Tuesday, 14 December 2021

TUESDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2021

TUESDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Hon JENNY SALESA (Assistant Speaker): Ke tau lotu. ‘E ‘Otua Māfimafi, kuo mau taa’i mālie ‘i ho’o ‘ofá mo e ngaahi tāpuaki hono kotoa. ‘Oku tuku homau lotó ka mau hū atu ke ke malu‘i ange mu‘a ‘a e Kuiní, mo tataki ange ‘emau fua fatongia ‘i he Fale Aleá ‘aki ‘a e poto Faka-e-’Otua, ‘ofa pea mo e ‘ulungaanga malū, ko e ‘uhí ko e mo’ui mo e melino ‘a e fonuá. ‘Oku mau kole atu ‘a e ngaahi me’á ni hono kotoa ‘i he huafa ho ‘aló pē ‘e taha ko Sīsū Kalaisi ka ko homau fakamo’uí, ‘Emeni.

Speaker’s Statements

Te Reo Māori Interpretation—Question Time

SPEAKER: Members, before we proceed, I just want to inform members that for question time we will be without our normal te reo interpretation service as a result of the weather at Wellington Airport and losing both of our interpreters that way. We are hopeful, though, that by the end of question time we’ll have a remote service available and that way people who are listening from outside will be able to have the interpretation. I will now ask for members who do speak in te reo, if they wish to, to do an interpretation. I did offer to one of the parties that if they didn’t like that approach I’d get Mr Jackson to interpret, but he doesn’t appear to be available.

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

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

SPEAKER: No bills have been introduced.

Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Greg Rzesniowiecki requesting that the House of Representatives amend section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990

petition of Chris Williams requesting that the House pass legislation to amend the Fisheries Act 1996 to increase the commercial size limit for harvesting snapper

petition of Michael Kampkes requesting that the House send the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill back to a select committee

petition of Rachel Booth requesting that the House urge the Government to allow border exceptions for parents of New Zealand citizens and residents

petition of Alexandra Birt requesting that the House urge the Government to change MIQ to create an equitable booking system

petition of Breast Cancer Foundation NZ requesting that the House urge the Government to restore and extend the screening programme for breast cancer.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.

I present the reports of the Controller and Auditor-General entitled:

Inquiry into the Ministry of Social Development’s funding of private rental properties for emergency housing

Observations from our central government audits: 2020/21.

I also present the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment entitled Wellbeing budgets and the environment: A promised land? Those papers are published under the authority of the House.

Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Financial Stability Report, November 2021.

reports of the Health Committee on the petition of Daniel Timms and the petition of Kylie Findlay

report of the Justice Committee on the Lawyers and Conveyancers (Employed Lawyers Providing Free Legal Services) Amendment Bill

reports of the Petitions Committee on the petitions of Ashley Jones, Carl Smith, Don Richards, Mary Coupe, Tatum Dyer, and Wendy Baker.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading, and the Financial Stability Report is set down for consideration.

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 jobs market is continuing to support the economic recovery. The SEEK NZ Employment Report for November showed that job ads had jumped 5.1 percent—the best monthly gain since May—and is now up 35.4 percent for the year. Compared with pre-COVID levels in November 2019, the latest numbers are 28.9 percent higher. Auckland job ads rose by 8.1 percent as restrictions were eased on retail activity, while Northland jumped 17 percent as the region moved from alert level 3 to alert level 2. The robust jobs market shows that the Government’s actions in response to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic to protect lives and livelihoods has proved to be the best economic approach as well as the best health approach.

Dr Duncan Webb: What support is the Government providing to businesses to recover from the impact of the Delta outbreak?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Last Friday, applications opened for a transition payment to affected businesses to support their move into the COVID Protection Framework. The payment is a recognition of the long period that these businesses, especially those in Auckland, have spent with restrictions in place prior to shifting to the new framework, and it is designed to support these firms through the next few weeks. This payment is at a higher base rate than the current Resurgence Support Payment, which will be $4,000 per business, plus $400 per fulltime-equivalent (FTE), up to a cap of 50 FTEs. So far, 18,861 applications have been approved, totalling $93 million. I encourage all businesses who are eligible to apply.

Dr Duncan Webb: What other economic support is available under the COVID-19 Protection Framework?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Resurgence Support Payments Nos 4 to 6 remain open for applications until 13 January 2022 to help businesses with their fixed costs. So far, the Resurgence Support Payment has paid out $2.3 billion to businesses. Along with the wage subsidy scheme, the Government has supported businesses and workers to the tune of $7 billion since the Delta outbreak began. It’s worth reminding that the leave support scheme and the short-term absence payment remain available under all levels of the COVID Protection Framework. We will monitor any economic impacts of the new COVID Protection Framework, and I expect to report back to Cabinet early in 2022 on whether any further support will be required.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

2. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (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 our approach to COVID, which has always been to take cautious steps forward, to let systems bed in, and to ensure as much certainty and safety as possible for New Zealanders. Because of these actions, we have seen Auckland case numbers and hospitalisations continue to decline while we have steadily lifted restrictions. We’re continuing this move forward with almost all of the country moving into orange on 11.59 p.m. on 30 December. This will follow two weeks after boundary restrictions are removed to give us greater certainty as we move forward. There are alternatives to our confident but cautious plan. There are those who will call to move faster, to abandon protections, and to hastily lift restrictions. We know from international experience that those who have done that have had to re-impose restrictions. Our plan seeks to move forward carefully but also to make progress.

Christopher Luxon: What is her expectation about the level of disruption Aucklanders can expect to face when driving out of the city this summer?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Ultimately, it will be the police who will determine how they manage compliance checks, in the same way as it’s up to the police to manage other checks they undertake for road policing such as, for instance, drunk driving. I’ve seen statements made by the police saying that they will be very mindful of traffic flows as they undertake the checks at their discretion.

Christopher Luxon: Does she stand by her statement yesterday that she’d been given an implication from police that not every car driving north would be stopped, and how many cars in fact will be stopped?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The indication was from a press statement that the police released. In particular, the Northland District Commander, Superintendent Tony Hill, in his statement said police will be very mindful of traffic flows; the public can expect they may be stopped and spoken to by police to ensure they’re abiding by the requirements of the public health order. Of course, by implication I assume the member would have rather had an alternative where there was no requirement on the Auckland public to do anything to ensure the ongoing safety of New Zealanders, that they simply lift the border and let it go. Our view has always been transition safely; reduce the chances of other cases being seeded. Yes, we know we will see some movement, but reducing it down as much as possible reduces the impact on vulnerable communities and our health system.

Christopher Luxon: Isn’t it correct that her Government decided to allow checkpoints, and why won’t she take responsibility and tell Kiwis travelling this summer what the impacts of this decision will be?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: This Government’s decision is not to just let COVID rip. If you’re going to take that decision, then naturally you place some expectation on those who are travelling. That expectation is quite a simple one. The vast bulk of Aucklanders are vaccinated, and by simply carrying their vaccine pass, they are meeting the requirement. For those who are not vaccinated, a simple rapid antigen test at a pharmacy will do as proof of travel. We’re leaving it up to the police as to how they undertake compliance, but, of course, as they’ve said themselves, they will be mindful of traffic flows.

Christopher Luxon: Don’t Aucklanders, after 15 weeks in lockdown, deserve at least some idea of how long they’ll have to sit in traffic to get a summer holiday, and why hasn’t she required this to be made public?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We actually did talk openly about the decision that we made. We have said that not every vehicle will be checked because, of course, that would cause a significant delay, because tens of thousands of Aucklanders move over the summer period. We have set a requirement. There will be compliance checks at the police’s discretion. In the same way that I cannot tell the public how long they may have to wait if there is a drunk driving test on a Saturday night, it will be up to the police to determine how they undertake these checks. Again, I come back to the alternative. Some people are uncomfortable about the changes at the Auckland boundary. This is a balanced approach that ensures Aucklanders can rightly move, because they deserve to, but ensures that we maintain extra precautions as we transition.

Christopher Luxon: Is it fair that Aucklanders have done everything they’ve been asked to during 15 weeks of lockdown, and even now you’re keeping them at red, against health advice?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No, the public health advice actually was to keep them at red. But I would again come back to the alternative that the member seems to be advocating. In fact, I’ve seen a statement from him that says, “Frankly, we don’t support the traffic light system. Our view is very clear, that when we can get to a high level of double vaccination we’re good to go, and we have to open up the country and get going.” The Opposition doesn’t support public health protections, they don’t support a boundary at Auckland, they don’t support any international boundary. That is a recipe for what we have seen in Europe.

Christopher Luxon: How many more businesses does she expect to fail as a result of the Government’s decision to keep Auckland at red for the rest of the year?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The decision was taken on the basis of public health advice. Our view is that if we take a cautious approach—

Hon Kiritapu Allan: How many people do you want to kill, mate?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —we’re more likely to see businesses be able to continue to operate. Of course, the member will be aware that we have worked very hard to support businesses all the way through COVID-19 and, indeed, the transition. I again would just use this as an opportunity to remind those who may be affected by that transition of the transition support payment that opened on 10 December. Like the resurgence support payment, it offers up to $24,000 to support businesses.

Christopher Luxon: What does she say to the staff and owners of Auckland’s bars and restaurants who are stuck at red until the end of the year, by which time Auckland will have emptied out for summer and their businesses will be struggling to survive?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That I know it’s been tough, but, despite a global pandemic, where in some parts of the world hospitality has remained closed for the better part of a year, we’ve designed a framework to try and ensure that they can remain open. Of course, they are able to open—a hundred indoor, seated and separated, and also if they have outdoor space, they’re able to occupy that too. That’s a level of certainty many countries cannot offer right now.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. I stand by this Government’s commitment to working with and, particularly, engaging with Māori, as we have done throughout our COVID response. Since the beginning of COVID, Ministers have regularly met with key Māori stakeholders. We’ve provided direct funding packages to support Māori providers and Whānau Ora. We’ve worked hard to push up vaccination rates and accelerate those rates for Māori—and our hauora providers have done an incredible job—and, of course, key Government agencies like police, the Ministry of Social Development, and Te Arawhiti continue to work closely with Māori groups as we continue to respond to the impacts of COVID-19.

Rawiri Waititi: Why did she reject the advice of the Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, who advised the Government to prioritise Māori over the age of 50 early in the vaccine roll-out, and that he had a strong preference of not moving into the traffic light system until Māori had reached 90 percent?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course, with the latter half of the question, you can see with the decisions that we made yesterday we continue to push for those high vaccination rates, and, in fact, we said we want high rates before we move in at orange. We have kept those parts of the country where we’ve seen slightly lower rates in red for a bit longer. From the projections we’ve seen, though, we are anticipating that even those regions will be in the mid- to high 80 percent mark double vaccinated by the time they move into orange.

Rawiri Waititi: Does she agree with the director-general denying the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency access to individual Māori vaccine data?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: On the issue of vaccination data, of course, there have been data-sharing arrangements with iwi leaders, the National Hauora Coalition, and, of course, for Whānau Ora, they’ve had access for its enrolled population since the end of September. Of course, as the member is aware, what Whānau Ora were then seeking to access was additional individual data, and, as the member is aware, the Director-General of Health has been working through the court’s ruling. The Government’s expectation is simply that we do everything we can to accelerate Māori vaccination, whatever that looks like.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: If she didn’t reject the Director-General of Health’s position on Whānau Ora access to Māori data, why did she reject his earlier advice on prioritising Māori over the age of 50 early in the vaccine roll-out?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, of course, we have continued to highlight that those who were most vulnerable to COVID-19 when we had limited supply of vaccine, we know, were older members of our population, were those with comorbidities, and were those who may care for those who are in either of those groups. That is why they were first in the roll-out, it’s why we also had a lower age bracket for all of Counties Manukau, and it’s why we also put specific vaccine supply to hauora providers to take a whānau-based approach. In fact, I visited a hauora provider in the member’s area that reported to me at that time that they were doing just that—they were going into areas and vaccinating whole whānau—and that was the approach we enabled right from the beginning.

Question No. 4—Housing

4. BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Housing: What action is the Government taking to get more houses built in Porirua?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Today, I announced the first funding agreement from the Government’s $1 billion Infrastructure Acceleration Fund (IAF), launched in June of this year. The Government’s $6.1 million IAF investment for a housing development in Porirua will enable 880 homes to be built—nearly twice the original plan for the 443 homes—and contribute to a crucial transport upgrade and key three waters infrastructure. The housing crisis we inherited is decades in the making. That will take time to turn around, but we are starting to make inroads. This fund will make a real difference by helping overcome a key barrier to building new homes: access to basic infrastructure. Today’s announcement is yet another step our Government is taking to fix the national housing crisis.

Barbara Edmonds: How will Porirua benefit from today’s Infrastructure Acceleration Fund announcement?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As well as delivering more homes faster, the funding will resolve critical infrastructure constraints holding the development back. Our investment in Porirua will provide a much-needed upgrade to the Tītahi Bay Road / Kenepuru Interchange and upgrades to key three waters infrastructure. Today’s investment builds on funding for the Government-led largescale project in Porirua I announced in July to provide capacity for an additional 2,000 homes and improved service levels for the majority of the 19,000 existing residents.

Barbara Edmonds: Why was the Porirua project fast tracked?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The proposal from Ngāti Toa Rangatira was selected because it was able to start quickly, was cost-effective, and enabled the delivery of a mix of affordable, social, and market additional 400 houses that would not have happened without the $6.1 million of funding. With over 80 responses to the requests for proposals for the IAF due at the end of this week, I look forward to announcing more support around the country for much-needed house building in 2022.

Question No. 5—Finance

5. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with economist Cameron Bagrie that “the economy is too hot”, and, if he does, will he therefore adjust down his Government’s spending in tomorrow’s HYEFU to alleviate upward pressure on inflation and interest rates?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for acknowledging that the New Zealand economy has exceeded expectations and has shown extraordinary strength and resilience. I agree to the extent that it does mean the economy no longer needs all of the stimulus that has been required up to now, but there remain significant challenges and opportunities in the economy that require a careful and balance investment. The details of the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) are just one sleep away.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he accept that high Government spending right now is simply competing with the private sector for scarce labour and resources and is accordingly driving up inflation to its highest point in over 30 years?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member needs to seriously consider what he is just proffering up. Does he actually think the Government should stop building State houses? Actually, he probably does, because that’s the record of the previous National Government. If he thinks we should stop spending on health—actually, that is the previous record of the National Government. That kind of “short-termism” is what got New Zealand in the position to have a housing crisis and to have a health crisis, and that might be the member’s recipe, but it’s not ours.

SPEAKER: Order! I just want to make it clear we are talking about overstimulation. I think there’s a bit of that over here at the moment, and the problem with that is it causes the other lot to get overstimulated.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There’s a bit of inflation too.

SPEAKER: Well, there might be inflation in the case of the Minister of Finance, but, hopefully, over the summer, he can have a programme to get rid of it!

Hon Simon Bridges: Will he adjust new Government spending tomorrow, so HYEFU downward, to alleviate inflation, or is he simply going to complacently accept the price of big fiscal policy, which is inflation, on a number of forecasts, heading to 6 percent in 2022?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member well knows that inflation is a global phenomenon. Those are the same percentage figures that are being seen around the world. The Government will continue to invest carefully and in a balanced way to make sure that we do provide New Zealanders with the kind of public services, sadly, that were not done under the National Government.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can he blame it all on this international phenomena, when, just across the Ditch it’s 3 percent, and, here in New Zealand, over half of it is the non-tradeables economy; that is, it’s happening right here under his watch?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, actually, when we compare ourselves to Australia, the Australian data officials note the global phenomenon and say that their “trimmed measure” does not actually align with that. On this side of the House, we understand that some New Zealanders have been doing it tough. We have supported them through that. But what we will not do is underfund the core services that New Zealanders need. And if the member wants to tell us what things he will cut out of education, out of health, out of housing, go ahead, because that’s been the problem that New Zealanders dealt with for decades.

David Seymour: How does it help New Zealanders afford a home for the Government to bid against private builders for the same land, materials, and labour?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Government’s contribution is to make sure that we have the land available to build the houses that we need to have. Actually, overall, it is the private market that drives what happens within land and real estate prices. But the Government is not going to step back from building State houses.

David Seymour: Does the Minister accept it was a mistake to spend $51 million on design and development for a bike bridge that never got built? And is that an example of the kind of stimulus that’s no longer required in the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No. What I do accept, however, is that it was a mistake to put $50 billion extra in the ACT policy they put out yesterday. But I’m sure the member knows that.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he accept that paying a lot more for private sector land and a lot more for motels around New Zealand has got to be a key reason why, right at the moment, house price inflation in New Zealand is 30 percent, the highest in the OECD, in an unsustainable housing bubble?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, I do not accept that assertion from the member. The member knows that the housing crisis has been decades in the making because we have not, as a country, invested in building houses and we have not taken steps to reduce demand. We have done both of those things and addressed both of those issues.

David Seymour: Does the Minister of Finance think that New Zealanders facing rising prices in every aspect of their life appreciate him standing up using parliamentary time to make jokes about a typo in another party’s policy document?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I am absolutely certain that New Zealanders across the country appreciate the fact that the Government has worked very hard to support them and their families through COVID, and I’m sorry if I’ve hurt the member’s feelings.

Question No. 6—COVID-19 Response

6. Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What recent progress has been made on New Zealand’s COVID19 vaccine programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): 2021 has been the year of the vaccine. The Government made a commitment that every eligible New Zealander would have the opportunity to be vaccinated by the end of the year. I’m incredibly proud to be able to report back to the House that as of midnight last night we’ve administered over 7,897,000 doses of the vaccine across New Zealand reaching 3.9-and-a-half million eligible New Zealanders. Ninety-four percent of the eligible population have now had their first dose and we are about 16,000 doses shy of reaching the national target of 90 percent of the eligible population being fully vaccinated. All but three of our district health boards have now achieved the 90 percent first dose target, around six DHBs have already reported 90 percent double dosed, and despite a range of challenges and logistical complexities we’ve maintained our commitments to New Zealanders around vaccination, and with the help of many New Zealanders we’ve delivered on rolling out the largest immunisation programme the country has ever seen, so I want to extend my thanks to every single New Zealander who has done their bit for New Zealand by being vaccinated.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What work has been done to support the vaccination programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: A phenomenal effort’s been undertaken by thousands of people across the country. We’ve been able to train 15,501 vaccinators and they’ve been working across 1,926 different vaccination sites across the country. That’s included 77 Māori health providers, 27 Pacific health providers, 32 marae, 12 schools, and 13 places of worship. We’ve had 257 different mobile clinics. I want to thank everyone who’s been playing their part in the ongoing roll-out of this vaccination programme—whether that’s behind the scenes dealing with administration and logistics, running vaccination sites, delivering the vaccination shots, or undertaking something as simple as driving people to their nearest vaccination station. If anyone out there has done any of those things or even if they have just encouraged a friend or a family member to be vaccinated, I say thank you to them. They are helping to keep New Zealand safe from COVID-19.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What have been some of the key highlights from the vaccination programme over the last year?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There are heaps but I’ll just pick a couple. The success of Super Saturday also should be recorded at this point, where over 130,000 people received a vaccination. That included a significant 39,000 first doses. That’s around 3 percent of the eligible population receiving a vaccination dose in a single day. I’d also want to note the successful establishment of the immunisation register and the booking system, which have worked very, very well to support the vaccination roll-out. I also want to note the work that we have done to secure additional doses for our booster campaign and, of course, further doses as required in the future.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What will be the focus of the vaccination programme going into the new year?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The two big parts of the vaccination programme in the early part of next year will be a decision around a paediatric vaccination campaign for five- to 11-year-olds. The Government is following the science on that very closely and we are awaiting further advice from Medsafe and from our Technical Advisory Group. The second major priority in the first part of next year will be the ongoing roll-out of the booster shots or third doses of the vaccination. We are already under way with that this year; we expect bigger numbers to become eligible in the new year and we are ready to make sure that they can get their vaccines.

Chris Bishop: Has New Zealand raised a purchase order for Pfizer vaccines for five- to 11-year-olds; and is it still his expectation that vaccinations for this age group will roll out in January 2022?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We have a confirmed advanced purchase agreement for those particular doses. In terms of the purchase order, i.e., the delivery schedule, that cannot be confirmed Pfizer will not confirm that until Medsafe have approved the vaccine.

Question No. 7—COVID-19 Response

7. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: How many fully vaccinated people, if any, who have travelled from Australia have tested positive for COVID-19 since 23 August 2021, and is the Government still committed to allowing fully vaccinated New Zealand citizens and other eligible travellers to enter from Australia from 11.59 pm on 16 January 2022?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I’m advised that between 23 August and 6 December, 4,883 travellers from Australia have completed stays in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). Three of these people tested positive. However, none of them were vaccinated. I’d note that overall we had 132 cases amongst 31,000 returnees since 23 August, 79 of whom were fully vaccinated. In answer to the second part of the question, yes. As we have done throughout the pandemic, the Government will remain adaptable to the changing international situation, and any emerging evidence around variants of concern, including the Omicron variant. Officials will continue to regularly monitor Omicron and any other variants around the globe, and Ministers will be available over the holiday period to receive advice on that. We remain committed to the time frames we announced under the Reconnecting New Zealanders plan, including allowing fully vaccinated New Zealand citizens and other eligible travellers to enter from Australia from 11.59 p.m. on 16 January 2022.

Chris Bishop: Will the Cabinet meeting next week consider a paper on allowing fully vaccinated New Zealanders in Australia to travel to New Zealand before Christmas without going into MIQ, in light of the Minister’s answer just now that there have been zero fully vaccinated travellers since 23 August who subsequently tested positive in New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No. One of the things that I would note for the member is that Omicron is in the community in Australia; it is not in the community here in New Zealand.

Chris Bishop: Why can fully vaccinated Aucklanders leave Auckland from tomorrow and travel to all parts of New Zealand, but fully vaccinated New Zealanders abroad cannot travel to their own country unless they win a slot in the MIQ lottery?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I’ve indicated to the member, one of the things that we are monitoring very closely is new emerging variants, including the Omicron variant, which is not in New Zealand. It will make it to New Zealand at some point, and at this stage it will be captured in our MIQ system.

Chris Bishop: What is the public health rationale that prevents a fully vaccinated traveller in Queensland, for example, from coming to New Zealand, a country with a full vaccination rate about to hit 90 percent, and rising every day?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think the member misses what I’ve just been indicating. First of all, we are wanting to ensure that we keep new variants of COVID-19 out of the community for as long as we can. We’ll keep that under review. I note that states in Australia, despite the more sweeping statements of the Federal Government in Australia, continue to maintain quite significant border restrictions. The statements of the Australian Federal Government don’t reflect the reality on the ground, where border restrictions continue to be in place in many Australian states.

Chris Bishop: What does he say to Victoria Hemmingson, who obtained an emergency allocation spot in MIQ from Australia for the purpose of attending her brother’s tangi, only to be forced to watch the tangi via live stream after being denied early release from MIQ on the grounds she had to travel from Auckland to Christchurch?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Ultimately, my message to anyone who’s been affected by the border restrictions is that we acknowledge the significant hardship that that can often cause. Nobody would, by preference, have these kinds of border restrictions in place. We all need to remember why we have those border restrictions in place and what New Zealand has been able to achieve over the last year and a half through those border restrictions, which is the lowest case rate of COVID-19 in the OECD and the lowest rate of death in the OECD, and our border restrictions have played a very big part in that. But I acknowledge, and the whole Government acknowledges, the significant personal cost that that has created for many people. In terms of the issues around exemptions, Ministers do not make those decisions; those decisions are made by public health officials on public health grounds.

Personal Explanation—Question No. 2

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Conservation): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to make a personal explanation.

SPEAKER: Related to?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: An interjection I made earlier in the House which I regret, so I seek leave to withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There appears to be none.

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Earlier in question time, I made an interjection during the contribution of Mr Luxon, and I seek to withdraw and apologise for the sentiment.

SPEAKER: Right, well, I think you just have, because you sought leave before.

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Thank you—good as gold.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

Question No. 8—Tourism

8. TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) to the Minister of Tourism: What announcements has he recently made about freedom camping?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Tourism): Recently, I announced, with Queenstown Mayor Jim Boult, that the Government was introducing tougher freedom camping laws to prevent the abuse which has placed an unfair burden on small communities and damaged our reputation as a high-quality visitor destination. At the heart of our new law will be a greater respect for the environment and communities through a “right vehicle, right place” approach. In 2022, the Government will introduce legislation that will, amongst other things, include that vehicle-based freedom campers will need to be in a certified, self-contained vehicle to stay overnight on land managed by local councils unless the council has designated the area for non-certified vehicles, and a new regulatory system to enable vehicles to be certified as self-contained. To be certified as self-contained, a vehicle will need a fixed toilet.

Tāmati Coffey: Why has the Government moved to make these changes?

Hon STUART NASH: Despite the Government’s investment of $27 million in freedom camping programmes since 2018, there are still problems, including inappropriate disposal of human waste. Feedback from communities and councils has made it clear that some freedom campers remain a problem. Issues include uncertified vehicles parking outside designated areas—including on private driveways and front lawns—littering, and disposal of human waste. Freedom camping will always be a valuable part of our tourism experience, but must meet minimum standards and respect our tourism brand.

Tāmati Coffey: What will be the expectations on campers?

Hon STUART NASH: We are setting clear minimum expectations for campers. Higher standards must be met before vehicles can be certified as truly self-contained with fixed toilets. Abuses in the past included campers slapping bogus blue stickers on vehicles to falsely claim compliance. Abuse of freedom camping by domestic and international travellers not only damages our “100% Pure” brand; it erodes public support for tourism and undermines its social licence to operate.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he realise that there are currently no freedom campers in New Zealand because his Government has kept the border closed to double-vaccinated visitors, and why isn’t he instead focused on—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m going to invite the member to restart his question. If he’s going to make assertions which are clearly incorrect—clearly incorrect—then I will rule it out, because members are not allowed to make an unsubstantiated assertion, in this case, which is clearly wrong.

Chris Bishop: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, I’ve ruled. The member will resume his seat.

Hon Todd McClay: Does the Minister realise that there are currently no international freedom campers in New Zealand because his Government has kept the border closed to double-vaccinated visitors, and why isn’t he instead focused on the actual problems that tourism businesses who are struggling have today—i.e., they are not sure whether they will survive this year or next because of this policy?

Hon STUART NASH: These rules apply to both domestic and international freedom campers, and what I would say is that this Government has put well over $600 million directly to support this industry.

Question No. 9—Prime Minister

SPEAKER: Before the member starts, I’ll just indicate to the House that the remote interpretation is now working.

David Seymour: Just in time!

SPEAKER: I deliberately said it because I knew it was such a high priority for the member!

David Seymour: I reflect on my priorities, Mr Speaker. Lucky it’s Christmas time!

9. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her answer “The Police.” to my question last week, “Who will propose the times, locations, and protocols for checkpoints on public roads when iwi representatives are acting as enforcement officers under the COVID-19 public health Act amendments made last month”; if so, will these checkpoints be initiated by iwi, Police, or the Director-General of Health?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): To answer the first part of the question, yes. To answer the second part of the question: the Police.

David Seymour: How many police officers will be diverted from other duties to run checkpoints under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act in Northland over the coming months?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously, the operational decisions over the summer period for the Police are matters for the Police. Those are decisions that they determine, and in any given summer they may make a decision that they need to deploy additional staff to, say, the Coromandel. On this occasion, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. There will be additional staff deployed into Northland. The current boundary, according to the Police, is staffed by 278 police, and I thank them for their service. They have helped New Zealand contain an outbreak that could have had devastating effects. Over the summer period, I’m told, at any one time, the Police have decided that there will be 74 police officers operating checkpoints in Northland.

David Seymour: How many non - police officers have been authorised as enforcement officers, giving them the power to run checkpoints under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, as of right now?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The second part of the member’s statement is incorrect. Only the Police can operate a checkpoint. Police must also run those checkpoints. The member, I would have thought, would be familiar with those provisions for two reasons. First of all, throughout the pandemic, the police have been doing that, and they have, from time to time, been supported by others. That is not new. But those arrangements were formalised through legislative changes that went to select committee from 29 September to 11 November. The clause was explicitly addressed during that period. The member was a part of that select committee process.

David Seymour: Is the Prime Minister denying that the legislation she just referred to says that enforcement officers can stop vehicles so long as they are under the supervision of a constable?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member implied that those other than the Police could run checkpoints. That is incorrect. An enforcement officer is able to stop persons. It’s only, of course, though, Police who can operate them, establish them, and, of course, oversee the operation. This is not new. We’ve been undertaking arrangements such as this throughout the COVID pandemic response. The member has argued for two competing issues, I notice, in this debate. On the one hand, he doesn’t think that the Police should have anyone else supporting them; on the other, he’s unhappy that the Police are having to run them.

David Seymour: What will be the penalty for an unvaccinated and untested person leaving Auckland stopped at one of these checkpoints?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I would need to go back and reconfirm the fine and penalty arrangement. Obviously, we have a fines arrangement in place for those who do not comply with the COVID protection framework; those who do not comply with quarantine provisions and the use, for instance, of COVID passes. It’s all contained within the COVID protection framework, and there is a range.

David Seymour: Does she believe checkpoints will increase travel times over summer, and, if so, can she tell people what a reasonable time is, in her opinion, for them to be delayed by such a checkpoint?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, these are all issues that are ultimately up to the police to choose how they manage traffic flows, how they choose to operate compliance checks. We have placed a requirement on Aucklanders departing to carry proof that they are vaccinated or that they’ve carried out a test if they are not. It is then up to the police to choose how they then check compliance with that, in the same way that we do not stipulate how the police at any given time check whether someone is speeding, whether someone is complying with the road rules, or whether or not someone’s complying with drunk-driving laws. They’re all expectations on citizens that, ultimately, the police have enforcement roles over.

Hon Stuart Nash: Has the Prime Minister seen reports that there are over 1,200 more police working hard in New Zealand since we came into office, compared to a decrease in police numbers during the last three years of the previous National Government?

SPEAKER: OK, well, the Prime Minister can answer the first part of the question.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I can confirm that we made a commitment at the beginning of our term in office that we wanted to see an increase in front-line policing; we’ve worked very hard to do that. There’s no doubt that that has, of course, served us well as we’ve had to manage COVID-19 and its effect, and I do want to thank all those police officers who have been a part of protecting communities during this pandemic.

Question No. 10—Police

10. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Police: Does she stand by her statement in June in relation to Police reports of violence in or around emergency housing that “this information is not aggregated by Police”; if so, at the time she made this statement, had the Police generated any Intelligence Notification reports about offences and violence in MSD emergency accommodation?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): I stand by my statement in the context it was made, which was in response to a written question about reports received of gang involvement in violence in or around emergency housing motels. The information they collect in this context is at a point in time and is place-specific. Police generate intelligence reports on a range of incidents all the time, and this can include incidents at emergency housing. Police respond to reports of crime wherever they occur. They do a fantastic job in keeping our community safe, and they have gone above and beyond during COVID-19. I’m sure that this House will join me in acknowledging the fantastic work the police do.

Nicola Willis: Can the Minister confirm that the question asked of her in June was about reports of violence police have received in or around emergency housing motels, and what is a police intelligence notification about the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) emergency accommodation and data relating to offences there if not a report about violence in emergency housing?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I can confirm that question No. 26702 was “What reports of violence have police received of gang involvement in or around emergency housing motels, if any, broken down by title [or] date?”, and my response to that was “I am advised that this information is not aggregated by Police.” I would like to confirm that police nationally do not routinely have access to all locally commissioned reports to address local changes in crime demand. The police, at a local level in policing in our areas and districts—manual analyses have been undertaken of specific addresses or groups of addresses where local officers have knowledge of the purposes for those locations. Why this is important is the local knowledge is important as a specific address may continue to function as a hotel alongside emergency housing. These local analyses have involved detailed manual data reconciliation processes that are not possible at a national level.

Nicola Willis: Is the Minister aware of her own answer to written question No. 26711 denying the existence of reports about violence in emergency housing, and how is that an accurate answer, given the existence of this report containing data about increasing levels of violence in emergency housing?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I’ve just explained to the member that at a local level, districts and areas will collect information, but it is not available to be aggregated into a national total.

Nicola Willis: Is it accurate to state the police do not collect data specifically in relation to emergency housing, when documents I have obtained show they have produced at least three reports containing data specifically about increased offending relating to emergency housing?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: At a local level, police collect information and data—at a local level—to inform deployment and to inform how they may act in local situations. This is not available at a national level.

Nicola Willis: Will the Minister take this opportunity now to correct her statement yesterday that “Police does not collect official data for reporting on emergency housing.”, when I have in front of me a report with official Police data on offending in emergency housing?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I stand by my statements, and I also want to just remind that member that she has wanted to kick Kāinga Ora kids out on the street. She fuels stereotypes about people in emergency housing, and now she wants to kick police after two years of sterling work that they have done—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. I think she’s strayed into areas that are not her responsibility. Question No. 11, Ingrid Leary. [Interruption] Order! Who was that? The member will withdraw and apologise.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon Simon Bridges: Kick him out.

SPEAKER: Who suggested that? Mr Bridges?

Hon Simon Bridges: I think he was kicked out for the first time last week, Mr Speaker, and I thought we could make it a two-for before Christmas.

SPEAKER: Well, I think for that disorderly interjection, or disorderly point of order that the member knew wasn’t a point of order, I will sentence him to stay till the end of question time.

Question No. 11—Transport

11. INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) to the Minister of Transport: What progress has been made on transport projects in regional New Zealand?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): We’re making progress on a number of projects around the regions to keep New Zealand moving and to support the economic recovery. I want to acknowledge the local MP for Taieri, Ingrid Leary, for helping to turn the sod and kick off construction on the new Beaumont Bridge over the Clutha River. This $25 million project will create jobs and strengthen an important link connecting Dunedin, Central Otago, and Queenstown.

Ingrid Leary: Why is a new Beaumont Bridge needed?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The new bridge will replace a current single-lane bridge built in 1887, which is no longer fit for purpose. The new bridge has been designed to meet expected traffic growth, including heavier trucks and modern earthquake standards. After it opens, the landmark single-lane bridge will continue to serve the area by providing a link to the popular nearby Clutha gold walking and cycling trail.

Ingrid Leary: What other regional projects have reached significant milestones? [Opposition members interject]

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Such enthusiasm in the House!

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! I know it’s nearly the end of the year and I know that bridges cause some excitement in here. In fact, we seemed to have a by-election about them at one stage, not that long ago, but I’m just going to ask members to get through the—[Interruption] Oh, look, just a bit of leadership, thank you.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I’m very pleased to announce another regional New Zealand Upgrade Programme project has reached a significant milestone. Waka Kotahi has awarded the construction contract for a roundabout at Cromwell at the State Highway 6 and State Highway 8B intersection. A single-lane roundabout will replace the current T-intersection when completed in the second half of 2022. This project will help to make a very busy intersection safer for everyone.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. We all know what roundabouts do.

Question No. 12—Oceans and Fisheries

12. Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green) to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: What advice, if any, has he received on measures to reduce the impacts of bottom trawling in New Zealand waters, which he said he would consider this year?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Merry Christmas to the member and the House. The Government opposes destructive and unsustainable fishing methods that harm vulnerable marine habitats. As such, I’ve received advice on a range of matters relating to the impacts of bottom trawling in New Zealand waters, including the management of benthic impacts of mobile bottom-contact fishing gear in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, as part of the advice received on revitalising the Gulf. Trawling’s going to be limited to defined corridors. In addition, we have proposals to prohibit bottom trawling in parts of the Bay of Islands and the nearby coastline as parts of appeals on the proposed Northland regional plan, and we have the formation of a collaborative forum with stakeholders to recommend management measures for bottom trawling in the exclusive economic zone. Work on that will begin in the coming months.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Is he concerned that in the 10 years to 2019, more than 3,000 square kilometres of ocean, an area more than three times the size of Auckland, was trawled for the first time; if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’ve previously said that I think one of the measures that we should consider as a country is limiting bottom trawling to areas that have been previously bottom trawled.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Why is the Fisheries New Zealand forum, which is providing advice on bottom trawling, restricted to providing advice only on spatial management tools and prevented from considering or advising on alternative management actions such as phasing out bottom trawling or establishing new marine protected areas?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The terms of reference have not been finalised. Suggestions have been made by some, including her former leader Russel Norman, who said that the terms of reference ought to be broad enough to consider move-on rules where corals, for example, are dredged up, and we’re considering that.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Is he also considering the contribution of bottom trawling to climate change as part of the work of the advisory forum, when research published in the Nature magazine in April this year suggested that the sediment disturbance caused by bottom trawling globally released carbon equivalent to air travel in a pre-COVID world?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’m not sure that is within the terms of reference. I am happy to take further advice on that issue.

Hon Eugenie Sage: In preparing for the Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan next year, has or will the Minister ask Fisheries New Zealand for advice on how to reduce carbon emissions associated with bottom trawling?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I haven’t sought advice on that issue, no. I do accept that bottom trawling has environmental impacts and that we should be doing our utmost to moderate those.

Hon Eugenie Sage: If he accepts that bottom trawling has impacts, is he comfortable that New Zealand is the only country that has bottom trawlers operating on the high seas in the South Pacific, and, if so, why?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I would say that New Zealand’s record in the Pacific is a reliable one for our partner and associated countries in the Pacific, and that New Zealand’s actions in that regard are responsible, as responsible actors in the international community. I would also note the member’s question to me earlier in the year quoting a National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientist saying that because of the damage that bottom trawling can do, management really has to focus on protecting un-impacted areas, and I agree with that sentiment.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That the sitting of the House today be extended into tomorrow morning for the first reading and referral to the select committee of the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill; the third readings of the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill; further consideration in committee of the special debate on current issues and priorities; the first readings and referral to select committees of the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2), the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill, and the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill; and the passing through all stages of the Gambling (Reinstating COVID-19 Modification) Amendment Bill.

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 45

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

Motion agreed to.

Result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 75, Noes 43 to include Te Paati Māori’s votes.

Bills

Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill

First Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): I present a legislative statement on the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill.

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

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill.

Tēnei te mihi ki a koutou ngā uri o Ngāti Maniapoto kua hīkoi i tēnei hīkoi roa kia tae ki Pāremata i tēnei rā. Te mihi ki te hunga kua whetūrangitia ka tika. Ki a koutou kua tae ā-kanohi mai, me koutou i noho haumaru ki te kāinga. He rā hou tēnei kua hura mō tēnei kaupapa nui a Maniapoto me te Karauna. Tēnā tātou katoa.

[This is a greeting to you all, the descendants of Ngāti Maniapoto who have travelled this long journey to Parliament today. I greet those who have passed, and to you all who arrived here in person, and the others who remain safely at home. This is indeed a new day for this important issue of Maniapoto and the Crown. Thank you all.]

In November this year, Maniapoto and the Crown signed the deed of settlement that is the subject of this legislation. Due to the challenges and disruptions caused by COVID19, this signing was delayed a number of times and had to happen on the papers. The effect of that was to postpone any visit to the Maniapoto rohe for that signing, and, significantly, has delayed the opportunity for the Crown apology to be appropriately conveyed. This further emphasises today’s celebrations, at least of this occasion, as a welcome meeting between us both and a gratifying way to close out the year.

Today, some members of Maniapoto are present in the parliamentary precincts for the occasion of this first reading. Unfortunately, those members of Maniapoto who live in the rohe have had to make the hard decision not to travel to Wellington today, prioritising the safety and wellbeing of their community and others. To those who are here and watching from the Banquet Hall, I extend a warm welcome to you to witness the first reading of your bill. To those in the rohe, I appreciate the further sacrifices you have had to make, but that doesn’t make this day any less special and important.

We remember and pay tribute to Maniapoto tūpuna who have suffered grievances and acknowledge the many leaders of Maniapoto who have passed away over the course of the settlement. It has been a long journey since the first Wai claims were submitted in relation to Maniapoto historic Treaty claims in the 1980s. I acknowledge and thank Maniapoto negotiators, my colleague the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, Peter Douglas, Mook Hohneck, Tā Wira Gardiner, and Glenn Tootill, as well as the long-serving former chair of the Maniapoto Māori Trust Board, Tiwha Bell, the current chair, Keith Ikin, and deputy chair, John Kaati. I also acknowledge the wider Maniapoto negotiation team for their continued efforts in bringing about this settlement.

On the Crown’s side, I acknowledge chief Crown negotiator David Tapsell for his hands-on leadership throughout these negotiations, and I note the contribution of my predecessor, the Hon Chris Finlayson, and I thank all of my ministerial colleagues. There have been a significant number of ministries and agencies who have been involved in the settlement and who are not able to be represented today, and I thank all of them for their support to achieve this settlement with Maniapoto.

In December 2016, the Crown recognised the mandate of the Maniapoto Māori Trust Board to represent Ngāti Maniapoto to negotiate a comprehensive historical Treaty of Waitangi settlement. The Trust and the Crown signed terms of negotiation in the same month. The Crown and Maniapoto signed an agreement in principle in August 2017, and the deed of settlement was initialled in December 2020. Following ratification of the deed of settlement by the Ngāti Maniapoto claimant community, the Maniapoto deed of settlement was signed on 11 November this year. Due to COVID-19 restrictions and to ensure the safety of the Maniapoto community, the deed of settlement was signed on the papers without a ceremony. So I thank all of Ngāti Maniapoto for their perseverance and patience during the journey to achieving the signing and getting to this stage today.

The first reading of this bill represents a valuable opportunity to reflect on the relationship between Maniapoto and the Crown. Maniapoto have had a long history with this House, which was so rightly highlighted by Maniapoto Māori Trust Board Chair Keith Ikin when we initialled the deed of settlement last year. For two decades following the Waikato Wars, Maniapoto upheld an aukati to protect their lands from outside influence and preserve their rangatiratanga. Having fought in the wars, Maniapoto also bore the responsibility of providing manaaki to their Waikato kin who had fled from war and land confiscation to the north. Their territory came to be known as Te Rohe Pōtae, a reference to Tāwhaio, the second Māori king, who is said to have placed his hat on a map to show the area covered by Kīngitanga’s mana.

Instead of submitting to the pressure the Crown put on them, Maniapoto rangatira pressed their demands on the Crown through a series of negotiations and agreements which have become known as Te Ōhākī Tapu. In 1884, the Maniapoto rangatira Wahanui, some of whose descendants are here today, spoke to this House. Wahanui sought that Parliament provide a way for Maniapoto to administer their territory and control alienation of Maniapoto land. He told the House, “E kī tūturu ana ahau ko tō mātou whakaaro e pēnei ana mā mātou anake te whakahaere o aua whenua.”—“I say that we wish to have the sole administration of those lands.” The Crown quickly disregarded the promises it made to Maniapoto through Te Ōhākī Tapu. Instead, it placed significant pressure on Maniapoto to allow the Native Land Court and European settlement to have priority access to the rohe. The Crown aggressively acquired large amounts of Maniapoto land, such that by 1935 only 24 percent of land in Te Rohe Pōtae was in Māori ownership. While there were many lands that were acquired from Maniapoto in breach of the Treaty, the site of the public works taking for what later became Tokanui Hospital is one of the largest public works takings in New Zealand’s history.

Throughout negotiations, the Crown has heard how the devastating effects of land loss have caused the people of Maniapoto intergenerational suffering. Maniapoto, despite all the harm the Crown has caused you, it is a testament to your humility and willingness to rebuild your partnership with the Crown that you have engaged in negotiations for this settlement.

The Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill seeks to give effect to the Maniapoto settlement package, as outlined in the legislative statement. That settlement includes total financial and commercial redress of $165 million; the vesting of 36 sites of cultural significance; an overlay classification which acknowledges the traditional cultural, spiritual, and historical association of Maniapoto with certain sites of significance; a greater role in the management of natural resources within the Maniapoto rohe; agreements with a range of Crown agencies; the gift and gift back of Te Ara-o-Tūrongo, that part of the North Island main trunk railway that passes through the Maniapoto rohe; and the return of the taiaha Maungārongo; and the ability to secure the return of the Tokanui Hospital site.

The true measure of harm and loss experienced by Maniapoto can never be compensated for through a settlement. However, with this settlement, the Crown wishes to begin to remedy some of the suffering and rebuild its relationship with Maniapoto. Through a comprehensive set of relationship agreements between Maniapoto and Crown agencies, the settlement provides the foundation for a new relationship as we look together to a better future for Maniapoto and the Crown.

Wahanui’s speech in 1884 and the subsequent gifting to Parliament of his taiaha, Maungārongo, were significant gestures towards the new relationship between Maniapoto and the Crown. This first reading of the Maniapoto Settlement Claims Bill represents a similar new beginning to a relationship of trust and collaboration between Ngāti Maniapoto and the Crown. The Maniapoto relationship with Parliament and the Crown continues to this day. Maniapoto are prominent in this House, with my colleagues the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, the Hon Willie Jackson, as well as the Hon Simon Bridges and Shane Reti being but a few of many to stand in this House. As I’ve mentioned, the uncertainties of COVID-19 have meant that the Crown has not yet delivered its apology for its many breaches. I look forward to delivering the Crown apology at a ceremony in your rohe as soon as it is safe enough to do so.

Maniapoto descendants have continued to seek their mana whakahaere over their lands and people, and I hope that through the passage of this bill, Maniapoto and the Crown will take a step towards this aspiration. I look forward to continuing to take this legislation through the House to achieve the final settlement of your historical Treaty of Waitangi claims. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Madam Speaker, I consider the bill should proceed without delay to the Māori Affairs Committee. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Ko te pātai kia whakaaetia te mōtini.

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

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): It is a privilege to rise on behalf of the National Party and as the National Party spokesperson for Treaty negotiations to speak on this first reading of the bill today. To those who are watching at home, kia ora e koro mā, e kui mā, e rau rangatira mā, e Ngāti Maniapoto, tēnā koutou. Nau mai haere mai ki te rā whakahirahira.

[Greetings to the elders, the many chiefs, and the people of Maniapoto, greetings to you all. Welcome to this auspicious day.]

The National Party will be supporting this bill through to select committee. To the elders, leaders, and members of Maniapoto who are here witnessing this from home, I wish to extend a very warm welcome this afternoon. The settlement, this bill, and this process is about you, your tipuna and uri. I acknowledge that the signing of the Maniapoto settlement, which took place last month, has been a long time coming for iwi, who have been on this journey for over 30 years, and I wish to acknowledge all who have been involved in that process. I wish to acknowledge, also, Minister Little and all those who have been involved most recently, but, also, over many, many years.

The finalisation of this settlement and its journey through this House of Representatives is testament to decades of hard work and negotiations between Maniapoto and the Crown. It signifies the beginning of a new relationship between both parties based on trust, cooperation and a commitment to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. I also note that this bill completes the settlement process which began under former Treaty negotiations Minister the Hon Christopher Finlayson, under the last National-led Government. As before, I wish to knowledge Minister Little, who is the Minister responsible for shepherding this settlement to its final conclusion.

The Maniapoto settlement package is one of the largest ever negotiated and includes financial redress, which in total will be worth approximately $177 million; relationship agreements with various Crown agencies; the transfer of 36 sites back to Maniapoto as cultural redress; the first right to purchase Crown lands in the future; an agreed historical account; an acknowledgment of Treaty breaches, and a formal apology for those breaches.

Maniapoto’s historical grievances relate to the loss of life and conflicts with the Crown in bearing the cost of the New Zealand Wars. The Crown deliberately undermined Maniapoto independence, failed to uphold promises made in the 1880s relating to Maniapoto land administration and self-determination, and acquired Maniapoto land in an aggressive manner. This settlement contains an apology from the Crown for its acts and omissions in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi, an acknowledgment that the Crown failed to uphold promises in Te Ōhākī Tapu—a series of agreements and assurances which the Crown and Maniapoto entered into between 1883 and 1885, through which Maniapoto sought Crown recognition of their mana whakahaere over their lands and people.

Specific acknowledgments of breaches in the deed include: acting unjustly in sending Crown forces across the Mangatāwhiri River during the Waikato War, including indiscriminately killing non-combatants and looting and destroying property; breaching the Treaty by confiscating land in which Maniapoto had interests, unfairly labelling Maniapoto as rebels, and failing to provide for refugees entering the Maniapoto rohe; and failing to protect Maniapoto tribal structures from the operation and impact of the Native land laws, particularly the individualisation of tribal lands, which led to massive alienation of the tribal lands Maniapoto had cherished for centuries. No settlement can ever compensate for the mamae that Maniapoto have endured for many generations. It is my sincere hope that this settlement will lay the foundation for a positive, aspirational future for the people Maniapoto, whether they be in Te Rohe Pōtae / King Country, in and around Te Kūiti, Ōtorohanga, Te Awamutu, or wherever Maniapoto whānau may be.

There is a point that we do wish to seek more clarification from in this bill. However, as I noted in the outset, National supports this settlement to select committee and there are some questions which we wish to clarify there. In particular, the recognition of marine interests 20 miles out into the exclusive economic zone, which is provided for in Subpart 9 and, specifically, clause 124 of the bill. The provisions of the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill relating to rights to the exclusive economic zone appear to be the most comprehensive to date and, from my research, it appears that other previous settlement legislation has granted some measure of rights over the exclusive economic zone where it overlaps with iwi’s rohe moana. However, this is quite comprehensive. This clause 124 has implications which, at this point, are unclear and potentially wide ranging, and the National Party will be seeking clarification at the select committee process on the meaning of that clause and how it impacts on other interested parties in that area. So I look forward to engaging with colleagues on the Māori Affairs Committee to seek clarity on the meaning, nature, extent, and effect of this provision.

I would conclude my speech by saying that it is not possible to fully compensate Maniapoto for the loss and prejudice that they have suffered. However, I hope that this settlement will forge a new relationship between the Crown and the Maniapoto iwi and will be a real catalyst for positive change for present and future generations of Maniapoto. My colleagues and I look forward to being able to support this legislation through the House.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): Tuatahi e tika ana ki te mihi ki tō tātou iwi i tae mai nei i tēnei rā, ki te whakanui i tēnei rā, kei reira i te Banquet Hall ināianei. Tēnei te mihi ki a koutou mō ō koutou tautoko i tēnei wā. Mōhio au he tino uaua ki te mātakitaki engari tēnei te mihi ki a koutou. Nō reira i tēnei wā e tika ana kei te maumahara ahau i a rātou, ō tātou tīpuna i tū hei rangatira hei toa mō tātou o ēnei reanga. Nā rātou i whakatakoto i te ara hei whāinga mā tātou, nā rātou tātou i ora ai. Nō reira he wā anō tēnei ki te whakanuia rātou ō tātou tīpuna. Me mihi ka tika hoki ki ō tātou rangatira o tēnei wā. Ka mutu pea taku mīharo rau rangatira mā, tēnei te tino mihi ki a koutou. He Hōnore nui ki te tū ki te kōrero e pā ana ki tēnei pire. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā anō tātou katoa.

[Firstly, it is only right that I greet everyone gathered here today, to celebrate today, and those who are gathered in the Banquet Hall at this moment, thank you all for your support at this time. I know it is difficult to watch only, however I greet you still. At this time, it is pertinent to remember our ancestors who stood as role models for us all of this generation. It was them who set the path for us to follow, it is as a result of their efforts that we thrive. Therefore, I acknowledge our ancestors. I should also acknowledge to our leaders of today. I will end my admiration here for the many chiefs. It is an honour to stand before you to talk about this bill. Thank you all.]

First of all, I mihi to some of our people who came here today. Not a big crowd from Maniapoto came down, sadly, because of Delta and COVID hitting some of our people in the Maniapoto area, but we had a lovely pō’hiri this morning—this afternoon, I should say; early afternoon. And a mihi to them for coming down to tautoko the kaupapa, and also to our whanaunga who may be listening, who may be watching. This is a great day for our people in terms of Ngāti Maniapoto. Of course, also I want to tautoko Minister Little’s acknowledgment, as I did in our reo, to some of our leaders who passed away during the settlement, and we will always remember the first claims that were submitted in the 1980s. I too especially want to thank our Maniapoto negotiators—the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, Peter Douglas, Mook Hohneck, Tā Wira Gardiner, and Glenn Tootill, as well as the long-serving former chair of the Maniapoto Māori Trust Board, Uncle Tiwha Bell—he’s a real icon—chair, Keith Ikin, and deputy chair, John Kaati.

It’s appropriate to say that our foreign Minister over here did a magnificent job, a terrific job as chief negotiator when she was in Opposition; I thought that was a great strategy to take up that other position, in terms of negotiating for Ngāti Maniapoto. I did worry that she might have had problems controlling her two mates—Peter Douglas, who’s now in the Prime Minister’s office, and Mook Hohneck—but apparently it all worked out. Peter confessed to us all today that he wanted to be the chief negotiator but—and thank goodness—that didn’t work out. But he’s doing a terrific job in the Prime Minister’s office. But Minister Mahuta took over while Peter charmed many of our people at different hui around the country with his endless “I look like Sonny Bill jokes.” And we recall those hui, and they were certainly events. And, of course, Mook Hohneck was quite a negotiator, too; he looked after all the troublemakers and dissidents, in true Mook Hohneck style, which I won’t elaborate on today.

But I want to congratulate that negotiating team. These types of hui are not easy—they are not easy. And believe you me, if you haven’t been down that path, if you haven’t seen some of these hui, I advise anyone in the House to go and have a look. They vary in the different rohe, and then you have to come into the cities and you have to come into the Māngeres—and not everybody’s happy with a settlement; no, not at all. So you do need a mixture of strength, of skills, and of humour, and I think that’s what our negotiating team brought to the party. So I mihi to them and all other Ngāti Maniapoto people who are part of this House—our friend over there Mr Reti, good to see you, whanaunga, and also Simon Bridges, who I always have a bit of a joke with about Ngāti Maniapoto. Sometimes I tell him, when he’s offline, that he’ll be kicked out of Ngāti Maniapoto, but lately he’s online and on song, so I congratulated him very much for his promotion in terms of leadership over the last week or so. But Ngāti Maniapoto are proud of their politicians across the House.

A special mihi today to our kaumātua, our chair, Tiwha Bell. He served our people of Ngāti Maniapoto admirably. He’s a man of much mana and we wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him. Also to Keith Ikin, the chair—he brings a lot of leadership and skills. And I mihi to you, Keith, if you’re listening or watching today. Of course, Minister Andrew Little must take a lot of credit for where we are, and his predecessor, of course, the Hon Chris Finlayson.

You know, Ngāti Maniapoto is very special—it’s a very special place. I whakapāpā to it strongly, through my mother, June Jackson, formerly Batley, who’s in the middle of Ngāti Maniapoto right now, at her sister’s rest home in Taumarunui. Her sister, of course, is Christine Brears, who’s a heavyweight in Ngāti Maniapoto—sadly, I think she was supporting National for a while, but never mind! She had John Key up there at some of her hui, so I’m going to have to get the boss along to sort of get her on the right track—well, that comes when you’ve got a farming background. But she’s a heavyweight mana wahine and has been a huge influence in my life in terms of always saying, “Don’t forget about Ngāti Maniapoto.” I mihi to her for her advocating in terms of Ngāti Maniapoto, supporting my mother, never being negotiators, but strong advocates for places like Taumarunui, Te Kūiti, you know, places that sometimes are forgotten by people. And Ngāti Maniapoto, first and foremost, is part of their lives. Both of them, my auntie and my mother, despaired regularly when I kept talking about Ngāti Porou, and they asked me to wipe that out of my kōrero, but I had to acknowledge Ngāti Porou through my father, and so my mother had to wear that.

In terms of the compensation for Ngāti Maniapoto, it’s appropriate for me just to focus in on the $165 million, because I think the challenge will be what our iwi does with that. Of course, as previous speakers have said, $165 million is never going to be seen as adequate. And we all know that Treaty settlements can never compensate for the true loss, and I think everyone knows that, because if you were to ask what the real settlement should be for Ngāti Maniapoto, people would say, probably, three or four times what that $165 million is. And, often, I get asked by our people why do we settle for such low rates. My response is always the same: when you have an offer of nothing or something, it’s always good to take something. Māori, through the years, are used to receiving peanuts, but through peanuts you can build dreams, you can build opportunities—ask the kōhanga reo movement; they’ll tell you. Look at where the kōhanga reo movement is today. Ask Ngāi Tahu. Ask Tainui. Tribes that settled for $170 million, now worth over $1.5 billion. So off the smell of an oily rag, dreams and empires can be built.

So I say to our people, to our negotiators, to our kaumātua, and to our leaders of Maniapoto, what will you build for our people? What will you build for young Maniapoto people going forward? How will you respond to the challenge, in terms of Te Ao Māori and the urban iwi divide? I mean, let’s be clear, most Ngāti Maniapoto don’t live in Ngāti Maniapoto. So we need to make sure and ensure that the settlement touches everyone’s lives.

Those are the huge challenges in front of us in the coming years. I’m very interested to see how Maniapoto responds and works with the Government. Through the years, I’ve been a critic of iwi who refuse to put their hands in their pockets when their people have been in dire straits, and I’ve challenged the iwi to front up in terms of funding and resourcing for their people. I understand, of course, the Government obligations, as everyone does in this House. I accept that Government should be primarily responsible for funding people in terms of their social needs—of course that has to continue—but I believe that this must be balanced against an iwi commitment for their people, particularly iwi who are doing incredibly well in the financial department, and we have big iwi now who are in the billion-plus category. It’s an indictment, perhaps, on some of our iwi that with some of the iwi doing so well, you can work across the road from iwi offices and have our people still living in Third World conditions. That’s a challenge. That’s a challenge for iwi. That’s a challenge for Government in terms of our strategy going forward. I think there’s an obligation from our iwi that can’t be just about a newsletter or of the odd-education grant. There must be a commitment to our people, and today I put that same challenge to our iwi of Ngāti Maniapoto. Kia ora no tātou katoa.

Dr SHANE RETI (National): E rau rangatira mā, e ngā iwi, kia ora mai tātou. E pai ana kua puta mai tātou i konei i tēnei rā mō te take tēnei mahi hirahira. Ko ahau kei tēnei taha. Ko ahau nō Ngāti Wai, Te Kapotai, Ngāpuhi-nui-tonu. Ā, ki tēnei taha, ko ahau hoki tētahi o ngā uri whakaheke o Ngāti Maniapoto. I tūhono ai ki Kāwhia ki te urupā o tōku whānau. Ko taku tupuna whaea a Irena Whāwhākia Paki. Ko taku kuia he uri nā Hoata Paki. I tipu mai ahau i Kirikiriroa, nō reira kia ora mai tātou.

[To the many chiefs and to the tribes, greetings to all. It is good that we are here today for this important occasion. I sit on this side. I am from Ngāti Wai, Te Kapotai, Ngāpuhi-nui-tonu. From your side, I am also a descendent of Ngāti Maniapoto. I have a connection to Kāwhia, where my family cemetery is. My grandmother is Irena Whāwhākia Paki. She is a descendent of Hoata Paki. I grew up in Hamilton. Therefore, greetings all.]

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I thank everyone for the opportunity to say a few words on this bill, the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill, and help shepherd it through to select committee, where a lot of the leg work will be done. This has particular resonance with me as a half of me is the Ngāti Maniapoto side—my Waikato-Tainui side—and the other half is my Ngāpuhi side. So this has a particular relevance to me here today even though a lot of my work, once I left Hamilton, has been up in Te Tai Tokerau. This bill still means a lot to my whanaunga in the Waikato-Tainui - Ngāti Maniapoto area.

There are several parts to this bill. The Crown apology: the Crown apology has three substantive parts to it, the first looking to redress the unjust use of Crown forces across the Mangatāwhiri River during the Waikato War. The second part: Treaty breaches, confiscating land which Maniapoto had interests in. And the third: failing to protect Ngāti Maniapoto tribal structures during this period, through the 1800s and 1900s. The second part is the cultural redress, which is across 36 sites of cultural significance in Ngāti Maniapoto, including three jointly vested sites. I noticed the place name changes as well; I think this is a good thing. The third part is the financial and commercial redress, the total value of which is $165,000. I note here, and as has already been commented, that one of the largest Public Works Act acquisitions was at Tokanui. I worked at that hospital about 30 years ago. It’s a substantial piece of land. It’s a big piece of land at Tokanui. I enjoyed my time there, and it is right that this be redressed back to the iwi.

The other parts that I want to talk to in this bill, as it moves towards select committee, first of all, have been raised by my colleague. We will be requesting some scrutiny of clause 124, Subpart 9 of the bill, which does talk to interests in the exclusive zone, and we just want to understand what that actually means, what the interests are. We want to check that it doesn’t reach across Takutai Moana and other legislation and want to understand what the prospective and retrospective implications might be. So this is a piece of work that the select committee will need to look at.

In a wider sense—again, with my Te Tai Tokerau hat on, if you like—we’d be very interested in the quantum with this bill, because we’ve got interests in what that might look like for Ngāpuhi, if we can ever organise that. And it was commented to me, “Don’t look so much there. One of the bigger settlements will actually be Ngāti Maniapoto.”—on the basis that the calculation for the quanta is actually substantively on the amount of land that’s been taken, and contentiously, some might say, that Ngāti Maniapoto, as we can see in this bill, has had a significant amount of land taken under various circumstances. But I make that point that, in the North, we were watching very interestingly what the Ngāti Maniapoto quantum might look like and what that might mean for us.

So we certainly don’t want to stand in the way of this bill progressing to select committee and the good work that that committee will do to appraise this bill, to appraise some of the concerns that we have raised, but net-net, of course, we are supporting this today. It’s fundamentally a good bill, it’s addressing a lot of the historical things we all need to address, and so this bill has our support today through the select committee, and we’ll have those deliberations there. Kia ora mai tātou.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): E te Māngai, tēnā koe, otirā ngā mema katoa o te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. Ko tōku whakapapa. Ko tōku tipuna ko Rāpana nō Ōtorohanga. Ka puta mai a Ihakara Rāpana, aka Ike Robin. Ka moe ia a Mei Pire nō Ngāti Pāhauwera, ka puta mai a Aroha Te Rangi Robin. Ka moe ia a Ruruhira Nepe-Apatu. Ka puta mai a Mei Robin, ka moe ia a Wīrangi Wiremu Whaitiri, ka puta mai ahau.

I runga i taku whakapapa, he mihi nunui ki te whānau, ki te iwi o Ngāti Maniapoto i runga i te kaupapa whakanui i te ahiahi nei.

[Greetings to the Speaker, and all members of the House. This is my genealogy. My ancestor is Rāpana of Ōtorohanga. From him came Ihakara Rāpana, aka Ike Robin. He married Mei Pire from Ngāti Pāhauwera and had Aroha Te Rangi Robin. She married Ruruhira Nepe-Āpatu. They had Mei Robin, who married Wīrangi Wiremu Whaitiri, who had me.

With this knowledge, I acknowledge the families and the iwi of Ngāti Maniapoto with respect to this important occasion this evening.]

It is indeed an honour to stand in support of the first reading of the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill. Can I acknowledge both those that are at home and unable to make it here this afternoon and those who are here listening here on the precinct to this significant piece of legislation we are debating.

As a former Treaty negotiator, you always look at deeds of settlement and you can distinguish certain aspects of negotiations from each other. When I examine the deed of settlement of the Ngāti Maniapoto, it gives me great pride that there are mechanisms in here that I’ve never seen before—the speed with which we have got to this place, with the mandate, obviously, signed in December 2016 and also the terms of negotiation signed that very same month, to less than a year later, probably in August 2017. So that’s probably six to seven months’ time that you’re signing the agreement in principle, and if you’ve negotiated claims, seven months to actually sign an agreement in principle is quite significant. So it’s not lost on me that the negotiators—and I want to acknowledge our tuahine the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and all those on the Ngāti Maniapoto side that were able to successfully conclude the agreement in principle in about seven months’ time. That’s lightning speed when it comes to Treaty settlements. And, of course, the deed of settlement was initiated this time last year, December, and, of course, here we are 12 months later having the first reading. So I want to acknowledge and underscore the speed with which this particular settlement has come to fruition and the many people that have worked in the background beside the negotiators, on both sides, to get us here today.

There are a couple of things that I mentioned earlier that are unique to this settlement, and I think it needs acknowledgment. In terms of the breaches of the Crown, the deed of settlement does acknowledge three key areas, but I particularly want to draw the House’s attention to the failure of the Crown to protect Ngāti Maniapoto’s tribal structures from the operation and impact of the native land laws, particularly the individualisation of tribal lands, which led to massive alienation of the tribal lands Maniapoto had cherished for centuries.

It’s the individualisation of Māori land titles that I want to underscore in this House. It was the making of this House that individualisation of communal ownership of land led to alienation, and we’ve heard time and time again when we read Treaty settlements in this House of the mechanisms of the Crown, not just confiscating land but the fact that the legislation that was meant to protect land had the reverse effect, and in this particular settlement we have that in the deed of settlement.

That, then, leads me to the extras, some would say, that the negotiators successfully negotiated with the Crown, of which I want to make mention. Taiaha Maungārongo: this is a taiaha which reflects tribal taonga that are still held in a lot of museums around Aotearoa and internationally. This taiaha, I understand, belongs to Maniapoto, to iwi, or the people of Maniapoto, and in the next five years the agreement allows that particular taiaha that has significance to Ngāti Maniapoto, which is currently held in the Otago Museum, to reside here in Parliament for five years before then going on to the Ngāti Maniapoto people. I think that is significant, and it could potentially open other opportunities for taonga. Many iwi have already settled, but those coming up next may want to look at exploring exactly what Maniapoto has done here with their particular taonga, this taiaha I mention.

And, of course, the Minister talked about the land that underlined the main trunk railway that went through Maniapoto’s rohe, and the Te Ara-o-Tūrongo part of this Treaty settlement, I think, is quite innovative in terms of whether we can gift land back wherever we can to those that lost land. It is absolutely important that we do it.

The ahumania talks about all the relationships with the various Government departments, and there are too many to list, but there are really critical ones in there, and, of course, the recognition of interest out to the 20-mile zone. As a Minister of Customs—and Madam Speaker is a former Minister of Customs. We understand the significance of our security on borders, and I’m particularly drawn to that part of this settlement, which, no doubt, will get explored when it goes to the Māori Affairs Committee, but it does acknowledge Maniapoto’s historic interest that goes out to 17.4 nautical miles, or 20 miles out to sea. So it will be interesting to see what submitters will say on that.

The $165 million of financial redress cannot be underscored in this time and age, and I want to acknowledge the success that the negotiators were able to gain in terms of commercial redress. One of the areas under the ahumania, the relationship redress, mentions a primary industries’ protocol, and just earlier this year, in July, I had the good fortune to actually visit Te Kūiti and the Maniapoto trust board to attend the Ngāti Maniapoto Marae Pact Trust, where I engaged with the rangatahi and the training that was going at the facility, led by Joe Stafford and all those that are working really hard with our agriculture primary sector community in the wider area. I want to acknowledge the work that they continue to do, and I know this settlement will enable not only the primary industry part of development for Ngāti Maniapoto but all the other aspirations that these people will continue to have and continue to evolve.

This is a fantastic settlement. Like I said, it draws on some unique mechanism within the settlement, which I’ve tried to highlight. It definitely will get tested, I have no doubt, through the Māori Affairs Committee. But it is critically important to underscore the commitment by the negotiators to get this negotiation up very quickly. It’s comprehensive—one of the most comprehensive settlements I’ve had the opportunity to speak in support of. I am very proud of those who have worked hard on both sides of the negotiating table, both in Minister Finlayson’s time and completed in Minister Little’s time. It is critically important that we see Treaty settlements in this House for the development opportunities they possess, not just for the Maniapoto people but in the outlying areas that make up this rohe of people. So, again, it is indeed an honour to add some value to the debate today in recognising the first reading of the Ngāti Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill. I acknowledge everybody who has worked really hard, and I look forward to the Māori Affairs Committee’s report back, and, hopefully, we will hear from all interested parties, both the positives and the developments should that be required in the settlement bill. I commend this bill to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party to also offer our voice of support for this bill. Along with others, I’d first like to acknowledge all the Maniapoto people who are here on the precinct of Parliament or present via Zoom or internet or watching on the television—however—observing this really significant day, this 30 years of work that’s gone into this, and it’s been a very long history that this is seeking to put at least a written line in the sand to move on from and reset relationships. I too want to acknowledge all those who have passed before this day, as all too often is the case, because these processes are not simple. For the general public who are watching this and are not up with geography in this country, I will just ground this in that the Maniapoto iwi is based in Te Rohe Pōtae—otherwise known as the King Country—in and around Te Kūiti, Ōtorohanga, and Te Awamutu, and it is a very significant iwi in this country. I understand in the census it’s a population of 35,000 people with many, as is often the case after land confiscation and theft and loss—most, 90 percent, I understand, living outside of the rohe. Also, I just acknowledge the negotiating team, who have been well acknowledged, I think, in other speeches today, and the speed of the negotiation and the comprehensive nature of the settlement certainly deserves commendation in this House.

I would say, though, that the Greens—we in every settlement speech will acknowledge that we do not believe that these settlements are full and final, and that for us the Crown and its representatives have breached Te Tiriti o Waitangi and, even through this process, continue to breach Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We believe that, ultimately, for justice and for everybody to be able to move forward into the future, we deserve there must be resolution and restitution for all outstanding historical and contemporary breaches, also acknowledging that Te Tiriti o Waitangi supports hapūtanga and that hapūtanga is undermined by the settlement process in general and in this settlement is no exception.

I note that there was a case that went to the Waitangi Tribunal seeking to overturn the mandate, which was not successful; the Waitangi Tribunal acknowledged that the mandate should stand and have basis to stand but did acknowledge significant flaws in the Crown’s actions in the process of this settlement. I do also at this point note that in that settlement, the Waitangi Tribunal noted that the Crown still had no policy or strategy for engaging with groups that did not fit neatly into its large natural groupings rubric, and this left these groups and their claims with no clear pathway forward. This is outstanding work of this Parliament—for us to be able to find that way—and I do encourage, as is always the case, that through the select committee process people bring their voices to have them acknowledged in this process, for us to be able to hear them and to see if there are ways to be able to acknowledge them. But on that moment, we can note the limitations on the process and the flaws on the behalf of the Crown; none of that undermines the work of the negotiators and iwi getting to this point, and it does—we can celebrate and critique at the same time.

So I would like to just take a moment to note, in terms of the history acknowledged in the settlement, key points that came out to me as a Pākehā reading this. There was an absolute sense of the absolute determination of Maniapoto iwi in holding their rangatiratanga against Crown’s denial of it from signing Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840, having to take up—and also just to note, because I don’t think it’s noted in the general public enough, that at that time Maniapoto were a strong, independent iwi with expanding trade connections among the growing Pākehā population. This was a thriving society with strong commercial basis, and the land, as it always is, was a core part of that reality. I just want to put that on record because when we don’t do that, I think we can unintentionally feed a narrative of the Crown being the saviour in the—you know, the beginning of commerce and success in this country, which is just patently untrue. And I note that then Maniapoto took up arms in its defence in 1863 and were involved under the leadership of Rewi Maniapoto and others fighting Crown engagements in several sites. I do want to thank Maniapoto for the saying, which has huge meaning to me, that arose at Ōrākau, the conflict there, where Rewi Maniapoto famously said, “E hoa, ka whawhai tonu mātou āke, ake, ake”, which is still well heard in protests, as we still have land struggles around this country. And that sense of determination and resistance I read in the statement, that absolute holding of the right of self-determination that reads all the way through this settlement and I want to acknowledge in this House—because that is no easy task, in the face of colonial processes and violence, and so credit to Maniapoto for holding that. And it is on now us in this House and tauiwi in the society to actually acknowledge that self-right to self-determination.

I just want touch on some of the aspects of redress in the settlement, recognising there have been 36 sites of cultural significance and three jointly vested sites returning to Maniapoto and a separate site as a recreation reserve. Then there are overlay classifications and statutory acknowledgment and a deed of recognition for another, I think, 31 places of significance, and place-name changes to 12 sites, 10 of which is adding the macron that was missed out, which is a very common thing in this country. It is, I guess, when English is the dominant language—sometimes the nuances and the differences of language are missed altogether, even when they are glaringly obvious, so it is a correction to those names. Also acknowledging the natural resources arrangements that are in the settlement around Ngā Wai o Maniapoto and provide for Maniapoto to develop an environmental plan and joint management agreement with the Waikato Regional Council, separate to, of course, from the Waipā River, which had already been covered by a previous settlement—then also for conservation to have regard to Maniapoto’s environmental management plan when preparing the relevant conservation management plan in Maniapoto’s areas of interest. I do think that these are of particular note, because we know the water and the land are the life that sustains. And as I will say in every settlement bill, the Crown has been a very, very poor caretaker.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of the first reading of the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill. Like so many Treaty settlements over the past few decades, this bill is nearly the culmination of a process which involves many thousands of hours’ work by hundreds of people to find peace for wrongs of the past, and it is an extraordinary process that our country has committed to over the last 36 years in order to try to correct some of the less desirable parts of our country’s history. The fact that we do that is, in my view, an example of New Zealand exceptionalism. Not perfection; it doesn’t extinguish the many wrongs that have occurred, but actually no country in history has ever been able to make history perfect. In fact, no country has been able to make the present perfect. And while we have great hope, we may not manage the future either. But what these settlements mean is that we acknowledge, and then redress to the extent possible within the practical realities of modern life, the wrongs of the past. And that’s certainly what this bill seeks to do for claimants in Maniapoto.

It gives a collection of redresses. One is an apology and acknowledgment and a historical acceptance of things that happened in the past, and it apologises for breaches of the Treaty in that time. There’s also cultural redress intended to recognise the cultural, historical, and traditional associations of Maniapoto. This is an area where I think some people could have some pause while supporting the general concepts of this bill. The legislation, for example, asserts that a taniwha exists. Now, around the world, for very good reason, most societies have moved or are moving towards a separation between what is put in law and what is objectively agreed to be real and what is metaphysical—what is people’s chosen beliefs about the world beyond the physical. The reason for that, as history has shown, with great difficulty at times, is that when people try to incorporate metaphysical beliefs into the apparatus of the State or the legal requirements for what people must believe, there is inevitably conflict because legislating metaphysical matters requires people to believe things by law that they may privately vehemently disagree with. And many people throughout history have lost their lives, fought, and been terrified and brutalised by precisely that mixing of metaphysics with the law and the State. So I think that reasonable people, while supporting the thrust of this bill and the concept of redress, can ask themselves whether or not something such as the assertion of the existence of a taniwha is something that belongs in statute law in a modern and democratic society, which is surely what—or at least I would hope—all members would want New Zealand to be.

It then goes on to give some more concrete redress, including natural resources; forestry; titles, both fee simple and customary over, I think, a total of 37 properties; and it also includes some changes in governance and reorganisation of taxation matters for fisheries. There’s also—I may have mentioned—some commercial redress transfers of Crown forest licenced lands. So there’s quite a sweep of redress, ranging from an apology, to land, to forestry, tax treatment of fisheries, and some cultural redress which involves the treatment of a system of beliefs around certain parts of the natural world within the rohe of Maniapoto.

So with those comments, I look forward to seeing the bill going off to the select committee, where it can be examined and debated. But I also signal that an ACT Party that has been an enthusiastic embracer of the Treaty settlement process for several decades now, that believes that the will to examine and atone for past wrongdoing is an example of some of the best of New Zealand, should also be cautious that we don’t start to mix what is metaphysical and what is physical, because many countries have gone down that path and discovered that that mixture is actually a very dangerous one, and those that have the ability are doing their best to pull back from it. With that, I commend the first reading of the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill to the House. Thank you.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Ko te manawarere, ko te manawarere, kia ū, kia ū—trembling hearts, trembling hearts, be firm, be firm. This bill has significance to me as a descendant of Rāwiri Puhirake and Pene Taka Tuaia, the masterminds of the battle of Gate Pā, who, like Ngāti Maniapoto, were leading a group of native hostiles into battle.

Tauranga iwi, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, and Ngāti Pūkenga, were in the Waikato fighting alongside Waikato and Maniapoto and that was a favour that got returned when war arrived in Tauranga in 1864. Maniapoto were there alongside other iwi. When Tauranga iwi and their allies defeated the British troops in Tauranga, it convinced General Cameron of the hopelessness of continuing offensive operations against modern pā. No other attack on the pā seemed likely to succeed as the one on Gate Pā. Extensive artillery pieces were brought to bear on the pā and the British had a huge numerical advantage. The fact that this was not enough to gain even a tactical victory hardened Cameron’s opinion that it was futile to attack a completed pā.

Now, this had important strategic effects as the King movement was not defeated. It lay waiting behind two separate lines of defences. These lines consisted of flexible cordons of modern pā with one protecting Ngāti Hunua territory and the other protecting Ngāti Maniapoto territory. Neither of these lines were attacked as Cameron did not forget the lessons that he learnt at Gate Pā. Therefore, I stand as a proud descendant of those that never gave up, those that never backed down, and today, Ngāti Maniapoto, we salute you, we stand by you again, and we navigate this battle: your settlement. Ka whawhai tonu mātou, ake, ake, ake.

[We will continue to fight, for ever and ever.]

The Maniapoto area of interest encompasses the King Country, including the adjacent marine environment and part of the exclusive economic zone. The principal townships within their area of interest are the mighty Taumarunui, Mōkau—not “Mo-cow”—Ōtorohanga, Te Awamutu, and Kāwhia as well.

Today marks a very significant milestone between Maniapoto and the Crown. This is the first reading of their bill, the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill, and this bill has taken just over 30 years to complete—30 years and it all comes down to these pieces of paper right here, which is their claims settlement bill. Only less than a month ago—around a month ago—the deed of settlement was signed in the territory of Ngāti Maniapoto, and actually it’s great that only a month later we’re standing here in the House delivering the first reading. The iwi will certainly benefit from the speed of this and from us standing here today delivering the first reading.

It’s been a long journey for them to reach a point where they are today, and it was poignantly said by Keith Ikin, who’s been leading some of the negotiations for Ngāti Maniapoto, “No settlement will ever compensate for the mamae we have endured for many generations. We reflect on the courage and sacrifice of our tūpuna and the generations of our people who have gone before us. We held fast to our mana whakahaere and achieving a relationship with the Crown that reflected the expectations our forebears set out in their signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, within Te Ōhākī Tapu and within the Kawenata of 1903. Today”—this is the day of the signing of the deed of settlement—“we hold fast to the expectations our elders have set. The way forward is a new relationship with the Crown that is real partnership and respects the rangatiratanga of whānau, hapū and marae within Te Nehenehenui.”

He goes on to say, “For those whānau who have committed over the last 30 years to the Waitangi Tribunal process, to informing the settlement and the design of the proposed new governance entity, we acknowledge your hard work and commitment. At the forefront of [their] thoughts”—and we heard this today in the pōwhiri—“are those who committed to this settlement [many years ago], who are no longer with us today.”, and today, on the day of the first reading, we remember them.

Can I acknowledge the Waitangi Tribunal process, which has also played quite an important role in scrutinising the part of the Crown in the Ngāti Maniapoto settlement. It’s an incredibly important part of the process because it creates an independent authority, an authoritative view on the claims settlement. The conclusion was that the Crown failed to protect King Country Māori against the severe and the lasting impacts of the settlement. It released its report, Te Mana Whatu Ahuru: Report on Te Rohe Pōtae Claims, which addresses 277 claims concerning Crown actions. One of the chapters in their report addresses the claims concerning Māori health in the area and wellbeing from 1886 to the present, covering subjects such as education, employment, te reo Māori, and also racial discrimination.

In the mid-1880s, Te Rohe Pōtae Māori negotiated with the Crown to open their district to the North Island’s main trunk railway, a move which would bring the region’s longstanding isolation from Pākehā to an end. The Crown did not uphold its promises and between 1890 and 1905 Māori lost ownership of more than 250,000 hectares of land or, comparatively, a third of the district. The Crown ignored the assurances it gave them back then and that was the catalyst for the situation that King Country Māori find themselves in today.

People have become disenfranchised with their lands. As my colleague the Hon Willie Jackson said earlier, 90 percent of Ngāti Maniapoto do not live within their tribal territory. They’ve also become disenfranchised from health outcomes, positive health outcomes, which affects the wellbeing of the people and the identity. All of those impacts can be traced back to those decisions and those activities that were made by the Crown in the 1880s—all of this and a whole lot more I’m sure that we’re going to hear about in the Māori Affairs Committee. It is an important part of the process, albeit there’s already been 30 years of reports, 30 years of submissions, 30 years of claims from the whānau, from the iwi. But, actually, it is an important part of the process.

So, as soon as we can, we’re going to call for submissions on this, and I call out to all of Ngāti Maniapoto who are scattered around Aotearoa who may be listening to this. We encourage you to submit into this process. This is a very important issue. It’s a very important take [claim]. You must make sure that we hear your voices as we read the first, the second, and the third readings inside this Whare, the House of Parliament. As the submissions will be called, it will be one of the first orders of the committee in the Māori Affairs Committee in 2022, and I hope that we can do justice to a very long process for the people of Ngāti Maniapoto.

I stand here today as a descendent of Tauranga Moana. I acknowledge Ngāti Maniapoto and their journey and I look forward to bringing them into Māui Tikitiki-a-Taranga to be able to hear their claims, to be able to hear their submissions, and to be able to give them some justice on this, their Treaty settlement claim. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.

Voting

Correction—Extended Sitting Motion

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Madam Speaker. I’m—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Is the member taking a point of order?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: A point of order seeking leave to correct a vote.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Any objection to—hang on. Could the member clarify which vote?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Sure. With genuine apology, I seek leave to correct a vote. Earlier today, there was an urgency motion in which the Greens didn’t offer a proxy vote for the Māori Party. That should have been two votes opposed to that urgency motion.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. The Ayes are 75, the Noes are 45; the Ayes have it.

Bills

Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand here today to wish Maniapoto well through the time that is happening in the rohe at the moment with COVID, and particularly since Delta came on stream. It’s been a lovely day for me today to go and share some special moments at Parliament, but there have been a large number—a substantial number—of Maniapoto who have been unable to travel to Parliament today to take part in this reading in person due to what’s been happening around with COVID. I know that is disappointing, but it is also a decision that Maniapoto have made in terms of keeping safe to stay where they are.

It’s been quite a difficult time for me over the last few weeks when at Mōkau the boundary has been at level 3. The top three quarters of my electorate has actually been in level 3 for a long period of time, while the lower end of the electorate has been at level 2, so I haven’t been in that area as much as I would normally be. But it brings back memories of visiting Maniapoto in the early stages of this settlement process with the Hon Chris Finlayson, when we started having conversations. I also remember taking John Key there at one point when he was the Prime Minister, and we went and we listened to some of the hopes and dreams of Maniapoto and what they would like to see when this settlement process had happened.

I’d like to also acknowledge Minister Little in this process. But, even more importantly, I would like to acknowledge Minister Nanaia Mahuta, who I know has had a substantial role in putting this settlement together, and I look forward as it goes through the select committee.

I’ve been the member of Parliament there for seven years, and it actually came up at lunchtime today, when we were having our special event, that most electorates have two MPs. There are the Māori MPs—and acknowledging Nanaia Mahuta and also Adrian Rurawhe, who cover quite a substantial proportion of the King Country area. So this is really important in having the King Country being able to move forward, and I share the sentiments of Minister Andrew Little when he said, “I hope this long overdue settlement provides a foundation for the cultural, social, and economic future of Maniapoto and their descendants”.

I would like to wish Maniapoto well as we go through the next part of the process, because the history is sad. Like with all of these things, there was the terrible losses of life, which are the most important losses—the lives that were lost during the early part of New Zealand’s history—but also the land that has been lost.

So in this redress, not only will there be an apology going forward—and I look forward to being a part of that process as we get on the other side of Delta and COVID, which I’m sure we will at some point. We’re looking forward to not only the money changing hands but there are 36 sites of cultural significance which will be returned, and those are the things that are really meaningful. The money makes a big difference. It will never be enough, and it’s always hard standing here doing these settlements when we know that the money is never enough to make up for what has happened in the past, and there’s a lot of give and take on both sides. There’s generally more give on the side of the accepting party, because a lot of grievances need to be settled.

So, just in supporting this today, I would like to say that as this goes through the select committee, we do have a clarification that we would like in National around clause 124 in Subpart 9, just around the marine interests. It’s a little unclear to us what that means going forward. But, beyond this, we are very happy to be standing here today and supporting the first reading of this settlement to go to select committee. I look forward to the process and I look forward to engaging as we work through. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Kei a koutou e ngā hapū o Te Rohe Pōtae, tēnei te mihi o Te Paati Māori ki a koutou, i te pānuitanga tuatahi o tō pire whakataunga. Nāku te whiwhi ki te tū i roto i tēnei W’are kia mihi ki a koutou i tō koutou mahi rangatira.

[Greetings to the House. To the hapū of the King Country, the Māori Party greets you with respect to the first reading of your settlement bill. It is my pleasure to stand here in the House to acknowledge you in your chiefly endeavours.]

It’s with great pleasure that I rise on behalf of Te Paati Māori to speak to this, the first reading of the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill. I’d like to first mihi to those that are out there watching this kaupapa today, knowing that you’ve all been out on the ground vaccinating, testing, and supporting your whānau, your hapū, your iwi. I’d like to mihi to all the hauora that are out there. They’ve had to carry this ngāngara. I recognise and see all the mahi that you’re doing. I want to also mihi to all of the kuia, the kaumātua, negotiators, hapū leaders, and whānau who are here, who are not able to also be in the gallery but are here in wairua. I acknowledge those who are no longer with us since this journey started, 30 years ago. The mahi of rangatira is to weave together their people, and that is exactly what you have done to reach this point. Your natural development was interrupted in the most horrible way possible.

Unlike members from other parties, Te Paati Māori is only afforded a five-minute speaking slot at these debates, so I’ll keep my kōrero brief and to the point. But 50 percent of the speaking slots is a whole lot more than the 1 percent of our whenua that is offered to us in these settlements. We all know that iwi generally settle for less than 1 percent of what was confiscated—what was violently stolen from us, not lost—that the Crown-led Treaty settlement process can be re-traumatising and pit whānau, iwi, and hapū against each other. The settlements are unsettling. They create divide and tension. The people of Aotearoa owe you their thanks for your extraordinary generosity and sacrifice in agreeing to the terms of this settlement. We recognise your koha of aroha, for peace to this nation, for bearing the costs of the wars, for bearing the costs of the New Zealand Wars. As an uri of Taranaki, I also acknowledge your manaakitanga in providing a safe haven for our people in the face of our own displacement, in the face of your displacement—the loss of your lives and whenua at the hands of the Crown in the 1860s.

