Thursday, 17 February 2022

THURSDAY, 17 FEBRUARY 2022

THURSDAY, 17 FEBRUARY 2022

The Deputy Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

karakia/Prayers

karakia/Prayers

DEPUTY SPEAKER: E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi mātou ki te Kuīni, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmene.

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

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today the House will adjourn until Tuesday, 1 March. Legislation to be considered in that week will include the first reading of the Statutes Amendment Bill; the second readings of the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill and the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill; further stages of the Commerce Amendment Bill, the Maori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement Amendment Bill, and the Maritime Powers Bill; and the third reading of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. Wednesday will be a members’ day and the first general debate for the year will be held on that day.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Can I ask the Leader of the House, is it the Government’s intention, given the worsening situation in the Ukraine, to introduce autonomous sanctions legislation that would enable New Zealand to participate in any international sanctions should there be an aggressor action against the Ukraine?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): The issue the member raises is a policy question for the relevant Minister, not for me as Leader of the House.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Point of order. I can help the member. Can I seek leave for the Autonomous Sanctions Bill, in my name, to be set down on the Order Paper for consideration next sitting day?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.

PETITIONS, PAPERS, SELECT COMMITTEE REPORTS, AND INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

PETITIONS, PAPERS, SELECT COMMITTEE REPORTS, AND INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No petitions have been presented and no bills have been introduced. Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

Government Response to the Report of the Governance and Administration Committee on the Inquiry into Supplementary Order Paper No. 59 on the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill

Government Response to the Report of the Environment Committee on the Inquiry into Natural and Built Environments Bill: Parliamentary Paper.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. A select committee report has been delivered for presentation.

CLERK: Interim Report of the Regulations Review Committee on COVID-19 Public Health Response Orders.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The report of the Regulations Review Committee is set down for consideration.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her statement in relation to Government housing policy that “we have to constantly make sure we are reaching those affordability goals for people”, and does she agree with the 2022 Salvation Army State of the Nation report that states “the massive increases in renting costs right throughout Aotearoa is confronting. Housing affordability for both first-home buyers and those renting is extremely worrying”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes, in the context it was made. In terms of the second part of the question, yes. This Government has not shied away from the housing crisis that we inherited. Unlike the previous Government, this Government admits that there is a housing crisis, and we are working hard to address it. There is no silver bullet. However, this Government is overseeing the largest number of building consents ever, with over 48,000 homes consented last year. We’ve added over 8,900 new public housing places—removing planning rules that stop homes being built and reforming the Resource Management Act and investing an extra $3.8 billion in the pipes, roads, and infrastructure required for new homes—and we’ve grown the construction workforce by 14 percent at the same time.

Nicola Willis: Can she name a single measure which shows housing is more affordable for New Zealanders today than it was when she became Prime Minister?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Prime Minister, as I said in my primary answer, there is no silver bullet. What there is is a long-term programme of work to build more houses. And yes, we are seeing supply come online, which will make housing more affordable for people. Yes, we are seeing more first-home buyers in the housing market. We are seeing the fact that the rate of house price increase is coming down. But, on this side of the House, we know that a housing crisis—decades in the making—is not going to be solved in just a short few years.

Nicola Willis: Well, isn’t it the case that, despite her enormous promises to New Zealanders, housing is less affordable for New Zealanders today, by every single measure, than it was when she became Prime Minister?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Prime Minister, this Government is sticking to its commitment to do the hard work to build more houses and to make sure that we support people into buying their first homes, make sure we have more social housing, and make sure we have more emergency housing. We are taking action. The National Party have not come up with, and not supported, one good idea to actually do anything about this.

Nicola Willis: How many children are being raised in emergency motel rooms on her watch, and how does that compare to when National was in office?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Prime Minister, we have invested in emergency housing so that children are not growing up in cars, which is what they were doing under the previous Government.

Nicola Willis: Why did median rents increase by a record-breaking $50 a week between December 2020 and December 2021?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Prime Minister, as the Prime Minister stated in the House yesterday, there are many reasons for why rents go up. Rents have been going up, in history, across New Zealand for many, many years. What I do know is that, on this side of the House, we have taken action to ensure that new builds are exempted from the rules that we put in place to make the housing market fairer, so that we do increase the supply, so we have more rental properties. We are taking action and, I repeat, the National Party have no policy to do anything about the housing crisis, which should not surprise anyone, because they denied it for nine years.

Nicola Willis: What does she say to the tenants of Glen, a landlord who wrote to me, saying, “I have issued my annual rent increases to tenants. This year, I had to take into account the additional $9,000 in tax we will be paying.”, and does she understand that her policy to hike taxes for landlords is being paid for by New Zealand renters who are caught in a cost of living crisis?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I say to those tenants is that they have a Government that is making sure that they live in warm, dry rental housing, that they are protected from being exploited, and that we are building more housing that they one day will be able to purchase. On this side of the House, we actually believe in supporting people who are in low-income situations—not what I’ve heard from the other side of the House, which is opposing every initiative we have taken to improve the lot of low-income people.

Question No. 2—Housing

2. IBRAHIM OMER (Labour) to the Minister of Housing: What is the Government doing to increase supply of public housing in Wellington?

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): This morning, I announced funding to provide warm, dry, public homes for an estimated 900 families and individuals in Wellington. The Arlington Development, on the fringe of Wellington’s CBD, includes 300 new public houses, plus shared amenities such as a new playground, community gardens, and rooms, offices, and an orchard to help integrate the new buildings and residents into the well-established existing community. Arlington will have on-site support services that will support Kāinga Ora’s residents and the thriving community. Construction on the new homes will begin soon, with staged delivery completed between 2023 and 2025. This Government continues to deliver on our plan—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think the Minister’s answered the question.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Thank you.

Ibrahim Omer: How will the Arlington project provide education and training opportunities?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Through its cadet and apprenticeship programme, Kāinga Ora works with training and pastoral care providers, build partners, and sub-contractors to help key New Zealanders into trade apprenticeships and to support them and their employers to maximise their success. Last year, the Government celebrated getting 500 apprentices into work, with the assistance of Kāinga Ora build partners, sub-contractors, and maintenance partners. The Arlington Development provides employment and training opportunities for 40 apprentices and four new graduates, with at least 50 percent of these roles being assigned to individuals who identify as Māori, Pacific, and women, or Kāinga Ora tenants.

Ibrahim Omer: How else should the Government be building public housing in Wellington?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: In addition to Arlington, the Government is working with the community, iwi, and Porirua City Council to deliver new, warm, dry homes in Porirua through the Porirua redevelopment. In July last year, I announced the first draw-down on the Government’s $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund, investing $136 million to unlock capacity for an additional 2,000 homes in Porirua and to create up to 250 jobs. This funding is on top of an initial investment of $1.5 billion announced in 2018 to replace older State homes that are past their best with warm, dry, modern homes.

Question No. 3—Social Development and Employment

3. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: How many more people, if any, received a main benefit for longer than one year in the December 2021 quarter compared to the December 2017 quarter, and what is the impact of any such increase on the children of those households?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment) on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment: There were 62,019 additional main benefit recipients in December 2021, compared to December 2017, who had been receiving a main benefit for a year or more. At the beginning of our COVID-19 response, Treasury forecast benefit numbers would peak at 487,500 in January 2021. However, due to the Government’s quick actions and investment in things like the wage subsidy, the highest number of people receiving a main benefit was 391,227 in January 2021—96,273 fewer people than forecast. To the second part of the question, this Government recognises the negative impact of child poverty and we’re committed to addressing it. We have raised incomes for low-income workers and those on benefits more than any other Government and have invested heavily in employment and training programmes to support people back into employment. This has led to 39,916 more people moving off a benefit and into work in the year ending December 2021 when compared to December 2017, and this is the highest number of exits into work for a December quarter since electronic records began in 1996.

Hon Louise Upston: What responsibility, if any, does the Government take for the fact that almost one in five New Zealand children are now growing up in a benefit-dependent household under Labour’s watch?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Reducing child poverty, as I’ve said in my response to the primary question, is a priority for this Government. Since taking office in 2017, 109,000 families and whānau with children will be, on average, $175 a week better off as a result of income support changes that we have made on this side of the House. Since 2017, all nine child poverty measures have gone down, we’ve turned each one of them, and I could go on. I mean, between 19,000 and 33,000 children are projected to be lifted out of poverty on the after-housing cost measures in 2022-23 as a result of the increases—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think you’ve addressed the question. Thank you.

Hon Louise Upston: Why, as noted in yesterday’s Salvation Army report, has this Government allowed children living in benefit-dependent households to escalate to over 208,000, an increase of 37,000 since Labour came into office?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Given that that member seems to be quite supportive of families on low incomes and their children, perhaps she would actually support the minimum wage increases that we are bringing into effect on this side of the House and the work that we have done to increase benefits more than any other Government. I would also point out that, in fact, the State of the Nation report says we are making progress on reducing child poverty, we’re increasing the number of houses being built, and our economy is resilient due to measures that we have put in place in response to COVID.

Hon Louise Upston: Why, given one-third of all people on a jobseeker benefit have been there longer than three years, does the Government continue to blame COVID-19 for New Zealand’s benefit dependency crisis?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: That member will know that with the jobseeker benefit, there are those who are work-ready and there are those with health and disability issues, so conflating the two is actually quite unhelpful. In fact, 106,000 of them are work-ready. Many of those actually are in part-time employment as well, and are counted in benefit numbers and not the unemployment figure. We’ve also lifted the abatement thresholds so that people are better off and able to work as well, and also, as I mentioned in my response to the initial primary question, this Government has focused heavily or significantly on getting people back into work, as opposed to just punishing those—using sanctions, as the previous Government did.

Hon Louise Upston: Can the Minister explain what the Salvation Army could not when it said about the 185,000 people on jobseeker benefit—and I quote—“It is not clear why more of those on jobseeker benefits are not moving into employment, particularly at a time when employers are searching for both skilled and unskilled workers.”?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I’d point to the response that was given previously in the House on that. We inherited a large number of people who didn’t have the skills and training to get into work that was actually there—that was actually a response that the member has received just this week on that. In saying that, we have focused on getting people into employment: 263 new front-line staff in Budget 2019 to help people into work, $150 million in Budget 2020 to help people into work, work-focused case management—something that previous Government abandoned when they were in office that we are focusing on—and we’re actually seeing results. He Poutama Rangatahi has supported over 7,000 at-risk youth into work. The Apprenticeship Boost scheme helps employers retain apprentices and has benefited over 40,000 people. This is a Government that is actually focusing on getting people into sustainable work that pays them well—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think you’ve answered the question. Thank you.

Question No. 4—COVID-19 Response

4. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What recent announcements has the Government made on reconnecting New Zealand with the rest of the world?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): On Tuesday, I announced the requirements for travellers arriving into New Zealand under the reconnecting plan. That will begin with step one at the end of this month. From 28 February, travellers to New Zealand—starting with Kiwis and other current eligible travellers coming from Australia—will be able to enter without staying in managed isolation and quarantine as long as they’re fully vaccinated, they return a negative test before flying, and they spend seven days in self-isolation, taking two rapid antigen tests during that time. These actions will lower the risk of COVID-19 entering the community whilst also allowing a significant number of families to reunite. It will assist with the economic recovery and immediately help to address some of the worker shortages we’re facing.

Dr Liz Craig: What will be required for travellers prior to departure and upon their arrival in New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Before flying, travellers will have the option of three different types of pre-departure test: the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test within 48 hours—which people are now used to—or they can do a supervised rapid antigen test or loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) test within 24 hours of their departure. From the end of March, a New Zealand traveller declaration will require travellers to complete an online declaration prior to travel and upload their evidence of vaccination and negative pre-departure tests. In the interim, travellers will be manually checked by airline and Customs staff. On arrival at the airport in New Zealand, vaccinated travellers will need to download the NZ COVID Tracer app. They’ll be given three rapid antigen tests. They will then travel directly to their accommodation, avoiding visiting people or entering shops and businesses. They’ll wear a mask until they reach their accommodation and ensure that anyone picking them up wears a mask as well. They’ll sanitise their hands regularly and maintain physical distancing as much as possible.

Dr Liz Craig: What will be required for travellers while they’re self-isolating?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The settings for self-isolation reflect the public health advice that arrivals to New Zealand have a similar risk profile to close contacts in the New Zealand community. As a result, they’ll be subject to similar protocols as community contacts. These things include an isolation period of seven days and reporting the results of two rapid antigen tests: one on arrival—day zero or day one—and one on day five or day six. A positive result will need to be followed by a PCR test to monitor for any new variants. Isolating travellers will be able to form a bubble with their family or with friends that they’re staying with, who will be able to continue to go to work or school, but they’ll need to minimise contact with others as much as possible. So, for example, no visitors to the place where they are isolating will be allowed.

Dr Liz Craig: How do these measures balance public health risks with the need to reconnect with the world?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Having managed isolation and quarantine, or MIQ, for every traveller was a temporary setting while none of us had protection. When we established it, for example, there was no vaccination and there were few treatments for COVID-19. That situation has changed significantly, and so now is the time when New Zealand should be reconnecting with the world. Our plans carefully balance the return of New Zealand to a greater normality whilst also smoothing, as best we can, the spread of Omicron within our communities. When we start to reopen, we’ll be one of the most boosted countries in the world, the COVID-19 Protection Framework will be well established, and returning travellers—at least over the next few months—will still need to comply with these measures, which will provide an additional layer of protection.

