Tuesday, 1 March 2022

TUESDAY, 1 MARCH 2022

TUESDAY, 1 MARCH 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

SPEAKER: Всемогутній Боже, ми дякуємо за благословення, які були даровані нам. Відкидаючи всі особисті інтереси, ми визнаємо королеву і молимося за керівництво в наших обговореннях, щоб ми могли вести справи цієї палати з мудрістю, справедливістю, милосердям і смиренням для благополуччя і миру Нової Зеландії.

[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, justice, mercy and humility for the welfare and peace of New Zealand.]

Слава Україні.

Motions

Ukraine—Russian Invasion

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I seek leave to move a motion without notice on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I move, That this House condemns the recent unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine by Russia, that it calls on Russia to cease all military operations in Ukraine and withdraw, and express New Zealand’s strong support for Ukraine’s people, its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

I will begin with the words of my colleague, foreign affairs Minister, Nanaia Mahuta. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the blatant act of a bully—brutal, intolerable, and an act of aggression that has been met with condemnation from the people and the Parliament of New Zealand.

We are united. Russia’s actions are a direct challenge to our core values: democracy, human rights, and the international rules-based system—values that we rely on for our own peace and security. We live in a world that is increasingly connected and borderless, a world where a challenge to one is a challenge to all. And that is why we have not only taken a strong position in condemning Russia’s invasion because of our beliefs and our values but because, now more than ever, we must all take a stand together.

Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine is a flagrant breach of international law. By choosing to pursue this entirely avoidable path, innocent lives will be lost. New Zealand and our international partners call on Russia to do what is right. We call for an immediate end to military operations in Ukraine, and a permanent withdrawal to end a pointless war.

The Russian Government has repeatedly ignored opportunities for diplomacy, negotiation, and de-escalation. Instead, Vladimir Putin has ordered an aggressive, unprovoked assault on the people and Government of Ukraine. This was not a miscalculation as a result of Russia’s unprecedented military build-up on Ukraine’s borders; this was a deliberate, calculated, and cynical decision—a decision to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, a decision to breach fundamental tenets of international law, and a decision by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to violate the UN Charter. Russia must now face the consequences of those decisions; so must Belarus, for its accomplice role in facilitating Russia’s invasion.

We have moved quickly in condemning the invasion. New Zealand immediately implemented a number of measures in response to Russia’s actions. These are: the introduction of targeted travel bans against Russian Government officials and other individuals associated with the invasion of Ukraine, and the prohibition of export of goods to Russian military and security forces. This covers the export of all goods intended for use by the Russian military and security forces, including any armed force, paramilitary force, police force, or militia. This includes weapons and dual-use technology that have a civilian use but are intended for military use or that may have military applications. Such a blanket ban is a significant step, as it removes the ability for exporters to apply for a permit and sends a clear signal of support to Ukraine. And, thirdly, the measures include the suspension of bilateral foreign ministry consultations until further notice.

I want to be very clear here, though: New Zealand has not yet reached the extent of the measures we will take to condemn this act. We are pursuing new measures to target Russian investment, including measures to target financial institutions in New Zealand, including separate but Russian-targeted, specific legislation. We continue to engage with international partners over the collective action we can all take, but it is clear that there will be a significant cost imposed on Russia for their actions. Our message must be clear: we are united.

Hundreds of people have already been killed or injured, hundreds of thousands more already displaced because of a conflict it seems the Russian people did not choose. The harrowing images of displaced or suffering civilians in Ukraine speak volumes of this unfolding tragedy and underline in very stark terms the human consequences of Russia’s aggression.

The scale of the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding is devastating. As a first step, we have moved quickly and announced a contribution of $2 million in humanitarian aid to support those in Ukraine impacted as a result of Russia’s unprovoked invasion. Our initial contribution will help deliver essential humanitarian assistance, with a focus on supporting health facilities and meeting basic needs such as provision of food and hygiene items. We will continue to contribute to humanitarian assistance, as a core part of our role in the global response.

I want to finish with the words of the President of Ukraine, who, hours before Russia invaded, said the following: “Our main goal is peace in Ukraine and the safety of our people … For that, we are ready to have talks with anybody, including you (Russia) in any format, on any platform. The war will deprive guarantees from everybody—nobody will have security guarantees anymore. Who will suffer from it the most? The people. Who doesn’t want it the most? The people. Who can stop it? The people. But are there those people among you?”

We have all been shaken by what we have seen, because what we have seen is a sense of stability, or order, of security being taken away. That affects all of us. And so, too, must we all act. This war must end.

Слава Україні.

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

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition): I rise on behalf of the Opposition to support this motion and to strongly condemn President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. There is no possible justification for the death and suffering this unprovoked attack has caused and will continue to cause. Our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine being subjected to such needless violence in their own home, and with their friends and family here in New Zealand and elsewhere who are, right now, fearing for the safety of their loved ones. This is an affront to human rights, an affront to democracy, and an affront to global peace and stability.

It is heartbreaking to see Ukrainians who just days ago were like us, going about their everyday lives, dropping their kids to school, going to work, shopping at the supermarket, are now having to fight for their country. President Putin has shown total disregard for international law and the sovereignty of Ukraine. This attack is a wholly unnecessary escalation that warrants a severe response from the international community. We are seeing that response from many: the US, Canada, the UK, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the EU, and others have all imposed strong sanctions restricting Russian banks from accessing their capital markets and services. Export bans have been put in place and the assets of Russian elites affiliated with the Kremlin have been frozen. Russian banks are being cut off from the SWIFT international payment system. The assets of its central bank are being frozen. The scope and severity of these sanctions is unprecedented.

New Zealand’s lack of an autonomous sanctions regime means we can’t join in these coordinated economic efforts. We support all actions taken to date by the Government to join in this response, but we encourage the Government to take two simple steps so that New Zealand can play an even stronger role. First, urgently pass autonomous sanctions legislation. National has a bill ready to go and we’re willing to work with and support the Government to get legislation through this House—but let’s do it quickly. Second, create a humanitarian visa for the family members of Ukrainians already in New Zealand, and fast track existing visa applications from the Ukraine.

History is occurring as we speak and New Zealand must take strong, meaningful action to help the global community stop this senseless war. The National Party condemns Russia’s actions and the catastrophic damage to human life they will bring.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Many years ago, I had the privilege of working in the international headquarters of a student-run student exchange programme that was set up in the aftermath of World War II to promote peace and understanding between nations: l’Association internationale des étudiants en sciences économiques et commerciales. One of my closest friends there—one of my colleagues and flatmates—was Karina Luchinkina from Ukraine, who was an extraordinary young woman of mixed Ukrainian and Russian heritage, and I have been thinking about her and her family still in Ukraine and of the work that we did together to try and promote peace and understanding between nations a great deal in the recent days and weeks.

In the horror of war, it is ordinary people like Karina and her family who suffer the most. The people of Syria know this. The people of Yemen know this. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan know this. Our forebears and those who were involved in the wars of the 20th century know this. So to watch an unfolding and full-scale attack on the people of Ukraine was shocking. It was frightening and it was deeply depressing.

The Green Party strongly condemns President Putin’s extraordinary aggression and violence in the strongest terms. We call on Russia to immediately cease military action against the people of Ukraine and to engage in peace talks meaningfully. And our hearts do go out to the people of Ukraine today. New Zealand is a nation that has committed historically to human rights, to non-violence, and to cooperation at a global level. Multilateral rules-based order and diplomatic engagement are core pillars of New Zealand’s independent foreign policy. What Russia has done cuts across all of that. It stands in stark opposition to peace, sovereignty, and freedom across the world.

Our response must focus, first and foremost, on what we can do to help those that this war will hurt the most: the ordinary people who are caught in the waking nightmare. That we are already seeing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians seeking refuge in other European States, fleeing with little more than the clothes on their back, leaving their homes, their families, their hopes, and their dreams—the Green Party strongly supports the Government’s focus on humanitarian aid to support Ukraine in the first instance.

Whilst the preference, of course, is always for peace to prevail and for people to be able to return to their homes, right now there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people facing an uncertain future in overcrowded refugee camps along the border. The Green Party urges the Government to commit to supporting Ukrainian refugees in every way possible—be that through resettlement or through direct humanitarian support in Europe. That must extend to everybody in Ukraine, regardless of their race or ethnicity, including migrant workers and students. We also know that it is the political activists, the journalists, the human rights defenders, and the rainbow community members who are more likely to be particular targets of the violence from Vladimir Putin’s regime. Now is the moment for New Zealand to deliver on its historic commitment to human rights and to welcome Ukrainian people and their families with open arms.

When it comes to diplomacy, we support New Zealand’s Ministers and officials doing all that they can to support efforts for peaceful de-escalation. The world must work together to resolve this conflict. The international institution that President John F Kennedy referred to as “our last best hope for peace”, the United Nations, is imperfect by design. However we go forward, we must ensure that we uphold the principles of human rights, multilateralism, and the international rules-based order. To this end, we support the diplomatic efforts being made by the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, and we wish her success, however improbable, in her work.

We also support New Zealand making efforts where it can to mediate for peace amongst international partners. And, as a long-term supporter of denuclearisation efforts, New Zealand should continue to push for an end to the long shadow cast by the threat of nuclear conflict.

Despite everything, it has been heartening to see huge numbers of people in Europe and in Russia itself turn out in recent days to protest against the war. It does give me hope that we can yet find a way out of this conflict for the Ukrainian people. A world without war is possible, but it does require enduring commitments by all nations to peace-building and diplomacy. New Zealand may only be a small nation, but we must never lose focus on doing everything that we can to support peace. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. On behalf of ACT, I would like to join with other leaders supporting this motion condemning the barbaric, illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

And I’d like to stand in support of those brave Ukrainians—many of whom only 96 hours ago were shopping and had in their hands their iPhone, looking at Instagram—now dug into trenches around their city defending their home with a military weapon. It is the most extraordinary display of grit and courage from those people—from their leader—and a display of what people are prepared to do to defend their home, to defend their freedom, and we are proud to stand with them and feel we should be doing more to support them, because no country has more to lose than New Zealand when a rules-based, values-based international order is lost and thuggery takes its place. If others are standing up—and they are, in the most extraordinary way, right around the world—to the kind of thuggery exhibited by Vladimir Putin, we, as a small nation, with a history of being right and taking moral stands on global issues of the day, should be right beside them.

I read in the newspaper over the weekend that this is “World War Wired”, a war where people can and are making a difference all over the world, not just through Governments, not just through States, but donating, volunteering, helping in the most unexpected ways, and it is extraordinarily hopeful that, actually, one dictator from one country—despite having, as Stalin said to the Pope, more divisions—does not have the power to overwhelm freedom and democracy. That has to be our hope, but New Zealand has a role to play joining in that “World War Wired” movement.

We need to say to Vladimir Putin: he is frozen out, the walls are going up, and we will not accept him in this world, so long as his actions are unacceptable. And I say, “Good on you.” to Fonterra saying, “Sorry, we’re not going to sell to you. We don’t share your values.” I say, “Good on you.” to our allies around the world who’ve said, “Sorry, no more banking system, because we don’t share those values.” And that is why it is so critical that I join with the call of the National leader that New Zealand has the legal ability to join in implementing similar sanctions at a parliamentary level. This is a Government that will go into urgency in this Parliament at the drop of a hat—doesn’t even have to be urgent. If there was ever a time to use urgency, then passing autonomous sanctions legislation—that’s the time to use urgency right now. And that’s what we should be doing, so we can join in that moral movement against this Government of Vladimir Putin.

And I have to say, for many people this is deeply personal. I can’t claim to have any great connection to Ukraine, but I know someone who does—Nataliya Shchetkova, the proprietor of La Vista restaurant of St Heliers, who came to national attention a few years ago. And I got in touch with her and I said, “I’m so sorry, I can’t imagine what it must be like for your family.” And she said, “All we want is for them to be here.” As the rest of the world opens its borders unconditionally to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees walking across their border—of course it is harder for New Zealand, a country that is literally on the opposite of the world. But if there are to be barriers to those people being reunited, safe, with their family here in New Zealand, surely the barrier should be geographical rather than legal. We should let them come here immediately, in these circumstances.

It’s critical that a worldwide effort ensures the Russian people see that Vladimir Putin, who many of them like—and I know Russian people who like Vladimir Putin. You know why? Because he doubled their standard of living in 10 years. It’s important they see he’s had them frozen out, and they should be asking him, “Why has the rouble just dropped 30 percent in 24 hours, Mr Putin, if you’re so great?” It’s absolutely critical that they’re frozen out and that they are excluded from normal, day-to-day life of the State, so long as they behave in unacceptable ways.

It’s also worth asking where this man came from. And it’s always good to read. A great thing to read right now is an old classic, The Road to Serfdom. The Road to Serfdom tells us that if you have an economic system where you can’t pay people for their efforts, you have to force them. And the enforcement required often looks like the KGB. And organisations all have a culture, and they promote individuals that suit their culture. Vladimir Putin—you can draw a direct line from the socialist experiment in Russia 100 years ago, to the enforcement tactics required to make it work, to the kind of monster it creates who is now terrorising people in Ukraine. That is a question of values.

It is an opportunity to talk about our values of democracy. The first thing I remember seeing on the TV screen was a whole lot of adults very badly dressed in 1980s fashion, tearing down a concrete wall decorated with graffiti. Of course, being six years old at the time, I didn’t know there was a place called Berlin, I didn’t know there was a Cold War, I didn’t know there was a wall—being six, I didn’t know a huge amount about those things. But I knew it was important, and the first thing I remember—it’s seared on my mind—watching on TV was my grandfather’s gravelly voice saying, “Well, it’s good, people uniting.”

And for 20 years after that, I could look around the world and see that democracy and freedom were winning—more and more countries were turning to democracy. It looked like the world was going to work out. Francis Fukuyama said history had ended—or we’d reached the end of history. Helen Clark said that we were living in a benign strategic environment. We had a free-trade agreement with China, the first Western country to do so, as we hoped they, too, would join Western liberal democracy.

The truth is it hasn’t worked out so well over the last 15 years since the great financial crisis. Democracy around the world is practised by fewer people, with less enthusiasm. And that makes for a more dangerous world for a country like New Zealand. That is why we need to reflect strongly on our values, our place in the world, and how we behave at times of crisis such as this. That’s why we should be putting the walls up and freezing them out and giving ourselves the legal ability to do so. That’s why we should be welcoming those who have family connections in New Zealand to the Ukraine without question, the way the European countries are, and if we were to do those things, then we could say that we are at the forefront of the moral reaction that is putting Vladimir Putin in his place and giving the Russian people the courage to put him there too. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Members, this is a sitting of the House at which some members are participating remotely. This follows the House’s adoption of rules allowing such sittings and the determination of the Business Committee that from Tuesday, 1 March, members may participate remotely in sittings of the House.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Can I be heard?

SPEAKER: Yes, you can.

RAWIRI WAITITI: Thank you. Tēnā tātou e hika mā tēnā tātou kua whāiti nei i tēnei rā ki te tautoko i te kōrero kua whārikihia i roto i tō tātou Whare i tēnei rā. Nei rā anō hoki te tangi atu ki a rātou te hunga kua riro tītapu ki te pō. Rātou kua mate i ngā heipūtanga a Rūhia ki runga i a Ukaraina i tēnei rā. Kei te tangi, kei te tangi, kei te tangi.

[Greetings to one and all who have amassed here today to support the issue laid before us in our House. We also mourn the loss of those who have passed. Those who have been killed by the Russian onslaught on Ukraine today. We grieve, we grieve, we grieve.]

We are living through unprecedented and trying times. In the midst of a global pandemic and in the face of climate change and ecological collapse, kotahitanga and unity are more imperative now than ever. When the rich and the powerful play war games, it is the poor and the vulnerable who pay the ultimate price. Our hearts go out to the people of Ukraine, whose worlds were shattered overnight, who will die defending their homeland, and whose families will bear the burden of this war for generations to come. Our hearts also go out to the working people of Russia, who will be sent to their deaths on the rich man’s whim. Their mothers grieve as ours do.

The people of Ukraine are caught in the middle of an imperialist proxy war, the likes of which we have seen in the Middle East and many other countries. Tangata whenua are all too familiar with the evils of imperialism and colonisation. This mamae is still felt today and is why I am speaking in this House on this motion. Te Paati Māori wholeheartedly condemn the unprovoked and unjustified actions of Vladimir Putin, his Government, and the fascist ideologies that enable this type of violence and supremacy. Nō reira e hika mā, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Therefore, greetings one and all.]

Motion agreed to.

SPEAKER: Слава Україні.

Speaker’s Statements

Photography in the Chamber—Remote Sittings

SPEAKER: Members, I just want to do a reminder that despite doing remote sittings, the normal rules as far as photography in the House and the requirement to get permission to do it, and not doing it from the floor, apply. I will take very seriously anyone who breaches that and publishes the photos.

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

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

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

CLERK:

Petition of Claire Dale requesting that the House change the law to substantially increase fines for misusing any mobility parking spaces

petition of Hadassah Meadows requesting that the House immediately repeal the changes made by the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Act No. 2 2021

petition of Danny Tahau Jobe requesting that the House pass legislation to make Aotearoa New Zealand the official name of the country, and

petition of David Barker on behalf of Action for Parent Immigration to New Zealand requesting that the House urge the Government to immediately reinstate the parent category entry requirements as they were before the category was paused in October 2016.

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

CLERK:

Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; the associated National Interest Analysis; and nontreaty status side letters on Ngāti Toa Rangatira’s guardianship of the Haka Ka Mate, New Zealand’s oenological practices, and Scottish whisky localities.

Annual reports for 2020-21:

Canterbury DHB

Capital and Coast DHB

Hutt Valley DHB

MidCentral DHB

Southern DHB

Taranaki DHB

Waikato DHB

Waitematā DHB

Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand

Office of the Children’s Commissioner.

Annual plans of:

Waikato DHB

Waitematā DHB.

Statement of Performance Expectations 2020-21 for:

MidCentral DHB.

Statement of Performance Expectations 2021-22 for:

Canterbury DHB

Capital and Coast DHB

Hutt Valley DHB.

Annual plan, incorporating Statement of Performance Expectations 2020-21 for:

Southern DHB

Taranaki DHB.

Statement of Intent 2019-20 - 2022-23

MidCentral DHB.

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

CLERK:

Report of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the petition of Louise Johnston

reports of the Environment Committee on the:

2020/21 annual review of the Climate Change Commission

2020/21 annual review of the Environmental Protection Authority

petition of George Hobson for Forest and Bird Youth.

report of the Māori Affairs Committee on the briefing on the 2019/20 financial performance of Te Tumu Paeroa

reports of the Petitions Committee on the petitions of Bill Wollerman, Ehab Takawi, Kirsten Van Newtown, and Nurse Practitioners New Zealand, and

report of the Regulations Review Committee on COVID-19 Public Health Response orders.

SPEAKER: The briefing and the COVID-19 orders are set down for consideration.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s policies and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. In particular, I stand by this Government’s decision to reconnect New Zealanders with the world as our public health advice confirms it is safe to do so. That is why, on advice from the Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group and the Director-General of Health, the Government has removed the requirement for fully vaccinated travellers to self-isolate. In addition, the Government has announced it will bring step 2 forward so that New Zealanders from the rest of the world outside of Australia will be able to return home after midnight this Friday. We’re expecting advice shortly on whether we can bring forward the remaining reconnecting steps, including international tourism. Managed isolation has been a crucial factor in our success as a team in responding to COVID-19, and I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the managed isolation and quarantine workers who, for almost two years, have worked so hard to keep us all safe.

David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister tell the House how many COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations will result from her decision to allow New Zealanders to enter the country without isolating from this week, and how many cases would have arisen from a decision to let foreigners enter the country without isolation from this week, and if she can tell us—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! That’s two questions.

David Seymour: It’s one question, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: It is two questions.

David Seymour: It’s a contrast between two figures.

SPEAKER: It doesn’t matter where your brackets are. The member’s asked for two different numbers; that’s two questions.

David Seymour: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I—

SPEAKER: No, the member’s finished his question.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the member would be so—if I could so put it—brave or bold to put his questions on notice, I would be happy to provide the specific modelling that we receive as a Government when making these decisions. However—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Brave or bold—brave or bold?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: However, Mr Brownlee, for step 2 of the reconnection, under self-isolation requirements, we could expect between 100 and 485 cases to enter into New Zealand. However, that is with an estimate of 65 percent of cases being impacted by self-isolation. So when it comes to the number that would come in without self-isolation, you can assume it will be higher, and, of course, higher still if you have more than, say, 10,000 entries, which is what that modelling is based on.

David Seymour: Is the Prime Minister seriously telling New Zealand she just decided to let New Zealanders in—but not foreigners—without isolation, she doesn’t know what the impacts of those decisions will be on case and hospitalisation numbers, but if David Seymour put the question on notice at question time, she would know that critical information?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Perhaps the member would choose to listen to the answer. With 10,000 arrivals in New Zealand, we have an estimate of between 100 and 485 cases coming in at the border. However, that is modelled with seven days of self-solation, so you would expect a higher rate of cases if you were not to have self-isolation. You would expect even further cases if you have not just 10,000 entries but tens of thousands of entries. We have asked our experts to consider what the likely impact would be of bringing forward tourism and a wider reopening. As you will have heard Professor David Skegg say yesterday, his initial response to that question is that you would wish to wait until after New Zealand has come through the peak of Omicron to ensure that New Zealanders in-country have the ability to get the response from their health system they need while we experience this significant pandemic.

David Seymour: So how many cases would New Zealand expect, and how many additional hospitalisations, if the border was to be opened without isolation, and based on that answer, has she considered the cost—

SPEAKER: That’s two questions again, Mr Seymour.

David Seymour: —of keeping the borders closed to New Zealand business?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m not going to traverse the answer for a third time because I don’t wish to waste the member’s supplementaries. On the last part of his question—have we considered the cost of business—of course, at all times we consider the impact on the likes of tourism, on the likes of our regional economies, but we must also factor in the impact on our health system. Our health system is doing an extraordinary job at present, but we do have close to 400 hospitalisations at the moment and we have not yet reached our peak of this Omicron wave. To simply carte blanche open the borders—as the member is suggesting and as the member has suggested consistently through this pandemic, might I add—would be at a great cost, potentially, to New Zealanders, and we’re not willing to do that at this time.

David Seymour: If the Prime Minister can’t put a number on additional cases and hospitalisations from letting foreigners enter the country without hospitalisation, then how do people avoid the conclusion that she’s just making it up and the decision making is now not based on evidence but entirely political?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I utterly reject the premise of that member’s question, and if he had listened to Professor Skegg yesterday, he himself made the point that the reason they have given the advice that we can open up at this stage to New Zealanders and those who are otherwise eligible is because of the Te Pūnaha Matatini modelling that suggests that the numbers we would have are numbers that we can manage in-country at this point. He also went on to suggest that a wider reopening would be something that you would wish to consider after you’ve come through the wave. I would also acknowledge Philip Hill, who is a member of that advisory committee. He believed that we should actually wait to even reopen to New Zealanders without self-isolation until after the peak. I’ll finish with a quote from Professor Skegg’s letter: “In November 2021, for example, there were concerted calls to drop all quarantine requirements for most vaccinated people arriving in Auckland, on the grounds that such travellers were less likely to be infected than Auckland residents at this time. This would have led to a major increase in Delta cases. Fortunately, the Government did not yield to the pressure, so our Delta outbreak was brought under control before the arrival of Omicron. In Australia, hospitals were still struggling to deal with the very large number of sick patients infected with the Delta variant when the Omicron outbreak took off.” That is sage advice from a public health expert, and we will continue to seek the advice of experts before making such significant decisions, rather than the view of that member.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister accept that every time I’ve put down a specific question to her on notice this Parliament, she has transferred it to another Minister to answer, and, regardless of her answer to that question, will she commit to answer questions put to her in future?

SPEAKER: Order! No, that question is ironic.

David Seymour: Point of order. Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: The Prime Minister has no option but to answer questions which are put to her in this House. That is an obligation of the Prime Minister. For the member to suggest that she doesn’t is wrong. The member knows it’s wrong and he’s being deliberately disorderly. If he continues this, I will regard him as being grossly disorderly.

David Seymour: Point of order. Mr Speaker, if I can clarify—I have no intention to be disorderly. The point I’m making is that the Prime Minister—and you accepted the answer—criticised me for not putting a more specific question on notice. I was simply asking her if in the future, if I put specific questions on notice, will she not transfer them to other Ministers, as she always has? I think people have—

SPEAKER: Order! The member has now said that four times. Does the member want a further supplementary?

David Seymour: Of the 344 people reported to be hospitalised yesterday with COVID-19, how many were admitted with COVID-19 and how many were admitted for another reason and then tested for COVID-19 once in hospital?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Speaking to that question directly, we have asked a number of times whether or not it’s possible to provide a breakdown. We’ve had the clinical leads in the Northern region give us their estimates. It is not at all the majority—the vast majority are admitted for COVID—but there is a portion who may, for instance, come in for broken arms, appendicitis, who are tested as part of the surveillance testing at A & E and picked up for having COVID. But it is, as I say, not the majority of cases. I’d also point out that, actually, that is the case for most countries we would compare ourselves to. They also record everyone with COVID. So if you’re comparing hospitalisation rates, we are still comparing apples with apples. To conclude, I look forward to answering that member’s question at No. 9, specifically on notice, on Ukraine, as the Prime Minister—untransferred.

SPEAKER: The Prime Minister will put her mask on and then I’ll call someone else.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: I’ve never regarded the Minister for COVID as a wet, but—the Hon Grant Robertson.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The international credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s reaffirmed New Zealand’s local currency credit rating to triple A and the foreign currency rating to AA+, both with a stable outlook. The agency once again praised the Government, saying New Zealand had weathered the pandemic better than most countries in terms of health, fiscal, and economic outcomes.

Hon Simon Bridges: How’s business confidence?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Mr Bridges, I prefer the international ratings agency than your reckons on this matter. Mr Speaker, Standard & Poor’s report is recognition that the Government’s continued health-led response to the ongoing pandemic strategy has been the right one for the economy.

Dr Duncan Webb: What else did the report say about New Zealand’s financial position?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Standard & Poor’s noted that New Zealand’s relatively better management of the pandemic meant the country’s credit position can withstand the potential damage of the shock to the economy. The agency is forecasting New Zealand’s fiscal deficits to narrow materially from the June 2023 fiscal year towards a surplus in 2025. This is expected to ease pressure on the Government’s debt levels. Standard & Poor’s said that while debt is much higher than in the past due to responding to the pandemic, it remains below most of New Zealand’s peers. It noted that if Budget deficits in the future were less than 1 percent of GDP, the foreign currency credit rating could be upgraded to triple A, in line with the country’s triple A local currency credit rating.

Dr Duncan Webb: Why are credit ratings important?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, otherwise we’d be left with the reckons of the Opposition finance spokesperson! But in this case, the ratings are important for ensuring that the cost of our borrowing remains low. Our triple A and AA+ plus ratings give people more confidence that New Zealand is a good place to invest. It also helps ensure our debt-servicing costs are kept as low as possible. Overall, the upgrade is a sign of confidence in the economy and that the hard work of New Zealanders and Government decisions have put us in a strong position to recover from the ongoing pandemic and that no one is listening to the Opposition finance spokesperson run down New Zealanders and run down their hard work in growing the economy.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. Overnight, New Zealand and the United Kingdom signed a historic free-trade agreement eliminating all tariffs on New Zealand’s exports, with duties removed on 99.5 percent of current trade from entry into force. This deal is expected to save our exporters $37 million per year on tariff elimination alone, and boost New Zealand’s GDP between $700 million and $1 billion, and the agreement will be welcomed by key sectors across the country. The agreement is a major milestone in this Government’s plan to accelerate our recovery from COVID-19 and grow our exports. This is also our first bilateral trade agreement to include a specific article on climate change, and provisions towards eliminating environmentally harmful subsidies such as fossil fuel subsidies. I’m pleased to see that the other side of the House is celebrating this agreement with us.

Christopher Luxon: Does she accept we have a cost of living crisis, when Kiwis are paying hundreds more at the checkout and hundreds more at the pump, compared to a year ago?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I, of course, keep a close eye on those petrol pump prices, as members around me well know, and that is, of course, one of the contributing factors that we’ve seen in recent times. We’ve heard much commentary around the impact on fuel prices—most recently Ukraine impacting the supply chains, issues caused by COVID, and increases in demand—and that is being felt here in New Zealand. We do expect, of course, as the Governor of the Reserve Bank has said, for that to peak and then start to come away. But we are not the only country experiencing this at present. It’s why we’ve made changes like, for instance, increases in benefit, minimum wage changes, and the increase in the family tax credit.

Christopher Luxon: Does she agree with media reports that the average Kiwi is paying $5,000 more a year for food, petrol, and housing than a year ago?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It’s one of the reasons we keep a very close eye on what’s happening with wages, as well. You would have seen from last week the release of those household income surveys an increase in the median wage of over 5 percent. We’ve worked very hard as a Government to make sure that, in terms of housing affordability, we see incomes grow, and that we see incomes grow over and above those increases that they see in the cost of living. That has been occurring until more recent times when we, alongside many other countries, have seen the impact of a simultaneous COVID recovery, and its impact on inflation.

Christopher Luxon: Is she honestly saying that Kiwis who have seen their real incomes fall over the past year shouldn’t be concerned because inflation four years ago wasn’t that bad?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No, what I am pointing to is our record.

Christopher Luxon: How are renters supposed to get ahead when annual rents have gone up by more than $7,000 under her Government?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’d note, under that member’s Government, rents, of course, continued to increase as well. Of course, over the last year rental costs have increased at about 5.4 percent; average household disposable income at 5.1 percent. Now, of course, we want to see that in reverse, which has been a goal of this Government and continues to be. It’s why we’ve taken the measures we have on housing. It’s why also we have taken the measures we have to lift the incomes of low and middle income earners.

Christopher Luxon: Does she agree with economist Brad Olsen, who warns that costs are going to keep rising, which means “It’s harder and harder to put food on the table and keep a roof over your head.”; if not, why not?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: What I look to are the projections beyond what is an extraordinary period right now in our history—a one-in-100-year pandemic and the economic impacts from that. And you can see those who are looking ahead, forecasting that we will come out the other side of that extraordinary period where constraints on supply, increases in demand are having an impact on inflation, and you’ve seen the Reserve Bank commentating on when they expect that to be. In the meantime, we do have a job to do as Government to make sure that we’re supporting families through that period in things like that increase in the family tax credit, benefit increases, and increases in the minimum wage, which I note the Opposition have not supported, and, therefore, I really question what it is the member is proposing that he would do to support families through this time.

Christopher Luxon: What tools beyond interest rates does she believe the Government has to rein in inflation?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, I note that the member believes that it all comes down to our spending in core areas. So my question to him would be: does he plan to cut the thousands of nurses we’re invested in or does he perhaps intend to cut the teachers?

SPEAKER: No, no. Order! There’s a one-way track for questions in this one and the member’s not allowed to ask the Leader of the Opposition questions.

Hon Simon Bridges: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Are you going to make the Prime Minister actually answer the question the Leader of the Opposition gave?

SPEAKER: Well, some of us could just about take the inference from the question that there might be another tool which the Prime Minister was asking the Leader of the Opposition if he supported. It was wrong of her to ask about his support for that tool, but not to mention it.