The Crown negotiation policies, which place everyone in the one-size-fits-all model, are cruel. The fiscal envelope is cruel. They have determined and engineered further division, further harm, and, therefore, further breaches of Te Tiriti. I know the damage this process does to our whānau, to our relationships, to our w’anaungatanga. I also know how important it is to never settle for what was achieved in the past—that we must keep striving to get the justice that our tūpuna deserve and to create a future where our mokopuna can thrive as their true selves.

That is why Te Paati Māori does not accept the settlements as full and final. This creates the false impression that our trauma lies in the past, that the inequities, the pollution, the poverty is no more. We all know that, sadly, that just isn’t the case. The Treaty is not settled; it is not honoured. A new Aotearoa is on the rise, an Aotearoa where tangata whenua, tangata moana, and tangata Tiriti unite and work together to create the harmonious, peaceful, and just nation that was envisaged in Te Tiriti—the future that our tūpuna sacrificed to ensure we could continue to strive for.

I look forward to continuing to support Ngāti Maniapoto as this bill passes through the House and to see the inevitable, continued progress of your people as you enter this new era. I also look forward to seeing your mokopuna come from other iwi and hapū to make sure their settlements and their needs are met. No settlement can compensate for the pain, the suffering, and the trauma that your people endured and, far too often, still ensure. But this marks an important step on your road to justice, on your road to prosperity for your people. This is not about dollars; this is about you being able to take the Crown to task, and, despite all the challenges—all the roadblocks that are put up to prevent real justice—nothing can take away from the fact that this is your day, this is your bill, and this is your story. Kia ora koutou katoa.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, te Māngai o te Whare, and it’s an absolute privilege to be able to talk on the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill. Can I just acknowledge Te Rohe Pōtae and the people of Ngāti Maniapoto hapū and whānau, and to those who are watching this today. What a moment it is for those, particularly with their ancestors and their mahi and their pain to finally be put to rest in a way that has some acknowledgment—maybe not full in some people’s view, but some acknowledgement—of restoring their mana as a people, as an iwi.

Can I also acknowledge the role that the Hon Nanaia Mahuta has played—my whanaunga—and her whānau in steering this to where it is today, and notwithstanding the roles of our Treaty negotiations Ministers, the Hon Andrew Little and the former Minister the Hon Christopher Finlayson. I sit on the Māori Affairs Committee, and I look forward to working with the komiti Chair, Tāmati Coffey, and our select committee on the mahi to ensure this gets taken through the parliamentary process.

I look back at the historical background that has underpinned this, right back to 1840, when Maniapoto rangatira who signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi at the heads of the Waikato River, at Kāwhia, and I look at the rangatira who were represented from Maniapoto. They were under the leadership of Rewi Maniapoto and others who fought Crown troops at places I know well, like Meremere, Pāterangi, and Ōrākau, and it has a sad, painful history that others have recounted here in the House this afternoon.

There has been talk about the boundary Te Rohe Pōtae. That, in itself, has a deep significance and plays into the naming of the rohe or the area as King Country and the establishment of that aukati, or boundary, around the territory to preserve the rangatiratanga and mana motuhake over the remaining land. I think that was important, and to note, no Pākehā could pass into these lands without permission, and the rangatira, despite everything, continued attempts to have their authority over their rohe recognised by the Crown.

We’re still talking back in the early 1880s, and there were certainly negotiations, a series of agreements, and, I guess, assurances that sought Crown recognition over their mana whakahaere—over their lands and peoples—in return for the agreement to lift the aukati and allow the construction of what’s talked about as Te Ara-o-Tūrongo, or that part of the North Island main trunk railway line to proceed through Te Rohe Pōtae. That continued right through to the current day.

So I at this point acknowledge the chief Crown negotiator, the team from Maniapoto, led by the chair, Keith Ikin, who we’ve talked about from the trust board. It was pleasing to see that earlier this year, they reached the milestone in that three-decade journey to the Treaty settlement and got, I guess, enough—that the Crown accepted that iwi in Te Rohe Pōtae, who make it up, had had enough support to enter a settlement agreement following that tribe-wide vote on resolutions in the Maniapoto deed of settlement, the proposed post-settlement governance entity, and the transfer of those fishery assets from the Maniapoto Māori Trust Board to that new governance entity.

So I acknowledge Keith as the trust board chairman for that significant step, and I know that there’s a lot to be done. I mean, when you look at what is required here, you have to shut down the trust board, you’ve got to set up the new governance entity, get the settlement signed, and—in the words of Keith Ikin, too—set up that five-year plan for an election of trustees for that new governance entity. I make comment about these things because they haven’t been spoken about this afternoon, but they do mean a whole lot of work within a tight time frame within the next 18 months, and so it will be busy.

Can I also acknowledge the Minister for Māori Development, the Hon Willie Jackson, who has said that iwi were happy with the voting process and the robustness of it. So it’s always good to hear the good news from our Minister there. Just in terms of just some of the detail, those three issues that I mentioned garnered more than 80 percent and I know that all parties were pleased and recognise that achievement, really noting that it was the highest voter participation from iwi that they had had. So I think it’s appropriate that we reflect on the efforts of the many generations of Ngāti Maniapoto, the iwi who over that time frame of three decades—30 years—have engaged in, as I say, the Waitangi Tribunal and that process and have brought this contribution to where it is today.

That name of the new settlement entity will be the Te Nehenehenui Trust, and they will take on the board’s current assets, as well as the settlement, which is worth that $178 million, made up of financial redress of $165 million and combined with rentals and interest accrued on Crown forests. Others have detailed what they are and, look, should they get the opportunity on decisions to buy further Crown forest lands, then that’s something that the new entity would do the analysis of. But the key focus—and it’s pleasing to see the trust board chair reiterate this in his kōrero—was to work with iwi to hear their views. We know, when we look at this process, there are plenty of eyes on those iwi who have done well and opinions on those who haven’t done well, and I do wish Ngāti Maniapoto all the very best in the next step in their journey, on their waka, to set the future direction for their iwi.

Can I just acknowledge the fact that this will be a critical stage, particularly in the time frame of the next 18 months. I know that communications with iwi members can be difficult, but, look, this can be offset by modern communication methods. I know that 90 percent of Maniapoto live outside of the region, in the Waikato, Hamilton City, but also in Auckland, and, like many of our Māori population, they are transient. They live anywhere at any time, and it’s important to acknowledge the desire of the iwi to continue those conversations and have those face-to-face conversations wherever they can, because, ultimately, they need to feel and own the settlement that’s been signed.

So this I think is significant. I’m always proud that we get to a stage in this House where we bring these claims to first reading. I’m even more excited when they’re at the third reading, but there is a process to go through. I have enjoyed working on the other Treaty claim settlements and we learnt so much, and I’m only hopeful that we can get to Te Rohe Pōtae, meet the people of Ngāti Maniapoto, those who have put the mahi in, and celebrate with them on the next steps for the future. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Tēnei te mihi w’akanui ki Ngāti Maniapoto, ngā uri o Ngāti Maniapoto, ngā hapū o Te Rohe Pōtae, ka mihi maioha.

[This is an acknowledgment of Ngāti Maniapoto, the descendants of Ngāti Maniapoto and the hapū of the King Country.]

I rise as the last speaker for the National Party and also as uri of Whanganui. I acknowledge Ngāti Maniapoto, those who are gathered near, far, wherever you are; this is a Titanic, an exceptionally powerful moment in the history of Ngāti Maniapoto, with the reading—the first reading—of the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill. I acknowledge those who have gone before, those who are gathered here—that is, in the precinct in Parliament. I look over and I acknowledge the Hon Nanaia Mahuta. When I look at you, I see your mother and your father, those who have gone before, and those of us who are here, we carry the responsibility and the weight of our tūpuna. I acknowledge those who are far away, of Ngāti Maniapoto. We come together to w’akanui—to celebrate—today the first reading of the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill. My acknowledgment also extends to those who have been leaders. Those who are here in the present, you are the gift for your future, your mokopuna. Those of ours who’ve departed, we are their mokopuna, and we carry on into the future the aspirations but also the expectations of our old people—those of us here who are becoming old, for our mokopuna, our future.

I acknowledge and draw to the attention of New Zealanders, in addition to Ngāti Maniapoto, who are tuned in, listening in, to this debate this afternoon, that the bill records at clause 12 those who signed, and thus this is inscribed into law—into this bill soon to become law. Those who were present and were signatories at the deed of settlement on 11 November 2021, I acknowledge all of you—Madam Speaker, I say “you” because, appropriately, I acknowledge those whom this bill is about. Also, the acknowledgment is to the negotiators both for Ngāti Maniapoto peoples and on behalf of the Crown. May I say, in paying acknowledgment, aroha mai: our apology from the National Party for not being present at the pō’hiri here in the precinct today. We did not know. Tikanga in the past has afforded us the opportunity to be present, so simply to allay any concerns as to why the National Party were not present. We are today. My colleague Joseph Mooney and I, we sit on the Māori Affairs Committee. Regrettably, we weren’t there, but we will be to listen to the submissions from those in relation to this bill.

May I just go over briefly, again for the benefit of New Zealanders—because, Ngāti Maniapoto, you know the passage and the journey that you have been on and that this bill records—the chronology. There’s been reference made to Waitangi Tribunal claims that were lodged back in the 1980s, and, again, I turn to the deed of settlement, which records there in clause 9.2.2 the claims and the claimants associated with the passage of the journey to arrive at the bill for the first reading today. Of note and interest, there were 108 claims to the Waitangi Tribunal in relation to those exclusively associated to Maniapoto or representative entity, and, at clause 9.2.3 of the deed of settlement, an additional 80 claims to the Waitangi Tribunal. So that conveys the enormity but also the reach and the impact of the breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the Crown having to amend that by way of this bill.

So the Waitangi Tribunal claims commenced back in the 1980s, some 30 years ago, and then the chronology: in December 2016, a mandate endorsing the Maniapoto Māori Trust Board to negotiate on behalf of their people. On 17 December 2016, the terms of negotiation were signed. On 15 August 2017, the agreement in principle was signed. December 2020, the deed of settlement was initialled, and then a year later it was signed to completion on 11 November 2021. And here we are today, 14 December 2021, for the first reading of the passage of the bill into law.

The bill is comprised of 233 clauses, seven parts, six schedules, which summarise and encapsulate the journey of the historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi over the course of time. Also inscribed into law at clause 8 is the summary of the historical account. Of note, clause 8, which is the historical account summary; clause 9, the acknowledgments; and clause 10, the apology—and I will address that in greater detail at the third reading—are the only parts or portions of the bill that are in te reo Māori. That is significant because that portrays and is indicative of the reo of the old people who are now mostly gone carrying through.

The historical account—again, New Zealanders, when these Treaty settlement bills come before Parliament, they are a history lesson, and they are putting into law, accurately, the history of the people who have been affected, afflicted, and aggrieved by the breaches of the Treaty. Clause 8 details that “Under the leadership of Rewi Maniapoto and others Ngāti Maniapoto fought Crown troops … at Meremere, Pāterangi and Ōrākau … also present at the unfortified village of Rangiaowhia”. The detail of the history and the grievance and the wounds and the mamaes that, hopefully, this bill will seek to appease and to heal is detailed there. Time does not permit me to address all of that today. At clause 9, there are 44 acknowledgments detailed in the bill—again, time does not permit me to read that. I invite New Zealanders to turn to the bill as a history lesson. Then, as I said, clause 10 is the apology, which I tend to save for the last reading, the third reading, before this passes into law.

The background—I’ve talked about the chronology—Maniapoto are an iwi-based tribal peoples in Te Rohe Pōtae, the King Country, in and around Te Kūiti, Ōtorohanga, and Te Awamutu. There’s an estimated 45,930 members associated to Ngāti Maniapoto, with more than 90 percent living outside the tribal lands. This just gives some context for the benefit of New Zealanders, because, Ngāti Maniapoto, you know your journey, you know your story. I often seize the moment and the opportunity for New Zealanders to learn from the wrongdoings of the past as we move forward into the future to remedy and to surface with hope; as I said, aspiration; expectation to fulfil what these Treaty settlements afford and allow—never in recognition of the real value and the depth of the wrongdoing and the damage, but it is a start, it is a reset, and it is to refresh moving forward.

The National Party supports, as we do, all Treaty settlement bills. There’s been a little bit of concern expressed about a particular clause or provision. However, the select committee is the place for that kōrero and enlightenment from our people to set the course and the pathway further into the future with clarity and with fulfilling expectations and hope. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Associate Minister for Māori Development): Whakataka te hau ki te uru, whakataka te hau ki te tonga; kia mākinakina ki uta, kia mātaratara ki tai; kia hī ake ana te atakura, he tio, he huka, he hauhū, tihei mauri ora.

Tēnei ka ruirui i te kawakawa hei tohu maumahara ki ngā tini mate o te rā, o te marama, o te tau o nanahi rā. Nā rātou i kawea i ngā kōrero me ngā wawata e pā ana ki ngā hapū maha o Ngāti Maniapoto. E moe, e au te moe, ka tau.

Kāti ake, e mihi ana ki a koutou kei te hau kāinga, ngā huānga. Koutou kei ngā rangatira kei ngā whaea e kawea nei i ngā wawata mō ngā uri whakatipu, nei te mihi maioha ki a koutou katoa.

[The wind swirls in the West, and the South; the piercing cold is felt inland and on the coast too; the dawn rises, indeed it is icy, frosty, and the wind is cold, ‘tis the breath of life.

I sprinkle kawakawa as a sign of remembrance to the many dead of today, of the month, the year, and yesterday. It was them who carried the issues and dreams of the many hapū of Ngāti Maniapoto. Rest in peace.

Allow me to greet you all, the home people, my relatives. To the many chiefs, the many women who bear the dreams of the next generation, this is my sincere greeting to you all.]

Can I thank all the members that have spoken to contribute to today’s first reading for the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill. To some extent this will be the first time that Maniapoto will have the opportunity to tell their story, because much of their story has been eclipsed in the past by the story of the Kīngitanga, by the story of the Waikato Wars and the raupatu that took place because of Maniapoto’s role at that time. It’s not often, as a member of this House, that you get the opportunity to share a story that is intrinsic to who you are, and I get to do that today, so I’m very grateful. It’s an honour and a pride to be able to speak to this particular bill.

Can I make some acknowledgments of my own to Chris Finlayson, who started off this particular process. The member for the King Country, Barbara Kuriger, was right. She did a lot to support the aspirations of Maniapoto by ensuring that her colleagues at the time, who were the then Government, were very aware of the aspirations within Maniapoto. In fact, Chris Finlayson, other than Koro Wētere when he was a Minister, was the second Minister to travel to Kāwhia. He travelled to Kāwhia with the understanding that that would be a place where the special factors, the unique factors, of the Maniapoto settlement could be shared with him, and, to some extent, clause 124 will emerge out of some of the history that was told to him at that particular time, albeit save it for the select committee.

Can I also acknowledge the current Minister of Treaty settlements, because, back in 2016, he held a different role in Opposition. When I went to go and see him to say, “Is it possible for me to support my iwi to be able to help to negotiate forward?”, he didn’t hesitate, and now here we are, in very different roles, and able to steward through such a significant settlement. It will be the fourth-largest settlement by some measures, but actually, by intent, it has the same intent as every other settlement: to try and find a way to resolve historical grievances, to set the record straight, to be able to ensure that there is a future for the next generation and it is bright, it is vibrant, and it will be of the making of every individual of Ngāti Maniapoto who want to serve the next generation.

There are some acknowledgments that I should make. It’s always a difficult time, but certainly for the period that I was involved in this, I want to acknowledge mātua Tiwha Bell, John Kaati, Bob Koroheke—the late Bob Koroheke—Pat Stafford, Rovina Maniapoto-Anderson, Miria Tauariki, and Muiora Barry, who were our travelling team of experts. Through that whole period of brief negotiation, there was a lot of work that went into it—years and years of work. But those kaumātua and kuia symbolise the hopes and aspirations of what the settlement needed to be. It was a challenging time, because the mandating process had been contested through the Waitangi Tribunal, internal to the tribe, and many tribes have been through this process. The Treaty settlement process can be very divisive, but, irrespective of that, there was a small cohort of kaumātua who were absolutely steadfast in their ambition to ensure that we were continuing to move forward, and I thank them for their leadership.

I also want to acknowledge Paul Meredith, because the quality of the historical record and the apology that has been set in place in the deed and also in the legislation is by no small measure by his hand. He put off a PhD so that he could contribute back to his iwi and set the record straight—so that needs to be said—also to the negotiating supporting team at the time: Tēpene Wilson, Titahi Tarawa, members of the Maniapoto Māori Trust Board, and at the time the then serving CEO Janise Eketone. Much has been said about the different profiles and make-ups of each chapter of the settlement, but a lot of work had been undertaken prior to the negotiating team being appointed so all they had to do was really pull together the visions and aspirations from the hard work and effort that had already been achieved within the iwi.

The other elements of the settlement that I really wanted to pick up on—and it was commented on previously by other members—are some of the unique features. In so far as the raumairoa—natural resource redress—elements of the settlement, many will be aware that Ngā Wai o Waipā preceded this particular settlement, and it was bespoke to the Waipā River, which is the largest tributary into the Waikato River. So, by extension, when it came to the point to negotiate the substantial settlement, the terms of the agreements reached in Ngā Wai o Waipā extended to the whole of the Maniapoto rohe. The reason for that is Maniapoto is water rich on private Māori land, and it was important to Maniapoto to ensure that there was source protection of these puna that lay inherent within the region. So Chris Finlayson understood how important that was, he understood the intimacy and relationship of Maniapoto to their water, and that was why the natural resource redress section reads as it does.

Then it’s also important to mention—I note the connections that have been said in the House—the headwaters of the Waipā River sit in Maniapoto and the headwaters of the Whanganui River sit in Maniapoto. So it was important to ensure that at its core, water was going to be a uniting feature between the interrelationships across the border for Maniapoto.

Can I come back to the key pou and pillar that guided these kaumātua and the negotiating principle. The first pou was always kotahitanga. As I say, Treaty settlement processes can be very divisive, but each step of the way that pou of kotahitanga always advocated for the collective interests of all tribal members of Maniapoto. Even though the tribunal process was taking place, contesting the mandate of the trust board, kaumātua would continue to reinforce kotahitanga. Kotahitanga has to be about everybody. Ninety percent of our tribe live outside of the rohe. We have to find ways to make this settlement work for everybody. The second pou is te mana o Maniapoto, and that harks back to Te Ōhākī Tapu, which members have referred to, the kawenata, te Mana Whatu Ahuru raumairoa—all of these deep and intrinsic knowledge systems that lie within the essence of who Maniapoto is and will be going forward into the future.

Te Whare o Te Nehenehenui. Now, if there’s something unique about Maniapoto in relation to Waikato, it’s the fact that for Maniapoto leadership is distributed. That means that every house within Maniapoto, every marae within Maniapoto, every hapū within Maniapoto stands on its own mana, but when it’s important to come together as one, they unite, unshakeable, unbreakable. So Te Whare o Te Nehenehenui is about reinforcing the distributive leadership, the power base that exists within the iwi, and it will be a guide for the future, and it will also be the name for the post-settlement governance entity going forward.

The last pou: Te Rohe Pōtae. As I said, part of the double duty obligation of Maniapoto after the 1863 land wars was to hold the aukati for 20 years—to hold a defensive boundary so that kin from Waikato, kin from Taranaki, could be looked after within the Maniapoto region. For 20 years, no one could break it, but it was by the temerity of spirit and leadership of those rangitira at the time that they advocated not only for the redress of the wrong that had occurred in their time and the Treaty of Waitangi, the return of lands and the like, they advocated to ensure that there would be a future for their people.

So another important part of this settlement is the Main Trunk line and the agreements around that Te Ōhākī Tapu. That is why Te Ara-o-Tūrongo is such an important naming element of the settlement. You will get all of that at the select committee, and I hope you do get the opportunity to go and visit, go to Te Tokanganui a Noho, listen to the people, listen to the stories that underpin the essence of this settlement, but, most importantly, listen to the heart of the people, because the heart of Maniapoto, at its core, really want to see a better future. They know by their own hands, by their own merit, by their own convictions that they can make something very different and better for their next generation, and to them, lastly, I applaud them.

Can I just thank David Tapsell, who was the Crown negotiator. He’s got many stories to tell about uncle Tiwha kicking him along. Thank you very much for your efforts in this work too.

Nō reira, kāti rā tērā pea māku hei whakakapi i roto i tētahi karakia. Kia hora te marino, kia whakapapa pounamu te moana, kia tere te kārohirohi. Ko tō hoa haere ko te rangimārie, ko tō hoa haere ko te rangimārie. Nō reira kei te Whare, kei ngā kokonga o tēnei Whare, tēnei a Ngāti Maniapoto e mihi atu ki a koutou katoa, tēnā koutou.

E pā tō hau he wini raro, he hōmai aroha

Kia tangi atu au i kōnei, he aroha ki te iwi

Ka momotu ki tawhiti ki Paerau, ko wai e kite atu

Kei whea aku hoa i mua ra, i te tōnuitanga

Ka haramai tēnei ka tauwehe, ka raungaiti au.

Nō reira, Ngāti Maniapoto kei a koutou tēnei wā.

[Let me conclude with a prayer. May calm be widespread, may the sea glisten like greenstone, and may it shimmer. Let peace be your travelling companion. Therefore, to all corners of the House, I am too of Ngāti Maniapoto, and I greet you all.

Your breath touches me like the north wind, bringing sad memories

I mourn again in sorrow for my kin

Who have disappeared beyond Paerau, who can now see them

Where are my former friends from the era of prosperity

The time of separation has come, leaving me desolate.

Therefore, Ngāti Maniapoto, the time is yours.]

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Maniapoto Claims Settlement Bill be considered by the Māori Affairs Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.

Bills

Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I present a legislative statement on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment 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 Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

As a new Government, we accepted that New Zealand faced a housing crisis and that it is our duty to turn around these long-term trends. I think we all now accept in this House that many people have been experiencing stress from housing costs, resultant overcrowding, and homelessness. Today, we deliver legislation that builds on the Government’s existing National Policy Statement (NPS) on Urban Development, bringing that forward faster and amending the Resource Management Act to deliver better outcomes. This bill will mean that more New Zealanders can have a healthy home sooner, whether they’re owners or renters. I’d like to thank the Environment Committee and officials again for their work on the bill.

There’s no doubt that the bipartisan approach of Labour and National to this legislation, supported in the House today by the Greens and the Māori Party, is important. It will help provide greater long-term certainty and stability in respect of this important setting.

Before I turn to the details of the bill, though, I would like to respond to what I thought was a slight over-egging of the pudding by the deputy leader of the National Party in the House last week, where she claimed that this bill will make greater inroads into the housing crisis than other measures that the Government has already taken. Although its impact is significant and will be beneficial to housing supply, it should be seen in context. It’s a welcome addition to the heavy lifting that’s being done by some other policy initiatives altogether. The cost-benefit analysis done by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) showed that the existing NPS on Urban Development will add 72,000 dwellings as a consequence, and PwC now think that that’s a conservative estimate.

In addition, as a Government, we’ve also introduced a suite of other actions to increase housing supply to get people into warm, dry housing, and, as I’ve said, it was us in 2017 who were willing to acknowledge a housing crisis that had been denied, in the face of people sleeping in garages and in cars. We’ve invested taxpayers’ hard-earned taxes wisely. We’ve had a $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund to speed up and scale up home building by enabling infrastructure needed to support housing. Most recently, this has included $136 million allocated to large-scale projects in Porirua, and $282 million in Auckland. In our first term, we established the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to lead our housing response. We established, also, the Urban Growth Agenda and Land for Housing Programme to improve land supply. We established Kāinga Ora to provide a joined-up approach to housing and community development. We passed the Urban Development Act, the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act, and, as I’ve said previously, put in place the NPS on Urban Development. These measures have enabled housing development, they’ve ensured that more capital is available to build infrastructure, and they’ve supported well—or they are going to support—well-functioning urban environments. We also passed the COVID Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act, and projects referred under that Act have included more than 3,400 residential units in the 2021 year. We’ve required the Reserve Bank to consider housing and monetary and financial decisions, and we’ve amended the Overseas Investment Act to ban most overseas buyers of existing residential property, to curb offshore speculation in our home, whilst encouraging investment into new housing.

This term, we’ve continued at pace by continuing with the comprehensive reform of the resource management system, we’ve dedicated $400 million to the Progressive Home Ownership Fund to help families into their first houses, and the next phase will see Kāinga Ora offering support for shared home ownership for households earning less than $130,000 a year. In March this year, we released our housing package with that $3.8 billion infrastructure fund to accelerate housing faster, with more support for Kāinga Ora, and with higher income and housing caps so that more people can access first-home grants and loans. We doubled the brightline tax test and we phased out interest deductions for residential investments in existing homes, again tipping the balance in favour of homeowners, and encouraging investors into new homes rather than bidding up the prices of existing houses.

As a Government, we boosted apprenticeships and support for trades training. This has been hugely successful, with more than 100,000 people extra in training, and many tens of thousands of those are in full-blown building trade apprenticeships. We’ve launched the Construction Sector Accord to help meet the challenges facing that sector as it’s rapidly expanded. We announced the $350 million Residential Response Fund to help balance our finance sector through COVID-19. We amended the Building Act to exempt smaller projects and lift the efficiency in quality building. We established the Māori and Iwi Housing Innovation programme to enable the building of more homes on Māori land. We introduced the healthy homes standards and amended the Residential Tenancies Act because renters deserve healthy and secure housing. We funded over 18,000 public and transitional houses to be delivered by 2024. We launched Housing First, working with councils to support housing providers and we’ve delivered an action plan for homelessness, which is actually one of the many reasons why we’ve succeeded as a country to overcome COVID, because we enabled a lot of homeless people to come off the streets.

The impacts of all of these policies on the supply of homes are clear in the numbers. There are now more than 74,900 public homes, 8,770 more than before the 2017 election. Building consent numbers are running at record levels with more than 155,000 issued since October 2017. More than 47,000 consents were issued in the year to the end of October, and an average of 44,000 is expected over the coming year according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s national construction pipeline. So that will be about 265,000 additional houses or homes after the next six years. In Auckland alone, the number of houses being built has almost doubled over the last five years, from 10,000 in 2017 to 19,000 per annum now. This is all very substantial progress, and for the first time in a long, long time, New Zealand is building more houses than needed to accommodate population growth, so we are making progress.

That is the background to this bill. This bill builds on that strong foundation of housing action. PwC modelling found that the medium-density rules in this legislation will add tens of thousands more dwellings in the next five to eight years than the five tier 1 urban areas. That strengthens our plan to improve housing supply by bringing forward and strengthening the NPS on Urban Development, and it makes land use and infrastructure more efficient.

This approach was reinforced by the Infrastructure Commission in their submissions to the bill. They highlighted that demand for infrastructure is driven primarily by population growth, and made the point that this bill is unlikely to increase the total cost of infrastructure in the long run, as it shifts where development happens, rather than whether it happens.

Intensification in cities, rather than sprawl, is shown to bring economic benefits, as well as environmental and wellbeing benefits. This bill introduces the medium-density residential standards, which will mean that more people in our cities will have more housing choices—not being forced to do anything; they’ll have choices—at more price points. Importantly, these homes will be in areas close to transport, schools, jobs, hospitals, and other services—in other words: where people want to live. The Environment Committee has strengthened the bill to ensure that density and livability go hand in hand. Intensification will also help low-carbon urban form and the protection of valuable productive soils outside of cities that we need to grow food.

Finally, the bill makes things easier and cheaper for councils and their communities by streaming this part of the council plan-making process, and so will, in turn, make sure that the houses that we need can be built sooner.

We’ve heard for many years now that too many Kiwis are locked out of the housing market. They will see this bill as a further opportunity to get a foot on the housing ladder and obtain a healthy and secure home to own or to rent. With this bill, we can look forward to more housing choices, like an extra home out the back for a parent or to provide a home for a renter or a first-home buyer; houses with easy transport options nearby so people can get to work, businesses, school, or the places that they recreate. We’re going to have easier development options for papa kāinga and to support extended family and multigenerational living, and we will do this with increased amenity and, I think, better housing, because if people aren’t spending as much on land, they can afford a better house. All of this is enabled; not required. The choice is for the landowner or developer.

The final point I’m going to say is that I find it incredibly odd that the party that claims it wants less regulation and favours greater autonomy for property owners is now tripping over itself to argue—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): This bill is the unique product of a negotiation and bipartisan accord between the National and Labour parties to ensure that more housing can be built in New Zealand. And it is right that people listening to this debate today will say, “Well, why has National chosen to work with the Government in this way?” And so I think it’s important that I put on the record for this House the context in which we are debating these changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA), because here in New Zealand, today, we are facing a housing emergency. This is despite the election of a Government in 2017 that had at the core of their manifesto a commitment to solve what they then described as a “housing crisis”. Since that point, we have seen rampant house price inflation at levels far beyond that seen around the rest of the world. This has led to immeasurable social harm, with more than 4,000 families now raising their children in emergency housing, prices up 26 percent in the past year alone, reaching a staggering, eye-watering median of $925,000. We now have a State house waiting list of historic levels, with more than 24,000 New Zealanders squeezed out of the private rental market and forced to line up at the Ministry of Social Development for a house. Things have never been worse for first-home buyers. Whereas in 2001, the average house was worth around three times the average income, today that ratio is more like eight to one. A first-home buyer today wanting to purchase a median-valued property would need to save $185,000 in deposit—that is an extraordinarily steep mountain to climb.

In National, we think it is untenable to have the property ladder pulled out of reach for so many New Zealanders. That is why we support this bill’s measures to make it easier to build more housing in New Zealand, because we believe that only by building more houses and building more affordable houses in the places where people want to live, will we be able to truly restore the idea of an egalitarian property-owning democracy.

This bill will allow our major cities, in Wellington, Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, and Christchurch to grow both up and out. It will allow people to add more housing to existing residential areas and to add the kind of housing that first-home buyers can more readily achieve—that is apartments, townhouses, smaller dwellings. We need more of those choices for the first-home buyers of today and tomorrow, and this bill will enable more of them to be built. It also allows for the fast-tracking of greenfields development on the outskirts of our major urban areas so that more housing can be built on the outskirts of our city. In short, taken together these measures will reduce the cost, the complexity, and the delays that currently face too many people when they set about trying to build a new house on an existing residential section. It will make it easier and it will unlock more homes.

The bill has not been without its critics, and I want to acknowledge today those who have raised their concerns about how this bill will work in practice. At the Environment Committee that considered this bill, we listened to and scrutinised hundreds of submissions, and I want to make it very clear to those who submitted that your contribution, your analysis made this a far better bill than it would have otherwise been. We were given a range of perspectives, both at a detailed level and a higher concept level that we listened to as a committee. As a result, we have made extensive amendments to this bill, through 50 pages worth of amendments in fact, which I think make this bill much better and therefore much more enduring than it would have been in its original form.

The key areas that have been reformed and made better are around design standards. It was the view of members across the House that those New Zealanders who came to the committee and said, “There must be good design standards when you’re having more intensified housing in your urban areas”—it was our view that those submitters were right. So we have made changes: to allow for landscaped areas, to allow for greater outdoor living spaces and outlook spaces, and to reduce the height of housing in relation to boundaries. We also listened intently to local authorities who said that they needed to maintain some discretion so that they could exclude areas from intense housing development that were not properly suited to it—areas, for example, that were subject to natural hazards, areas that had particular historic heritage, areas which would not be able to support the level of housing that this bill implies. So we tidied up the qualifying matters section of this bill to ensure that local authorities were able to carry over assessments formed during previous planning processes.

A third area where I think we have improved this bill is that we have fixed up some of the transition measures around private plan changes that are already in process that will bring on new housing development. And we have allowed for local authorities to put in place district-wide standards around things like hydronic loading and permeability. These are technical terms and I talk about them in this third reading speech because I acknowledge all of those in the engineering departments, planning departments, and other departments of our local authorities who told us these things matter. We have heard you. We have also heard the voices of the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who have said to us that “We can no longer tolerate a situation where it is too difficult to build new housing in the suburbs of our New Zealand cities.” We have heard those people, and this bill sticks fast to its purpose of ensuring that more people will be able to build a home without facing the disincentive of a laborious resource consent process, while having the certainty that development can occur.

I want to acknowledge the constructive approach our select committee took and, in particular, I want to acknowledge Eugenie Sage, the chair of the committee, and Rachel Brooking from the Labour Party. It is an unusual situation when National and Labour work so closely on the development of something, but I think that it has meant that concessions on both sides have made this a more enduring piece of legislation. But I do want to put this on the record of the House, particularly following the contribution from Minister Parker: the truth is that Labour had an approach to housing that today, as we stand here, has failed. They promised 100,000 KiwiBuild houses; they have not and will never deliver them. They said that removing interest deductibility from landlords would somehow improve things; all we have seen since then is further house price appreciation. They added a maximum sustainable employment goal to our monetary policy, and subsequently we have seen extraordinary house price inflation.

So here on the National side of the House, we will continue to raise our concerns about this Government’s approach to housing. We will continue to be constructive critics where we see their policies failing. But, most importantly, we will continue what we see as a solemn duty to keep putting forward the constructive policy solutions needed to restore the dream of home ownership in New Zealand, whether it’s further reducing consenting processes, enabling more greenfields development, bringing on more community housing, exploring cooperative housing models, looking at actually legislating for build-to-rent housing, doing more in the building supply chain, reforming unit titles. National will keep putting forward solutions; we will do that work. We have said for many years that RMA reform of this sort was necessary. Labour heard our cry. It took four years, but today is a good day. Our communities will have their character enhanced by this bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! The member’s time is up.

RACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to briefly touch on the why, where, what, how, and a little bit of thanks, as well, in my contribution today.

Why are we passing the third reading this afternoon? We’ve heard from both the previous two speakers, Nicola Willis and the Hon David Parker, about the huge problem we have in New Zealand that I think everybody in this House acknowledges about our lack of housing. We also have a climate emergency. The intensification of our cities goes some way to help with that issue, and that is that when you incentivise transport mode shifts, so that you have people taking public transport, people walking, people cycling, that that can help with reducing our carbon emissions from transport, which are 40 percent of our carbon emissions. It’s also important that we don’t sprawl and build on very productive land. Those issues are ones that the National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 (NPS-UD) was made to address, as well as this housing issue. What we have with this bill is speeding up the process for the implementation of the NPS-UD, and also this new tool, which is the medium density residential standards (MDRS).

Where does this apply? Well, it applies to cities. It applies to the tier 1 councils. It doesn’t apply to islands. It doesn’t apply to Waiheke Island—that was a change that the Environment Committee made. It doesn’t apply to towns near centres like Christchurch, including Oxford and Akaroa.

What is it? This bill, it enables more development. It doesn’t require people to develop sections that they don’t want to. All it does is mean that they can build somewhere without requiring a resource consent if they are meeting the MDRS. Or maybe they have some sort of consent requirement as a restricted discretionary activity, which is a simpler consenting process than some others. So it’s good for developers.

What is it? So, by August of 2022, which is approaching at speed, these tier 1 councils will notify an intensification planning instrument. That will do both the implementation of the MDRS but also the implementation of that NPS-UD.

How will it do it? Well, I think there’s a couple of points I want to touch on in the “how”, and that is we’ve heard a lot about qualifying matters. The previous speaker, Nicola Willis, spoke about them in part. The MDRS doesn’t have to apply to every single area of a relevant residential zone. There may be qualifying matters that mean that it’s not appropriate to intensify a certain area. So one of the qualifying matters—and these are found in new section 77L—is any section 6 matter of the Resource Management Act (RMA). Section 6 matters are those of national importance, and they include historic heritage.

I just want to dwell very quickly on that term, “historic heritage”, because this is defined in the RMA. The definition includes a contribution to the understanding of New Zealand’s history and culture. That’s quite a high bar to reach—a nationally important historic heritage measure.

So areas that a lot of submitters talked to us about in front of the Environment Committee related to special character areas. So these are areas where planners have said, “Not quite historic heritage, but still some very important amenity values.” Some of those areas might have some historic heritage. So the section 6 qualifying matter won’t necessarily apply to those areas. Instead, they’ll have to rely on a different qualifying matter, and that is “Other matters”. I mention this because if the council is going to use an “other matter” as a qualifier, then it has to produce more analysis and justification for why it’s relying on that as a qualifying matter—so reducing the enabling powers of the MDRS and the NPS-UD. It will have to do this at a site-by-site level. So that’s an important part of this piece of legislation that planners in our biggest centres will be grappling with, no doubt.

Also important to note that where a development doesn’t meet the standards in the MDRS that then it’s a restricted discretionary activity. As I said before, that means that you need to get a resource consent, but the decision makers, their discretion is restricted to the issue that’s been breached. So if you want to intensify your land more than what the MDRS allows for, then you can apply for one of these resource consents. Of course, it’s more time-consuming, but it’s very much still on the table as an option.

Finally, I’d really like to thank the Ministry for the Environment advisers, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development advisers that we had working on Saturdays in front of us in the select committee, but I’m sure they worked all the weekends in the short time that we were looking at this bill. Also the Parliamentary Counsel Office—the same can be said for them. And, of course, our wonderful clerks. So thank you to all of them, and I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. In rising to support the third reading of the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill on behalf of the National Party, I just want to commence my contribution by picking up where the deputy chair of the Environment Committee, Rachel Brooking, who has just resumed her seat, left off, and that was to acknowledge with grateful appreciation the very hard work that was done on this piece of legislation by officials, who worked extraordinarily long hours, under significant time constraints and pressure—to the Parliamentary Counsel Office staff, who were grappling with some quite technical issues around planning, and I recognise that that tested their remarkable skill. They are incredibly talented people, and at this time of the year, it pays sometimes just to acknowledge some of the people that don’t have a public face around this place but are integral to the effective working of our Parliament but also to the creation of enduring legislative drafting that actually does the job that select committees and Parliament wants done.

This piece of legislation is an interesting culmination of work that has actually transpired over several months, and I think it’s worthwhile just traversing some of the history as to how we got to what is, in many respects, quite an unusual situation where the two major parties in this Parliament—and I think actually all but one of the smaller parties in the Parliament—are supporting this legislation. On this side of the House, we have long argued that the answer to our housing challenges and to getting more housing built, and to providing the opportunities for young people and first-home buyers, in particular, to get into the property market was reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA). And we have long argued that that piece of legislation needed work. So it was that, in the last election campaign, when our former leader Judith Collins was spokesperson for housing, she actually wrote to the Government and offered a bipartisan approach to solving housing issues. Now, that of itself was, I think, an important step forward, because, throughout the nine years of the National administration, every single time that the John Key and Bill English - Government tried to reform the RMA, it was universally opposed by the then Opposition—every single time, every single time; oppose, oppose, oppose. And there was never any sense of collegiality or a sense of Parliament trying to act as a unifier to solve some of these issues.

Well, on this side of the House, we think that, when an issue as important as this becomes apparent and an opportunity for a bipartisan approach presents, we should take it. So, during that 2020 campaign, we announced that we would introduce emergency measures to cut back on red tape and make it easier to build houses. So this is, effectively, what this piece of legislation does. This is National Party policy that we campaigned on, and I’m surprised that that has come as a surprise to some people who have been commentating and passing criticism about this legislation. And then, in January of this year, Judith Collins actually wrote to the Prime Minister offering to work together on emergency legislation, and in April she introduced into the members’ ballot our own bill that would have required councils to zone at least for 30 years of growth. That bill in the ballot actually incorporated much of what is being proposed and will be passed by this piece of legislation. Then not much happened through the next several months, until, in June of this year, my colleague, the deputy leader of the National Party, Nicola Willis, and I received letters from Ministers Woods and Parker, responding to what they say had been their own proposal on how to achieve the aims of National’s bill. And we actually welcomed that. It’s understandable that we were initially a bit surprised, but we were welcoming of the fact that they were open to discussing elements of our proposed legislation and our solution, and, as a result, negotiations ensued and the legislation was introduced to Parliament.

And it’s fair to say that this actually, at third reading, is a very much improved and better bill than the bill at first reading, and that’s largely due to the good efforts done at Environment Committee, and I too want to acknowledge the role played by my colleagues on that select committee, but in particular I want to acknowledge the chair of the select committee, the Hon Eugenie Sage, who, I think, did a terrific job reading, literally, a thousand or more documents. We received close to a thousand submissions, and we heard from nearly 200 submitters over a very condensed period of time. Some of the most compelling submissions, from my point of view, were not those submissions that came from people who, for one reason or another, objected to the general concept of intensification, but those submissions that came actually from young people, I found most compelling—those people, those young people, who said, “This bill gives us hope. It gives us hope for the potential that one day we too can be property owners, and that we can buy a house and that we can get a foot on to the property ladder.” We are interested, actually, they said, as young people, in going further than this bill has gone. They wanted, actually, even more radical reform than this bill proposes. So I was heartened by that response and encouraged by it, and I was less compelled by those who came to the select committee and actually said, “Oh, no—well, enough is being done” and, “We’re working towards it” and, “Things are happening”, and “We’ve got a plan.” Well, actually, more than 4,000 people tonight will be asleep in a motel unit because we have such a shortage of affordable and easily obtained, purchased houses in New Zealand.

So this is a bill that’s all about freeing up land markets. It’s all about property rights, actually. It’s all about the ability of a property owner to free up the capital that lies currently buried on their back lawn. And I heard one commentator say that the answer to much of what is our housing crisis literally lies in our backyards, and this is what this bill is about: it’s a bill that enables property owners to add an extra dwelling, two, or three on to an existing property. And, for many property owners, that’s something that has been impossible to achieve, because there has been so much red tape. There have been so many barriers. There have been so many hurdles for them to overcome. So this is a piece of legislation that changes the balance of influence and power, if you like, from those who plan, restrict, and constrain intensification in our major urban cities, to one where the presumption now is to build and to allow homes to be built. And I for one, and we on this side of the House, think that that is a good thing.

I heard a term mentioned by my colleague the deputy leader of the National Party, Nicola Willis, that I hadn’t heard actually for probably several decades, and it’s a term that we need to hear more of, because I can certainly remember, as a younger person at university when we were discussing weighty issues about Parliament and legislation and law reform and democracy in our great little nation, we would often talk about how proud we were to be members of an egalitarian, property-owning democracy. And it’s that term—“egalitarian, property-owning democracy”—that I heard Nicola Willis mention in her contribution today, and I think that’s important. That is something that is good, it’s aspirational, it’s positive, and it’s future looking.

And this is a piece of legislation that does a whole lot of things, and the deputy chair of the select committee went through some of the detail; I’m not going to repeat it. But what this piece of legislation does is give hope to people who currently are locked out of the property market—that they too, soon, will be able to buy a home. And why is that important? Well, it’s important because homeownership is good for people, good for individuals, good for families, good for neighbourhoods, good for communities, and good for us a nation. Property ownership is something that we should aspire to, and we should be encouraging and making it as available as possible to as many New Zealanders who want to be property owners—then surely we should be creating the environment that allows for that to occur.