Question No. 5—Health

5. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: Why did he reject my call to urgently convene a young people’s mental health summit in response to early signs of increased mental distress as a result of the pandemic, and what does he say to student Jiya Rana, who said in response to my call, “It was actually good to feel acknowledged. It was the first time I felt it had been really addressed in this pandemic and it felt spot on with the conversations I’d been having with my peers”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I received a letter from that member on 25 January this year at 1.55 p.m., suggesting a summit on youth mental health. At approximately 2.30 p.m. on the same day, my office started receiving queries from journalists asking what my response was to the member’s letter. I have not before received a letter with a proposal for a course of action which has been so swiftly followed up by media queries. I drew the conclusion that the member’s so-called call was a political stunt and not a serious request. To Jiya Rana, I say that this Government inherited a mental health system in crisis because of the years of neglect by that member’s party when it was in Government. This Government, on the other hand, has made the single biggest investment in mental health, with its $1.9 billion four-year programme of improvement. This has seen more than 850 front-line roles added to our mental health system, in particular addressing the needs of those with mild to moderate mental health issues. This includes funding 103 youth-specific roles within the primary and community sector. Specifically in relation to the pandemic, amongst other things, we have funded the following for young people: a $5.6 million funding package that provided extra resources to the Auckland district health boards for mental health and addiction services; funding for the Mental Health Foundation’s targeted mental health promotion campaign; and enhanced peer support through telehealth services. Also, we’ve provided $2.5 million of grants to support 36 grassroots community-based youth and kaupapa Māori initiatives that are working with children and young people most affected by COVID-19, and invested in more than 20 community-led projects through the $1.4 million youth mental wellbeing fund. This is a Government that takes mental health seriously, especially the mental health of our young people. The member’s suggested summit was an act of political cynicism.

Matt Doocey: Does he agree with recent research from the University of Auckland which confirms a pandemic-related increase in demand for eating disorder services for young people, and, if so, what is his plan to ensure young people with eating disorders and their families get the timely support they need?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The health system has been well across the further impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused on young people and their families, and I’ve outlined the additional support given in relation to eating disorders. The DHBs and the Ministry of Health are well aware of the pressure being put on the system, largely because of a shortage of specialists because the system was so badly run down in the last few years. This is a Government that is investing more and more in our mental health services, both at the mild to moderate end and at the acute end, to pick up and recover from the catastrophe left by the previous Government.

Matt Doocey: Does he accept recent St John Ambulance data which showed a disturbing trend of a 36 percent increase in mental health and suicide attempt call-outs in under-14-year-olds, a 77 percent increase in the last two years of the pandemic, and, if so, what is his plan to reduce the number of suicide attempt call-outs in under-14s that our emergency services respond to?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I just caution that member to be very careful about the data that he has referred to. So when the St John data that was released referred to mental health call-outs and attempted suicides—those two things are not the same thing. There are people who can be anxious and distressed and depressed who are not suicidal. There has been an increase in demand and in need, and those services are being provided because this is a Government that takes mental health seriously, takes youth mental health seriously, and has put considerably more into just that part of our mental health services than has ever been put into it before.

Matt Doocey: Does he accept the findings of the Salvation Army State of the Nation report released yesterday, which concluded that mental health pressure on young people had increased last year, with a third of teenagers facing moderate or high levels of distress, and, if so, what actions has he taken to support young people to get the support they need?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: This Government has been aware all along that the responses to the pandemic that have required many schools to be closed or operate on a sort of partial basis have put severe strain and pressure on young people and their social networks and, in many cases, their mental health. That is why, as I outlined in my answer to the primary question, this Government has invested more, specifically in services to support and assist young people and their families, and we are continuing to do so. It is also why this Government was determined that when the school year started recently, we did everything we could to get young people back to school to restore their social networks, to restore their socialisation, and to improve their mental health.

Matt Doocey: So when the Minister said—when he rejected my call for a young persons’ mental health summit—that the Government is across the issue because he was hosting a conference at the end of the year, why does he think it’s acceptable to wait until October to respond to the issues instead of a summit right now, or is it because he is playing politics?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I said before, the member’s letter was a stunt, and that’s why he ran off to journalists the minute he sent it to me. He has not seriously committed to a summit at all. It’s interesting that his leader says publically that he wants National and Labour to collaborate on mental health issues, but he’s got a spokesperson who is not simply capable of doing that. We have committed to hosting an international summit later this year, specifically on youth mental health issues. That’s an opportunity not only for New Zealand to relay its experiences to experts from around the world but for those around the world to come and share theirs with us, and we are committed to seeing that happen.

Question No. 6—Social Development and Employment

6. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What announcements has the Government made about supporting Māori into employment, education, and training?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development) on behalf of the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Today, alongside the Minister for Māori Development, we launched Te Māhere Whai Mahi Māori, the Māori Employment Action Plan. Across Government, we’re committing to 32 actions, spanning three key pou, over a period of five years to support better outcomes for Māori in the labour market. Te Whai Mahi underlines our commitment to supporting kaupapa Māori and working kanohi ki te kanohi and in partnership with whānau, hapū, iwi, and wider hapori to improve employment outcomes for Māori—wider hapori; we’re talking about the community there. The action plan is one of many tools in our Government’s toolbox to secure our recovery from COVID-19 and to support Māori as the employees, employers, and drivers of the Māori and wider economy.

Shanan Halbert: Why is this announcement important?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: On behalf of the Minister, we know that some Māori face a number of barriers to gaining meaningful employment and are commonly overrepresented in roles that involve lower pay and skills, fewer advancement opportunities, and less job security. A high number of Māori workers are also underutilised. Māori have the potential to excel in employment, and there is an opportunity to see Māori move into quality, higher-paying and skilled work with greater advancement opportunities and job security. These opportunities have the potential to improve intergenerational wellbeing for Māori, their whānau, and wider communities. This action plan sets out the ways this Government will support Māori employment aspirations and positive labour market outcomes, and also ensures the Government is meeting its Tiriti obligations.

Shanan Halbert: How were the actions of the plan developed?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: On behalf of the Minister, Te Ara Mahi Māori was appointed as an independent reference group to help inform the development of the Māori Employment Action Plan. Te Ara Mahi Māori was made up of leaders in their fields and provided representation right across the Māori community. Te Ara Mahi Māori held 11 hui in total, travelling across the motu, from Kaikohe and Tāmaki-makau-rau to Ōtautahi, to Ōtepoti, engaging with over 150 people: rangatahi, mana whenua, training and education providers, community groups, employment services, local government employers, and unions. Through the engagement undertaken by Te Ara Mahi, we’ve been able to capture as many perspectives as possible, which have gone on to inform and develop the actions in the plan announced today. Can I say, in finishing, some of the emphasis, particularly on Māori women, who are at the bottom end of those statistics, makes me very happy, and I know it has got a lot of support from Ministers and people right across the House.

Question No. 7—Broadcasting and Media

7. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister for Broadcasting and Media: Does he accept all the conclusions of the Sapere Report on Media Plurality in New Zealand; if not, why not?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister for Broadcasting and Media): The independent report the member speaks of was commissioned by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to consider the state of media plurality in New Zealand. There are some recommendations that I think have merit, and some that have less. For instance, there is a recommendation that advertising restrictions for Christmas Day, Anzac Day, and Easter be lifted; I have trouble with that as I don’t think the community would want to see that.

Melissa Lee: What response does the Minister have to criticisms the Sapere report makes, including submitters to the research calling the Public Interest Journalism Fund a “‘giant game of musical chairs’ and was leading to salary inflation”?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: They are expressions of people who submitted to the report, not the conclusions of the report. I would also say that at a time when we are losing a number of journalists from our newsrooms, it’s important to make sure that, as an important part of our democratic infrastructure, we’re supporting our fourth estate. We are doing that by making sure we fund New Zealand On Air to make decisions to support our fourth estate.

Melissa Lee: Did the Minister influence or instruct the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to write to the Commerce Commission on 4 February 2022, asserting that a media bargaining imbalance exists in New Zealand, when the ministry’s own advice from Sapere in a November 2021 report stated that—and I quote—“no one thought there was a crisis for media businesses or the state of plurality in New Zealand”?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The independent research came to their own conclusions; I don’t agree with it, and therefore, I think the Ministry for Culture and Heritage was expressing the Government’s opinion.

Melissa Lee: Point of order. The question was did the Minister influence or instruct.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, the problem is that you added an extra leg on the other end, which he has addressed. So you might want to ask that bit again.

Melissa Lee: Noting that the Sapere report states New Zealanders are currently well served by plurality in the media, will the Minister continue with his plans for the disestablishment of Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand and the creation of a new public media entity?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I think if you look at audience trends—how they are watching and listening and consuming media—that our public media entities also have to make sure that they are fit for purpose. The Government is intent on doing that. It was a commitment we made at the last election.

Melissa Lee: Considering the Sapere report states there is not a compelling case for a structural intervention by the Government to address the potential future risk of plurality in the market for national news, and the Government spent over $300 million on media and broadcasting in 2021, will the Minister commit to the abolition of the Public Interest Journalism Fund and all publicly funded political reporting; if not, why not?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The Sapere report is independent, and on the point that the member first made, I disagree with it, considering the answer that I gave earlier. If the member is saying that they want to get rid of all the funding that New Zealand On Air uses to support the fourth estate at the moment, which makes sure that we have programmes like The Nation and Q+A and other shows that she has actually, in her previous life, taken advantage of, then I think the media would want to know about that.

Question No. 8—Justice

8. GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Justice: What action has the Government taken to end harmful conversion practices in New Zealand?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): On Tuesday, the Government successfully passed the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. Parliament voted with near-unanimity to support the bill, which will prevent harm towards our rainbow community and encourage open and respectful discussions about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. We made a promise during the 2020 election, and we have delivered. We have banned conversion practices in Aotearoa, and I commend all of the Kiwis, past and present, who have worked to make the ban on conversion practices a reality.

Glen Bennett: Why is a ban on conversion practices important for our rainbow community and in particular our rainbow rangatahi?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: There is absolutely no evidence that conversion practices work. What there is evidence of is the real, serious, and life-altering harm that it can cause. The practices have contributed to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts and attempts. Conversion practices are based on myths that a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression can and should be changed, and I thank the 112 members of this House who voted in favour of it.

Glen Bennett: How does the ban on conversion practices ensure open and respectful conversations about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The aim of the new law is to encourage open and respectful discussion around sexual orientation or gender identity. I acknowledge that some submitters during the select committee process and indeed some members of the House were concerned that the bill could prevent parents, health professionals, and religious groups from supporting individuals in exploring their sexuality or gender expression. I would also like to reiterate to the House again that a safe and respectful conversation is not captured in this bill.

Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Does he agree with the Government’s statement in the departmental report for the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill regarding a rights-based approach to the issues facing intersex people, including best-practice guidelines for healthcare; if so, when will this work start?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I acknowledge that point that the member made—and also during the committee stage of the bill’s progression. That work will be taken as part of a wider review of the Human Rights Act, which we hope to make sure is started before the end of this term.

Question No. 9—Police

9. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister of Police: Does she believe New Zealanders are safer under this Government than they were four years ago; if so, how does she explain the Salvation Army’s 2022 State of the Nation report which shows violent crime overall has increased since 2017?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): Firstly, can I ask members of this House to thank our women and men of the police who are out there right now endeavouring to keep us safe from an extraordinary event that’s occurring out there. We welcome the findings of the Salvation Army State of the Nation report and as a Government we’re committed to keeping New Zealanders safe. That’s why this Government has invested $450 million into police since we came into office in 2017, including $45 million into front-line safety. As a result of this investment, the police workforce is the largest it has ever been, with 15 percent more cops on the beat than in the last five years. In answer to the second part of the member’s question, the violent crime reported by the Salvation Army is primarily due to an increase in reporting of serious crime—in particular, family harm—following legislative changes made in 2018. The changes made in this area have created more awareness and encouraged more people to come forward and report crime. I would also note that the State of the Nation report shows the number of offenders has declined and the estimated offending levels have remained relatively unchanged over the past year. I’m confident that the record investment this Government has made into resourcing our police is making communities safer.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Then how can she explain violent crime rising 21 percent but imprisonment for offending falling by 36 percent?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: This Government is committed to addressing the long-term issues that cause crime. That’s why we’re partnering with communities and iwi to expand Te Pae Oranga to 30 locations across New Zealand to address the underlying factors of offending. We are also looking at additional pathways for rehabilitation to occur. We cannot simply arrest our way out of this situation; we must find alternative resolution services and additional pathways for rehabilitation.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Can the Minister explain to this House, then, how her strategy is working when there’s a 36 percent reduction in imprisonment for offending and a 21 percent increase—

Hon Kelvin Davis: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister has no responsibility for who goes into prison. That is a matter for the courts, not the Minister of Police.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s been given in the context of the primary question so as long as you keep in that spectrum, I will allow it. So if you can repeat the question for members—

Hon Mark Mitchell: So my question to the Minister in relation to her last answer is: how can she support the Government’s strategy when there’s been a 36 percent reduction in offender imprisonment and a 21 percent increase in violent crime?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I think the member believes that every crime should then be resulting in a conviction which results in imprisonment. Actually, what we are trying to do on this side of the House is take an all-of-Government approach to look at what the key drivers of crime are and then provide alternatives. We are not going to arrest our way out of this. We are not going to be like that Government who wanted to throw the book at everyone when we know clearly there are opportunities for us to provide rehabilitation and other pathways for people, like Te Pae Oranga, which is a fantastic programme that we are rolling out to 30 sites. It is supported by Kīngi Tūheitia, who believes that this is an opportunity for us to keep our whānau out of prison.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Is there a correlation between gang membership increasing by over 50 percent and violent crime rising by 21 percent over the same period?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: There’s no question that we’ve got to do everything we can to disrupt gangs and organised crime. The reality is that this Government has never been more active in targeting the gangs and criminal leaders and getting them off the streets. We’ve put a record number of police on the beat with a specific focus on gangs and organised crime. We’ve ramped up our efforts to hit gangs where it hurts—their pockets—and we’ve seized $500 million in cash and assets from gangs and criminals over the last four years alone.

Hon Mark Mitchell: How can New Zealanders trust this Government on law and order when violent crime is rising; and how does she respond to the Salvation Army’s 2022 State of the Nation report that clearly shows this Government is failing to keep Kiwis safe?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: There’s something that really disappoints me about that member—

Hon Member: Just one thing?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: No, there’s two. What really disappoints me about that member is that as a former Cabinet Minister he allowed the reduction of police on the streets. He sat there and allowed the reduction of numbers in police. The other thing that—

Nicola Willis: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK, I think I know what the point of order is but we will hear it.

