time. I commend this bill to the House.
ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): I rise to bring this bill of urgency home. As I do, I would actually like to acknowledge Mr Bayly on the other side of the House. Throughout the entire time of urgency, I have to say Mr Bayly, you have shown a lot of energy from the beginning—a lot of energy. But I’d have to say by the end you have been rather flat.
Now, I think that we need to make it absolutely clear that this is a necessary piece of urgency as we prepare to go to the new framework, where the entire country will be able to move into this new framework, where we’ll enable the opportunity for businesses who need resurgence support to have that delivered. This is why I will commend this bill to the House and thank everyone here who has been supporting it. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Speaker. And we are coming to the conclusion of this. I won’t try to match my dear friend Andrew Bayly’s energy, but I will be equally enthusiastic—enthusiastic about the fact that we are sick to death of a Labour Party who fails to plan, because that is why we are here at 20 to 12. In 20 minutes, Auckland will have been in lockdown for 100 days. So we are here debating, under urgency, legislation that is supposedly about Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits), but if you’re a business—whether you’re in Auckland or you’re a business in Taupō that’s been severely affected by the fact that Auckland’s been in lockdown for nearly 100 days—you are none the wiser in terms of what support you will get, when you will get it, how much it will be, and how it will be delivered. So I actually find it’s quite insulting.
I started my first business at 19, and I want to pay tribute to every business owner out there, because I can’t really even begin to imagine how hard it’s been. So I find it really insulting to be passing, under urgency, legislation that doesn’t give them any clarity—no certainty, no information, no detail about what support might be available in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
So the Government gets excited about the traffic light system, and the only colour they like is red. So they tell us that Auckland’s going to start in red. And for how long and what support will be available? What financial support will be available for businesses when Auckland goes into red? And what about the rest of the country? Are we going into orange? No one’s going into green.
Stuart Smith: No, no.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Stuart, you’re not going into green—we know that for a fact. So in terms of this business support package, I think this is yet another example of a Government that is overpromising and under-delivering. Sounds good, sounds exciting, here’s the business support, but actually no detail.
And then we move into the Working for Families tax credits. We heard speakers on the other side talk about the fact that this is being delivered now and it’s under urgency because COVID’s affected middle-income New Zealand families and low-income families. Well, actually, this was happening anyway. This has got nothing to do with COVID. Labour members must stop using COVID as an excuse for everything. If you’re going to Consumers Price Index (CPI) adjust Working for Families and Best Start payments that were going to happen anyway, don’t then say, oh, you’re doing it because everyone’s had a tough time under COVID. No. Be honest. Be upfront. Tell the population—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! Sorry, I apologise for interrupting the member. If members are going to have conversations which need their masks off, please leave the Chamber.
Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. So we tolerate time and time again, day after day, everything being blamed on COVID. So when you stand in this House and pass legislation under urgency, let’s be honest with the public, the Working for Families tax credits is simply a CPI adjustment with a couple of bucks a week extra thrown in. The Best Start payment, 61c—61c over and above the CPI adjustment—yippee, excitement! So at least be upfront with the public and don’t put everything on COVID. Don’t, as my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse suggested, profess to be this absolute saviour and this very, very generous Government that is just giving out cash willy-nilly. Well, actually $5 a week—our view is if you were going to do anything, you should have let those people who are in work keep more of what they earned in the first place.
And the third thing was this is meant to be delivering on Jacinda Ardern’s big promise to lift 100,000 children out of poverty. So again, the big promise: no delivery. Oh, so we’ll just tuck it into—we’ll say it a few times in this bill that we’re debating in Parliament under urgency and it’ll sound like we’re doing something. Well, guess what, the members opposite, when they gave their first reading speeches, couldn’t even get the numbers right. So here’s the numbers for you: 2017, Jacinda Ardern promised to lift 100,000 children out of poverty. On the measures she used then to where we are now, there are 1,500 more children in poverty—1,500 more. So you’re not even going in the right direction yet. And to suggest—and there’s not that many days in the House that Jan Logie and I agree, but we agreed on many things tonight. That $5 a week, do not oversell this to the New Zealand public. They are not stupid, and it’s insulting to suggest that 350,000 families will be better off as a result of this bill. Five bucks. How much has their rent gone up? Hundred bucks a week.
So I’m very happy to conclude the arguments on behalf that the National Party has put forward tonight under urgency, under duress, and we are opposing the Taxation (COVID19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill.
HELEN WHITE (Labour): It’s a pleasure to rise and to end this debate. I think we all actually deserve to go home at this point. What I wanted to say, finally, is that I see this bill, the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill, as one I support because it comes out of a united Government that actually has managed to have a very coherent philosophy. And that philosophy is one that has got a sound moral basis. This package—this piece of legislation—will support businesses as we move into a framework where, in fact, they are open, and that’s a good thing. We’re beginning the end of something that has been very traumatic for the country. But, at the other side of this bill, is a piece of work which is about bringing children out of poverty, and I remind the Opposition that those children were in poverty when this Government took over. Thank you. I support the bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 75
New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.
Noes 43
New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.
Abstentions 2
Te Paati Māori 2.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
SPEAKER: The Government has informed me that they do not intend to proceed with further legislation. Urgency is therefore concluded. The House is adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 11.48 p.m. (Wednesday)