Christopher Luxon: When she said, “Look, I acknowledge that there will be times when Government policies will have an impact on inflation.”, which specific policies was she referring to?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I certainly wasn’t referring to cameras on boats, which is the only thing the member has pointed to. Look, to answer both this question and his previous one, what we have continually pointed to is the international environment that we’re in presently and the impact it’s having on inflation—of course, examples like fuel being a critical component of the inflation increases we’ve seen. But we’re not alone in that, and I would reflect on the comments that have been made by the Reserve Bank, where “Global inflation is expected to peak during 2022 and then moderate as supply disruptions are gradually resolved.” So we are referring to both those as having an impact right now but also, when that abates, we’ll also likely see inflation come away. In the meantime, the Leader of the Opposition seems to be suggesting that we should not have invested in the wage subsidy, that we should not have invested in our health response, or perhaps he’s referring to our core Crown investment in things like teachers, nurses, and their wages. If he suggests that we should cut those, he needs to be honest with New Zealand.

David Seymour: Point of order. You have often cut off and restricted questions for going well beyond their relevance and scope. How is it possibly helping the House get answers to questions to have the Prime Minister speculate—

SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat—[Interruption] The member will resume his seat. Judgment on the lengths of questions and answers is mine and mine alone, and it is disorderly to bring it up by point of order. The member’s had two warnings. If he is disorderly again today, he won’t be in the Chamber.

Christopher Luxon: Are falling real incomes just the price that Kiwis have to pay for her Government’s desire to spend billions on vanity projects like underground trams?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I completely reject the premise of that question—and what I point to is a record by this Government in making decisions that boost the incomes of particularly our low and middle income New Zealanders and where we have seen wages outstrip the increase in the cost of living. And the member’s reference to some projects I’ve seen, he’s, on the one hand, said that he wants to cut transport projects; on the other, he’s had members out there at the ribbon cutting, supporting them.

Question No. 4—Energy and Resources

4. RACHEL BROOKING (Labour) (remote) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What action is the Government taking to decarbonise New Zealand’s transport sector?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources) (remote): The Prime Minister and I recently announced the successful projects that the Government is co-funding through the first two rounds of the Low Emissions Transport Fund. The fund is about demonstrating and adopting high potential low emission transport technologies, innovation, and infrastructure to help accelerate and maximise the decarbonisation of how we power our transport sector. The $6.45 million of Government funding is being matched by more than $9 million of private sector co-funding.

Rachel Brooking: What notable projects have been funded in the first Low Emissions Transport Fund round?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Just three examples of projects being funded are: Firth Industries who will deploy New Zealand’s first electric battery-swap concrete mixer truck; we’re working with Fonterra to enable New Zealand’s first electric milk tanker—the tanker will operate with battery-swap technology at the Waitoa Depot near Tauranga; and Bayes Coachlines will provide a passenger bus with solar panels, providing 5 to 10 percent of its own power. These projects are helping demonstrate what is technically and commercially viable, enabling businesses to invest in their own decarbonisation with greater confidence.

Rachel Brooking: What investments have been made in charging infrastructure through the Low Emissions Transport Fund rounds?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The Government continues to invest to build network coverage and accelerate the roll-out of the nationwide electric vehicle charging network. The funding has enabled a faster roll-out of a further 25 chargers distributed around the country, including in Te Tai Tokerau, Napier, New Plymouth, Masterton, Christchurch, and Rākaia. The latest investment increases the number of chargers the Government has supported since 2017 to 1,313. Further investment will be focused on filling gaps in New Zealand’s charging network. We are now seeing real progress in the roll-out, with more people able to access charging infrastructure where and when they need it.

Simeon Brown: Has the Minister seen the Waikato Chamber of Commerce report which states the Te Huia train service emits 11 kilograms more carbon dioxide per passenger than people using their own cars between Hamilton and Auckland, and if so will she be advising the Minister of Transport to cancel this service to help reduce New Zealand’s carbon footprint?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes, I have seen that report, and so has my colleague, the Minister of Housing, who I have discussed it with. Funding this service, and ensuring that we are planning for the future is critical not only for looking how it is we are going to provide housing in the future but the way that we do that in a decarbonised and low emissions way. So no, I will not be recommending cutting such an important service.

Question No. 5—Finance

5. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all his statements and actions on the cost of living?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, in their context.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he accept what the Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee said last week in its Monetary Policy Statement that “Wage growth continues to lag CPI inflation.”, making many Kiwis poorer, and, if so, what does he intend to do about it?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, on this side of the House we have a very clear position that increasing the minimum wage is one way to begin to do that, in contrast to the Opposition, who have three different positions: one where the member says it’s not on, one where Nicola Willis says it is, and one where Chris Luxon can’t make up his mind.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he also accept that in order to rein in the inflation the Monetary Policy Statement foresees, the official cash rate increases to 140 basis points over the next couple of years to over 3 percent, meaning higher interest rates and, again, less money for many Kiwis, and, if so, what does he intend to do about that?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I know the member is new to his portfolio but I’m pretty sure he will be aware that the setting of the official cash rate is the responsibility of the Reserve Bank, just as in 2014 and 2015 when that member was a Minister and the official cash rate was 3.5 percent it was the responsibility of the Reserve Bank.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he accept what the ANZ has said recently that “a higher than otherwise official cash rate may be needed to lean against even more fiscal stimulus come Budget 2022” or, in other words, his spending may be forcing interest rates higher than they need to be, hurting even more Kiwis?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, and on this side of the House, as we’ve continually done over the four years that we’ve been here, we will make sure that there is a careful balance between spending that we need to do in the economy and to support New Zealanders and a fiscal balance. The member opposite failed when he was on television the other day to actually be able to say what he’d cut. What’s he not going to do?

SPEAKER: Order! I think the member is beginning to go a bit far in these matters, but I will say to the member asking the question that I was probably a little lax in letting him have his first supplementary, which didn’t relate to the primary question.

Hon Simon Bridges: What part of the ANZ’s recent statement that “It is simply not sustainable for the Government to keep spending at the pace it has been.” doesn’t he understand?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member will note from the forecasts that were included in the Budget Policy Statement that spending does begin to track down after the one-off increase that there will be in this year’s Budget, and I would note to the member that spending in response to a crisis is not new. The previous National Government did it and saw spending as a percentage of GDP rise to just over 34 percent, very similar to where we are now.

Hon Simon Bridges: Wasn’t he correct in 2019 when he told RNZ, “What I do know is that fiscal and monetary policy do need to work together”, and if so, why can’t he now in the lead-up to Budget 2022 take his own advice and rein in the big Government spending?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I most certainly was right in 2019, if I can say so modestly. What I would say is that we have seen fiscal and monetary policy work together to get New Zealanders through this particular global crisis that we’re seeing. I can only refer to the words of novice economic commentator Simon Bridges, who said on television the other day, “I’ve also made clear, inflation is international.”

Question No. 6—COVID-19 Response

6. Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Is he confident the current COVID-19 response settings are informed by best evidence on how to protect people from this virus without using lockdowns?

SPEAKER: Before I call the member, can I just ask the people who are running the TV system, having Dr Woods as a background is probably not the best use of the time.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yes. The Government’s overall response to COVID-19 has put the safety and interests of all New Zealanders squarely at its centre, combined with input from experts and the latest evidence, which has meant that New Zealand has had one of the lowest hospitalisation and death rates as a result of COVID-19 in the world.

Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: What steps is the Government taking to protect the health and safety of especially health workers, who may be exposed to COVID-19 at their workplace?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Our hospitals and our health system as a whole have good training and good knowledge around infection prevention and control, and our experts have been working with them to ensure that they have access to all of the resources that they need. So if I think about N95 masks, for example, we have been making sure that we have a plentiful supply of those for our front-line health workforce, and that includes in the broader health workforce—so places like aged residential care, those working to provide health services to those with disabilities, and so on have access to N95 masks. In terms of other workers, we’ve been making sure they’ve had access to what we colloquially call the surgical masks—so those ones with the blue frontages—which are also very, very effective. In addition to that, we have put in place a Close Contact Exemption Scheme, which means that only those who absolutely have to go back to work should be going back to work if they have a household contact who has COVID-19, because that also helps to keep them and others safe in the workplace.

Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Further to that, what steps has the Government taken to ensure that supply of N95 masks or equivalent are distributed to the rest of the New Zealanders during the Omicron outbreak?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There is a limited supply of N95 masks and they are, of course, significantly more expensive than the other masks that we have available. So the workforces that they have been supplied to include aged residential care facilities, disability support services, homecare support services, mental health and addiction services, and pharmacy, who have been able to access them through the Ministry of Health. Others, of course, are able to purchase their own, but as I indicated, it is more expensive. To ensure that people have access to quality masks, though, those other surgical masks have been available, and the Ministry of Health has been working to make them available through the Ministry of Education, and through the Ministry of Social Development, where they’re being distributed to organisations like food banks and other avenues. Te Arawhiti have been working with iwi providers to make sure they’re available. The Ministry for Pacific Peoples have been making them available, including through church networks; the Ministry for Ethnic Communities have them available; and around 750,000 masks have been made available to community health providers, who are servicing wide regional networks as a one-off supply. So we have been making sure that there are appropriate masks available for the particular context.

Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Is he aware that tamariki Māori in rural areas have the lowest vaccination rate of all children, and, if so, does he intend to urgently increase resources to Māori providers for vaccine outreach?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, I am aware of that statistic, and it is a stat that we should all be concerned about. We have put significant additional resourcing into our Māori health providers in order to try and reach into some of those communities. It is a more challenging group of people to reach and we need to be patient there. One of the things that I’m acutely aware of is that the feedback we get from those communities is that they don’t want to be stigmatised by the discussion of vaccination, and that also we are experiencing quite significant pockets of vaccine hesitancy and misinformation in those communities, and the best way to approach that is carefully and patiently, and that is exactly what those health providers are doing, and they have our full support to do that.

Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: What advice, if any, has he received on instituting a test-to-stay policy for close contacts in schools and early childhood centres, as has been used overseas to limit classroom transmission?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That is something that we keep under close review. One of the things that we have stressed to schools and early learning services is that they should only be accessing the Close Contact Exemption Scheme for their staff where that is an absolute last resort because, in most cases, in fact, schools and early childhood services will have other things that they can do to keep those people who have a household contact who has COVID-19 out of the workplace. In terms of the broader student population, though, that is something that we are keeping under review, and it may well be that, as we sort of head towards the peak of this particular Omicron outbreak, we do more in that area.

Dr Elizabeth Kerekere: Is he confident that the community care available during phase 3 will be able to identify people who need hospitalisation, including due to low oxygen levels, and provide timely hospital transfers?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: This is, of course, one of the things that we have worked through very, very carefully. There is no system that is absolutely foolproof here, and we do rely on people self-monitoring for symptoms—and reporting back in where their symptoms start to change. So a really, really important message for anybody who is at home isolating because they have COVID-19: if their symptoms worsen, if they are starting to experience significant health impacts, then ring 111. That is exactly what they should do because we want to make sure that they’re getting the healthcare that they need. It is important that, for those who have relatively mild symptoms, that they stay home and they get better, and they make sure that those health services are available to those who really need them, whose symptoms could be getting worse.

Question No. 7—Health

7. Dr SHANE RETI (National) (remote) to the Minister of Health: How many inpatient events have been cancelled, in total, since the Delta strain lockdown on 17 August 2021, and how many people are currently waiting more than four months for a first specialist assessment?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): The Ministry of Health’s latest reporting for the week ending 20 February 2022 estimates that approximately 7,219 in-patient elective procedures were deferred nationally due to COVID-19 since August 2021. As the member will be aware from my answer to his written question, these are estimates subject to revision by DHBs. Results for December 2021 show that there are 32,896 patients waiting longer than four months for a first specialist appointment. This compares to 19,765 in September 2021.

As I have said in this House previously, the reality is that pandemics disrupt health systems. All services reduce procedures in order to keep patients and health workers safe. Every effort is being made to reduce the disruption of planned care. Since the alert level 4 was lifted on 21 September 2021, many of the DHBs have reduced waiting times in their planned care schedule. DHBs have put a number of measures in place to maintain delivery. This includes prioritising urgent and non-deferrable cases, outsourcing where possible, running additional surgical lists and extending the use of providers that can deliver minor procedures in a day-case environment. We know that the Auckland based DHBs—Auckland, Counties Manukau, and Waitematā—have continued to be at the centre of the response to the latest outbreak and continue to see disruption to their schedules, but even these DHBs have worked immensely hard to keep delivering services and have lifted their delivery.

Dr Shane Reti: When he said recently that the management of the health system had been “somewhat of a leader in terms of minimising harm”, how does he explain his answer to written questions last week that a woman in Taranaki has now been waiting 789 days for a first specialist assessment?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: What that member fails to mention is of course that for some of those outlier and exceptional cases, there are a number of factors that sit behind the delay of their first specialist appointment, often including the patient’s own request for a delay. I think what’s important—as the member will know as a health specialist and health researcher—is that, you know, we tend to look at mediums and means as indicative of the performance of the system. In any event, what we can say is that although the system in the early stage of the August outbreak cancelled and deferred procedures, since then many of those procedures have managed to catch up and, in fact, in December what we saw across the public health system as a whole—85 percent achievement of planned care procedures against that plan, which was a significant improvement in previous months given the disruption caused by the pandemic.

Dr Shane Reti: Does he believe he has minimised harm to the woman at North Shore Hospital who has been on the priority 1 waiting list since July, with specialist concerns that she may have thyroid cancer, who has now been told this type of elective surgery has been cancelled?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m not familiar with that individual case and even if I were I wouldn’t be disclosing patient details in a public forum such as this. What I can say is that I am satisfied with the response of our DHBs, including Waitematā and all those Auckland DHBs, who have been under immense pressure responding to the Delta outbreak since August and now the Omicron outbreak, now seeing over 300 patients admitted just in the last few weeks alone for treatment, having to again defer procedures. They are doing what they need to do, what they can do, safely and properly, to keep patients well and staff safe, and they are doing what clinicians do in these circumstances: appropriately prioritising and triaging and keeping as many people as safe as possible.

Dr Shane Reti: How has his leadership minimised harm to people with lung cancer who the cancer agency state have had a 30 percent fall in bronchoscopies?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: One thing this Government has done is increase funding to Pharmac by 25 percent because it was virtually static under the previous Government, and we have significantly added a number of cancer treatments funded by Pharmac too. In fact, we added, outside the Budget cycle, another $60 million to enable Pharmac to fund additional cancer treatments. We have continued the roll-out of the bowel screening programme because that was underfunded by the previous Government when it started. We’ve all but completed the roll-out of that programme. This is a Government, through those measures and the establishment of the Cancer Control Agency, that takes cancer seriously in a way that never has been before.

Dr Shane Reti: How has his leadership minimised harm from the report of 147 surgeries that were cancelled at Counties Manukau in the past two weeks?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I don’t know whether the member has noticed, but we’re not only two years into a pandemic but we are, sort of, about three weeks into one of the most significant outbreaks of the total COVID pandemic that we have ever seen. So we’re now up to, roughly, 100,000 active cases in our communities right across New Zealand. We have over 300 people in hospital in Auckland alone as a consequence of the pandemic. The DHBs have been planning for this, but part of their planning is to make sure they have room in hospital for the people with the very serious respiratory conditions they’ve got as a consequence of COVID, and that has meant deferring planned care. That is what they are doing. It is a perfectly orthodox, normal response to a pandemic that our DHBs are responding to appropriately.

Dr Shane Reti: When the director-general said today that the staffing of hospital beds is an issue that will have an impact on in-patient procedures, how many staffed hospital beds are currently available across New Zealand?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m not quite sure what the member is referring to by staffed hospital beds, but I do point out to the member, one of the other consequences of the outbreak is that when staff are household contacts and are required under current protocols to isolate, that does have an impact on the staffing of hospitals, and that is happening now too. So part of the planning of the DHBs is not only planning for a significant increase in the number of patients with COVID who need treatment—particularly for those difficult respiratory conditions—but also planning for a reduction in staff because they have to respond to their exposure or risk of infection, particularly when they are a household contact. That has all been planned for, that is being played out at the moment, and staff and patients are being kept safe as a result.

Question No. 8—COVID-19 Response

8. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) (remote) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What recent announcements has the Government made on reconnecting New Zealand to the rest of the world?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yesterday Cabinet agreed to remove the self-isolation requirements for fully vaccinated travellers. Advice from the Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group and the Director-General of Health is that it’s now an appropriate time to drop the requirement for self-isolation for fully vaccinated travellers after they arrive in New Zealand. We were already in the process of removing the requirement for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for that group. Now that we are two years into the pandemic, the balance of risk has shifted from our border and into our community. As the pandemic evolves, we are evolving in our response as well. Getting tested is now quicker and easier, requirements for isolation have been simplified to only those who share a household, and care in the community is focused towards those who are most in need of support.

Tangi Utikere: When will this change come into effect, and what will it mean for New Zealanders overseas?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: From 11.59 p.m. on Wednesday, 2 March—so tomorrow night—vaccinated travellers entering New Zealand will no longer need to self-isolate. That means that Kiwis coming home will be able to step off the plane and immediately—once they’ve been through customs—connect with family and friends and enjoy all that New Zealand has to offer. The Government’s also confirmed that we’ll be bringing forward step 2 so that New Zealanders from the rest of the world can return from midnight this Friday, 4 March. Cabinet is also going to be regularly reviewing the remaining steps over the coming weeks.

Tangi Utikere: What requirements will remain on international returnees in order to protect the safety of all New Zealanders?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Travellers will still be required to have a negative pre-departure test before they board a flight to New Zealand, and they will need to undertake two rapid antigen tests, the first when they arrive in New Zealand, and the second five or six days after they have arrived here. If they return a positive result, they’ll be required to report that result and isolate for the same period as a community case of COVID-19. Returnees will also be asked to follow up any positive rapid antigen tests with a PCR test. That will allow us to run whole genome sequencing for new cases that have been detected amongst people who have come across the border, which will help us to determine any new variants that might be coming into the country. That means that we can keep tabs on what’s happening at our border and the emergence of any new variants that could be of concern to us.

Chris Bishop: What instructions, if any, have been given to MIQ staff around processing applications for early release from MIQ in the last week, and what does he say to Michael Brown, who was recently denied early release to visit his father in ICU just yesterday despite testing negative three times in a row over the last five days?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I won’t comment on individual cases in MIQ, as has long been my practice of doing that. But in terms of the early release from MIQ, people will be released from MIQ early as a result of the announcements that we made yesterday.

Tangi Utikere: In response to my earlier question to the Minister, what impact will these decisions have on the ongoing use of MIQ?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It will have a significant impact on the use of MIQ, and can I begin by picking up where the Prime Minister left off in her earlier comments of thanking all those who have been involved in running our managed isolation and quarantine facilities over the last two years. I want to acknowledge that it has been a difficult job—it’s been more difficult at some times than others—and many of those who have been doing that work have paid a significant personal cost for their involvement in MIQ. So I want to extend a very genuine thanks to them for their commitment. Their hard work is one of the reasons New Zealand has enjoyed such long periods of being COVID-free, and so we thank them. We will now be starting to scale back our MIQ operations. It will have an impact on those workers, and we’ll be talking to them about that over the next few weeks. We do expect to retain some MIQ capacity, so we’ll still need that at the moment for unvaccinated travellers and potentially also to support some of those cases in the community who are unable to isolate safely if they need to. So there will still need to be some MIQ capacity, but we’ll be working through that over the next week or two.

Question No. 9—Prime Minister

9. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Is the New Zealand Government planning to take further measures to support Ukraine and stand against Russia’s unprovoked invasion; if so, what is stopping the Government from implementing these measures right now?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. As I said in the motion earlier today, New Zealand has not yet reached the extent of the measures we will take to condemn the recent unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine by Russia. We will continue to look at measures to condemn this act of war, including measures to target Russian finances. To this effect, after exploring the role our Overseas Investment Office and Overseas Investment Act could play in further restricting incoming investment, we have subsequently sought advice on a specific Russian sanctions bill. We expect to engage with other parties on this course of action shortly. As a country, we moved quickly in condemning the invasion and immediately implemented a number of measures in response to Russia’s actions, some of which are covered by other countries’ sanction regimes or are at least similar. All put us in line with our partners’ response. These are: targeted travel bans against Russian Government officials and other individuals associated with the invasion of Ukraine, the prohibition of the export of all goods to Russian military and security forces, and the suspension of bilateral foreign ministry consultations until further notice. New Zealand is also contributing to the humanitarian effort and has provided an initial $2 million in humanitarian aid to support those in Ukraine, and we’re continuing to work through options that are consistent with New Zealand’s unequivocal opposition to Russia’s actions.

Brooke van Velden: Does she agree that if New Zealand’s laws now currently allowed the Government to impose stronger sanctions, we would be better placed to stand with other liberal democracies against Russia’s aggression, and if so, will the Government introduce an autonomous sanctions regime under urgency?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I reject the premise of the member’s question that we are not standing with other international counterparts. We very much are. You’ll see they’ve introduced export restrictions, as we have. They have introduced travel bans, as we have. We were an early mover on humanitarian assistance, as we often are. Where there perhaps are differences are, for instance, where countries have made moves through SWIFT—that is not something that New Zealand has a contribution to make, given the way that system works; the freezing of Russia’s central bank assets; or bans on exports to Russia that extend beyond dual-use goods. That includes aircraft and oil refinery equipment or, for instance, freezing, for example, Nord Stream 2. So you’ll see that where there has been a difference in approach by countries, it’s often been because they have a very targeted area which would be impactful for Russia that perhaps is less so for us. That does not mean that there isn’t more we can do, and we already are exploring a targeted piece of law.

Brooke van Velden: Will the Government consider fast-tracking Critical Purpose Visitor Visas for citizens of Ukraine who have family or work connections here, and then make them eligible for residence as refugees once in New Zealand, similar to what it did for refugees from Afghanistan last year?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: So the Minister has already been liaising with his department over prioritising urgent visa applications from Ukrainian nationals. My understanding is that they’re already in a position to do that and are doing that. When it comes to the processing of refugee applications or inclusion of refugees generally, obviously we have doubled our quota for refugees. That enables us greater capacity. Of course, there is pressure from a number of crises in that regard, but we always work through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for that category, and so there’s obviously a process to go through there, but we do have more capacity than we did under the last Government.

Brooke van Velden: Will the Government consider allowing businesses to sponsor refugees from Ukraine if they agree to cover housing, health, and other costs, and if not, why not?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Currently there is the ability of community organisations to be a part of that kind of programme. I couldn’t speak specifically to the current scale of that. Obviously, some of our refugee quota has been impacted by COVID. We have, however, taken very direct action to at least make sure that did not act as a blockage to us responding immediately to the crisis in Afghanistan. It’s fair to say that has put pressure on our community organisations who traditionally work with refugees. My final point: Ukraine wants us to get their home back, so of course we have to be mindful of what role we can play in the future for those who may not wish to return, but we also have to make sure at the same time we are not giving up on their ability to return to their homeland, and that is where a strong focus of New Zealand and all like-minded partners is.

Brooke van Velden: Point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was relatively specific about businesses being able to sponsor refugees, rather than community organisations, and the programme that the Prime Minister mentioned is specific to approved community organisations.

SPEAKER: I will ask the Prime Minister to elaborate on her answer.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I thought it was implicit in my response that what we currently have is a community-based sponsorship regime. When it comes to businesses, of course, they tend to do that through work visas.

Brooke van Velden: Will the Government expel the Russian ambassador from New Zealand?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We’ve not removed any options from the table at present. I would note that that is a significant step that hasn’t been taken by many at this stage, and in part that is because at the same time we have to factor in our ability to continue to look after New Zealanders in the region too. So there is that consequence. My understanding is that at present there have been some who have recalled their own representation—only, I believe, three countries have done that at this stage. But, as I’ve said, nothing is off the table.

Question No. 10—Building and Construction

10. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (remote) to the Minister for Building and Construction: What recent reports has she seen regarding education and employment opportunities in the building and construction sector?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for Building and Construction) (remote): I have seen a report that shows employment and education opportunities in the construction sector are on the rise, outperforming targets set by the Construction Skills Action Plan in 2018. This is a result of a strong role the sector is playing to support COVID-19 recovery, enabled by this Government’s significant investment in infrastructure and housing. Since we launched the Construction Skills Action Plan, over 30,000 people have been supported into construction-related education or employment opportunities. I’m pleased to report that this milestone has exceeded the action plan’s target by more than sevenfold. This Government will continue to invest in our construction sector to ensure we have the skills, capacity, and capabilities we need to build back better from COVID-19.

Arena Williams: Thank you, Mr Speaker. What initiatives has the Government put in place to help deliver the Construction Skills Action Plan?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Much of the success of the Construction Skills Action Plan is the result of a coordinated effort between Government departments and sector employers to play our part in growing talent in the sector. We have put in place a number of initiatives to deliver on the action plan, such as Mana in Mahi—thank you, Minister Sepuloni—which, as of October last year, has supported 3,500 young people into education and employment opportunities within the sector. It’s also included the leveraging of the Government’s procurement programme—thank you, Minister Nash—to ensure the Government agencies continue [Audio missing] development and training when evaluating tenders. These are just a few of the initiatives we have put in place to progress the action plan and to deliver—

Hon Member: Can I mute that?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: —a more resilient construction sector.

Arena Williams: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! No, no, the member doesn’t have the call. I’m going to make two points now. One is that members have been briefed, as part of their training, that there is sometimes a delay in getting to a member remotely. I’m not going to put up with criticism of the staff who are involved in that when there is such a delay, and/or comments, as we did have. The second point I’ll make is that patsy questions and answers have a limit, and the last answer went beyond that limit. And therefore, I’m now going to call Hon Gerry Brownlee for the next question.

Chris Bishop: Point of order.

SPEAKER: Well, is the member going to disagree with the ruling I’ve just made? Because I’m prepared to reverse it.

Chris Bishop: No, I just wanted to say, Mr Speaker, that certainly no one from the Opposition benches was having a go at the staff running the system at all. I want to make that very clear; they’re doing a great job.

SPEAKER: Well, both the member and the member sitting next to him made loud noises during the delay to the supplementary question.

Question No. 11—Foreign Affairs

11. Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What additional options, if any, has the Government considered in responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and why hasn’t the Government introduced an autonomous sanctions regime?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs) (remote): [Audio missing]—both condemn the invasion and immediately implement a number of measures in response to Russia’s actions. These are targeted travel bans against the Russian Government officials and other individuals associated with the invasion of Iraq, the prohibition of the export of all goods to Russian military and security forces, and the suspension of bilateral foreign ministry consultations until further notice. This invasion is a blatant break of the most important international laws and the rules-based world order that we rely upon. We will continue to consider other measures including those to target Russian finances. Again, as has been earlier said, Cabinet has sought advice on a specific Russian sanctions bill, which we expect to discuss with other parties across the House shortly. In terms of wider autonomous sanctions legislation, that would have implications that go far beyond Russia and impact our foreign policy position more broadly and would require further consideration.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I thank the Minister for that answer, but in relation to the last part: was he in fact incorrect when they said of the autonomous sanctions bill that it’s necessary because there is “a growing risk of New Zealand being perceived as an easy target because of gaps in the range of sanction measures [available] to be imposed” and “for those reasons New Zealand is increasingly regarded as being out of step with security partners such as Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United States.”?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The Minister of Foreign Affairs has been clear that we don’t rule out a future role for a broader autonomous sanctions regime, but we would note the matter is perhaps not quite as simple as the member would present it now. I would note that I’m advised that National—the prior National-ACT Government—looked at the issue in 2012, chose not to progress it even after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, and the member himself did not even give the bill a first reading when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Can the Minister explain to the House how a Russia-specific sanctions bill, which the Prime Minister has spoken of today, would be so substantially different from the autonomous sanctions bill that we need to wait quite a long time to see it in the House?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I can give a couple of instances. I’m advised that the member’s version of autonomous sanctions legislation has insufficient consideration of human rights issues and the rising issue of cyber-security. Those are two of the issues that we would expect a broader autonomous sanctions bill should encompass.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: If, as Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) has identified—and I quote—“all New Zealand’s key security partners have the ability to impose sanctions outside the UN framework.”, why has her Government still not implemented the ability for New Zealand to do the same, and why are we getting so many excuses about why we cannot participate with other nations in the world to show the strongest condemnation of Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine?

Hon DAVID PARKER: As the Prime Minister has outlined, we have and we will continue to take appropriate action against the Russian regime. The wider considerations of a broader autonomous sanctions bill are complex, as the Minister found when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs and his predecessors found when they, for nine years, didn’t introduce one even after the Russian invasion of Crimea.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Has MFAT recommended to the Government that an autonomous sanctions bill is necessary for New Zealand to be in step with the partner nations that we so like to identify ourselves with?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The latest advice on that very issue was received yesterday and the recommendation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was that we first consider a specific bill in respect of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

SPEAKER: Question—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: No. The member’s an optimist.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well it’s been such a long time! I thought—

SPEAKER: Seeing the member, except for myself, is the father of the House, I will give him another supplementary.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll try and make it brief. Can the Minister tell us how long we may have to wait to see this Russia-specific sanctions bill introduced to the House?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I haven’t got a specific time frame to give the member, but the issue is being consider with priority by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I would note that we’ve already tightened the overseas investment rules into New Zealand, and that many of the new investments that the member might be concerned about would be covered by those tightened rules that this Government introduced.

Question No. 12—Trade and Export Growth

12. JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata) (remote) to the Minister for Trade and Export Growth: What recent announcement has the Government made about signing a free-trade agreement with the United Kingdom?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment) (remote): on behalf of the Minister—

SPEAKER: Order! No. The member is not answering on behalf; he is the Minister for the moment.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I am the Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs not the Acting Minister for Trade and Export Growth. I’m answering this on behalf of the Minister.

SPEAKER: I apologise to the member. I’m quite wrong again.

Hon DAVID PARKER: No problem, sir. On behalf of the Minister for Trade and Export Growth, I’m pleased to announce that overnight the Hon Damien O’Connor signed the New Zealand - United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement in London. This premium gold standard agreement secures New Zealand’s preferential access to the UK market for the first time since 1973. That is important. It’s the fifth largest economy in the world and, as the Prime Minister has already said, the deal eliminates tariffs on 99.5 percent of our current trade from the time of entry into force. It will accelerate New Zealand’s COVID recovery by boosting New Zealand’s GDP by between $700 million and $1 billion per annum, and exporters will save approximately $37 million per annum from tariff elimination from day one. Of course, they’ll also benefit from the increased trade, which will flow from the increased access. This free-trade agreement sits alongside the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, PACER Plus, the China free-trade agreement (FTA) upgrade—all agreements concluded by this Government to help revitalise our trade agenda, and I believe I would be speaking on behalf of many members of the House in congratulating the Minister, the Hon Damien O’Connor.

Jo Luxton: What Trade For All elements have been included in this FTA?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The agreement reflects many aspects of the Trade For All Agenda. It includes commitments on the Treaty of Waitangi, small and medium sized enterprises, trade and gender, trade and development, and consumer protection. It’s our first bilateral trade agreement to include a specific article on climate change. It includes important provisions that were hard won in the negotiation on eliminating harmful subsidies such as fossil fuel, and fisheries subsidies. We’re pleased that this agreement advances not just economic gains but also wider Government priorities.

Rino Tirikatene (remote): What are the benefits that are anticipated for Māori in this free-trade agreement?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Recognising the long and important relationship of the British Crown with Māori through the Treaty of Waitangi, this agreement contains the broadest set of outcomes for Māori that New Zealand has managed to negotiate in any FTA. Included in the FTA is a Māori trade and economic cooperation chapter, recognising the value of increased Māori participation in international trade and investment, and promoting cooperation between the parties to the FTA to enable and advance Māori economic and wellbeing aspiration. It also prioritises tariff elimination on a range of products of interest to Māori, particularly in fisheries, horticulture, dairy, and meat sectors.

Question No. 11 to Minister

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Point of order, Mr Speaker. In asking a question to the Hon David Parker, I was unaware that he was the Acting Minister. It does make a difference, as you know. I therefore used an incorrect pronoun in addressing him, and I’ll make sure that’s correct in the Hansard record.