So this is a bill that’s all about reducing red tape, changing the presumption from one of not being permissive to one that permits and encourages building and development in our urban environments, and it’s a bill that, on this side of the House, we are very pleased to support in the bipartisan nature that it has been presented.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): I’m very pleased to take a call on this. Can I start by acknowledging the Ministers and the role that they’ve had to play in this—both Ministers Parker and Woods for their leadership in this space, acknowledging that this problem that we are dealing with through this bill is a hangover from previous Governments of both colours and it’s those parties that have worked together around the Environment Committee table to be able to try and navigate a pathway forward. It’s good, actually, for us to be able to put our politics aside and actually focus on the real need. That’s the number one thing that Kiwis want us to come to this House and sort out is what’s happening with our housing situation around the country. The Minister earlier talked about some of the great initiatives that are happening, but this is a really big problem and it’s going to require lots of tools in the tool box. I listened to the previous speaker from the National Party, the Hon Scott Simpson, who talked about homeownership. Māori have only ever faced insecure homeownership situations. The highest rate of Māori homeownership was back in the 1980s where people could capitalise on the family benefit to be able to get themselves into homes, but it hasn’t been that way for a very long time.

What this bill does is it will enable multigenerational families, whānau, to be able to live in the same space. It will create medium density in our cities but also for our tier 2 councils as well, of which Rotorua Lakes Council is proudly stepping up and saying, “We want to be involved in this.” Just before they were talking about motels. Yeah, back home in Rotorua we have lots of people that are currently using motels as accommodation. It’s not the way forward; we need other things to be able to pivot to. This creating medium-density residential areas in our big cities but also our tier 2 councils is going to be a crucial part of that. Māori that are listening in from around the country should feel safe in the knowledge that we’ve cast our eye over that too. We’re making sure that these changes give effect to the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We’re making sure that tangata whenua have access to their ancestral lands, their waters, their sites, their wāhi tapu. All of those become qualifying matters and, therefore, handbrakes on any kind of development, and that is the right thing to do.

Enabling housing through this bill and making opportunities for Māori to be able to get on the property ladder has been at the forefront of my mind as I’ve sat through countless hours of the select committee process, and I want to acknowledge our chair who did a stunning job of navigating the politics of the committee, navigating through all of the submissions, and hearing from the people out there that want change so desperately in this area. So I commend this bill to the House.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. The Green Party’s really pleased to be supporting the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I just acknowledge the comments by other speakers, because even though the first we found out about this bill was when it was introduced, about the same time that councils did, it has been an incredibly constructive process by the Environment Committee and by the Parliament in improving the bill. I really acknowledge too the strength and the expertise of public submissions—councils, individuals, the urban design community, young people, and many others—and the thorough process that all members of the select committee really put their hearts into, improving the bill, to develop the themes that were coming through in submissions and then to amend the bill accordingly.

Like others, I would also like to place on Hansard and on the record the huge debt that we owe to the massive mahi by officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, the Ministry for the Environment, the Parliamentary Counsel, and the select committee secretariat of Edward, Jacob, Izzy, and Charles—just all of the work that they put in behind the scenes to actually deliver, with Parliamentary Counsel, a much-improved bill.

This bill builds on the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) and brings forward its implementation, recognising the real need for urban renewal and densification in our cities to crack through and respond to the housing crisis. It was a very impressive list of initiatives that the Government has taken over the last four years to tackle the housing crisis. But we still have far too many people, as the Hon Scott Simpson noted, sleeping in motels, sleeping in cars, sleeping in places that they can’t afford because the rent takes far too big a portion of their weekly income. This bill is about providing as a permitted activity the building of three dwellings of up to three storeys across most of the residential areas in our largest cities, enabling housing to happen as a permitted activity and encouraging more duplexes, walk-up units, terrace houses with common walls, and the like.

We got quite a lot of evidence from councils and others about the extent of housing construction that was already occurring in the year to September 2021. A record 47,333 new homes were consented, and that was up 25 percent from the year to September 2020, and multi-unit homes accounted for 46 percent of these. So we are seeing already an increase in more townhouses, duplexes, and the like.

Some of the changes that the select committee made in response to submissions were, obviously, in relation to the density standards, providing a 20 percent landscaped area, providing increased outlook space, increased outdoor space, changes to the building envelopes through reducing the height at the boundary to four metres, and also major changes in relation to qualifying matters. These are the matters, as the deputy chair of the committee, Rachel Brooking, noted, that can be used through the intensification planning instrument to show that some areas are not suitable for medium density residential housing—things of national importance such as the natural character of the coast. But it is on those matters that there were changes to the bill to provide a little bit more flexibility for councils to ensure that medium density happens in more suitable—well, doesn’t happen in unsuitable areas. A lot of effort too on ensuring that some of the smaller towns weren’t included, because it wasn’t intended that they be subject to the same sort of development as in our big cities.

Papakāinga houses—encouraging councils to use the intensification planning instrument to facilitate the building of papakāinga houses, rather than plans providing the barrier that they do at the moment. There is a lot of work that is going to have to be done by councils, particularly the planning staff and others, and also the public in response, through these intensification planning instruments. So I would really like to acknowledge in advance all of that work.

There was a suggestion from some submitters that the medium-density residential standards be inserted directly into plans, because there is, of course, no ability to change these new density standards in new Schedule 3A of the Resource Management Act, inserted by Schedule 1 of the bill. So I would really encourage agencies to very closely monitor the way in which the bill is implemented and how it operates in practice, because the select committee has tried to foresee issues. But there may well be things which need to be changed, and if it’s well monitored, then that can be addressed, potentially, through the Natural and Built Environments Bill and the reform there.

We need to do density well, if people are to move away from having a dream of having a single-storey house on what was once a quarter-acre section but is now much smaller. And if families, single-person households, and others recognise the opportunities in living in two- or three-storey units and apartments and duplexes and the like—so doing density well, the Green Party believes this bill was a bit of a lost opportunity. We tried really hard to get things like Homestar standards included in the density standards, because it is puzzling that when Kāinga Ora committed last year to all of its new homes—and it builds at least 1,100 new homes annually—being built to the Homestar 6 standard, we want, in the Green Party, to ensure that everyone has a right to a warm, dry, healthy home with low ongoing energy costs so that we reduce energy poverty. The Homestar standard can save households up to $570 in power costs annually, but at the moment only 5,000 of the 43,000 homes that are built each year meet those Homestar standards. We need to tackle our climate emissions. With an increasing electricity demand growing by at least 70 percent by 2050, anything that we can do to reduce energy use helps to reduce those emissions.

We need to reduce waste. Housing and construction contributes 40 to 50 percent of the waste that goes to landfill each year. Again, we heard from submitters that because demolition is a permitted activity in areas like Auckland, there is no control or encouragement for construction waste to be reduced, for sorting to occur on site, for materials to be recovered. Things like Homestar standards do improve that commitment to sustainability. The Labour members have said that things like improvements to the building code belong in the Building Act. Yes, they do. But where there are provisions which prevent councils from using their plans to put in place higher standards than apply in the building code and when there is no regular periodic review of the building code to catch up with what is being done in housing developments overseas, we think we need to use the opportunities that bills like this provide to have more warmer, more pleasant, and more energy-efficient homes. So it was disappointing that that did not happen.

There is already quite a lot of intensification occurring. We hope that councils with their intensification planning instruments, with the new policy and objective framework that the bill has, that relates back to the NPS-UD—that that process is not too complicated. But I would just finish by, again, thanking all of those who made the submissions and the really constructive work that every single member of the select committee did to improve this bill, working alongside Parliamentary Counsel, the select committee secretariat, and officials.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill at its third reading. The ACT Party wants more homes to be built in New Zealand. We want people to have access to warm, dry, affordable homes so that all New Zealanders feel like they can have a future in this country and so that young people don’t feel like they’re being priced out of the market and that their best hope to have a property-owning future is to move to Australia. And we’re hearing so much of that happening from our skilled tradespeople and our skilled workforce at the moment. And ACT wants young New Zealanders to be able to feel like they can someday own their first home, because that provides stability for families. It provides stability that a lot of people are looking for as they want to settle down and raise children in suburbs and communities with their family around them.

We often think of the people who send us emails, who we meet in the community, who tell us, “We don’t feel like we have a future in this country.” And we have to change what we’re doing so that people do feel like there is a future in New Zealand because they have homeownership. I often think of a man that I met in Ōāmaru who was a 30-year-old tradesman who told me that he was moving to Australia because he didn’t actually feel like he had a future here.

Hon Member: Shocking.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN: And I think that is—it is; it’s shocking and very saddening.

But while we know that there is a problem in housing and how many homes we are building in New Zealand, this bill is not the solution to the problem. And that’s for two reasons. The first is that it focuses on changing our planning laws, when we know it’s not the planning laws that are the issue. It is infrastructure financing and funding. The second reason that we have for opposing this is because of the process that came about while we’re passing this law. Now, ACT has stood in this Chamber and opposed a range of laws that have been rushed through with limited consultation. Rushed law seldom leads to good law, and that’s why we oppose it.

So I first want to start off by talking about the shoddy process that’s led us here to the third reading, because I think it gives context to the issues that we’ve found in the bill throughout the process. Not only was it rushed, it was put forward in a very unusual manner. This is a bipartisan approach with two parties that have zero credibility on solving the housing crisis. That’s why they stood up to have a bipartisan approach, because they wanted to abandon attacking each other on an issue that they both have no credibility on. They considered the benefit of standing up on podiums side by side in the media, saying that they had found a solution, before they considered the people that would be affected by their law change. They considered themselves before the people of New Zealand, and that’s why we ended up in a process that was secret, because it was so much more important that they wouldn’t spoil the surprise and the announcement that they’d somehow just solved the housing crisis, and they couldn’t possibly tell anybody what they’d been up to because, you know, that would spoil it for everybody. And that’s a shame, because bipartisan approaches shouldn’t be a bad thing, but the result is a bad policy that won’t actually work and it won’t solve the problem, because they’ve misdiagnosed it.

So what should have happened? Well, they could have started by consulting with people who actually build homes in this country: the builders, the developers, the architects, the local councils, and the planning experts. That’s what the ACT Party did as soon as we heard of this announcement. And would you believe it? They told us that this policy won’t do anything. It won’t deliver the houses that it promises to a generation. It won’t deliver a single more home. It promises more theoretical homes. But you can’t live in a theoretical home, and that’s because they’re adding more zoned land when zoned land isn’t the problem to build more homes.

Now, when we looked through the very short select committee process, I was amazed with that shortened time frame that people were able to express the flaws in this problem—even with such a short process. And the councils and developers pointed to the lack of infrastructure, which doesn’t allow them to intensify in existing town centres close to community services. So this enabling housing supply bill, which says “enabling housing supply”, doesn’t do anything to enable housing. But what would enable housing is more infrastructure.

There are many issues, but I’ll just touch on a few. The first is, obviously, that it doesn’t touch on infrastructure funding and financing, which actually holds up development. Because if you look at the Auckland Unitary Plan, which came into effect in 2016, it has zoning for up to 400,000 more homes. The zones are there, but some developments still can’t occur because of the infrastructure that’s holding it back. And we heard of a wonderful example from a person who lives in Grey Lynn, and they would love to see more intensification happening in their suburb, but the issue that’s holding them back is the infrastructure. They already have overflowing sewage, overflowing pipes. We don’t want to see that happening across our cities. The ACT Party does want to build more homes, but we don’t want sewage in the streets. We also want to make sure that we live in a democracy that listens to people and listens to local knowledge and the experts.

A second example is the Hamilton City Council. That is a growing city, but it also lacks infrastructure for its older parts of the city. They’ve said that it would cost about $4 billion just to bring up their infrastructure to intensify under the National Policy Statement on Urban Development that already exists, before you then go and change the rules again for more intensity. I think that is a huge issue, because it is not good for planning and certainty and it’s not good for councils. The medium-density residential standard creates a completely new zone that would allow three three-storey homes in any suburb in our five largest cities, one metre from the boundary. That won’t be more homes; they’ll just be in a different place to where the councils had expected them to be when they were planning for communities. People want to live in a home, but they also want to live in a community that’s serviced by their community, that has access to transport—access to being able to go to work to school, the shops, the libraries, the public parks. People want to live in a community, not just a home.

The last aspect is that this was divisive rhetoric, and we’ve been seeing this in a whole range of policies that this Government has been pushing through. It was supposed to target the nimbies, the people who said, “Oh, they couldn’t possibly like another home in their suburb, and that’s terrible because they don’t want other people to have a home.” That’s not the case. They’re not listening to the actual problem, which is that people have identified that intensification in their area won’t work because of the infrastructure problem. The ACT Party doesn’t just oppose; we propose. We reached out, we told the select committee, we told National and Labour that we would want to see infrastructure added to this bill, and they rejected that. They rejected a policy that would actually work. We are not opposing this because of politics; we’re opposing this because of people and because we want policy that works. New Zealanders deserve policy that doesn’t just say it enables; it does—and this policy won’t deliver a single more home.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Kia ora, e te Mana Whakawā. I’ll just make a brief contribution to this, the third reading of the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I must respond to the person that just spoke, the deputy leader of the ACT Party. She said—and I quote—“ACT want younger New Zealanders to someday own their own home.” Anyway, this bill, enabling housing supply, will make that someday sooner. As a matter of fact, sooner is like next month.

In my brief speech, in 1874 seven Tongans lived in New Zealand, almost 100,000 Māori, and then the rest were migrant settlers from England that came. According to Stats New Zealand, 4.7 Aucklanders lived in either a single dwelling or a tent. Well, fast track it here, after Labour had built the State housing in the 1930s and the most houses built ever in the last four years—after we’ve done that, and I want to acknowledge the leadership of Dr Megan Woods and, of course, Minister Parker in the leadership of where we are today.

Young people told us at select committee (1), we would hope to buy our own home, and, (2), we want to live closer to where we work. We want to contribute to climate change by having low-carbon community living and public transport. And in response to infrastructure, the infrastructure community came and said to us that building higher would mean less pipes needed. If we built the way the ACT Party had wanted, it would mean more pipes and so contributing to climate change. I want to also acknowledge that in this bill the committee has also enabled developers to think in terms of communal living—so communal areas for barbecues, for hāngī, and for umu pits so that the next generation will live in a community that is built for people. And on that note, malo ’aupito.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Mālō ‘aupito. The next call is a split call. Erica Stanford—five minutes.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a relatively historic occasion, where National and Labour have come together in a bipartisan approach to try and fix what has become our housing crisis. Can I start by acknowledging our new deputy leader and my colleague, Nicola Willis, for her extremely good work on getting us to a position where we can support this bill.

In my community of the East Coast Bays, you can’t really buy a home for anything less than $1.5 million. So you’re looking at somewhere around $300,000 for a deposit on a home. And the one thing that the people in my community tell me is that they are worried. They’re worried for their children and their grandchildren who won’t be able to buy a home in the community where they grow up and that they will be forced to go to places like Australia. That is one of the biggest concerns people say to me, that their children and their grandchildren will be forced offshore to places like Australia, where there are better opportunities, lower cost of living, but—critically—much lower house prices. That’s what they’re worried about. They are desperately worried that they won’t see their grandchildren grow up because their children have moved offshore.

Not only am I worried about the people in my community, I’m also worried about workers in our big cities. Workers like nurses and teachers, policemen, firefighters who are facing the same issues—can’t buy a home in their community and are looking to move to Australia. We see that all the time. I get contacted by nurses all the time who are shifting to Australia for the reasons I mentioned earlier. We’re also losing migrant workers before they even get here because they look at the cost of housing and they choose to go elsewhere. In a global war on talent, we need to have affordable homes so that we can attract quality migrant workers to this country. Currently, in our housing crisis, with house prices that have exploded in the last year, up 30 percent, we’re not able to attract those workers, keep our own workers, and keep our children and our grandchildren here in this country.

As was mentioned earlier, the last four years have seen a failure to act on any of the problems that we have with our housing crisis. No matter if you look to KiwiBuild, if you look to banning of foreign buyers, ring-fencing of losses for landlords: none of these things have worked. The single most important thing that we can do at the moment in this approach is to cut the red tape; is to allow people to build on their existing residential properties, more homes—and the kind of homes that we need, terraced homes, apartments, multiple-storey buildings on small sections. These are the kinds of homes that our children and our grandchildren will be able to afford to buy to keep them in our communities. I would like to respond to Brooke van Velden, who spoke earlier, about how important it was to keep families close in communities and in our existing suburbs. And the point that I want to make is that that is what this bill does. It removes that red tape so that we can build more houses in the suburbs, where parents can keep their children and their grandchildren close to them—which is the one single thing that I get day in, day out in my community. It’s that they want their grandchildren and their children to grow up in their communities. This bill allows that to happen.

Of course, there are concerns around infrastructure. Part of those concerns were acknowledged in the bill, where we give councils the ability to restrict areas where this can happen if there are issues with the area and infrastructure. But also we acknowledge that this bill is one part of a much bigger puzzle, and that much bigger puzzle includes things like infrastructure. But this bill is about cutting the red tape; something that you would have thought that the ACT Party would have supported. It doesn’t fix all the problems, we acknowledge that, but it is one part of a much broader puzzle that we have to continue doing work on—but it is no reason not to support this bill, to allow more housing in our residential areas and more housing in greenfields developments.

I look forward to a future where my daughter and my son can afford to buy a home, a first home, in the community that I live in. This bill, and the work that Nicola Willis has done, will allow that to happen. Thank you.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise in support of this bill, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I will say very similar things that have been said on the other side of the House, because the reason that there’s a consensus over this bill is that the major parties understand the depth of this problem.

This bill will mean that my children can actually afford to live in my suburb. They won’t have to live a long way away. That’s really important to me, and it’s very important to them. If we did not do this, it would really create a very vast gap between our older generation and our younger one. Our younger generation are pretty angry that they’ve been locked out of Auckland. This is a really important bill for Auckland. It means that we’re going to have a lot more affordable houses, and they’re going to be close to our city. And they’re going to be able to be part of a solution to climate change, because we will live in places we work, and that will be good for everyone.

I am absolutely admiring of the capacity of the two major parties to have got together and made this a reality, and I am absolutely shocked that ACT would take the position it would, in a city that’s desperate for housing. It is absolutely contrary to their ideology, if it wasn’t for their own self-interest in Epsom. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): This debate is interrupted. I will resume the Chair after dinner at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.56 p.m. to 7 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the House is resumed. When the House rose for the dinner break it was considering the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. The next call is a Labour Party call and I call Tangi Utikere

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, as we head towards Christmas, I thought there would be some Christmas cheer around the precinct, but after listening prior to the dinner break to the ACT deputy leader’s contribution, it is clear to me that there is no Christmas cheer anywhere near the ACT Party caucus. What I want to say is we have actually been listening as members of the Environment Committee to councils, to developers, and to people for whom this will make a real difference.

Simon Court: You want to see our video. Wait till you see our video. Our Christmas video is the best video you’ve ever seen.

TANGI UTIKERE: And while Mr Court is there giving us his contribution, perhaps that’s at odds with his deputy leader, because it was something quite different prior to the dinner break.

This is a particular bill that will make a huge difference. I’ve had contributions on the first, second, and now third reading. I’ll leave it there. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I was actually looking forward to a little bit of Christmas cheer from the other side, but we obviously got cut off a little bit early. But I’ll do my best to convey a little bit more of that in my short call.

I’m speaking on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill third reading, and I had the pleasure to speak on this at the second reading as well. And it doesn’t seem that long ago, but I think we covered off a little bit of detail. So I just want to go through a little bit more of that, because I think things have moved on a little bit, subsequent to that. But, in essence, National supports this bill, and that’s because National understand that housing is a significant issue for this country. It is a significant issue, particularly for our young people, and in my home city of Auckland, which many of my colleagues around here are from as well, it is a massive issue there as well.

In my home electorate of the North Shore—which is a beautiful electorate, absolutely stunning, you know, surrounded by water—housing is a massive issue. The affordability of housing is a key issue that people raise, and, as I said, particularly with those who are younger, the dream and the aspiration of being able to buy their own home. But the reality is: entry price in my electorate is over a million dollars. You know, that’s where you start. So it is a significant burden, and I think we have an obligation and a responsibility in this House to do what we can in order to make that a little bit easier.

I think no one’s under any illusion that this is the silver bullet that’s going to solve everything in regards to this challenge, but I think what we do need to reflect is, actually, actions speak louder than words. You know, we do need to start moving, in regards to some changes in this space, and I think the select committee process, which was very robust—I want to acknowledge Eugenie Sage, who was the chair of the Environment Committee, and I know that she did a very thorough and respectful process. I wasn’t part of that select committee, but I do acknowledge our members, deputy leader Nicola Willis and the Hon Scott Simpson, on our side, that contributed to the select committee process.

I also want to acknowledge—and I think it is important, because it was a condensed process—all of those officials, particularly from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who made a significant contribution in terms of that passing through of that bill. I think, while the select committee spent many, many hours in terms of their deliberations and consideration around that, those officials in the background did significantly more as well, and sometimes we don’t acknowledge them. But because it’s Christmas and because we’re getting at that time of the year, I think it is important that we do so.

The bill as introduced at first reading had a significant number of amendments as a result of that select committee process, and the select committee process is such an important aspect of our democracy. It is a process—

Simon Court: It was throwing mud at the wall.

SIMON WATTS: —in order to make sure that we listen to the feedback that we get from people, and we got a lot of feedback—I can hear a bit of feedback somewhere in here; maybe it’s just me. But plenty of feedback across that select committee, and particularly for those members of my electorate. I know there was a number of people from Devonport, etc., that made submissions. Auckland Council, iwi, and commercial entities made a number of submissions into that. And I think some of the submissions and some of the feedback has been taken into account as part of the amendments that have been proposed under the new aspects of the bill.

There’s four elements that relate to the changes that were made as part of that process. One is around the design standards. We heard a lot of feedback, particularly, as I said, from Auckland Council, in terms of the ideas and considerations in that space, and I’m pleased to see that the bill was—

Simon Court: Because urban design should be done by Parliament.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Apologies to the member. Couple of things: first of all, don’t be the Grinch tonight that stole Christmas. Objections should be rare and reasonable, and the member will not interject while his mask is off his face. Thank you.

SIMON WATTS: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. So as I was saying, there were some key changes, and I was referring there around the design standard changes, which were significant. They referred to changes in regards to the outdoor-space elements of the bill, and also in regards to landscaping and other components. An issue that was raised a lot in my electorate was around the exclusions around particularly heritage zoning. If any of you have been to the beautiful Devonport Peninsula on the North Shore, it is a stunning location. I’m slightly biased, but it is a lovely part of our city, and I’m glad to see that a number of the considerations around special character zones—that the council will be able to ensure that those protections remain. And that’s really important, not only for heritage but also for environmental aspects and other risk considerations.

Another aspect of feedback and critique that was given was particularly around the height-to-boundary ratio, and I’m glad to see that—as a result of feedback in the select committee process—that is being reduced from six metres down to four. I think that, by all accounts, in terms of the feedback that we’ve had subsequently, is sensible.

And lastly, there were some changes in regards to the district planning changes—and I think, again, just reflecting some of the feedback provided through that select committee process.

There were 966 submissions presented to that select committee, and I do acknowledge all the members of the select committee across the House here who were part of it. We got regular updates around that process, but it was definitely—having sat in on the Health Committee, which has a number of comprehensive and complex bills, this one definitely sounded like it was one that definitely put the team through their challenges. I think 183 of those submissions were oral submissions, as well, and that reflects the importance of our democracy in terms of being able to provide that feedback. I’m confident that all members of that select committee, across the House, participated and contributed as part of that process. I definitely know from those that I have spoken to that that was the case, and, again, that was really very much important.

In terms of the other aspects, I guess, of what, for those that are watching—and I’m sure there will be a large number as they come into Christmas. This will be a prime time, no doubt. If I wasn’t here, I’d definitely be watching, just for the record. The aspects of the bill—

Simon Court: Well, particularly if their property rights are being extinguished. They’ll want to see who’s got their name on that.

SIMON WATTS: There’s plenty of entertainment, as well. You can imagine it’ll be high ratings, no doubt. But some of the aspects of the bill that weren’t covered that, I think, it is important to recognise is around that affordability aspect that I referred to earlier. Infrastructure is another area that National has noted in regards to infrastructure enablement being a key element in terms of housing development in this country. National absolutely acknowledge and note that that is an area that needs to be progressed. In addition to that, also the challenges around labour supply as well, because it’s all good to talk a big game, but, again, in order to execute and deliver, you’re going to need the labour supply in order to do that. So we’re looking forward to seeing additional measures. Obviously, National has proposed around the $50k per house infrastructure funding package, which we announced earlier on this year.

Simon Court: Except that bill’s been pulled from the members’ ballot.

SIMON WATTS: I think the member’s saying how sensible that policy is, and he’s right, it is. It’s a sensible policy, and it’s good to have that support across the House.

But the other aspect that we’ve also, in terms of this bill, is—really, it’s cutting red tape. And I think that’s—

Simon Court: Oh, no, it sets up a parallel consenting regime! It adds red tape.

SIMON WATTS: —a good example around the bill, that when we’re cutting regulation—and, again, it’s good to see that the majority of those parties in this House are wanting to cut red tape and cut regulation. There are a couple that are not, but that’s OK. But I think, in terms of the importance of this bill and the value that we provide, reducing that regulation is an important aspect.

I just want to conclude, in the short amount of time that I have—and if only I had twice as much time, but we haven’t, of course—

Simon Court: Well, if only I had a second call; it would set the record straight.

SIMON WATTS: Thank you very much, member from Selwyn, much appreciated. This bill isn’t going to result in a free-for-all in regards to how housing is built in this country; restrictions will remain, and I think that is important. What, in effect, it will do is allow for sensible and pragmatic development. On this side of the House, we’re supportive of more housing in this country, we’re supportive of young people being able to buy their own home, and we’re supportive of action, not words. I commend this bill to the House.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Real pleasure to stand and take a short call on this bill. Homelessness, difficulties with housing—we all know it exists. It’s great to have all parties across the House—most of us—joining in to support something that will make a real difference, a real change, for our communities. I just want to really thank the entire support crew that got in there and did a whole pile of work which really, really brought this bill together. We made some significant changes. I love the transitional provisions. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 110

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

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Sexual Violence Legislation Bill

Third Reading

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Sexual Violence 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 KRIS FAAFOI: I move, That the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

Can I acknowledge the House for the way that it undertook the committee stage of this bill. From my understanding, this bill has unanimous support in the House now, following changes and assurances that were made at various stages of the progress of this legislation, and I want to thank the House for that. I’m mindful of continuing concerns that parties may have, indeed, around the bill. Even over the bill’s development and passage through the House, we’ve seen clear confirmation that we need to do better by the victims of sexual violence, researching showing low rates of sexual violence being reported and how often those who do report don’t make it to court or conviction, and studies also highlighting the way that complainants feel vulnerable in the process; they feel disbelieved and worn down by the system.

The problems with sexual violence trials have been described as reform resistant, and it is true that our approach to change needs to be both holistic and legislative to be effective. Special education and training for those who work and operate our courtrooms, more fulsome and wraparound support for complainants, and improvements to court facilities are all under way. Broader work to reduce sexual violence continues to be a priority for the Government, and the national strategy and action plan for the elimination of family and sexual violence was launched last week—and we know that so much of the work to combat gender-based violence happens and needs to be supported on the ground, and I’d like to acknowledge the co-leader of the Green Party and my ministerial colleague Marama Davidson and others for their work to get that strategy launched. But, as a Parliament, we must set the framework and send the signals for better practice in our courts, and the changes in this bill have been long called for, and it is timely that we act now. I do want to acknowledge my predecessors, the Hon Andrew Little and Jan Logie, for driving this work under the previous Government, and I thank the Law Commission for the report that kick-started this bill.

In the committee debate that I mentioned earlier, some MPs sought a commitment to review this legislation, and I want to assure the House that the Budget in 2019 included some funding for an independent evaluation of this bill and its changes. That will happen, and the review will consider the impacts on both complainants and defendants, and it will be undertaken once the reforms have bedded in. Again, I thought the debate in the committee stage was mature, and I think there are concerns from, certainly, the legal fraternity about some of the aspects and components of this legislation. Again, reflecting the committee stage debate, I think they are fair concerns to have, but we believe we have built the balance and the safeguards in there for fair trial rights, but the review itself will be able to deal with those issues and assess the progress of those components of this bill.

However, for the remainder of my time in this third reading, I want to talk about two provisions for which there was obviously some debate—first of all, around pre-recorded evidence, because the bill entitles complainants to give their evidence in alternative ways; for example, via the likes of audiovisual link from outside of the courtroom or by a pre-recorded video. The bill makes it clear that pre-recorded cross-examination is one of the options unless the judge decides to disallow it. This type of cross-examination was first used in Western Australia back in 1992 as an initiative to help child witnesses give quality evidence and move on with their lives earlier. It has happened in New Zealand, though rarely since 2011, when the Court of Appeal determined it should be used only in exceptional circumstances. Since that time, all other Australian states have now introduced pre-recorded cross-examination, as has the United Kingdom, either in successful trials or as fully fledged practices for certain witnesses. Scotland has also recently legislated for children to pre-record their cross-examination, with powers to extend the process to vulnerable adult witnesses. I do want to emphasise that these jurisdictions share our fundamental criminal justice rights and our firm commitment to the rule of law.

Concerns about these rights and principles were also raised in these places when pre-recording was introduced, but the evaluations carried out in those jurisdictions do not provide evidence that those concerns played out in practice. The key is that the pre-recorded cross-examination is not mandated; it is an option to be used in appropriate cases and not to be used where it would jeopardise the fairness of a trial. And where it becomes apparent that pre-recorded cross-examination may present more of a risk than a benefit, it will also be open to the prosecutor to change that mode of evidence. The concerns raised about pre-recorded cross-examination are understandable. That is why the legislation prescribes its use as an option rather than a presumption. In those cases where pre-recorded cross-examination would jeopardise trial fairness or where the benefits are outweighed by the risk of making things worse for the witnesses, a different mode of evidence will be used. In the cases where it does neither of these things, it should be an option.

The other change which seems to have caused the most concern is the restrictions on evidence about the complainant’s sexual history with the defendant. Currently, this evidence can be admitted on the usual standard. Under the bill, evidence about the details of that sexual history could still be admitted but only if it is so directly relevant that excluding it would be contrary to the interests of justice. The judge will usually make that decision before the trial, which gives the complainant some warning about questioning that can be particularly difficult and what to expect. Again, despite similar laws existing in most comparable jurisdictions, some remain concerned about those same fundamental criminal justice rights. It has been argued that the new restrictions will mean that juries will be deprived of hearing crucial evidence, but, as the bill permits clearly, if the evidence is crucial, it will be admitted. We’ve always trusted judges to determine the value of proposed evidence to the usual standard and to this higher standard, which already applies to evidence of other parts of the complainant’s sex life. In any particular case, there might be some really important context and history, and, in those cases, the evidence will be admissible, but if the evidence can be presented without considering if it is actually relevant, we risk reinforcing those outdated ideas of continuing consent that we supposedly moved on from when we outlawed marital rape in 1985.

I also acknowledge that these changes represent a significant shift and the legal profession has some concerns about the preservation of defendants’ rights. Trial fairness is non-negotiable, and it gives out justice system its legitimacy. It is not in anyone’s interests to jeopardise the fairness and robustness of verdicts, but I do not think that justice is a zero sum. Improving complainants’ experiences procedurally does not automatically entail restricting defendants’ fundamental rights. The interests of justice and the right to a fair trial are paramount and explicit consideration in parts of the bill that we have heard most concern about. The flip side must be: if a procedure is not contrary to the interests of justice and the circumstances of the case, and if it does not risk the fairness of a trial, how can we deny complainants the better treatment that these changes will provide? Complainants have an integral role in bringing perpetrators to justice, thereby reducing future harm, a societal benefit. They do so despite the harm that they have experienced. We have a positive duty to support them on that unavoidably difficult journey, and this bill is one part of how we fulfil our duty to that. I commend the bill to the House.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): The National Party will support this legislation and we do so, fundamentally, because there are many things that this bill does and the majority of those things we agree with in the cause of trying to make it a bit easier for complainants of sexual attack to get justice. We are all very conscious of the reality of continued high levels of sexual violence in this country. Family violence and sexual violence is on the rise and, sadly, continues to get worse, and we do want to make it easier for complainants to access justice and to achieve justice.

We’re all familiar with the very low rates of conviction in this space. Now, this is not something that can be solved easily, of course, because the very nature of the crime is on many occasions hard to prove. And it is a highly, incredibly high-stakes set of circumstances that are brought before the courts whereby somebody’s life has been substantially ruined or attacked or threatened through an act. Of course, a defendant, if that defendant didn’t do that act and has been falsely accused—which in life happens; we all have to acknowledge that happens—then their life will be destroyed and ruined, their reputation ruined, and sent to prison for a very long period of time. That is why we have trials—to try and identify the correct outcome and to achieve justice—and we all acknowledge that there is no very easy way to do that, because some very difficult conversations have to be had, questions have to be answered, and it is a very, very difficult process for everybody involved. So elements of this bill wherein the Parliament is attempting to remove some of the more difficult aspects for complainants in order to make it easier for them to achieve justice we agree with.

We have outlined on a number of occasions our concern about a couple of elements—a concern widely shared across particularly the defence counsel but across the legal profession. We are disappointed that the Government didn’t agree with our Supplementary Order Papers during the committee stage on two matters, which I’ll traverse briefly. One is around evidence relating to the sexual experience with the defendant. This bill brings in the higher threshold which, in effect, means that if a complainant has had a prior sexual relationship with the defendant that can be referred to as a mere fact but nothing much beyond that can be referred to. The legal concern that is raised by particularly the defendant community is that details about the complainant’s previous experience with the defendant will be directly relevant to the issue of reasonable belief in consent potentially, in some circumstances. So there is a real concern about the consequences of that.

Secondly, there is the issue around the pre-recording of trials. The New Zealand Law Society and many other legal organisations have worried about the consequences for fair trial rights in order to ensure that pre-recorded cross-examination means that the defendants have to declare their strategy much earlier in the process and the jury might not have access to all the relevant material. Now, that may be something that a judge can recall the complainant back for, for a second time, and if that happens of course it undermines the purpose of it, which means that the complainant is re-traumatised twice. So it may be that the outcome is not necessarily what is intended.

The Minister very calmly says everything will be fine: it’s been done in Australia and the UK and the worst fears have not been realised. Well, time will tell, and I am grateful that he as Minister has assured the House today that this legislation will be reviewed as a matter of course and in three, four, five years’ time we can take stock and see what is happening because we do obviously have a very strong desire to ensure that complainants of sexual attacks have access to justice and that their integrity and their dignity is respected through the process and, secondly, that defendants also, particularly young Māori men of the group that the Waitangi Tribunal has heard concerns around—that those men particularly—have access to a fair defence and the ability to clear their name if, indeed, they are innocent, and that is the nature of this whole process.

So, look, we on balance support this legislation because of its intent, because of the assurances made by the Government in terms of the slight movement they’ve made on a couple of these issues and also the intent to review this in time. But we do remain concerned that in every respect we are conscious of the need to ensure that all New Zealand, where they are accused of significant crimes that have very significant outcomes for them and their lives, have the ability to defend themselves properly. So, on that basis, we support this legislation.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): This bill is about balancing the ledger for victims of sexual violence in the courtroom and the criminal justice system. We know for a fact that there are a number of sexual violence incidents in New Zealand that go unreported every year. We know that there are even more that go on that are not prosecuted, and, after that, there are even more that do not go through to conviction. That, in whole, makes our justice system very difficult for someone standing in the courtroom when a rape or other sexual violence offence has occurred.

What this bill does is attempt to make our system fairer and make it friendlier to victims who have to go through that harrowing experience. By strengthening restrictions on evidence about a victim’s sex life, it’ll enable victims of crime to go into that courtroom and have greater ability to have confidence that they will not be re-victimised by the very system that should be bringing justice to them. Labour is passing the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill to make our courts a better place for victims of sexual violence. The intent of this bill is that it will make the experience of attending a court and giving evidence less traumatising for sexual violence. It improves the rights for victims, it makes the justice system better for women, and I’m proud to see this bill here at third reading. I commend it to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): It is a pleasure to take a call in support of the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill, the genesis of which, I understand, arises from a real scourge in our society. We have really high—unacceptably high—rates of sexual offending and violence that occur here, and, for a multitude of reasons, too often they go unreported and therefore unprosecuted. From what I understand, I think about 25 percent of New Zealand women have experienced a sexual assault in their lifetime, and I think, unbelievably, only 6 percent of those assaults are actually reported to police. To me, that is a real point of shame for us all. I think, from all the evidence and the submissions I’ve read, that that’s largely to do with the current existing court process, in that too often it results in victims being re-traumatised. We’ve long held the view that the criminal justice system really needs to, I suppose, up its game and become increasingly victim-centric and focused on the victim. I do think that our track record speaks for itself.

We’re supporting this bill tonight because not only will the provisions in it bring some dignity to a victim’s ability to be able to give evidence against an alleged perpetrator but also, over time, it’s going to give them more confidence to come forward and seek justice and, I suppose, some closure as well. I think that we as politicians here really need to do everything we can to encourage victims to come forward and engage with that court process, and therefore it’s our obligation to make it an attractive proposition, not a terrifying one.

Not long after this bill was introduced to the House, I had an anonymous call from a woman who wanted to tell me that her female partner had been raped by a male work colleague and they wanted to know when this bill was going to come into law so therefore they could then even think or even consider pursuing court action, because, as it was then and there, they weren’t going to even consider it. I never heard back from that woman, but I do want to say, if they are listening, I hope that the passage of this bill today gives them the courage and indeed the confidence to pursue justice.

In my time as a journalist, I’ve covered a number of murder trials, particularly of women, and often we heard canvassed evidence of sexual violence and offending against the victim that occurred prior to that murder. And, as I stand here tonight, I can’t help but wonder, had this piece of legislation been in place by then, would those women potentially still be alive. So I am confident that this bill is going to reduce the re-traumatisation of victims that so many of us have talked about and that they will be more prepared to go to court and give evidence.

Now, I didn’t sit in on the select committee, but some of the submissions I’ve read stuck out to me. There’s one in particular from the Canterbury District Health Board, down in my home patch, which presented detailed submissions raising awareness about the number of sexual assault victims that they see admitted to hospital. They reported “regular encounters”, with only a minority of patients who were prepared to engage in the court process. They also commented that the reasons that those victims weren’t prepared to engage in the court process was largely for fear that they wouldn’t be believed and also because of the potential repercussions from the perpetrator. From my very own electorate, the Lincoln University Students’ Association submitted in favour of the bill, drawing attention to a study which reported 36 percent of 2,700 tertiary students who were surveyed said they had experienced some form of sexual assault in their time at university. They are damning.

We are here in support of this bill this evening. The National Party have slight reservations. We will always hold the right to a fair trial as a fundamental tenet of a democratic society. And, while we do broadly support the principle of allowing for this cross-examination by video recording of a victim or a witness ahead of a trial, there is some slight concern that this should only be kept for those rare and exceptional circumstances rather than a matter of course. And it is encouraging to hear from the Minister that that will be watched closely. So, all in all, we do stand here in support of this bill this evening, and may I commend it to the House.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I first heard the statistic that one in three women was subject to sexual violence in my late teens at a women’s rights conference. Then the speaker asked us to look around the room, which was full of women. The silence was profound. Women’s eyes actively connected with each other, and others actively looked anywhere but each other’s eyes. I was horrified.

But I think I’m more horrified now because the stats haven’t changed. While the Me Too movement was a significant watershed moment for us, what we’ve learnt is that calling it out isn’t always enough. This is a bill that responds to two pieces of advice and recommendation from the New Zealand Law Society to make some really fundamental process changes, because what we know is that, when experiences can be told in safe, trusted places, shame dies. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Jan Logie.

JAN LOGIE (Green): This is a split call.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Split call—thank you. Five minutes.

JAN LOGIE: I want to start with some recent quotes from sexual violence victims and their whānau, describing our current court processes and why I will be so pleased to see this bill passed today: “Consent was never an issue because I was a child. But she asked, ‘Why did you never stamp your foot or make some noise?’ Or, you know, ‘You could have stopped it.’” “I completely broke down and I had to be carried out of court. It preys on all your deepest insecurities.” And, from a parent, “With my daughter, they were suggesting things to her, saying she hadn’t even been there. It seemed like the case came down to being able to successfully confuse the children enough to get a paedophile off a charge. That part was absolutely traumatising for all of us. How can a justice system be just if this is the way it treats children? It becomes not about justice. It becomes a game.”

So, today, for all those hundreds of thousands of survivors of sexual violence and their whānau who have wondered if they will ever be believed, who have struggled with the violence of the system’s response to their truth-telling, who have despaired at the lack of Government action, who have felt judged and dirtied and betrayed by our collective response, I hope this bill passing today tells you that you have finally been heard in this place.

It’s my great honour to be a Green Party voice in support of this third reading. This bill has been at least 15 years in the making. From the public outrage in response to the treatment of Louise Nicholas, and then we had in 2007 the two-year Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence, an in-depth academic review of the problems and solutions, many more discrete academic papers, surveys of court participants, sexual violence survivors, a petition of over 100,000 New Zealanders, attrition data, two Law Commission reports, even a trial of some of the controversial aspects of this bill in our specialist courts, two positive New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets, a select committee inquiry, a Chief Victims Advisor’s report, decades of overseas experience—all supporting the changes in this bill. I have honestly never seen such a strong evidence base for a piece of legislation. All of these reports told us we are actively now re-traumatising victims in the court process and that the processes that are being used do not encourage good evidence, and cases are not being tested on the law, and that we can do better without undermining anybody’s right to a fair trial. There have been so many opportunities since 2007 for this law change, but none of that evidence or the voices of survivors were enough to convince a Government to do anything but tinker, deny, or delay. So today is big, and I want to thank the hundreds of advocates and survivors who have persisted all these years.

This bill enables complainants to say how they would like to give evidence. It requires complainants’ and propensity witnesses’ evidence to be recorded so it can be used if there’s a mistrial, requires the sexual history of the defendant to meet the same threshold as the sexual history of other people. The threshold is relevance, and it requires judges to intervene if they believe questioning is inappropriate, misleading, or needlessly repetitive. It supports judicial directions on rape myths and allows victim impact statements to be given in alternative ways and to clear the court.

Nothing in this bill is world leading, but I think we can take the resistance to it as a truth of its significance. This bill is not the end of the journey, but I truly hope it is the end of the denial and an embedding of the transformation to a rigorous and safe justice system that tests the evidence and not the person. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence): I rise as the Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence and Sexual Violence to support this bill and to awhi my colleague Jan Logie, who just spoke on behalf of the Green Party. I want to thank the Hon Kris Faafoi for bringing this bill back into the House, ensuring that victims, survivors, and whānau can see that the protections this bill offers are indeed a priority of this Government.

Going back to what this bill is about, it is to reduce the trauma that sexual violence complainants experience when they attend court and give evidence. That is the whole premise of what this piece of legislation is attempting to do. And I want to thank again Jan Logie for her incredible leadership in this mahi, bringing the bill to this, the depth and the strength that it is today.

Our communities, our victim/survivors, and advocates, the many, many organisations who continue to work with us as a Government to strengthen such protections must be thanked by everyone in this House, and I acknowledge that our colleagues across the House are absolutely doing that. These protections are a responsibility for us as lawmakers and law changers. I am so relieved to see this finally here at the third leg, the final leg, of the sexual violence legislation.