Nicola Willis: It’s a long-established expectation of the House that the Minister will address the question rather than enter into a political tirade.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s absolutely correct. I probably should have stopped the Minister at the time she started but she needs to address the question.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I stand by the record of this Government to invest more in police, invest more in their safety. And by keeping them safe, they keep our community safe. That member over there was in a Cabinet that allowed for police numbers to reduce. How can you keep a community safe when you reduce the numbers of cops on the beat? How can that former police person himself be so critical of our police?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s answered.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Can I read that question again, please?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. Question No. 10—[Interruption] Order! Settle down—in the name of Damien Smith.

Question No. 10—Commerce and Consumer Affairs

10. DAMIEN SMITH (ACT) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What impact, if any, does he believe the recent amendments to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act are having on the ability of New Zealanders to access finance, and is he concerned about the wider impact of this legislation on the New Zealand economy?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): The banks, the Opposition—and I acknowledge ACT in this—and the Government are all on the same page when it comes to supporting the intention of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA). We want to stop vulnerable people from finding themselves in unaffordable debt. I’ve followed the concerns raised by consumers closely, and that’s why I have asked the Council of Financial Regulators to review whether the reported outcomes of the CCCFA are either attributable to the Act’s intended protections, whether they’ve come from unintended consequences, or whether they are attributable to external factors like the global economic situation. As for the economy, I’m sure the member will have read, as I did, with great enthusiasm, the Minister of Finance’s good news from earlier this morning: the economy overall remains strong and resilient. It grew 4.9 percent over the last year and outperformed most of the countries we compare ourselves with. Unemployment is at record lows and wages are rising.

Damien Smith: What does he say to ASB chief executive Vittoria Shortt, who said, “we are seeing an impact of around 7% of customers that we would have liked to lend to, but have not been able to, given these changes.”?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: We have put the review in place sooner rather than later. These are significant changes voted for by the ACT Party, by the National Party, by the Labour Party, by the Green Party, and by Te Paati Māori. These are changes that the whole Parliament voted into existence. We acted early because we want to be sure the Act is working as it should be and we’re not seeing unintended consequences. What I would note is that the lending dropped in December, as it does every December—that’s a seasonal variation. The lending in the most recent December period was still higher than the lending in December 2017, December 2018, and December 2019. We do want to make sure that the Act is working as it should, and that’s what the review is there to do.

Damien Smith: Does he believe that a $1,000 credit card or a $1 million home loan have the same loan risk; and, if not, why are banks having to go through the same checks for two completely different risks, according to the chief executive of the ASB bank?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: A 2019 review into the financial sector found that around 18 percent of New Zealanders found themselves in either moderate hardship on an everyday level or severe hardship on an everyday level as a result of lending that was unaffordable for them—a significant problem. And I expect that is why the whole Parliament voted in these changes, because we wanted to make sure that vulnerable lenders are protected.

Nicola Willis: Supplementary question.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry, National don’t have any more supplementaries.

Damien Smith: What does he say to the man who applied to have his credit limit increased by $500 and was confronted with 15 pages of forms, despite never having missed a payment in the seven years he’d had that card?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I can’t, obviously, speak to that individual’s circumstances, nor to the individual bank’s policies on this matter. What I would have said is that different banks are putting different responses in place, as you’d expect in a competitive market, and members are free to shop around and look for a bank that better meets their needs.

Damien Smith: Does he agree with the observation from CoreLogic that new lending rules seem to be keeping first-home buyers out of the property market, as well?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: What I would note is that first-home buyer lending is up under this Government. I think that’s pretty critical to the question the member’s raising, and it should be noted that lending commitments usually fall in December, as I’ve previously noted, and that total lending commitments for December 2021 were higher than they were in December 2017, December 2018, and December 2019. I would also note that interest.co.nz recently acknowledged that while lending commitments dropped in December from November, as you’d expect, according to the season and compared to the previous year, the number of mortgages approved by first-home buyers expressed as a percentage of residential sales was 38.8 percent in December 2021, up from 34.4 percent in November last year, and 35 percent in the December prior.

Damien Smith: Does the Minister really believe it’s reasonable for New Zealanders to wait six months for the Government to review the impact of this legislation and the deterioration in the funding market place?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I’m not sure where the member gets six months from. This review started within a few weeks. It is true that Australia took a couple of years to work through their changes until they settled, and this review began within a couple of weeks of issues appearing in the media—admittedly, a lot of those media articles referred to loan-to-value ratio restrictions. None the less, we want to make sure that this legislation is working as it was intended when National, ACT, and every other party in this Parliament supported it through.

Question No. 11—Transport

11. GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu) to the Minister of Transport: What updates has he seen regarding the Government’s clean car package?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): It’s been a very good week for the Government’s clean car package and I’ve seen updates informing me that it passed its committee stage reading in the House yesterday, and the third reading is expected to pass through the House this afternoon. The bill will increase the supply and variety of zero- and low-emission vehicles available for purchase in New Zealand by applying the clean vehicle standard to importers of new and used light vehicles. It will also increase the demand for zero- and low - carbon dioxide emissions vehicles by providing for the full Clean Car Discount scheme, designed to incentivise through rebates and charges the purchase of zero and low emission vehicles. Our Government has moved to prevent New Zealand from becoming a dumping ground for the world’s dirtiest vehicles by cleaning up our fleet and providing Kiwi consumers with more fuel-efficient vehicles at a lower price, and that’s good for our climate, too.

Greg O’Connor: What has the package delivered to date?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: As of the end of January, there have been over 10,700 electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles registered since the scheme was introduced in July last year. To put that into context, 2021 saw more electric vehicles registered than the entire period from 2013 to 2018, and about one in four electric vehicles on the road today have been registered since the Clean Car Discount took effect in July. As a result of this, the new passenger vehicle segment has already achieved the standards’ 2023 target across the fleet, a year ahead of schedule. To support this increased uptake, public EV charging has also become much more accessible, with charging stations available on average every 75 kilometres over 97 percent of the State highway network. This programme is already delivering results. It’s helping Kiwis get into cleaner vehicles, it’s stopping us becoming a dumping ground, and it’s actually a sign of this Government’s commitment to not just talking about climate change but doing something about it.

Greg O’Connor: Why is it important that there is an incentive scheme in place for clean cars?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: It’s very important. I note that this whole Parliament has signed up to the independent Climate Commission’s approach. This whole Parliament has signed up to that approach, which is an expert-led approach which tells us that we need to reduce emissions from our transport sector by 41 percent by 2035. This sector’s emissions have grown by 90 percent since 1990, and if we continue with the same policies that we’ve had, we’ll continue to have the same results. This Government wasn’t prepared to see that happen. These policies make a difference in every single country in which they are in place, and I note that every country around the world in the developed world, except for Australia, New Zealand, and Russia, currently has a standard, as we are proposing here. This is about our Government and our country catching up with the rest of the world and getting Kiwi families the cleaner vehicles that they need, which will save them a lot of money in the long term.

Question No. 12—Trade and Export Growth

12. GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) to the Minister for Trade and Export Growth: Does he agree that New Zealand has a responsibility to make COVID-19 vaccines accessible to everyone worldwide; if so, what work, if any, has the Government done with its trade partners to progress a TRIPS waiver to support equitable access for developing world nations?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): Yes, I agree that New Zealand has an international responsibility to help make COVID-19 vaccines accessible to everyone worldwide. This Government supports a waiver of intellectual property protections in relation to COVID-19 vaccines under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or what is called “TRIPS” and the “TRIPS waiver”. As chair of APEC, New Zealand used its APEC host year to encourage engagement on this issue. It sits alongside New Zealand’s efforts in APEC and at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to address other elements of supply chain issues for vaccines and COVID-19 products. Following our efforts, 17 APEC economies have now either lowered or completely removed tariffs on vaccines and related products, making them easier to access.

Golriz Ghahraman: Will he commit New Zealand to a strong position to extend the waiver to all COVID-19 vaccinations, related equipment and materials, and ensure that those negotiations are transparent about the language of the waiver at the TRIPS Council meeting next week; if not, why not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: As I said, New Zealand has always been committed to assist with the roll-out of vaccines across the world. We are not safe until everyone is safe. New Zealand has taken a position—a realistic one—that believes that there should be a TRIPS waiver for vaccines, but if the request that has come from two nations in particular extends across all medical products related to it, that will be very difficult to get through the WTO. We would rather push for and successfully get a TRIPS waiver on vaccines. It will be very difficult to go beyond that. So we believe that it’s better to get the first, rather than to lose out on all of it.

Golriz Ghahraman: Does he agree with the World Health Organization that “Worldwide access to COVID-19 vaccines offers the best hope for slowing the coronavirus pandemic, saving lives, and securing a global economic recovery.”; if so, does he consider that working toward a global vaccine equity that reduces the emergence of new variants will also ensure that trade policy delivers for all New Zealanders?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Yes, absolutely. I do agree with all of that. That’s why we will push at every international forum for those things to progress. As I said, we believe we cannot be safe until everyone is safe, and vaccines offer the best way forward. I wish that message would get outside of Parliament into some places, too.

Golriz Ghahraman: Has the TRIPS waiver been raised in discussions between New Zealand and the representatives of the United Kingdom and European Union during respective bilateral negotiations on trade agreements; if not, why not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: The issue of TRIPS waivers is a multilateral solution, not a bilateral one. We know that most of the European countries, if not all, and certainly the UK support not exactly our position but support the view that vaccines must be rolled out across the world. Each of those countries, or some of them, have a slightly different view. That’s why we believe that consensus can be reached on a vaccine TRIPS waiver but, on some of the other products, it will be more difficult. Ultimately, it’s a multilateral decision and solution that is required.

Golriz Ghahraman: Given the significance, as we’ve both agreed, of the TRIPS waiver and vaccine equity, will Cabinet take the stances of the European Union and United Kingdom on the TRIPS waiver into consideration when it makes decisions on any final trade agreements New Zealand may reach with either; and if not, why not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Our Trade for All policy is one that ensures that whatever trade agreements we sign up to, and we’re progressing them—and I want to thank the teams doing a lot of hard work, particularly on the UK and the EU ones—we have a Trade for All policy that says whatever agreements we sign up to and progress must benefit all New Zealanders. As I say, we ultimately depend upon the benefits, particularly of vaccine roll-out across the world, to give us the opportunities to travel once again and to engage internationally as we used to, without fear of some kind of infection.

Golriz Ghahraman: Does the Minister think that New Zealand should block the United Kingdom’s attempt to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) if the United Kingdom does not agree to support a TRIPS waiver; if not, why not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: No, I don’t think that that’s one of the levers that should be used. We welcome the UK into the CPTPP agreement, as long as they reach the standards that the other members have set down and negotiated through some fairly tough negotiations. I’d like to acknowledge my predecessor, the Hon David Parker, in that area. CPTPP is a valuable agreement. We hope that the UK can come into that. Collectively, it will assist us to get the multilateral agreement on the vaccine TRIPS waiver that we require.

Standing Orders

Sessional

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That the House adopt the following rules as a sessional order:

Remote Participation in Sittings of the House

1 Purpose

The purpose of these rules is to enable the remote participation of members in sittings of the House. Making remote participation available to members is intended to limit the risk of the spread of COVID-19 and to avoid undue health risks for the public, members, and staff.

2 Definitions

For the purposes of these rules, remote participation means attendance at a sitting of the House by digital means without being physically present in the Chamber, and participating remotely has a corresponding meaning.

3 Determination of sitting with members participating remotely

(1) The Business Committee may determine that a sitting of the House will be held with members participating remotely.

(2) A determination under this rule can relate to more than one sitting, and can be made in respect of any member or a class of members (for example, members from a specified area or district, if restrictions apply in that area or district that differ from restrictions that apply in the Wellington area).

4 Remote participation part of House’s proceedings

The remote participation of members in a sitting of the House is part of the House’s proceedings, and those members are treated as present within the Chamber when they are participating remotely.

5 Standing Orders, rules and practices apply

Unless these rules provide otherwise, the Standing Orders and other rules and practices of the House apply to any sitting of the House that is held with members participating remotely, to the extent that they are capable of applying and with any necessary modifications.

6 Business Committee may determine rules

(1) The Business Committee may determine rules regarding the conduct of sittings with members participating remotely.

(2) Rules determined under paragraph (1) have effect despite any Standing Order or rule to the contrary.

7 Attendance of members

A member is recorded as present in the House on a sitting day for the purposes of Standing Order 38(1) if the member participates remotely in that sitting.

8 Delivery and availability of documents at Table

When a sitting is being held with members participating remotely, references in the Standing Orders to the delivery of documents to the Clerk at the Table, or to the making available of documents (such as notices of motion) at the Table, include the communication of those documents by electronic means, as arranged by the Clerk.

9 Voting during sittings held with members participating remotely

When a sitting is being held with members participating remotely,—

despite Standing Order 146, there is no limit on proxy votes that may be cast by a party, and

despite Standing Order 144(5) and (6), a party of five or fewer members may have votes cast on its behalf, including when no member of that party is present within the parliamentary precincts at the time, by the leader or whip of another party, and

for the purposes of Standing Orders 148 and 151, and despite rule 4, members who are participating remotely are not treated as present within the Chamber when a personal vote is being held.

10 Official coverage

Appendix D is modified to the extent necessary to enable the coverage of members participating remotely in a sitting.

This is quite a significant day for the New Zealand Parliament. New Zealand Parliament has always sat in this or a similar debating chamber for the entire time of its existence and members, up until now, have not been able to participate remotely—they’ve either been here or they haven’t. The reality of the global pandemic is we are entering into a phase now where more people will be unable to attend the parliamentary debating chamber, either because they have COVID-19 or because they are isolating because they have been exposed to somebody—a household contact, for example—who has COVID-19. It is quite conceivable that in the next few weeks we will see some, potentially, senior members of Parliament unable to attend and participate in parliamentary proceedings unless we find an alternative way for them to do so.