SPEAKER: I’m certain he will be thankful for that, but I think the member will probably have to consult the Clerk before he makes a change of that sort. Hansard is a record of what he says probably more than what he should have said, but the member will consult with the Clerk on that.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I would hope that the Clerk is able to assist me, because otherwise it’s a terrible change for the Hon David Parker.

Appointments

Assistant Speaker

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): A point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice on the appointment of an additional Assistant Speaker.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move, That this House appoint Ian McKelvie as an Assistant Speaker, with effect during any sitting of the House that is held with members able to participate remotely.

Mr Speaker, this is an historic day for Parliament, with members participating remotely in the proceedings in the Chamber for the first time. You and the other presiding officers, I know, are going to considerable lengths to ensure that you can preserve your own health and wellbeing and that you’re able to be in the Chamber when required. But after discussions at the Business Committee, I think it has been agreed that it would be wise to have an additional presiding officer on the team so that we can ensure that we have a presiding officer available for the duration of any remote sitting.

So I have great pleasure in nominating Ian McKelvie for the role of Assistant Speaker. He’s a very experienced member of the House, having been member for Rangitīkei since 2011. He’s the chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee, a role that he performs, I’m told, with good humour and fairness. He is a respected and liked member across the House. He has a very calm and genial approach—qualities that I’m sure will serve him and us very well in the Chair. And so I thank him for agreeing to take on this role of Assistant Speaker, and commend his appointment to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It gives me great pride and pleasure to stand and support the motion moved by the Leader of the House nominating Ian McKelvie to serve as a temporary Assistant Speaker, and I want to echo the remarks of the Leader of the House in complimenting Mr McKelvie on his good humour and his good cheer and his experience.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he get a pay rise?

CHRIS BISHOP: He does get a pay rise, Mr Bridges, I think I’m right in saying. I don’t want to mislead the House. Mr McKelvie has—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, he doesn’t.

Hon Simon Bridges: He’s doing it for free?

CHRIS BISHOP: Mr McKelvie has served as an MP—

SPEAKER: It’s the same rate as a chair of a select committee.

CHRIS BISHOP: Oh well, there you go.

Mr McKelvie has served as an MP since the 2011 election as the MP for Rangitīkei, in addition to being the current chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, which is a reasonably bipartisan committee—it is a small committee and reasonably bipartisan in nature; just with National and Labour members on it—and he does a good job of keeping good order in that committee. He has also previously served on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and is a former chair of the Primary Production Committee.

I don’t think any member of the House would disagree with me in saying that he commands respect across the House for his wise contributions on a range of legislation, some of which is non-controversial and some of which is controversial, but he’s someone who I think everyone in the Parliament always listens to. Because of that, there can be no better criteria to bear in mind when you’re considering a presiding officer, because, ultimately, it is the respect of the House that is the most important in that role, and Ian will certainly command the respect of the House. So I’ve no hesitation in commending this motion to the House. Thank you.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in hearty support of this glorious motion to appoint Ian McKelvie perhaps temporarily to the Speaker’s Chair. I think it would be fair to say that Ian McKelvie is a man of maturity, quite considerable maturity, and he’ll use that very well—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What other qualities?

DAVID SEYMOUR: —in the Speaker’s Chair. Gerry Brownlee asked, “What other qualities?” Well, Ian McKelvie’s someone I’ve got to know and like over the years that we’ve both been here in the House, and he’s somebody who has great humility. He has great magnanimity, he has great judgment, and I think that those are wonderful qualities to have in a Speaker. The only thing I can say is that it might be bit of a shock for some members to get used to seeing those qualities return to the Chair, but I think we can welcome them. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

covid-19 orders

Approval

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): In accordance with the determination of the Business Committee, I move, That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020: COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing and Vaccinations) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 3) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 2) Amendment Order 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order 2022, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order 2022, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2022, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order 2022, and COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 3) 2022.

I’d like to begin by thanking the Business Committee for agreeing to debate the motion today. Here we are again, and I’m asking the House to approve a number of orders—12 orders—that have been made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. As is the nature with these debates, some of those orders themselves are already out of date and have already been replaced by other orders, and some are about to be, based on the announcement that we made yesterday. But I would like to, as I always do in these debates, thank the Regulations Review Committee for their consideration of these various orders. I think the committee does a very thorough job on behalf of the House in scrutinising the use of the powers provided under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, and I’ll touch on a few of the themes of their comments in a few moments.

So the orders that we are confirming here were made between 10 December last year, 2021, and 23 January this year. The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 was reported back from the Regulations Review Committee in its report on 10 February. The remaining 11 were featured in the committee’s report on 17 February. The 12 orders in question cover quite a wide range of issues, including the opening up of the Auckland boundary just before Christmas, the status of different parts of New Zealand in the traffic light system, and so on.

The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order 2021 and the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2021 set out the revised regime for travellers arriving into New Zealand that came into effect late on Monday this week and that was about to be replaced as of late tomorrow night. That, of course, was the one stepping through the removal of managed isolation and quarantine and imposing a self-solation system instead. That, of course, is now going to be replaced by another order that will also go through this process that, in due course, we will address and have to confirm here in the House.

Other amendments address technical drafting issues, and they seek to clarify details that have emerged as our response to COVID-19 has continued to develop. I would like to take a moment here to thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who work under great pressure to put these orders together, often having to do so in a very compressed time table, and often having to deal with what are quite technical issues—often quite a complex network and web of technical issues that they have to work their way through. Inevitably, from time to time, there are technical drafting amendments that need to be corrected, and we try and correct those in the next orders that are made.

The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 dealt with a range of issues related to the crossing of the Auckland boundary. At the time of the transition from alert levels to the protection framework, the Regulations Review Committee expressed some concerns not about the orders themselves, or the provisions of the order, but about the accessibility of regulations. And they raised similar concerns about the difficulties of navigation through the order when they expressed concerns about the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order of 2021. The committee asked for clarity over the meaning and criteria that applied to country groups in this order and, again, an issue around the ease of understanding.

So the constant revision and updating that the rapid development of COVID-19 has necessitated has been a challenge in terms of keeping the secondary legislation as easy possible to navigate, and I want to acknowledge that, and I thank the Regulations Review Committee for drawing attention to those issues. I do agree that it’s important the regulations should be clear, they should be easily understandable, and the comments and feedback of the Regulations Review Committee will help us to continue to improve the design of orders in the future.

There are two orders that have been omitted from this motion, and I will cover them now because they have been subject of significant discussion over the last few days. The requests for vaccination mandates that originally came from the Police and the Defence Force were the subject of orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. There are operational factors that drove the decision by those agencies to request the vaccination requirements: for example, Defence Force personnel need to be vaccinated in order to undertake overseas deployments, in many instances, including in places like the Pacific for disaster relief. So there are operational considerations there.

The decision of the courts to not uphold those two orders has only just been released, and we do need to take time to consider that. I do want to be clear that the judgment’s quite clear that it’s not questioning the role of mandates per se but whether they are required specifically for Police and for Defence in terms of business continuity purposes. So we need to take time to just carefully consider what the court’s ruling is—not have a knee-jerk response to that. So we will do that, and then we’ll make further decisions. We have been really clear, though, that where there is no longer a justification for a vaccination mandate to be in place, we would look to remove that in a timely manner. So, in some cases, in the case of the Police, very high rates of vaccination have now been achieved, and it may well be that there is no replacement for that mandate. But we’ll work through a careful process to look at that, and then we’ll make decisions in due course.

In terms of wider issues around vaccine mandates, as the Prime Minister and I have both been clear, we will seek to remove those at the appropriate time, and at the moment, as we head into what is already a very large outbreak and growing by the day, it isn’t the right moment to do that in many cases, but we will consider each of those mandates on a case by case basis. When the case has been made for them to be removed, then we would look to do that.

Chris Bishop: Does that mean these four—the Police ones—they’re not approved?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Defence Force one, the one that related to Defence, and the one that related to Police, which were the subject of the court decision last week, have not been included in the motion. The motion was revised and has removed those from that. They’re not being confirmed, so they will lapse. I didn’t want the Parliament to be in a position of, effectively, voting to confirm something that the courts have ruled against, so we’ve removed those from the motion, and we’ll now take some time to consider what the future of those, if any future, may be. With that, Mr Speaker, I congratulate you and commend this motion to the House.

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

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Can I start where the Minister for COVID-19 Response ended, which is congratulating you, sir, on your ascension to this august role. It’s great to see you with a grin on your face, sir, chairing this session.

I thank the Minister for COVID-19 Response for the exchange we’ve just had and beg the House’s indulgence for an interjection, but it was a genuinely interesting question, which is what do we do as a Parliament with these orders that the court has essentially ruled as inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and, essentially, ruled unlawful. We’ve just heard from the Minister that that has happened, but also he didn’t want to put the House into a position where we were confirming orders that the court has essentially ruled unlawful. I think that was the right decision, and so those orders now lapse, and it’ll be interesting to see what the Government does with those orders and with the issue of mandates for the Police and Defence Force generally.

I’ve read the Yardley judgment, Yardley v Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, quite carefully, and some people have got a little bit carried away and said that it sort of means the end of vaccine mandates generally. That’s not quite my reading of the judgment. It’s actually quite a narrowly tailored judgment in relation to section 11AB of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act that we passed an amendment to under urgency in the latter quarter of last year. I actually raised this in the debate—and if you check the Hansard you’ll find this. I raised this issue of the confusion between section 9 of the Act, which allows the Minister to make vaccination mandate orders in relation to public health, and the amendment that came in, which allows the Minister under section 11AB of the Act to make vaccination mandate orders when it’s in the public interest. That is actually what’s at the heart of the Yardley judgment and something that the Parliament is going to have to grapple with, because what happened in the Yardley case is that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety made a mandate order in relation to the Police and Defence, not on the grounds that it was justified on public health grounds but that it was justified on the grounds of maintaining public confidence in the Police and the Defence Force and, essentially, the continuity of service for those two particular forces.

What His Honour Justice Cooke found is that that argument or that ground that the Government put forward was not made out—that because you were dealing with such a small number of people in relation to vaccination who hadn’t been vaccinated, then there was no real impact on the continuity of service.

Interestingly, and this is where it is true to say, I believe, the judgment will have an impact on vaccination mandates more generally, is the judge’s comments made over the dicta in relation to transmissibility of COVID, particularly the Omicron variant and whether or not that has an impact on vaccination. The judge made two particular comments that I think are interesting and that I think we need to bear in mind as we have the debate around mandates. The first is the public health advice was that no further mandates were necessary. In other words, the Police and Defence Force mandate that the Government imposed was not necessary, and the existing mandates that were in place prior to the Police and Defence Force mandate made by the Minister for Workplace Relations were not necessary. That is interesting—that is interesting.

The second point is the judge made very careful comments obiter dicta in relation to the impact of Omicron on vaccination and how that applies in terms of limiting transmission. Because it’s very clear, I think, to most members of the House now that there’s been a sea change in our COVID response because of Omicron. Under Delta—

David Seymour: The Government’s still working it out.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I’m not sure if that’s actually true. I think they’re starting to get their head around it. Under Delta, it was very clear that vaccination made a big impact on transmission. Scientific evidence is very clear on that. Under Delta and the previous strains of COVID, vaccination made a big difference. It limited the transmission. So if you had 100 vaccinated people in a room, the chance that they would spread COVID amongst themselves was very, very small indeed; very low—not zero, but very low. Omicron has changed the game. It busts through vaccination, it busts through double vaccination, it busts through booster vaccination, and actually, the vast number of people, the vast bulk of people who are getting COVID—almost 20,000 today, 15,000 yesterday; you know, it was 3,000 last week or whatever it was—are vaccinated. They are fully vaccinated and indeed they are boosted. So that raises significant questions for the Parliament as to the utility of, firstly, vaccine mandates, and, secondly, the issue of vaccine passes.

I want to make it very clear for the House that we worry on this side of the House around whether or not there is any utility of vaccine mandates and vaccine passes any more. As the judge comments in the Yardley decision, it is worth bearing in mind that mandates impose on rights. I think, possibly in the last year or so, we have worked out that we’ve been too quick to impose on rights. It’s been interesting that the Attorney-General has not really ventilated and had a discussion, publicly at least, about the intrusion on rights that mandates have on individuals. There are two particular rights—and, again, these are covered in the Yardley judgment—that are intruded upon. One is the right to be free from medical treatment or the right to choose your own medical treatment, and the second is, of course, freedom of religion, which is touched upon as well. So it’s very clear—I think everyone would agree—that vaccine mandates intrude upon individual rights and freedoms. So the question is whether or not the intrusion on those rights is justified.

Now, our view in the National Party was that we would tolerate those intrusions on those rights for a temporary length of time—for a small length of time—while we were battling COVID because the science, at least six months ago, was very clear that vaccination made a big difference in terms of the spread of the virus, the spread of the illness, and of course, the wider impact that that spread has not just on individuals but more, actually, on the public health system and our wider society. It made a difference to limit the spread of COVID, and generally we’ve done a pretty good job of doing that in New Zealand.

So our view was they were justified as a temporary measure, but times have changed. Omicron has changed the game. The transmission benefits of vaccination are no longer anywhere near what they were, and because of that, the rights calculus—the careful balancing of whether or not something is a justified intrusion on a right—has therefore changed. And, actually, that is what His Honour Justice Cooke made comments about in the Yardley judgment. So that’s why it is right that the Minister is taking time to consider the impact of that judgment when it comes to vaccine mandates.

But we should not underestimate the impact that mandates are having on individuals out there. I’m not just talking about the group of protesters on the forecourt—they are at the hard edge of people who have been impacted by vaccine mandates—but right throughout the country, there have been people who have found themselves shut off from their local sports club, shut off from their local golf club—not allowed to even play a round of golf outside. I think worldwide there’s one case of transmission of COVID outside, but yet the local golf club has banned him from participating.

The thing that really gets me is young kids: 13-year-olds who can go to a physical education class and participate with unvaccinated 13-year-olds, but can’t go to a rugby practice after school—can’t go to rugby practice because it’s not involved in school sport. It’s a private school sport—

Hon Scott Simpson: Or swimming club.

CHRIS BISHOP: Or swimming club—as my friend and colleague the Hon Scott Simpson says, kids going to swimming lessons in outdoor pools. What is the risk of a 13-year-old contracting COVID outside? It’s not zero, but it may as well be zero. Of course, you’ve got to weigh that up against the impact of banning a 13- or 14-year-old from participating in sport, and keeping them active, fit, and healthy. All of those things have fallen by the wayside. So my view and National’s view is we’ve got the balance wrong and we do need to start to unwind the mandates. We do need to start to unwind the vaccine pass restrictions, that I haven’t had time to cover. The sooner they are gone, once we’re through the peak of the Omicron outbreak and then we can start getting back to normal life, the better.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Tēnā koe te Māngai o te Whare. I want to also congratulate you on your new role. I have not known you as long as many other people in this House, but I got to work with you while we were doing the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill, as it was going through the Governance and Administration Committee, and I can say that many people in our communities who took part in that process were very impressed with the way that you handled that committee.

I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support these COVID orders. We note these orders were presented between 15 December—just before we finished work or before the House rose—and 1 February. Because these orders were during the summer holidays, we saw falling Delta numbers at the beginning, but then the community outbreak of Omicron started at the end. We note that the main issues are covered around international border rules, including the future move from Managed Isolation and Quarantine to self-isolation—the consequent pushing back of the time line to reflect the risk of Omicron and adjustments to the traffic light system. It feels like we’ve in red for such a very long time and we are very aware that red makes no difference to how Omicron is spreading.

Until now, we’ve been shielded from the skyrocketing numbers of COVID that we’ve seen around the world over the past two years, but no longer. Despite there being people in this country who think COVID-19 is not real, and therefore masks are not necessary, 100,143 active cases would beg to differ. The Ministry of Health has noted that about 60 percent of those cases have been under 30 years of age, 12 percent over the age of 50, and that the numbers are really concentrated in our 10- to 19-year-olds, and our 20- to 29-year-olds—25 percent each. However, we’re seeing the opposite pattern for those who end up in hospital, where only 20 percent are under the age of 30, but 54 percent are over the age of 50.

With more people self-isolating, we’re concerned that health and community workers, who are already stretched—who were stretched before COVID—will be able to identify people who need hospitalisation, including due to low oxygen levels, and provide timely hospital transfers. The Government—we need you to resource local Māori, Pasifika, and community health providers and organisations, to support those in self-isolation at home, to visit and ensure their health and wellbeing, and provide vaccinations and testing as required. Because, out of 20 DHBs, we still only have six who have reached 90 percent of Māori fully vaccinated. If boosters are the magic ingredient to stop people going into hospital, and dying, many Māori are still not eligible.

Also, only 51 percent of our 5 to 11 year olds are vaccinated with one dose: for Pasifika, 43 percent; for Māori only 31 percent. Hundreds of our schools now have active COVID cases and, with close contacts no longer needing to isolate, there’s a huge risk of infection to our vulnerable children and their whānau—especially the under-fives, who cannot be vaccinated. Test-To-Stay has been used overseas to manage infections in schools, as an alternative to isolating close contacts. We hope the Government will urgently introduce this at all schools across Aotearoa. Whānau are greatly concerned about sending their children to school; we must do everything we can to ensure our schools are safe at this time.

And, of course, at this stage in the pandemic, we know that some people can be infected with COVID and not show symptoms, but rapid antigen tests, or RATs, are only available for free to those with symptoms, if they are available at all. In Gisborne, there’s one pharmacy who sells them, and they’re sold out, and there is a queue of cars around the block—which is great; get tested—at the Salvation Army hall, but it’s really, really hard to get those tests. So we need to scale up provision of those RATs so that anyone can screen for COVID, to prevent asymptomatic transmission in high-risk locations, and to vulnerable people, because the vaccine pass can no longer guarantee that the holder is not infected. N95 masks, or equivalent, need to be free and easily accessible, and community health providers must have the resources to get masks to those who need them most.

Finally, I acknowledge the mana whenua of the land on which this House sits. Taranaki Whānui gathered yesterday at Pipitea Marae to lay down Te Kahu o Te Raukura, a cloak of peace in a form of cultural protection over their ancestral whenua, including all of Parliament, until the occupation is dispersed. They wanted to send a strong message to protestors—who have not honoured their role as manuhiri, as honoured guests—that now it is time to listen to mana whenua. Te Raukura contains the three feathers representing honour, peace and goodwill—the same symbol used at Parihaka.

This is an incredibly graceful and dignified response to what is happening outside this building, despite the fact that last week protestors broke into Pipitea Marae, in Thorndon, through the back door and served a trespass notice—as if they had any kind of authority to do such a thing—to the police and Māori wardens who were inside. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such an outrageous breach of tikanga. Let us take their advice, though, that healing will not happen on the grounds of Parliament; that healing will happen when people go home, back to their communities and alongside their people. Yes, the Government should absolutely clarify when mandates are no longer needed—we all want to know this because we all want that to happen—and it appears that if the Government is not ready to ease those mandates, the High Court has indicated that it is ready to make that decision themselves. These orders have been put in place to keep us protected, and I commend them to the House. Kia ora.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to these motions, and, just to make it clear, to summarise what’s going on here, the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act allows the Government to make orders that direct New Zealanders to do or not do things, to be or to not be at a place, and they’re able to do it just by signing a piece of paper. The catch is that Parliament has to debate them retrospectively. The ACT Party, at first, was actually prepared to support this basic idea because we thought the Government would stop making rules when they no longer made sense. We asked that there be more accountability into the system and the Government didn’t bring it, so that’s when we stopped supporting this—months ago. We voted against the last set of orders, I think in November. We voted against the COVID-Public Health Response Amendment Bill that made many of these orders possible; we voted against that last year. So we’ve been opposing this for some time because the problem is the rules no longer make sense. The benefits of these rules no longer exceed the costs.

It’s time to move on from a paradigm of fear, from a world where people are supposed to bear huge costs at the altar of the COVID god, even if it doesn’t make, practically, any difference. And we heard that in the parliamentary question time today. I asked the Prime Minister: if we let people come and be tourists and drive the New Zealand economy, if foreigners could come without isolation, how many extra COVID cases, how many extra hospital cases, would there be? The Prime Minister didn’t know. She said she knew how many there’d be if they had to isolate—a few hundred. How many if they didn’t have to isolate? She didn’t know. The fact is, there’s no reason not to open up the border. The restrictions on people coming into New Zealand that we still have do not have benefits that outweigh their costs.

It’s the same with so many of these rules. You know, we’re talking about rules here—for example, the requirement for groups of people to be vaccinated. Well, we heard a summary of the recent court case under Justice Cooke from my colleague Chris Bishop, and it was a pretty good summary. What the judge found is that the mandates are not required for the specific purpose of business continuity for Police and Defence. They have enough people. They could take the people who are in danger of COVID from not being vaccinated and sub them out. They wouldn’t actually stop the police or the Defence Force from continuing to do their work. So the mandates weren’t justified. They weren’t a justifiable limitation on people’s freedom to choose.

Then the judge said something else that’s very important. He said Omicron is changing the calculus of COVID. Omicron is different. It’s easier to spread; spreads more easily. It’s less virulent. It’s milder if you do get it. And it has what they call immune escape properties—different, vastly different from Delta. So vaccination’s effect on spread, and hospitalisation even, from Omicron is nothing like it was for Delta. And that changes the rules. It doesn’t matter if you pro-vax or anti-vax or pro-mandate or anti-mandate, you have to start from an agreed set of facts. And the facts are that Omicron is now the dominant strain. Almost 100 percent of cases are Omicron now, and the effects of vaccination on Omicron are much different than they were on Delta.

When the facts change, we have to change our response because this whole COVID response—if the epidemiology, if the biological facts are the foundation, the policy is the frame, the politics is the roof. And right now, Omicron is shaking down the whole edifice on which this Government’s COVID response has been built.

Let me give you an example of what some of these rules that are inflexible mean at a personal level, and this is a story of a constituent. When someone comes to see me as a constituent it’s a secret. I don’t talk about them. But this is from someone who said, “It’s time to use my voice.” I’m talking about the chaplain at a school called Dilworth, that’s had a lot of challenges. This school is going through all sorts of difficulties, not the fault of any of the people there now—all historical, but still very painful.

The chaplain is not an anti-vaxxer. In fact, he was vaccinated twice. But he had a response that was very bad from his second dose. He went to see his doctor, and his doctor said, “I recognise that. That actually is a legitimate recognised response to the Pfizer vaccine.” It was so horrible that it affected him for months. He didn’t want to get the booster, but because he doesn’t want to get the booster and because of the mandates on whole professions like education and because of the requirement to be boosted by today if he wants to keep working, he has to go home. At a time when that school most needs a chaplain, it can’t have one.

I have to ask, given the changing calculus of COVID with Omicron: is that worth it? Is that sane? Dare I ask the Prime Minister: is that kind? I don’t think so. It no longer stacks up. It no longer makes any sense. And there’s so many ways that we could have had a more humane response to vaccination requirements. In fact, there’s three things we could have done that would have helped him.

First of all, we should have said it’s vax or test. Sure, I understand under earlier variants people wanted to know the people around them were less likely to give them COVID. It’s self-protection. But really, if the person gets a test every 72 hours as ACT proposed in October, if you know that they are not carrying COVID because they have been tested, then do you really care if they’re vaccinated? Why would we indulge in a mania of going even further and saying that they have to be vaccinated if we’ve already secured our own protection by them having regular tests? So it should have been vax or test. That would have let this guy keep working.

Second of all, what we should have done is said, “Look, we’re able to have an organisation set its own rules.” Now, this particular school, any time—they’d be very happy to make an exception for this guy. But, actually, they can’t, you know, because it’s the whole education sector. And here’s the third thing we could have done to have a more humane response. If we had decided that we were going to let doctors have their own professional autonomy and give exemptions, his doctor would have given an exemption like that, but she’s not allowed to. And the way that doctors have had their rights to give exemptions taken away was really quite extraordinary. You know, imagine if lawyers had to ask the Minister of Justice before they gave certain advice. There would be an outrage. Lawyers would never stand for it, you know? Doctors have been told, “You can’t give certain advice to patients unless the Ministry of Health stands over you and says so.” It’s pretty extraordinary.

Now, if we’d made it vax or test, and we had organisations like schools make their own rules and exceptions, and let doctors operate with professional autonomy and make exemptions, I suspect we wouldn’t have the loss of social cohesion, and some of the angst that’s out there. We could have had a much more humane effect on vaccination with the same outcomes in terms of public health. And yet, here we are post hoc ratifying vaccine mandate rules. Well, ACT opposes them and we have since at least October now, and we’ve made positive suggestions that could have given us a more humane response. They’ve been there all along.

There are other suggestions here around the border, but I don’t think the Government is capable of making sane calculations around any policy to do with COVID. That’s why we say it’s time to move on. It’s time to ask—when it comes to isolation rules, for example—why does it make sense for somebody to isolate for 10 days when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the incubation period is two to three days and your infectious period’s day four and five? The New Zealand Government says you got to keep isolating for another five days after you’re infectious. Why? Because they don’t care about the cost they put on New Zealanders. They don’t care about other aspects of your life or wellbeing. It’s COVID above all else. It’s sacrifice at the altar of the COVID gods and damn all the other costs that people face. Those isolation rules are completely wrong.

And then there’s the question of QR codes. Well, actually, you’re only a contact if you live with someone. So unless you’re scanning the QR code in your house, then it’s actually not going to—Mr Speaker, I assume you’re too sensible to have one. Unless you have a QR code in your house, then scanning QR codes doesn’t help with contact tracing. But you know what? Every business in this country is required by law to display one, and every customer that goes into those businesses has to scan. Does it make any difference to public health? No. Is it an imposition on New Zealanders? Yes. Does it show how much the Government cares about other aspects of New Zealanders’ welfare? Absolutely. “We’re making it do it because we can. It won’t make any difference. So what?” And then the likes of Michael Baker have the temerity to say, “Well, it doesn’t work now, but it might work at some time in the future, so you have to keep doing it.”

This is the lack of analysis of the costs and benefits of the Government’s COVID response, and it’s absolutely shameful. There’s the border, there’s the mandates, there’s the QR codes, there’s the isolation requirements. There’s the ban on rapid antigen tests. Those things all matter.

Hon Andrew Little: And the low fatality rate.

DAVID SEYMOUR: And there’s Andrew Little barking away in the corner saying, “Oh, we have a low fatality rate.” We don’t have a low fatality rate because of anything that Minister’s done, I can assure you. He’s been incompetent from start to finish. How many tests can the Government do? Oh, 58,000? No, they forgot about rising rates and the inability to pool. Nothing that Minister’s been responsible for has made any difference. How many ICU beds do we have? He barks away, but he knows he’s screwed it up at every point. That’s why we need to move on. We need to get past rules that no longer make sense and take our freedom back. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou katoa. Te Paati Māori initially supported the Government’s health response in COVID but continued to not support the Government’s ongoing policies due to a host of reasons but, mainly, a lack of transparency with the testing regimes and the traffic light framework, and you know well our views on the way that you handled a mandate. Māori are the most regulated peoples that we know. Tikanga Māori and rāhui could have been done in this sense. Your mandates have been cruel and, quite frankly, are very confusing.

With currently the highest COVID reproduction rate in the world, it has never been more important that we prioritise looking after w’ānau and, indeed, our communities. We need to understand that phase 3 policies point to the failure of the Government to properly prepare for the Omicron outbreak, and heavily invest in healthcare and community services. Despite warnings, the Government has not invested in things like ICU, testing, and contact tracing capacity. We are supporting the call of Whānau Ora for an inquiry into the Ministry of Health’s handling of the roll-out of rapid antigen testing and, indeed, the whole testing regime, which has been an absolute shambles.

In February 2021, Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, said “Of all the different testing models, antigen testing seems to be the least reliable.”, and that he was not contemplating using rapid antigen tests (RATs) in Aotearoa. This statement was made while RATs were being deployed in the United Kingdom, throughout the United States and Canada, and some Australian states. Our Māori experts knew that RATs would be a useful screening tool as a first line of defence. Six months after—September 2021—still Bloomfield had denounced RATs, although with 100,000 RATs being purchased and later deployed at Middlemore to take the weight off overwhelmed services, indeed, in the middle of Delta. That same month, saliva testing was made available for Whānau Ora, in partnership with Rako Science. The cost of saliva tests is lower than nasal swabbing. In the middle of regional spread, Taranaki iwi also got into a similar partnership, as did Tupoho iwi in W’anganui.

Fast forward to a year later, 23 February 2022, we now have the call that RATs are no longer just a screening tool but, in fact, he has determined, against all good science, that they would now be deployed as a diagnostic tool across the whole of Aotearoa. We then learnt that a shipment of RATs had just arrived in Aotearoa, which would double the country’s capacity. Why were the RATs not ordered earlier? Why are they not readily available in communities like mine? All I have to say is, thank goodness for iwi, for Māori providers, who, at their own cost, took up saliva testing in areas that DHBs are not readily popping up and testing in.

Why did the Ministry of Health (MoH) not support progressively building our testing capacity, including through partnering with iwi and Whānau Ora, who, instead, have had to establish saliva testing capacities and capabilities at their own cost? How many iwi are subsidising the poor performing MoH by providing their own testing crew, which this MP has been part of? There are some, and these are questions that demand to be answered, indeed, in an independent inquiry. What has been clear, time and time again, ever since our first COVID case two years ago, is that we as tangata w’enua, cannot, and must not, rely on Government and the State to protect our w’akapapa and keep our people and our communities safe and well in home isolation. Manaaki packs, testing—where would this nation be without Māori hauora, Whānau Ora, and iwi providers?

At every stage during this response, our calls have been ignored, as have many Māori health experts. Resources have been delayed, power has been centralised rather than shared. In Te Paati Māori’s COVID policy release in November last year, we anticipated the risks of the Omicron wave and called on the Government to invest heavily in testing and contact tracing capacity, and we recommended a targeted Māori home isolation strategy. Crucially, we called for the establishment of an independent Māori pandemic response group with statutory powers to develop and lead the Māori COVID-19 health response. We never supported the traffic light system. It fails to protect tangata w’enua and vulnerable communities, and it didn’t receive support from our people, whether it was iwi leaders, Whānau Ora, or grassroots. Government should have increased testing capacity in the regions and issued home isolation packs, to all w’ānau, with essential supplies.

Now, at 20,000 cases today, we have the same leader, the same person within Ministry of Health, apologising—apologising for testing mishaps and delays. It’s not good enough. Too much of the response to this Omicron outbreak has been left to chance and to super-bureaucrats. Our people deserve better.

E te w’ānau, we saw us as Taranaki put down Te Kahu o Te Raukura. That’s our way of saying to you, “Enough is enough”. You have outstayed your welcome. The mana w’enua have asked you to return. I wear with me today our raukura of honour, peace, and goodwill. Your mamae has been heard. It is time now, whānau mā [family], hoki ki ō kāinga [go back to your people]. Go back to your people, where we will love and look after you. Go back and leave the mana w’enua to return the mauri to their w’enua.

On that note, e te w’ānau, it’s good to see you all well here, on this first virtual forum, and I hope that we listen to the people, inside and outside. It is time for us to work at unity and healing. E te w’ānau, you do not belong standing next to racists and white supremacists. Hoki ki ō kāinga. Kia ora. Tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Go back to your homes. Thank you, greetings one and all.]

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. May I begin by congratulating you on your elevation. Others have noted your popularity. I think I’m right in saying it’s universal among the House, so I think the only danger of anyone objecting to your elevation to your current role would be yourself.

Hon Member: Ascension.

CHRIS PENK: Ascension, no less.

I do want to take at least a brief call on these COVID orders. I mostly want to make some remarks as the chair of the Regulations Review Committee. If I do make any comments in my capacity as a National Party MP, I will make that distinction clear. As others have noted, something very interesting and, I think, actually really helpful has happened in the House today, and I think it’s a significant moment in our public law history in this country. I don’t wish to overstate it but as you can tell I’m rather excited, sir, at the interplay that we’ve seen before—a discussion between the shadow Leader of the House, Chris Bishop, and the Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins, in relation to the non-presentation or the non-inclusion of a couple of orders.