As others have said, we have significant under-reporting of sexual violence. We know that putting your hand up to even report at all to anybody, let alone going through any sort of formal justice process, is one of the least tempting options, one of the least—one of the most cruel options that we can offer to anybody as it stands today, and that has to change. This legislation acknowledges that we are accountable, our systems across Government, to make sure that we cause no further harm, and that creating further trauma and causing further harm is part of the prevention work to create even more harm for generations when sexual violence happens to anyone, their whānau, and their community.

We have heard from the many advocates and organisations that this bill has taken too long to progress. So, again, I thank the Hon Kris Faafoi for bringing it into the House. Some of the many examples of what we heard from advocates and organisations included Te Ohaaki a Hine—National Network for Ending Sexual Violence Together (TOAH-NNEST). Services were concerned and said that we know the common reaction of those accused of sexual assault is to attack the character of the victim by ridiculing and making them public. They go on to say that, “[We believe] the government has a moral duty to listen to research that indicates this change is vital [also] for the well-being of child victims.” We just heard Jan Logie put on to the floor the very quotes and examples of exactly that particular instance of trauma that is unacceptable; that is an absolute hideous shame for all of us in Aotearoa.

So I know this bill will have tangible meaning for people’s real lives. This is why I acknowledge and thank Minister Faafoi for being one of the many family violence - sexual violence ministerial colleagues to have brought and launched Te Aorerekura, National Strategy to Eliminate Family Violence and Sexual Violence. This legislation is part of the absolute minimum of steps that we must take to actually ensure that we are serious, that we are taking serious the journey to wellbeing and long-term restoration of sexual violence complainants and survivors, and that we are enabling more tools and support to help people with a pathway that does lead to actual justice and to actual accountability.

I wanted to also make it very clear that we need to see more of this direction with legislation in this House as lawmakers. As policy makers, we need to see more across all of our systems, not just in justice, for sexual violence survivors and complainants. That is part of the transformational and intergenerational work that this legislation before us in the House presents. And we have a challenge that I will end on: that we cannot tinker around the edges. I know that, as parliamentarians, we all care about the wellbeing of victim/survivors and complainants, and that we know that preventing further trauma in our systems will also prevent further intergenerational harm after the first instance, after the incident of harm, that has happened. So I am proud of the work that Te Aorerekura will do to bring that to realisation. Thank you.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support this, the third reading of the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill. The reason why we support this bill is because it puts, in our mind, the rights of the victims at the centre of our justice system. But, in saying that, we did have a number of concerns that we wanted addressed in order to ensure that we could have a good balance and a fair system for all. When you look at the legislative statement, the purpose of the bill was to reduce the re-traumatisation that sexual violence victims experience in court. That is admirable as a way to move forward to allow many more victims of sexual violence the confidence to speak out and speak up. We agree that the bill was seeking to improve sexual violence victims’ experience in court while preserving the fairness of a trial.

We must admit that we did have concerns about that second aspect of that last statement I just made: the fairness of the trial. While we still want to keep the victims at the centre of the justice system, we need to make sure that the justice system is kept fit for purpose. So we supported this bill along its first reading, second reading, and committee of the whole House stage with some reservations, which we’ve made quite clear, and we’d like to take this time to acknowledge the efforts of the select committee in actually hearing from submitters and being able to put forward some good ideas to address the issues that have been raised. We wanted to make sure that there was the right to a fair trial. Some of the concerns that had been raised were including the inability for the defence to participate in the cross-examination, the ability of the defence to—well, the inability, actually, of the defence to keep their defence until trial and having to put it forward on the table. We thought that this would not allow a full and fair trial.

The reason why we thought it was important to bring this up is because there has been an increase in the number of vexatious litigants that bring cases to the court, which ultimately ends up having an impact on the real victims of this type of crime. There was concern that the impact would stop a fair trial from occurring, and I’m really pleased that Minister Faafoi saw this and, with his team, came up with Supplementary Order Paper 105, which has been voted in, which addresses many of those issues. Some will say it doesn’t go far enough, but when we need to balance the rights of our victims to be the centre of our justice system, there is only so much that you can do, and we must rely on the justice system itself to be able to point to where fairness needs to be instigated. We did agree with the National Party member Chris Penk’s Supplementary Order Paper 11. It did not go through, but we do believe that, when it comes to sexual violence cases, the relationship between the two parties is relevant to a case. But, nevertheless, that didn’t go through.

To conclude, we’ve heard tonight that there are a large number of victims that do not come forward, that they’re scared to come forward, and that they are worried that the alleged offender may be the one that ends up cross-examining them. It’s really important that those that are seeking justice actually are able to get it and, furthermore, encourage others to stand up, speak out, and take a case. But, with the increasing number of innocent people that are brought through the system, it’s crucially important that our judicial members are able to find that balance and to instigate it in a way that both the victim and the defendant have that fair trial. It’s really important that the judiciary are able to use their powers in such a way that both parties are heard adequately through this.

So, in that respect, we commend the House for coming together to be able to put together a bill that does put the victims at the centre of our justice system but still balances that right for a defendant to have a fair and just trial. On that note, ACT support this bill.

Dr Emily Henderson: Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Emily Henderson—Dr Emily Henderson, apologies.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kiwi lawyers who say that the innovations introduced in this bill will in some way threaten the trial are wrong, because these are barely innovations at all. These measures that we are introducing here, which I am so incredibly proud to stand here to support tonight, have been in use in the UK, in Australia, and even little old Whangārei—in one case for 30 years and another for over 10, and in Whangārei’s case since 2015. There is nothing to be scared of here. All we see is progress for the most vulnerable victims and witnesses we bring through our courtroom. I am so grateful to the work of the Minister, Kris Faafoi, Minister Davidson, the great Jan Logie, and those many, many academics and women who have brought their stories to us for over 30 years. I commend this bill to the House.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Speaker. No one deserves to be the victim of sexual violence. So, in the House tonight, I want to make mention of those people who have had really tough times. Anything that this bill does to stop the re-traumatisation of those victims has to be good. It’s my pleasure to commend the bill to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to speak to this bill as the legislative process wends its way towards a conclusion. I’d like to thank all those who have engaged in the process of considering the bill. I was involved at select committee stage and have spoken at various other stages in this House and do want to sincerely thank those who have engaged, those who have advocated one way or the other, all coming from a very genuine position of experience, whether, unfortunately, in the case of those who have come to the select committee or otherwise engaged, from a perspective of having suffered in the way of sexual violence, but also to acknowledge with gratitude those who have shared their professional experience and can advise the way that they believe that this will play out in courtrooms in New Zealand.

So the third reading is technically almost the final stage of the passage of a bill. Royal assent only remains at that point, but I think in many ways this is unlikely to be the final word on the matter. To put a positive construction on it, I think, as colleagues of the Green Party have noted, there is ongoing work to be done, and I think that every member in the House would support the idea that we can do better and should do better. We must do better as a country in relation to sexual violence, and in courtroom processes that is, of course, very important. But on a more negative note, potentially, I would be very surprised if there isn’t ongoing discussion required as to the way that these trials are conducted. Of course, no one wishes to have a system that could not be considered safe in terms of convictions that stand; so I very much hope that the fears that have been expressed are not borne out, albeit that I think that in some cases those are well-founded.

We’ve expressed those reservations in the form of a couple of Supplementary Order Papers and our minority view within the select committee. But, ultimately, as you’ve heard from my colleague, our justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith, and others, ultimately we have decided none the less to support the bill, acknowledging, of course, its positive intent and the fact that it does contain many measures that are admirable and will indeed serve to improve the lot of complainants and victims without reducing fair trial rights.

Of course, serious consequences of sexual violence include not only the physical and emotional damage to human beings subjected to such abhorrent action, but of course a loss of confidence in the court system to the extent where it has been said and where it can be claimed that people feel unable or unwilling to come forward for fear of being re-traumatised. Of course, that is a great indictment on our legal system, but actually also on our country. But obviously, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater and reduce fair trial rights in a way that would be problematic and might actually even be counterproductive in the sense of requiring appeals or trials to be lengthened, actually, by pre-trial cross-examination needing to take place or be replicated in the trial proper. So we’ve made those arguments. We’ve explored that, and I think that we’ve done that in good faith on this side of the House and across the House, too. I think that all members have been made aware of the particular aspects of the legislation that I’m now highlighting.

So I’ll just end my contribution with a couple of predictions, if I may and then look to consider what the future may hold. In terms of predictions, I very much hope that it’s not the case that the dire warnings from some on the criminal bar will not be realised—I rather hope that they won’t be realised in terms of a loss of quality of representation. I know that a number of barristers feel very strongly that this law will not enable them to do their job well, and that’s deeply unfortunate. They’ve also argued that there is a very strong possibility of a declaration of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, notwithstanding that BORA vets, so-called, have been conducted as part of the legislative process, and I do acknowledge that. The other fear that’s been expressed, and I think in quite compelling terms, is the risk that Māori and others disproportionately affected by the exercise of discretion in our justice system may be impacted by the way that these processes play out. I very much hope that’s not the case, but we should all be alive to that possibility and prepared to review that in due course.

So, with those ringing as somewhat of a warning, I do none the less express the hope that, with the high level of engagement from all different aspects of the debate going forward, we can continue to discuss and hopefully reach a better justice system for all those concerned going forward.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): It’s a real pleasure to take the last call on this bill; a bill that has taken so very, very long to get here. I want to acknowledge everyone who has worked so very hard. I’ve only spoken on this bill, and not worked on it. But I want to acknowledge my Minister Kris Faafoi and the Minister the Hon Andrew Little, as well, who previously brought this bill to the House. I’d like to acknowledge, as well, Ginny Andersen, who has chaired a difficult and complex piece of legislation through this House.

I want to, finally, just say to this House, and at this time, anything that we do here matters to the victim/survivors of violence. While this is just the beginning of a change—and a positive change—it is something that we as a House can do, and every time that we stand up and say, “This is not OK” and that “You are not to blame.”, that is making their lives better. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I declare the House in Committee.

Special Debates

Current Issues and Priorities

In Committee

Debate resumed from 17 November.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House is in committee for further consideration of current issues and priorities—

Hon Members: Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): —seriously?—for further consideration of current issues and priorities—I’ve got a lot to say—in a special debate. There are 46 minutes and 12 seconds remaining in the debate. This a timed debate, and the clock keeps ticking during any points of order or when Ministers swap in or out. The remaining time available for Labour is only 15 minutes and 57 seconds remaining. The remaining time available for each other party is as follows: New Zealand National, 51 minutes and 38 seconds; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, nil; ACT New Zealand, three minutes and 27 seconds; and Te Paati Māori, six minutes and 12 seconds. The question is that current issues and priorities be noted.

Agriculture

JO LUXTON (Chairperson of the Primary Production Committee): Thank you, Madam Chair. It gives me great pleasure to rise as the chair of the Primary Production Committee to lead off the Estimates 2021/22 debate for agriculture. For 2021/22, the funding sought for agriculture totalled $293.8 million, which is about the same as the previous year’s estimated actual spend of $293 million. The committee discussed the funding of $37.2 million over four years for integrated farm planning. This initiative aims to ensure that 40,000 farmers and growers have access to farm planning to improve performance and environmental outcomes.

The committee also discussed Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures, which has an estimated expenditure of $79.8 million in 2021/22. The Minister told the committee that Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures was created to support innovation in New Zealand’s food and fibre sectors by co-investing in projects, and that the fund will focus on leading new ideas and projects for the future.

The committee acknowledged the difficulties that the Canterbury farmers have faced following the flooding in late May of 2021, and we thanked the Ministry for Primary Industries for their work in this area to support our affected farmers. We discussed that, in June, the Government allocated $500,000 to assist the recovery, and the Minister told us that rural support trusts, councils, Federated Farmers, and other organisations were on the ground looking at what needed to be done and how best to distribute the money. I note that following our hearing, the Government announced an additional $4 million.

The committee noted that Budget 2021 provided around $68 million for the eradication and long-term management of Mycoplasma bovis, and this compares with the estimated actual expenditure of $143.5 million in the 2020-21 year. The reduction in funding is the result of the prevalence of the disease reducing.

As the chair, I sincerely thank the Minister, the officials, the clerks, and the select committee members for a thorough and robust set of hearings. Thank you.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, time is short—if we can restart the clock, please. I’ve had this portfolio since 29 August, and I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. I wasn’t on the committee, and these reports were done in July 2021. So the trade Minister has come back to the House—congratulations on the UK trade deal. But, as you can imagine, in my role, having the first opportunity, there’s time for 20 questions. If you can’t answer them all in the time frame tonight, I’m happy to have the answers by the close of business tomorrow before we go home for Christmas.

So, on the clear obligation to identify areas of significant natural areas, the Minister said that in some cases the value of farms might increase if they have indigenous vegetation. Can he please tell of cases he knows where this has happened? On integrated farm plans, the Minister said funding could provide 100 additional professionals. How many of these professionals are in place? What is the time frame for the integrated farm plans? The Minister told the committee that the Government would offer support for irrigation in ways other than Crown Irrigation Investments. What are those ways? How are they being progressed? The Minister reported class exceptions for an additional 200 dairy workers and 50 vets, saying there was not enough managed isolation and quarantine for 500 workers. How did we end up with three dairy workers out of the 200?

The Minister said he would be seeking advice on all aspects of the climate commission’s report relating to agriculture. What advice has he received to date? How much more broadband has been rolled out under his rural communities portfolio? On He Waka Eke Noa, the Minister said places like England and Europe will be looking to New Zealand to see how it implements a levy, and New Zealand can show the way. What discussions has he had about this while out on his trade trips? Besides participating in He Waka Eke Noa, what other initiatives, along with asparagopsis seaweed, are under way to help farmers and growers lower their gas emissions, and how are they progressing? What responses has the Minister had from stakeholders so far, farmers and iwi, in particular to greenhouse gas emissions options?

The Minister told the committee, which I wasn’t on at the time—I’m very pleased to be back on the Primary Production Committee, the best committee in Parliament—he had “grave concerns”, and that’s a quote, about the planting of radiata pine in permanent forest sinks. What has he done to protect productive farmland being planted with pine trees? How will the planting of radiata trees into permanent forest affect the progress of Fit for a Better World? How will the outcomes and milestones for projects funded under the One Billion Trees Programme be measured and reported going forward?

Why is the Minister opposed to Fonterra’s capital structure, voted on by shareholders? Would he be happier if it ended up in foreign ownership like Westland? Where is the evidence of reputational damage that he has spoken about relating to the export of live animals? What is the Minister’s plan to achieve the productivity, sustainability and inclusiveness targets in the Fit for a Better World roadmap? What milestones are you aiming for in the next 10 years? How is progress towards the roadmap targets measured and reported?

How much has been invested in the Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change research programme? What returns and outcomes is the Minister seeing, and, in addition to publishing on the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) website the results of these reports, have they been communicated?

Then, in expecting that publicly funded buildings must be built out of wood, as the Estimates say, how does the Minister expect to increase value for wood processors? How many potential successful MPI wellbeing initiatives for farmers and growers—or how are the initiatives being measured on wellbeing? Why do reports on catchment groups have to be reported to both MPI and the Ministry for the Environment, and why can this not be consolidated; and then what steps are MPI involved in to stop COVID-19 getting into our meat and milk manufacturing plants? With that, I wait for the answers.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. When was the Minister first made aware of New Zealand’s commitment to the methane pledge, and was he made aware of New Zealand’s methane pledge by the Minister of Climate Change before his departure to COP26? What will the methane pledge mean for the cost of on-farm operations and, by virtue, the cost of living here domestically for domestic consumables given the heightened international market prices? When will the Government and the Minister and the Government and his Ministry for Primary Industries officials seek to reconcile and fully compensate ANZCO, the owners of Five Star feedlot, and why, after several previous attempts in select committee, he still can’t answer what the final compensation figures will be, given the farms first became infected in 2018?

Last question: how can farmers have confidence in Overseer after several iterations failed, and it will now be reused as an accounting tool to measure on-farm emissions—i.e., methane and carbon dioxide?

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I think it’s quite telling that we haven’t had the Minister answer a single question yet, when there have been quite a few come up, and perhaps it’s been a little bit difficult for him to keep up with all the questions or to keep abreast of the challenges and issues that are being presented in his portfolio. Now, if that’s a bit too much for him, I’m happy to break it down and just keep it to one or two simple questions that perhaps he might be able to grace the industry with by answering.

So, on that basis, I’d like to get an understanding from him around what advocacy he has done to ensure that Immigration New Zealand better understands the needs of rural New Zealand. We have seen far too many instances this year where we have not been able to get the workforce we need across the borders, whether it’s dairy workers or vets or, more recently, rural contractors. It’s not good enough that it has taken this long, and it seems clear that the Minister and his ministry haven’t been advocating enough with Immigration New Zealand to get those exemptions in place for our primary sector. Those are critical roles. So what is he doing to ensure we don’t have these sorts of hiccups again?

Now, in terms of advocacy, as well, rural-proofing was something we heard from the Minister early on when he became the Minister of Agriculture as being a key priority. Every piece of legislation would be rural-proof. So I’m interested to hear how that work is going, what he is doing to ensure rural-proofing is occurring, because we’ve heard from Ministry for Primary Industry (MPI) officials that they are seeing consistent issues around a lack of consultation, and also increased costs being placed on the rural sector through a whole raft of legislative pieces of work going through. So what is he doing to minimise the impact on rural New Zealand, if anything?

Then, finally, from the horticulture perspective—because I’m concerned I’m giving him too many questions now—MPI have commissioned the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research to do a survey of importers in relation to post-entry quarantine requirement. I’m interested to know whether he has received that survey or report back yet, and, if so, what action he is planning to take on that, because I’m hearing from the horticulture sector a number of concerns around time frames, their ability to get quarantine space, how they can go through that process, the lack of import health standards, for a whole range of products like avocados or hops—why haven’t we got those? Is he planning to put those in place? So I’d appreciate some insights into those areas. Thank you.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): I thought the Minister was going to stand up. I just had a question that I did want to ask him before he does stand up to start answering the questions. How many new entrants to the industry have been attracted under the programmes that he’s been telling us are going to work rather than bring the immigrants in? And just a follow up to my letter that I wrote to him and Minister Faafoi recently: what work’s being done to increase the understanding in Immigration New Zealand of the seasonal nature of some of the work that goes on in our primary industries?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): It’s a pleasure to take my mask off. Look, I welcome the opportunity to answer some of the questions that have been put to the committee, and I’d like to, firstly, acknowledge the Primary Production Committee for their good work. As was said by the Opposition, I think this is the best select committee in Parliament, and, indeed, they did do a thorough job of asking some of the questions. There are a lot of questions, and I’ll try and work through them.

I guess, on the one of labour, or that is workforce in particular, it’s really good to hear that the National Party wants so much labour. We do, too—that’s Labour Party. They probably are referring to workforce needs across the private sector. Firstly, how many new entrants? Over 8,000 people have come into the primary sectors through the efforts of not just the Ministry for Primary Industries but, in fact, we have spent on behalf of taxpayers millions of dollars through Opportunity Grows Here. It is a very successful campaign working actively with tertiary institutions to train people over the last period, particularly around COVID, as we have understood the need across the sector, because of the borders being blocked for workers in all of the sectors. Indeed, it’s across our whole economy.

Their question has been—so, firstly, 8,000 new people have come in; secondly, how many have we allowed in? It is a hard job, working with the border closed, but, next to health, the primary sectors have been the second-biggest beneficiary of opportunities to come through the border: health workers first; primary industry workers second. That’s something that we shouldn’t take for granted, when every other sector has been crying out for people to come into our economy. I think it is important that the sector actually acknowledges and says thank you to the Minister of Immigration. He has had a very, very tough job, I have to say, and—I’m just trying to get the figures here, of course—we have allowed in 5,100 primary sector workers.

So we’re asked about why not the full complement of dairy. Well, there were issues around the claims of the skills required in the dairy industry. I’m not going to go into all of those areas, other than to say Government has work cooperatively with the sectors, and most of those sectors had been appreciative. Most recently, of course, the 200, which was the number requested by the rural contractors to come in. Yes, there are still issues to get through managed isolation and quarantine, and the changing environment that is not just Omicron, which adds to the risks, but actually the system that we’re running here. We’ve let in people who can shear sheep; people who can work in woolsheds. We have let in vets. We have let in people who can pick fruit. Tomorrow morning, we’ll release the Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries, and I hope there’s as much interest in that report as there’s in—or, actually, a hell of a lot more than in the debate that we’re hearing here tonight.

Can I say that the primary sectors have done spectacularly well through what has been a very challenging time. I want to acknowledge the efforts of people at every level of that sector. Whether it’s working in the freezing works, whether it’s working on the farm, or whether it’s being one of the chief executives trying to find space on ships, this has been a challenging time, and the primary sectors have done well for our country and for our people and for our rural communities, and there has been consideration by Government all through this process. Money has been given out to assist directly and indirectly. Indeed, the figures tomorrow will show that that has been a good investment.

Can I just go back—there are many, many questions. I’m not trying to avoid them; I’m not quite sure where to start or where to stop, other than to say that in terms of integrated farm plans, they are an objective of this Government to try and work with farmers. Indeed, I had a discussion this morning with a group of farmers, trying to say—these are farmers who are implementing best practice—“How can you share your knowledge and your passion with lots of other farmers?”, and that’s the basis on which we are working. We’re not saying we can develop the plan and tell you what you should do from Wellington; we’re saying we want to work with you.

Indeed, the first thing, though—so, what about fresh water? OK, we didn’t get that exactly right, but the intent or, indeed, the need for us to make progress on freshwater quality is absolute. Indeed, we have reviewed the whole process and come back with a set of proposals around intensive winter grazing, around stock exclusion, and around freshwater standards that I think the vast majority of farmers—visionary farmers—will see as quite sensible. It will enable us to get back the social licence that we have in some areas lost.

Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund—SFFF—has given literally hundreds of millions of dollars out to people who are showing innovative vision, innovative ideas, and put them on the table. We are supporting them moving forward.

The issue of climate change and our obligations there—a big, challenging one. He Waka Eke Noa, a Government-initiated but industry-driven—I guess it’s been a project, but it’s actually been a collaboration that delivered a draft report that will give us some progress. But we need to go further.

What, I was asked, am I doing offshore? Well, I am listening and, in fact, I have—and I wished I could table it in the House here tonight, and indeed I will. It is a report from Tesco asking all their suppliers, firstly, to move to renewable energy now, and, secondly, to have in place a plan for how they will reduce their carbon emissions by the end of 2022. All of these requirements are coming on us as food producers supplying food into the discerning markets of the UK, which we’ll have better access into; into the EU; and, indeed, it will be into all other markets eventually, and so we must move through this.

Before I sit down, I’d just like to thank again the primary sectors for their efforts and their discipline in assisting with the eradication of Mycoplasma bovis. There was one question regarding Five Star Beef. Can I say that we are working with them to ensure that they get fair payment but we minimise the true cost. We allow them to continue to operate for as long as is sensible, given that if we were to then eliminate or take all the stock off that and they were to be re-infected, that would be a huge cost to the farming sector. It would be a disaster for Five Star. So when we do this, and we do de-stock Five Star, we need to know that that will be close to the end of the Mycoplasma bovis eradication programme.

We’re on path. I want to thank everyone. It’s been tough for those directly in the firing line of that, who’ve had to get rid of their stock, but, indeed, we will achieve a world first and, hopefully, eradicate Mycoplasma bovis. That’s one of many, many positive things that have come from the primary sectors.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. To the Minister, you described the work of He Waka Eke Noa, the primary sector climate action group, as a project. You describe that Tesco are asking suppliers, agricultural groups to identify their carbon reductions—not methane, but carbon—and to describe their pathway to renewable energy. Well, fortunately, New Zealand already has that pathway. It’s called the emissions trading scheme.

So my question to you, Minister, is what will the Government do if farmers reject the premise of He Waka Eke Noa to put a price on methane when there is no other comparable country in the world putting a price on methane from growing food and fibre—no other country—and if the Minister insists that the Government will force farmers to price methane, what is the cost per tonne for that methane, Minister? What is the cost per tonne for that methane that farmers will be required to pay when a committee established by this Government tells them this is the price they must pay? What is that cost per tonne, and does the Minister think that’s acceptable? What will that cost per tonne of methane add to a kilo of beef mince in the supermarket, a kilo of cheese, or a 2-litre milk in the supermarket?

Minister, we’d appreciate an answer on behalf of New Zealand consumers and families. Thank you.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I just wanted to come back to the question I asked earlier in relation to the horticulture sector. There’s been a lot of concern around the costs and the challenges of getting quarantine space, for importing products, and I’m really keen to understand what work the Minister is doing there. I know that the Ministry for Primary Industries commissioned the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research to do a study of importers around the post-entry quarantine requirements, so has he received that report yet; if so, what work is he doing off the back of that?

I also understand that they’re looking to move to a full cost-recovery model for those quarantine facilities, which is a significant change from where we are now. So what’s the likely cost implication on users, is that model actually going to be where he lands, and, if so, by when?

Then, lastly on the horticulture sector, what workforce issues is he aware of arising in the sector over the coming season, and how is he planning to address that, as well? Thank you.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Look, very briefly, just to answer that one: the post-entry quarantine facilities—look, the Government has committed, after years of neglect and the running down the capacity in that area, to build a new facility, and we hope to do that on a site that has yet to be confirmed because there are issues to work through. It is a site that is logical, that will be efficient, and, hopefully, it will minimise the cost. But there will be a cost, and that should be carried by the industry. It will be user-pays, as it should be, but it will allow, we hope, the efficient facilitation of new plant material into the country, biosecurity-checked, ensuring no harm comes with that and enabling the industry for horticulture, in particular, to get on and innovate. So we’re working on that to have that in place as quickly as we can.

In terms of workforce issues, look, we’re working very closely with all the sectors so that we get the figures right, so that when the sectors ask for spots in managed isolation and quarantine or how we can actually get enough people into the country, whether it be through the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme or through the Pacific, and that, actually, we get the numbers right and we fully utilise those people, and that we don’t have them sitting around doing nothing or we have them in the wrong place. So we’re working with each of the sectors to make sure we get it right.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Minister, very quickly, could you please—and I asked this question before; you didn’t answer it. When were you first made aware about New Zealand’s commitment to the methane pledge? And, overwhelmingly, again—I’ve asked the question again—how can farmers have confidence in the Overseer after several iterations? You know how many it’s had, and it’s now going to be used as an accounting tool to measure on-farm emissions—i.e., methane.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Look, sorry, there were many questions; I didn’t mean to avoid them. The methane pledge, look, was something brought to my attention by the Minister of Climate Change—that we were going to sign up to this. Indeed, we went to the sectors, to Beef + Lamb New Zealand and they said, “Yes, we want to support this.”, because, actually, it’s an international challenge. We’ve signed up to that, and we’ve agreed to work with the primary sectors to achieve those targets. Many of those will be achieved over time. Offshore, the focus is on leakages from gas pipelines. From New Zealand, it’s around biological, biogenic methane, but we can work through that in a way that says New Zealand is committed to reduce emissions in every way we can.

Mark Cameron: So you’ve only known this year, Minister?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: So I knew about this and we endorsed it, and we supported the Minister of Climate Change at COP26.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Someone has to seek the call, or I’ll—all right, we’ll change Ministers at this point.

Local Government

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Madam Chair, I appreciate the call and acknowledge the Minister of Local Government, who is about to assume the seat, and as spokesperson for local government for National, I’ve got a number of questions in regards to this debate involving three waters, surprisingly, Minister, but we’ll get into a little bit of that soon. Obviously, this reform is the most significant reform of drinking, waste, and stormwater services: the megamerger of 67 local authorities into four separate entities. It’s also not only one of the largest elements of reform planned by this Government it is also the most widely opposed reform by the majority—

Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. I apologise to the speaker for interrupting. However, it’s convention for the chair of the select committee to introduce the discussion of this, not the spokesperson for the Opposition.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you very much for that. I’m entitled to place the call where I see it being sought and I did just that.

Kieran McAnulty: I realise that, but where’s Ian McKelvie—he’s sitting right there.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will not argue.

Kieran McAnulty: I’m not.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will not argue with the Chair’s ruling.

SIMON WATTS: Madam Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity. As I was saying—I just got the attention of the Minister; looking forward to some good questions.

I just wanted to say, as I was saying before we were interrupted, this is also one of the most widely opposed elements of legislation, but I’ve got a number of questions in regards to this in three key areas and one is around the compensation paid to councils. So the question for the Minister is: what compensation will be provided to councils for the value of their water assets? The second question I’ve got is in regards to the process you’ve used to estimate the value of those council assets and, specifically, did the Water Industry Commission for Scotland use national averages in order to value these assets or did they use actual replacement value? Why I think that is important is because the use of national averages potentially overstates that number.

The other area of questioning, Minister, that I want to get into is around the profit-making of these new entities. So my question is: will water be metered under the new water services entities, particularly in areas that aren’t metered at the moment? The other question is around: will water entities be operated as State-owned enterprises and expected to make a profit, which is required under the State-Owned Enterprises Act?

The last tranche of questions, Minister, is in regards to probably what has been said on public record by yourself and by many members or your officials as regards to the whole basis of this reform being around economies of scale and the benefits related to that. My questions around that are: do you stand by the reform benefits being modelled on Scotland as a point of comparison for New Zealand, acknowledging that with the exception of population between New Zealand and Scotland there isn’t too much more in similarity between our two countries? The second question is, in order to achieve those cost efficiencies, it has been stated that the only way to achieve that is through the amalgamation of those 67 local entities into those four separate entities—my question is around the counterfactuals. So what assessment have you undertaken in regards to, I guess, what you’d refer to as the “business as usual” or the “do-nothing” scenario—so councils or the local authorities continuing their programme of asset replacement and investment in the future versus this model around amalgamation and what was the differential in regards to that?

And, lastly, the amalgamation in terms of the benefit modelling that’s being quoted refers to the fact that the amalgamation of these entities will achieve a 50 percent capital expenditure efficiency improvement and that will be delivered through the consolidation of water networks in order to achieve that benefit. That assumption is fundamental and significant in terms of the underlying benefit case for this proposed reform and I want to understand, Minister, in terms of: how did you came to that number of 50 percent? What were the considerations in regards to other mechanisms in which you could achieve benefit and did you actually consider other counterfactuals around that, and, in terms of deriving that capital efficiency benefit, what other considerations did you put thought to?

So those are the three areas of questions, and I’d really appreciate the Minister’s contribution in terms of that.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Minister, for taking the opportunity to be in the chair and to potentially answer some questions. I’m going to ask, Minister, will some debt have to stay on council books when the Crown transfers control of drinking-water, waste-water, and stormwater infrastructure from 62 councils to four new independent entities?

I note that $500 million has been allocated for a no-worse-off component of a three waters reform package to ensure that no local authority is financially worse off as a direct result of the reform. However, in just one example of the Christchurch District council, their three waters assets are expected to be worth $6.9 billion at the time of the proposed transfer in July 2024, but the debt of the council for those assets will sit at $1.1 billion. Concerns have been raised that the council will be left holding the debt with no revenue stream and the council would have to pay millions of dollars of interest while the debt is repaid. I note that a Department of Internal Affairs spokesperson is on record saying that in some cases the debt could be transferred to the new entities but it might not be feasible in all cases.

Most cases manage their borrowing on a portfolio basis rather than borrowing individually for a specific asset. For example, the Christchurch District council predominantly borrows from the Local Government Funding Agency of which it is a member. I also have a question about: will the proposed new water entities have access to membership of the Local Government Funding Agency and be able to hold loans?

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Jeez, I am absolutely looking forward to the Minister’s contribution in terms of some of these questions, but in the intervening period while we’re waiting for that, I’ve got a few more to add to that list. I’m interested around what is the proposed “highly transparent accountability framework” that her proposed four water service entities will need to operate within, and if she could provide a little bit of clarity in terms of what that framework is. Ideally, some detail would be appreciated.

Just going back to my colleague’s questions around the intention for the debt and other liabilities in terms of the funding of that from the water services entities balance sheets, I’m interested particularly around how ultimately that’s going to be funded, and whether that is going to flow back in terms of ratepayers in terms of their water rates in order to fund that liability. If that’s the case, then if ratepayers are going to have to pay for the use of those assets, then do they still own them in terms of that model?

I’m looking at the Minister to see whether she might be ready to come in. She’s given me a head nod, so I’ll let her do that.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): Can I thank members for the questions that they’ve asked in the House in relation to three waters, and just remind everybody that the reason for the reform is that we cannot have communities around New Zealand who on a daily basis get boil-water notices—and that’s just for drinking water—and where they have no-swim notices at their beaches or local rivers where there are burst pipes and a real systemic kind of damage of their water infrastructure system. What we also know is that people are getting sick, and we cannot afford in a country like New Zealand to have a water network where people are getting sick simply from drinking water. That’s why we’re going down the reform path that we are pursuing.

Can I just in response to some of the questions highlight some of the challenges of the status quo in relation to the questions that have been asked. What we know now is that if we do nothing, 43 of the 67 councils do not have the revenue to cover their water services’ operating expenditure. That is as things stand right now. Do we want that to be the case going forward into the future? No. Can it be better? Yes. What is the solution? Well, the Government is putting a solution on the table because for 20 years, there has been systemic under-investment of the water infrastructure network. What are some of the alternative models—because I hear the questions that the members have been asking? Sure, the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) model was raised, but the whole challenge for the NZTA model is that it would require the introduction of a whole new water levy, and members on that side of the House don’t want any new taxes. We’re very sensitive to the challenge of introducing a new water levy on mainly ratepayers around water.

On the regional model: now, we tested this, especially in the Hawke’s Bay, and the challenge for the regional model is that there will be huge variances in costs to ratepayers throughout the country if you go down the regional pathway. So we had to continue to look to comparative models overseas and say: what is going to deliver the fairest outcome for every community, no matter whether they’re a city, a large city, metro, provincial, or rural community, so that everybody gets the fairness of an outcome? What is going to be the model that is going to assure people that they can meet the drinking-water standards—which are much higher—they meet the World Health Organization standard, but also the new freshwater standards?

The other component of the reform is to be very bespoke towards New Zealand. We value our fresh water. We value the things that make us feel good about caring for our environment. That’s why we’ve pursued a model that looks to get the benefits of aggregation, to ensure the fairness to all communities large and small, to ensure that ratepayers over the long term aren’t paying more, they are paying less, and to ensure that there is a financially sustainable pathway for investing in water infrastructure. That is the reform programme that we are pursuing.

Now, the member asked a question around compensation. Well, actually, what’s happening here—and it’s the wrong characterisation of the opportunity for local government, because the opportunity for local government is to remove debt and liability off councils’ books into the water service entities, and councils will still retain a level of governance oversight and the ability to direct water service entities in the way in which they operate. That is why aggregation alone is not the full sum benefit, but it will ensure that small communities—actually, big and small communities will gain the benefits from the reforms that we are pursuing.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Thank you, Minister. Before I call Simon Court, can I just remind you that the ACT Party has 16 seconds left.

SIMON COURT (ACT): We can do it—we’re efficient. Thank you, Madam Chair. Two questions: will Government meet with Communities 4 Local Democracy tomorrow about their concerns about three waters reforms; if not, why not? And will the Government release the exposure draft for the Water Services Entities Bill and hold an inquiry in the same way as they held an inquiry into the exposure draft of the Natural and Built Environments Act? Thank you, Minister.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): I’ve continued to acknowledge—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I’m sorry, Minister, but the time for the Labour Party is now expired. If the National Party, who is the only party with time left, would like to gift some of that time for the Minister to answer questions, you’re welcome to.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I seek leave to take the National Party’s time. I seek leave—Madam Chair, point of order. I seek leave to take the National Party’s time in order to answer the member’s question.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Is there any objection to that motion? No objections.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: The question of me was: am I prepared to meet with the mayors who are coming here tomorrow in relation to their concerns around three waters. This evening, I have invited those mayors to come and meet with me. Whether or not they take up that invitation, the invitation sits on the table. What I can also say is that throughout this whole process, over four years, I’ve continued to engage with councils and Local Government New Zealand around these very challenging issues that have been around for around about 20 years. This Government is putting a solution on the table; there is no alternative, and I would invite every council to engage in an alternative that looks for a financially sustainable pathway so that every community big and small—more importantly, their ratepayers—gets the benefits of reform.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Yeah, and I thank the Minister for that additional context. She noted as part of her basis for these reforms around the issues that New Zealand has faced in regards to drinking water issues—and we are familiar with the Havelock North example. But I am interested in the Minister’s comments in regards to Yale University’s global benchmarking survey in which New Zealand sits in the top 30—actually, 29th out of 180 countries—in regards to quality of drinking water and water infrastructure. We sit in a peer group of Canada, the US, Singapore, Israel, and while no one acknowledges that there isn’t some room for improvement, we are not in the bottom 20, and we aren’t facing catastrophic failure of the scale which is referred to.

I think why that is important is for the whole case for change. What’s the burning platform here? What’s the big driver in terms of the need for us to act, when the Minister refers to the point that, actually, you know, we’ve got some significant issues here? When you do a horizon scan in terms of where we sit globally, we are not a significant outlier—actually, quite the opposite. We’re sitting in the upper quartile of peer group.

So the scale of reform being tabled and the speed at which this process has been tabled, and I guess what you’d refer to as the lack of consultation—and those are not necessarily my words; those are words from the majority of local authorities around this country. Why are we not using the opportunity to take on board the feedback and look at the different counterfactual models? Because as my questions asked before, what were some of those counterfactual models that we have considered other than what is seen as sort of the silver bullet, which is amalgamation of the 67 local entities into four entities? That just seems like that’s the only option that’s available, and the feedback loud and clear from around this country is that there are other options in order to deal with our challenges. I’m wanting to try and understand around the appetite of the Minister—why are we not giving that due consideration?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): We’ve only got two minutes and 42 seconds left.

Simon Watts: Oh, she’s got no time.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Well, you had gifted time to the Minister before, so if you would like the Minister to answer—

Simon Watts: I’m happy to. I’d like the Minister to answer using my time.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): I thank the member for ceding his time to me to be able to answer the questions. Firstly, in terms of the question around the counterfactual model—it’s a very good question. Can I say that the model that we have landed on delivers the full range of benefits that I’ve spoken to and is fair. It delivers benefits to ratepayers; it ensures that there’s a financially sustainable pathway to be able to invest in infrastructure for the long term, which is a huge challenge for councils; and it ensures that by removing debt and liability off the council’s books and the Crown’s books, we have these water service entities that have sufficient scale to be able to self-invest within this network.

But let me come back to the counterfactual, because it’s a very good question. We did test 30 models—that is on the Department of Internal Affairs website. It has got a strong and robust analysis against the Government’s bottom lines as to why we didn’t end up pursuing certain models. It does give some background to those who have been interested in this approach as to why we are where we are. Can I say that the other element of the counterfactual has been to ensure that we are transparent in the way that we present this information to be able to undertake our regulatory impact analysis and our way of going forward.

Can I also say—and, again, it is a point that was highlighted at the very beginning of this debate, which is the case for change. Now that we have established a dedicated waters regulator who will be able to, in a more uniform way, assess and monitor all councils in meeting drinking water standards—compliance, monitoring, and enforcement of those standards, as well as fresh water standards—that will certainly lift the bar. That is going to put a lot of pressure on several councils who have had variable rates of performance. That was known right at the beginning; it’s no secret amongst any of the councils. But most importantly, what it will show is that there are a number of challenges for councils, especially in waste water, to be able to invest in waste-water treatment plant upgrades, because they are currently now not meeting the standard. With Taumata Arowai, they will have to meet the standard. There is a deficit in their ability to finance that. That is why we’re pursuing the reforms that we’re pursuing.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): We have 20 seconds left.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I was wondering if the Minister could answer my question around the averages in terms of the asset values, whether it’s replacement value or averages. Happy to use my time.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): To be assured of an accurate answer—there’s so much variability amongst the councils—I’m actually happy to respond by written question to that particular question because that will be more beneficial to the member.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, the time for this debate has expired. The question is that the current issues and priorities be noted.

Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Madam Speaker, the committee has noted current issues and priorities in a special debate. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Bills

Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for ACC): I present a legislative statement on the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment 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 CARMEL SEPULONI: I move, That the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.

Next year, it will be 50 years since the ACC legislation was first introduced here in New Zealand, and ACC remains a unique and world-leading scheme. It is an integral part of our social support system in New Zealand and has become part of the fabric of our country. As Minister for ACC, I want to make sure, and our Government does as well, that the system assists all New Zealanders who have had an injury and that the system is fit for purpose for New Zealand in the 21st century.

Back in March, I remember I’d just finished an interview at TVNZ’s Breakfast, I was en route to my next engagement and I read a Radio New Zealand article written by Anusha Bradley. The article was about the growing number of women experiencing injuries when giving birth, and their struggle for treatment. It included one experience shared by a woman called Susan. It was a distressing read but I instantly knew that this was something that needed to change. I asked my officials to improve gender balance, fairness, and equity in the ACC scheme, and birth injuries seemed like a reasonably important place to start. I was in the process of asking ACC for information about how different population groups, including women, were accessing support through the ACC scheme. It showed that women made fewer claims to ACC than men, have fewer injuries covered by the scheme than men, and each woman’s claim cost the scheme a third less than a man’s, on average, in entitlements.

This reflects the inherent gender disparities in the scheme that are the result of its focus on accident-related physical injuries, which are more common among men and in male-dominated types of work. It’s not surprising, given this scheme was set up to support the New Zealand workforce in the 1970s, but it is time for us to begin addressing these disparities. New Zealand looks very different from what it did 50 years ago; our workforce looks very different from what it did 50 years ago. The bill represents a first step in that mahi, by extending ACC cover to a specific list of maternal birth injuries.

Eighty five percent of women in New Zealand experience an injury when giving birth. Some of these injuries are severe and share similar features to other physical injuries covered by ACC, so it is only fair that they are covered too. The extension of cover will benefit up to 18,000 more women per year, who will be able to receive cover for maternal birth injuries. Enhanced cover will improve the support available to birthing parents suffering these injuries—in particular, by providing more timely access to surgeries and pelvic physiotherapy. For those few severe cases where individuals are incapacitated for the longer term, the additional benefits of ACC cover include access to non – means tested weekly compensation, home help, and rehabilitation.

I’m really proud to present to the House a bill that will make a huge difference for the women that experience birth injuries, and I’m very grateful for the support of a number of external groups, from Parliament and women, but also to the women in this House who have been very vocal in their support, particularly those in the Green Party and, of course, in the Labour Party women’s caucus.

This bill is also about reversing some of National’s 2010 changes. The bill also introduces changes that we meet our manifesto commitment to address the changes that National made when last in office, which unfairly disadvantaged tens of thousands of New Zealand workers. The changes in the bill will clarify the section 30 test for work-related gradual process, disease, or infection cover, and put the burden back on ACC to prove that a disease or infection is not work-related.

The bill reduces the threshold for injury-related hearing loss cover from 6 percent to 5 percent hearing loss. Claimants with 5 to 5.9 percent injury-related hearing loss have a legitimate need for a hearing aid. The exclusion of these people from ACC cover by the previous National Government was a cruel cost-saving measure. This change ensures that an additional 200 people per year can access the support they need.

The changes in the bill will also ensure that ACC considers what someone was earning before they were injured, as part of its occupational assessments. This means certainty for claimants that if they suffer a covered injury, they will be supported by ACC until they are able to return to a suitable job.