Other Parliaments and other democracies around the world have also had to grapple with this issue. We’ve seen in Westminster, the home of Parliament, similar arrangements being put in place to allow people to beam in. We’ve seen the Australian Prime Minister participate in their version of question time via TV screen. So other Parliaments and other democracies have had to grapple with these very same issues that we are grappling with here in New Zealand.

It is vitally important at a time like this that our democratic institutions can continue to function. We’ve had a variety of different approaches to that as part of our pandemic response. We have been fortunate that for most of the last two years, our Parliament has been able to sit relatively normally, albeit with some additional public health measures like social distancing and so on. But we now are entering a phase where, with more cases in the community, we can’t necessarily take that for granted.

So the motion that we are passing now creates an enabling framework for MPs to participate remotely in the Parliament’s proceedings. There are safeguards in place, though—the decisions about when and how to initiate these provisions will be made by Parliament’s Business Committee and they will be made using the usual approach of Business Committee decisions, on a near-unanimity basis. So most parties in Parliament will need to agree to members participating remotely in order for that to happen.

The Business Committee will also be able to determine for how long it happens and any conditions that may be imposed on people’s ability to participate remotely. For example, if there was an outbreak that affected a particular area, it could be that only members from that particular area were included. There are a variety of things that the Business Committee will be able to consider. So this is not a sudden abandonment of Parliament’s debating chamber. There will still be aspects of parliamentary proceedings that happen here in the Chamber. It is quite conceivable that, in fact, it is the minority of members who will be participating remotely, while the majority of members are still able to be here in the Chamber. But it is also conceivable that we could have a situation where the minority are in the Chamber and the majority are participating remotely. This allows for that eventuality. If we get to that point, but it would be Parliament’s Business Committee that would make that determination.

As I’ve said before, we would need to get cross-party and cross-Parliament support for any remote sitting to take place. I think that that is important. We will need to feel our way here a little bit. No doubt there will be some teething troubles along the way. There might be the odd frozen Zoom call as we’ve all been used to. I look forward to the first member trying to participate in proceedings with their mute button on—it’s only a matter of time before that happens. But I’m sure that we will be able to make this work and I think it is important that we do make this work.

In making these decisions—and it’s been a long journey, a lot of a lot of debate has gone into these rules—we have been mindful of the fact that members of Parliament are very active travellers. We are very active in the community and, therefore, we are at more risk of coming into contact with COVID-19. I think the last thing that New Zealanders want to see is that potentially quite significant parts of parliamentary procedure are unable to go ahead because people can’t participate. So this allows our Parliament to continue to function in a global pandemic and allows all members of Parliament to still be able to participate. I think that that’s very, very important.

Finally—and this is something that I also raised with the parliamentary Business Committee—I arrived in the New Zealand Parliament at a time when attendance at the House was paramount above all else. I can recall instances where party whips would require people who were quite unwell to come into the parliamentary complex, sometimes to sleep on the couch in their office, in order to make up the numbers. I hope that we are reaching an era where we can be a little bit more sensible about some of those things. Sometimes the best thing for people to do when they are unwell—most of the time, in fact—is for them to stay home and get better rather than exposing others to whatever ailment it is that they have. I think that doesn’t apply just to Parliament; it actually applies right the way across our society. I think a global pandemic has certainly prompted many, many people to rethink their attitudes when it comes to “soldiering on” when they are unwell.

I think that this latest change that we are making in the Parliament should be a welcome one. It is one that I think we will all take care about using, it is one that responds to a global pandemic, it is in keeping with what’s happening internationally, and so I commend this particular resolution to the House.

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

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It just so happens that Mr Hipkins and I did arrive at this place over 13 years ago at the same time, and he looked much, much younger than I did at the time. I must say, given what he’s had to experience over the last couple of years, perhaps he’s weathered a little more quickly but I know that that’s what ministerial office does.

The National Party is pleased to support this motion, and I associate myself with nearly all of the comments that Mr Hipkins made. I’ll come to one point where I have a slightly different perspective on it. But as he says, this has had a relatively long gestation, but I reckon it has landed in a really good place. And, actually, it was necessary, I think, to experience what was possible, what was necessary, and what continued to ensure that a vibrant democracy continues.

As members will recall, we were shut down for several weeks in 2020 and the substitute for that was the Epidemic Response Committee. Now, that to me was no substitute for this place, but it was a pretty good imitation for the time. I know it was looked at very closely around the world, and as Mr Hipkins said, the UK and Australian parliaments moved quite quickly to put in place the opportunities for remote participation—albeit, I note that in Australia they weren’t able to vote, the pairing system still applied, and so that could’ve been quite problematic for smaller parties particularly, but even for the Government. And I expect that there were probably people travelling when it might not have been as safe to do so as was considered comfortable.

Last year, actually, I raised this as an alternative to what looked like an extended suspension of Parliament, and I referred to the UK and Australian experience. The initial response—and this is certainly no reflection on the Clerk—was that actually it was technically difficult, quite costly, and so it kind of went into a little bit of a hiatus for a few months before the Clerk came back and said, “Actually, we’ve had a look again. We think we can do it. We think we’ve got the budget for it so let’s have a look at it.”

Now, the irony of that was that as the months have passed, having raised it, my own colleagues became rather—not so enthusiastic about it, I think we’ll say. And I think there was a context to that, also. Remember that we were in level 4 at the time and there was, again, a move to suspend, which we didn’t support, and I actually think that, even when we were running this place between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. for about four or five weeks with a maximum of about 15 members, it was still better than what was being considered in the alternative as a virtual Parliament, which would have had no more than three people here to satisfy the Standing Orders—the Speaker, a Minister, and perhaps one member of the Opposition. I really hope we don’t get to that point.

Because my strong view is that this place is an in-present place, a tactile place, somewhere where we do have to debate and duke it out. So what we are passing here as a sessional order is the opportunity for remote participation, not the opportunity for a virtual Parliament, and that’s where I differed a little bit in Chris Hipkins’ predictions of the future. This sits alongside the COVID-19Protection Framework criteria that the Speaker of the House has put in place for how we can operate under the various colour systems. Even at red we are able to operate with a maximum of 60 members in this House, and what I envisage is that when this is needed we will still have that and the ability of people, as Mr Hipkins says, sometimes in particular geographical locations able to participate remotely. I hope we don’t get to the point where we have a very small number of people in this House and the majority participating remotely. I think that would be a problem. I certainly am not signalling that we wouldn’t agree to it, because what we don’t know is what we don’t know, and we have, I think, by and large, worked quite nimbly to make sure that democracy still happens.

So I am signalling, though, my own view that we should at least have 60 people in this place—sometimes it would be at most—and the ability to remotely participate from time to time. Those alert members will have noticed that the order we are considering today is different from the one that was on the Order Paper for the last few weeks, in the sense that it did have a number of ways in which it could be invoked—we have reduced that to one. So it used to have a motion in the House, the Speaker in accordance with parts of the motion, and the Business Committee. We have reduced that down to the Business Committee. I appreciate Mr Hipkins’ willingness to look at that and to agree to that.

I’ve been on the Business Committee on and off over the years and I know it works, mostly, in a very collegial manner. We have had our moments, but that near unanimity that is required has nearly never been a significant barrier to doing the right thing, and I’m confident that will be the case in the future. But I would remind both of the larger parties represented in that committee that the greatest beneficiaries of this motion will be, I think, the minor parties, who will be disproportionately affected by members or their loved ones or colleagues being struck down with COVID and therefore their inability to come to Parliament. So in exercising, in effect, a power of veto, Labour and National do need to be very cognisant of the fact that this could affect minor parties. We haven’t seen one party for the last couple of weeks, and I hope that if this was ever invoked, they would take advantage of it, because I think that’s the most important thing, that we all participate on behalf of the people who brought us here and whom we represent.

So with those comments, I’m very pleased to support this. Like my colleague on the other side, I look forward to a—well, a fairly bumpy start, I expect. There’ll be some teething issues when the TV screen gets up, but I think it will work and it will be a really good addition to the tool box that we have.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will keep this call pretty short. I feel as if I’ve been howling into the hot wind of the Business Committee for far too many months on this topic to want to take up more time than is necessary speaking on this motion. So just let me say, finally—finally—we are catching up and putting the measures in place for us to be able to model responsible workplace practices for the rest of the country; for us finally to have a measure in place to be able to stand with everybody else in the country, consistently, who are making and have consistently been making hard calls and adapting their work practices; and for us to be able to recognise that, you know, we’re not special in that sense. We can actually do our job remotely like most other people have had to—and as we do, I believe, quite well in our select committees. Also, we have the measures to be able to keep those other people in this workplace safe, and recognising, as has been mentioned, that as members of Parliament we are potential vectors for the disease. We live in places right across the country and we are out in our communities, and that makes us a potential risk to others for picking up the disease and passing it on to other people. So our presence of coming together in this place needs to be very well considered, and it is a basic first step for the Greens to use the technology to reduce the risk when we can.

I would just say that we’ve seen the UK do this, and Australia in part, as well. I do sense I have a different view from the speaker of the Opposition around the sense of what it takes to be a vibrant Parliament. My prediction is that if we are using these measures, we may see a more on-point and a possibly more civilised question time. While I am not, by any measure, advocating at all for Parliament to go online permanently—kanohi ki te kanohi is important—however, I don’t think we should overplay the vibrancy of this place, because it’s often just bad behaviour and I suspect we may learn some lessons from having some people Zooming into this process that may, I hope, inspire us all to behave better when we all come back together. So, on that note, the Greens are relieved to finally see this motion passed today.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT to support the motion for remote participation in these sittings. We need the flexibility in Parliament with the uncertainty of the rules in the future. The fact that we’re even contemplating it is, I think, indicative of a pretty poor COVID response. Remote participation should be seen as a last resort. Like other things, it should have been seen as a last resort for the rest of New Zealand, but those people aren’t in such a privileged position that we are.

ACT believe MPs should be in Wellington, holding the Government to account. Our democracy depends on it. While the Government buries its head in the sand, there is an increasing belief amongst New Zealanders that our democracy is under threat. We’re supporting this because the Government rules will at some stage impact upon us as well, and we need a contingency plan for what to do if MPs get COVID or are a close contact.

There are similar concerns for all businesses that must keep operating, who are gobsmacked at the stroll-out of the rapid antigen tests dividing New Zealanders, again, into deciding who’s critical and who isn’t. If staff can’t pay their bills because businesses close, then I believe they are critical.

Like other businesses, Government isolation rules make future weeks and months in Parliament uncertain, but at least we can keep operating. Imagine having stock that has to be thrown out, or being responsible for staff who can’t pay their bills for their families. Businesses who have been forced to do exactly what we’re talking about have had to get loans—often from friends and family, because the banks aren’t as friendly as they used to be—or they’ve just gone under.

My challenge to all MPs is that if you do go into remote participation, you stop getting paid. How do you pay your mortgage, your rent, or whatever? Use your savings, because that’s exactly what tens of thousands of New Zealanders have had to do, and I just wonder how long the rules would last if that was the case. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Order adopted.

Bills

Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That statement is published under the authority of the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This is a very significant day for transport policy in New Zealand and for the work that we have ahead of us as a Government, a Parliament, and a country to meet the great challenge of decarbonising our transport system and our economy. That’s because, with the passage of this legislation, we will finally be taking meaningful action to reduce emissions coming from New Zealand’s vehicle fleet, which has been the largest increasing source of emissions across the entire New Zealand economy.

Since 1990, emissions from our vehicle fleet have increased by 90 percent, and that is far and away the biggest increase of any sector—a bigger increase than agriculture, a bigger increase than energy, a bigger increase than industry, bigger than any other sector. One of the reasons for that is because there has been a total lack of legislative or regulatory leadership in this area. New Zealand, up until today, is one of only three countries in the OECD, alongside Australia and Russia, that don’t have a vehicle emissions standard. And that is one of the reasons why we have one of the dirtiest vehicle fleets in the world. It is one of the reasons why we have those increasing emissions. It’s one of the reasons why we have such terrible air quality in our cities. It’s one of the reasons why our vehicles cost more for Kiwi motorists to run, because of their sheer inefficiency. It’s very, very clear that, as the rest of the world continues to increase its level of ambition, as the rest of the world moves to bring cleaner cars into their fleet, if we don’t take action here in New Zealand, we will become, even more than we are now, the dumping ground for the dirtiest vehicles in the world.

What I said very clearly at the beginning of this address is that there’s something here about this House and all parties in this House backing up our fine words with action, because this House, nearly unanimously, passed climate-change legislation to establish the independent Climate Change Commission, to set the goal towards reaching net zero by 2050, to say that we wanted the commission to tell us how to bring emissions down by sector. Inherent in that was the fact that we would then accept that advice and do something about it. Well, we’ve set up the commission, an expert group led by Dr Rod Carr, which has engaged extensively with the scientific literature and consulted with the public. And they’ve come back, and they’ve told us the steps we need to take to get down to net zero. They are very clear that we need to substantially decarbonise the transport sector if we want to achieve that. If we don’t decarbonise transport, we don’t reach net zero.

So, to every other member of this House who voted for net zero and voted for the Climate Change Commission, my question for you in this debate is this: at what point are you going to do something about it? On this side of the House, we will, because this is a piece of legislation that will have a major impact on the emissions coming out of our transport sector. Approximately 12 megatons—that’s 12 million tons—of emissions will be avoided through the clean car package that is contained in the legislation before the House today. That is a major contribution to the urgent task that we have of decarbonising our transport system. As I say, we have to back up the words; we have to back up the votes with actually doing something. The time for sitting on our hands on one of the biggest issues of our time is over.

I say in particular to colleagues in the National Party that, having done the right thing in the previous term and working with parties on this side of the House on climate change legislation and on the net-zero goals, they are now running perilously close to becoming the climate change deniers of our time. Denialism used to be about denying the scientific consensus for climate change, and they had plenty of members who took that view up. The new denialism is saying, “Oh, yes, we accept it.” but finding every excuse in the world to ever do anything about it, and that is how they are positioning themselves in their consistent opposition to any measure that actually meaningfully reduces emissions, including this one. My challenge to them is: if they’re not going to front up and actually support these policies, tell us what the policies are that you would deliver that would reduce the same amount of emissions, because, whenever that question is asked, we hear the deafening silence. From members on that side of the House, we hear their support for electric vehicles, for low-carbon vehicles, but they do nothing. Their policies failed in the last term, and doing nothing will continue to fail.