Let me take a step back, first of all, by noting that the Regulations Review Committee is known as a collegial committee. That’s how we operate internally, so to speak, but it also marks our interactions with other key players—for example, Ministers of the Crown or in a broader sense, hearing complaints with complainants, of course, but also relevant Government agencies, and so on. But I do also want to acknowledge an element of collegiality or comity—which is often the specific word used—in relation to the committee as a creature of Parliament and the comity or collegiality of Parliament with the other branches of Government. So in this case we’re acknowledging the fact today that Parliament has recognised that the court has made a judgment that is in a similar sphere to the substantive policy basis of a couple of COVID-19 orders, and Parliament has respected that the court had the right to make that determination on the facts in a case that was particular to the complainants, so to speak, before it, and the Government has respected that by removing the orders in relation to the Police and the New Zealand Defence Force members who had brought that motion. So I don’t really want to talk too much about the case specifically but I do want to commend the Government for recognising that appropriate separation between the powers of those respective branches of Government. So that’s, I think, an interesting development, and I think it’s very appropriate.

On a similar but slightly different note, we’ve seen that the orders that the Government first saw fit to promulgate—and the Regulations Review Committee agreed, albeit in a narrow way, considering, as they do, orders’ appropriateness—were appropriate at the time but are no longer appropriate according to the court. And it struck me as interesting that it would be possible to say quite rightly that an order is appropriate at one moment but later, when facts change—not the order itself; but when facts change, and in this case the transmissibility of COVID, being the Omicron variant as opposed to the Delta one—that actually changes the suitability of the order. In judicial review terms, that might speak to the reasonableness of the decision maker’s judgment—with a lower-case “j”, not to be confused with a court’s judgment—and in Regulations Review Committee terms, that’s, of course, going to the degree to which human rights are impacted or the extent to which the order might be said to be consistent with the objects and intentions of the Act, and so forth.

A number of orders have nevertheless been presented. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about those that weren’t, but I think it’s worthwhile to note that a number obviously have been presented. They were relatively uncontroversial, although the committee, in its usual diligent way, as excellently advised, provided some feedback to the Minister on various ways that we thought these could have been expressed more clearly. In a couple of cases, we’re yet to hear back from the Minister, which is reasonable, I think, given the time frames and the busyness in the real world of further orders that are being made along the way, in the way of a global pandemic. So, for that reason, we have an interim report. So that’s just explaining to anyone who’s following along and wondering why we might have only done an interim report, well, that’s the technical answer for that—that we need to hear back from the Minister, give him, and it is him, a chance to respond to concerns that we’d raised in the report.

I won’t dwell any further on those, and I’ll conclude a relatively short call by just noting as well the mandate orders that were not presented to the House. I’ve given kudos to the Government for not seeking to present them and putting Parliament in the position of having to seek to confirm that which the court had, in a sense, overturned.

But I do want to speak briefly with my different hat on—as a National Party MP—and at the time the order was put in place, as the National Party defence spokesperson. It seemed to me that it was inappropriate that the mandates should remain in place such that members of both those uniformed services should be told that they would not be welcome to remain in the service while there was litigation going on. I did write to the Minister of Defence at the time and made that suggestion. He declined to accept that suggestion, and I feel a sense of vindication that in fact if he had taken that advice, then we wouldn’t have the messiness that we do now with people having been let go from employment, from service, and now, as a result of a very recent court order, are, effectively, having that put on ice.

My other comment would be with a different hat on again—shadow Attorney-General. I did write to the Attorney-General some time ago, asking for the release of advice around the balance of rights considerations for a number of these different orders. He declined—in fact, he outright refused—to release publicly that legal advice, which I would’ve thought would be a helpful exercise for the sake of transparency, for the sake of ventilating, to use the phrase of my colleague and friend Chris Bishop, some of these issues which are now, unfortunately, the subject of uncertainty given the court judgment interacting and indeed contradicting the will of Parliament, or at least the Government, in the making of the orders.

So that concludes the remarks that I did want to make. I don’t know how much of it made sense to anyone but me, but I think other fans of public law and constitutional issues will think that today—

Greg O’Connor: Just the usual.

CHRIS PENK: Mr Greg O’Connor says it’s just as usual, I think, so I’m sorry that he didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. But, in any case, thank you, Mr Speaker, and before I get any other expressions of support, I’m going to stop there. But thank you for the opportunity to comment on these orders, and, again, congratulations to you in this role.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Assistant Whip—Labour) (remote): [Audio issue]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Willow-Jean, can you please start again? We can’t hear you.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: [Audio issue]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): We still can’t hear.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 45

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

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020: COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing and Vaccinations) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 3) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 2) Amendment Order 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order 2022, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order 2022, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2022, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order 2022, and COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 3) 2022.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 45

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

Motion agreed to.

Orders approved.

Bills

Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill

Second Reading

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.

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

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e rau rangatira mā tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[To the authorities, to all the voices, and to all the esteemed leaders, greetings one and all.]

It’s my honour to support the second reading of the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill. Firstly, I want to acknowledge the members of Ngāti Rangitihi, who haven’t been able to travel to the House this time—as would normally happen for any reading of a Treaty settlement bill—but because of the COVID restrictions, they’ll be watching this second reading online, and I want to acknowledge those who are doing so. I want to also acknowledge the members of Ngāti Rangitihi: their resilience, their energy, their tenacity, and their drive, which has brought us here today at this second reading; one step closer to closing out their settlement legislation and for them to face their future. I also want to take time particularly to thank the Ngāti Rangitihi negotiation team and Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi Trust, who’ve shown extraordinary dedication to their work. Their ongoing commitment to achieving a fair historical Treaty settlement between Ngāti Rangitihi and the Crown is greatly appreciated.

This bill reading brings us one step closer to bringing effect to the deed of settlement between Ngāti Rangitihi and the Crown, which was signed at the Rangitihi Marae in Matatā on 5 December 2020. The deed of settlement settles historical Treaty of Waitangi claims relating to Ngāti Rangitihi and comprises historical redress that records the Crown’s breaches of the Treaty and the past injustices the Crown inflicted on Ngāti Rangitihi; the Crown apology for historical Crown acts and omissions in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles and the resulting pain caused to Ngāti Rangitihi; cultural redress acknowledging connections to land and resources of significance to Ngāti Rangitihi; relationship redress building new connections with the Crown, local authorities, and other groups; and financial and commercial redress providing a strong economic base for the future.

After its first reading on 22 June last year, this bill was referred to the Māori Affairs Committee. The committee called for submissions between June and August 2021, and received 20 written submissions from interested groups and individuals. They also heard seven oral submissions. Firstly, I want to thank the committee for swiftly considering the issues raised in submissions, and I want to acknowledge the hard work of that committee, which is greatly appreciated. I also want to thank all those who took the time to share their kōrero with the Māori Affairs Committee. The committee reported back to the House on 17 December last year, and recommended that the bill be passed with a small number of technical and minor amendments.

The committee’s report was focused on key issues raised through submissions. This was primarily around concerns about the cultural redress sites being offered to Ngāti Rangitihi in the Tarawera region, and disagreements between ownership rights with Tūhourangi and Ngāti Rangitihi for the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. I acknowledge the committee’s position that the Crown has engaged with Tūhourangi and has considered any effects that redress will have on them. Tūhourangi are close neighbours to Ngāti Rangitihi, and both have continued to work together in great spirit throughout negotiations. The bill enables the on-transfer of sites from Ngāti Rangitihi to Tūhourangi.

Finally, it’s the Crown’s sincere wish that Ngāti Rangitihi settlement will restore the Crown’s honour and atone for the past injustices it has inflicted on Ngāti Rangitihi. Although no settlement can truly ever make up for this wrongdoing or compensate for the hurt Ngāti Rangitihi has endured, the Crown hopes that this settlement will be a starting point of a new, strengthened relationship between Ngāti Rangitihi and the Crown. I look forward to welcoming Ngāti Rangitihi to Parliament for their third reading. Until then, I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. To the members of Ngāti Rangitihi watching this afternoon, I want to say welcome to Parliament virtually. I wish you could be here in person, and I hope we will be able to see that for the third reading. But this is a good step today that we are progressing this through the House. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s good to be here on what is a historic day, despite the fact that we are doing it, effectively, by Zoom, which seems to be the way of the world at the moment.

Look, I do hope that I have an opportunity to visit with Ngāti Rangitihi and to speak with them in person in their rohe. I do have a personal connection to this region, having spent a relatively small but very memorable part of my childhood living on the shores of Lake Tarawera as a child and taking a bus into Lynmore Primary School in Rotorua and going past the Buried Village of Te Wairoa every day, back and forth.

I’m very aware from that experience—it impressed on me deeply as a child—of the Tarawera eruption on the people of Ngāti Rangitihi back in 1886. About half of the approximately 110 people killed in that eruption were from Ngāti Rangitihi, and it led on, unfortunately, to injustices where the Crown didn’t assist the people of Ngāti Rangitihi at that time adequately, and that’s part of the injustices that we’re seeking to restore here today. So it’s a special moment for me personally to be aware of some of that history from my childhood and to be here today speaking on a bill that’s helping to restore some of the mana of Ngāti Rangitihi—and I acknowledge some of the pain and suffering that their ancestors have experienced—and, as best we can in this process, to make that right for their descendants and those who followed on.

I am a permanent member of the Māori Affairs Committee, and we were grateful to hear from those who submitted on this bill. We are happy to recommend that this continues through to the third reading with a couple of minor amendments, which I acknowledge the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Andrew Little, spoke to previously.

There are some other matters that were considered. The cultural redress sites in the Tarawera region: some submitters from Tūhourangi raised concerns about the cultural redress sites being offered to Ngāti Rangitihi. Specifically, submitters did not believe that Ngāti Rangitihi had the right to seek redress in the Tarawera region. The Waimangu Volcanic Valley is one such redress site, and, as the Māori Affairs Committee, we understand the concerns regarding the cultural redress sites in the Tarawera region led to some uri of Tūhourangi applying to the Waitangi Tribunal for an urgent inquiry. Although the application for an urgent inquiry was declined, the tribunal continues, I understand, to consider the matter. However, it’s not for the committee to comment on matters under active consideration by the tribunal, but we wish to acknowledge the views we heard from submitters on the matters raised.

Also, we heard about the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. When there are disagreements between iwi in relation to specific items of redress, the Crown prefers that they are addressed by mutual agreement between the interest groups, and we had been advised that Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi Trust and Tūhourangi Tribal Authority, the governance entities for the two iwi, resolved to seek an enhanced parcel of land at Waimangu. This enhanced parcel of land includes the adjoining Ōtūkapuarangi site, to which the Crown agreed.

Outside of settlement, the two iwi have resolved that Ngāti Rangitihi will transfer ownership of Ōtūkapuarangi in full and Waimangu in part to Tūhourangi. The two iwi also resolved that the sites should be jointly administered by Ngāti Rangitihi and Tūhourangi. The bill provides for these arrangements to be implemented post-settlement, and it will be up to the post-settlement governance entity to make the arrangements necessary. We did hear that transferring land in this way to other interest groups is unusual, and Ngāti Rangitihi is only the second iwi to have these provisions in its settlement bill.

We will have an opportunity to speak more at the third reading on this bill, and I will save some of my comments for then. Like I say, I do hope that Ngāti Rangitihi can be here in Parliament when we do have that third reading.

I do want to acknowledge all of the work that has been done to date to get it to this stage, and I also acknowledge the former Treaty negotiations Minister, Christopher Finlayson for the work he did on this and for the work that has been done by Minister Andrew Little, as the present negotiations Minister, and his staff. So with that, I will commend the bill to the House.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe, otirā ngā mema katoa o te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Mr Speaker, greetings, and to all members in the House, greetings to you all.]

Mr Assistant Speaker McKelvie, can I add my warm congratulations to your appointment. It is lovely to have your wisdom and expertise from the House, so congratulations. I look forward to much more of your guidance in this House.

To our Ngāti Rangitihi, e te iwi e haramai nei, e whakarongo mai nei anei ngā mihi maioha ki a koutou katoa i runga i tō kaupapa whakahirahira i te ahi nei. Nō rēira, ōku rau rangatira mā, e kui mā, e koro mā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[To the tribe coming here and listening, these are my affectionate greetings to you all, as you present important issue here this afternoon. Therefore, my chiefs, to my elders, greetings, greetings, greetings to you all.]

I’m pleased to stand in support of the second reading of the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill. It’s important to contextualise the second reading in a process that generally takes years, if not decades, for iwi, particularly, waiting to hear their particular claims. So at the second reading, it is a time to reflect on what the public consultation on this bill transpired—and I’ll touch briefly on that.

The previous speaker, Joseph Mooney, who is a member of the Māori Affairs Committee—and I want to congratulate Mr Mooney and all the members of the Māori Affairs Committee who heard this bill and have reported that with very few changes to this House. But, essentially, all Treaty settlements generally have three parts: they have the apology; they have the cultural redress; and, of course, they have the commercial financial redress as a way to acknowledge the breaches of the Crown or the acts of omission of the Crown in respect of the Ngāti Rangitihi people.

And just to help—because some of my colleagues have asked, “Where exactly is Ngāti Rangitihi?” So it’s the Rotorua-Kaingaroa-Matatā area. It’s not part of my estate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, but not far. It is part of the Waiariki Māori electorate, and I’m, like I said, really pleased and honoured to have a short call on this significant piece of legislation.

The point that I wanted to just take some time to explore—and the previous member did address that—was around the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. I think I want to underscore what the settlement actually does, because, in general, when we have disagreeing areas of interest between two neighbouring iwi or, in the past Treaty settlements, where the ownership of the return or gifting of some properties are gifted to iwi then gifted back to, generally, the Crown. But in this example that Mr Mooney alluded to, we are actually gifting land to Ngāti Rangitihi who will then give it back to Tūhourangi. That is the area that Mr Mooney highlighted in his contribution.

It’s unusual that an iwi who is at the heart of a settlement receives property and then gives it to another iwi. That’s why I wanted to underscore it, because it would have been an enormous generosity of Ngāti Rangitihi to accept those conditions of receiving a piece of property and then handing it to Tūhourangi as a means of acknowledging the shared interests they have in that particular property. Not only is this settlement enabling that to happen but they will jointly have a governance structure, as I understand it, over the particular property that’s been mentioned in this House.

I just think when we’re in a time of—[Assistant Speaker knocks microphone]—kindness and generosity—are you all right, Mr Speaker? In this time of kindness and generosity, I think the iwi through this particular settlement of Ngāti Rangitihi, I think, cannot be underscored enough. So I just wanted to mention that as a unique quality within the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill that we are debating this afternoon, and, again, want to acknowledge the Ngāti Rangitihi negotiators, their steering committee, and their people for that generosity, but for their perseverance in this full and final settlement of which the second reading is a critical part.

The $11.3 million in financial and commercial redress is made up of two parts. Ngāti Rangitihi is a recipient of the Crown forest land of the Central North Island (CNI) Iwi Collective, which, if you recall, was negotiated many, many years ago. So it’s important that that mechanism to ring-fence Crown forest land for Ngāti Rangitihi is being realised through this particular settlement, and that’s about $7.3 million. Then, of course, $4 million in straight financial redress, making a total of about $11.3 million that has been offered to Ngāti Rangitihi. Of course, it’s never, ever going to be enough, but I wanted to acknowledge and highlight the origin of that commercial make-up, the fact that Ngāti Rangitihi has an interest in the largest CNI Crown forest, which is in the central North Island. I’m sure, as we get to the third reading, the plans to unlock not just the economic but the social and the cultural and environmental aspirations of Ngāti Rangitihi, this settlement package will lean quite a lot into ensuring that they receive that.

Can I just add my appreciation to the Treaty Ministers—Ministers plural—who have had a hand in this particular settlement. Can I also acknowledge the hard-working Māori Affairs Committee that did receive 20 submissions—I think they heard seven submitters in general. But the way in which the Māori Affairs Committee has reported unanimously back to this House shows that there’s goodwill across this House when it comes to Treaty settlements. So with those few words, can I again extend my appreciation to Ngāti Rangitihi. I too hope that in the third reading that we have some of them here in the House. It is a momentous occasion when you have your third and final reading of your Treaty bill. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Like the previous member, it is a pleasure to rise and speak on this. I spoke at the first reading and just note that of course the members of Ngāti Rangitihi were here for that, but now we’re in a position where it cannot be so. And as my colleague Joseph Mooney said of our life and the world we live in, these are strange times. But, nevertheless, it’s good to be here speaking on this second reading. I’m not on the Māori Affairs Committee, but I have been on it previously. Good times, simpler times, I really enjoyed it actually—getting around the rohe and the motu and checking out little marae all over New Zealand.

This bill, of course, does a few key things in terms of key settlement outcomes. There’s $11.3 million there in financial redress, comprising $7 million throughout the Central North Island Forests Iwi Collective settlement; the right of first offer of the Rotomahana farm, currently owned by Landcorp; and the right to buy the land under Matatā School and the school house site, with a lease to the Ministry of Education. There’s also, of course, cultural redress, which is usual in a case such as this, for Ngāti Rangitihi, and that reflects in relation to the Crown Minerals Act—and I was the first Minister of the Crown to do such protocols and agreements—the Resource Management Act, and the Fisheries Act, and the deed of settlement provides for the vesting of 19 sites to be transferred to Ngāti Rangitihi as cultural redress.

Of course, as the previous member has said, this is a great part of the world, where Ngāti Rangitihi live. I know it very well, I’ve spent a lot of time there—Matatā, a great place to stop for a pie, a great part of the world; very beautiful there on the Matatā straits. And, of course, Lake Tarawera as well—in my view, the most beautiful, mystical lake in New Zealand. There’s one or two—Waikaremoana could come a close second, because it’s a beautiful one too—but actually I think Tarawera is just very, very special and, as I say, my favourite lake in New Zealand, having spent a bit of time there over the years. This is a special area. As with all Treaty settlements, what’s in it won’t compensate fully and in some ways it’s token, but it does acknowledge and provide redress for the harms, the injustices of the past.

That, of course, brings me to National’s position on Treaty settlements, and they’re rather straightforward. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: National is proud to be the party that has started this process, fundamentally, with Jim Bolger and Sir Doug Graham, and has carried it on through the likes of the inimitable, some would say idiosyncratic, Chris Finlayson and others under John Key’s tenure. We have seen more Treaty settlements than the other big parties. We are proud of that. We’re proud of our role in progressing historic Treaty settlements to deal with and provide redress for historic injustices. That doesn’t mean that we think that actually, you know, all that Te Arawhiti and the likes of Willie Jackson, Kelvin Davis are doing—prospectively—is right. Actually, we think there are some of those things which are a bit adventurous, which actually put New Zealand on the wrong path. But in terms of this bill and this historic Treaty settlement process that Te Arawhiti leads, we’re fully behind it. We will enjoy celebrating with Ngāti Rangitihi at the third reading.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Barbara Edmonds.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Associate Whip—Labour): I’m sorry, it’s on the Chamber—I’m just checking. The Chamber staff online hasn’t responded back to the member—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Is this a point of order?

BARBARA EDMONDS: A point of order, yes. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m just noting that we have a member who’s sought a call on the Zoom, and we haven’t had a response from the Chamber staff to say it’s been received.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Yes, thank you for that. With the footnote, with apologies to the Hon Eugenie Sage, I call—coming in remotely—Tāmati Coffey.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) (remote): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Forgive me for being a little bit novice at this whole—the technology side of how we’re presenting today. But I’m very pleased, as chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, to be taking a call on this, the second reading of the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the previous speaker, the Hon Simon Bridges, who talked about how Treaty settlements will never be enough. I absolutely agree with that. In fact, we’ve heard that in the submission from the chair of Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi Trust, Leith Comer. He said it will never be enough, and I agree with that, which is why I think that it’s on us as the Government of the day, and for every other future Government to come, to ensure that we’re topping up that account, that we’re actually making sure that we’re engaging with iwi to create co-governance and co-management opportunities at every level, so that we don’t leave them out of pocket and so that we actually acknowledge that Treaty settlements, when we have them, are not full and final. They need to be supplemented with future power-sharing. I look forward to the member of the Opposition, who just resumed his seat, supporting that.

Can I first of all, as I say, acknowledge Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi Trust. Usually, it would be something that we would be able to do in person, go and hear the submissions, travel to Matatā. That was the plan. Unfortunately, COVID got in the way, so we were unable to travel. We let the haukāinga know that we were unable to travel to Rangiaohia, to the marae, to be able to listen to the people of the land. Kanohi ki te kanohi is a very important tikanga Māori, and unfortunately on this occasion we weren’t able to do that. We did do that on Zoom, though. On Zoom, we heard various submissions. So can I thank everybody that presented their submissions: 20 in total, seven orally.

I want to acknowledge, as I said just then, the chair of the trust, Leith Comer, when he talked about the harm that’s been caused over the years. To quote him, he said “Crown actions in the early and mid-20th century destroyed this place. The cutting of the Tarawera and Rangitaiki Awa directly out to sea” also was an action of the Crown which put them back, also “enabling the mill at Kawerau to discharge anything [that] it wanted into the Tarawera [River] were the acts that caused the destruction. The Crown has taken the [right] step in righting these wrongs by acknowledging [that] it breeched [those] Treaty obligations to Ngāti Rangitihi.” But again, he said “this is nowhere near enough.”

Patrick Nicholas, another submitter, said “No settlement will ever be [enough] to compensate for the mamae [that] our people [have] suffered”, and yet he still found that the submission from Leith Comer, as chair, was “very inspirational”. I also want to acknowledge Rex Bunn, an avid researcher, who’s dedicated his life work to the eruption. He was the one that came forward and said that he knew that this bill was going through and he wanted to make sure that we had the exact location of Ōtūkapuarangi. If you didn’t know that, Ōtūkapuarangi is the Māori name for the pink terrace. He was very happy for the exact location, the coordinates, to be included, making sure that the relevant iwi knew where they were, and he had the photos and the science to prove it. Although, I must say, I’m pretty sure that between our iwis, Tūhourangi and Ngāti Rangitihi, they probably already knew.

Can I also acknowledge the Tūhourangi Tribal Authority and Ngāti Rangitihi for working together on this. They themselves agreed outside of the settlement on a way forward, and my colleague Meka Whaitiri talked about it before—a way forward on the Waimangu thermal valley. You see, what they decided was that outside of the settlement, it would go to Ngāti Rangitihi, but that it would be transferred to Tūhourangi the pink terrace, Ōtūkapuarangi, in full, and Waimangu in part. The two iwi also resolved that the two sites should be jointly administered by both of the iwi as well.

I want to acknowledge Tania Rangiheuea and Rea Martin, who are my whanaunga from Tūhourangi. Their views were very different from that of the tribal authority, and Rea pointed out that they had concerns around the cultural redress sites being offered to the Ngāti Rangitihi, specifically saying that they did not believe that Rangitihi had the right to be able to seek redress in the Tarawera region. To that point, they have a Waitangi Tribunal claim in, Wai 2771, and they wanted the committee to be able to hold off until the tribunal had heard it. They applied to hear that urgently, but that didn’t happen. That was not upheld by the tribunal, but it’s still being considered by the tribunal. So for the short time, and to be able to have some progress in this space, the committee thought that it was prudent that the show went on.

This is a great piece of legislation, and it is going to settle the outstanding grievance of Ngāti Rangitihi. For that reason, this being the second reading, I’m proud to support it, but I know that myself, the committee members, and, most importantly, the people of Ngāti Rangitihi will be looking forward to the third reading so that they can finally put this to rest and start their journey off into the future, and, hopefully, that will be done ā-kanohi [face to face] instead of ā-rorohiko [via computer]. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): My apologies for being slightly premature. E mihi ana ki a Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku, tēnā kōrua. Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koutou ngā mema o te Whare Pāremata. Tēnā koutou Ngāti Rangitihi, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[I acknowledge and greet the Sky Father and the Earth Mother. Greetings Madam Speaker, greetings to the members of this House of Parliament. Greetings to Ngāti Rangitihi, greetings, greetings, greetings one and all.]

I’m really pleased to take a short call on the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill, and can I particularly acknowledge the Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi Trust, who negotiated with the Crown, and particularly people like Leith Comer, Catherine Moana Dewes, Tia Warbrick, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, and Donna Semmens. The bill, as others have said, was referred to the Māori Affairs Committee, under the capable chairing of Tāmati Coffey, last June. It received some 20 submissions and there have been some small technical changes to it, but nothing substantive.

I feel very humbled to speak on this bill because of my role last term as the Minister of Conservation, and the role that Te Papa Atawhai had, particularly in some of the cultural redress in the bill. It’s always instructive just to get a small insight into the horrors of colonisation, the loss of mauri, the loss of mana, the loss of whenua, to look at the history that is encapsulated in all of the Treaty settlement bills. In this bill, clause 8 describes some of the history and some of the impacts of colonisation on Ngāti Rangitihi. They had very little contact with Pākehā before the 1820s. They didn’t sign the Treaty and they didn’t accept the Crown’s authority.

In 1866, of course, there were large confiscations of land in the Bay of Plenty, including land to which Ngāti Rangitihi had a strong connection. Those confiscation claims were never properly investigated, despite the protests of rangatira. Of course, in our land law, back in the 1860s, the Crown went about converting collectively held land, land that was held by Māori in tribal ownership, into individual tenure. This was devastating. Then in the 1870s through to 1890s there were proceedings in the Native Land Court, but this succeeded in burdening Ngāti Rangitihi with considerable survey costs and didn’t really resolve any of the claims. Then you had the Crown refusing to pay rent on land where the tenure was yet to be determined.

Then, of course, there was the Tarawera eruption, the largest, the deadliest eruption in Aotearoa in the last 500 years. More than 110 people perished and around half of those were Ngāti Rangitihi. We’ve seen the devastation that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption has caused—people losing their homes, crops being destroyed, livelihoods being destroyed. That big plume of ash from the Tarawera eruption, the flattening of forest, the destruction of villages, the destruction of crops, caused enormous harm and damage to Ngāti Rangitihi. What did the Crown do? Did it provide the sort of humanitarian assistance that we’ve seen the community and the Government extend to Tonga? No. The bill records, in clause 8(4), that instead of extending support and help to Ngāti Rangitihi—and I quote—“The Crown generally acted as a monopoly purchaser, and aggressively purchased Ngāti Rangitihi lands.” Those were lands that, if they hadn’t been damaged, if Ngāti Rangitihi hadn’t lost so many of its own and been dispersed and displaced, Ngāti Rangitihi would have been very unlikely to have sold.

So you have considerable poverty, huge displacement, the loss of a basis for economic wellbeing, the loss of mauri, the loss of the connection with the whenua, and then, of course, the Crown action in draining areas like the Rangitikei wetlands—an enormously significant mahanga kai drained and converted to pasture.

All of this history and the destruction of the connection with the land meant the loss of the traditional tribal ownership structures. The bill recognises, acknowledges, and apologises for that history of Crown action.

The Crown, in the bill, also recognises its failure to protect the Tarawera River. The Tarawera awa is of enormous spiritual and cultural importance to Ngāti Rangitihi. Like others in this House, I have walked beside that river. It flows out of Lake Tarawera. It’s in almost pristine condition. The waters are crystal clear at Te Tapa Horo, which is the campsite beside the river which is being vested in Ngāti Rangitihi. It disappears underground and then some distance downstream it shoots out of the rock in a 65-metre cascade down a rocky cliff face. It is spectacular, one of our natural wonders.

In contrast to the river flowing out of the lake in crystal clear condition, downstream, because of the pulp and paper mill in Kawerau, it becomes the black drain. In 2010, when the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment reported on some of New Zealand’s filthiest rivers, the Tarawera was the second filthiest. So this black drain has had thousands of tonnes of pulp and paper discharged into it over decades, and it was because of the legislation the Crown passed in 1954, the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company Enabling Act, which had minimal concern for the environmental impacts of those discharges, the impacts on the mauri of the river, and Ngāti Rangitihi. I acknowledge the work of Catherine Delahunty, former Green MP, working alongside Ngāti Rangitihi to try and get the loophole in the Resource Management Act closed and to clean up the river and stop those discharges.

This settlement is really important because it provides for Tarawera awa restoration strategy group, an eight-member joint committee of the Bay of Plenty Regional Council with four members from iwi Ngāti Rangitihi alongside Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Mangakino, and Ngāti Tūwharetoa and for local councils. Their mahi will be to restore the mauri and the wellbeing of the Tarawera River and redress the harm that has been done by the pollution and those thousands of tonnes of pulp and paper effluent.

Certainly the bill provides for financial and commercial redress, but we’d just like to talk again about some of the cultural redress, because it is the cultural redress, the return of 80 hectares of really significant conservation land at Waimangu to Ngāti Rangitihi in a way which has been negotiated with Tūhourangi which will allow the joint ownership and management of that land. It was in 2017 that Ngāti Rangitihi and Tūhourangi purchased the concession which enables the public to visit the spectacular geothermal wonders of Waimangu and operate that jointly and now we see this land which has got the most significant geothermal vegetation in Aotearoa on it going back to Ngāti Rangitihi. Like others, I really commend the generosity and the negotiations which have happened with Tūhourangi which allows land to be returned to Tūhourangi, particularly the Ōtūkapuarangi area on the shores of Lake Rotomahana in a separate side agreement with Tūhourangi.

The cultural redress also includes the recognition agreements over about 1,800 hectares of the Tarawera scenic and historic reserves around the lake to ensure that Ngāti Rangitihi’s values and the significance of those areas to Ngāti Rangitihi are properly recognised through the statutory written acknowledgment in resource management proceedings and in any proceedings about the management of that land.

The bill, as others have said, is never enough, but it is a step, in terms of recognising the harm that has been done in the past and setting Ngāti Rangitihi on a new direction where it is getting the basis of its connection with the whenua actually restored. The Green Party is very pleased to support the bill.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak to the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill on behalf of the ACT Party. We will be supporting this going through, as we did in the first reading. Part of the reason for that is because we are aware that those that voted from the iwi to support this bill got 92 percent support for it. So we intend to support them to support this settlement.

From the previous speaker, the Hon Eugenie Sage, I was quite surprised to hear about a black drain coming out of Tarawera. Having grown up in Rotorua in the 1980s and the 1990s, I actually spent quite a bit of time swimming in that lake with my family, and there was nothing black, but a lot of pristine about that.

Now, the Māori Affairs Committee have said that they’ve made minor changes after having listened to the submitters through their written and their oral submissions. Having been given this to speak to today, I went and had a look at the bill myself, and the history within the bill did make some interesting reading and I will be repeating some of the things that previous speakers have already acknowledged.

After reading the history, I’m very glad to hear that the Crown and iwi are finally able to acknowledge the grievances and to move on, that the offered cultural, historical, and financial redress has been accepted, especially as Ngāti Rangitihi assisted the Crown in defence of the area of land between 1865 and 1872, offering the Crown their military support and doing this all the while, while the Crown was confiscating land around the area.

I note also that during that time, the iwi also sought redress from the Crown but they were not recognised, and in fact, at that time, their complaints were not even investigated. Later, as has been already acknowledged, the Crown aggressively started purchasing land, land that they had already been leasing and land which they had decided payment of the rental was being now used as an advance payment for the land itself. Once again, Ngāti Rangitihi were trying to lodge claims, trying to be heard, and they were largely ignored. I admire their tenacity, because they kept on going, as has been shown since the 1860s—there are generations of this iwi that have kept on pushing even though the Crown was ignoring them.