Finally, the bill makes a number of minor policy and technical changes. These changes are intended to improve the clarity and usability of the Accident Compensation Act and ensure that it is achieving its policy intent. This will improve the administration of a system that affects all New Zealanders.

In summary, this bill makes important changes to the scheme, which will provide more support to injured New Zealanders, more clarity on what is involved for gradual injury claims at work, and more equitable cover for claimants and, in particular, women. I’m very proud of this particular bill and I’m looking forward to it making its way through the select committee and hearing what the submissions bring. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Madam Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill first reading. I acknowledge the Minister firstly for bringing this bill to the House. National will support this bill through to the select committee process.

As the previous National spokesperson on ACC—and I do acknowledge the Hon Michael Woodhouse, who is now the spokesperson—I’m going to cover a little bit of detail and context in regards to this, because I have been quoted publicly in terms of feedback on this bill, saying that it is sensible legislation. And acknowledging it is Christmas, Minister, I did think there was going to be a positive exchange there, but you sort of jumped into a little bit of negative, and I thought, “Oh, gosh. Thought we were going to have a good night.” But I’m going to keep it pretty positive, because this is really important. This impacts between 17,000 and 18,000 women in this country every year. And it is not only a significant physical injury as a result of pressure during the birthing process—that’s all the detail that I’m going to go into—but also the post-rehabilitation and the emotional and psychological effects of this type of injury that occurs and does occur on an ongoing basis for a large number of women. I think it needs to be recognised, and that’s why on this side of the House, we are supportive of that.

I think it’s also important to acknowledge, and I refer to some reporting done by RNZ in terms of Official Information Act process, that actually there is a degree of bias within ACC towards women—and that, as reported, was driven by some of the lower claim lodgements by women, and whether this reflects the potential around unmet need, i.e., those that are living with injury but not seeking treatment or other aspects. I think this is and continues to be an area that we need to do better in, I think would be fair, in terms of particularly women and the support that they receive from ACC. I’m very much looking forward to our spokesperson for women behind me, Nicola Grigg, who will not doubt cover more of that in more detail.

Nicola Grigg: Graphic detail.

SIMON WATTS: Detail, yeah—underlined, bold, capitals.

I also want to refer to this bill as set in the context of some changes to the Accident Compensation Act 2001. And as the Minister has alluded to, outside of the birth injuries element there are some what we would refer to as “minor amendments”, and I’ll cover a little bit of that later on. But ACC does have its problems, and I think it is important to acknowledge that.

We’ve spoken in the House and publicly in terms of media attention, and rightly so, around the sharing of private data and the issues that have come up around that as being part of a select committee process, which, again, impacts on this bill—the attempts by us to get more focus in terms of ACC on aspects such as the case management system, which will be a system that would deal with claims relating to this bill. We’ve been blocked in terms of trying to get that conversation happening.

More recently, probably one of the last aspects that I did when I was spokesperson was trying to get the select committee to do a briefing into ACC around the ongoing issues around privacy breaches and client personal information. And you can imagine, in terms of the context of this bill, the criticality and the importance of protection of personal information and the impact of that information being available in the public domain, which is absolutely abhorrent, but we have seen examples of that this year. I think there is an absolute expectation in regards to ACC managing aspects such as this that that aspect must improve rapidly. I am pleased in a way to see that the independent review by Treasury is under way for ACC as well.

In regards to this bill, one of the aspects that we’re really keen to understand as we go through the select committee process—and as part of our democracy, the select committee process is a really important aspect of this. I expect, knowing the Minister, she will contribute and participate and let the select committee do what they need to do, but the costing element around this, as I understand, is somewhere in the region of $25 million. And while, in the context of ACC’s balance sheet, that may seem somewhat small, it is an area that I think we do need to make sure is robust in terms of its calculation. I think, going back to my comment before around the potential risks for potentially a large number of women out there that may not have previously claimed for this type of injury, what potentially is the scale of that unmet claim or the unmet need and the implications around that. I think that’s important just in terms of an overall affordability conversation, and that will be something that no doubt the select committee will undertake a robust assessment of as they go through.

The other aspect that this bill relates to is, as always—and it’s always the conversation we have in regards to the ACC scheme—where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the boundary between what is covered by the system and what is not? There is a large number of—this is a very topical area, but there are others in terms of that line. And I think the reality is though that this scheme is a scheme that is funded through employee-employer contributions, and so while it’s very easy to just include and broaden the coverage net, there is a fiscal cost to that which needs to be borne by certain groups. I think that’s always the balancing act around this specific bill and the affordability around that and other aspects around where that line is. And so, again, I expect the select committee process will go through that.

The Minister referred to a couple of changes around hearing. I think, when you start playing around with aspects around gradual change, this is a complex area. It’s a complex area in regards to the clinical assessment that is undertaken, the pre-existing conditions that an individual may or may not have, and the ability to isolate one specific aspect such as hearing loss and the absence of the environmental elements that that individual has incurred through their lifetime is often the clinical challenge around trying to say whether that injury or that aspect is covered or not covered. I think, while the Minister may be critical towards where National were in the past, it is just acknowledging that this is a complex area, and I think that needs to be noted.

I did want to comment a little bit around the element within the bill which is putting an additional board member on to the ACC board. I acknowledge that they are dealing with a complex, significant balance sheet—in the region of $60 billion. And they’ve got eight independent individuals there. Obviously, they’ve got the Hon Steve Maharey—18 years as a member of Parliament for Labour—who’s now the chairman of that board. And I’m sure he’s going to do a very thorough job, but the introduction of another board member, I think I would always question—eight’s that sort of magic number around span and control, and six of those eight board members are new to the board since 2021, right? So we’re dealing with a new board, and the introduction of, potentially, a seventh out of nine, I think places quite a significant consideration around the continuity of that board and the experience and the ability for that board to be able to get up to speed, acknowledging they have an acting CEO—actually, a new CEO, of course, as well. So in light of the challenges that that entity has in regards to its operations, I’m not really too sure what the value is, but, again, that’ll be something that will come through in terms of the select committee process.

So I wish the select committee all the very best for what will be a robust process. I look forward to watching from afar in terms of this bill going through the House. You never know, I might have the opportunity to speak on it again, but I commend this bill to the House.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I am absolutely delighted to be standing here this evening to rise in support of this bill, and I’d just like to say how proud and grateful I am to Minister Sepuloni for bringing this to the House. I would also like to thank and acknowledge Mr Watts for his support for maternal injuries and for the work that we will be doing together.

Because as we know, a number of women experience severe birthing injuries. As I stand here, I have before me in my mind’s eye many of my former clients, but also particularly one of my constituents who came to talk to me about a severe injury that she had experienced in the course of what we would describe as a physiological birth where treatment wasn’t involved in her injuries. It was precisely those injuries that were experienced by the passage of the fetus as it was being born—and I’m struggling here not to go into too much detail, but I won’t. But it was that woman and many like her who are experiencing injuries and for whom that cover is not provided, and that’s one of the things that we’re trying to correct here.

There are going to be, should this bill pass as we hope, 17,000 to 18,000 women who will benefit from this bill—17,000 to 18,000 women is a significant amount of health benefit to those women whose permanent health has been injured: their continence affected, their sex lives affected, and many other specific injuries. We have described seven injuries in this piece of legislation. I really would encourage anybody who is interested to take a good look at what we’re proposing here and to come forward and to submit when it goes through the select committee process. I do heartily commend this bill to the House.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to rise and stand in support of this legislation, the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Sixty thousand babies are born in this wonderful country we live in, and what most people don’t realise is that 85 percent—85 percent—of women in New Zealand experience an injury in the process of giving birth. Some are substantial and some aren’t. It’s one of those areas that I think it’s really important that we explore further, because there will be far too many women whose lives are permanently affected by this. The member before me, Sarah Pallett, spoke in terms of her professional experience of the physical and physiological impacts of giving birth, but actually just as important is then the impact on women’s maternal mental health as a result of some of these injuries, and I think it’s important that we consider this.

It’s been interesting to see the number of women who have come forward to raise these significant issues. During the course of the work that I’ve done on a member’s bill to increase post-natal stay, we had a session here in Parliament, a breakfast, of which there were a number of speakers, and the part that stood out for me was one of the speakers, a scientist, talking about the most dangerous time of a woman’s life being when she was giving birth, and the most dangerous time of a child’s life was when they are being born. I was quite shocked, and I think that we haven’t paid enough attention to the fact that it is a very physical and a very traumatic experience that can have a lasting impact on mother and, therefore, on baby. So I do think some of the changes that have happened in ACC’s approach, in terms of decisions they’ve made around birth injuries recently, have had a significant impact in a negative way on women.

What that has led to is a number of petitions, and it’s interesting because, before the review in June 2020, perineal tears topped ACC’s list of the 10 most common childbirth-related injuries for women, and claims at that time were about 30 per month. After that review, unfortunately, though, the number of claims accepted went down to about four. So I do want to acknowledge Kirsty Watt, with her petition in June 2020 asking for improvements in the rehabilitation care of New Zealand women post-birth. Because I was involved heavily in the National Party’s policy around the first 1,000 days, this was a component, and hearing the experiences of women and just how significantly it had affected them was quite devastating. It affected their relationship with their baby. It affected their relationship with their partner. It affected their ability to enjoy life in very basic ways. The very level of physical incapacity was quite staggering.

So I do want to acknowledge Kirsty Watt for bringing that petition initially and just to take this opportunity to say petitions actually do have a significant impact on our parliamentary democracy, and I would really encourage people not only to consider creating a petition but to sign one. There was a second petition, and I want to acknowledge the Green Party and the organisations that supported them, many I have been involved with, with my three-day post-natal stay, but more broadly on the campaign for women’s health and particularly in the first 1,000 days, understanding the importance of a baby’s brain development while a mother is pregnant and post-birth. Everything that affects the mother affects the baby, and I think that, potentially, in more recent years, the pendulum has swung too far in favour of the child and away from the mother. So I commend the Minister for bringing this bill to the House, for putting some of the emphasis back on the mother and ensuring, through this change to ACC, that the mother is able to get the support and treatment they require to support their ability to function, and function well, in life, not just as a mother.

I was quite staggered, actually, at that 85 percent of women experiencing an injury giving birth, and there are far too many examples where it was yet one more thing that women just put up with, and in absolutely hideous circumstances in some cases. One of the most challenging cases I spoke with was a women who was just unable to leave the house. Her injuries were so substantial she was unable to leave the house at all, and so her ability to function as a mother, as a woman, as a human being—the process and the system really disrespected her. So I do think this is an important piece of legislation to ensure that—and part of what raises women’s frustrations is their having to fight the system, and when you are physically so debilitated, in levels of agony that are quite unimaginable, in an injury that many women are uncomfortable talking about even with their closest family, to then have to fight the system to get access to financial support for treatment is, for many, the final straw. So I do think this is an important measure to enable women to get the support they need.

One of the areas I do think and hope is explored in this select committee is where the line is: what injuries are covered and which ones aren’t. And just as I have acknowledged those who have initiated the two petitions that have been a significant part in changing the law—or the introduction of this legislation—I would really encourage women with real stories and real experiences to consider submitting. A submission is a very powerful way to bring real experiences into our ability to change the law and, in this instance, to make sure that the line that is drawn in terms of which injuries are covered and which ones aren’t will be really important. I’m not on that select committee, but I would reiterate to women’s organisations—actually, not just women’s organisations, because this is not just a women’s issue; if a mother raising a baby has a significant injury like this, it affects her whole family—to make sure that we have those voices to ensure that the changes to this legislation cover more of the injuries rather than less.

The other thing I would consider—because one of the aspects of the National Party first 1,000 days policy was to actually enable women to get assistance through specialist physiotherapists. So, for some, pelvic floor damage might not be through significant tears or damage but still cause significant issues that have an impact on their quality of life. So I would really encourage people to come forward to submit, for the organisations that were involved in supporting the open letter, including groups like Mothers Matter and Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Aotearoa, for example. The College of Midwives will, obviously, be there—and the Council of Women, to name a few—to make sure that women’s voices are heard. This is a great opportunity, and we need to get it right.

JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is what I consider a real privilege to be able to stand and take a call on this piece of legislation. I want to join others from across the House in acknowledging the Minister, Carmel Sepuloni, for bringing this piece of legislation to the House. It’s an extremely important piece of legislation and it will impact on many, many women’s lives going forward.

We’ve heard tonight, and I was quite horrified when I heard and read about this, that 85 percent of women experience an injury when giving birth. I was lucky enough not to be one of those 85 percent of women. But I can’t even really imagine how it must feel when you are going through a time when it’s supposed to be an exciting and joyous moment in your life, giving birth to a child that you have wanted and been waiting for for so many months, to have it potentially go quite wrong and give you life-long injuries as a result. We’ve heard tonight how it does and can impact also on a woman’s mental health when that sort of situation occurs. It affects partners, relationships, families; we’ve heard that. What I think that this piece of legislation brings into line for women is that what they go through does matter, and just because in the past ACC has been focused on more accident-related physical injuries, now this will be something that will be considered just as seriously as those types of things.

One of the other things that is going to be changed with this piece of legislation is that ACC board members are going to increase from eight to nine board members and that should encourage better diversity or more diversity on the board as well.

Minister Sepuloni, again, I just want to commend you for bringing this piece of legislation to the House. It’s going to mean so much to so many people going forward. Thank you.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. First of all, congratulations to the Minister. This is quite an exciting moment, I think, to have positive, progressive ACC legislation in the House—it’s the first time in my living memory—and specifically making provisions that start making inroads into addressing the really entrenched sexism within the legislation that means, I think, quite often in terms of the work of ACC, the financial costs that accrue to men versus women was about a billion dollars difference in that in favour of men, which is just extraordinary. Where a rugby injury gets cover and our love and our support and then the most important job in the world where injury arises of giving birth pretty much nothing except struggle, this legislation starts us in addressing that. I’ll speak to some of the specifics a bit later in my speech, but I also want to speak to the fact that making this change will help women and birth parents be able to access support and that is to the benefit of all of us in our society: our children, our families, and all of us.

It also, I think, helps address some of the shame and the stigma and the silence around these injuries as well. I recently had a Facebook message from somebody who was talking about how they gave birth 9½ months ago and have had abdominal pain and urinary incontinence every single day since and thought that was just what happens. We had had no public discussion that had connected to her that actually this is something you can go to the doctor about, this is something you can get treatment for. That is a sign of a societal problem in itself that I hope this discussion will start addressing, because we need to remove the shame and the stigma and ensure the supports are in place.

I will speak to the some of the things—that the Greens are so stoked that this is on the table and that there are things we would like to see change through the select committee and I will speak to some of those. We see in the regulatory impact statement there was a decision to cover a specified list of obstetric injuries caused to birthing parents, and our concern over that is that it doesn’t necessarily cover all birthing injuries and even in that definition of physical injuries. And there was another option that was considered to define the fetus as a force external to the body so that all injuries caused by the fetus to the birthing parent during labour and delivery would be considered accidents under the ACC Act and that would have ensured that at least all physical injuries to the birthing parent were comprehensively covered. Unfortunately—and this is where it kind of sticks in my stomach a bit—the decision was made not to go with that option, because it risked a broader interpretation to also include injuries to the birthing parent throughout the pregnancy and the child. Oh—I’m sorry, it was not chosen because of potential cost reasons. And that, to us, if we’re looking at making sure that this works for all of our families, then actually that’s what we need to put first.

I also would just say that for the Greens, we wanted to see—as the 40,000-plus people who signed our petition in a very short period of time wanted to see—all injury, including trauma, not necessarily connected to a physical injury because there are birthing parents who experience trauma through a difficult labour, even if there isn’t a physical injury, and we want to make sure that they get that support at the time they need it in the most easily accessible way. We also would like to see the injuries to the baby covered. We know that there are lifelong injuries that are incurred through the loss of oxygen during the birth process, and it does not make sense to us in the Greens that we can cover the injuries in other contexts and not recognise that first injury because it absolutely is an injury.

So those are the areas we are absolutely looking forward to exploring through the select committee process in relation to birth injury. But I say all of that and we wouldn’t be able to explore any of those things if we didn’t have this legislation and if it wasn’t on the table and if those so many thousands of people hadn’t signed those petitions and Anusha Bradley hadn’t done some great investigative journalism—and I want to shout out and acknowledge her as well for her work.

So now I’d like to speak to the other part of the bill, which are the winding back of five changes made by Nick Smith in 2010. I’d like to speak to these. These may not be the headline parts of this legislation but they are important and we, the Greens, would also like to see these go further because I think Labour has made a commitment to unwinding those changes and they’re not doing it in this legislation and the Green Party believes they should.

The first is changing the onus of proof for gradual process, and that is great, but not re-establishing the Ministerial Advisory Panel on work-related gradual process, disease, or infection will limit the impact of this change and mean that many people with gradual process injuries, diseases, or infections will still either have to battle ACC for cover or just lose out. Words of Hazel Armstrong, an ACC lawyer known to many in this House: “Yes, it’s a first step. You might get another 200 people through, but it’s not the big game changer needed in New Zealand.”

Then there’s the requiring occupational assessors to consider pre-incapacity earnings. Also positive, but this legislation doesn’t roll back the change of definition of vocational independence from 35 hours to 30 hours per week, or the decrease that we saw in weekly compensation or the increase of time from two to five weeks before weekly compensation is raised to the statutory minimum or even the abatement of holiday pay from compensation. So it’s kind of such a miserly little measure.

And then there’s the reducing of the requirement for 6 percent hearing loss to 5 percent hearing loss. The legislation previously did not have a percentage. We don’t have a percentage of the number of bones in your body that you need to break before you can get support and I’m told by experts who know a lot more than me that actually the percentage doesn’t have meaning around functional hearing loss, that there will be people who will require hearing aids to be able to function effectively in their workplace or in their life, who may only have 3 percent hearing loss or less. So this doesn’t make sense to me at all.

Then there is the fact that the Government is ensuring dependants of a claimant with a terminal illness covered by ACC who chooses assisted death under the End of Life Choice Act can access legal entitlements. I think that’s great. But it does kind of, for me, bring into stark contrast the fact that the Government has chosen not to bring back the entitlement for people with self-inflicted personal injuries or suicide or who are in prison. At the heart of an effective and powerful ACC that we want to see is the no-fault cover and support, so I don’t—and I would be interested to see through this process whether we can get back that concept of no-fault cover to restore the power and the greatness of ACC that so many of us have been so proud of and looked at other jurisdictions that have to go through courts to battle to get their entitlements. We want that back and it doesn’t feel like we’ve got it at the moment, so there is a huge amount of work to do.

Then finally, I just want to again note the significance of this day for women. It’s a bloody good day in this House for women and I really commend the Minister for being receptive, being proactive, and getting some—

Nicola Grigg: Stuff.

JAN LOGIE: —stuff—thank you, some stuff done, finally, in ACC. It is well overdue and we are very much looking forward to these conversations.

TONI SEVERIN (ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. It’s great that ACC will acknowledge these birth injuries, in common with a lot of other injuries that occur, however they haven’t been recognised because of us being women. There’s estimated to be around 17,000 to 18,000 women that suffer with these injuries. As has been spoken about before, 85 percent of women incur injuries during birth, but it’s not just injuries that occur; it is also the emotional side of these injuries that can have a lasting impact as well on women. With these emotional injuries, they also impact their loved ones that are there to support them, because the husbands, partners, aren’t able to support them because of the injuries, but they can help the babies, which is great.

ACC needs to improve more around women’s health with these birth injuries. It is great that this support is occurring, but there are other injuries, as has been mentioned, and sometimes women’s health gets overlooked and they don’t get that support that is needed. Also, I’d like to point out that ACC has had its problems around personal information, and that’s a concern for us in the ACT Party, because women especially do not want their information or injuries shared around with other people. So it’s very important that we make sure that these things do not continue. The other thing is the estimated cost is an unknown because we’re not 100 percent sure exactly how many will be able to claim. So it is a bit of a problem there on financing within the ACC scheme.

Overall, ACT’s very happy for the maternity birth injury side of this bill. However, there are the other matters that I’d like to raise. The main concern is actually raising the board from eight to nine. As said in the bill, a wide range of specialists and stakeholders is required on the board. That’s fine; I agree with that. However, as my colleague in National pointed out, we have already appointed new board members in February, then again in August, and then again in September. So if we were looking at having a better structure within our board, then how come the ACC, when they were appointing the board, did not look at this maybe in August or September when they were appointing these new board members?

The other thing that is really good to see is that they are ensuring the legislation certainty that dependants of claimants will not be disentitled for future injury entitlements covered under the ACC scheme following the claimant’s assisted death in accordance with the End of Life Choice Act 2019. We’re very proud for this to be included in the other matters.

Overall, we’re very, very happy, as I said, with most of these, but we’ve also got to take into account that there are other matters—who will be paying for it, and if you are aware that the ACC levies for the employees will be raised in the next coming year. So that means that more money will be going out of our everyday - New Zealanders’ pay packets, and they’re already struggling. That is something that we have to be aware of, that more money will have to be found in some of the areas within the ACC financing, and that’s usually out of our hard-working taxpayers’ dollars.

The next thing is that there are seven technical changes. Now, within these technical changes most of them are just fixing up definitions, which is fine. But there’s also one that’s enabling the ACC compensation corporation to use the most recent employer filing to Inland Revenue when determining the client’s weekly compensation. This I don’t have a problem with because that will ensure that the person that is off work due to an injury will most likely get 80 percent of their wages. Because at this stage, there’s a lot of paperwork that employers normally have to go through to prove earnings for employees or the employees themselves have to find that.

So also, the other thing I’d bring up, that hasn’t been mentioned, is aligning the ACC penalty rates with the IRD’s rules, by changing the 1 percent monthly interest rate from the day after the levy invoice is due, rather than 30 days after the payment is due. I understand that’s just general business, but it also needed to be pointed out to people that even though you think you have 30 days after not to be penalised, because people do tend to sometimes put their ACC bills aside and not organise payments. So this needed to be pointed out.

But most of all, in general, ACT is very happy with this bill. It is moving forward to help women with the injuries around birth. It’s great that people have stepped forward and put petitions to the Parliament here to speak up for these injuries. But most of all, is for the New Zealanders, hopefully listening tonight, to be made aware that submissions are open and come forward and speak what has occurred to them.

In the bill, in Schedule 2, is a list of maternity birth injuries. I would hope that people will come forward, after reading these, and even others that may have occurred that have not been put here, that they may be recognised, possibly in the future, that have occurred. And especially, I feel also, the mental health side of things may need to be looked at a little bit more, because that is a huge thing for a lot of women that suffer these birth injuries. So, I commend this to the House.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. This bill is all about fairness because it seeks to provide more equitable coverage for injuries covered by ACC. Tonight a lot has been said about this bill, and I just wanted to reflect on one comment, I think it was the Hon Louise Upston who mentioned that about 85 percent of women experience injuries while giving birth. This is a sobering reminder of why tonight we need this bill, and that not doing anything simply is not acceptable any more. Making this bill more equitable, more accessible is the right thing to do. It’s about time, it’s a must. I also want to add my voice to others in thanking the Minister in bringing this bill tonight. Madam Speaker, this bill is timely, it’s the right thing, it’s morally right. I commend it to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Earlier this year, following robust conversations—graphic conversations, very detailed conversations—with a lot of my girlfriends, along with deeply traumatised fathers, I started to draft a member’s bill. That member’s bill was titled the Accident Compensation Coverage for Third and Fourth Degree Perineal Tear Amendment Bill. But following media coverage, and I have to say some pretty gutsy advocacy from Green MP Jan Logie, I’m very pleased to say the Government’s beaten me to it. So I won’t go so far as to say great minds think alike, but I must commend the Minister for bringing this in front of the House.

We have now in front of us the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and we, in the National Party, are happy to support that. While the bill does cover the other matters, as our spokesperson for women I want to focus my contributions this evening on those birth injuries. A lot has been said this evening about the 85 percent of women who tend to suffer birth injuries, but that actually translates to around 18,000 women per year. And it is those 18,000 women who have suffered the injuries, which are accidents that are not currently covered by ACC. Some of the injuries, I’m told, are particularly painful and distressing and have a long-term effect on the lives of the women who suffer them.

This bill has come in front of the House because in June 2020 ACC actually revised its guidance on its then existing cover for perineal tears that were suffered during childbirth. At the moment, the corporation only covers those tears that are the result of a treatment or the failure of a treatment, as opposed to those that are caused by the birthing process. And it’s the failure to provide that treatment that’s no longer covered by ACC. I think we’d all here agree in this House, along with those 18,000 New Zealand women, that that is wrong.

As was discovered with much horror by my young male researcher today, perineal tears are not uncommon in childbirth, but the most severe are known as third and fourth degree tears, and they can involve some really debilitating injuries. They do often require surgery under general anaesthetic. They often require ongoing pelvic physiotherapy. There’s ongoing medical issues, they can be profound. They can be life changing for these new mothers, as some can take months and months and even years to heal. The ACC cover for such injuries can be a critical enabling factor in the recovery of those mums.

So in its consideration of this bill, it asks that the select committee does consider the severe impact and ramification of those third and fourth degree tears and make it clear that they are covered in the new schedule of injuries that is going to be devised. We do have some questions around the particular injuries that are going to be covered, as the bill sets out in its list, in that Schedule 3A, which aren’t included. But we will leave it in the hands of the committee to revise those and to consider them.

So I think that this bill does make a really good first step in advancing the rights and protections of women, and it is a much-needed change for what has been a painful and unfair consequence of a legislation that could be made better in order to enable them and help them. I therefore commend it to the House.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): It is my pleasure to take a short call on this bill this evening, Madam Speaker. We’ve heard a lot about the significant impact this is going to have on so many women around the country, but tonight I just want to speak very quickly about a small but significant aspect of the bill, which brings justice to thousands of New Zealand workers.

Work-related gradual process, disease, or infection cover, such as industrial deafness, will be better supported. The clarification of section 30—the test restores the burden back on to ACC to prove that such injuries aren’t work related. It lowers the threshold to 5 to 5.9 percent. Those extra 200-plus workers every year who need a hearing aid will get one. This is about restoring a little bit more justice to our workers who pay with their hearing. For those freezing workers who have industrial deafness, we see you and we hear you, and this one’s for you, Dan.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I, too, rise to speak on this Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill in its first reading.

As my colleagues have said, the National Party is supporting this bill. We are supporting it to select committee at this stage, because there are some aspects of it that do need further investigation, and I note that while the regulatory impact statement has done a very broad costing, quite a rudimentary costing of around $25 million, it is not a robust investigation as to the ongoing cost of this. So I anticipate that the select committee will be a lot more thorough in that, because we need to know how many more claims this policy change is likely to generate. We don’t know if it’s 100; we don’t know if it’s 10,000. So we will support the bill at first reading to the select committee.

The bill makes changes. There’s five additional policy changes in this bill, seven regulatory and technical changes. But what clause 6 of this bill does is it amends the definition—so I went to have a look at the existing Accident Compensation Act of 2001, and it talks in there about the purpose of that Act, which is “to enhance the public good and reinforce the social contract represented by the first accident compensation scheme by providing for a fair and sustainable scheme for managing personal injury that has, as its overriding goals, minimising both the overall incidence of injury in the community, and the impact of injury on the community (including economic, social, and personal costs)”. It proposed to do that through a number of different measures. Number one of those was “establishing as a primary function of the Corporation”—the Accident Compensation Corporation—“the promotion of measures to reduce the incidence and severity of personal injury”. We all see that through the prevention programmes that are rolled out by ACC and some of the advertising programmes as well.

A second was to provide “for a framework for the collection, coordination, and analysis of injury-related information”. That, of course, is the data collection which we have heard mentioned a few times tonight and the need for that data to be absolutely secure. Next was “ensuring that, where injuries occur, the Corporation’s primary focus should be on rehabilitation with the goal of achieving an appropriate quality of life through the provision of entitlements that restores to the maximum practicable extent a claimant’s health, independence, and participation”. So in those instances, we are talking about the recovery from an accident. And in the next item, “ensuring that, during their rehabilitation, claimants receive fair compensation for loss from injury, including fair determination of weekly compensation and, where appropriate, lump sums for permanent impairment”. Of course, that is speaking to the support that is offered to those people who have legitimate ACC claims. The last item is to ensure “positive claimant interactions with the Corporation through the development and operation of a Code of ACC Claimants’ Rights.” And that speaks to the relationship between claimants and the ACC Corporation.

The Accident Compensation Act of 2001 also goes on to define what is not considered an accident in section 25, in Part 2 of the Act, and it states that an accident does not include “(a) any of those kinds of occurrences if the occurrence is treatment given (i) in New Zealand, by or at the direction of a … registered health professional”. I guess this is where we are with this bill that we are now debating, that these are the types of injuries that are now going to be recognised as an accident in terms of the definition of the ACC Act.

One of the items that I have a particular interest in is in Part 3, clause 8. It talks to the injuries that are work-related, gradual process, disease or infection described in section 30. In reading that, I had to wonder whether it will mean that our firefighters who are exposed to a range of toxic fumes in the process of fighting fires will be covered under this clause. There was nothing that led me to believe that it would, because it’s not specified in the bill. But I do hope that, during the select committee process, that will be identified as a legitimate clause and a claim that is able to be made by firefighters who are exposed over a lengthy period of time to toxic fumes.

This was brought to mind when I visited, with a number of other members from across the House, the Rotorua training facility for our firefighters. I was most impressed by the standard of training that they enjoy out there but also the standard of the facility that they get to train in. But at the end of the day, we were invited back into the building, their smoko room, and we were discussing this very issue around the long-term impacts of being exposed to the toxic fumes within a burning building.

It wasn’t something that I had turned my mind to at all, but, of course, when a firefighter goes into a building of any sort, they have no idea about what the content of that building contains, what the furniture is made of, or, if it’s an industrial building, what might be inside that building—and so the toxins within that, of course, can differ. So they may not always be fully prepared for what they are exposed to. So this was something that the Firefighters Union and Fire and Emergency New Zealand were very keen to see progressed—that those workers, the firefighters that risk their lives going into burning buildings to save people and property, are fully compensated at the end of their work life if they do have these specific problems, mainly lung diseases and high rates of cancer that are currently not recognised.

I do note that in the national health policy that was released a year or two back that we actually did include the injuries and the illnesses for firefighters that were exposed to these toxic fumes. So I do hope that the select committee identifies that as part of the consideration of this bill.

There’s a lot being said about the birth injuries—and I do have to wonder why it’s called maternal birthing; I don’t know that we have paternal birthing anywhere that I’m aware of, maybe seahorses. But this, of course, is for women who suffer from these physical injuries during childbirth, and, I have to say, in looking through some of the data, it did make my eyes water and it brought back a flashback for me as well. Some of these injuries are debilitating, it’s time we recognised them for women and gave them the support post-birth that they deserve, and I have great pleasure in commending it to the House.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take the last call on this first reading of the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I am on the Education and Workforce Committee, and I look forward to hearing the submissions that people will make on this bill. It’s heartening to see support from all over the House for this proposal today.

We know that the bill does four specific things that have been canvassed: extending the compensation scheme to cover birth injuries, taking steps to reverse changes made in 2010, increasing the size of the ACC board, and making a number of smaller technical changes. But what I would like to focus on in my speech is the main part of this bill, which is maternal birth injuries, and wanted to recognise, also, the Minister Carmel Sepuloni for seeing an issue within a portfolio she was responsible for and seeking to remedy that very quickly, actually, because it was the right thing to do. So I commend her for that and thank the members of the House for supporting this.

We know that women make fewer ACC claims than men. We know, when women make claims, they’re less successful at obtaining ACC cover, and even when they are successful, they receive less money than male applicants. Statistics like this are not an oddity. They may mean the system is not fully meeting the needs of women, which is, as we know, over half the population.

As we’ve heard tonight, giving birth is one of the greatest health risks that women of childbearing age face. It’s one of the hardest and most physical things that a person can do, and birth injuries, as we know, are a regular occurrence. They can be extremely serious and debilitating, and they can affect mental health. So I commend the Minister for bringing this bill to the House, and I want to let women who have suffered birth injuries know that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m sure we’ll hear difficult stories at select committee, but it is time that we heard them. So I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, the House is suspended, and I will resume the Chair at 9 a.m. tomorrow for the extended sitting. Pō mārie.

Sitting suspended from 9.57 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)

TUESDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2021

(continued on Wednesday, 15 December 2021)

Bills

Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2)

First Reading

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister of Defence) on behalf of the Minister of Education: I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2).

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 PEENI HENARE: I move, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I will move that the committee report the bill to the House by 2 May 2022.

In August 2020, the Government passed the Education and Training Act. This was comprehensive legislation that brought together education legislation into a single Act. This House has already considered education amendment bills this year, including the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill, which was passed in November. During the debate on that bill, I said that I will be bringing further changes to the Teaching Council to the House. The bill we are debating today contains these changes, which I will return to shortly.

The bill before the House today is the next step in a programme of continuous improvement for the education sector. The bill contains both new policies and minor and technical amendments to existing provisions in the Act. The bill amends the Police vetting provision in the Act. The bill amends the Act to align it more closely with the safety checking regime set out in the Children’s Act 2014. The Children’s Act requires all workers who have regular or overnight contact with children to have undergone a comprehensive safety check, which includes a Police vet before beginning work. The bill requires all non-teaching and unregistered employees to have been the subject of a Police vet before beginning employment, rather than the two-week period employers have to apply for a vet currently. This change is aimed at ensuring children are safe while engaging in education.

The bill streamlines the disciplinary functions of the Teaching Council by reducing the number of matters that must be referred to the disciplinary tribunal, and allowing them to be resolved more quickly by the complaints assessment committee. A number of other minor changes have also been made to the legislative provisions relating to the Teaching Council. These changes include making it explicit that the council can prosecute breaches of registration and certification requirements, and that it can regulate teaching in all languages of instruction and not just English and Māori medium settings.

The bill better supports the wellbeing and safety of our tertiary and international students. It ensures that provisions for wellbeing and safety codes and the dispute resolution scheme for tertiary students are fit for purpose. As well, the scope of the dispute resolution scheme was broadened so that the scheme operator can consider breaches of the code alongside financial and contractual complaints. The bill changes how the Government regulates fees charged by tertiary education providers for student services such as health, sports, and recreation services. This will allow the Government to ensure these settings better respond to student needs and system changes. For example, it will enable the Government to consider future changes to better protect fair fee arrangements for tertiary students or to enhance student voice. The bill simplifies qualifications and other credentials by streamlining the way qualifications are designed and used. Under the bill, industry will be able to establish their own national curricula through workforce development councils to be incorporated into the New Zealand Qualifications Framework. The bill also provides for micro-credentials and removes training schemes and training packages. In addition, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) will be able to publish information on any quality issues relating to providers, which will increase transparency for all students.

The bill makes two amendments relating to national student numbers (NSNs). First, the bill will allow NSNs to be used to ensure employers and students receive appropriate resourcing and support for work-based training. Currently, national student numbers cannot be used when funding is not administered through an education provider. This amendment will allow agencies to better administer these resources and to seek recovery of funding if necessary. Secondly, the bill explicitly authorises national student numbers to be assigned to students studying in overseas jurisdictions where New Zealand has entered into an arrangement for the teaching and assessment of NCEA. Currently, these arrangements include the Cook Islands and Niue. The bill amends the mandate of the Education Review Office (ERO) to enable it to review professional learning and development accessed by schools, kura, and early learning services. Enabling ERO to review professional learning and development will improve our understanding of its quality and impact in individual places of learning and at a system level.

The bill also makes a number of minor and technical changes to the Act. These amendments include specifying the free kindergarten associations currently recognised for collective bargaining purposes, removing the requirement for the Secretary of Education to review and approve school strategic plans, and enabling NZQA to exercise discretion about whether to cancel the registration of private training establishments in relation to immigration breaches. In 2020, the Act introduced new provisions that enabled network management for licensed early childhood services. The network management provisions have a delayed commencement and will come into effect on 1 August 2022. Network management approvals will examine the need for an early childhood service and the suitability of the applicant.

I have released a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that amends the network management provisions. The changes set out in the SOP create a more sustainable, higher quality and more diverse network of early learning services. New national and regional statements would be introduced for early learning network management, which will include priorities for early learning provision following input from the early learning sector and Māori. Providers will have access to information on supply and forecast growth, demand, and need. The amendments will further improve the quality of services by introducing new requirements around demonstrating capability and strengthening the fit and proper test. The changes will protect children and create a more learner- and whānau-centred early learning network. I have referred the SOP to the Education and Workforce Committee so it can be considered at the same time as the bill. With great excitement, I commend this bill to the House.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m happy to take a call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2). When this bill was originally introduced, we had a good look through it. There are a number of changes, technical amendments, but on the whole a bill that didn’t look overly contentious. There were some issues that we had, but they could be nutted out at the select committee, as you would expect us to do. However, yesterday morning, very early in the morning, a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) was tabled, and this, of course, is highly unusual. You very rarely get a Supplementary Order Paper that is introduced before the first reading of a bill. Now, I understand from the Minister that it just wasn’t ready in time, but usually what would happen is that the bill is withdrawn, amended, and then resubmitted to the House. So we’ve only had this Supplementary Order Paper since yesterday, but I would like to base most of my contribution on what is contained in this Supplementary Order Paper, because we will not be supporting this bill based on the Supplementary Order Paper that was tabled yesterday by the Minister.

The reason we won’t be doing that is because right from the very start when the original legislation was introduced to the House in late 2019, we had many concerns about network planning for early childhood. I’ve read back through all the speeches that we gave, and we signalled at the time that there were going to be issues with network planning. When the Government and the Minister get involved with what types of centres can be set up, where they can be set up, under what conditions, and how many students they can have—when the Minister starts to get involved in that level of detail of private businesses—we signalled at the time that we thought there would be issues.

This Supplementary Order Paper goes even further, and I’ll get into the detail of that because I want to go through it part by part. But, overall, this Supplementary Order Paper for the early childhood education sector is anti-competitive. It reduces choice. It entrenches the existing providers regardless of the quality of the service. It discourages small players from entering the market. It reduces the likelihood of a centre being established in a brand new residential area, and it makes it harder for new centres to establish, basically, anywhere, especially those small, niche community providers who are wanting to get set up. Now, the Minister who was reading the speech today for the Government talked about this Supplementary Order Paper meaning that it would be sustainable and diverse—we’d have a sustainable and diverse early childhood education (ECE) sector because of this. I would argue that this does exactly the opposite, and I will go through point by point.

Firstly—there are two steps to this—the Minister is required to give approval for an early childhood centre to be able to, later on, apply for a licence. It used to be that you would just set up your centre and then you would apply for a licence when you had set up. Now there is a two-step process, and the first part is actually going to the Minister to get his approval for applying for a licence within two years. Now, the very first part of this, in section 17, in new clause 5A, talks about the Minister having a high-level assessment of the relevant attributes of the area to be served, including, without limitation, the demography of the area, the needs of the communities in the area, the needs of the children, and the availability of centres.

Now, it talks about a high-level assessment. The reason it has to be a high-level assessment is that the ministry do not have the capabilities or the IT system or the data collection to be able to understand. Other than a very high-level demographic view, they do not have the ability to know what parents want. Do they want a play centre? Do they want a community centre? Do they want a private centre? Do they want something a bit more niche? That data doesn’t exist, and the education ministry doesn’t have the ability to collect that data. There is no IT system to track it. They don’t know where parents want those centres. Do they want them close to their home? Do they want them close to their work? Do they want them somewhere else? What size do they want? There are many things that parents want when it comes to an early childhood education centre, and at the moment they have incredible choice, but now the Minister is going to be deciding, based on information that he doesn’t have and cannot collect, what type of centre can be opened and where. One of things that’s been slipped in, in this SOP, is that the Minister must take into consideration any other matter that he considers relevant to the application—anything else that he thinks might be relevant, based on data that he doesn’t have. One of the things, also, is that the Minister will be looking at people’s financial arrangements. Again, the ministry doesn’t have the capacity, the bureaucrats available, to be able to (a) actively collect the data and (b) analyse it. So it’s a capacity issue that the ministry just doesn’t have.

What has been inserted into this SOP is a particularly egregious section, section 17A, in clause 5B, and this is the one that I really want to talk about. The big problem and what the Minister doesn’t understand is that, when someone sets up an ECE centre, it’s a long, costly, difficult process. And when you add in extra compliance and the Minister has to decide whether you can set up a centre, it makes banks nervous. The ANZ bank has already said they will not lend to ECEs setting up new centres under the existing legislation, let alone this. This new section 17A allows the Minister to say at the beginning of the process or at any time, “This is the type of centre I want, this is the number of children, and this is where I want it.” Now, at any time in that 2-year process that the centre has got to apply for a licence, the Minister can impose new conditions and amend or revoke any existing conditions. So you can have the rug completely pulled out from underneath you when you’re already halfway through the process. No bank will lend to any ECE provider on these conditions. It’s absolutely ridiculous. So when we talk about wanting to set up new centres and having sustainability, banks won’t lend on this. They already wouldn’t lend on it, but they certainly won’t lend on it now. This a massive problem. The Government does not understand the commercial realities of setting up a new centre.

One of the other issues with this bill—and it’s always been there—is that the centre only has two years to complete construction. So from getting the approval from the Minister about what he wants, they have two years. In most cases, it takes almost two years just to get a resource consent before you even get a spade in the ground, and that’s a massive problem. In this bill, they have gone on to say that, if there are any exceptional circumstances, it may be extended for an extra two years. It talks about things like adverse weather events that are outside your control, but it doesn’t talk about things like hold-ups by the council, shipping delays, or not enough staff. Those types of things don’t seem to fall into the types of things that the Minister will grant an extension on. So you will have providers thinking, “Am I possibly going to be able to get a centre set up in two years? Probably not.” The Government is discouraging centres from building new centres. It’s the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve.

The ministry has said they want to have small centres in more places and not just the big guys. Well, this bill discourages that, because these little guys will not be able to get the finance. The big guys can get the finance because they’ve got their own arrangements. So we will see a proliferation of the very big centres, which isn’t in itself a bad thing—they’re great providers—but if the ministry are trying to get an outcome where you see small providers, niche providers, community centres set up, this bill discourages that and will do the exact opposite. The second part, the really important part, is the Minister can at any time change his mind on the conditions, and then section 17C says the Minister may revoke his approval for a licence if he’s satisfied that the applicant didn’t meet the criteria that were set in the first place—or changed halfway through the process. So the Minister can revoke his approval based on the fact that he changed his mind halfway through, decided he wanted to change some conditions, and the poor provider couldn’t meet it or had his finance revoked or something, and then the Minister can say, “Oh, sorry. Too bad; I’m revoking it.” It’s just absolutely ridiculous. The commercial realities of this, they just don’t understand.

In my last 44 seconds, I just want to talk about the fact that, if an applicant is particularly aggrieved by this, they can take it to the District Court. That’s in the bill—the new part of the bill. The problem is that the Minister doesn’t have to take that into account, and he can grant a licence to their competitor who’s also trying to get the licence in the same area regardless of that fact that you’ve gone to the District Court. So there’s no point in taking this to the District Court if you feel aggrieved by the decision that’s been made, because the Minister doesn’t need to take that into account. He can just grant the approval for the licence to someone else. This is a terrible bill. It’s egregious. It will do the exact opposite of what the Government is trying to achieve, and we will not be supporting it.