It actually was extraordinary to me when I read through submissions from the vehicle sector on this legislation—and they’ve had their critiques; let’s be honest about that—that virtually every part of the vehicle sector in New Zealand supports action in this area. The clean car discount is supported by both major importing associations and the AA. The clean car standard is supported by one of the major vehicle importing associations. The National Party’s position is actually a more conservative, more aggressive, more backwards looking one than the industry itself, which we are regulating as a result of this piece of legislation. That just illustrates the, frankly, dinosaur position that they continue to take on this issue. What emphasises this even more is the fact that the first steps of the clean car package, which were implemented from 1 July, are already shown to be working. Since the implementation of the clean car discount, the average sales of zero-emissions vehicles per month have roughly tripled. They have roughly tripled. And approximately one in four electric vehicles on the road today has been purchased since the clean car discount took effect. As a result of those policies, the new-car fleet being imported into New Zealand has already achieved at a national level the 2023 clean car standards under this legislation. That is how successful and effective the clean car discount scheme has been. We always knew that would be the case, because time and time again Kiwis say they want access to cleaner vehicles.

What this legislation does is to facilitate that in two ways. The first is through the clean car standard. The standard is about making sure that we actually have a vehicle emissions standard, like nearly every other country, for new vehicles coming into New Zealand. It sets targets which get more ambitious year by year, and it enables importers with considerable flexibility to meet those targets by banking, borrowing, and being able to trade their credits if they are not able to achieve. These schemes have been shown internationally to make a big difference. The most important thing they do—and importers already tell me this—is they enable New Zealand importers to go to their head offices and actually get the stock of clean vehicles here, because there is now a regulatory direction, like every other country. Previously that was not in place, whereas other countries did have it, and so importers found it hard to get the stock of clean vehicles here that Kiwis want. So it’s already making a difference in that respect. The clean car discount then accompanies it and helps to stimulate demand by incentivising Kiwi consumers to swap the dirtier vehicles for the cleaner vehicles. As I say, that has already been shown to be working, and it works in country after country after country internationally.

There are two very important things to note about this package as well. The first is the abatement rate. The abatement rate means: how much does it cost us to reduce a ton of carbon under this policy? The answer is that, actually, under this package, New Zealand saves money for every ton of carbon that we avoid. That is because of the massive fuel savings that occur as we transition our fleet to low-emissions and no-emissions vehicles. So not only are we cleaning up the air, not only are we reducing our emissions, which Kiwis want to do, not only are we making it cheaper for them to fill up at the pump; we’re doing that all at a saving to the country overall. Secondly, the clear international evidence is that these policies are progressive; they actually benefit people with the least the most. That’s because, as more efficient vehicles come into the fleet, they offer people massive savings on the maintenance and the running of vehicles—massive savings. You think about the lifetime costs of running a vehicle, and they are slashed when a family is able to own a clean, efficient vehicle. That is going to be of huge benefit to New Zealanders.

This is a big change—it’s one that we’ve been talking about for a long time—but it’s actually not a radical change internationally. This is about New Zealand catching up. It’s about us catching up and actually doing the things to tackle climate change that other countries are doing. It’s about us catching up with the automotive industry, which in country after country, manufacturer after manufacturer is already shifting to cleaner vehicles. So this about how we do the transition and how we make it more affordable for Kiwis to get into the clean cars that they want so that they can play their part in tackling climate change. On this side of the House, we’re proud of the change that that will make, and I ask other members of the House to do the right thing, to put our words into action as a House, and to support this important piece of legislation. I commend the bill to the House.

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

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): If it looks like a tax, and it smells like a tax, and it quacks like a tax, it is a tax! That’s what this bill is doing. The Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill is a car tax. It is about increasing costs on New Zealanders and that is what it is at its very essence. The Minister stands up and talks about what he thinks this bill is going to do. He even got to the point where he said it’s progressive—it’s progressive! Well, I can tell you, Minister, it’s actually regressive. It’s actually going to send many New Zealanders backwards, simply paying more for the vehicles that they need rather than actually helping them get into cleaner vehicles.

The other thing this piece of legislation does is it gives absolute power to the Minister of Transport to dictate to the car industry what cars, what subsidies, what taxes, what fees, what charges. He has complete control. There is unlimited regulatory powers being transferred in this piece of legislation to the Minister of Transport. So he might want to stand up and talk to us about how this is going to improve the industry, but actually he is the one who is actually getting all of those powers. Rather than working with the industry, he is on a massive power grab with this piece of legislation. It is an ideological bill rather than actually a pragmatic and practical bill which will actually make a difference.

There are so many concerns in this piece of legislation, and the first point is around the increased costs, because at its very essence, what this piece of legislation will be doing is increasing the costs of buying a new vehicle, for the vast majority of New Zealanders. This piece of legislation gives the Minister of Transport the ability to set fees or charges for vehicles in New Zealand. And he says, “Well, OK, I’m then going to subsidise these other vehicles to try and reduce emissions.” But the reality is that people don’t always have the choice, and there are many New Zealanders who don’t have the choice. We spoke about this at length in the committee stage. We spoke about this at length during the select committee. We talked about the realities of New Zealanders’ lives and how actually at the moment there is not the ability for them to have a choice so that they can get a car which has a subsidy rather than one which they have to pay a tax.

I think that is no better demonstrated than in the instance of our farmers and our tradies, who have no ability but to pay the tax. The Motor Industry Association was very clear: this piece of legislation is going to be increasing the cost of vehicles by 15 to 20 percent in New Zealand. I just think it’s incredible, some of the misinformation which is getting peddled in this debate. In fact, the Prime Minister went on the AM Show and said, “Within the next 12 to 24 months, we’re hoping the likes of Toyota are talking about bringing in EV utes.” Well, only the next day Toyota had to come out and say, “I’d like to reiterate, we do not have any plans for a battery electric HiLux in our line-up in the next 18 to 24 months.” And then they went on to say it is irresponsible to suggest that customers stop buying non - electric vehicles (EVs) immediately until there’s an electric option available. The range and volumes of EVs needed to meet demand is simply not available, and many customers still need a vehicle to transport their family or operate their business.

So the very reality of this piece of legislation means that tens of thousands of New Zealanders [Interruption]—will simply have no choice. And I hear the members on the other side saying “Well, why do they buy utes?” This is the arrogance, the absolute arrogance of the members on that side, where the Prime Minister even got up and said, “Well, they’re all purchasing it for illegitimate purposes.” That’s right, they are not purchasing those utes for the right purposes. And of course, that’s all the chardonnay socialists on the other side of the House, who want to tell you and your family what type of vehicle you should drive and what you should be able to purchase. I just think that’s frankly awful, but that’s this Government. They want to tell you how and what kind of vehicle you should be able to purchase.

The reality, as I said, is that these new vehicles—in fact, the new utes, which are electric vehicles—will not be coming into the market. It says here—this is what the Motor Industry Association says—“Our expectation is plug-in hybrid utes … might become more widely available by 2025 and full battery electric utes … after that.” So until then, what’s the choice for a farmer or a tradie? Pay the tax—pay the tax. That is essentially what this Government is saying to our hard-working farmers and tradies.

Maureen Pugh: What’s the answer?

SIMEON BROWN: And what about what—well, a very good point from Maureen Pugh. She knows a thing or two about farming. How are you going to drive your Tesla or your EV around the farm? It just doesn’t work. The other point being raised on the other side is “Well, we’re talking about new vehicles.” So now what we’ve got is a point here where the Government members are saying, “Well, just tell those farmers: hold on to your existing ute, hold on to your existing ute until you can buy an EV.” Yes, well, hold on to your existing ute until after 2025, and, for instance, if your used vehicle has already done 400,000 kilometres and needs replacing—and, by the way, it emits a huge amount more than if you went and bought a new HiLux today—actually, it’s better to hold on to that.

That comes to another problem with this piece of legislation. It isn’t going to achieve the reduction in emissions which the Minister is wanting. What it is going to do is instead mean that New Zealanders hold on to their existing vehicles for longer or effectively they just pay the higher price, particularly where they don’t have a choice.

Then that brings me to the last point, which is actually that, effectively, it just provides a wealth transfer. The evidence is clear, and the Minister talked about how many people have taken up the offer of the subsidies—well, everyone loves a subsidy, don’t they? Everyone loves a subsidy—

Hon Member: Except those who pay.

SIMEON BROWN: Except for those who pay; that’s correct. And in fact, all those people who went out there and bought their new EV—that’s the so-called success—well, they were probably just waiting for this subsidy to come. So the numbers of course were going to increase because they were not going to purchase a vehicle until they could get the subsidy, which the Government then brought in.

But the reality is this is effectively a wealth transfer. Instead of this Government, which I thought was about being egalitarian and trying to help those most in need, it’s about taking money from those who have no choices, taking money from people whose actual choice of purchasing a new vehicle might actually be only within up to $10,000, not to be able to purchase something like a new Tesla of $60,000. And it’s transferring the money from them to subsidise the person who can already afford to purchase a $50,000 or $60,000 vehicle. That’s why this Government is actually the chardonnay socialist Government, because they talk a big game about trying to lift people out of poverty and help those in need. But every single time it comes to actually implementing policy, it is the very, very opposite.

What we actually need in this space to reduce emissions is we need pragmatic, practical policies which actually make a difference. It’s about working with the industry and working to make sure the standards and making sure that the reduction in emissions is actually something where they can actually meet the demand which is needed. We have to realise we’re a very small market of new vehicles. Other countries have much more market and much more demand in terms of what they actually can require for their markets. So the reality is you have to work with the industry, you have to invest in the network in terms of the charging networks, something which National actually invested in. This Government talks a big game, but at the end of the day, all the ideas that they come up with ultimately end in a three-letter word, which is “tax”. National will not support this bill.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It’s terrible to be locked into a time warp; terrible to be locked having to defend the status quo. Actually, I’m pleased to see that not all of the National Party are locked into that status quo. Just before this debate began, we actually saw some progress that actually takes into account new technology. We have agreed, as a House, that we can actually conduct a virtual Parliament. Now, that’s something, as we heard in that debate, that was unforeseen, something that would’ve been incomprehensible some time ago. But things move on, and, as the chairman of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that has had the privilege of taking this bill through the House, and listening to some arguments for and against, I’m actually convinced that this is another bill whose time has come.

I hear those opposite, fearful, speaking on behalf of those poor old farmers who won’t have utes anymore. Well, that’s not true, as we all know. In fact, having grown up on farms, having grown up in the agricultural community myself, I’ve seen the changes in my own time. It shows that the agricultural community are probably more adaptable than anyone else in New Zealand and will very quickly get into their stride with this change. In fact, some of the fears I’ve heard is that these things don’t go very fast. What I’ll challenge anyone to do is to get into one of these fully electric vehicles. In the words of someone very close to me, they said they go like cut cats.

Dr Duncan Webb: I said that.

GREG O’CONNOR: In fact, the performance of those—no, it wasn’t the current acting whip, who is not very dear to me; it was actually someone much dearer, I might say.

So this is, as I said before, an idea whose time has actually come. During the select committee process, we did hear from car importers—not manufacturers directly, of course—who were concerned that the supply of vehicles necessary would be impeded; in fact, wouldn’t be able to keep up. But when they were actually pushed on it, what they did say—and the Minister previously mentioned this—is that by having these requirements, it strengthened their leverage with their parent companies in Japan or in Europe that they were dealing with, because it actually meant that when they were actually putting their hand up for a greater supply of these vehicles, they were actually given the supply.

So while I’ll say that many of our submitters were a little concerned that the relatively comfortable world that they are in now would be upset, I think when they were actually pushed on questions, they all understood that, yes, there was a lot of innovation happening in all their industries. Unfortunately, many of them weren’t in a position to actually talk about it if they knew, because, as we all know, with the commercial imperatives, none of these companies are going to talk about where they’re at until they actually get to launch these vehicles. No one is going to give away that commercial imperative, that commercial advantage, they have until their products are actually ready to come to New Zealand.

So, as I said before, this is a piece of legislation that those who are standing opposite who are so passionately speaking against—I know in Opposition your job is to oppose, but be very careful because often these are the sort of speeches that are thrown back at you if and when you ever do become Government. And I rather suspect that, particularly the previous speaker, that’s the sort of negative speech that he will probably regret in time to come, because we are entering an era—just in the last month, look at the flooding that’s happened. You can’t separate the clear climate change evidence that is happening before our very eyes. For some reason, there’s those who would say that, yes, there’s been a whole lot more heavy rain events, heavy wind events, and there is clear evidence of the climate change, than there are those—I won’t say that those opposite are deniers, but “regretters” would be a better way to describe it. Because the reality of it is that in their own electorates, they all know that we have to make these changes, and these are the sort of changes in transport that we can make here, we can make today. Because if we don’t make these changes, then we will be letting down those that come after us.

So, those, with this legislation, who are now tasked with the, I suppose, implementation, I would say who are the importers, those who are going to continue to be able to import high-emitting vehicles—and if you’d listened to the previous speaker, you would’ve thought that all of a sudden the supply of utes into New Zealand was going to be curtailed on day one. No, those vehicles will still be able to be imported into New Zealand. You still will be able to get the utility of your choice. Yes, your car or your partner at home who drives the electric vehicle, the rebate they get will cancel out pretty much the extra fee that will be placed upon the ute, and that will be, generally, a cost-neutral exercise. And I know the next speaker will probably leap up, because I said that last time and he saw that as some sort of concession.

No, it’s not, because what it does is—as I was speaking to an individual at Fieldays last time we were able to have Fieldays, who in the midst of abuse, I asked him what sort of vehicle his wife drove and he actually talked about the fact that she had just bought an electric vehicle. When it was pointed out to him that it would be a cost-neutral exercise for his household, he actually looked into the air and said, “Oh, I hadn’t realised that.” So perhaps some more honesty opposite in the way that some of the constituents are being spoken to, might just make things a little less traumatic for some of those who somehow believe that they are going to be forced to be driving electric everything on day one. That’s not the case.