On 10 June 1866, Mount Tarawera erupted. This beautiful big maunga lost half its top and created nine craters in the middle of it. The destruction of the Pink and White Terraces on Lake Rotomahana was devastating, but not as devastating as the burying of Te Wairoa village. By the 1900s, Ngāti Rangitihi had virtually lost all of their land or most of it, and they moved to Matatā. And at this point I’d like to acknowledge my uncle from Matatā, Wahia Mita. I note that after the move to Matatā, Ngāti Rangitihi lobbied the Crown for relief again for what they had lost, and they spent 30 years doing that lobbying. I also acknowledge the draining of the Rangitaiki swamp, which affected their ability to gather food. It affected urupā, two of them, and it degraded the mauri of the Tarawera awa. Despite this, Ngāti Rangitihi continued with their military support for the Crown while holding their mamae within.

I note that Tūhourangi had their concerns over the ownership of certain parts of land, and I see that colleagues from the Māori Affairs Committee actually have addressed this. The concerns, of course, were over parcels of land in Waimangu Valley, Te Waimangu volcanic valley, and I commend the agreed resolutions that have been made between Ngāti Rangitihi and Tūhourangi and understand that the transfer and ownership of some of this land will include jointly managing it together and that this will be concluded after the settlement with Ngāti Rangitihi gifting their settlement land in the Waimangu Valley, parts of it, to Tūhourangi.

To Ngāti Rangitihi, we acknowledge your history. We acknowledge your extensive lobbying over trying to get your property back. You lobbied for well over 100 years. We acknowledge your military service to the Crown and we also acknowledge your stamina and your resolve. We are pleased that the mauri of the awa can be restored. We support the settlement of the Ngāti Rangitihi grievance. It is time to move on, time to restore your mana, and time to grow your mauri. Kia ora.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Ki te Arawa waka, tēnei te mihi. Ki ngā uri o Ngāti Rangitihi, tēnā koutou.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker. To the peoples of Te Arawa, I acknowledge you. To the descendants of Ngāti Rangitihi, greetings.]

The Treaty of Waitangi is a foundational document for New Zealand’s legal system and our constitutional framework. I’m proud of the long-established principle in New Zealand that the Crown owes Māori the duty to act in good faith, in accordance with the Treaty.

It has cross-partisan support, as we’ve seen today in the House, with Opposition members speaking in support of this bill and for the general principles of what we are doing here, which is righting the wrongs of the past and not erasing those histories which are uncomfortable today.

This settlement legislation brings us one step closer to giving effect to the deed of settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Rangitihi, which acknowledges those instances where the Crown has not acted in good faith, and I’m proud to be a part of the Parliament today that is doing so now.

As such, I agree with the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Andrew Little, that this bill is an opportunity for the Crown to atone for the injustices that Rangitihi has been subject to at its hands. And it’s an opportunity for Rangitihi to look to the future as an iwi, to continue to build its identity, to flourish collectively, to be a leader within its rohe, and to face Government as a partner.

It’s a privilege to speak in support of the settlement which means so much more than the sum of its parts to the negotiating team, to the uri who will benefit from it, and to partners in Government who look forward to working with Ngāti Rangitihi going forward.

I also want to thank everyone who submitted on this bill; the Office of the Clerk and my colleagues on the Māori Affairs Committee for their work and considering the views of those submitters and the advice that was delivered, largely online in a Zoom environment. I agree with the chair of the committee, Tāmati Coffey, when he said that the kanohi ki te kanohi engagement is a part of the settlement process and of tikanga Māori. But it’s good that we’ve had those moments where the Minister has been able to meet with the groups on the ground and that we were able to host Ngāti Rangitihi in the House for the first reading of this bill, and I look forward to the future when we can be back together again.

There has been a history of excessive land takings by the Crown, under the guise of the Public Works Act, from this iwi, and not having sufficient land in the aftermath of the Tarawera eruption to live dignified lives. Today, Ngāti Rangitihi are, effectively, a landless people. They have been dispossessed of their tribal lands and they now have interests in less than 4 percent, or approximately 9,000 hectares, of their original 250,000 hectare tribal rohe. It’s an area made up of 175,000 hectares of the central North Island, known as Kaingaroa, and the adjacent lands in the 75,000 hectares of confiscated land within the Eastern Bay of Plenty confiscation area. I also note that much of that 9,000 hectares that I talked about the iwi having an interest in today is unable to be used for economic benefit, due to its status as conservation and reserves land.

Rangitihi were forced out of their inland rohe by the eruption of Mount Tarawera, as other speakers have canvassed. But they relocated in the coastal rohe lands in Matatā and Hauone, and by the time their inland rohe was again fit for human habitation, the Crown deemed that land [Audio missing] public [Audio missing] conservation estate and for Crown [Audio missing].

There are two main ways [Audio missing] those wrongs in this piece of legislation and in all Treaty settlement legislation. The first is financial redress and [Audio missing]. And I want to touch now on [Audio missing]. Cultural redress in this settlement looks like the 19 sites of deep significance to be transferred to Rangitihi as cultural redress on the settlement date and this [Audio missing] which is known in and around the Waimangu Volcanic Valley, the former site of the Pink and White Terraces, and five properties at Matatā. That means for this iwi, in practice, that relationships with neighbouring iwi, with local government, and with arms of Government like the Department of Conservation and the department of culture and heritage can be developed from a strong standing point.

I will conclude by saying that I look forward to considering this legislation again at the third reading. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Speaker, thank you very much. It gives me pleasure and it is a privilege to speak on this piece of legislation, as all of the area that we’re talking about in this settlement for Ngāti Rangitihi either is in my electorate or previously—before boundary changes—has been. I’ve had an opportunity over the period of time that I’ve been the elected member of Parliament for Rotorua to talk at great length with many of the leaders of this iwi about the land, the history, and what it means to them. And indeed, I remember—it might have been in my first term, which feels a little while ago now—I had an opportunity with Ken Raureti who lives down the road from me, to visit Mount Tarawera together. I’d been talking to Ken about why public access had been taken away many years ago. I remember as a child having an opportunity, as many people in New Zealand did, to just drive on up the mountain and wander around at will. In fact, I think I went there with a Scout group or something where we slid in the scoria down into the volcano mouth on a number of occasions—the very first adventure tourism, I suppose, in Rotorua.

Hon Simon Bridges: That doesn’t sound very health and safety!

Hon TODD McCLAY: That was the day when health and safety was: if they didn’t come back then there was one less in the Scout group, that’s correct. However, the point of this was I said to Ken, “Well why do people not have access now? There’s a great concern in the community. So he said, “Why don’t we go up and wander round and we’ll talk about it?” I arrived at his house, and he decided he wanted to go in my freshly painted blue National Party truck—we were in Government at the time—and we drove south towards Taupō, we went round past Rerewhakaaitu, and then drove up towards the mountain. It stopped at a very large gate that was double locked, and I said to Ken, “If you open the gate, we can drive all the way to the top.” He said, “Well I will”—but the keys are in the glovebox in his car back at his house in Rotorua. So we got out and we walked all the way, which is probably an hour to an hour and a half walk to get to the landing area where there were young men and a few women camping, and I learnt a lot that day.

In fact, it wasn’t a decision on the part of iwi to close the mountain when it was open—and Mr Bridges talked about health and safety. Somebody went up riding mountain bikes late at night and landed in the crater and was badly injured, and the owners of the land at the time, Ngāti Rangitihi, were held to account so they had to close it as a result if health and safety. The point of this is, over time, there has been less than enough understanding about the claim of Ngāti Rangitihi, and largely this goes a long way to address that. I’m very pleased that they have recognition over the Central North Island forest. Much of that land, as with others in the area, falls within their responsibility previously, and Mount Tarawera, its reserves, and many other areas including where the Pink and White Terraces were, and the Waimangu Valley and tourism volcanic area also form part of this.

Can I say, and I don’t want to speak for too long because the actual member of Parliament for the Wairakei electorate that all this falls in, I think is—well the Māori Party are speaking after me—Rawiri Waititi, and I would leave it to him as the elected member of Parliament to talk much more about this. But can I recognise the work of Leith Comer, with whom I had the opportunity to go up on the mountain a few elections ago and talk about settlement and what access would mean for others who also might like to go and understand much, much more. To Ken Raureti who gratefully gave much of his time to me, Merepeka who also is there, and the other trust members for their diligence, their hard work, and commitment over many, many years to create greater understanding, to move forward for their people, and to find a settlement with the Crown.

Mr Bridges says that these settlements don’t go all the way to meeting the injustices of the past, but this is an opportunity to draw a line under those and then look forward together to an area of New Zealand that we can develop together. I would finish by saying—not to be at all political—but to the member of the Green Party that spoke earlier, Eugenie Sage, they are forever talking about the bottom of the Tarawera River. It’s good that there is a joint effort to continue to make sure that the bottom of the Tarawera River is healthy, but she along with others knows that the regional council, with local iwi and local people, have worked very, very hard over many, many years through continual consents to make sure it meets the standards that are required. It no longer has the term that she gave it, it is no longer a drain, it is healthier than it has been for many, many years, and there is wide-ranging commitment to continue to improve it. I commend this bill to the House, and look forward to it passing fully.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote): Kia ora, kei te rongo koutou i a au? Kia ora, kia ora tātou. Ka tangohia taku pōtae e ahau. Koinā hoki taku mahi ia te wā o ngā kōrero mō ngā pire, nō reira, kei te mihi atu rā ki a Rangitihi i tēnei rā. Kei te mihi atu ki a Te Arawa whānui me ngā whātorohanga ki roto i a Mātaatua, engari i a Rangitihi nei rā te mihi atu rā ki a koutou. Tēnā rā hoki koutou i runga i te āhuatanga o ā tātou mahi.

Kite au i a Rangitihi, ā, heke iho mai rā ki a Pikiao, arā ko tērā o ō tātou mate ki a Muriwai i roto i ngā wiki kua hipa ake. Māna hoki te ope tārewa e kawe ki tōna nohonga ki a rātou kua parangia, i te ara kua parangia e te tini e te mano. Nō reira koutou e ngā mate, haere, haere, whatungaro atu rā. Kua hoki mai rā ki a tātou ngā mahuetanga iho. Ngāti Rangitihi, tēnā tātou.

Tēnei tātou i tēnei pānuitanga tuarua mō tō koutou pire, mō ngā kerēme Tiriti o te iwi, me te mea hoki kei te tautoko i ngā kōrero a te heamana a Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Māori, nāna hoki te kōrero āhua kei te mokemoke tonu mātou kāore e tarea te haramai ki roto i a koutou ki te whakarongo ki ngā kōrero engari e tarea tonu tātou te whakatutuki i runga i te ipurangi nei. Nō reira, ahakoa kāore tātou i tae ā-tinana, ko te mea nui i rongo tonu mātou i wā koutou kōrero e rongo tonu mātou i te wairua o te kawe o tēnei o ngā pire i roto i tērā tūāhuatanga. Nō reira, kei te mihi atu anō ki a koutou.

Kei te kite atu au i roto i tēnei o ngā pire he āhua ōrite ki ngā tūāhuatanga i whakaritea e ngā iwi i mua noa atu i a koutou—te whakahoki whenua mai, ahakoa kotahi pai heneti noa kua hoki, ka hoki mai tētahi wāhanga. Tērā anō i wā koutou ngahere, tērā anō i wā koutou whenua rotarota, tērā anō i wā koutou roto kōreporepo, ngā kūkūwai, ngā awa, ngā ahi tipua, ngāwhā tae ake rā ki ngā taha moana paku nei kua whakahokia nei ki a koutou. Koirā anō hoki nei te painga o ngā kerēme Tiriti nei. Ka tarea anō hoki e koutou te whātoro atu ki roto i wā koutou ake, tō koutou ake mana whenua, tō koutou mana moana, tō koutou mana wai māori hoki. Nō reira kei te mihi atu rā anō ki a koutou, ā, tekau mā iwa anō hoki ngā wāhanga kua riro i a koutou ki roto i to koutou redress, me te mea hoki ko Ngāti Rangitihi koutou e hautū nei i tēnei kaupapa.

Nō reira, āe, kei te mihi atu rā, kei te mihi atu rā. Ki a koutou ngā taratihī, ki a koe Leith. Ko koe te hautū nei i tēnei kaupapa i roto i ngā submissions, i ngā kōrero i whakawhārikihia ki mua i te aroaro o te Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Māori, ko koe tērā e hautū nei i ngā hiahiatanga, i ngā wawatatanga o Rangitihi o ēnei rā, ā, me te pīkau anō hoki ngā koroingo o ngā mātua tīpuna. Ki taku kōkā ki a Cathy, ki a Merepeka, ki a Tia, ki a Melanie kia tae ki, ki a Donna anō hoki koutou hei hāpaitia nei i tēnei o ngā pire, ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Anei rā tō koutou mema o Te Waiariki e kaha nei i whawhai nei mō tō koutou pire mō ngā wawatatanga me ngā tūmanakohanga o Te Waiariki, kei te mihi atu ki a koutou i tēnei rā.

E, kāore tēnei e whakatōroa i ngā kōrero, ko te mana o tēnei tūāhuatanga ka noho tonu ki roto i a koutou, ki Ngāti Rangitihi, ā, me te mea hoki ka hoki atu rā ki ngā kōrero i whakawhārikihia i mua noa atu i tō koutou aroaro i a koutou e whakatinanahia i te pire i te pānuitanga tuatahi me te mea hoki, tēnei tō koutou mokopuna. Tēnei tō mokopuna e tū whakahīhī nei kei roto i ngā tūāhuatanga kei mua i te aroaro. Kia kaua e waiho mā ngā mahi nei hei whakamutunga engari me waiho ake mā ō tātou tamariki mokopuna hei ngā rā e haere ake nei te whakahaere tonu i ngā hiahiatanga a te iwi, ā, i ngā koroingotanga a ngā mātua tīpuna kei mua i te aroaro.

Nō reira kāore tēnei e whakatoro i ngā kōrero, te tautoko katoa i ngā kōrero a ngā mema Pāremata o tēnā taha o tēnā taha e tautoko nei i tēnei kaupapa. Ā, kāti ake, ko Te Paati Māori nei e tautoko nei i tēnei pire, nō reira Ngāti Rangitihi, maranga mai ki runga, kei a koutou tō koutou mana kei a koutou te wā tēnei Te Paati Māori e tautoko ana i tēnei pire, kia ora tātou.

[Hello, can you hear me? Greetings everyone. I’ll take off my hat. This is what I always do when are talking about bills, therefore I acknowledge Rangitihi today. I acknowledge the wider people of Te Arawa and their connections within Mataatua, but to Rangitihi, this is my acknowledgment to you. I greet you as we work together.

I look at Rangitihi, descending to Pikiao, and to our deceased one, Muriwai, who passed recently. May they be carried by the spirit group to their resting place by way of the path that has been cleared by the many before them. Therefore, to the dead, go, go, be gone. Returning to us all, those who have been left behind. Ngāti Rangitihi, I greet you.

Greetings to everyone to this second reading of your bill, for the Treaty claims of the tribe, and I support what the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee said, along these lines, we felt very lonely, not being able to be amongst you to listen to your stories, but we can still complete this process by means of the internet. Therefore, although we not able to attend in person, the main thing is that we heard your stories and we felt the spirit in which this bill was carried in those circumstances. Therefore, I acknowledge you again.

I see in this bill some similarities to arrangements made by tribes preceding you: the return of land, even though only 1 percent, at least a part has been returned. Then there are your forests and your wild areas, then there are your lakes, marshes and wetlands, the rivers, geothermal and hot springs, including the small amount of coast that have been returned to you. This is one of the benefits of Treaty claims. You are able to explore your own territorial rights, your own rights over the sea and fresh water. Therefore, I acknowledge you once again, and, there are 19 areas that you have obtained in your redress, and you, Ngāti Rangitihi are guiding this issue.

Therefore, yes, you deserve our thanks. To the trustees, to you, Leith. You have steered this issue through the submission process, laid out the stories for the Māori Affairs Committee, and you have guided the desires and dreams of Rangitihi today, while carrying the wishes of the ancestors. To my aunties, to Cathy, to Merepeka, to Tia, and to Melanie as well as Donna, you have shouldered this bill, many thanks to you. I stand as your member of Parliament for Te Waiariki, having fought hard for your bill, for the dreams and the hopes of Te Waiariki, and I thank you today.

Well, I don’t wish to extend my speech because the power in this situation rests with you, Ngāti Rangitihi, and, I hark back to what was said to you as you were fleshing out the bill at its first reading, and it is as if this is the offspring. This is the offspring standing proudly to face the issues in front of it. Don’t let this be the end of it, we must let our children and grandchildren continue to manage the perceived needs of the iwi, and the desires of the ancestors.

Well, I don’t wish to go on any further, I support what has been said by the members of Parliament on all sides of the House, supporting this issue. And, to conclude, this is Te Paati Māori supporting this bill, therefore Ngāti Rangitihi, stand tall, you have the authority, this is your time and this is Te Paati Māori supporting this bill, greetings one and all.]

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Kia ora, Madam Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to be able to speak on this bill, the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill. Can I acknowledge all members of the iwi Ngāti Rangitihi, and, for many reasons, primarily COVID, they are watching online today. Can I acknowledge you all. I want to just also acknowledge the Hon Andrew Little, the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. The Crown and iwi negotiators—these people do an amazing job to bring these arrangements together and present them for us to process through the parliamentary system. I want to also, while we’re on the acknowledgment section, just give some warmth to the Māori Affairs Committee. It’s a good, cross-Parliament group of people who work constructively to ensure that these are worked through with the spirit, mana, and mauri that they deserve. Can I acknowledge the chair there, Tāmati Coffey. Those who submitted—20 submissions on this particular bill. Look, it could have just been one, but it’s always good, I think, that we get a range of views from across the iwi, the whānau, the hapū, that express a whole range of concerns. Sometimes it’s a bit late to include them in. Sometimes they’re just alerting us to history that often we don’t know about, and seven came in to express that orally.

It brings us to be a step closer to giving effect to the deed of settlement. Each time these come to be, I’m always quite excited. I’m horrified at the history, and so any historical redress that records Crown breaches is very important, and what I’ve learnt is that it’s really important that we get that accurate and recorded into the settlement. There’s also cultural redress too, which in this situation acknowledges those connections to land and resources of significance to Ngāti Rangitihi. Part of that, too, when you look at redress, is also about relationships and building new connections, because often this is about resetting the relationship with the Crown, with iwi, with whānau, with local government, and with other groups, and then moving forward. Of course, to finish that off, some part of that will be financial and commercial redress.

I want to move to that, because when I look at the summary of that package, there’s a few things I just want to point out. I don’t think the money is everything here. At just under $12 million, it’s very important to not only show a tohu or symbol of the horrific history here but also, as I said, it allows them to work with their post-iwi settlement—to a post-settlement entity to move on. It’s interesting, when you look at those 19 sites of deep significance to Ngāti Rangitihi which will be transferred, of course, the learning for me was that former site of the Pink and White Terraces, which is tied up into that Tarawera Awa group. That settlement will help establish the Restoration Strategy Group, as it’s called, and they’ll be a permanent joint committee of the Bay of Plenty Regional Council. That just ensures that that gets into the local governance structures of the rohe and ensures that this has some enduring and permanent decision-making capability. There’s a good sum there of half a million to get that up and running, and it’s great to see that that’s being worked through and provided in terms of those statutory acknowledgments and recognition of the four areas—sorry, seven areas—that form that relationship.

When I look at the apology—and I think this is important—and when I first looked at one of the Treaty claim settlements, I found that this was normal in terms of making an apology for those breaches, and then, reading back on what that’s covering, it really does. It’s painful to read out, but the Crown acknowledges it breached its Treaty obligations when it failed to protect things like the tribal structures of Ngāti Rangitihi, to act in good faith, to protect the iwi from becoming virtually landless, the Tarawera River, te reo Māori and increasing or encouraging its use, and to just protect the iwi from the impact of high survey costs and act in good faith in terms of taking the excessive land at Te Ariki for public works purposes. These are just a range of things that that redress will cover.

I’m really proud that we’ve worked through this as a committee. We certainly did when it reported back to the House on 17 December last year. There were a small number of minor and technical amendments. We worked through those, and although—in conclusion—no settlement can truly make up for this wrongdoing and compensate for the hurt, I know the Crown hopes that this will be the starting point for a new and strengthened relationship between Ngāti Rangitihi and the Crown. I look forward to seeing this back for the third reading. I commend this bill to the House.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s very humbling to be able to stand up here and say a few words in support of the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill this afternoon. As often is the case on these types of occasions, the contributions across the House have been reflective of the sacrifice of Ngāti Rangitihi and appropriately optimistic about the partnership between the Crown and Ngāti Rangitihi into the future. Can I acknowledge those who are watching in their own homes back in the Bay of Plenty. It is, I’m sure, not the same as being here. When you are here in this place when we have these conversations, the atmosphere can be very electric and powerful. But be assured that whilst you’re not here in physical presence, all of us, as we have spoken and reflected today on the significance of this bill, very much have you in our hearts and can sense the importance of this for you and your people.

I just want to really make a few personal comments as a contribution today. I’m not on the select committee. The select committee is, though, quite an impressive group of people. I had the pleasure of being on it for a few months a few months ago, and the people on there are very generous in terms of their time and reflection on matters such as this. But I do want to reflect just on really the values that have been expressed by Ngāti Rangitihi throughout the last 150 years. When you look at that history, from supporting the Crown in 1864 when they joined Te Arawa, having to deal with the large-scale Crown confiscations that occurred in the Bay of Plenty in the 1860s, having to endure the Crown acting as a monopoly purchaser in the 1880s and 1890s, being devastated by Mount Tarawera, and then having not only the appalling loss of life but the remaining lands confiscated to the point that they were largely landless in the 1900s, and then, of course, the Rangitāiki swamp being drained—an area of great importance to them. Yet despite that, when World War I came along, Ngāti Rangitihi put forward their bravest and their best to go and fight for Crown and country, and many of them died. Despite the treatment of the Crown, in 1939 they did it again, and in subsequent battles.

We often reflect as a House on values. They can purse our lips quite quickly. But actually, when you read the history, it is stark that a people that have been let down so consistently by the Crown still believes in the partnership, still believes in honour in holding their side of the bargain, and still is optimistic about the future, and willing, despite all evidence, to take the Crown at face value and to build an enduring relationship into the future. That is values in action, and I think, as a House, as we reflect on the details that have been so superbly articulated of the process and what was negotiated through the various contributions this afternoon, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact here that this is a remarkable people in the Bay of Plenty who have endured immensely, over many generations, yet still look to what can unite us as a country and where they can contribute in partnership with the Crown going forward into the future.

So I want to acknowledge that today, acknowledge the enormous sacrifice, and the fact that this House—although you are not with us—is reflecting deeply on that sacrifice and hoping that you can see here, in the contributions that have been made on the second reading of the Ngāti Rangitihi claims bill, that there is cross-party support, that this is a step forward for you and for the Crown that is positive and can be built on. Kia ora tātou.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Pīka i roto i te pō nei, ki ngā mema i roto i te Whare ki waho i te Whare, tēnā rawa atu ki a koutou i tēnei pō. Ki ngā kaiurungi o Ngāti Rangitihi ka mihi atu ki a koutou i tēnei wā i runga i te kaupapa nei. Me mihi kau ana ki a koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[Greetings to the Speaker this evening, to the members in the House, and to those outside the House, I acknowledge you all this evening. To the leaders of Ngāti Rangitihi, greetings to all of you on the occasion of the issue at hand. My acknowledgments, greetings, greetings, greetings to you all.]

It’s my honour and privilege as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee to speak on the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill this evening, albeit virtually. Last time that I met these members was in fact in the House. It’s been an honour to be a member of the Māori Affairs Committee because you learn so much along the way. It’s a history lesson where you get to deep dive into the stories of our local iwi across Aoteaora, and in this particular instance, Ngāti Rangitihi have been very generous in what they have shared with us along the way. Can I acknowledge our Minister, the Hon Andrew Little, for the work that he has done in leading the settlement of Treaty negotiations across Aotearoa, and in this one in particular, and also our very capable chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, Tāmati Coffey, who enables us as a committee to come together, to build a sense of kotahitanga, and where we are able to move towards supporting a particular kaupapa like we are this evening.

When it comes to Treaty settlements, it’s an opportunity for the Crown to acknowledge and in many respects to apologise for its breaches to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the commitment that we have all made. Tonight, I would like to speak out loud to what those breaches are and to acknowledge them within the Whare this evening. The Crown acknowledges its breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its failure in its obligations for Ngāti Rangitihi to protect the tribal structures, to act in good faith when leasing and purchasing Ngāti Rangitihi land blocks, to protect Ngāti Rangitihi from becoming virtually landless, to protect the Tarawera River, to actively protect te reo Māori and to encourage its use, to protect Ngāti Rangitihi from the impact of high survey costs, and to act in good faith by taking excessive land at Te Ariki for public works purposes.

Those points are really, really important for us to acknowledge within the House this evening, and I do it from a heartfelt place as I too follow my own iwi journey and our own settlement process and understand the many years of hard work that people, and people that we’ve heard from, do in order to take such proceedings forward. So I acknowledge that this particular speech at the second reading within the House is an important one and that Part 1 effectively sets out the purpose of the bill and provides the provision of the bill to take effect on the settlement dates unless the provision states otherwise; Part 2—we’ve heard this evening about the cultural redress for Ngāti Rangitihi—and Part 3 for the commercial redress and the commitment that we make in enabling this iwi to move forward independently, and part of this process is to pass back the mana that has been impacted along the way.

I want to acknowledge particularly the presentations and the submissions that we heard as a part of the select committee process. And we all know him well and we’ve heard his name mentioned a number of times this evening, but Leith Comer, who was one of our primary speakers on this particular bill, reflected on the Ngāti Rangitihi journey and the settlement process, and today that has been largely cohesive and unifying. But he also acknowledges, sadly, too that while we acknowledge this particular part, it signifies the beginning and also with the discussions this evening that we have a role to play in continuing to stand alongside this iwi to enable them to re-establish the mana that has been impacted, but also enable investment to go forward into future generations in education and in their local economy.

I want to acknowledge, also, Rea Martin, who spoke against this particular bill on the basis that she advised that the Wai 2771 claim has not been brought to a close and that Ngāti Rangitihi should not have their settlement under this claim resolved. That’s the nature of Māori politics in one sense, but also part of the history and whakapapa that’s been shared in this particular journey. All submissions that we heard as a Maori Affairs Committee are valid and important, and a very important part of the fabric and whakapapa of this particular story.

This piece of work also enables this iwi to move forward, and I look forward to the third reading of this particular bill. I appreciate the consensus that has been established right across the House. One particular old boy who was schooled in my local area is Patrick Nicholas. He also made a submission on this bill, and he acknowledges that no settlement can truly compensate for the hurt that Ngāti Rangitihi have suffered, but he hopes that the settlement will enable Ngāti Rangitihi to achieve their cultural, environmental, social, and economic aspirations. And that’s all of our aspirations for this iwi, for all of our tamariki and mokopuna across Aotearoa—that they too get to enjoy the fruits of our labour, of our country, and that they have an opportunity just like I had in education and employment and where we all stand today.

So I want to thank Ngāti Rangitihi for their patience over this journey and acknowledge the work of our Minister and our Māori Affairs Committee, and I commend this bill to the House. Tēnā tatou.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): This bill is set down for committee stage next sitting day. Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. I just want to thank all members in the House for their patience and forbearance as we all settle into this hybrid Parliament. I want particularly to acknowledge the technical people, there are two sets of them, for some wonderful work. I can see you—thank you. I also want to thank the Office of the Clerk and all Chamber staff as we settle into the new reality. The House will reconvene at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Bills

Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill

Second Reading

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill be now read a second time.

Ngāti Maru iwi, he rā tino nui tēnei mō koutou, nā koutou te kaha me te manawanui, nō reira e rau rangatira mā tēnei taku mihi atu ki a koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[To Ngāti Maru, this is a very important day for you, and your strength and steadfastness, therefore, to the many chiefs this is my acknowledgment to you, greetings, greeting, greetings one and all.]

This bill gives effect to Te Hiringa Taketake, the deed of settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Maru signed on 27 February last year. The bill comprises three parts detailing cultural and commercial redress and the Crown’s apology redress. This redress has been designed to support Ngāti Maru on their future journey. As kaitiaki in their rohe, the natural resource redress included in this bill is essential in enabling Ngāti Maru to fulfil their responsibilities to the natural world.

I intend to speak in more detail about the Ngāti Maru settlement in the third reading, but for now, I acknowledge those Ngāti Maru members who are watching this reading from afar, and I pay particular respect to the work and dedication of the Ngāti Maru negotiation team. Through negotiations with Ngāti Maru, the Crown has come to learn what friendship and partnership with Ngāti Maru entails. I’m optimistic that this bill contains redress which will support this relationship into their future with the post-settlement governance entity, Te Kāhui Maru Trust, Te Iwi o Maruwharanui.

After its first reading on 6 July 2021, this bill was referred to the Māori Affairs Committee. The committee called for submissions between July and August 2021, and received 35 written submissions from interested groups and individuals. They also heard eight oral submissions through an online forum. I’d especially like to thank those who took part in this process and shared their kōrero with the Māori Affairs Committee. I acknowledge and thank the members of the Māori Affairs Committee, who have swiftly and considerately progressed this bill.

The committee reported back to the House on 21 December last year, and aside from the small number of recommended technical amendments, the committee recommended that the bill be passed with minor amendments in two areas, with the first of these amendments being two provisions relating to the administration of the riverbed within the Whanganui River catchment area. These amendments will give effect to the agreement reached between Ngāti Maru, Ngā Tāngata Tiaki o Whanganui, Te Pou Tupua, and Ngāti Hāua that it would no longer be appropriate for the Department of Conservation to administer and manage any riverbed running through the relevant sites. Instead, Te Pou Tupua, the representative of the legal person Te Awa Tupua, will assume these responsibilities.

The second substantial amendment is to the provisions relating to the resource consent process as part of the proposed joint-management agreement between Ngāti Maru and the Taranaki Regional Council, aiming to clarify the intended role of the New Plymouth District Council under the joint-management arrangement. These amendments will be beneficial for Ngāti Maru to have a greater voice in the management of their rohe.

This second reading of the Ngāti Maru Claims Settlement Bill represents the next step in the iwi’s journey towards reconciliation with the Crown. It also brings the Ngāti Maru community closer to benefiting from all of the good this settlement will bring to their rohe. I acknowledge the Ngāti Maru people’s resolve to continue progressing this bill, considering the effect COVID-19 has had on their ability to fully celebrate their most recent milestones, and I look forward to welcoming Ngāti Maru back to Parliament for their third reading in the coming weeks and finding a time in the near future to formally deliver the Crown apology in their rohe, which I wasn’t able to do when we did the deed signing, which is typically when it is done.

But on that note, this bill is good. It’s made good progress. I’m very thankful to the work of the Māori Affairs Committee and all those MPs who have worked on it, and the various members of Ngāti Maru and parts of their community who have supported it. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to rise on behalf of the National Party to speak on the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. I want to thank Minister Little for the work that he’s done in guiding this process through to date, and I also acknowledge Ngāti Maru themselves, who cannot be here today for what is an historic occasion as we guide this bill through the second reading, and heading towards the third reading, which, hopefully, will happen in the near future.

I just want to say we feel you are here in spirit, so to speak. We look forward to, hopefully, having you here at the third reading for what is a process that is a very big moment for Ngāti Maru o Taranaki and is a big moment in reconciling these claims, which have taken a long time to get here. I want to acknowledge the negotiators, the steering committee, and Te Arawhiti staff for the work they’ve done in getting us this far.

I do have a little bit of sorrow that we haven’t been able, as a select committee of which I am part, to get out and actually talk to Ngāti Maru in their rohe, and I hope to be able to do that at some point in the future. I’m part of the Māori Affairs Committee, which has listened to submissions on this bill, and that’s primarily what the second reading is about today: just reporting back on where we’ve got to after the bill’s been through the select committee and is heading towards the third reading, which will culminate this process.