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

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2). I spoke on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 1) last week, and this bill is different, but it does have some similarities. Both bills follow from the substantive change that was made last term, the Education and Training Bill 2020. I said in relation to that bill that it was a pragmatic bill, and it is good lawmaking to make sure any inevitable issues that come from a substantive legislative change like the one that was introduced last term are addressed quickly and efficiently.

So this bill brings forward minor technical amendments and it also makes the substantive policy change which was mentioned by the member opposite, Erica Stanford. She’s correct that the most substantive change is the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that introduces the network management provision for licensed early childhood services. This was actually provided for under the primary Act; so it’s not correct to say that this was not foreshadowed at all in the primary legislation, although this SOP does detail what will happen.

And I disagree with the member in terms of what this SOP will achieve. The changes will lead to a more sustainable, unified, higher-quality, and diverse early childhood education sector that meets the needs of early childhood teachers and students in New Zealand. So I commend this bill to the House.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): My pleasure to talk on this bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No. 2), which, in the normal course of events, was a fairly routine piece of legislation typical of this Government, fixing up little mistakes made in previous pieces of legislation brought to the House in haste and in error, and so there’s a long list of little things that they’ve got to fix. So, align the Police vetting procedures in the Act more closely to the safety-checking requirements of the Children’s Act 2014—they didn’t get it right the first time around. So then they had a bill through the House, which we’ve just passed, but they still didn’t manage to get it right and so they’ve got another bill to fix that. So that’s what we see quite often, and ordinarily that’s OK. But, as my colleague Erica Stanford pointed out, unusually we’ve had—at the same time as this bill being introduced—a large Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) bringing in what is a reasonably significant policy change around early education providers.

And, in essence, what we’ve got is a strengthening of a licensing regime for early education providers, and returning to a situation—a lot of younger New Zealanders won’t recall how the New Zealand economy was arranged back in the 50s and 60s and 70s and early 80s, where the whole of the New Zealand economy was licensed. So, if you wanted to set up a business as a transport business, for example, you couldn’t just open up a business and say, “Here are my trucks, I want to take your stuff from A to B.”; you had to get a licence from the Government to do it. The Government would say, “Well, actually, there’s already a transport business here in Eketāhuna. We don’t think you should set one up, because there’s already a business there. You don’t need to do it.” That’s how the whole country operated, and it was a mad system and it led to—it was all about protecting the incumbents, and if you had a licence, you had a licence to print money, and if you didn’t, you didn’t. That was a corrupting regime because it became not about the skill of what you were offering; it became about how effective you were at getting and retaining a licence. That is the mad arrangements that had New Zealand in a terrible situation by the early 80s, and was all thrown out under a reforming Labour Government. It was the only decent Labour Government in the history of this country, I’m bound to say, but that’s by the by.

Now, years later, in 2021, we have another Labour Government restoring that sort of mind-set to the early education sector. So, rather than coming along and saying, “Well, here, I want to set up an early education offering centre in Eketāhuna”—or Remuera or wherever—“I believe I’m going to provide something that parents will want. I want to help educate and look after these young kids. I’ve got a bright new idea; I’m going to do a better job than the people who are doing it down the road, and people, if they like what I have to offer, will come, and if they don’t they won’t, and that’s what it’s all about. I’m going to deliver a better service and product than anybody else, and people are going to come”, that’s not the option, because, under this proposal, some Minister and some bureaucrat in Wellington will have to step back and say, “Well, actually, there’s already sufficient providers in that area. We don’t think we need you, and the country doesn’t need you. Get lost. We’re not going to give you a licence, based on our data analysis and our assessment of what the situation is.” So that’s fundamentally all about protecting the incumbents—the people who are already there. It leads to a scleretic—sclerotic—what’s the word? It leads to a calcified and hardened situation where there is less innovation and less opportunity for new providers to come in. It’s a dreadful idea, and we will oppose it on principle.

I don’t know why they don’t just be honest and say what they really want is they just don’t want the private sector involved in education, full stop. That’s what they’re trying to do, and this is sort of a halfway step which is a tragedy. So, look, we’ll be opposing this legislation. It speaks volumes of this Government that they introduced a bill and then couldn’t even get their act together to introduce a coherent bill, with this actually in the bill rather than throwing in an SOP at the time that it’s introduced, in a rushed and messy manner. But at least it will enable the submitters in the select committee process to deal with it and engage in the issues, and I’m sure many people in the sector will be very interested in it. But, of course, the moment that you bring in very difficult licensing regimes, then naturally it’s the people that aren’t in the sector who might have got into the sector who are the most affected. The incumbents, quite often, are quite happy to make it difficult for competitors to come along, and so it becomes a very difficult and unhelpful set of arrangements when Governments get more and more involved in making decisions about whether a New Zealander should have a go and set up a new business in any part of the economy, whether it’s early education, whether it’s driving trucks, or whether it’s doing anything else.

Quite aside from the natural requirements and absolute expectations around the many things in the education sector that are special in terms of ensuring quality and qualifications and Police vetting and all those elements which are quite legitimate and separate and should be dealt with in a rigorous way, what we’re talking about here is about the market demand for places in early education, and that is where this Government is crossing the line and, of course, is part of an overall, wider-ranging trend towards centralisation and decisions being made, by officials in Wellington, about what’s best for everybody else. That’s very much a theme that we’ve seen in the polytech sector; it’s a theme that we’re seeing throughout every aspect of this Government—“Wellington knows best.” As we all known, particularly those of us from Auckland who have been locked down for such a long time, there are different views in different parts of the country. People have different priorities and mind-sets, and we’ll be looking forward to hearing from them throughout the select committee process that follows. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to rise and take a call on this piece of legislation. I just want to spend my time focusing on the Supplementary Order Paper that we have before us. As someone who has gone through the process of opening up and starting an early childhood centre in a small, rural town, I found that process extremely easy and smooth to do, and I don’t see that this piece of legislation will change that in any way, shape, or form. If I still owned that centre, I would welcome this piece of legislation, because I had an early childhood centre in a small, rural town—or area—and if someone, a big competitor such as these corporate centres, wanted to come in and open up shop, that would completely put me out of business. As a small-business owner, I see that this piece of legislation will better protect these small-business, niche early childhood centres that the Opposition seems so passionate to talk about.

What I have found quite interesting in the first two contributions from the Opposition is that they barely mention children, and children are at the heart of this matter. Children who attend early childhood centres deserve quality education in quality settings. The other thing they haven’t mentioned is that it’s taxpayers’ money that fund these early childhood centres predominately. So therefore, if I apply to open up an early childhood centre and, for some reason during that process, I either go bankrupt or I suddenly have some serious criminal conviction, it should be entirely within the Minister’s ability to cancel my application and not allow me to open up an early childhood centre, because it is a way of protecting our children and protecting taxpayers’ money. I absolutely commend this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Madam Speaker, it’s Groundhog Day. We’ve got another one of these education and training amendment bills. When this one hit my desk, it kind of reminded me of exactly the same one that we passed last week, which was the Education and Training Amendment Bill, and maybe because it’s the holiday season and I’ve been thinking of the holiday movies that I’ll be watching with my whānau, perhaps we could name these education and training amendments bills like prequels or sequels to sorts of movies. So, looking forward to this one going to the select committee, I’m not sure if it’s going to be the “Education and Training Amendment Bill: A New Hope” or “Education and Training Amendment Bill: The Empire Strikes Back”, but I’m certainly hopeful for the teachers of Aotearoa New Zealand that it could be the “Education and Training Amendment Bill: The Return of the Jedi”.

The Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) did land yesterday, and we will be taking some time to go through that with our caucus, because there are a lot of substantive issues that have been raised, as well. But I must say that, as the education spokesperson for the National Party got up to respond to the SOP, it just sounded better and better, to be honest. I was expecting some criticism to dissect it, but the contributions just made me think, “Well, maybe, actually this is not such a bad thing after all.”

I think it is really important and really mindful for all of us that we must always place children at the centre of the education system. We must place children at the centre of everything that we do in terms of the way that we organise and establish our early childhood education centres (ECE), the way that we run our schools, and the way that we support our education communities as well. Also, I’m very mindful as well about the discrepancy within the ECE sector as well: the massive pay-parity differences between those that work in the kindergartens compared to those that work in ECEs. I was privileged enough to go to one of the protests just recently to support those calls as well, and one of the things that the teachers told me was that, if you start in the kindergarten, compared to someone that works in the ECE sector, within 10 years, that pay parity gap could be as wide as $100,000 or $10,000 a year, and growing each year, as well. So I feel that anything that will help to make early childhood centres the best possible place for our tamariki is something that we should be working together as a Parliament to do, as well, and that will hopefully come up in the select committee, as well.

I did hear some mutterings to the right of me about crony capitalism, and so I did take the point from the member Simon Court about making sure that that doesn’t happen. I’m certain the member to my right will highlight that—the need to make sure that doesn’t happen—and hopefully that will come out in the deliberations in the select committee.

But, to the bill, there’s lots of different things in here—for example, aligning the Police vetting provisions more closely with the requirements in the Children’s Act 2014; strengthening the Teaching Council disciplinary processes—that would be good; requiring compulsory student service fees charged by tertiary education providers; and enabling NZQA to exercise discretion about whether to cancel the registration of a private training establishment in relation to immigration breaches. But, here, I think one of the issues that we should also think about as well and be mindful of is the immigration breaches that happen not just in private training establishments (PTEs) but also in universities and polytechs as well, and also to remember that, often, students who have a particular class of immigration status don’t necessarily have the support to progress any kind of concern that they might have with a PTE, but also within a university or in a tertiary education setting as well.

Other things in this bill, as well, is amending the Education Review Office’s (ERO) mandate to enable it to review professional learning and development. I would be interested to see how that would look, to see how ERO would go about that, and whether they’re actually the appropriate body to do that, and the sorts of plans that they would do to make sure that that is done properly, because that really impacts the quality of teaching and the quality of teaching practice within Aotearoa New Zealand, as well. There are other things in here, as well, like introducing new types of casual vacancy on school boards when the board’s members are removed for breaching the code of conduct; amending the Act’s regulation-making powers so that the regulations can specify the qualifications held by persons controlling or working as educators in an early learning centre.

So there’s a lot of parts to this to this bill, and it’s going to be really good to get into that detail at the select committee process, and also to tease out all of those issues around the SOP. The Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2)—let’s hope that it’s “Return of the Jedi” and not the “The Empire Strikes Back”. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to take a call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2). The purpose of the bill is to make amendments across a range of matters in the Act to give effect to new policy decisions and to make minor and technical changes. While they may seem minor and technical changes in the added Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), ACT believes there is enough to worry about for us, and we will not be supporting the bill.

There are a number of areas of change. I’ll just go through a few. The Police vetting provisions—where the Education and Training Act is amended, it’s all non-teaching and unregistered employees of early childhood education (ECE) services and registered schools must be the subject of a vet before they start work, instead of two weeks in, which absolutely makes sense.

The Teaching Council—we talked a bit about the Teaching Council over the last few months. It’s been noted that matters of teaching conduct are taking too long to go through the disciplinary process. The aim is to strengthen the Teaching Council processes, which makes sense, as it is their core business; a lot of other stuff isn’t. I know a matter that has been dragging on for over two years, and this is unfair on the teacher involved, and the family, and it needs to be dealt with.

On the surface of it, the compulsory student services fees amendment sounds OK, but when we read, “give Government more flexibility to regulate”, we in ACT are justifiably nervous.

The private training establishment changes are to enable the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to exercise discretion about whether to cancel the registration of a training establishment in relation to immigration breaches—seems a bit like overkill. Five cases, 2018 to 2019, affecting a total of about 60 students. Were the cases intentional, innocent mistakes, or even incompetence from Immigration New Zealand? A lot of work needs to be done in that area. It seems like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The bill extends the Education Review Office’s (ERO) mandate to enable it to review professional learning and development. As an ex-teacher, the mention of ERO makes me nervous, and I’ll be looking forward to finding out more detail about this change.

Then we have the new sections around student accommodation, where “a code administrator may authorise any person to do, at any … time, any 1 … of the following things”—and there are seven things: enter a premises, get any person to produce documents, remove documents, inspect the training work and any related materials, and talk with any person. It just seems very authoritarian and warrantless searches and privacy issues, and possibly not justified.

Then we come to SOP 118—that we got yesterday. We’re concerned about this for a number of reasons, and it seems to be another chapter in the agenda of the ECE area, and we have every right to be cautious. If we look at new section 17(2) in the SOP, when applying for a licence, “The Minister may grant approval, but, before doing so, must take into account—(a) a high-level assessment of the relevant attributes of the area to be served, including (without limitation) the demography of the area, the needs of the communities in the area, the needs of the children in the area, and the availability of licensed early childhood services in the area with different offerings (for example, … te reo Māori);”. There are a number of other lists, but the last one is “(g) any other matter that the Minister considers is relevant to the application”. This just seems to be giving huge subjective powers to the Minister.

New section 17A—when applying for a licence, a Minister may, at any time, impose new conditions on the approval or amend or revoke any existing conditions. New section 17B—when applying for a licence, the Minister must specify an expiry date for the approval that is no more than two years after the date on which the approval is given. Anyone prepared to start up and do business in New Zealand in the current climate needs every help they get. They need certainty; this doesn’t provide it.

New section 17D—the Minister may issue statements relating to network of licensed early childhood services, including “(1)(a) the Government’s strategic priorities for the establishment of licensed early childhood services;”. We had a taste of these priorities earlier in the year, and we have reason to be concerned. I could go on, but instead, we’ll wait until the select committee process to ask the questions that we believe need answering, but until then, we won’t be supporting the bill. Thank you.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): It’s clearly indicative of the lack of enthusiasm on the Government’s part that they won’t take a call. But as a slight Christmas present, I will not make this a completely long 10-minute speech. Fundamentally, we’ve been hearing from the left side of this House that it’s about putting the children at the heart of this. The problem is that it’s all about, actually, putting the Minister, the Government, and bureaucrats at the heart of education. So, for those listening out there, the Government yesterday dumped an SOP—and you’re going “What’s an SOP?” Well, to sort of riff on the element of education and training: “SOP” is an acronym for a Supplementary Order Paper. It’s an amendment to a piece of legislation. The irony for those of us who are, of course, in politics is that this is the first reading of a completely new piece of legislation but the competence of this Government is sorely on display in that they needed, within minutes—actually prior to the legislation even being introduced to the House—they’ve had to make changes, and not only that, the changes are egregious.

Long and short—probably more long—the Government wants to put more and more control into who sets up early childhood education (ECE). We’ve heard some very poor excuses from the other side: there’s the chance that those setting up ECE will turn out to be very dangerous criminals. I suppose that’s possible. It would be interesting if the Government could provide any statistics of how many people running ECEs have turned out to be dangerous criminals, and as the Corrections spokesperson I might point out that we don’t really put these people in prison anymore, anyhow.

But, basically, the SOP is outlining a whole lot of conditions, rules, and regulations which the Minister exercises. So National opposes this bill, because, as I said at the start, it’s not putting the children at the centre; it’s actually putting the Labour Government. Unfortunately, this is very true to form because we’re seeing this level of control right through the sector. We’ve seen it with the polytechs, we’ve seen it with the health sector, we’ve seen it around water; you name it. The Government wants more and more control. So we oppose this bill. We will look forward to it going into select committee. We hope New Zealanders do submit a lot, because, as others have noted, there’s a whole pile of stuff in here from Police vetting, to strengthening the Teaching Council, disciplinary processes, and so forth. So it’s really important for teachers and educators to be aware.

In concluding, people need to be aware of the mischief that this Government has already created. I won’t ask the other side to spell “mischief”; it might be a little bit of a challenge—it begins with an “M”. But, basically, the bill’s convoluted in itself, and as I say, yesterday, before this was even read a first time, an SOP, an amendment, has already been tabled. As some have noted, it’s a bit of a Trojan Horse, and that’s where we’ve got probably the most focus, and probably the principal reason why National opposes it. So I’ll repeat what I said at the start: the Government cannot make the argument—well, not successfully—that it’s children at the centre. This is all about the Minister, it’s all about the Government, and it’s all about control.

Ibrahim Omer: Madam Speaker?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Before I take the call, could the member clarify whether he is seeking a five-minute call on behalf of the Māori Party, who did not take up their call?

Ibrahim Omer: No, I’m taking a full call—10 minutes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. I call Ibrahim Omer.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As I rise to take a call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2)—what cynicism. It’s supposed to be our last day, we’re all supposed to be cheering up with a positive mind-set, but here we go.

The bill amends the Education and Training Act 2020. The bill does have quite a few amendments, but it’s also the next step in the programmes of continuous improvement for the education sector. It contains both new policies and minor technical changes.

This bill also further improves the quality of service by introducing new requirements which will eventually lead to the change that will protect children and create a more learner- and family-centred early learning network.

The Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—my good friend Jo Luxton, who is also an expert in the early childhood education sector, who was also an ethical living wage employer. Talking about it, I’m not going to say much but the SOP amends the network management provisions for licensed early childhood services. I think with that I’m going to rest my case about this, because Jo Luxton is the best person to speak about this. She comes from the sector, she was a living wage employer, and she is the best person to, basically, make this point, and I will take that.

This is a good bill, and I look forward to engaging with submitters during the select committee process. I commend it to the House.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Mōrena, Madam Speaker, and everybody. I stand to take the last call for the National Party on this Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2), because last week I spoke in the House with my colleagues again on another Education and Training Amendment Bill—which was not labelled (No 1). Little did we know we had (No 2) coming up! When I addressed the House on that matter, it was quite clear that the principal Act, which had been rushed through in haste, in urgency last year—we made it very clear to the Government that in so doing you’re actually diminishing and depriving the New Zealand public and our education sector of the value and the valued recognition and significance that ought to be given them in making sure to get things corrected. Here we are with an amendment bill (No 2).

The detail of this amendment bill just affirms and reaffirms and confirms the rushed nature and aspect of the principal Act last year, with reckless regard. I do say “reckless regard” because the National Party—we cautioned the Government to take things at cautionary, due diligence pace. Here we are with the (No 2) bill, which is by no means minor and technical and short. It is 73 clauses long, two parts, four schedules, and, dare I say, in total some 44 pages. That is not minor. It is very substantive, substantial, and significant. And these are further amendments, fix it ups. So the substantive amendments to the principal Act are outlined in Part 1, and the previous speaker, Ibrahim Omer, tried to indicate that this is a minor amendment—far from it. In Part 1, there are 67 clauses; in Part 2, there are a further six clauses; and then there are the four schedules that follow thereafter. Nothing minor, nothing insignificant.

Turning to the bill—well, actually, turning to a Supplementary Order Paper to the bill, which has been shut down in haste just yesterday—that Supplementary Order Paper, for the benefit of the public, is an amendment to the amendment bill. So, again, that just depicts—and, in fact, magnifies—that the Government continues to do things in haste, haphazardly, and without the due diligence that is required to those who give service in this specialist area of education and the education sector. A Supplementary Order Paper that is 13 pages long and that has some, well, dare I say it, amendments to the additional—what did I say?—73 clauses, which are amendments. A further approximated—I haven’t counted but approximated—seven amendments to that, 13 pages long. It is my submission that this is not respectful to those who are working in the education sector, and I say it’s not respectful because it wasn’t necessary for it to be rushed under urgency last year. So here we are again looking to fix it up.

I pick up from what my colleagues before me have spoken on—this, very clearly, in going through the detail of the amendment bill and the Supplementary Order Paper, is about centralising. It’s centralising, taking away from the people out in the regions who are running not only businesses but the significant education of the communities whom they know—in this instance, our children and, importantly, always, our children. This is a Government who deems that, as a Government, there is the long reach and the strong arm of the Government telling our communities, telling our people who know our communities best, how and what to do. This is classic centralisation. As said, it’s been seen in the polytechnic sector—another education sector; in our health sector, 21 DHBs. It’s interesting to see how all the MPs, particularly the Labour MPs in communities, are going to actually front up to our communities to explain why they support the removal of our specialised health service, the district health board, from our communities. Further centralisation. We’ve seen it with the COVID health response, Whānau Ora. We have the strong arm of Government telling our people how to do things because the Government knows best. And here we are with the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2).

With the explanatory note, it addresses the areas of aligning Police vetting provisions with safety checking requirements; the Children’s Act—that is important, so important it should have been dealt with in the first instance, under the principal Act, if our children are front of mind and the centre and purpose of this. Here we are: amendment bill (No 2). The amendment bill is also about strengthening Teaching Council disciplinary processes, that’s been dealt with, and I do recall, in the principal Act debate, there was strong debate about that. And again, getting it right, here we are fixing it up. “Greater flexibility for the Government to regulate compulsory student services fees charged by tertiary education providers.” There’s a whole list—in fact, it’s several pages long—and that is a summary of what this amendment bill is about.

The National Party opposes this amendment bill very much not because we undermine or devalue the education sector and the early childhood education sector and those people working within it but because we don’t actually value the Government in haste shoving it under our noses with barely minimal time to look at it. The Supplementary Order Paper—undoubtedly, the Government has the numbers, like it always has on anything that comes before this House, and, as it deems for New Zealanders, will make sure that this passes into law. This bill is going before the select committee, which hopefully—hopefully—the Government will see fit to give our public sufficient and opportune time to have input and to listen to those who know better than those who sit in Government seats.

It’s all very well for a member from the Government to say that that person runs a small early childhood education centre in a small rural town and that the business is doing well. That was before this Supplementary Order Paper, before this principal Act, and before the amendment bill (No 2), which is before the House. Of course it’s incumbent on a member within the Government to agree with what they’re told to say, and that all is well and rosy with this bill. It will be for the members of the public before the select committee to speak to those total of amendments: 73 clauses; 67 of those are substantive and substantial. Only six minor consequential clauses related to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) sector.

So, in closing, it’s very clear that in the National Party we value the interests of our children, we value the interests of our business operators, our educators, and our local communities, because there are people in our local communities who know better and know how best to serve the needs of our local communities, rather than a Minister on high who delegates authority to officials and the bureaucracy. Leave it for our people to determine what best services their needs. The National Party opposes this. The Government has the numbers and so it is going to pass through to the follow-after stages.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. ’Twas the night before Christmas and ’tis rich that the Opposition calls us out for a lack of respectful engagement with the sector. Can I remind the member about the engagement on national standards and the whakapapa and stories that sit with that particular piece of work that this Government had to tidy up?

This amendment bill is an important one and, coming from experience in my career in the tertiary sector before becoming an MP, you tend to appreciate the technical detail of this particular bill. I draw on a couple of points, particularly two that stand out for me; one is the alignment of the Police vetting provisions in this particular bill. We know the importance of this well. But the importance of it extending into areas such as student accommodation is very, very important to ensure that the people that have the pastoral care and look after our kids and young people—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can you just come back to the bill.

SHANAN HALBERT: Apologies, Madam Speaker. I’m speaking to the Police vetting provisions in the bill—

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

SHANAN HALBERT: —that relate to student accommodation, and the Police vetting Act, under this bill, I understand, applies across to student accommodation. That’s my first point.

Just secondly, in there, is the importance of us having another look and adjusting legislation to support students and young people to have a voice in the disputes process within tertiary institutions and particularly for international students that come through that particular area as well.

It is a technical bill, and as an experienced tertiary practitioner, alongside Jo Luxton as an experienced early education practitioner, we commend this bill to the House.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): It is with pleasure that I stand and take a call as the last speaker on this first reading. To bring a bit of Christmas cheer—there seems to be a lot of bah humbugging happening across the other side of the House—this bill is something that shows that this Government is ambitious and optimistic for our education system. This is about improvement and taking up opportunities to make sure that we continue to lead the world with our education system.

One of the aspects that we will be looking at is the next steps in building the structures that are coherent and relevant with Te Pūkenga. It is not about centralisation, actually; it is about ensuring that industry, through Workforce Development Councils, help us to build a qualifications and credentials framework and national curricula that make sure that Te Pūkenga becomes the world-leading tertiary provider that it has the potential to be.

I am very proud to be taking this to select committee and collaborating with educators, students, and industry to make sure that this bill is as good as it can be. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Bill read a first time.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Ayes 110

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

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) be reported to the House by 2 May 2022.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 9 December.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As has been indicated, this is the third reading of the Oranga Tamariki—the first reading of the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill. It is the first reading, but undoubtedly the Government has the numbers, as it always does, and with this being a Government bill, it is indicative that it will go to a third reading eventually.

As the National Party spokesperson for children, Oranga Tamariki, I have those caps in one hand and in the other hand I have my Whānau Ora and Māori development caps. When I rise to speak, I talk about the interconnectivity of these relationships, and the relationships I talk about are not just the portfolios, but the people who work in this sector.

Before coming into the House this morning, there were the officials from Oranga Tamariki and the chief executive, Chappie Te Kani, with his officials who appeared before the Social Services and Community Committee. I acknowledged, and I acknowledge again today in the House, the importance of the work that is provided by Oranga Tamariki, formerly Child, Youth and Family services and the people who work in that sector, importantly—about the care, the protection, and the welfare of our children. That’s what this bill is about. It is an amendment bill and this amendment is to the principal Act, which is the Oranga Tamariki Act of 1989—the Children’s and Young People’s Well-being Act 1989.

Now, I’ll give a bit of context before I address the details of the amendment bill itself, and the context is to highlight that, as I indicated before the select committee—and acknowledging Oranga Tamariki and all of the kaimahi, the workers in that speciality field, in looking after our children and the relationships that are important to be had between the State, also with our communities. And bearing in mind that the majority of children who come into care, regrettably—there are a number of non-Māori children—are predominantly Māori. And the importance of the relationships into our whānau, our hapū, and our iwi communities, but also the importance of relationships with our non-Māori communities.

The principal Act, giving context about the nature, the scope, the complexity, and the demands associated with child welfare and legislation—the principal Act of 1989 has 469 sections, it has 11 parts, and it has three schedules. That in itself indicates the scale, the size, the complexity, and the specialist nature of social work practice and the law.

Now, this amendment bill is one that is comprised of 40 substantive amendments. Three of those are to do with the title and the purpose of the Act. So, as I say by way of introduction, the principal Act and the amendment bill, itself comprised of 40 amendments, is signalling the substantive, complex nature in a very specialised area of law in terms of navigating, interpreting, and application in social work practice. Now, I say that because it’s very difficult for a person who hasn’t worked in this field to appreciate the nature and the demands of what’s imposed not only by the law, but the imposition of that in terms of how that relays out into practice.

So the six minutes that I have left now, I’m going to turn to the bill itself, the amendment bill itself, and in saying that, it is—I’m always cognisant of context. So I’m going to give some overlay, an overview too, in terms of the nature and the demand of the work that Oranga Tamariki has to deal with. In its annual report of 2021—this indicates the scale of the issues of concern around child abuse—the reports of concern, that’s child abuse and child welfare, some 77,953. That’s for the year 2020 to 2021. The referrals for assessment of investigation are 4,250. The children who’ve been taken into care for that period has reduced significantly by approximately 59 percent down to 822, and family group conferences, which are the precursors for a child being taken into formal State welfare status—the number of family group conferences (FGCs), which is that level of engagement and connectivity between the agency, or Oranga Tamariki, with the communities are some 8,909 FGCs. So that just gives the scale, the complexity, and also the pressures that are there on the agency.

The Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill came to the attention of the National Party about one and a half weeks ago. I’ve just outlined the complexity and the scale and the size of this legislation. The amendments that are proposed are some 44 clauses with 40 substantive amendments there. There are approximately, by way of those that have been identified in the legislative statement—there are a number of what’s called minor and technical changes to the bill, and they number approximately 36. There are three significant parts to the amendment bill, and those significant parts deal with—the first one is the subsequent child legislation, and it has been proposed in this amendment bill for what’s called a partial repeal of that subsequent child provision. I will come back to that.

The second part of it is the repeal of what’s called section 66D within the principal Act, dealing with data set provision—the information that’s required to be collected by Oranga Tamariki and other agencies that’s accumulated and amalgamated into a data set to be able to identify to those working in the child welfare sector. It imposes on them quite detailed and huge burdensome administrative requirements of compliance. That’s the second part of this amendment bill. The third part, as I said, are those minor and technical amendments.

I’ve made substantive notes here and this is going to go before the select committee and it will require substantive input from interested parties. Those interested parties, to date, have been by way of other agencies and entities that have provided reports over the last two to three years which have come before Oranga Tamariki. Those are reports from the Ombudsman’s office, from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, by way of two reports, from Whānau Ora commissioning agency, and also an internal examination or investigation by Oranga Tamariki itself about the uplift of babies soon after birth, and that came to prominence within our local media about a year ago. There’s also been a Waitangi Tribunal hearing in relation to the concerns associated with the nature of Oranga Tamariki’s operations. As a result of those investigations, there’ve been 25 recommendations made by the ministerial Māori advisory committee. Those 25 recommendations, in summary, identify a complete overhaul that’s required of Oranga Tamariki.

The subsequent child provisions: essentially, in 2016 the National Party introduced an automatic and a mandatory—which means that it’s required on the agency, Oranga Tamariki, and the social workers, for any child that’s born after an earlier child who’s been taken into permanent care from the family, the parent, that subsequent child must be the subject of oversight. That’s the mandatory nature. And it’s been deemed in this overview by the Minister that this subsequent child provision needs to be repealed. The part to be repealed is that it’s removed the onus and the burden of responsibility not so much on the parent—and it’s been framed that way in the papers before the House. The onus and burden of responsibility is actually on the social worker under the provision of sections 18A through to 18D. The burden of responsibility is on the social worker and the agency to provide that wraparound support for any subsequent child who is born to a parent whose earlier child has been taken into care. It’s been described that there is a reverse of onus on the parent to do it. The reverse of onus is the responsibility of the State to provide that monitoring and to check that the child will be safe with that parent.

I’ve quickly run out of time. The National Party caucus at this time does not support this bill. It goes to select committee—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! The member’s time is up.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): I just want to thank that member, even though she opposes this bill. I want to thank her for her contribution, because she is quite right. This goes right across the spectrum in terms of Māori development, Whānau Ora, and it’s a very, very important piece of legislation—one of the most important pieces of legislation for Te Ao Māori, actually, that’s why I’m having a little bit of a contribution with regards to it. With respect to the previous member, Harete Hipango, she said Jacqui Te Kani, who was the former leader of the Māori Women’s Welfare League—and it’s actually her son Chappie Te Kani who’s, as you know, the CEO.

I wanted to just say this kaupapa is incredibly important, as the previous member touched on, and I want to pay tribute to an old friend of mine, a man by the name of Des Ratima, who brought this to the fore. Des was a very close friend of mine—he passed away about three months ago—but it was his work in Hastings where he supported a young woman who was traumatised, sadly, by some of the actions of our Oranga Tamariki staff at the time, and it was around the whole upliftment kaupapa. Des supported this young woman, and then this story blew up on one of the entities. A woman by the name of Melanie Reid highlighted this kaupapa to the nation, and I think people were a bit stunned by what was happening. So I mihi my mate for his contribution being the catalyst to this kaupapa, and he was a wonderful advocate for Te Ao Māori. Nō reira taku hoa, moe mai, moe mai, moe mai rā.

[Therefore oh friend, rest, rest, rest well.]

But Des followed up on much of the mahi that we had done at ground level with my organisation, Manukau Urban Māori Authority (MUMA), with the Waipareira Trust, who have worked at this—and that’s John Tamihere’s organisation. We’ve worked at ground level with our whānau for many, many years, and we would never ever—ever—put up with our babies being threatened.

So when the strategy, or the campaign, came out in terms of not one more baby would be taken, we—I’m a person who has taken babies. We took babies. I worked with my mother and other social workers at ground level. When we had babies who were being threatened, we would go in and take the babies and make sure that the whānau was OK, and if that meant removing people who were in the way, we would remove those people. Sometimes they were gang members; sometimes they were people who were threatening whānau and community—whatever. Our organisation worked at ground level to make sure that there was safety paramount in terms of the baby and in terms of the mother, and we did that for a number of years and, sadly, out of sync with our Government agency.

But we said that you have to be careful when you take babies. It’s not about not taking babies; it’s about ensuring that the whānau is safe. The problem we had was that we had our social workers from Oranga Tamariki going and traumatising whānau, and you can’t just take a baby and not talk to the mother. You can’t just take a baby and not talk to the whānau. You can’t traumatise our communities—that was the essence and the catalyst to this bill.

I’m pleased that we’ve been able to work through this and reach a position with our good people in Oranga Tamariki. Don’t get me wrong, we all know there are some wonderful social workers in Oranga Tamariki. But if the policies are not right, then you get a consequence, and the consequences have been traumatised whānau and traumatised communities.

Now, after us observing things, after us seeing the work of Jean Te Huia and some of our groups from Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust and MUMA, we built a strategy to combat that. That strategy has been a top-heavy and heavyweight Māori group led by Matthew Tukaki and people like Naida Glavish on there, fantastic group, overseeing what our whānau need, and that group has come up with 25 recommendations to make sure that our families are more comfortable, that our families are safer. I’m proud that our Minister, Kelvin Davis, has taken that on board, because he knows the way forward is that there has to be some devolvement to NGOs and recognition of the work that our groups do at community level. That’s why this legislation is so incredibly important. So I mihi to our Minister, Kelvin Davis, and that group who’ve done some important work going forward.

Our work is now. Even though I talk about Oranga Tamariki in the past tense, I know the changes are happening now with Chappie Te Kani and the people there. I think that if they can work in tandem with our community, they can lay down a future that will be good and safe for all our tamariki and all our whānau. Kia ora anō tātou katoa. Kia ora.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thanks, Madam Speaker. National—[Adjusts microphone] There we go—just because I’m sure everyone wants to hear this speech! Look, National does oppose this bill. You heard from my colleague Harete Hipango some of the nuances involved, so we will look forward to the select committee process.

Look, the fundamental point—and, actually, the Labour speakers in the previous bill were talking about putting the child at the centre, and I suppose that’s the fundamental reason, at this point, that we oppose it, because we do not believe the child’s been put in the centre through this amendment bill. Removing the subsequent child is traumatic; in fact, removing any child from parents is a traumatic event. But, put really, really simply, we remove subsequent children because there’s been an immediate, real, and substantial threat to a previous child, and the onus of proof, ultimately, has to fall on those parents to show that they have properly and really changed, and we just feel that this is not quite balanced.

As I say, we’ll look forward to engaging it in the select committee, but I think the fundamental point has to be that it is about the child. And I’ve stood in this House before and other bills related to Child, Youth and Family, or, now, Oranga Tamariki—and, actually, it’s not about the community and it’s not about the family; in fact, so much legislation now becomes so much about that that the child becomes secondary. And that can’t be the case; the child must be centred—of course, in a community, in a family—but we just feel that this is out of balance.

But I do want to acknowledge, actually, the staff, those who are in Oranga Tamariki—it’s an exceptionally difficult job; it’s one that I can only conceptualise academically. This is not a direct experience of mine, but I thank them for the work they do and acknowledging as well the politicisation of topics like this is unhelpful at times, as they get pushed around and accused of poor behaviour. But we understand that, by and large, they’re putting the child first and are doing all that they can.

So we oppose this bill, but at the same time we look forward to engaging further in the select committee if this bill passes—we’ll see what happens.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thanks, Madam Speaker. As the chair of the select committee that will receive this bill, I’m very delighted to be here speaking on it. I have to say, I remember in 2016 when the onus of evidence, the burden of proof, fell from Oranga Tamariki—or Child, Youth and Family (CYF) as it was at the time—to the parent. I remember sitting in a meeting with my Women’s Refuge colleague and we talked about the hope that these families have, when a child has been permanently removed, the hope for the next child.

Now, I do not come to this House lightly and say that the world is a wonderful place. I know that our children need to be cared for; I know that it is important to do that, but this piece of legislation needs to be somewhat removed. We will still keep some standards in place. For those who have murdered, there is manslaughter or infanticide, there will still be an onus and a burden to do so, but certainly for us here on this side of the House, we believe that there is the opportunity to change, there is the opportunity to care for children, and to make a difference. This bill supports those children to stay with family, to stay with safe family, and for Oranga Tamariki to prove should the child need to be removed. That is where the evidence should sit, that is where the burden should sit. Families should have the opportunity to raise their children. I commend this bill to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party in support of the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill, and as has been pointed out by other speakers, this is doing three key things: one, the partially repealing the subsequent child provision, repealing redundant information-sharing provisions, and then a range of technical corrections to the Act.

The majority of my contribution this morning will be on the subsequent child provision aspect of this bill and we are very, very, very pleased to see this go. I know nobody likes a know-it-all, but in this instance I feel compelled to put it on the record that the Green Party is the only party in this House who opposed this legislation on its introduction. One of our key reasons for doing that was a concern about this provision and the shifting of the burden of proof onto whānau. Metiria Turei spoke in the second reading for us, articulating—I thought quite perfectly—concerns about the bill and acknowledging that actually it was already difficult for mothers particularly to demonstrate to then Child, Youth and Family that they’d had enough intervention that they’d be able to keep their baby and care for them properly, and then shifting that burden of proof quite significantly added hurdles for those women and that made that ability to keep family together so much harder and actually created disincentives to change, because if you’re doing all of the work without any support and you’re not getting any hope of being able to reunite your family, people give up.

The fact is that we also were pointing to her at that time having gone out and spoken to agencies who were working with families who were in this situation who noted that 50 percent of the parents of the families at risk come from State care—50 percent. Interestingly, we’ve seen that played out again and that the State care has failed to provide those parents when they were children with the resources that they needed to have a good and fulfilling life, and we still see that.

So a conversation about needing to put children first, the Greens have several issues with. Children are never isolated; actually, the wellbeing of the child, we have to understand that in the context of connection and that we should be putting all of our resources into preventing the need for uplift. If anybody has seen The Justice of Bunny King, I think it was, and the deep frustration of our system and the struggle for families to be reunited because the resources in our system are not there for them to provide that protective system. We get to see the fact that this is punishment of the children and the families, and that the drivers of harm, at heart, are our housing crisis, poverty, and family violence. We have to be addressing those core drivers if we are to truly say that we are putting our children first.

While we’ve heard from the National Party, unfortunately, that they won’t be supporting this, I do need to recall that this has been to the Waitangi Tribunal and the Waitangi Tribunal has called for the immediate, it was, repeal of this legislation. That was even after the then Minister in 2019 had said it would be repealed because they saw the pernicious impact of this provision in the legislation; not just in the removal of the children under this provision, but the impact it was having on social work practice across the organisation of creating a heightened and unrealistic sense of risk and a sense of shifting, subtly, that onus of proof from the organisation to prove that a family wasn’t fit to care to, actually, the organisation seeking to have the family prove that they were safe, which is an incredibly difficult thing to do for many families.

We saw that concern confirmed by the Waitangi Tribunal and by the Commissioner for Children who advocated very strongly in the Waitangi Tribunal, who described this provision in the legislation as “‘pernicious’ and ‘totally unnecessary piece of legislation’, which ‘should be repealed tomorrow’.” Judge Becroft, at that time, as the Children’s Commissioner, considered that the introduction of the legislation had led to a culture shift within Oranga Tamariki that exceeded the actual application of the statute and that it has actively caused harm and concluded that the existence of the second and subsequent child legislation constituted organisational racism. So I really want to ground the Opposition members’ contributions in those findings of the court.

If we are hearing from anybody that they are putting the wellbeing of children first, then I would suggest listening to the Children’s Commissioner and the Waitangi Tribunal and their views on the wellbeing. What it takes to put the wellbeing of the child first would be a good first step for their contributions.

I also do want to respond to the comments that were made earlier by Minister Jackson about the changes that are happening within Oranga Tamariki, and also noting that this law change did need to happen earlier and it’s incredibly important to see it happening now. But the Greens’ view is that the next steps is that really we need to be seeing that partnership between Māori show up in a strategy for how the organisation will change towards delivering our commitment and duty to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and that that work of developing a strategy should also be reflected in work to decide what legislative changes are needed so that there can be a comprehensive plan. There is still concern coming from the community that legislative changes are happening in a piecemeal way and we’ve got conflicting intentions imbedded in the legislation at the moment, which were a result of a very difficult and rigorous process of bringing in that initial legislation. It was very hard fought, but you cannot, I believe—it still reflects the inconsistencies of the original intent and the battle to improve it, and it is not entirely coherent.

So we have heard that the Māori advisory group is actually kind of taking that role. But I will, again, point the Government to the fact that the Waitangi Tribunal recommended a transitional authority independent from the Crown to eliminate the need for State care of Tamariki. Again, to speak to Minister Jackson’s intervention, this is not saying that anybody wants children to stay in unsafe situations; we do not—we absolutely do not. We want intervention to provide them and their family with the best supports to make life safe, and if there are concerns, then we believe that the people that are going to be the safest are probably those within their extended whānau or community who have a better record of keeping of children safe than the State does. We have to acknowledge that the abuse of children in State care has not improved; our children are still at risk within our State organisations. So when we talk about safety of children, we have to acknowledge that reality. I am concerned that, at the moment, Whānau Ora providers who are on the ground are saying that they do not support the direction of that partnership that the Government is leading out, and that is putting people who need to be doing the work in conflict with the organisation and the Government, and that undermines the work. We have to come together for our tamariki—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! The member’s time is up.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of ACT to say we will be supporting this bill today, but with many concerns. When it comes to the security and safety of our children and changing the way we look at it, we should always be very careful that we get it right. I can see this from two sides. I can see this from the onus of proof being a huge burden on a parent that’s going through a lot at the time, facing a massive organisation and not knowing how they can prove they are good enough to have their child back. I really think the onus of proof should be on Oranga Tamariki (OT) and the courts to decide whether the child is safe or not, not relying on a parent having to prove that they’re a good enough parent. How do you do that against such a massive organisation?

We have many parents that might be put in this situation through no fault of—well, through no fault of their own, really. I see this from a mother that may have an abusive partner that has hurt a child that is in the care, and that mother will now come under the subsequent child provision, even if she’s moved on, got into a new relationship, and wanting to have a new child. So I can see how this can be a bad thing.

But I can also see how this can leave a loophole for parents that have abused their children in the past and may abuse their children in the future. So we have to find a good middle ground. I think by removing the provision of a parent who has had a previous child or young person removed from their care, and there is no realistic possibility that they will be returned to that person’s care, may be a step too far. Maybe we need to look at how we can fix the problem that you’re trying to solve. Maybe we need to have a provision in there that allows for a family group conference (FGC) process before going to the courts, which is a huge issue at the moment because we don’t have the provision for an FGC before the court process, and maybe also changing the onus of proof, the burden of proof, back to where it belongs.

I don’t feel that a parent who has been seen to be a good parent and a capable person should have a child removed just because of a piece of legislation that says so. So we have to find that middle ground and make sure we’re getting it right, both for the child and for the parent.

At the end of the day, New Zealand has a shocking record for abuse with children and we need to get this right. We have had multiple changes within the organisation over the last few years in the leadership roles. We’ve had major investigations into Oranga Tamariki in the way they behave around the care of our children, and there have been so many changes going on that I’m afraid OT cannot do their core job when the organisation itself doesn’t know where it’s at. So I hope we can have more stability within the leadership role and more understanding of the direction that we want to go.

OT was formed to fix a lot of these issues, and it was meant to be over a four-year period. We get to year four and we chuck it out and we start again. I would hate to see, we’re making all these changes, and in four years’ time we decide that’s not working and we chuck it out again. Our children can’t afford for us to get this wrong anymore. It’s been going on for too long. We need to support our families better, and pre-determining risk is not necessarily the correct way to go.