This legislation is so that the transition we’ll be making is now given the necessary legislative design, and it will in fact improve the whole of the situation we’re trying to do environmentally that we simply must do, not only to keep to our international obligations but actually obligations to the next generation. I commend this to the House, Mr Speaker.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. If ever there was an example of truth in the old adage that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, it was in the speech that we heard from the Minister of Transport in this third reading debate. Now, we have a Minister who is very full of his own importance, and he is determined to follow the ideological bent of his party at every possible opportunity. He never misses a chance to do that. But, just as the last speaker, Greg O’Connor, did, he conflates an issue that relates to climate action and the lowering of our transport emissions with tax and using punitive taxes to actually try and encourage or change behaviour. Now, on this side of the House, we know that that doesn’t work.

Actually, the most disappointing aspect of this piece of legislation is that it puts New Zealanders against New Zealanders, and this has become a hallmark of this Government: divide, division, pitching one group of New Zealanders against another. So in order to appease the demands of their flash friends in Grey Lynn, they are going to punish vast numbers of New Zealanders who don’t have choice and who can’t afford it, and those people who don’t have choice and can’t afford it are going to be forced to pay a premium for the vehicles of their choice so that free money can be given to the Labour Party’s flash friends in Grey Lynn to buy their expensive electric cars.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m a great fan and an advocate and a long-term owner of an electric car, and I am a great convert and ambassador for them. The previous member said that they are cost-neutral, but it’s actually better than that. They are far superior to being cost-neutral; they are cost-positive in terms of outcome. But it takes a little bit of time because you have to get over the hump, if you like, of the initial capital cost. Once that is over, then what happens is that the cost of running it and the cost of maintenance very quickly provide a better return than on a fossil-fuelled internal combustion vehicle.

But the problem with all that from this Government’s point of view is that right at the minute, there isn’t the range of choice that is available. I would love it if there was, and there will be soon. There will be in years to come. There will be in years to come, but right now, as this legislation is going through this Parliament, those choices are not available. So this is, as my colleague Simeon Brown said, really an exercise in wealth redistribution. That goes to the very core and heart of Labour Party socialist philosophy and idealism, and that’s always what they’re trying to do.

What they could have been doing, if they were thoughtful and careful about it, is they could have been targeting a programme of incentives that didn’t pitch one group of New Zealanders against another group of New Zealanders. They could have been pitching a range of imaginative incentives to middle-income New Zealanders, because that’s where the real economic benefit is.

It’s not people like members in this House, who can afford to buy a $60,000 or a $70,000 vehicle, but the impact on a low or medium income family that has high maintenance costs and high fuel costs on an old dunger would be much enhanced if they were into a reasonably priced electric vehicle (EV), because the maintenance would be less. The cost of running and driving and fuelling that vehicle would be far less, and that would be something that I would have thought the Labour Party would embrace. But, no, they have deferred again to their flash friends in Grey Lynn and other parts of the trendy suburbs of Auckland who like to ride on slow trams along Dominion Road and who sit and drink chardonnay. They like that.

But this is classic Labour Party, “Big State knows best” big thinking, and “We will tell you how to spend your money and what cars you should buy, what vehicles you should buy, and we will tell you from the balcony of the Beehive. By issuing proclamations and passing legislation in this Parliament, we will teach you how you should live.” Now, Helen Clark got into exactly the same kind of philosophical problem when she tried to mandate low-flow showers and energy-efficient light bulbs, and that should have been a lesson to this Labour Government, who are now so out of touch with middle New Zealand. People don’t like to have a finger waved at them and be told how they should make purchasing decisions.

Stuart Smith: Nanny State—nanny State.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: It is nanny State, as Stuart Smith says. It’s very nanny State. Helen Clark paid a price for that, and so too will this Government, because it’s not just in this area that they are doing it. It’s a range of issues that they adopt at every possible opportunity.

The Minister talked a little bit about the unanimity across this Parliament in terms of the broad direction of climate initiatives and our pathway towards Net Zero 2050, and the Minister is absolutely right: this Parliament passed without dissension that legislation, and that was a good thing. But the real issue is how that pathway is traversed and what actions are taken. Yes, the independent Climate Change Commission makes recommendations, but it’s up to the politicians of the day and the Government of the day to either accept or reject that advice that comes from the Climate Change Commission. Now, that was why it was set up. It was set up deliberately that way—that’s why we supported it; presumably, that’s why the Government supported it—because we wanted to have independent advice. Nothing wrong with that, but the final decisions are made by the politicians and Government of the day.

Now, in this case this Government has taken an ideological and philosophical approach that they are going to mandate decision making for New Zealanders, and take out of the hands of New Zealanders the decisions that they usually should fairly and properly make, by fiddling with market forces. They’re robbing one sector of New Zealanders—the productive sector—and offering free money to another sector who want to buy and can afford to buy expensive electric cars. I think and we on this side of the House think that that philosophy is wrong. It’s not the question of lowering our emissions that’s wrong, it’s not the pathway towards net zero that is wrong, it’s not the decarbonisation of our economy that is wrong, it is not the transition from molecules to electrons that is wrong; it’s the way this Government is seeking to do it that is wrong. That’s why we are opposing it, and that is a matter that this Government simply fails to grasp.

In so doing, perversely, they have actually got to a point now where a whole lot of New Zealanders, because they feel they are being punished or being forced into decisions that they would prefer to make themselves, have now become anti-EV, and I’ve noticed that as an owner and a driver of an EV. The mood has changed significantly because there are a whole lot of people who feel that they are being pushed, cajoled, and put through some kind of cattle race into a decision that they have no real control over. So the difficulty is that we now, as I say, have these two groups of New Zealanders divided, and this has become a hallmark of this Government.

Now, the Minister mentioned that—surprise, surprise—the number of EV purchases has gone up since the scheme came into effect in July of last year. Well, these are people who had been waiting for four years for this Government to do it. The Government signalled this four years ago, so what happened was that the demand for EVs dropped off significantly until the free money was available, and why wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t people wait? Well, if there’s an opportunity to save $8,000 on a new EV, they would be crazy not to wait, and so that’s exactly what they did. They waited. But what the Minister didn’t tell the House was that in the period of time until the punitive taxes on utes and other vehicles, for instance, that are affected by this piece of legislation come into effect, what’s happening is that those vehicles are being bought in massively large numbers as people try to get ahead of the curve and the imposition of the extra tax.

This is a Government that takes a philosophical view. They have, when it comes to pretty much any policy issue, only three options: to make it compulsory, to tax it, or to ban it. This is an absolutely classic example of a Labour Government wanting to tax, ban, or make compulsory behaviour that should actually be left to the decision making of ordinary New Zealanders, who are perfectly capable of making good decisions for themselves.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be speaking on the third reading of this bill, the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill. On the weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting the Tranzit Coachlines Group, who have a depot in Rongotai, and I was there with Daran Ponter, the chair of the regional council for Wellington. There we had Paul and Keven Snelgrove take us through their electric fleet of buses, and, really, what was more exciting was the repurposing of diesel buses into electric buses.

Look, these two chaps have been in the business of running buses since day dot. They talked about their time setting up the business, through their family history in the Wairarapa, and they themselves coming across to the new age of electric vehicles. I know, when they first came in, they won the tender for supplying the bus fleet for our Wellington region. They said, “Look, we want to test electric—the whole electrification of the fleet in Island Bay.”—for those who have been there, one of the best suburbs in New Zealand, I have to say. In Island Bay, they’ve developed something that they themselves put together, and I raise this because what I’ve seen there is two chaps that came from an industry that you could only have diesel in, in terms of bus transport, but have made that transition for themselves and for their consumers and customers.

It was good to hear their views, and after being in here for just a short time I thought some people really do need to get out into their communities and listen to what’s happening out there, and talk to the people who have been in the industry and who are doing their own—I guess we use terms like “transition”. So they are positive about it, they are reflecting the change, and they are working globally with providers all round Asia, who have really come to New Zealand and put together a bespoke technology. They’ve got some buses from bus companies in China. But, really, they’ve invented their own because they believe that we can do it here. It’s innovative, it’s unique, it’s different, it supplies jobs to Kiwis, and it utilises what’s here. We have an interesting terrain in Wellington City, and so developing a bus fleet and electrifying it at certain points are all important. But I raise this because they are also doing their bit. And so I’ve kept them in the loop with the work that’s being done here, because we know this is important; we know it’s a contribution. So I’m cautious when I hear there’s some ideology or some politics behind this, because I’ve seen electric vehicles with different party logos on in our own basement, and I know that people are there, I know people are politicising this, but really there is no need to. It does contribute, ultimately, to that urgent task of decarbonising the transport system. This is our contribution to the fleet.

I’m not going to say too much more, because there is a positive uptake—look, it’s already happening, and we will see this happen more, more, and more. It will be Kiwis who respond. Sometimes people have been sheepish about admitting that they own such a vehicle. I would say “Be proud!” There’s no need to be; it’s going to happen. There will be chargers put in place, thanks to funding from central and local government. It’s going to become the norm. This is quite normal. I’m simply going to commend this bill to the House.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Tēnā koe. It’s a pleasure to give my third—I believe—and final speech on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill. I guess it’s been quite an interesting process and a privilege also to get a chance to sit on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee alongside my parliamentary colleagues, and acknowledging that this bill was enabled by my colleague Julie Anne Genter, who laid the groundwork and thankful for the Minister, Michael Wood, for carrying it through in this term.

I think it’s clear to say that what this bill will do is stop making New Zealand a dumping ground for polluting vehicles. That is important. We do not want to become the place where industry knows they can throw away polluting vehicles that ultimately will be creating waste and emissions locally. It will also give options to New Zealanders to purchase cheaper vehicles, and especially in the second-hand market.

It’s been really interesting, though, hearing members from the right-hand side, and particularly the National Party, who have waxed lyrical about how this bill is going to tax those working-class people. Because as many of us have stated, it’s not low-income people who are buying new vehicles. Low-income people have the most to gain from this bill.

I think we’d be kidding ourselves if we said that this bill was a silver bullet to address the challenges that climate change presents, especially in the transport sector where so many of our emissions are coming from. The truth is that this is one lever we must pull in order to address the climate crisis. On top of this, we should be looking at things like free fares, an intra-city regional rail network, a shift in how we fund our transport infrastructure, as well as many other solutions that are yet to come. So the National Party can talk all they want about their supposed pragmatic solutions to the climate crisis, but at every stage of the way they’ve shown us that they are willing to spend billions on polluting infrastructure that will increase emissions, and oppose the solutions that we need to support our communities to meet the challenges that the climate crisis presents, as well as providing them equitable options to move around. It’d be great if members on my opposite side were again talking about cheaper fares for public transport or other forms of subsidies that do help low-income people.

So it is a pleasure to finally see this bill through the House and to start now being able to discuss the many other solutions that will bring about a much more impactful reduction in emissions in our transport industry. Kia ora.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to talk on behalf of my fellow colleague Mr Court and share rather a lacklustre performance. I know he’d be better at delivery here and give an illuminating one; not the dreary one that we saw from the member Greg O’Connor over there. This bill speaks to mollycoddling one part of society and impugning another. I can just offer a very quick anecdote, if I may, when I was at the Fieldays down in Mystery Creek about six or seven months ago—going back a fair way now. Look, there was all manner of vehicles there, as you could well imagine. And rather unfortunately, it was more often than not the last electric vehicle (EV) left standing when many of the utilities, which now are going to be impugned with this, had long since gone.

ACT supports the concept that making polluters pay for their carbon emissions actually will help reduce our emissions across the board, but, equally so, New Zealand’s emissions are capped. Any emissions reduction plan, by the standards imposed by this bill, will not reduce a single ton of carbon and almost invariably it creates an opportunity for emissions leakage into other sectors. We’ve got a cap here in New Zealand. All it will do is literally shift the onus on to somebody else.

The state of this bill, as proposed, is to “achieve a rapid reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from light vehicles imported into New Zealand”. Notably, manufacturers who submitted on the bill described international supply constraints. I think that’s a wide point here. This technology’s currently not available in many parts of the automotive sector. It will also mean that there will be no sufficient low-emissions vehicles in the near and potentially foreseeable future. Equally notable, with many countries, there is also a left-hand drive market—I’m sorry, a small amount of countries, I beg your pardon. We think of New Zealand, we think of Australia, we think of the United Kingdom and Japan. The manufacturers are now presented with a significant problem. It’s abundantly clear to the ACT Party that this bill is purely ideological and whilst well intentioned—and I think we’ve got to make that call; this is very well intentioned—it’s purely ideological, however, and it will fail on deliverables both for consumers and the desired environmental outcomes, and I think that’s the one thing that we really have to converse about and debate here today.

Treasury, in its own advice released under the Official Information Act, asked if time frames and when standards come into force will actually be delayed, and they would be significantly because of the international supply constraints around low-emissions vehicles and their availability. A lot of this technology—I think we’ve got to be honest here—in the rural sector is six, seven years away and, by virtue, when it is available is going to be exorbitantly expensive. Sadly, it seems to malign one part of the transport sector and its users with another. It’s picking winners and losers. And arguably on this side of the House, I think we’d agree with that statement. Tradies and farmers will fall victim by this piece of legislation.

These are tools. I mean, I can quite happily tell the members on the other side of the House, I have a utility and it wouldn’t be an EV one, and it certainly wouldn’t be an EV one, I would wager, for the next 10 years. There’s simply nothing available that the average farmer or tradie could afford. The bill introduces unnecessary regulations that will be difficult and costly to comply with and add further additional costs to everyday Kiwi families. I think that’s been well canvassed on this side of the House.

Submitters also noted that the lower-income families will inadvertently be targeted by this legislation. There are everyday Kiwis that won’t have this technology—and I see the member shaking her head over there. I’d like to present her with the question of what technology she thinks would be readily available for anything under $50,000.