The bill gives effect to the deed of settlement signed by the Crown and Ngāti Maru to settle all historical Treaty of Waitangi claims. The area of interest for the iwi is centred on the inland Waitara River Valley, and extends from Taranaki Maunga in the west to the upper Whanganui River in the east.

The bill includes a summary of the historical account, and as Minister Little spoke to, he looks forward now to giving a formal apology when that is possible. The bill also addresses cultural redress, relationship redress, and financial redress, and the vesting of 16 sites of cultural significance as part of that, which we looked at as a committee.

Interestingly, the administration of the Whanganui River catchment area was something we needed to look at as a committee, and clauses 57, 58, and 59 of the bill provide for the transfer of three properties that are public conservation land within the Whanganui River catchment area. One of those properties is to be transferred as shared redress with Ngāti Hāua. These sites may contain riverbed owned by Te Awa Tupua, the legal personality that comprises the Whanganui River, but are administered and managed by the Department of Conservation. Te Awa Tupua - owned riverbed would not be transferred with the surrounding land as the Crown no longer owns it.

We have been advised that Ngāti Maru, Ngā Tāngata Tiaki o Whanganui, the post-settlement governance entity for the Whanganui River settlement; Te Pou Tupua, the “human face” of Te Awa Tupua; and Ngāti Hāua have agreed that it would no longer be appropriate for the Department of Conservation to administer and manage any riverbed running through these sites. Instead, Te Pou Tupua should assume those responsibilities, and they have agreed to do so. So, as a committee, we have recommended amending the bill to give effect to this agreement.

The bill would require the trustees of Ngāti Maru and the Taranaki Regional Council to create a joint-management agreement for matters relating to the Waitara River and its catchment area. There’s also a clause there which would apply to specified resource consent applications made to territorial authorities. In its submission, the New Plymouth District Council—whom we heard from—sought clarification of its intended role in the joint-management agreement, which we considered, and although the drafting of clause 87 actively reflects the equivalent drafting in the deed of settlement, Ngāti Maru have agreed that the joint-management agreement was only intended to apply to applications for resource consent between the Taranaki Regional Council and Ngāti Maru. The reference to territorial authorities in clause 87 was made in error, and, accordingly, the committee has recommended amending the bill to accurately reflect the agreed intention of the joint-management agreement.

The bill as introduced removed memorials on land pertaining to Ngāti Maru’s redress. It also removed the Waitangi Tribunal’s jurisdiction to order resumption in favour of Ngāti Manu. We understand that it is Crown policy to remove all remaining resumptive memorials on land in a region once historical Waitangi Tribunal claims have been settled through legislation, and Ngāti Maru are the last iwi in the Taranaki region to settle their historical Treaty claims.

Te Arawhiti advised us as a committee that it was considering whether to amend the bill to remove other resumptive memorials within fully settled areas of the Taranaki region. However, as this was not considered or discussed with Ngāti Maru prior to the deed of settlement being signed, Te Arawhiti concluded it would be more appropriate to remove memorials at a later time, although this was the last settlement in the area, and the committee supported this approach as this bill is focused on Ngāti Maru o Taranaki.

So I do look forward to having an opportunity to speak more generally on the bill itself, but given this is the second reading, I’ve just focused on the select committee process and the considerations that we’ve had. I certainly do hope that Ngāti Maru are able to be here in person for the third reading, which will be a historic moment and one I certainly look forward to. So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe, otirā ngā mema katoa, tēnā tātou katoa anō.

[Mr Speaker, greetings to you, and to all the members, greetings again to you.]

I’m proud and pleased to take a call in the second reading of the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. To the people of Ngāti Maru, ngā mihi ki a koutou katoa, i runga i te kaupapa o tō pire, nō reira tēnā tātou, tēnā tātou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[To the people of Ngāti Maru, I greet you all as you bring your bill to be discussed, therefore, greeting, greetings, greetings to one and all.]

I’m not a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, so I’m very reliant on the report that came back to the House and the close examination of this bill by the Māori Affairs Committee. Can I, obviously, add my appreciation for and acknowledgment of the negotiators for Ngāti Maru.

I won’t repeat what both the Minister for Treaty settlements and the previous member, Joseph Mooney, have said. They’ve traversed the parts of the legislation that we’re debating tonight. As a former Treaty negotiator, you always look for a unique part of each iwi’s settlement, and I think the two previous speakers touched on the two, from my perspective, which give rise to the uniqueness of this settlement, and that is the use of conservation land—which has been touched on—and the riverbed of the Whanganui River, and, of course, the removal or the resumptive orders, which is really important as a mechanism to return what we can back to the people of Ngāti Maru.

So it is one of the last iwi of the Taranaki iwi whānui that is settling here. This is the second reading. I want to acknowledge all those that submitted on the bill. I want to acknowledge the Māori Affairs Committee, who gave it the right scrutiny. I want to acknowledge the amendments that they brought to the House and that the Minister of Treaty settlements, the Hon Andrew Little, has taken on board, and has adjusted accordingly. This is a very important reading for the Ngāti Maru people of Taranaki, and the area of interest is the inland Waitara River Valley, which goes out to Taranaki maunga to the west and the upper Whanganui River in the east.

In acknowledging the significance of what we’re debating here as the second reading, I want to acknowledge the Taranaki leadership that has bestowed itself on not only this House but the region of Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara, particularly as the iwi come together to put a cloud—a karakia o raukura—over this whole capital city of ours, and I want to acknowledge that tribe and the tribe of Taranaki with the people of Ngāti Maru because they are one people.

So I want to acknowledge the Taranaki whānui Te Atiawa in terms of the karakia that it has bestowed on this place—Parliament—as acknowledgment of the mana whenua in my contribution to this particular bill. It is important for Ngāti Maru to feel the support on this side of the House—and I thank all members of this House—in the second reading of this particular bill. But it’s also to acknowledge the significance that their people, the iwi of Taranaki, have also provided comfort and some blessings to this place of work—the Parliament, the New Zealand House of Representatives—and, to those that have found their way here, to politely say to them that it’s about time they go home, and we’ve heard contributions from previous members in this House that have talked about what has actually occurred to the people of Te Atiawa, of which Ngāti Maru is one of those key iwi that are part of that particular tribe.

I want to again commend the bill to the House. I want to acknowledge all the negotiators who have fought gallantly on the unique qualities of Ngāti Maru—particularly, like I said, around the riverbed, and the clarification around the partnership that will be forged with the Taranaki Regional Council. From the limited knowledge I know of that part of the northern land, which is distinctly different to the East Coast, is that it is the significantly productive land that occurs in the wider Taranaki region, and, of course, there is the significance of the awas and its contribution to the primary sector.

So, with those few words of support and endorsement, I look forward to the third and final reading of this bill in acknowledgment of what has been negotiated and agreed between Ngāti Maru and the Crown to address the past wrongs and hurts of the omissions and acts of the Crown. I look forward to, hopefully, hosting the people of Ngāti Maru, should they find themselves down this part if conditions allow, to celebrate alongside them the significance of this bill. I commend the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill to the House.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to stand here, and it is a shame that COVID restrictions have limited Ngāti Maru from travelling to Wellington, because one of the special things I always find when we do Treaty settlement bills is often we would have members of Ngāti Maru, or whoever we’re speaking to, up in the gallery so that we can actually have them being much more part of what we’re doing than they currently are. I too want to reiterate, as others have said, that I hope that by the time we get to the third reading, we can be in the state around the COVID regulations that we can have a room full of people, because it’s never as good otherwise, and it’s been a struggle for Ngāti Maru all the way through.

In terms of the deed of settlement, as Minister Little mentioned before, it was a beautiful, sunny day, and we were all out in a little place called Tarata, which is in inland Taranaki, where the deed of settlement was due to be signed. There had been over 650 people who had been invited to that event, and because of the COVID situation at that time, which was nearly a year ago now, it was attended by probably only about 30 or 40 people, I’d say. It was really only the people who had been doing the negotiation, the Minister, and a few of us from Parliament, and I did feel for Ngāti Maru at that time, because they’d been in the process of putting up a new marae and we couldn’t use it to its full extent.

It was almost finished, and I look forward to the day, as Minister Little said, when he can go back there and give the full apology, which wasn’t able to be given on that day. So it has been a hard row to hoe, but it’s a pleasure standing here and speaking on the second reading, and we’re looking forward to progressing this in the hope that we can all be together when we get to that final stretch and have the third reading and have a celebration together.

Because of the inland location of Ngāti Maru, they had limited contact with Europeans during the 1840s and the 1850s. They were not involved in the land dealings which led to the war in Taranaki in 1860 and were not directly involved in the subsequent fighting. Their involvement was limited to providing refuge to Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitāke in accordance with the requirements of whanaungatanga, and then it all changed. When the Crown confiscated huge tracts of Taranaki to punish so-called rebels in 1865, approximately half of the traditional lands of Ngāti Maru were included. Many of their main kāinga, urupā, and wāhi tapu were taken, and some have never been returned.

In the early 1870s, the Crown attempted to promote European settlement on confiscated land by paying some Ngāti Maru compensation for the rights that the confiscation had extinguished. These deeds of cession covered about 60,000 acres and created significant divisions within the iwi, and it compounded the damage that had already been caused by the loss of land. So now we’re talking many, many years—150 years—later, actually standing in the House of Parliament in New Zealand and feeling very, very appreciative that Ngāti Maru have been gracious enough to accept a settlement that’s been offered, because—I think it’s been said earlier today in an earlier Treaty settlement bill—there’s lots of give and take through these things, and it’s never enough to undo everything that was done at the time that these awful events happened.

In the early 1890s, some Ngāti Maru were virtually landless and appealed to the Crown for help. The Crown’s response was slow and ineffective, and legislation was not enacted until 1907. The land ultimately provided to Ngāti Maru was poor and it was of limited size. So the extensive loss of the land and the assets has eroded tribal structures. It’s bad enough what actually happened in terms of the assets being taken, but it actually eroded the culture and the tribal structures and it caused severe poverty, and that damaged the whole physical, cultural, and spiritual health of generations of Ngāti Maru people. The intense sense of loss and disconnection is expressed in the following Ngāti Maru lament:

Maru Hāhā

Hāhā te whenua

Hāhā te tangata.

Maru of extreme loss and breathlessness

The land is deserted

The people are gone and gasping for breath.

I wasn’t part of the Māori Affairs Committee, but it’s good to see that the committee has taken care of some necessary changes, particularly in relation to the riverbed and the Whanganui settlement with Ngā Tāngata Tiake o Whanganui, because each boundary isn’t exactly—particularly when it comes to rivers—distinct and separate. So it’s been really good that this has been made to work in a way that it can work for Ngāti Maru as well as for the people of Whanganui.

Then, of course, it was very important to get that clear distinction when there is a relationship here with the Taranaki Regional Council, but it didn’t extend down into the same relationship with the Taranaki district councils, of which there are three. So it was really important to make sure that the right terminology is in the bill and everything had been done right so that it didn’t cause any problems later.

So I just do want to make note that if we look at the schedules which sit in the back of this piece of legislation, there are some beautiful conservation areas and some beautiful scenic reserves. There are some great marginal strips, beautiful land along the Waitara River, Okau Scenic Reserve—there’s quite a range of beautiful New Zealand conservation and historic land here that I think Ngāti Maru can be very proud of in terms of the settlement they’ve made. But I also look forward to working with Ngāti Maru and all of the iwi of Taranaki in terms of making these conservation areas and these scenic reserves even more beautiful than they are now as we work together in agribusiness and in Māori agribusiness, which we do have a lot of in Taranaki. It’ll be just great to work together on some of those projects and get the biodiversity and everything of these lovely places up and running again in joint projects.

So, with that, I’d like to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I acknowledge the tough times that we’re going through and the fact that we have taken this online, as we did for our submission hearings, as well. As chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, it was less than desirable. We would very much have liked to travel to Taranaki to go and hear the submission hearings and to look the people in the eye, but, unfortunately, we were unable to do that then for the submission hearings, and we’re still unable to do that now. So, Ngāti Maru, ahakoa kei hea koutou, poipoia e tēnei whenua e tēnei motu o Aotearoa, he mihi tēnei ki a koutou.

[So, Ngāti Muru, wherever you may be, be cared for by this land, this country of Aotearoa New Zealand, this is my acknowledgment to you.]

I’m proud to take a call on the second reading of this bill. The Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill was referred to our komiti Māori on 6 July 2021. The closing date for submissions was 18 August 2021. We got advice on the bill from Te Arawhiti—thank you to them for their continued support to the committee through this process. The Office of the Clerk also provided some advice on the bill’s legislative quality, and Parliamentary Counsel assisted with legal drafting.

We received and considered 35 submissions from various interest groups and individuals, and we heard oral evidence from eight submitters. The majority of the submitters had a desire to move everybody forward for the benefit of Ngāti Maru—for their people, for the wider community, for the future, ngā tamariki mokopuna kei te heke mai [for the children and grandchildren to come]—and they wanted to acknowledge also those people that had passed on, who were also quite active in initiating and moving the claim forward from the beginning, and the collective mahi and dedication achieved in reaching this settlement, their settlement. They had optimism for their tamariki and for their mokopuna so that they could fulfil their aspirations, and they had a desire to restore, revitalise, and enhance the mauri of Ngāti Maruwharanui. That was the overwhelming feeling of some of the submitters who were absolutely in support and saw no reason for the select committee to stand in their way.

I will talk very briefly about the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Fisheries Trust, who also came before the committee. They put submissions in. There was a longstanding issue that we as a committee heard about that had been happening between the Ngāti Maru Fisheries Trust and Te Kāhui Maru, which is the entity set to receive this settlement. The fisheries trust felt as though, to be able to go through this—what they said in their submissions was that they thought that the restrictiveness of the Ngāti Maru claimant definition for the Treaty settlement was too restrictive. They had concerns surrounding the facilitation process, and they had concerns around the rūnanga’s mandate to negotiate a Treaty settlement—full stop.

We had to fill ourselves in with this conversation, because it had been going for quite some time prior to it coming before the committee, but after we’d heard the submissions and taken our advice, we—the committee—decided that, actually, Te Kāhui Maru Trust did in fact have the mandate, it did in fact go through thorough processes around facilitation to make sure that that was nice and tight, and there were plenty of opportunities via the independent review of the Ngāti Maru tribal register. That was conducted in 2017 as part of negotiations, and we were comfortable that they had a robust process to be able to include people that wanted to be included on their rūnanga register.

This was an interesting settlement because this is the last of the Taranaki iwi to come before the select committee, looking for settlement on their grievance. I, along with the rest of the committee, look forward to the third reading of their settlement bill. Again, I’m sorry that we couldn’t be in each other’s company for this—the second reading—but what I did note, what I did observe, and what I do know is that Ngāti Maru are very, very keen to get this through, to be able to receive their settlement, to be able to receive their redress, and to be able to hear the Crown acknowledgments and the Crown apology as we move forward into the third reading.

I do want to acknowledge that point there too—the reading out of the apology—which was something that was discussed. On 29 September, Ngāti Maru set out their aspiration for the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations to visit the Ngāti Maru rohe after the third reading to deliver the Crown apology to the claimant community. On their request, the Minister did not deliver the Crown apology at the signing of their ceremony, but we decided to hold off on it. We did have to go back to them to see if they wanted the apology mentioned at all throughout this select committee process or the first, the second, or the third reading, and they advised us that they would like the committee to be able to read their apology as part of the third reading.

So we look forward to doing that and to addressing past wrongs, but I acknowledge Ngāti Maruwharanui and the journey that they’ve been on, through our select committee process but through our wider political process as well, to try and deliver a better future for their tamariki and their mokopuna. I commend this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. E mihi ana ki a tātou katoa e noho ana ki te Whare Pāremata, otirā ki a tātou e noho tawhiti nei pēnei mai ki a au.

E mihi ana ki a koutou Ngāti Maru. Maru hāhā, hāhā te whenua, hāhā te tangata. E mihi ana ki tō koutou nei manawanui, tō koutou nei manawaroa i tēnei o ngā hiku o tēnei pire, i te mea kua roa te wā e hīkoi ana koutou i tēnei o ngā tukanga ki roto i ngā rua tekau o ngā tau.

Nō reira, e mihi ana tēnei ki a koutou e noho ki raro o te maru o te maunga tītōhea ki tōna rāwhiti tae noa ki te pūtake o te awa o Waitara, whakawhiti te manga o Hoehoe, heke atu ki te awa o Whanganui hipa atu ki a Matemateaonga ki Whakaahurangi.

Nō reira, ko au anō tētahi mema o te Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Māori. Ko te raru kē mō ēnei wāhanga e kimi nei tātou i tēnei wā ki raro i ngā āhuatanga o te mate urutā. Tē taea e mātou te whai wā ki te haere ki tō rātou nei marae ki te whakarongo ki ngā kōrero, ki te whakarongo ki ngā pūrākau, ki te whakarongo ki ngā kaupapa kia rongo anō te taiao, kia rongo anō te whenua, kia tipi haere ngā wāhi e ngākau nui ana Ngāti Maru.

Heoi anō, mā runga i te whakawhiti ki runga i ngā hangarau mata hiko i tau anō te whakaaro i ngā moemoeā o Ngāti Maru i a mātou ngā mema o te Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Māori. I ara mai i ngā nawe tūroa o Ngāti Maru i te murunga i tapaina me te kounutanga hua mai i muri i tā Te Karauna raupatu i tētahi haurua o ō rātou whenua taketake i te tekau 1860. I kōrerohia e ētahi o ngā kaikōrero e pā ana ki tērā wāhanga, otirā te wāhanga anō te pakanga whenua ki Taranaki i mōhio whānui tātou ngā konene e noho ana ki Parihaka me ōna pānga ki a Ngāti Maru i raupatuhia te Karauna i ō rātou nei whenua.

I te korenga o tētahi huarahi whaihua kia mau tonu i a rātou he taitara takitini ka rongo tonu anō a Ngāti Maru i te kore haeretanga me te kurukurunga o ngā tūranga o te iwi o te rautau tekau mā iwa. Nā te hē o te whakahaere o Te Karauna i ngā rāhui i tāpuitia rā mō te iwi ka takahia te mana o Ngāti Maru me tana whakahaere i ōna whenua e toe ana. Nā ngā mahi o Te Karauna, nā te korenga rānei o āna mahi ki a Ngāti Maru i muru ia te nuinga o ō rātou nei whenua tīpuna, i peia ai hoki ki ō rātou uri ki whenua kē atu.

Ahakoa kore rawa atu te utu paremata o te whakataunga Tiriti ki a Ngāti Maru e āta hāngai ana ki te taumata o te kino kua pā ki a rātou e pono ana taku tūmanako kia tū ko te whakataunga nei hei huarahi atu ki te whakatikatika te whakatikahanga o ēnei takahanga o te ture. I a mātou ngā Kākāriki e whakaaro ana ki ngā āhuatanga pēnei ana te āhua, me mōhio mai tēnei Whare, ehara i te Te Tiriti o Waitangi te kirimana mō te hokohoko noa, ehara i Te Tiriti o Waitangi te kirimana mō te hokohoko taputapu te hokohoko whenua. He oranga anō nō Te Tiriti o Waitangi. He hononga he piringa i waenganui i Te Karauna me ngā hapū kia whakatinanahia ngā moemoeā o ngā mātua tīpuna.

Tē taea atu te whakatau te whakamoe Te Tiriti o Waitangi i te mea kei a ia ōna oranga mai i te wā i tāmokotia e ngā tīpuna i Waitangi i te tau 1840 tae mai ki tēnei rangi tonu. Ko tōna aronga mēnā ka tiro tātou ki te wāhanga tuarua—tino rangatiratanga. He pūtake anō tērā ki a au ki a mātou te katoa e noho nei ki Aotearoa, hei hāpai, hei āwhina tātou i a tātou e whakatere ana i o tātou nei waka ki runga i te moana pukepuke i tēnei wā.

Nō reira, ki roto i tērā horopaki me mihi atu ki ngā uri o Ngāti Maru i a rātou takahi ki roto i ngā rua tekau, toru tekau e aha rānei ngā tau kia kōkirihia tēnei kerēme nō rātou, i te mea kua mōhio ki roto i te tukanga ka puta mai ngā pūrākau, i puta mai ngā kōrero tuku iho ka tohatoha i ēnei taonga, ā, te kōrero mai i ngā kaumātua, ki ngā reanga katoa. Ko te tūmanako kia kī ngā kete mātauranga mō te hunga rangatahi o te iwi kia whāngaihia anō ērā kōrero ki ngā tamariki mokopuna.

Kei reira anō te oranga i te tīmatanga o tēnei momo kēreme, whakatau Kēreme. Ko te Whakatau Kēreme he tikanga kia tau te mauri kia whai whakaaro te hunga katoa e noho ana ki te takiwā i waenganui i ngā hapori katoa. Nō reira, ko tōku manako kia noho te katoa o ngā hapori e noho ana ki te takiwā; tangata whenua mai; tauiwi mai; manene mai; a mai; kia whakarongo ki te hītori tūturu nō Ngāti Maru.

Hoki anō tērā whakataukī i mōhio tātou rongonui “Ko te kai a te rangatira he kōrero”. Nō reira nā runga i te kōrero ka whai tēnei me te rangatiratanga hei oranga mō Ngāti Maru, otirā ki a tātou katoa i roto i a tātou e whakangungu ana ngā kōrero tuku iho a ngā mātua tipuna. Ngā korero ko ētahi e mamae ana te ngākau i te mea he kōrero e pā ana ki ngā pakanga te whawhati o ngā tūmanako i ahu mai i Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Heoi tēnei te āhua o te ara i tēnei wā me kōkiri anō tātou ki te tika me pono hei oranga mō tātou.

Ki roto i tēnei whakatau kerēme ka tae atu i te toru tekau miriona te pūtea kia whakarite he pūtea anō mō te whakangungu te taha ahurea kia kite tātou tērā i roto i ērā atu o ngā whakatau kerēme. Kei roto hoki i tēnei whakataunga te hoki mai i ētahi o ngā kura pērā ki a Tarata a Matau me ētahi wāhanga o te urupā o Tarata me ērahi wāhanga tāpui taiao me ngā kura e toru.

E ai ki te kōrero i a au e pānui ana i ngā pepa ko tētahi mea ka hokia mai ko te whare teihana pirihimana ki Whakaahurangi kāore ake mēnā kei te whakahoki tērā teihana pirihimana ka noho ngā pirihimana ki hea. Heoi kei te pukumahi ngā pirihimana kei waho i te Pāremata i tēnei wā, tēnā pea. Kāore anō tēnei he raru kia tau ki a rātou.

I a mātou te komiti whāiti e whiriwhiri ana ngā take i puta mai i tautoko katoa i ngā kōrero i kōrerotia e te tiamana i mua. Te nuinga i tautoko mai i tēnei kaupapa ko tētahi, he whakaaro ano tō rātou. Heoi anō i kite tātou i tērā momo kōrero ki roto i ēnei tukanga whakatau kerēme.

Ko ētahi hapū e aro anō rātou ki Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I hainatia Te Tiriti o Waitangi mō te hapū, nō reira ka puta mai ēnei o ngā kōrero. Nō reira ko te whakatau kēreme Tiriti o Waitangi ehara i te mea i whakatau te ngākau ki ētahi atu. Nō reira, me mihi atu ki tērā āhuatanga o tātou.

E mihi ana ki ngā ringa wera i kōrerohia e te Arawhiti ki Ngāti Maru me ērā atu o ngā rōpū nā te aroha o ngā iwi whānui o taua wāhi ki te awa me te awa o Whanganui i te mea he wāhi anō mō Te Pou Tupua kia noho tahi me Ngāti Hāua i te mea tērā te āhua o ngā awa pērā i te awa tipua pēra ki a te awa o Whanganui. Maha ngā iwi e hono ana, maha ngā wāhi e hono ana ki tērā o ngā awa, heoi anō ko tōna tikanga nā Te Pou Tupua tērā wāhi i kōkirihia ēnei iwi, ēnei rōpū katoa. Ngā hāpai, tiaki o tērā waha, mā rātou anō ngā whenua e rārangahia.

Nō reira, nōku noa iho he tautoko kia whai wāhi anō ki roto i ngā kaupapa tae noa ki tō tātou pānuitanga tuatoru o tēnei. Kei te tautoko mātou ngā Kākāriki ki tēnei o ngā pire. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koe.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker. Greetings to all of us, those in the House of Parliament and also to those calling in remotely like me.

I greet you, Ngāti Maru. Maru of extreme loss and breathlessness. I acknowledge your dogged persistence at this time of the final stages of the pire for it has been a long 20 years you have been pursuing these processes.

Therefore, I greet you who live in the shadow of the barren mountain, on its eastern side stretching to the source of the Waitara River, crossing the Hoehoe Stream, descending to the Whanganui River and, by way of the Matemateaonga Ranges, back to Stratford.

Therefore, I am myself a member of the Māori Affairs Committee. The circumstances of the pandemic have made this difficult for us at this time. None of us were able to visit their marae to listen to what they had to say, to listen to their stories, to listen to the issues, and to experience the environment and the land as well as visit some of the special places of Ngāti Maru.

However, the dreams of Ngāti Maru were also expressed and felt by us, the Māori Affairs Committee, in our online discussions. The longstanding complaints of Ngāti Maru arose from the plunder and thus the withdrawal as a result Crown confiscation of half of their original lands in the 1860s. Some of the other speakers spoke about this part, as well as the Taranaki Wars and we all know of the refugees of Parihaka and its effects on Ngāti Maru when their land was confiscated.

With the erosion of an effective way to retain multiple title, Ngāti Maru continue to feel the effects of the continuing loss of tribal leadership that stemmed from the 19th century. Because of the Crown’s failure to put aside reserves for the iwi, the authority of Ngāti Maru was disregarded and its ability to manage its remaining lands was undermined. Due to the actions of the Crown, or its inaction towards Ngāti Maru, the majority of their ancestral land was confiscated, leading to the displacement elsewhere of its descendants.

Although the redress to Ngāti Maru in this Treaty settlement does not in any way match the harm that was done to them, it is still my hope that the settlement will provide a way forward to right these breaches of the law. While we, the Greens, were discussing issues such as these, the House needs to know that the Treaty of Waitangi was not an agreement for the sale of belongings nor of land. The Treaty of Waitangi is a living document. It binds tightly together the Crown and the hapū in order to embody the dreams of our ancestors.

The Treaty of Waitangi cannot be silenced or put to bed, because it has been a living document since its signing by the ancestors at Waitangi in 1840 right up to this very day. Its purpose, if we look at article 2, is self-determination. This offers a direction to me, to all of us living in Aotearoa New Zealand, to support and help each other navigate the troubled waters in which we find ourselves at this time.

Therefore, in this context, I would like to acknowledge the descendants of Ngāti Maru. You have been on this journey for 20, 30, or more years because they knew that, in the process, stories and legends would be told and these stories were shared from the elders to all the other generations. The hope is that the baskets of knowledge of the younger generations will be filled, so the future generations can also be nourished.

That is also one of the benefits of beginning these types of claim, claim settlements. A claim settlement allows all parts of the local community to calmly deliberate amongst themselves. Therefore, it is my wish that all parts of the community; the people of the land; Europeans; other immigrants; and whoever else will be able to listen to the true history of Ngāti Maru.

I turn now to that famous proverb that we all know “The sustenance of chiefs is words”. Therefore, upon these words and the word autonomy, this will bring wellbeing to Ngāti Maru, indeed to all of us, as we defend the stories handed down from our ancestors. Some stories were painful to hear because they referred to the battles and the crushing of hopes which had stemmed from the Treaty of Waitangi. However, this is an aspect of our journey at this time, we must continue to push for truth and justice for the benefit of us all.

In this claim settlement is the inclusion of $30 million. There is also another fund to protect cultural aspects as we have seen in other claim settlements. Included as well in this decision is the return of school properties such as Tarata and Matau, with some parts of the Tarata burial ground and some parts of environmental reserves and three schools.

According to what I read in the documents, one thing that was being returned was the police station in Stratford, but if that police station is returned where will the police go? Well, they may be hard at work outside Parliament today perhaps. This has not yet become a problem for them.

While we on the select committee were discussing the issues, everyone supports what the previous chairperson has said. The majority support this issue, but other people had other thoughts. However, we have all seen that type of thinking in the claim settlement processes.

Some hapū focus on the Treaty of Waitangi. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by the hapū, and therefore these issues come up. There these of Treaty of Waitangi settlements don’t sit well with everyone. Therefore, I must acknowledge that attitude of ours.

I acknowledge the workers behind the scenes, Te Arawhiti, or the Office of Māori Crown Relations, who were mentioned; Ngāti Maru; and some other groups, for the support of the wider iwi of the river and of the Whanganui River as there is an opportunity for Te Pou Tupua—that is, those that act and speak on behalf of the river—to collaborate with Ngāti Hāua, because that is one of the characteristics of these types of supernatural rivers such as the Whanganui. Many iwi and many places connect to that river. However, the idea is that Te Pou Tupua is a place where these people can come together. The supporters, the guardians of that voice, they themselves will weave together the land.

Therefore, I just need to say we support further participation in this issue right up to and including the third reading. We, the Greens, support this bill. Greetings to you all, greetings to you.]

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The ACT Party supports the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. What is good about this bill is that the Treaty of Waitangi recognises private property rights in its second article. New Zealand is almost unique in the world in that our founding document recognises the property rights of all New Zealanders in its founding document.

The Treaty of Waitangi, in the English version, in the second article, says that “Her Majesty the Queen of England … guarantees … the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties” which the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand had in their possession. Then, as we know from reading our recent history, a number of egregious acts were committed, not solely by the Crown, which dispossessed Ngāti Maru and other iwi and hapū of their lands.

We should count ourselves fortunate, particularly at this time of great strife in other countries that we regard as our equals, whether they be in Europe or in the Pacific, where strife between ethnic communities and disagreements over land and access to resources has led to violence and the breakdown of their civil society. So I think it’s important that all New Zealanders acknowledge that having the Treaty of Waitangi as a founding document actually gives us an opportunity to focus on sorting out real infringements of private property rights.

Reading through the proposal that this claims settlement bill brings to the House, there is an apology and redress for the acts of the Crown and the omissions of the Crown—an apology, a cultural redress, and a commercial and financial redress of $30 million. In terms of the apology, there’s an acknowledgment of the Crown’s actions and an apology for its breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi with regard to Ngāti Maru, and that is fit.

In terms of a cultural redress, the bill includes provision for a number of cultural redress instruments, which are listed in detail in the bill. The bill then comes to the substantive matters, which is the vesting of properties, because, despite the fact that the Crown has acknowledged a large number of properties and the extent of land that was alienated from Ngāti Maru unfairly, it’s not possible for the Crown to restore all of that land, because since that event, much of that land is, in fact, owned by others. Other people now have private property rights in that land. So the Crown has to find some other way of giving redress, in terms of a financial redress of $30 million, and to make available other properties that the Crown has access to. That is land about which the Crown, essentially, says, “While we might have wanted to use it for other purposes, it is far better that we give Ngāti Maru this land in recognition of the loss of their lands and alienation of their lands as a result of the Crown’s action.”, and that is fit.

So there are properties in the Taranaki area, and then there are statutory acknowledgments. That is where in law the role, the mana, of Ngāti Maru is recognised in legislation, and that is fit.

There is a deed of recognition where the Crown is required to consult with Ngāti Maru on specific matters that affect this iwi and to have regard to their special associations that they have with places that are important to Ngāti Maru, and that is fit.