Let’s support these families. Let’s have something in place where if a parent is deciding that they are going to have a subsequent child and they have had problems with OT in the past, instead of having the fear of God in them and going to OT and saying, “I’m about to have another child.”, where is the support and the leadership within the communities and OT to set up ways that these parents can have some kind of training, some kind of support, to be ready for this next child?

I think this is the direction that the Government is trying to go, and I really appreciate that, because OT needs to be an organisation where parents are not afraid to stand up and say, “I need help.” We have a lot of parents that need help that are too scared to speak up, and we end up in situations like this where our children are at risk and it’s avoidable.

So this piece of legislation is not a small piece of legislation. There are 44 clauses in this, and I am really looking forward to the select committee process, hearing what the communities have to say and hearing some ideas about where we could go in a better direction. Instead of being reactive all the time, let’s be proactive and let’s come up with some solutions together to make our children’s lives better and to make New Zealand a country we can all be proud of.

So, in saying that, we will support this through to select committee and I look forward to hearing what people have to say.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker, and meri Kirihimete. Thank you for this opportunity to speak on the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill. I stand here in the House this morning not as a social worker, not as a lawyer or a lawyer for a child. I stand here as a mere layperson, as a caregiver, who has been part of the Oranga Tamariki system for the past 20 years. I’m proud for us to be standing here this morning supporting the Hon Kelvin Davis and his work to rebuild the trust, to rebuild the organisation that is Oranga Tamariki, to ensure that communities and whānau trust this system, and to build a system where our young people, our tamariki, thrive.

I want to acknowledge Karen Chhour and her contribution. We need to get this right for our tamariki, and for that I commend this bill to the House.

Dr SHANE RETI (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As has already been commented, National will be opposing this to the first reading for a number of reasons. Fundamentally, I think we’re all agreeing that where there is increased risk, there needs to be increased care. It just seems to us that what this bill does is acknowledge the increased risk but actually reduces the care that we should be bringing around cases of the sort. And if we look at several parts of the bill—everyone recognises the risk-care relationship by saying, “Look, if a child has been killed, there’s absolutely increased risk and subsequent care should proceed, as it’s detailed in the legislation.” Part of the question, though, is that if a child has been taken into care, is there that same degree of risk and is this the way to manage? But that’s really what we’re talking about here.

To answer the first question: I think the risk impact assessment—table 7, section 2—answers the first question that if a child has been taken and placed into care, the subsequent children are at risk. It quite nicely points out that in the general population there is only a 2 percent risk of a child needing to be taken into care, but 7 percent if an older sibling has already been placed in a home for life placement. So no disagreement that there’s increased risk if a previous child has been placed. What seem to be some of the issues, though, are more around the implementation rather than the policy intent. That comment that—and I correctly heard—the difficulties in requiring Family Court involvement to establish a determination, those are implementation. The core policy intent is still good. Focus on the implementation would seem to be where we should be looking.

So these are but some of the reasons why we’ll be pleased if in select committee we can address some of these issues. I heard some suggestions to my side here a moment ago that will be useful to discuss in select committee. But, I’d have to say, looking for support from us in a bill of the sort should also come with some degree of transparency and I’m afraid I don’t see that in the risk impact analysis—clause 11, Part 1—where some of these solutions are proposed. The first one is implementing tailored support for parents. That’s a good idea, but then why are solutions 2 and 3 redacted? What is the secrecy around some of the solutions and the remedies to this bill? It then goes on: clauses 17, 18, 19—where do the costs fall?—completely redacted. Look, we’re happy to—I think we’ve all got agreement here: increased risk needs increased care. But if you want our support, really, you need to be a bit more transparent around some of these things in really core documents like this.

We understand the intent. We’re supportive of the intent. We may well be able to figure some of these things out in select committee, but where some of the solutions are hidden—why would you do that?—and where the whole section on where do the costs fall are redacted, you know, you just start wondering if there’s any transparency in other parts of this bill. When you start adding it all together, it sort of leads us, reluctantly, to a position of needing to oppose it at this reading anyway.

So what we’re putting on the table here is: there may be some things in select committee that can help us change that position, but coming at first blush to a first reading when you’re seeing redactions in the risk impact assessment—it’s not a good start.

I just want to lay on the table again: we understand the relationship between risk and care. I think most of the House does. I don’t think that’s a point in question. Where we’re questioning here is it seems to us that this bill is reducing the care imperative—acknowledging the risk and reducing the care imperative and that will be a challenge for the select committee to see if they can persuade our minds because here, today, this morning, we’re not persuaded, but we’ll see what select committee can do with it. So happy to pass this through select committee. We will be opposing it as it stands today. Thank you.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Madam Speaker, it’s an honour to speak on the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill. What this bill does is that the State believes that mokopuna has the right for their parents to be given the opportunity to change once they have gone through a traumatic experience of being removed from home in terms of subsequent children. That’s what this bill does. It actually provides opportunity for mokopuna to return home to their parents and for parents the ability to change, and that’s what some of this bill does.

I want to take this opportunity to wish all the children in care a merry Christmas and to pray that social workers find the opportunity for them to see their parents or whānau over this Christmas. I want to acknowledge the caregivers. Thank you so much for what you do for our children in care, throughout the 365 days of the year, and especially the caregivers at Dingwall Trust. Thank you so much for what you do for our children, and for looking after my pet chicken, the French cottage, thank you. Merry Christmas.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare.

I have never forgotten being told by a very experienced family therapist that even the most badly abused children do not want to lose their parents. What they want is those parents to have their behaviour changed so they are safe to go home to. This is what that is about. I remember a case when I was a young lawyer—which I am not any more, and I am no expert in the field—but I remember this case where it took us 11 years—11 years—to reunite a māmā and her pēpi who had been taken away, not because of the mother’s behaviour but because of her partner’s abuse. She could not escape him. Even when she did, it took us that many years, and three more children, each one was a struggle to help her retain them. This bill will keep those whānau, give them the chance, and give our children the chance, to grow up in safe families with the support that their mothers and fathers need to become the safe parents those children want. I commend it to the House.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I stand along with my colleagues on this side of the House in opposition to the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill. It’s another one of those bills that we see where the Government has not come up with any solutions but all they are doing is unwinding yet another piece of legislation, with nothing to replace it. And that seems to be the modus operandi of this Government. Where are the solutions? As my colleague and friend Dr Shane Reti alluded to, we need solutions. But we also need the transparency and openness from the most open and transparent Government—not!

In terms of the detail that is informing this policy change, when you get information back that is blacked out—and it reminds me of the official information requests that my colleague Jacqui Dean got from the Department of Conservation. She’s got black wallpaper in her office now, from the pages and pages of redacted information from this Government. So it’s a bit ironic that we stand here today with less information than the Government has got because they’ve blanked out that information. And here we are, trying to debate why we need to undo yet another piece of legislation. A piece of legislation, I have to say, that was introduced as, in using the Government’s own words, “an abundance of caution”. It was brought in to protect the most vulnerable children in this country.

I’d just like to start some of my contribution by referring to the UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 7. In that report card it says, “as of March 2021”—so it’s current information—New Zealand ranks 35th out of 41 developed countries for child wellbeing outcomes. In 2003, UNICEF ranked us the third-highest amongst rich countries for its child maltreatment death rates. That’s why that legislation was brought in: to be another stopgap in the maltreatment of our children. In this country, five children die every week as a result of family violence. We’ve got a shocking record in this space. But interestingly, I found that the UNICEF report also made no correlation between the levels of child wellbeing and GDP per capita. In fact, the report actually went on to mention the Czech Republic as achieving higher levels of child wellbeing than many rich countries, including us. We ranked below them.

So what I want to do is pay tribute to some of the children who have not had the benefit of the interventions that this particular part of the Oranga Tamariki Act actually inserts. James Whakaruru, he was killed in 1999. The only part of that child’s little body that was not bruised were the soles of his feet. The Kahui twins, and this case is still unsolved, with Chris Kahui, the father, found not guilty for the murders of Christopher and Cru Kahui. Both twins died on 18 June 2006 from blunt force trauma causing brain injury, and it was suggested in the trial that the injuries were caused by either direct blows to the head or being thrown against a firm surface or severe shaking. Nia Glassie, 2007, died at the age of three, due to severe brain damage. Her mother was charged with failing to provide the necessities of life for that wee girl. Nia had been subjected to family violence for two months prior to her death. That is the absolute most cruellest way to bring up a child in this country. And it’s incumbent on us as a Government to ensure that all measures are included in our legislation to intervene in the most high-risk of cases. Tahani Mahomed: Tahani died on 1 January 2008, three days after she was admitted to hospital because she was failing to feed. When they got her there, they found that her head injuries were consistent with being hit with great force. The father was charged on one count of murder and two counts of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Duwayne Pailegutu: Dwayne died on 2 July 2008 due to 75 external injuries from assault by his stepfather that left him paralysed and struggling to breathe. The stepfather got 18 years non-parole for Duwayne’s death. But they were a result of an assault and the subsequent neglect to care for that little boy.

Now, in 2007, the rate of deaths of children and young persons under the age of 19 in New Zealand—we had the highest rate of such deaths along with the United States. Now, this is an abysmal record and it needs to be sorted out. I struggle to understand how unwinding a piece of legislation actually does get us to the objective of caring and protecting our most vulnerable: our children.

Now, this legislation was actually put in place to try and head off some of those potential cases. Just for the House’s information, when I was researching this bill, I found that only 19 times has this piece of legislation been used since it was first enacted. So it’s not a huge problem that is looking for a solution, but maybe in those 19 times it was used, we’ve given those parents or that mum the opportunity to turn her life around, but we’ve also had the opportunity to intervene, to protect and to save yet another child from being brutally murdered and adding to the abysmal record that we have as a country for looking after these little people.

For the record, too, as of 30 September this year, 2021, 74,400 reports of concern involving 54,600 individual children and young people was reported in New Zealand—54,600 children. Now, that is the reason this legislation exists. It exists to protect those children from the very people who they look to for their care and their safety.

Now, part of the proposal of this particular unwinding of legislation is to remove Section 66D of the Act. Now, that part of the Act only came into effect in 2019 and it’s around the information sharing, the data sharing between organisations. If I recall, some of the debates that happened in this House around that data sharing, it was opposed vigorously by the Opposition parties of the time. They were concerned about the security of that data and how it would be used. But then we heard about cases where families would present at A & E in hospitals, and there was no one within ACC reporting or sharing the information about the family violence that was going on. So ACC wasn’t sharing it—data—with the police. The police weren’t sharing their data with Work and Income New Zealand or Child, Youth and Family at the time. So there were big gaps in the communication between these organisations.

Now, it’s only been in since July 2019 and here is the Government unwinding that. So what replaces that in terms of how we connect with the various entities in this country that are looking at the symptoms and the results of family violence? How are we ever going to know what’s going on? Because we can’t see the big picture without this clause surviving.

Again, I say that it’s a travesty when the Government feels that they’re making progress when all they do is unwind legislation and replace it with nothing that is substantial in terms of how we are going to maintain the safety for our children in this country. I do not support this bill.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to speak on the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill, not only as a member of the Ōtaki electorate but also as a member of the Social Services and Community Committee, and also having worked for Oranga Tamariki and worked in the social services for decades now.

This bill is more than transformational change, and it is showing progress that this Government is doing. We don’t just sit on our hands around here; we do proper change. We love our tamariki, we love the people of Aotearoa, and that’s why this bill is essential to make sure that we keep our babies safe while providing tools for their whānau to be able to support a loving environment and be able to make sure that they can keep their whānau together.

So thanks to the Minister Davis and his officials, and also to Matthew Tukaki and the board, which has been able to see the change that was definitely needed, and be brave enough to make sure that we start to trek towards that.

Part of this bill is to repeal the subsequent child provision, which has not improved the safety of our children. In fact, it’s done the opposite. These provisions have been barriers to our social workers working meaningfully with our whānau.

So, again, for me, and with my experience and working and being connected to my community, this bill’s going to make massive change. Thanks to this Government once again, and merry Christmas to everyone out there, including our children in care.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Oranga Tamariki Amendment 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 33

New Zealand National 33.

Bill read first time.

Motion agreed to.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is, That the Oranga Tamariki Amendment Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

Bills

Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill

First Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Deputy Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move, That the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

This is an important piece of legislation that covers a number of quite challenging areas. The bill as is put to the House will create a more workable and coherent approach to the use of national security information in both court and administrative proceedings. The bill stems from a Law Commission set of recommendations from its 2015 review and implements the majority of those recommendations, which relate to how national security information is treated by the courts, and also in administrative decision-making.

The question that lay at the heart of the Law Commission’s review at that time was this one: what should happen when information is relevant to legal proceedings, but in disclosing it, we might have a deleterious effect on national security interests. This is a very challenging issue, and it has arisen from time to time in our legal history, and there needs to be a way of addressing that. What the Law Commission found is that we have a number of gaps and inconsistencies in our current framework in how we deal with these issues.

The current law doesn’t provide enough assurance that national security information can be adequately protected if it does transpire that it needs to be used in court proceedings. That potentially creates security risks for New Zealand. On the other hand, the current law can also disadvantage affected people who might not know the reason for the decision that has been made against them. This is something of a quandary. The Law Commission recommended legislation to clear up inconsistency in the law and to give all of the parties involved a clear process that protects national security information, while at the same time maintaining fairness and natural justice. The bill that’s before the House aims to achieve both of those objectives.

The bill covers civil proceedings, including judicial review of administrative decisions, and also criminal proceedings. A key feature of the bill is that the court should be able to order a closed procedure when dealing with national security information in civil cases. It will—and I think this is important—be up to the court to decide how to manage national security information and whether the risks of disclosing that information are sufficiently serious to justify withholding it, so there is a serious attempt to achieve comity here and to allow the courts to have appropriate jurisdiction over managing these tensions. In cases where it’s in the interests of justice to exclude that information from proceedings, it will then be held completely, but in cases where the information should still be taken into account, the court would then have the ability to be able to use closed procedure. The closed procedure would take place in a secure court facility, with only security-cleared personnel and the judge present. The court would be closed to the public, to the media, and to other non-Crown parties.

Another key feature of the bill is the use of special advocates in closed procedures. Now, special advocates are security-cleared lawyers who act for people who are not allowed to see the national security information in question in their case, because the court has determined that disclosure of that information would have a security risk.

Safeguards in the bill will mitigate the absence of this for the affected person. The special advocate and the judge would have fuller access to the information, and the judge would be able to direct that a summary of the information is prepared for the affected person and their lawyer so that they’re able to understand the key issues and to provide meaningful responses. The special advocate would have input into the summary, and the judge would have the final say on the summary contents. So, again, we see a reference to the important role of the court and the judge in managing these proceedings. Closed hearings and special advocates are already used by the courts. The bill will create clearer rules to be followed in all cases where closed court procedures and special advocates are used.

The bill does not provide for the use of closed procedures in substantive criminal trials. The bill retains a fundamental position that a defendant would always be present during a criminal trial. However, the bill does provide a new pre-trial process to enable national security information to be used but protected at a criminal trial. The court would decide in that closed court pre-trial hearing whether admitting national security information in a protected form—for example, in a summary document, as previously discussed—is consistent with the defendant’s right to a fair trial. So again, there’s a clear process here to try and balance up the complex rights and responsibilities that are at play.

This process would be limited to serious offences where there is a high public interest in a conviction. The bill does depart from the Law Commission’s recommendations in one important respect. There are specific issues around disclosing particularly sensitive security information that the bill must address. In rare cases, extra certainty is needed to protect our security, and that’s both international and domestic security, and foreign partner relationships. The bill provides for a ministerial certification option to protect particularly sensitive national security information. This process will require a certificate to be presented by the court, signed by both the Attorney-General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Once a court receives such a certificate, it can either exclude the information or conduct a closed court procedure. No other options are available—that is, the case can’t be heard in an open court.

To ensure that these cases only transpire in very rare cases, the Crown would be required to consider the non-certificate track first. So it’s a fall-back only if the non-certificate track is deemed not to be appropriate, given the nature of the information.

The bill replaces existing tailored schemes where national security information is used in decision making, like the Passports Act, the Terrorism Suppression Act, and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act, among others. This means that there will now be a consistent set of protections and procedures so that affected individuals have fundamental rights—for example, to a special advocate, a summary of the information, and to remove requirements for a court to make a decision on information that the affected person doesn’t have access to.

Immigration decisions sit within a unique context involving a high number of decisions regarding non - New Zealanders that often have to be made relatively quickly, in collaboration, sometimes, with foreign partners. Other jurisdictions also have separate arrangements for dealing with immigration issues of this kind—for example, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. I’m satisfied that the current immigration scheme contains sufficient protections for affected individuals. The Law Commission did consider the Immigration Act regime to be the most robust and protective of the affected person’s rights out of the existing schemes.

In conclusion, the issues covered by this bill touch on some very important constitutional and rights matters, such as the fundamental rights of people to open justice and a fair trial, the respective roles of the judiciary and the executive, protecting national security, and the principles of open Government and democratic accountability. I’m confident that the Government, in putting together this bill, has struck the right balance between those considerations, acknowledging considerable complexities. I look forward to the Justice Committee’s consideration of the bill. I commend this bill to the House.

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

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I also wish to thank the Minister for setting out the detail of the bill in so far as is possible with an initial contribution. Of course the legislative statement is, I think, a helpful innovation that this House has adopted relatively recently for setting out detail in a matter such as this where there is considerable implications for national security, but also the rights of individuals. The detail is hugely important. It will be appropriate to consider at select committee, and so for now we necessarily take, at the first reading, a reasonably broad-brush approach.

For National, I can confirm that we will support the bill, at least at the first reading, and I don’t say that in a way to imply that we wouldn’t support it going forward, but the caveat there is that there is a considerable amount of detail. It’s a weighty bill, both literally for those watching on Parliament TV, they can see it’s literally a weighty bill, but also more metaphorically in terms of the seriousness of the matter. So, certainly happy to state up front that we support the intent of the bill, and in so far as we’ve had an opportunity to consider the detail, it appears to us pretty well constructed.

I’d like to actually acknowledge a point that the Minister made around the fact that we are here in Parliament, the legislative branch at the urging of the executive, the Government of the day, making rules for the judicial branch, the courts. So the Minister rightly referenced the need for comity. So that’s a mutual respect and understanding and separation between those branches of Government. In more colloquial terms and in less pointy-headed fashion, I suppose, I could observe that we are not telling the judges how to do their job—it is their job and it’s appropriate for us not to seek to interfere, obviously, with the operation of any individual court case, nor unduly constrain the way that they conduct trials—but at the same time, it is appropriate for us to provide some guidelines for the protection of citizens’ rights and, of course, national security as well.

Part of the theme of what the Government is seeking to do here is around consistency and clarity. So to the extent that we are taking an overall view of the judicial system and saying to courts that they must each adopt a certain set of procedures because then there’s consistency across those, I think it’s appropriate for us to tune our mind to that and to provide some direction and, dare I say it, leadership in that space.

I’ve mentioned that tension between the branches of Government, and I don’t use the word tension in any ugly sense; I think it’s healthy that we consider the way that they interact, but there’s also a tension in terms of the rights of individual citizens and, of course, the power of the State. You can approach that from a civil liberties or human rights perspective, and that’s totally appropriate. You could also consider the power imbalance between the respective parties—and again, that’s a perfectly appropriate analysis—or one could think about the fact of a citizen in a State having a relationship, not only in a general criminal law setting but also here in a national security context, and just trying to understand how we can balance those as best we can so that we don’t sell New Zealand short in terms of defence of the Realm internally and externally, but also, we do not wish to be impinging on the fair trial rights of people accused of involvement in some pretty unsavoury activities.

So the whole bill and everything in this area is necessarily geared towards trying to weigh up those different competing demands, and of course, we’ll do the best that we can in this House along those lines. I look forward to the Justice Committee taking that role very seriously—and no doubt they will—and I acknowledge that the chair of the Justice Committee is in the House and she might well make a contribution in this debate, and certainly, she and her colleagues of various parties in that committee will take that task seriously, along with the advisers, I have no doubt.

In relation to the national security imperatives, I think it’s worth taking a step back as well, and acknowledging that our friends and allies, those with whom we secure such sensitive information, will be interested in our stance on these matters. We would not wish to preclude our ability to cooperate internationally by being too loose within our domestic procedures, because that wouldn’t be in our national interests either; not only—and this is the point I’m really trying to make here—from the point of view of each individual case and each individual matter and each individual piece of intelligence but also that relationship more generally is important for New Zealand to maintain, whether it’s Five Eyes or other arrangements, in terms of information sharing that we have already in place.

How the bill seeks to achieve its various objectives is really in the category of three different settings or jurisdictions. The Minister’s explained these in some detail already, leaning on the legislative statement as well—as the Minister clearly did, as he’s entitled to. I’d note that there’s civil proceedings, there are criminal proceedings, and there are administrative decisions, which themselves could end up in a court context. But these are different spaces, and for those not well versed with the law, it’s probably worth noting that these are quite different settings. Certainly, in the criminal context, we already have a dynamic where the State is taking an interest. It’s the State who prosecutes a citizen, rather than a fellow citizen, so there’s an extra level of State versus individual interest dynamic at play with those ones.

If I can actually start with the civil proceedings, though, first of all, what we’ve got here is the standard closed court procedure that the Minister’s referred to, and the standardisation is part of that general rationalisation, that seeking of consistency across these kind of proceedings. In the way that case law, but also court procedures, develop over time, of course it’s been somewhat ad hoc until this point, and that has been a reaction in each individual case. For various matters that are often high profile and matters of considerable public interest, as well as being interesting to the public, the procedures have developed over time, and it’s appropriate to come up with some standard procedures, and one of those would be the closed court procedure. So this is where we have special procedure orders able to be made.

The suggestion from the Government is that a special advocate, who has a security clearance, would be representing the interests of the individual. This is obviously a compromise whereby, ordinarily, the starting point would be that a person would be able to choose their own legal representation, but to have a lawyer who isn’t able to receive the national security information, whether it’s that top secret level or perhaps lower, is problematic in this case. On the one hand, we want people to be aware of charges that are against them and give them the ability to defend themselves, but we don’t want our security agencies and police and others who are in a position to have to provide this information to be doing so in a way that would jeopardise others or the system more generally.

So the role of the special advocate is a really crucial one, and we’d be leaning heavily and relying heavily on the professional ethics of such people, and I don’t doubt that they would seek to discharge those duties very carefully. I suppose we can take some comfort from the fact that every lawyer already has an obligation not only to their client but also to the court, as an officer of the court, and to the rule of law more generally. So while, on the face of it, it might seem as though a lawyer will be placed in a difficult position by knowing information about their client that they can’t necessarily disclose to their client that they know—if I’ve understood the legislation correctly—at the same time, we already do have in place a higher duty even to one’s own client that a lawyer has, and that might not be obvious to those not in the profession or not versed in these matters. But while it is a compromise, and even perhaps arguably an uneasy compromise, it is one, I think, that reflects the desire of all parliamentarians, I would hope, to balance these competing rights.

I do have a question that’s probably more along the technical lines, and it will no doubt be answered in due course through the select committee and perhaps submissions: whether a person has not only the right to have a special advocate but perhaps the responsibility. I don’t know, and the answer might well be in the legislation already—whether a person can choose to self-represent—whereas, obviously, we’re taking off the table the ability of a person to have a non - security-cleared lawyer. So that’s detail that I think would be worth discussing, and I look forward to that in future stages of the debate.

So just to wrap up as my time comes to an end, I’ve mostly focused on that particular bit, but that is actually across the civil and criminal realms in terms of administrative decisions, standardising provisions that allow for judicial review of and appeals against those administrative decisions, and, again, just relying on general principles, it’s fair to allow someone to have the right of appeal, particularly on a point of law, as opposed to a factual matter. So it’s good to see that there is at least some provision made for that. We’ll look forward to that detail further down the track.

So on that note, I wish the Justice Committee all the best in its consideration, and confirm that National, at this, the first reading, does support the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): The Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill implements the majority of the Law Commission’s recommendations from back in 2015. It particularly took a look at how national security information is treated, both in the courts and also in administrative decision-making. The question at the heart of the Law Commission’s inquiry was what should happen when information is relevant to legal proceedings, but also, by disclosing that, it might prejudice our national security?

The Law Commission found there are a number of inconsistences in the law. First of all, it found that the current law does not provide enough assurance that national security information can adequately be protected in the way it needs to be in order to be used in court. Secondly, the current law can also disadvantage affected people who may not know the reason for a decision against them. The Law Commission’s recommendations are implemented in this bill, and this bill achieves their objectives. It’s a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Hang on. [Removes mask] I’ll get through the first minute getting this off. Apologies, Madam Speaker. I’ve just got to get my hearing aid back in place so I can hear you when you go to sit me down. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

It’s a very interesting place to find myself, speaking on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill, and it’s probably the first justice bill I’ve spoken on in the House for quite some number of years. In fact, I think the person in the chair may well have been the chairman of the Law and Order Committee last time I spoke on a justice bill in this House.

So the bill results from recommendations made by the Law Commission, or a 2015 report. That, in itself, I guess, just shows how long it takes for issues of importance to get to the point of legislation in this House, under normal circumstances. Before saying a few words about the bill, I just want to reflect on the enigma that the Government is when only a minute or two ago we were debating a bill that takes away protections from a few young children—lifesaving protections—and here we are, a few minutes later, debating a bill that puts in place protections for, well, reasons of national security, but for very interesting reasons. The Minister I heard say that this is an important and complicated piece of legislation. The enigma of this is that for nine years in Opposition, this current Government spent the whole of their time opposing every security bill that came into the House. Here they are, taking the high ground, I suppose, and doing what you could only describe as a three-quarter backflip off a springboard and putting a piece of legislation in place that puts in place those types of protections. So you’ve got to wonder at the reason or logic behind some of their opposition to previous bills.

We of course won’t oppose this bill, because we understand the importance of—

Hon Member: Oh, good on ya.

IAN McKELVIE: No, same. We understand the importance of, I guess, providing security and giving assurance to our international partners, amongst other things, and international countries that whatever information is produced in the course of court proceedings that might create some security challenges for us or security challenges for our allies or for other people in the world, or, in fact, for individuals is protected in a manner that’s logical, sensible, and as transparent as can be.

I think the interesting issue about this bill is that most of the provisions that it puts in place can be found in the law now. But the problem is they are all over the place, and, as the previous speaker from this side of the House, Chris Penk, described, they are kind of ad hoc and need to be pulled together in a manner that would be different in every case. This piece of legislation intends to put in place practices that are easier to follow and that creates certainty for the courts going forward.

I find it interesting because inevitably we get into matters of opinion. Even in legal proceedings, it’s very difficult to document in legislation something as certain as a process that we will follow on every occasion because every occasion is so different, and this bill introduces a new trial admissibility hearing, or a pre-trial admissibility hearing, where the court determines what process it should take and how the national security information should be protected. That, of course, will inevitably become a matter of opinion because it’s very difficult to document that in law. So, like so many other things that we have coming through this House, it’s going to be interesting to see how the select committee deals with these issues and how they put some certainty, or as much certainly as they can, around the processes that lead to this stuff, because, as my learned legal friend Chris Penk also described earlier on, these matters are very technical and there are also issues that, frankly, the legal fraternity need to deal with and deal with in a manner that this Parliament can’t deal with. So we need to put the law in place that allows the courts to operate in a manner that then protects the information they want to protect, protects New Zealand, and protects our allies where necessary.

So it is for me a complex piece of legislation. It’ll be interesting to see, and I’ll take a great deal of interest in, how the Justice Committee reports this back to Parliament. But, in the meantime, the National Party certainly supports these pieces of legislation because we understand very well the importance of national security; of protecting our borders, our information, and our people; and also protecting our allies and the information they may need to provide at times to assist us in whatever types of court cases or civil cases we are undertaking in this area.

So it is a complex area, and, with those few words, I commend the bill to the House and look forward to the report of the Justice Committee when it comes back. Thank you.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Merry Christmas, Madam Speaker. As Minister Wood said earlier in speaking to this bill, it responds to Part 2 of a Law Commission report in 2015, and it’s a bill that requires us to balance obligations of a fair legal process with protecting our national security.

The doctrine of public interest immunity isn’t a new one. It’s existed for a long time at common law, and it can be part of a well-functioning democracy. At the genesis of the doctrine, no doubt, many years ago the predominant view was that the assertion of public interest immunity was conclusive. However, the modern view is that courts should retain some role in assessing whether the assertion is correctly made. So there are a number of considerations in terms of the appropriateness of court processes and their scope, but also, as colleagues have mentioned, human rights concerns as well. I look forward, as a Justice Committee member, to examining these considerations, and I commend this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): It’s great to hear around the House the word “balance”—the need to balance the rights of individuals and the right for all of us to be safe here in Aotearoa New Zealand. The background of this bill is that it regulates how national security information is used as evidence in court. These rules will come into effect when the Government needs to prosecute someone for alleged criminal wrongdoing based on highly secure national security information (NSI) that the Government cannot share within the public sphere. For example, the Government may receive information through the Five Eyes alliance, which they are sworn to protect, and at the same time they want to act on the information provided to prosecute a terrorist allegedly planning an attack.

Some jurisdictions have completely closed court proceedings, where they prosecute someone in relative secrecy and without telling the defendant the evidence that they have against them, in order to protect the national security information. This would breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which affirms that every person has the right for courts, tribunals, and Government decision-makers to observe the principles of natural justice. These principles involve procedural fairness so that the Crown has no unfair advantage. They include the right to full information and the reasons for decisions being present at hearings, having legal representation, and being able to challenge evidence. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act also sets out minimum standards of criminal procedure, including the right to know the prosecution’s case, to be present at the trial, and to present an effective defence.

Aotearoa has a very ad hoc approach as there has only been a small number of cases where national security information has had to be used. One of these cases is the case of Ahmed Zaoui, an asylum seeker who was imprisoned for two years, including 10 months in solitary confinement after the SIS deemed him a security threat, all the while refusing to say why. The Refugee Status Appeals Authority eventually found the State did not have any evidence against him that he had directed or participated in any act of violence or terrorism. An admission from Sir Michael Cullen, the Deputy Prime Minister during the saga in 2016, said, “I think at the time we in government were too willing to accept what we were told instead of probing behind the true nature of the source of the information and therefore its inherent unreliability.”

This bill is based on a good, comprehensive Law Commission report from 2015, and I note it’s taken a while to get here. It tries to strike a balance between protecting national security information but without completely stomping on the rights of everybody. What it will do, in summary, is create a framework to better define national security information and govern how it is used in any court proceedings. It will replace frameworks under the Passports Act, the, Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act, and the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act. The Immigration Act will retain a separate regime and this is tailored to the immigration tribunal. This is, of course, better than the status quo, because it gives the courts a narrow but better-defined role in determining what evidence is NSI and if and how it can be used, and this will help courts more legitimately understand when a Government may be using illegitimate information.

The following changes are proposed for criminal procedure. There will be a pre-trial closed court session where the judge will review NSI. The court will consider what is necessary to protect the information, and a security-cleared special advocate will be present at the pre-trial to represent the non-Crown party. There is a new pre-trial admissibility hearing for the court to determine how national security information should be protected at trial in criminal proceedings. There will be judicial discretion to allow use of national security information in a modified form, and there will be confirmation that a closed court procedure excluding the defendant is not available at the main trial and criminal proceedings.

The following proposals are proposed for civil proceedings. There will be a new legislative regime to cover the disclosure and management of security information in civil proceedings, and a process for the Crown to make a security information application in relation to a proceeding, asking for the court to make orders protecting confidentiality and security information. The Attorney-General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs are to jointly issue an NSI certificate that certifies that the information is national security information. There is—in my understanding—no ability for the court to override this. However, this decision would be judicially reviewable.

The court will have the authority to decide whether information subject to a certificate is to be excluded from the proceedings or provided to a special advocate. A closed court procedure would be available in all civil cases, and there will be a discretion for the court to dispose of or otherwise deal with a civil proceeding that cannot be fairly determined by all of the options available to the court to manage the security information.

There’s a lot there, and I will reflect on just a few points. The Law Commission recommended that the court should be the final decision maker as to whether something is national security information rather than this being decided by the Attorney-General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs through a certificate. This is something that the Greens agree on. In terms of the impact on tangata whenua it says that it is unlikely that these proposals will be used to limit expressions of tino rangatiratanga or to override the Crown’s obligation to actively protect Māori interests and rights, but that historical events indicate this remains a possibility in the future.

We only have to look back relatively recently to the Urewera raids, which is the most prominent of the court actions to date under the Terrorism Suppression Act. The raids there related to the assertion of tino rangatiratanga and involved the use of search and surveillance warrants through the information involved at the time. It was not national security information. I think it is really mindful to recognise and remember, and I hope that we do take this energy into the select committee process as well—that historically the Crown has been highly reactive to perceived threats against its sovereignty. We only have to look back to the history of the New Zealand Land Wars, the history of Parihaka, and the raid and subsequent arrest of Rua Kēnana at Maungapōhatu. It always tends, historically, to be skewed against tangata whenua, so I would encourage the select committee, when they do this very important balancing act of the right to protect individuals and the right to protect our communities, to make sure that that is a prominent in their minds when making that determination. On that summary, I support the bill.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. With this being my last speech for the year, I’d like to wish the House a very merry Christmas, as well as the Chair and the clerks, and I also notice that we’ve got Willow-Jean Prime’s little pēpē in the Whare today. I’d just like to wish you a very merry Christmas too, dear.

I’m standing to speak on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill. The ACT Party will be supporting this bill. The reason why is because we don’t like personal liberties being lost, and we think that this bill actually goes a way to addressing that. Currently, our national security information is handled in such a way that it’s quite ambiguous, it’s uncertain, and, of course, it has also been inconsistent. New Zealand needs the capability to be able to receive information from overseas jurisdictions and respond to that information appropriately.

So this bill seeks to create a clear and consistent approach to the use of security information. The effects of that is that it will actually go about clarifying respective roles and interests of the judiciary, the executive, as well as those affected individuals, and we note that there are several costs and potential unintended consequences, but we also recognise that the regulatory impact statement and the departmental disclosure statement presented measures to help mitigate some of those risks. We look forward in the select committee process to be able to go through and see if we can tidy that up. There are some problems that we’ve found, and hence the need for this bill. The current frameworks have been developed in an ad hoc manner, and this approach has lacked clarity and a consistent protection for individuals as well as for New Zealand’s national security. There is no assurance right now that the national security information can be adequately protected if it is used in court procedures.

So the changes that this bill presents are that when we are in a situation where current proceedings may disadvantage non-Crown parties, they’re unable to challenge the outcomes because they don’t have the full information and won’t get the full information. So that looks to be changed. And there will be provided for those non-Crown parties a security-cleared specialist advocate that will be paid for by the Government, by the Ministry of Justice. So our natural justice concerns can be alleviated there.

There’s also a number of changes that will occur within our criminal, our civil, and our administration procedures so that the rights of the individual align within the system. It standardises the provisions allowing for judicial reviews, and appeals against any administrative decisions.

There’s a series of pros and cons with this bill. Some of the pros, of course, are that our national security interests will be protected while access to information can be acquired by the parties. It may shorten the court time process, which, of course, we really need at the moment, because there’s such a huge backlog, especially in the criminal arena. New Zealand society should become agile to respond to national security threats while assuring our international partners that their intelligence will be protected.

Of course, some of the cons with this bill are that the cost will be met by existing baselines within the Ministry of Justice, baselines that already need a significant amount of money put into them just to achieve their current targets let alone adding new pressures to that system. The strengthening of the protection of the national security information may erode some parts of the principles of open justice, and this is where the debate within select committee will be valuable. And, of course, there will be additional resources that will be needed, for example, to get those security-cleared specialist advocates involved within the system.

So when we look at the pros and the cons of this bill, we can expect that there will be cons when we’re looking at a national security interest in that context. But they have been identified, and they can be mitigated, because it is essential that we do standardise the procedures to protect our national security interests and allow those affected to actually know why.

ACT looks forward to fleshing out the identified issues through the select committee process, and to make sure that this bill is better for our national security interests but also for the people of New Zealand. I wish you all a merry Christmas, and ACT supports this bill.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare, and meri Kirihimete. Delighted to rise and take a quick call on this. It’s an age - old saying that hard cases make bad law. Making decisions on sensitive areas without having a careful consideration of the policies and principles behind it is dangerous. That is why it’s so important that we are doing this work, and I am delighted to be part of the Justice Committee who will oversee it.

It is important that we do this on the basis of the extremely thorough Law Commission report that we have already heard referred to. To be looking forward to undertaking this balancing act and this investigation with the likes of Vanushi Walters, who can stand up and talk about public interest immunity, just talks to the scrutiny that we will have. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Simon O’Connor—a five-minute call.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Oh, only five minutes? Isn’t it Christmas? No, the Christmas will be that actually I won’t speak for too long. I think there’s a relative comity in the House around this bill.

Look, fundamentally, protecting our national security is a fundamental need of the State, of the Crown. But, on the other side—and I think, actually, other speakers have touched on it too—of course, the right to a proper and fair trial underpins a healthy democracy, and therein lies the tension. But, reading through this bill, I think it is, at this point, striking the right balance. There are issues of national security. The information that is shared doesn’t always have to be in public. And I think, for those listening in who say, “Well, why shouldn’t we know?” it’s not always just the information that the intelligence services have; it’s how that intelligence has been gathered, which in turn can compromise future operations.

I think others may have touched on it too, but we work not just as a single country but we work with our allies—so we’re thinking the likes of the UK, America, Australia, and others. We rely quite heavily on their national security and intelligence operations, and we have an agreement with them not to compromise their work and their intelligence, and we don’t want to do that in and through our courts. So I think this is going to bring about a careful balance, but importantly, and I think, as the other speakers have indicated, we will want to really tease this out in select committee to make sure that we get this right. We’ve come back to this House far too many times with amendment bills by this Government.

But, anyway, to finish, I suspect, having had a trifecta of speeches this morning, this will be my last in the House this year—just in case people were getting excited! But, through you, Madam Speaker, can I wish everyone in the House merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and I look forward to re-joining you all after hopefully a relaxing break in 2022.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take this call and, in doing so, extend a warm and Merry Christmas to everyone across the House. I hope that you enjoy a happy holiday. I certainly hope to see some of you in Hawke’s Bay.

Now, back to the bill. The Law Commission found a number of inconsistencies and gaps in the current law. I note from this that the current law does not provide enough assurance that national security information can be adequately protected if it needs to be used in court proceedings. This creates a security risk for New Zealand. The current law can also disadvantage affected people who may not know the reason for a decision against them. The bill achieves some of these objectives, and others as well, and I look forward to recommending this to the House. Thank you.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I just want to echo the sentiments of season’s greetings to everybody in the House this afternoon and to Nicole McKee, who acknowledged Heeni, the pēpē of the House, who’s here with me today.

Now, I do just want to take a very brief call on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill. I am almost one of the last speakers, so it has been well traversed why we have this bill before the House today. It is as a result of the Law Commission’s 2015 review. We are adopting the majority of those recommendations and what is proposed in this bill includes some of those recommendations.

But I do just want to pick up on the contribution from the Green Party, from Teanau Tuiono. He mentioned a number of significant matters for Māori, and so, therefore, I do really look forward to the select committee process where we will be able to look at those more thoroughly and in depth.

I am a member of the Justice Committee. I look forward to Ginny Andersen ushering this through and being part of that process. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to stand and take a call on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill in the first reading. Can I just support the comments of Willow-Jean Prime—and it looks like her beautiful daughter has joined us in the House today, as well—and just say merry Christmas to everyone. I hope that all of you, all my colleagues across the House, enjoy a happy and safe Christmas, but let’s remember that the people that are actually tasked with our national security are still out there working to make sure that they keep us safe.

So, with this bill, I think that always when it comes to national security we should do everything that we can to always take a bipartisan approach, and ensure that we put the best possible and the strongest legislation in place to ensure that we not only meet the needs of our country in terms of our national security but we also consider and acknowledge those important Five Eyes partnerships that we have so that they continue to have confidence in us and the way that we treat information. The new legislative regime will cover the disclosure and management of security information in both civil proceedings and the criminal court.

For me personally—and we can certainly look into this at that select committee—it is just exactly how the special advocate is going to work, because, of course, it’s important that justice is always seen to be done. So we have to have a high level of confidence in terms of how that special advocacy is going to work inside the court system.

It’s a very good bill. I look forward to receiving it as a new member on the Justice Committee and examining it and improving it through the select committee process, and I’m very happy to recommend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I, just like everyone in this House, support this bill, and I would just like to shamelessly take the opportunity to wish everybody a safe and relaxing Christmas. It’s not often that the public gets to see this House working together, but I take every opportunity to point out that it happens more than people realise. It’s always on the last day of the sitting year when people show their true colours and actually demonstrate that we do get on. So, to everyone here and everyone watching, all the very best.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Bills

Gambling (Reinstating COVID-19 Modification) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Courts) on behalf of the Minister of Internal Affairs: I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Gambling (Reinstating COVID-19 Modification) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: I move, That the Gambling (Reinstating COVID-19 Modification) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): In accordance with the determination of the Business Committee, this bill is set down for second reading forthwith.

Second Reading

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Courts) on behalf of the Minister of Internal Affairs: I move, That the Gambling (Reinstating COVID-19 Modification) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill enables charities to draw lotteries online in order to raise funds for their causes. This type of fund-raising activities is considered class 3 gambling under the Gambling Act. Class 3 gambling activity is best described as small lottery-style gambling but requires a licence to operate. Prizes are offered or awarded in a gambling activity on one session of the gambling. Examples include housie, instant games, and gaming sessions otherwise known as casino evenings. It does not involve a gaming machine and is often run by a corporate society at in-person events. In order to gain a licence, the Department of Internal Affairs, as the regulator, must be satisfied that the charity is financially viable and that the costs will be minimised and returns to the community maximised.

The changes being made in this bill have already been through this House and select committee unopposed. I look forward to us being able to resolve this issue in the House today.

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

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I thought I’d just say a few words, rather than just continuing on the fastest democracy in the West, as they say. Just very quickly, ACT is going to support this. But how appropriate that we’re here at the end of the year fixing up a silly little mistake like this. Rushed legislation often has consequences like we’re seeing here.

We support granting more flexibility. These issues have been discussed and debated to operate as class 3 lotteries, and, as a board member of an incorporated society myself, I know—although we don’t run gambling—how difficult this has been for incorporated societies and charities, for their fundraising efforts this year and last year; how disruptive COVID-19 has been when you put just hours and hours and months into planning for events and things like that, and then suddenly alert levels change and you just lose everything. So it has been tough.

Anything like this bill that helps with sustainability for these organisations so that they can give more to the community is a good thing. But I won’t hold you up any more, because, if I do, you never know, it might expire again and we have to do this all again. So thank you, Madam Speaker.

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): In accordance with the determination of the Business Committee, this bill is set down for third reading forthwith.

Third Reading

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Courts) on behalf of the Minister of Internal Affairs: I move, That the Gambling (Reinstating COVID-19 Modification) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The time has come for me to adjourn the House. Before I do that, I want to wish everybody who is involved in the running of this House, including those who serve and those who participate, a very peaceful and happy Christmas. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today.

The House adjourned at 11.52 a.m. (Wednesday)