In summary, this bill is merely ideological. We support the premise of it, but we can’t see how it works and categorically, whilst well intentioned, it will absolutely fail, based on the emissions trading scheme that we currently sit in. ACT totally opposes this bill.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Thank you for the opportunity to speak, Madam Speaker, and it’s always a privilege and honour to get up, not only as the member for the Ōtaki electorate but certainly as a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. We heard from 135 submitters on this bill, the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill.

We know that this bill will increase the supply in the variety of zero- to low-emission cars. We also know that it will increase the demand for these cars, which, for our low-income families, is going to help, because that will lower the cost of the cars, as well as the clean-car discount that you get as well. And that is amazing for our low-income families. We are going to make sure, with this bill, that New Zealand, our beautiful country, Aotearoa, is no longer a dumping ground for the rest of the world’s dirty fleet—that they all have clean-car standards or legislation for but we don’t. So that fixes this; that puts us in the same spending field as the rest of them in making sure that we are looking after our country and doing something about our climate change.

This clean-car discount that goes with this bill—$8,625. And I can tell you, coming from a low-income family, that that is an awesome amount to be able to get a discount on a car that, when you do get it, you get to save money on petrol, you get to put more money in our family budgets, and that is going to make a massive difference—while we also can feel we’re making sure we’re doing our bit to save Papatūānuku as well.

This bill is another example of this Labour Government doing what it said it would: delivering while looking after our people, looking after Papatūānuku, and making sure we’re doing our bit in terms of climate change. For that, I’m really proud and I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Hon David Bennett—five minutes.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill is a failure in policy on behalf of the Government. There are a number ways that it is a failure. First of all, there just aren’t the quantity of vehicles out there to achieve its purpose. If we look at the ute market—and the “ute tax” is what this bill was described as—there are no alternatives. There are no alternatives coming in the near future. The only alternative the Minister could come up with when we were considering this bill at the select committee was a prototype that had come out from America and had not actually got to production yet. That was his view of something that was going to be in the market, on the ground, in two years’ time. It’s a dream. It just will not happen. All this bill is going to do is mean that people will pay more for those vehicles, and that will increase inflation in this country and continue the process that we’re seeing in this country at the moment.

Fundamentally, it is wrong. We are in the Australian-Japanese car market. That’s where our vehicles come from. This bill thinks that we’re in the European market. In the Australian-Japanese market the movement is towards hybrids and better fuel uses. In the European market—fair enough—there is a bigger move towards electric vehicles, but they are not conditioned for the New Zealand market. They do not do utes, for example, and they are not readily available here. That last speaker, Terisa Ngobi, spoke about an $8,000 discount for her people. Well, they’ve to spend $70,000 to get the $8,000. Not many of her people can actually spend $70,000. Not many of any people can spend $70,000 on a car just to get an $8,000 discount.

When we look at this bill, there’s another part of it where the left will keep on saying that it’s a dumping ground for cars in New Zealand. Well, the reality is that this bill will create an environment where people will hold on to those second-hand Japanese imports. They will hold on to those older cars because they can’t afford to buy a new one. It will actually achieve the opposite. What they are actually doing here is constraining New Zealanders to hold on to an older fleet. What we should be doing is taking advantage of the new technology around the world to get a better fleet, and that is the approach that would be much more sensible and would achieve our goals.

Another thing they say is that roads are the problem, and you hear that public transport is the answer. That is complete and utter rubbish. Most of New Zealand is based on a roading network. All of productive New Zealand, effectively, is based on a roading network, and without options in the electric vehicle fleet for that market, it makes it very difficult for people to be able to achieve their economic purposes. Also, electric cars, over time, will have to go on roads, and you need to invest in your roading network to enable that to happen.

What has happened here is there’s actually been a failure by the Government to understand what they’re doing. It’s classic leftism policy. They make an idea up and they say it’s going to happen, but it actually hurts the very people they say they try to represent. The people on the lowest incomes won’t be able to take advantage of this. The people that are academics or politicians who sit in this room will be able to take advantage of this subsidy, and it’s just another wealth transfer to the rich, from the poor, that you see under a Labour Government.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: They may laugh but it’s a reality—look at the housing market example, as well. What would be a better approach? That is something we need to look at. Let’s actually invest in some renewable electricity for New Zealand. Under this Government, renewable electricity generation has decreased as a percentage of New Zealand production. If we really want to do something about electric vehicles (EVs), let’s make sure they run on renewable electricity and not coal coming in from Indonesia. If we really want to do something about EVs, let’s invest in an EV network around New Zealand so you can actually power up these vehicles when they come in. If you really want to do something in this area, why don’t we look at alternative fuels, where you can use a mixture of fuel? That’s what our fuel companies want to be able to do. If you really want to do something about this, you would actually look at using hybrids and other vehicles in the Japanese and Australian market that are actually more fuel efficient, more energy efficient, and more environmentally friendly, but the opposite is happening in this case.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Tangi Utikere—five minutes.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, thank you. It’s a pleasure to take a brief call. I guess, what I would like to start my contribution in the House with this afternoon is that we don’t make any excuses on this side of the House for what this piece of legislation will deliver. I’ve been sitting here this afternoon listening to the contributions from some members opposite. We don’t hate on the people of Grey Lynn here on this side of the House, we don’t hate on those that choose to drink chardonnay. But it seems to me that there are excuses, a lack of ideas, coming from members opposite, and it’s just excuses, excuses, excuses.

When we have a look at what this legislation will deliver, it will make a significant change, it will deliver on the independent Climate Change Commission’s advice to this Parliament about steps that need to be taken. I took a call on the second reading of this legislation, so I won’t go into the specifics of what the select committee delved into, but what I would say is that when we have a look at the their recommendations and the work that they did, they’ve made the proposed legislation much more user-friendly, identified the role that the Minister will play in terms of taking advice—and then I’ll leave it for members themselves to have a look.

But I reflect on the three aspects that remain unchanged for me at second reading. Really, what this legislation does is it provides a focus in terms of supply and the variability and variety that would be delivered in that particular space—that’s the first thing. Secondly is that it does create incentives, and colleagues on this side of the House have already referred to the incentives that would be put in place. The third is around transparency. The bill itself provides transparency, not just for the manufacturers that would be importing these vehicles but also for those members of our community who would purchase the vehicles, ensuring that they knew the information about the vehicles, that they knew, specifically, whether it was electric vehicle (EV) hybrid, and what the particular subsidy would provide as well.

When I reflect back on the independent advice of the Climate Change Commission that is from Ināia tonu nei, it is around providing fiscal incentives, which this bill does; it is around lowering the cost, which will be a flow-on effect; and it will be a matter of urgency, which is why we are committed to seeing this piece of legislation through the Parliament this afternoon.

When I reflect on a couple who actually came to visit me in my electorate office when the Government had announced that this was going to take place and that the subsidy was put in place, they were able to discuss with me their thought process and their thinking around why they decided to purchase an EV, an electric vehicle. For them, the incentive for a subsidy was part of the reason why they decided to make that particular decision. This will continue in place. It will continue to support the focus around supply, the incentivisation, but also the transparency that is obviously needed as well. This has proven that it is a huge success. The Government will continue to support initiatives in partnership with others around infrastructure that’s being rolled out to support EVs, hybrids, and the like. I am delighted to be able to commend this bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Before the introduction of this legislation, we had become the dumping ground for pollutant vehicles.

Barbara Kuriger: Oh, there’s that rhetoric again.

HELEN WHITE: What has happened—it’s not rhetoric; it’s actually absolutely what had happened. We had let those vehicles come in and we had seen it as an advantage for our poorer citizens that they could buy cheaper vehicles. But what we were doing was we were flooding the country with vehicles which were hurting our children because they were allowing them to live in a polluted environment, and they were hurting our climate change needs. So they were not doing us any good in the long term. This is a dramatic turn-around for this country and it has two aspects: (1) it brings us up to the standards that most countries—let’s face it—have already adopted; and the other is it provides a scheme where people will be able to buy an electric vehicle and it will go into the pool of vehicles in this country.

I want to be very clear about this because there’s been a little confusion today about what the scheme is for. It’s not for the person who buys the first electric car; it’s for all the people who buy the cars subsequently, because most of us, let’s face it, do not buy new vehicles. We buy second-hand vehicles, and this is going to flood the market with those vehicles and they’re going to be affordable for the first time for our poorest families. And let’s also face it: being poor is quite an expensive process in this country because if your vehicle is a petrol-guzzling vehicle and an older vehicle, it is actually much higher to maintain, in terms of costs, and you have to pay for petrol, which is going through the roof. So it’s going to be a wonderful thing when our families are released from that, and this particular Act will work to do that—it achieves it—and I am absolutely proud of that.

Now, I just wanted to talk about some of the rhetoric we heard today from the National Party. Yes, it is true that they shared that rhetoric with some of the bigger, older-style car companies who told us things like, “Oh no, we’re part of a small market. We can’t possibly demand these vehicles.” We’ve heard it today with lots and lots of put-downs: “chardonnay socialists”. We’ve heard about how our Minister Wood is full of self-importance. These kinds of put-downs are things I’ve heard all my life as a practising lawyer. When people don’t like change, they put others down, rather than producing any proper ideas. And let’s face it, this idea is a good one. We know that because, from last year, when the scheme started, one in four of those electric vehicles out there came in during the scheme, and one thing that we don’t like is a success if we are in that kind of mind-set, because that’s what we’ve got here.

I am absolutely proud of this scheme. I’m proud of what it’s going to achieve long term. I’m proud of the contribution it will make to the second-hand car market, turning it into one that is healthier and better for the environment. I commend this bill to the House.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m wondering, now that we’ve got to this point in the debate, when we are going to get a rural MP with some sense of reality around utes actually standing up and making a speech. I could see the senior whip over there for the Labour Party, who had one such vehicle until recently, until, unfortunately, his Prime Minister put him in a space where it was very difficult to retain his ute for ute purposes after he’d given her a ride in it. It just showed me that, as Greg O’Connor said before, “Farmers adapt.” Well, we’ve actually seen Kieran McAnulty adapt and farmers will adapt. But you can’t adapt to something that doesn’t exist, and that is the message that this side of the House is trying to get through.

The National Party do want the climate change goals to succeed, but to get the right goals to succeed, you have to have the right settings. And right now—I was at Fieldays as well, and I can tell you that I’m not sure if Mr O’Connor over there actually told us all that the farmers said to him, because a lot of farmers were actually telling us a lot of stuff at Fieldays about what a stupid policy this was because you tax something for which you have no replacement for and all you are doing is taking money out of the pockets of the people who actually want to make a difference to climate change. So that doesn’t work. It’s a tax, it’s a wealth transfer, and it’s got nothing to do with climate change.

The Prime Minister said way back at the beginning, a few years ago, that this could be her generation’s nuclear-free moment. Well, unfortunately, we’ve heard too much of that and we’ve heard today that the renewable energy is going backwards in this country. So when you claim that something’s going to be a nuclear-free moment, you might want to be very careful what you wish for, because we all know that our renewable energy is going backwards. So therefore, even if Minister Wood’s grand plan about us all driving around in electric cars actually worked at some level and we could all find a suitable vehicle for our requirements, for which many people can’t right now, i.e., farmers and tradies, then we wouldn’t have enough renewable electricity to run such vehicles. We all know that there’s quite a lot of Indonesian coal going into our renewable energy system and taking it backwards.

Farmers do adapt. I think this Government actually needs to adapt some of their policies to understand how things actually work in the real world. When the technology is available, people will change to it. This is just mucking around with market forces. This is just putting taxes in place that are going to make no difference, and one day, the Minister is going to eat his words and everything he’s said around this piece of legislation.

We did hear today about the excitement about this discount—for our families that can’t afford to buy cars. There’s a lot of families that won’t be able to afford to buy these cars, even with the discount. These cars are expensive. These cars, because we don’t have enough of them yet, haven’t actually come down to an affordable price. And when they do, then we should start thinking about encouraging some of our families to be able to afford these electric cars. The market forces will take care of these things when they’re available.

Angela Roberts is over there and she must understand the dynamics of a rural electorate because she’s actually covering quite a big rural electorate in her role at the moment. But I had quite a level of—well, I don’t know if it was comedy or discomfort or quite what it was the other night when Michael Wood stood up and talked about how he’d had a wonderful holiday in the summer with his family and he actually had driven through my electorate, made a point of saying that he’d been there. He’d been on State Highway 3 in Ōtorohanga and Te Kūiti, and he had his electric car and he’d managed to charge it, and that was all wonderful. So rural was taken care of. We all know that Minister Wood, in his discussion document, actually said he was going to put a lot of cycle ways in rural so that farmers and tourists could go about their business, and I wondered if he’d ever been there until that moment.

So, yes, we do have electric vehicle chargers in Ōtorohanga and Te Kūiti, but that is not rural New Zealand at the most remote points of it. I made a point to Minister Wood the other night that if he had been in Marokopa last weekend, he probably wouldn’t have got to work this week, because he would have been stuck in his electric car. I asked him when he opened the road at Awakino whether he’d actually seen the hills surrounding northern Taranaki and the King Country, because people need utes to be able to run the businesses; the sheep and beef farmers, in particular, that operate on that hill country. Mr McAnulty knows this well, and Angela Roberts must see it as she goes around in her travels as well.

Now, when Canterbury flooded, the Prime Minister was down there. How did she get to go and meet with those Canterbury farmers? In a ute. Nicola Grigg will tell us that. She went in a ute. Greg O’Connor, I remember back when you were a new MP, you telling us stories about how you’d been to the West Coast.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member won’t bring the Speaker into the debate.

BARBARA KURIGER: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I remember Greg O’Connor telling us his memories about working on his uncle’s farm on the West Coast of the South Island—and I know that his cousin’s farm is pretty severely flooded at the moment, and there’s a lot of mud in the West Coast of the South Island. Unfortunately for those people down there, three sessions of weather within about eight months. It’s been very wet, it’s been very muddy, and the only access that some of those people have, to be able to get in and out, are four-wheel-drive ute vehicles. It is a big slap in the face for those people who want to continue to drive those vehicles to have to turn round and pay a tax on top of the cost of a vehicle that they have no replacement for.