Then we come to the matter of natural resource redress. In New Zealand, we have the Resource Management Act, and that was intended, in 1991, to be the vehicle by which private land owners and the Government and their agencies, whether they be a transport agency or a railways department—as it might have been at the time—could apply for consent from local government, and then the Environment Court, if it was appealed, to undertake activities on their private property. Now, the Resource Management Act is recognised to have failed to adequately allocate resources and to have imposed costs and burdens on the private sector and the State sector alike, and, in fact, that law is well overdue for reform. The ACT Party has proposed an alternative to the Government’s Natural and Built Environments Bill, which we’ll be presenting in the House later this week.

But coming back to the natural resource redress in this bill, this bill provides for joint-management agreements between Ngāti Maru and local government—the Taranaki Regional Council—and that is in relation to any exercise of the local authority’s functions, powers, and duties relating to a natural and physical resource. Yet most New Zealanders would expect that resource consent decisions taken under the Resource Management Act are actually impartial and free from interference and influence by those who do not have an elected role and are actually not subject to all of the controls on regional councils, for example, which limit the exercise of their decision making.

Many New Zealanders have raised concerns about these types of joint-management or co-governance arrangements, and some of these concerns are legitimate. I could give you the example in Auckland of the co-governance arrangements over Auckland’s maunga—our volcanic cones—which has resulted in a large number of trees being removed against the wishes of the local community, because it turns out that once these co-governance relationships are entered into, many other people who live in that community, private property owners and those who care about their environment—their parks and reserves and their natural place—as much as any other New Zealander does, from any ethnicity, feel that their concerns are not in fact being heard. They have lost the decision-making power over their reserves, and, in fact, even their elected representatives on their local councils have lost their decision-making power.

When we see joint-management agreements over natural resources identified in a piece of legislation, many New Zealanders are greatly concerned about that. It may well be there are other ways to deal with the private property rights that Ngāti Maru have and that they have demonstrated in the courts than a co-governance arrangement, which in many ways is the worst of all worlds, because any decision making they have over other people’s private property would be regarded as unfair by those subjected to decision making by unelected people, and yet it doesn’t actually give them the opportunity to do what they see fit with their own property.

So, in many ways, while the joint-management agreement described here in the natural resource redress section of the bill appears to have good intentions, it’s actually an example of where you get to with poorly thought out principles that are applied to sorting out issues of private property rights. That’s why the ACT Party believes that, if there is a breach of property rights, that should be clearly defined, and that, if a party does in fact have a property right, they should be compensated for that if it’s been affected. Otherwise, groups that are unelected should not have decision making powers over other people’s property, and that is definitely a risk as these types of redress measures are advanced through legislation.

But the ACT Party will support the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill because we believe in the rule of law. We believe that it does go a long way to uphold the value of private property rights in New Zealand, and for that reason, we will support it at this reading. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Pīka, ki ngā uri o Ngāti Maru, tēnā koutou. Ki a Maru Wharanui te tupuna matua iwi o Ngāti Maru Wharanui, tēnā koe.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker, to the descendants of Ngāti Maru, greetings to you all. To Maru Wharanui, the eponymous ancestor of Ngāti Maru Wharanui, greetings.]

It’s a privilege to speak tonight as part of the first sitting of the virtual Parliament. This is a Parliament that acknowledges the importance of the Treaty settlement process, and I’m proud to be a part of the cross-partisan approach to acknowledging the breaches of the Crown’s duty to act in good faith to its Treaty partner. Though we may not all have the same reasons for acknowledging the injustices committed by the Crown—and I disagree with the ACT member’s contribution almost in its entirety—we have the same over-arching goal.

In my short introduction, I acknowledged the people of Ngāti Maru and their eponymous ancestor, Maruwharanui. He’s the eldest child of Pito Haranui and Manauea, and brother to Marukōpiri, Mihi-Rawhiti, and Hinepango. It is right to acknowledge this tupuna and all of the tūpuna of Ngāti Maru, whose hopes for their descendants we are supporting tonight. This settlement legislation brings us to giving effect to the deed of settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Maru, which acknowledges those instances where the Crown hasn’t lived up to those hopes of the tūpuna of Ngāti Maru, and brings Ngāti Maru closer to taking on a complete kaitiaki role over its own natural environment.

I agree with the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations that this bill is also about bringing the people of the Ngāti Maru iwi and its rohe closer to enjoying the economic benefits of settlement, and I want to thank everyone who submitted on this bill, as well as those who advised on it and facilitated the Māori Affairs Committee’s discussions. Only minor amendments were suggested, which reflects the confidence all members have in the process, and I want to echo the comments of the member for Southland, National Party MP Joseph Mooney, when he said to the uri of Ngāti Maru that we feel you here in spirit tonight.

Now, if I may, I wish to give the House some context for the settlement that we are discussing and why Parliament unanimously agrees that these injustices should be acknowledged and given redress. The Crown apology begins with the dispossession, displacement, and dislocation suffered by Ngāti Maru that began with the Crown’s unjustified confiscation of almost half their traditional rohe. The damage caused by the loss of Ngāti Maru lands was compounded by the divisions created within the iwi when the Crown negotiated deeds of cession as a means of securing possession of the confiscated lands to make way for European settlement. The subsequent passage of the last remaining Ngāti Maru land through the Native Land Court individualised their customary land title, making the land more susceptible to alienation and further damaging tribal cohesion. Measures taken to ameliorate growing Ngāti Maru landlessness were ineffective, and much of the tribe’s remaining land later came under Public Trustee administration and was subject to perpetual leases.

These are serious breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi that we are acknowledging tonight. That is why the saying of the iwi is appropriate, and a number of members have used it, but I wish to repeat it:

Maru Hāhā

Hāhā te whenua

Hāhā te tangata.

That means:

Maru of extreme loss and breathlessness

The land is deserted

The people are gone and gasping for breath.

I hope that this next chapter in the history of Ngāti Maru offers a breather, a time to recuperate, to gather together, and then move forward, once recovered. That’s why I think the cultural redress portion of this bill is, in my eyes, the most important, because it is a moment that we can gather together all that has happened and look forward to something new coming.

There’s one particular part of the cultural redress which I think is very important and I want to highlight, given the contribution of the previous member Simon Court about property rights and the rights of other property owners in the rohe of Ngāti Maru. This deed will provide for a natural resources plan, Maru Taiao, which outlines the values and principles of Ngāti Maru and the resource management issues of significance to Ngāti Maru in relation to the Maru Taiao area. Local authorities must take the Maru Taiao plan into account when they are preparing a review and policy statements and planning under the Resource Management Act.

That’s significant because this restores not only the kaitiaki role of Ngāti Maru, which they have always had and do not need the Crown to acknowledge because they have always been kaitiaki of the area, but it fulfils that hope of having the governance responsibility, of having the decision-making power, that iwi are so well placed to exercise for the benefit of everyone in their community, and I am pleased this Government has made that move. That’s why I look forward to considering this legislation further again in the next reading, but I commend this bill to the House now.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The next call is a split call—five minutes each.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. I think it’s indisputable that settlements like this help iwi to unlock their economic potential and they boost the regional and provincial areas but, more importantly, as the previous speaker has referred to, they re-empower and re-engage iwi who have oftentimes been disenfranchised with their culture, with their heritage, with their rohe, and with their land.

So, this evening, the House takes another step towards completing the eight Taranaki settlements. As many have observed, it has been a long journey for Ngāti Maru and its 2,800 members, ever since Christopher Finlayson and Te Ururoa Flavell recognised the mandate of Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Maru Trust back in 2016, but I think some would argue it’s been even longer than those six years. It’s actually been 150 years since that dreadful confiscation of the iwi rohe.

I think the historical account and acknowledgments in this settlement legislation do make for sober reading and, at times, extremely troublesome reading. The confiscation of land in Taranaki is undoubtedly a stain on this country’s history. I know that the Minister has undertaken to visit Tarata, to deliver the Crown’s apology in person once this bill has completed its passage through the Parliament, and I think that’s very important. It’s very important that the Crown unreservedly apologises to the hapū and to the whānau of Ngāti Maru for failing to uphold its obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Other speakers have covered the contents of the settlement, so I probably don’t need to repeat that, but what I would like to canvas briefly is the work of the Māori Affairs Committee and the very interesting issue that has come out of that with the conservation land properties within the Whanganui River catchment area. The Whanganui River settlement has attracted huge attention both here and abroad for the quite innovative approach that it’s taken to the future management of the Whanganui River, and the concept of Te Awa Tupua has actually been world leading. The solution that’s been found to the management of this particular body of water and, specifically, the riverbed running through the conservation land properties, as to the responsibilities of Te Awa Tupua—and I think we can all be very proud of the result reached—illustrates that Treaty settlement arrangements don’t have to be static, but, with the consent of all parties involved, they can adapt to suit circumstances. It wouldn’t have made sense in this case for DOC—the Department of Conservation—to fulfil an essentially administrative role, and, in fact, it probably would have been a backward step in this day and age.

So National is proud to support the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill, and I think that both sides of the House can be happy with the bipartisan history of Taranaki negotiations and settlements. They were started by the Hon Margaret Wilson in the early 2000s, and now are very nearly completed with this legislation. We all look forward to the third reading and to the future consideration by this House of the collective arrangements reached over Taranaki maunga. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote): Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Ki ōku whanaunga o Ngāti Maru tēnei te mihi a Te Paati Māori ki a koutou i tēnei wāhanga o tō pire Whakatauanga. Ka tū au hei uri o Taranaki, hei uri o Ngāti Ruanui, hei kaiārahi o Te Paati Māori. Nāku te whiwhi kia tū i roto i tēnei Whare, kia mihi ki a koutou i tō koutou mahi rangatira.

[Greetings to one and all in the House. To my relatives in Ngāti Maru, this is the acknowledgment of Te Paati Māori to you at this stage of your settlement bill. I stand here as a descendant of Taranaki, as a descendant of Ngāti Ruanui, as a leader of Te Paati Māori. I am fortunate to stand in this House and acknowledge your noble work.]

It’s with great pleasure that I rise on behalf of Te Paati Māori for the second time in support of Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. First and foremost, I want to mihi to my whanaunga who are watching this today, who cannot be here in person during these trying times, and those of you who are out there on the ground testing, vaccinating, and keeping our whānau safe, just as your tūpuna would have. No settlement can compensate for the pain, the suffering, and the trauma that you—our people—endured and still do endure that saw your natural development interrupted in the most horrible way possible.

The Crown’s negotiation policies are cruel. The fiscal envelope is cruel. I know the damage this process does to our whānau, to our relationships, to our wānangatanga. There is no way that settlements in Aotearoa are fair or equitable. No one in this House has the right to congratulate themselves today or ignore how it is we got here today. So, once again, I would like to mihi to my whanaunga and to thank you for your generosity, for your aroha that you have given to this nation in agreeing to the terms of this settlement.

Te Paati Māori don’t believe in full and final settlements. A treaty is to be honoured; not settled. There are many who have profited from our pain, from your loss, and Taranaki economy thanks and mihi to you all.

So I want to remind the House today of what I’ve said during the first reading of this bill. Tangata whenua will never settle for settlements. We will keep striving to get the justice that our tūpuna deserve to create a future where mokopuna can thrive as their true selves. Ngāti Maru have generously accepted 1 percent of everything the Crown has taken so that our future generations can come back for the 99 percent, and Te Paati Māori will fight tooth and nail to play our part in achieving this.

I want to reflect and appreciate all those of Ngāti Maru who have fought since 1891 until today. I want to bow to our marae, Te Upoko o Te Whenua, and all the kaumātua whose vision is to reaffirm your identity and your very existence. To the many: Polly Kopu, Tainui Tukata, Ray Peri, Ray Henry, Hazel Peri, and let’s not forget Rata Pue. To all those back home who serve their people and who serve their roles as mana whenua, as ahi kā for Ngāti Maru, for being resilient, for what the Crown did to us has cost us, you have refused to let it define you. Your manaaki—you are your people. You are active in your region. You are active in everything that needs to be done today, and I think last time I called you masters of resilience, I see your contribution to our te ao: Tupuānuku workforce development, Te Kōhanga Āhuru, your education scholarships. You fight to preserve your people during a pandemic.

At your bill’s first reading, I remember that we talked about these masters of resilience afterwards, and I stand by that analogy. Today, I ask that we reflect on what and where you would be today had your natural development not been interfered with. We would be landowners. We would be strong, multicultural language speakers, exporters, and importers in your thriving economy. We would have multiple networks of hapū and whānau development. We would have grown multiple leaders, managers, businesses. We would be the healthiest and we would be looking after those living beside us. We would take risks and, most of all, we would believe in each other.

One of the biggest things I’ve experienced in iwi is how hard we are on ourselves. None of what our whānau have had to endure is settling. None of what has happened to us is our fault. We have waited for a long time for our reclamation. At times, it can bring out the worst of us.

To all of our whānau who are out there, to all our whanaunga, I ask that we remember peace and that we support each other. I also mihi to those in our tari of Ngāti Maru who are in isolation at the moment. Piki te ora, piki te kaha. Ngā mihi aroha ki a koutou katoa mō tō kaha mō tō manaaki mai tā tātou iwi katoa. Kia ora koutou.

[Get well and strong soon. We all send our affectionate greetings, for your strength and hospitality. Be well all of you.]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I’d just remind members, if I have to wear one if these beautiful masks, you should too.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. E te iwi Ngāti Maru, tēnā koutou, and can I say what a pleasure it is to speak on this second bill, the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. I had the privilege of being part of a pō’hiri to welcome them here, with the Hon Andrew Little, the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations—to warmly welcome them and meet representatives of their team, and can I acknowledge both the iwi and Crown negotiators. These settlements are big pieces of work. As a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, the more of these I do, the more that I learn about the processes that different iwi across the motu go through to bring these to a conclusion.

I want to just acknowledge other members of the Māori Affairs Committee—in particular the chair, Tāmati Coffey. Hopefully, all things proceeding well, we will be able to partake in the celebration when the third reading comes to the House.

This bill gives effect to Te Hiringa Taketake, the deed of settlement between ourselves, the Crown, and Ngāti Maru, which was signed on 27 February of last year—2021. There are some important parts, as per each settlement package, in terms of a redress. There are generally three key parts to this: the apology—and look, I said in an earlier speech around the need to get this accurate. One of the things I’ve learnt is that whānau, hapū, and iwi want to ensure that their story is told accurately to capture that historical account of what happened at the time, and the breaches of Te Tiriti—the Treaty of Waitangi—with regard to Ngāti Maru.

Secondly, a key point is the cultural redress. Every settlement is different, and in terms of Ngāti Maru and those people from Taranaki, it talks about 16 sites in this case. There are some protocols, and I know one of the strong features of this settlement is with regard to primary industries and the fisheries, but probably something that was expressed—and we had 35 written submissions; eight oral, and it would have been great to get there, if it wasn’t for COVID. But we heard strongly around the importance of ensuring that the responsible Ministers issue protocols for any taonga, tūturu, or protected objects, found with the Ngāti Maru rohe of interest, and it talks about national monuments, the publications detailing history, and the provision of cultural and spiritual practices, right through to board appointments of interest to the people of Ngāti Maru. There are statutory acknowledgments that go with that, and that fulfils that cultural redress.

The third piece is around commercial redress. What I find interesting, and I have learnt lots, is that that exclusive right of first refusal over Crown-owned property—this can be controversial. But they’ve said in this commercial redress, within that Ngāti Maru rohe, it is for 179 years from the settlement. I know that this means much more to the people of Ngāti Maru than just a simple piece of paper. We’ve heard this evening the recount of a range of provisions relating to the riverbed within the Whanganui River catchment area, for example, and the resource consent process as part of that joint-management agreement between the iwi and the Taranaki Regional Council clarifying that role for the local authority, the New Plymouth District Council.

So, in conclusion here, I want to just say how much of a pleasure it’s been being part of progressing this bill for the people of Ngāti Maru. It certainly brings a strengthened approach between Crown and local government towards those people who have been most impacted, and I look forward to, hopefully—fingers crossed—seeing them here as part of the third reading of their settlement bill. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): E ngā mana, e ngā reo, tēnā tātou katoa.

[To the authorities, to all the voices, greetings one and all.]

It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party and as the member of Parliament for North Shore on the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. I want to just firstly acknowledge the last speaker, Paul Eagle, for his contribution as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee.

As part of the preparation for this this evening, I had a review of the deed of settlement, which I think provides quite a detailed overview in terms of the full account of what occurred back in the 1870s. For someone who was coming to this with little knowledge, I’ve learnt a lot from that overview. I guess that gives some context in terms of not only the importance of what we’ve heard this evening from a number of speakers before but also the importance of such a process that, in a bipartisan manner across the House, we join together to make progress, and I think we’ve heard that term used a lot this evening as well in terms of the progress that this process allows us all, as a country, to undertake.

The select committee, of which Tāmati Coffey was the chair, contributed a great amount in terms of this process. I understand there were around 35 submissions that the committee heard. Eight were oral submissions, and, of course, that was undertaken virtually due to the reality that we are all faced with under COVID-19. But the committee did a good job. I want to acknowledge Joseph Mooney and Harete Hipango from the National Party, who are members of the Māori Affairs Committee, alongside all of the other members of that committee, many of whom have spoken here this evening.

I also want to acknowledge Minister Little for his contribution in terms of bringing this bill to the House and, of course, prior Ministers in this area—particularly the Hon Chris Finlayson, who was very much a part of the initiation of this process. I also want to acknowledge the many members of the support team that provides support to our select committee process. The Clerk’s Office obviously were key contributors, and I must say that for anyone involved in the select committee process, often those individuals’ efforts go unnoticed by some, but it’s definitely acknowledged and noticed by members of select committees in terms of their contribution, and often under quite significant pressure in timetable as well.

Obviously, this process in this settlement is one which provides an apology on behalf of the Crown. There is also an element, which we’ve discussed already, around the financial redress. I think it’s been acknowledged right through, no matter where we are or who we are, that this will never be enough, and I think that term has come through loudly and clearly. But it is part of that process and it is the part of that redress that this House does, and this evening, actually hearing two of those bills come across is pleasing to see.

Obviously, I’m from the Waikato, and I just want to acknowledge Mr Assistant Speaker McKelvie—congratulations. It’s good to see you in the Chair this evening. It’s a pleasure to be able to get some guidance from someone so wise as yourself, so that is acknowledged.

As a boy from the Waikato, I haven’t spent much time in the Taranaki, but we’re very lucky to have listened to Barbara Kuriger, my good colleague and friend, who articulated the beautiful elements that this settlement process will include, and—vast areas and beautiful areas—that was articulated in terms of what were Department of Conservation and conservation areas, which, I’m sure, those 2,800 members of Ngāti Maru will, no doubt, really appreciate.

The select committee process had two major or substantive contributions, I guess, in terms of their process. One was around the administration of the riverbed within the Wanganui River catchment area—that process—and the committee considered that. The other aspect that was substantive in terms of amendments that were done by the select committee was around the resource consent process—in particular, clause 87(1)(b)—for which the committee recommended amending the bill to remove what was, in effect, an error in the original thing. So that brought value and that has made the bill even better than before.

Obviously, today, we’re embarking in terms of this virtual Parliament process. The hapū and iwi that are unable to be here physically in the House will be watching from afar in terms of being online, and I do pass on my best regards to all of them. This is a long process, but we are coming towards the end of that. I’m sure for that iwi and hapū that that is a really important part, and I understand, as we’ve heard from Nicola Grigg, the member of Parliament for Selwyn, in her contribution before that the Minister is going to provide that apology in person, which no doubt will be appreciated by those members.

So I think that is pretty much what I wanted to cover this evening. The settlement process is something that is very, very important. It is, as I say, a redress. It’s not enough in terms of the full compensation in terms of what was taken back in the 1870s, but it, hopefully, will provide a level of, not necessarily closure, but a level of acknowledgment of where the process is and allow us, together, to move forward from this point together. So tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. I commend this bill to the House.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) (remote): Te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā rawa atu ki a koe. Ki ngā kaiurungi o Ngāti Maru ki Taranaki, tēnā koutou, e mihi ana ki a koutou i tēnei pō. Nā reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, e mihi aroha ki a koutou i tēnei pō.

[Mr Speaker, greetings to you. To the leaders of Ngāti Maru of Taranaki, greetings, I acknowledge you this evening. Therefore, greetings, greetings, fond greetings to you this evening.]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s wonderful this evening to speak to another Treaty settlement bill that is going through the House. It’s always an honour to be part of the Māori Affairs Committee for a couple of reasons, but, first and foremost, to hear the stories of our people of Aotearoa to share our history, and, through that, secondly, we learn so much. I’m looking forward to those stories as a part of this process being shared with all of our communities across Aotearoa, but particularly that our taiohi, our tamariki mokopuna, grow up with the stories of old—the stories that our old people shared—and part of the process of being in this particular settlement bill was hearing the stories of Ngāti Maru. It’s very, very special, and I acknowledge them this evening.

The Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill gives effect to elements of Te Hiringa Taketake, the Ngāti Maru deed of settlement, which relies on legislation to be enacted and implemented. This takes a particular part of my heart because I am from an area just across the hill from this particular whānau, and we’re in our own journey to settle the Mōkai Pātea claim. It’s wonderful that this particular whānau, this hapū, this iwi are well ahead of where we are at, in that we’re at the second stage of this particular reading.

It’s my honour also to be the final Government speaker on this bill this evening as a member of the Māori caucus, and can I acknowledge the Hon Andrew Little and the amount of work that he has done to progress these particular bills. Also, can I pay acknowledgment this evening to our chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, Tāmati Coffey, who does a wonderful job of keeping us all on track to be as efficient as possible. The beauty of the Māori Affairs Committee is that we all at some point come to consensus to progress outcomes for Māori within Aotearoa, so I acknowledge all of the speakers this evening from across all parties and the contribution that they have made in particular for this bill.

Just to recap, Part 1 of this bill sets out to provide the provisions and take effect on the settlement date, unless a provision states otherwise. It specifies that the bill binds the Crown and defines terms used in the bill, including “Ngāti Maru” and “historical claims”. The second part is the cultural redress, which we’ve heard a lot about this evening. It’s important, as an iwi, and particularly for our tamariki mokopuna, that they have the opportunity to grow up with their culture and identity, and this particular bill will support them to do that.

But what is of particular interest tonight, and others have touched on it—and it is important—is that part of restoring mana to this iwi is enabling them to stand on their own two feet, giving them the resources that were, sadly, taken away from them, and enabling them to live and breathe as an iwi and as an entity to determine the future of their own people and of generations to come. Part of the commercial redress is the conditions that are set up as a part of this bill: the transfer of Te Wera Crown forestry licensed land and the transfer of 35 deferred selection properties, which Ngāti Maru can purchase within two to five years of settlement—Mr Speaker, my apologies; I’m getting a little bit of feedback—an exclusive right of first refusal over specific Crown-owned properties within Ngāti Maru rohe for 179 years from settlement, and, finally, a shared right of first refusal over specified properties within Ngāti Maru rohe.

Can I acknowledge, finally, the work of Te Arawhiti, who share a vision constantly about enabling both Māori and Pākehā to meet along the bridge so that as a country and what we signed up to as a Treaty is about us working together for the betterment of all people—Māori and Pākehā alike—in this country and that we all do well. Part of this particular bill enables Māori in this iwi, Ngāti Maru and Taranaki, to do well and to determine the outcomes that they want for their own people. I believe that we can work together between the Crown and our iwi and that that sets up for quite an exciting future. It means that the Crown at some point has to learn, and part of this evening is that we acknowledge the hurt and the ill faith that has operated to where we lead in to today to establish an apology to Ngāti Maru. So, without future ado, can I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Maritime Powers Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 17 February.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Maritime Powers Bill. New Zealand is an island nation with 15,000 kilometres of coastline and one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world, so keeping our maritime environment secure is a critical component of our national security and prosperity. Trades such as trafficking of drugs, arms, wildlife, and humans compromises New Zealand’s safety, security, economy, environment, and territorial integrity. Therefore, there is a critical need for New Zealand to be able to respond to these increasing serious maritime threats in international waters and this Maritime Powers Bill just does that.

The bill provides law enforcement agencies—who are defined as police constables, customs officers, members of the armed forces, the Department of Conservation rangers, and endangered species officers—with power to enforce elements of New Zealand’s criminal law in international waters where they have reasonable grounds to suspect that serious offending is taking place on boats. It also provides powers to respond to a range of offending in international waters.

The bill does quite a few things. It allows New Zealand to respond to criminal activities in the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand, allows for research and surveillance based on the powers in the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. It also allows enforcing detention and arrest powers.

We’ve heard some concerns about the bill—that it might be at odds with the New Zealand Bill of Rights and other international conventions on seas and oceans. But this bill is consistent with our rights and obligations under international law, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and international human rights obligations. So if it passes tonight, it will enhance the wellbeing of our communities and advance our security and shared prosperity.

I’d like to thank the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for their work. They have received about seven submissions, including from the Privacy Commissioner, the New Zealand Law Society, and the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties. The New Zealand Law Society and the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties recommended the bill be amended to make sure the Bill of Rights would apply to the powers exercised under the Maritime Powers Act. The committee reviewed this recommendation and was advised that the Bill of Rights already applied to the powers under this bill and does not need to be expressly set in the bill. So this has addressed already some of the concerns that had been raised about this bill.

As noted in our manifesto, when it comes to our independent foreign policy Labour Party values include a focus on upholding the international rule of law and this bill contributes towards this. We must be honest that with globalisation and increasing interconnectedness, and while people and goods move freely from place to place, our law enforcement agencies need tools to be able to do their job. If they can’t, if they don’t have enough tools, then New Zealand will be subjected to criminal offences. For our shores to be kept safe our officers must be equipped well and this bill is going to do just that. This piece of legislation is going to help to do that and I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The next call is a split call. I call Todd McClay.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Mr, Speaker, thank you so much, I’d just prepared a 10-minute speech. I’ll read it twice as fast as I normally do, perhaps.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Ha, ha! You’re a great reader.

Hon TODD McCLAY: It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. It’s important work that is about to be done when this is finally passed into law. It’s a shame the Government hasn’t shown more urgency in this as they have so many other things that they’ve said are important but in the end the New Zealand public is not quite as sure that they are as urgent as they say.

The reason for that is it is about New Zealand enforcing our own laws internationally—or this Parliament makes a decision, it passes a law as to what we think is legal and what’s appropriate. We will now be able to enforce this, in as far as New Zealand registered ships are concerned, anywhere in the world, or ships that are not flagged under New Zealand within an area that we have an extraterritorial jurisdiction—which largely means a few parts of the world and our exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

The reason I say it’s a shame they haven’t shown more urgency in doing this is right now, in our EEZ, there is bound to be a boat there, a ship on its way, on its way out, nearby that actually we would want our services to look at if they suspect or believe that they are breaking international law that is in New Zealand law. But the reason I point that out, in as far as the Government not showing urgency here, is there’s another situation that is comparable to this that’s going on at the moment in the Ukraine and as far as Russia is concerned. And there’s another area where decisions by New Zealand, perhaps this Parliament, are not able to be enforced overseas, just as in this legislation they are equally not, and the reason for that is that this Government has dragged its feet and even today said it won’t pass an autonomous sanctions bill. So whilst we’re here debating this about what could happen on the high seas or, you know, under a New Zealand - flagged ship or, let’s say, a Russian ship in an area of the world where New Zealand has extraterritorial jurisdiction, when this law is passed we can enforce New Zealand law in as far as that Russian ship is concerned. So it’s a good thing that we’re passing this. We should be doing it faster.

What’s not a good thing is that the Government today drags its feet and says it won’t pass an autonomous sanctions bill under urgency, although we are debating this piece of legislation today; instead of this today, we should be debating and passing an autonomous sanctions bill so that tomorrow, if we did so in urgency, the Government could put in place sanctions against Russia for the actions they have taken in the Ukraine, where today people are dying defending their country. We could put in place sanctions as the US has, as the United Kingdom has, as all European Union countries have, as Australia has. But no; we’re here passing this legislation. And if it follows through the normal process, at the end of this three-week sitting block it will enter into law; that’s a good thing. And lo and behold if one of those Russian fishing vessels happens to wander down here, we’re going to send out our military or—what does it say here?—an “endangered species officer” or “Department of Conservation ranger” to grab them. But in as far as three weeks from now, here’s an ironclad guarantee: this Government won’t have passed sanctions on Russia when, actually, I believe there is a majority in this House to do so today, to stand with our allies around the world and to make a very, very strong statement.

The Prime Minister put out a press release; that’s a good thing. I don’t think Russia read it and if they did, it didn’t alter their behaviour. But as the rest of the world is taking a position to sanction them, New Zealand should be able to also, rather than only being able to if the UN allows us to—we should be making those decisions here in this House and in New Zealand. The legislation is a good thing—

Hon Andrew Little: Why didn’t you pass the bill?

Hon TODD McCLAY: Well, the member said “Well, you’ve got to pass the bill.” There’s a lot of noise over there, but they were pretty quiet when it came to the Prime Minister’s statement about the Ukraine and not being able to pass sanctions, because she wasn’t clear about this. But this legislation will go through over the next three weeks and they’ll rush out there and say, “Ah ha! If one of these Russian vessels happens to wander down to New Zealand waters, we’ll grab it.” But that will do nothing for the people of the Ukraine.

We do support this legislation. We do think there are some changes needed. I mentioned a couple of areas there—we think probably some of the authority of powers given to Department of Conservation rangers or endangered species officers will be the same as the police or Customs or the military. I think that probably goes too far. There’s another way to do that. The Government did say in committee that actually those powers would be used very, very cautiously. Actually, there is not such a thing. Once power is given, people use it. And in this case, I don’t think we’ve got it right. So we should talk about that more in committee stage and look to fix it. We will be supporting this and passing it. But we would support and pass an autonomous sanctions bill in urgency today if the Government actually could show urgency in areas that matter.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The next call is a remote call—five minutes.

HELEN WHITE (Labour) (remote): I don’t accept that this bill has anything to do with the Ukraine, but I do want to extend my worries and thoughts to the Ukrainian people today. Having said that, I would like to address this bill, which is one that absolutely needs to be passed.

This is the Maritime Powers Bill and it will mean that we are able to extend New Zealand law to New Zealand flag ships internationally. We’ll also be able to extend New Zealand law to foreign-flagged ships that are in our economic zone, and that zone is actually really big. It’s one of the largest economic zones in the world, so it’s very important that we are able to do that. What this bill does is that it actually builds on the Search and Surveillance Act, the Customs and Excise Act, the Fisheries Act, and it uses the same kinds of powers—in our extraterritorial waters and internationally—on our own ships. So it allows us to take what we’ve already learnt about what works and put it in those settings. It means that if people are exploiting labour in those waters, if they are conducting drug deals, if they are pirates, we are able to do something about that urgently. I was thinking about the kind of people who do that work. Those kinds of people are really in a very vulnerable situation, the police and the defence forces and the customs officers, and even the Department of Conservation, when they are carrying out those activities they can’t rely on the backup that you would rely on if you were on land. They are in a dangerous situation. So it’s incredibly important that we support them fully. This law will do that.

What it does allow is it allows a search without warrant. There were some issues raised about that, but it does have a tempering of that because the warrant, if you do a search without warrant, under the fact, you must actually report that to the commissioner of police. So there’s oversight, because this Government is very mindful of the rights of people and making sure that the response we have is proportionate, but also that we are watching these things. So we are making sure that there is no exploitation of them. Now, our Minister, Nanaia Mahuta, talked about the importance of this in a changing world because we are—as unfortunately we know this week—in a very changing world. We need those sorts of powers that make our territories secure and make it something where we know that we are going to be able to actually respond in a way that is appropriate in an ever changing situation. We’re going to rely much more than we ever did on the sea for our supply, and it’s so important that those supply ships can come in and we know exactly where we stand and those people policing those situations have our backup.