So I just want to reiterate to the Government—I mean, we know the voting dynamics in this House. They’re going to change very soon: 2023 is coming up and the game is on. But I just want to give some reality to those people on the other side of the House that actually, if you put a tax on something for which you do not have an alternative, all you are doing is taking money off people. The Government is not going to make any difference to climate change with this policy. It’s just a dynamic that’s working against market forces. It’s a dynamic that’s putting vehicles into the system for which we have no renewable electricity for. I look forward to the day when we can point out to the Government that this policy has not worked and we can get back into Government and we can reverse the ute tax and we can put some sensible climate change policies on the agenda. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a great privilege to take the final call on this very progressive piece of legislation. I stand here and I know that, when I leave the House tonight, I can go and look the young people of this country in the eye and say, “We have done something.” I haven’t heard a single idea from the other side of the House about how we are going to mitigate the costs, mitigate the climate change damage that is happening.

We’ve heard about, you know, being stuck in Marokopa last week. Many of us had experienced the energy that is becoming more common. I want to commend the leadership of our Minister, the previous Minister—about actually taking some action. It’s really ironic hearing people on the other side of the House talk about ideology versus actual evidence. It’s a weird thing to say for me, but these are capitalist concepts. These are capitalist levers. This is about influencing, internalising externalities, incentivising behaviour shifts. This is about influencing the supply—just of supply and demand—for cleaner vehicles.

The improved standards mean that we are open for business. The rest of the world knows that they have to meet those challenges. It gives our importers the confidence to go and compete for cleaner vehicles on the global market. It gives companies like the Lines Company the confidence to invest in our charging infrastructure so you can charge in Mōkau. It also gives the confidence to continue to build a diverse green fleet. It isn’t just about electric vehicles. You do need vehicles with decent torque. Some of us need four-wheel drives—absolutely. It is about making sure that we have really good green hydrogen and hybrids as well. This is bringing vehicles into the fleet that can be sold to ordinary New Zealanders as second-hand vehicles.

Barbara Kuriger: We don’t have green hydrogen.

ANGELA ROBERTS: We are investing in green hydrogen. We are visionary and we are ambitious. The young people of New Zealand deserve this. This is a story of hope and this is a story of a Government of action and I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Maritime Powers Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 10 February.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the Maritime Powers Bill, at its second reading. I join alongside my colleagues on both sides of the House in supporting the passage of this bill. It’s been a while since we had the earlier part of this second reading; so I’ll just go over a bit about what this bill will achieve.

Quite simply, this bill will allow New Zealand’s existing laws against serious criminal offending to be enforced in international waters where New Zealand has extra-territorial jurisdiction. This includes offences that take place on a New Zealand - flagged vessel in international waters, offences that take place on board a foreign-flagged or a stateless vessel in international waters but where New Zealand has extra-territorial jurisdiction, and in situations where a person is suspected of committing an offence against New Zealand law and is located on a foreign, New Zealand, or stateless vessel.

In summary—and because we’ve had the plain English bill through the House this week—it would cover crimes on our vessels, crimes on our waters, and crimes against our laws. This bill does so by extending the powers of law enforcement. In doing so, it supports our law enforcement officials in their work when they have to undertake them on vessels. This change would be consistent with New Zealand’s rights under international law—particularly the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is also consistent with our rights and obligations under international law generally.

When I was at law school, when it came to picking our electives, I didn’t take a paper on the law of the sea; I instead took labour law. However, my good friend and contemporary and fellow student at the time Dr Bevan Martin did take this elective. He is now a specialist lawyer and academic in maritime law, and I am here as a Labour MP. Isn’t it interesting how sometimes our paths can diverge and lead us to different places? But, in having a friend who is a specialist maritime lawyer, I did take the opportunity to ask Dr Martin about this bill and his view on this bill as someone who can look at it somewhat independently. He responded as follows: “The world’s oceans are places of complex and overlapping claims to jurisdiction, to legal authority over persons and vessels. Within these vast spaces, a wide range of illegal activity can take place in relative anonymity, often by vessels that fly flags of convenience with no real oversight from the State under whose flag they operate. Drug smuggling, human trafficking, illegal fishing, and even piracy can thrive if responsible countries do not maintain a careful watch over their zones of responsibility.”

The United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea recognises the need for States to exercise criminal enforcement jurisdiction over domestic and foreign vessels across the full range of maritime zones—from the high seas to the territorial sea. While our powers are more extensive closer to home than in international waters, the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea shows that some actions are universally acknowledged by the international community as criminal, and as acts that should, therefore, be suppressed anywhere they are identified. Notably, this can be piracy, slavery, and also drug offences, including some other trafficking as well. New Zealand’s obligation to suppress unlawful activity in the sea is further bound up in a series of international obligations that go back decades—notably the Convention on Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety in Maritime Navigation in 1988. This convention recognised—and I quote—“unlawful acts against the safety of maritime navigation that jeopardise the safety of persons and property and seriously affect the operation of maritime services and undermine the confidence of peoples in the world of the safety of maritime navigation.” This particular convention following 9/11 was further significantly updated, and New Zealand, at that time, joined with many others in the international community in recommitting to the goal of safer seas.

So when I did ask my friend about this bill, it was very clear that he supported this bill, and I thank him for his insights and comments and work in this area. It is clear by prioritising this bill that the Government is demonstrating both New Zealand’s obligations under international law and also, just as importantly, to the people who we ask to patrol our seas, often in fast developing situations—that they are also supported and able to continue to do their work. It is essential that we extend and clarify the powers of those who we charge with keeping our oceans safe, for both New Zealanders and also for those who visit New Zealand—and hopefully there will be more of those shortly when the borders reopen—and therefore fall under our protection.

We also have to consider the alternative of passing this legislation: a New Zealand naval vessel, for example, that was boarded and then detained a vessel suspected of, say, human trafficking or worse, and then compelled it to return to a New Zealand port, only to have the offenders escape justice on a technicality based on the New Zealand Parliament not giving officials powers that they needed to undertake enforcement action. Now, while this might sound like a plot of some movie based on the high seas or some fictional drama, these are not fictional concerns but real possibilities that we want to avoid with the passage of this bill. So that is why it is so important that this House passes this bill.

This bill is also consistent with Labour’s commitments. Labour has a longstanding commitment to an independent foreign policy, including upholding the rule of law, and this bill is consistent with that. Labour also has a proud tradition of multilateralism, human rights, and commitment to international law. As a trading nation, New Zealand has a growing marine economy and a domestic market that is increasingly relying on the connectivity that the sea provides to the global supply chain. Sea transport is the most common mode of transport to import and export goods. So, again, in plain English, we sell a lot of stuff, and we use ships to transport it. That is why this bill is so important.

Now, I wasn’t part of the select committee that considered this bill, but I understand they received a small amount of submissions: seven in total. Four, I think, expressly supported this bill, and the others didn’t take a position. So I think we can assume there isn’t any widespread public opposition to this bill. The select committee also provided some useful feedback, and I know that the Minister, when reading the initial speech on the second reading, noted some technical amendments that improved the bill as a result of the deliberation by the select committee. So I thank the select committee very much for the work that they did on that.

In conclusion, New Zealand’s maritime security environment is becoming more complex and more dynamic. Keeping our maritime environment safe and secure and holding those who commit offences against New Zealand law to account is critical. This is particularly important in New Zealand, as an island nation, while upholding the rule of international law. I wish to share the Minister’s sentiment that this bill is a positive step and one that will enable us to uphold maritime national security in a fair and proportionate way, in line with international law and in line with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I thank the Minister and the select committee and the submitters very much for their work, and I commend this bill to the House.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do happen to sit on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, who had the privilege of hearing submissions on this bill and doing the examination. It’s not often that that committee receives legislation to consider, so we were all suitably excited. It does touch upon foreign affairs in a way, but this is about our domestic rule of law. New Zealand—and I don’t think most New Zealanders know or appreciate this, but we have the job of patrolling about a fifth of the world’s oceans. That’s for environmental monitoring, it’s for criminal activity, and it’s for disaster relief.

The Green Party, whilst we agree with the intent of this law in terms of allowing for that monitoring to be extended in the case of some serious crimes—and I don’t think that there’s any debate about these crimes being crimes or these activities constituting crimes and things that we all want to stop, like slavery, people-trafficking, and trafficking of drugs. In the case of the Green Party, we’re quite concerned about the trafficking of rare and endangered species, which does happen at the high seas as well. The method by which the bill goes about doing that, which is to expand the powers of board and search in a way that undermines, as we see it, the rule of law—and the New Zealand Law Society agrees it undermines the rule of law—is of concern to us because whilst it is important to monitor criminal activity and to enforce the law, the way that we do that always contributes to the way that rule of law and human rights are protected across the globe, including on the high seas.

So, obviously, when you look at something like the illegal, unlawful, and overfishing inquiry in the Pacific, which the foreign affairs committee is currently undertaking, we know that there’s a range of activities that both touches on undermining environmental protections and very much sits in what we might think comfortably doesn’t ever happen in the modern world—but it does—like human trafficking and slavery. These things do happen. There is a need for that.

But what this bill allows for—and it actually imports the exact language of the Search and Surveillance Act, which I have quite a bit of experience in applying and dealing with in the domestic courts; what it imports is the exact wording of the warrantless search powers that police have under that Act and under some other acts like the firearms and prohibition Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act. But it doesn’t allow for any type of search or circumstance where a search happens to be judicially monitored. This bill doesn’t allow for a search warrant to be sought or obtained in an ordinary circumstance.

So while these other laws that guide enforcement officers in terms of search and seizure allow for a fast-moving situation where a warrantless search is required, this bill only allows for warrantless discretionary searches. To put that into context, it also allows for, for example, internal bodily searches for the collection of biometric data. So whether that’s DNA or saliva testing, it allows for the use of force, but it doesn’t allow for the challenge that comes with judicial monitoring. So when there is time and we can see a vessel approaching, when we’ve had information from Interpol and we’re about to disembark and leave our shores and go over to a vessel—and there is ample time because these aren’t necessarily fast-moving vessels—we can actually require our enforcement officers to show reasonable cause for belief that a crime is happening, as we require New Zealand police to do, before they go ahead, use force, and collect internal bodily materials, for example. If they are at high sea and things materialise quickly, of course there could then be a discretionary warrant and a search power. The New Zealand Law Society, who brought with them not one but two maritime law experts who had actually acted as maritime officers as well—both said that this is something that they would recommend for New Zealand to uphold the rule of law whilst we extend our powers to enforce the rules and to monitor criminal activity at the high sea.

Now, even the Search and Surveillance Act that does allow for search warrants to be issued, in the opinion of the Green Party—a long-standing opinion that we’ve expressed through successive caucuses—goes well beyond what we would expect in its warrantless search powers that don’t actually apply an objective standard and quite often don’t apply a belief standard, which a court would interpret to say that there has to be an objective level of evidential basis for a search to be triggered, but often will come with an opinion-based or a subjective standard.

So the Search and Surveillance Act itself is somewhat problematic, and we have seen an absolute rise in police relying on warrantless search powers since that power has been made available to them, which is understandable. But when you think about the level of prejudice that exists in our criminal justice system, and will exist even at the high seas—we see it in international law, we see it in the way that Interpol surveils those from certain backgrounds, certain nationalities, and certain flagships when we’re talking about ships—we know that there is room for misuse of this type of incredibly broad discretion. So while the intention is good and while we are trying to monitor and apply the law and make the world safer, the way that we do that has to be exemplary, and in that way, this law absolutely fails. So the Green Party and the New Zealand Law Society and the human rights - based framework can’t support the law as it stands. So I don’t commend this bill to the House.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): It is my pleasure to give the last speech of this sitting block, and I’ll make sure to keep it relatively short. I am standing on behalf of the ACT Party on the Maritime Powers Bill at the second reading, and I want to acknowledge the hard work of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

This bill is set to allow New Zealand law enforcement agencies the power to enforce New Zealand’s criminal law in international waters. Now, New Zealand already has the right under international law to exercise maritime powers in international waters, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, when they were doing background on this bill, said that we don’t currently have adequate maritime powers. There are gaps in how we can enforce New Zealand’s laws in international waters. That limits our ability to actually respond to threats of criminal activity that might be happening in coming to New Zealand or having left from New Zealand. And that’s hugely concerning when it comes to trans-national crime. There is a huge importance, when it comes to drug smuggling, migrant smuggling, wildlife smuggling, or firearms smuggling, that we actually do want to create a healthy, safe community in New Zealand. People do actively bring, or seek to bring, illicit goods to New Zealand, and we need the powers in our domestic laws to be able to stop that and make sure that we have the laws correct. So it’s concerning that there have been gaps in our enforcement.

We have some bespoke laws when it comes to the Fisheries Act and the maritime Act and the Customs and Excise Act, but it doesn’t help when you have cases that fit slightly outside the box. A good example of that is if you have a ship coming to New Zealand and it has illicit drugs, and the drugs get dropped off and the ship then leaves the country and goes back into international waters, currently, you could stop that ship, under our law. But if when boarding that ship, the officials saw illegal firearms that had come into New Zealand’s waters and left again, they would have no power under the current laws to be able to issue a search warrant, again, for that specific purpose.

So it helps to fill some of the gaps when you’re already dealing in international waters with search warrants. And I think that’s really important, because we don’t want people bringing goods into New Zealand and harming our communities. We do actually want to create a safe, healthy environment.

In conclusion, I think our laws should be clear, they should be simple to follow, and we should fix the gaps where we see them, and I note that that’s what the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee have sought to do. It helps to have all of these laws in one place rather than in bespoke parts of other laws, and it will help to create safer, healthier communities in New Zealand. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. It’s been a long week with an extending sitting, so I want to thank all of the Chamber staff. I want to thank officials from the Office of the Clerk, and also the Speaker’s office. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 1 March.

The House adjourned at 4.57 p.m.