I wanted to just talk about the hazards that are in that work because it is one of those things that’s very, very real. The hazards are actually that people would have guns on those boats. They would be carrying out acts without any sense of the law of New Zealand. And that would happen. So these people who are going on to those boats really do step into an incredibly vulnerable situation. So this is a situation where people can go in if there’s reasonable grounds to suspect and if there is a reasonable belief to suspect, but they have to do so in terms of a serious offence. So it’s not something which they would do lightly, and that’s been built into the Act too.

Finally, this is consistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and that’s really important because I think we’ve all realised over the last few days—perhaps been reminded—that it’s incredibly important that we actually work as a community. And so the UN conventions are incredibly important, and I think we’re starting to work much more as a community and see that it’s important that we actually work as a group and in a unified way when it comes to the areas that join us. That kind of mentality is something that I welcome in a post-pandemic world where we actually very much need to rely on our community of ethics and laws. So thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to contribute on this, the Maritime Powers Bill. When I last spoke on this it was about the importance of the proposed legislation on drug trafficking and being able to search and seize drugs in international waters off our coast prior to them reaching our shores. I spoke about the debacle at Ninety Mile Beach in 2016, which resulted in what was then New Zealand’s biggest ever meth haul, and it potentially could have been stopped sooner with the right surveillance and the right laws.

Today I’d like to speak about something else. I sit on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, which is considering this bill, and we’re also inquiring into illegal unreported and unregulated fishing, and it’s something that several others have mentioned in this debate. We’ve received many submissions on this, and time and time again we’ve heard compelling evidence from submitters about the need for greater enforcement powers for Department of Conservation officers. Sea Shepherd has done a lot of due diligence in this space. They’ve worked with lots of Governments all over the world as vigilantes of the sea, and in their oral submission they stress the need for greater enforcement powers for New Zealand Customs officers, and it was something echoed by many others. It’s because the problem at sea is that it’s very easy to throw away the evidence of illegal activity and throw it overboard in the case of fishing or, say, weapons smuggling. Currently, Customs officers don’t have the power to be able to stop and search boats suspected of illegal activity, and that goes for fishing, for drugs, for human trafficking, and so on.

So, in short, New Zealand is in some cases unable to act or disrupt criminal activity before it reaches our shores. Our maritime powers simply don’t align with our criminal law jurisdiction or our rights and obligations in international law, and that’s why sorting this out has actually been a priority for Labour in our election manifesto.

This bill extends powers to stop, to search, to detain, and to arrest, and these powers already exist in domestic law and the bill simply extends these powers into international waters. As other speakers have mentioned, there were seven written submissions and one oral one—a really helpful one from the New Zealand Law Society, and I’d like to thank them for that. They submitted on three areas, including the application of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and human rights, and they basically said that these Acts apply and that an explicit reference was not necessary. In fact, they said it would perhaps be confusing if it was to be included because it would put into question whether other legislation would also need explicit New Zealand Bill of Rights Act references.

The second element that they mentioned was about powers exercisable without a warrant, and there has been a lot of discussion on this. The short answer is that these powers already exist and they exist in the same way. Without this law there is uncertainty relating to international law and vessels, and, as I mentioned before, the law deals with the mischief of evidence being thrown overboard, which is very real.

The Law Society also submitted about futureproofing for technological developments, and as a committee we did acknowledge there will be developments, and I’m thinking here of developments around, say, autonomous weapons—the work Minister Twyford is doing. There will always be technological developments, but that issue can’t be resolved here because it really involves all maritime law—but we will keep an eye on it.

The law is not just needed to prevent illegal and unrecorded fishing. It also is needed, as my colleague Ibrahim Omer has said this evening, for weapons trading—for example, firearms. The tightening of New Zealand’s laws could lead to more smuggling through coastal borders. It relates to immigration. It relates to wildlife. The law supports important conservation and biosecurity work done under the Wildlife Act, and it also is needed to address the geopolitical risks, and we’ve seen those increase recently with the impact of COVID and with climate change. That’s brought the Pacific to the fore, and with the current terrible events unfolding in Ukraine, it’s not difficult to see how we might be wanting to ensure our own corner of the world is as secure as it can be.

Another problem that this bill addresses is really what’s been described as a good problem, which is our large coastline: it’s 15,000 kilometres, in fact. A beautiful coastline with lots of pristine beaches. And also another good problem is that we live in one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones. So the law is also timely. We’re living in a changing world—we have a growing marine economy; we’ve got a domestic market that is increasingly reliant on marine connectivity in relation to our supply chains, our shipping routes, and, again, that’s certainly come to the fore during COVID. We’ve seen the importance of shipping for importing and exporting and we do need it, as I said, to protect our national interests in the Pacific and in the Southern Ocean. This changing world that I’m referring to in relation to maritime areas was all recognised in the 2018 Strategic Defence Policy Statement, and that statement said that “Maritime security is fundamental to New Zealand’s national security.” It looked at climate change; it referred to transnational crime; to resource competition and the geopolitics that go with that; and to irregular migration.

So this legislation supports the maritime strategy. It protects our economic interests, our cultural interests, and our environmental interests now and for future generations. What it does—and others have spoken about it—is it gives power to enforcement officers to respond to a range of criminal offending in international waters. That includes “offences that take place on board a New Zealand - flagged vessel in international waters; and offences that take place on board a foreign-flagged vessel or stateless vessel in international waters”—and that’s vessels where—“New Zealand has extraterritorial jurisdiction; and situations where an alleged offender or evidence of criminal offending is located on a New Zealand, foreign, or stateless vessel in international waters.” It does this in a manner that is consistent with New Zealand’s rights and obligations under international law—so our human rights obligations, for example, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; or safeguards in the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. What it doesn’t include is foreign ships outside those situations, unless there is permission from a foreign State, and unless they are in certain categories of offences, such as slavery or piracy or the continuous pursuit after contravening a New Zealand law—those are all covered.

So the benefits, as have been traversed by my colleagues, are that this law gives parity to agencies around enforcement powers for police, the New Zealand Defence Force, Customs, and the Department of Conservation, and it essentially puts those agencies under one regime. It counters transnational organised crime. It allows prosecution for criminal acts against our laws when the act is done outside New Zealand.

In summary, our maritime laws do need updating. We need to protect the 15,000 kilometres of beautiful coastline that we have and our interests from organised crime, security threats, and wildlife threats. This piece of legislation aligns with international law and human rights. It’s a strategic approach. It has long-term benefits and it shows the international and intergenerational approach of our foreign affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta.

I am personally invested in this legislation. I support all legislation that reduces the incidence of methamphetamine on our shores. I worry about the dangers of human trafficking, and this legislation deals with that. It has been through a full select committee process, and it’s a real pleasure to commend it to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. As the member who has just resumed her virtual seat has said, it is a pleasure to contribute to the process of passing this legislation. It’s a worthwhile endeavour and, as far as I can tell, it’s supported by all parties across the House. National’s indicated, of course, already that we do support the Maritime Powers Bill at this, the second reading.

So, I haven’t had much to do with the particular bill, so I’m standing on the shoulders of giants in the sense that I’ve read the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee report and, by doing so, had a bit of a flavour of some of the submissions and had the benefit of the work that they’ve done. So, passing off their homework as my own, I’m going to copy that and pretend that my points are original in the traditional way. But actually, I did genuinely have some reactions of my own to the legislation as I was reading it, so I’ve compared notes with the select committee report, and indeed the bill itself as it now sits, and the legislative statement. And I think it’s pretty clear what we’ve got is a bill that does cover some pretty important gaps. That’s what it sets out to do—not actually create many new offences, if any, so much as clarify powers that are existing and extend them in a geographical sense. So not extending jurisdiction in the sense of any new kinds of offending being captured, but extending jurisdiction in the way of the reach of New Zealand’s sovereign power, even out into international waters, which is sort of an interesting concept in itself.

Taking a step back, the obligations that allow New Zealand to exercise its authority—and indeed as obligations New Zealand is required to exercise this authority in some senses—to be able to enforce those laws actually makes them meaningful. If New Zealand—and indeed other nations, in an equivalent way—weren’t able to enforce the laws, then those laws would not be meaningful and, of course, the high seas could be the Wild West, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. So it’s explicitly to try and make consistent with New Zealand’s international obligations under, for example, UNCLOS—the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. I’m glad I remembered that acronym—every now and then it’s possible to start one, isn’t it, and get a couple of letters in and can tail off if you’re not careful. But, anyway, I don’t think I’ve embarrassed myself on this occasion. So that’s sort of the underlying purpose and rationale of this legislation. So it’s domestic law, but giving effect to and consistent with international law. And doing so not only in New Zealand domestic waters—where actually we probably already have these powers—but doing that in international waters too. So it’s a pretty big deal. It’s a big deal physically—it’s a huge area.

I note that the legislative statement calls New Zealand “an island nation with extensive maritime domain.” Of course, that’s a perfectly orthodox and reasonable way to characterise New Zealand, another way of thinking of our country, though, is we could say that we are a really large nation of which most of our territory is water. So, if we thought about it in that way, we have a huge amount of real estate—or territory—over which we are sovereign, and that might sound very much expressed in the language of—

Greg O’Connor: Talk about the navy.

CHRIS PENK: —having rights but also responsibilities attached as well. I’m being encouraged, I think, by Mr Greg O’Connor, to talk about the navy. And I don’t usually require too much encouragement on that, but the only subject on which I can be more reliably depended upon to fill 10 minutes of a debate is the law. And this is at the intersection of law and maritime matters, so I’m very much in my element, Madam Speaker, and I can only hope that you’re enjoying my contribution as much as I am, but I doubt it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I’m in love!

CHRIS PENK: Anyway, so the idea is for the New Zealand law to be extended. The long arm of the law needs to be pretty long if we’re thinking about an exclusive economic zone as some 200 nautical miles. That’s, of course, beyond that initial realm, so to speak, of 12 nautical miles—being the territorial sovereignty, so to speak.

And then, further out, of course, you’ve got international waters, which are exactly as they sound. And if we think about international waters being the waters inter, or between, the nations, but thinking about trans-national crime, the things that could take place between different countries—such serious matters as trafficking of humans, drugs, arms, and wildlife—then it’s, of course, pretty obvious pretty quickly that we’re talking about pretty serious stuff. And the enforcement officers that the legislation empowers are pretty wide in their range, and that indicates a wide range of different interests and ideals that we have out on the high seas.

So we’ve got, variously, constables, I presume in the sort of New Zealand standard police kind of meaning of the word—and I look over to Mr O’Connor, this is a subject with which he is well versed—so constables, as well as Customs officers, members of the armed forces, Department of Conservation rangers, warranted officers, and endangered species officers. Endangered species, of course, important to protect—I’m thinking birds, sea life, and of course Labour MPs: all endangered species. So we have, obviously on a more serious note, some pretty serious powers. The select committee turned its mind to the ones that could—in fact, do—breach human rights in a way, but in a way that they’ve obviously decided ultimately is reasonable. So we’ve got warrantless searches, so searches and, I suppose—following that—seizures, potentially of vessels without a search warrant. The practical dimension, of course, of boarding at sea—an opposed boarding, so to speak; one in which the boarders are not welcomed, in fact, may be actively repelled—is that it’s pretty difficult to get hold of a justice of the peace or a judge to provide a search warrant at short notice in “Sea State Nine”.

So, those matters were thrashed out—I think, pretty well—by the select committee. I can see, reading between the lines—and, in fact, the very words of their report back—they did grapple with that question. A previous contributor, and it might have been Helen White, mentioned that the New Zealand Law Society contributed—in fact, it might have been Ingrid Leary. Apologies to either or both of those if I’ve misidentified them, but in any case obviously these were important matters that the select committee considered deeply. But I also think they added some value in some other ways that may be worth highlighting in my remaining time.

One is the idea that these powers are given—for example, to New Zealand - flagged vessels in international waters or indeed to offences that take place on a foreign-flagged vessel in international waters but for which we’ve got extraterritorial jurisdiction. And then the idea that at the point that they come into New Zealand’s more standard sphere of influence, that the powers would actually somehow go away, and that’s the last thing we would want, of course, is for the certainty that this law is trying to provide that’s given to the Customs or the navy or other law enforcement agency, to actually disappear at the point that they are getting closer to shore. Actually, the closer they get in a way you would think that the stronger New Zealand’s influence and ability to detain and control would be. So the select committee in its wisdom—and I do mean that genuinely—recommended amending clause 33 to state explicitly that the powers may continue to be exercised in New Zealand’s territorial seas, internal waters, in any port in New Zealand, or at any place where a ship reaches land, even though that exercise of power under the legislation had actually started considerably further out. So I think that’s a really useful little confirmation there. You don’t want to be having these arguments out at sea. I don’t know how technical the legal arguments would be and how much it would be more a matter of force, but of course it’s important to have a proper legal basis for these things, which is of course the very basis for us being here tonight.

So my final comment, again in the spirit of commending the select committee’s careful consideration, is that they’ve gone to pains to make sure that this concept of a vessel being pursued without interruption reflects the international law. So that unclosed convention, article 111—Nelson’s number of course: one eye, one arm, etc. So that uses the same language as in that international instrument as in this law, in clause 6. And they’ve recommended the insertion of another clause to make it clear that if reasonable efforts have been made by the enforcement officer to communicate requirements to stop, that basically they can go ahead as though that had been received and acknowledged, which I think is probably fair enough. So anyway, good bill, supported across the House, including by National, and, for what it’s worth, by me. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Maritime Powers Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 110

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

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

I’m very pleased to present the bill in its third reading to the House this evening. It’s an important piece of legislation. I reflect on the fact that it was last week that the Government formally put out the public engagement campaign around the Road to Zero campaign, which is our piece of work, working with partners across the country to bring down New Zealand’s road toll, to stop hundreds of deaths and thousands of serious injuries occurring every year in our land transport system. That was a really important piece of work that was commenced in the last term of Government. It is about not just accepting the current road toll that we have for some time. One of the recommendations of the Road to Zero programme that was established in the last term of Government was the establishment of drug-driving legislation. So it has been a long piece of work.

I looked back on some of the dates in preparation for the debate this evening. It was back in February 2019, so three years ago from around about now, that the initial consultation document on drug-driving was released, and then July 2020 that the legislation was read for the first time, having been introduced by the Hon Julie Anne Genter. So this is an important piece of work, but it is one that we have worked through carefully and really turned over the issues to make sure that we establish a regime that is fair, that is justified, that will be durable, and that, most importantly, will be up to the task and will keep Kiwis safe on our roads.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee who have overseen the select committee process for this piece of legislation. It hasn’t been a simple piece of law. They’ve done a really good job, I think, of supporting the legislative passage and improving the legislation as it’s gone through.

I also want to particularly thank the members of the Independent Expert Panel on Drug Driving who contributed their considerable experience and expertise to the development of this bill and to making sure that we have robust, defensible, and fair thresholds for both infringement and criminal offences that are included in this bill. That panel was chaired by Dr Helen Poulsen and included some of New Zealand’s leading experts in toxicology, pharmacology, and biochemistry. As we covered in some detail in earlier stages of the debate in the House and in the committee, I think that members of the House can have great confidence that the information that has been provided by that expert panel ensures that this is a robust and fair piece of legislation. I’d also like to thank submitters who engaged in this process, and my predecessors—the Hon Phil Twyford, the Hon Julie Anne Genter, and the Hon Stuart Nash—who have all had a role in developing the legislation and bringing it through to the House.

As I said previously, the goal of Road to Zero is to stop that sort of almost casual acceptance that the road toll is a necessary payment that we make for driving on New Zealand’s roads. Last year, 320 Kiwis lost their lives on our roads; about 320 the year before that; and so on and so on; and thousands of people seriously injured. Drug-driving is a big and a growing part of that carnage on our roads. In 2020, of the people who lost their lives on our roads, 101 people did have drugs within their system. That is a very, very large proportion and it is a proportion that continues to grow in real numbers and as a percentage year on year. So it is very clear based on the evidence that taking action on this issue will help us to save lives and have a safer land transport system.

It is important to note within this bill that the oral fluid testing regime that we are setting up is only a road safety tool. The tool can’t be used for detecting illicit substances and used outside of the context of people who are driving their vehicles. I think that’s an important assurance to provide. A positive oral fluid test cannot be used as evidence of the use of a controlled drug, and a prosecution for an offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act. A positive oral fluid test would not be sufficient to justify the search of a vehicle for the purposes of any other drug-related offences. This is purely about reducing the harm that is caused by drug-drivers on our roads.

The legislation establishes infringement offences for 25 drugs. It is important to note that these are both legal and illegal substances. So the focus here is really focused on the harm that may be caused by substances, no matter what the type of that substance. It is possible for someone consuming a legal substance to be impaired in the same way that someone who has consumed an illegal substance can be impaired. Again, I think this is just an important point to convey: this isn’t about focusing on any particular substance or any particular demographic; it is focusing in on any of those substances that may cause people to be harmed in our system.

Broadly speaking, the bill establishes a new random roadside oral fluid testing regime to deter drivers. The way it works is by providing officers with the power to administer that oral fluid test. A person who is asked by an officer to complete that test will do so and they will then be asked to complete it a second time if the first test shows that drugs may have been used by the person who was driving. This is about building as much robustness into the result as possible. It is important to note that a person who tests positive after two oral tests is only liable for an infringement offence, not a criminal offence. At that point in the process, under the legislation, the person themselves may elect to go down the route of receiving a determinative blood test, and it is only in the event that that blood test produces a positive result that the person may face a criminal penalty if they exceed the criminal thresholds that are set out in the Act.

The thresholds are different. The infringement thresholds, as advised by the independent expert panel, are a proxy for recent use, and the criminal thresholds are a proxy for a level of impairment. The expert panel set that after extensively working through the international literature on this issue, international examples, and the best and most up-to-date scientific advice from within New Zealand. So to be very clear: the threshold for criminal offending, which may only occur after the person has elected to go down the route of a blood test, is a higher threshold for people to reach.

We also recognise the added road safety risk of driving after combining drugs or drugs and alcohol. The regime does include stricter infringement combination offences and combination criminal offences when a driver has consumed more than one substance.

We do understand that people who consume drugs can, very often, benefit from a health intervention. As a result, there will be compulsory referrals for assessment to drug education or rehabilitation programmes for all third and subsequent criminal offences. In discussion with my colleagues and police, I am also assured that police will be adopting an approach of trying to provide support and direction towards those services at lower levels within the system as their resources allow.

In terms of the setting of criminal limits, as I outlined, 25 substances will be covered. These will include the most prevalent illicit and prescription drugs used by New Zealand drivers, including THC, methamphetamine, MDMA, opioids, and cocaine. As I said before, this is a road safety tool, and it’s very important to note that. We’ve been very careful in the development of the legislation to make sure that that is the focus.

When the bill was originally considered by the Attorney-General in late 2020, his view at that point in time was that the bill did not pass a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. I’m very pleased to confirm to the House, as I have in earlier stages of the debate, that a lot of work subsequently went into the legislation, which came after the receipt of expert advice from the panel and engagement between Ministers, which means that those concerns of the Attorney-General earlier on in the process have been met. Significant changes to the bill were made, including introducing a medical defence pathway, inserting the limits advised by the expert panel into the bill, and making sure that the devices and the cut-off thresholds of the devices that will be procured by police will be gazetted so that the limits are very transparent and open to scrutiny.

So I have a great deal of confidence, and I want to convey this to the House, that while we’re dealing with complex issues within this bill, they have been thoroughly considered and I think we do have a robust and fair piece of legislation. And, of course, in the committee of the whole House stage, the Government did take the step of agreeing to a Supplementary Order Paper put forward by the Green Party and the ACT Party to set a review mechanism in place three years after the implementation of this piece of legislation. Once this bill has made its way through the House, we expect the regime to commence from 2023. I am confident that it will make New Zealand roads a safer place for Kiwi motorists, it will reduce deaths and serious injuries, and that is something that, I’m sure, we all support. I commend the bill to the House.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I rise on behalf of the National Party in support of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill, which is having its third reading today. I just want to start my comments by referring to where the Minister started, which was he was talking about the Road to Zero strategy, and he talked about how the genesis of this piece of legislation started with some consultation in 2019. Well, the reality is—and I think it’s important as we debate this legislation here at its final reading—that the genesis of this piece of legislation took place two years earlier when the incoming Government was advised of the need in 2017 of legislation to implement a roadside drug-testing regime in New Zealand. It was the Green Party Associate Minister Julie Anne Genter who said, “No thanks—no thanks. We don’t want to do that because it’s going to breach some people’s human rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.” She didn’t think about asking some more questions and trying to get some more information—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Point of order, Madam Speaker. That’s misrepresentation of the opposition that the Hon Julie Anne Genter had to this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. That is not a point of order. I call Simeon Brown.

SIMEON BROWN: Thank you, Madam Speaker. And so the incoming Minister was advised of a need of some legislation to introduce a random roadside drug-driving testing service in New Zealand by the police and that was rejected. That advice was rejected back in 2018 by the then Minister. But it’s the Labour Party who was in Government and they agreed with the Associate Minister of Transport—rather than working with the National Party, who would have supported them to bring legislation into Parliament to address this important issue.

I’ll tell you why this is an important issue—because the Minister of Transport talks about the need to reduce the death toll on our roads and to reduce the number of serious injuries, and we couldn’t agree more. The facts speak incredibly strongly to the need to act in this area: in 2014, there were 18 deaths on our roads where the person causing the death was impaired by drugs; by 2019, that had increased to 107—107. That’s over five times as many deaths being caused on our roads and all of that time the Government has said “No thanks.”, and then they said, “We’re going to put it out for consultation.” Then finally, at the very, very last hour of the last Government in the last Parliament, they introduced this piece of legislation to Parliament and here we are, two years later, about to give it a third reading. And thank goodness for that, because this legislation has been long overdue, and it’s something which is needed to actually address one of the biggest and one of the fastest-growing causes of deaths and serious injuries on our roads.

So I just want to acknowledge all of the parties who have been involved in bringing this bill to the House: the select committee, the submitters, and for the expert advice in bringing this bill to the position it is in now. Now the message is that we need to see it implemented and we need to make sure that our police have the resource so that they are able to actually act with the powers that are contained inside this piece of legislation. Because the reality is with the number of people who are suffering from serious injuries or deaths on our roads caused by drug-driving, this has to be one of the biggest priorities when it comes to trying to reduce the drug-driving.

We’ve got a Government which has got a strategy and the Minister has got a big red zero. But he’s taken four years—4½ years.

Hon Scott Simpson: That was his rating.

SIMEON BROWN: “That was his rating.” says the Hon Scott Simpson. That might be the number of metres of light rail he’s delivered as well. You could use that for a number of things. But the hard serious fact here is that this is something which should have been done far, far sooner. The reality is—what we know that this piece of legislation is going to do—it will be a deterrent. The reality is, at the moment, we know that with drink-driving, the police have a job, they’ve got the powers. That legislation was introduced back in 1993, and there was a subsequent reduction in the number of deaths and serious injuries where drunk-driving was the cause behind those accidents. So we know that this legislation is going to have an impact.

The next thing which needs to be done is the Government needs to make sure that the police have the resources to be able to do that. I have serious questions at the moment around how that resourcing is taking place in the road safety partnership area between the New Zealand Transport Agency and the police. Only last year, the police delivered only half of the required 3 million breath tests on our roads; 1.5 million were delivered against a target of 3 million. So the reality is there will be serious questions which need to be asked to make sure that they’re able to deliver on those targets and also on this piece of legislation to make sure that it is as an effective deterrent as it can be.

The reality is that this will have an impact, not just as a deterrent but in terms of the lives that it will save, the families who would otherwise have been impacted—but also just the very clear message that this Parliament sends to people who wish to go on the roads after taking drugs, that that is not OK. It is not OK to do that, and we’ve seen the television messages and we’ve seen the ads on TV, but there are now legislative powers for the police to be able to stop you, to be able to test you, and to be able to potentially even prosecute you for that offence—and to be able to make sure that those tests are done in an accurate way and that there is a fair process around that.

So the National Party supports this piece of legislation. Our hearts go out to the many hundreds of people who have been affected by drugged drivers. I know my former colleague the Hon Nick Smith, if he was here, would be referring to the young man, Matthew Dow, 23 years of age from Nelson, who was tragically killed by a drugged driver back in 2017. These are stories which are far too often heard throughout our country and it is so important that we get this legislation passed, we get it implemented, and we get that road toll down through this legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Madam Speaker, in several minutes you’ll be passing this piece of legislation on behalf of the House. I’d like you to listen for a cheer from downstairs where there are a large number of police officers who will be listening to this debate—I’ve just alerted them to it. Because I’ve been speaking with them over the last few days that they’ve been here, and they can’t wait for this piece of legislation. They’re very eager for it, like many police officers—

Simeon Brown: Why have they had to wait?

GREG O’CONNOR: —before them, including the time that I spent in the police myself.

One of the problems—that we’ve taken so long to get here. Let’s just leave the petty politics out of this, please, Mr Brown. This is an important piece of legislation. The reason we’ve taken so long to get here is because with drunk driving or alcohol-impaired driving, it’s relatively simple because alcohol is a legal substance, so we were always able to concentrate on the impairment. Whenever we discussed it, when the law was implemented, it was always about impairment. The problem with illicit substances, particularly cannabis, where much of the debate seemed to focus, was that it was always clouded—probably a bad pun—by the fact that it was seen as a way to track down or to investigate drug offences. So why this piece of legislation is very good is it ensures, as the Minister said before, that it actually isn’t going to be about drug enforcement; it’s going to be about road safety. That, again, is why we’ve taken, unfortunately, so long to get here.

I’ll just give you an example of how that may work: I’m aware of people who live in a Middle Eastern country where alcohol is illegal. If you are detected with any alcohol on your breath in that country you are arrested, not for any driving offence; you are arrested for having alcohol. That has been the fear here. That is why the legislation, as put together and well advised by our advisory committee—and I do have to, like the Minister, really praise the efforts of our Independent Expert Panel on Drug Driving. Because as we went into this process—and I was privileged enough to chair the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that did do this work—we were struggling a little bit with this whole concept of how we made sure we were actually policing impaired driving, and it got ourselves away from this whole unfortunate issue of just looking for cannabis smokers, which, again, a lot of our submitters tended to base their whole submission on.

So the expert panel, led so ably by Dr Helen Poulsen—a toxicologist—who actually did an excellent job, helped by Professor Shaw, Dr Sharon Kletchko, Andrew McGlashen, and Malcolm Tingle. These people were able to really assure us as a committee that when the amount of drug is detected, there is going to be a tolerance level—that what we’re going to be talking about here is an amount of the drug that we and those who are going to administer this will be able to go into the process with confidence, knowing it will detect an impairment level.

So the first two tests: anyone who fails those two tests will receive an infringement. Now, it will be that person’s choice whether they want to go on and take blood, and should the amount in the blood, or multiple substances be detected along with alcohol, then they will then enter a criminal regime where, obviously, the sanction will be much greater. So this is, again, a piece of legislation that those who are perhaps sitting at home, those who are a little bit worried that this is somehow just a way to go after dope smokers—many submitters brought up a fear that someone who had had a joint three weeks ago on a fishing trip to Taupō, that they would be detected in this, that perhaps someone who was sitting as a passive smoker in a car where others were smoking cannabis, that they would be detected.

Again, anyone who wants some reassurance, I would suggest that they actually get hold of this report by the independent expert panel—the report that gave us as a select committee the absolute confidence to recommend this bill to the House and all the provisions within it. Because anyone reading this report, with good science from not only around New Zealand but also around the world, will be able to satisfy themselves that this is about road safety, not about drug investigation.

So as the chairman of the committee I’m commending this bill. I can actually now give categorical assurance that for those who probably prevented this moment from arriving a lot earlier, that the science has advanced, that we can now rest assured that those who appear before courts or those who are fined for being impaired for drug driving, that the intended goal of road safety, which will come about by getting those people off the road, will, in fact, be reinforced by this piece of legislation. Therefore, I have absolutely no hesitation in commending this to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a delayed pleasure to be speaking in the third and final reading of this Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I say it’s a delayed pleasure because this is a bill that should have been passed years ago, and for the chairman of the select committee to stand and proudly proclaim to the House that he’s been warning police officers around the precinct of Parliament, who have been doing such a good and noble job over recent weeks in this place, that they should be excited about this piece of legislation passing—the piece of legislation that, I might add, won’t actually be effective for another year or so yet. And in the fifth year of this Government’s regime, that they should now be passing this piece of legislation belatedly, slowly, behind time is an appalling indictment upon their record of road safety, their diligence towards road safety, and their lack of enthusiasm for actually doing something that is sensible, pragmatic, and in normal ways, you would say, progressive.

But my colleague Simeon Brown actually related some of the history of it, and I think it’s important in this third reading to go over that a little. There was an opportunity in this debating chamber to pass a piece of legislation that was brought to the House in a member’s bill by my former colleague Alastair Scott. Now, that piece of legislation was almost identical in form to this piece of legislation, but for petty, party-political reasons it was voted down by the then Labour - Greens - New Zealand First administration. And they voted it down knowing, knowing then, that the science was unequivocal in terms of providing absolute evidence that drug testing, saliva testing, random saliva drug testing of this sort lowered the fatalities on our roads. We know that to be true because, in jurisdictions like Australia and in the United Kingdom, legislation of this sort had been in place for years with very effective results.

What we also know is that when the Minister, who was then the Associate Minister, the Hon Julie Anne Genter—and she’s a member of the Green Party, who we, of course, know are dodgy on drugs and drugs issues. So she decided, by playing petty politics, to put the lives of New Zealanders at risk unnecessarily—unnecessarily—for years, and that is something that will be for her conscience for years to come. It’s very sad that there have been so many fatalities, so many deaths, in those subsequent years, and the Hon Julie Anne Genter will have to confront her own conscience on that matter, because she used strawman arguments for putting aside the legislation that was brought to the House by my former colleague Alastair Scott, a piece of legislation that could have gone to a select committee, could have been tidied up if there were issues that the then Government had. But, no; they decided to play petty politics. It was the chair of the select committee only a few minutes ago who was lecturing this House and saying, “Don’t play petty politics.” Well, pot, kettle, black, I think is the appropriate analogy. Pot, kettle, black.

So finally—finally—in the fifth year of this Government’s regime, we have an opportunity to pass this piece of legislation, and I guess we should be grateful for small mercies that better late than never is appropriate. The Minister told us, in his opening speech in this debate, that 320 lives were lost last year on our roads, and that’s simply an unacceptable level of pain, suffering, and death to be occurring in New Zealand. But I’m one of a generation that remembers when the road toll was significantly higher than that, when we had a completely different attitude and view about drink-driving, when it was socially acceptable to drive drunk. For some of us who were young drivers at a period of time in the late 1970s and early 1980s—frankly, it’s a miracle that some of us survived. Then insightful Governments—in fact, it was a bold move taken by a previous National Government that actually introduced random drink-driving, and that was at the time considered pretty radical. But it actually had a very, very good effect, and the same effect can be attributed to this piece of legislation when it comes in. But the fact that it’s going to be 2023 before it actually becomes effective—as my colleague the very hard-working member for North Shore, Simon Watts, says, it is unbelievable that it could be taking so long. That the Labour Government, backed and supported by the Greens, have been dragging their feet for so long on this important piece of legislation is incredibly sad for us all, and it’s an embarrassment not just for parliamentarians, but it’s an embarrassment for New Zealand when in other jurisdictions it’s been working so well.

So what we do know is that the Minister is right when he states the obvious—that this is a road safety tool—and that’s a good thing because we need as many road safety tools as we can get. But when we have a Government that is notoriously soft on crime, these are the sorts of prices that we pay for it, and it’s just a plain, simple fact that this Government has been dragging its feet on this issue. This is a Government that has been literally dragged kicking and screaming to this piece of legislation. They could have passed it years ago, with all the benefits that would have come from it.

But I want to pick up on a point that my colleague Simeon Brown made, because for this piece of legislation to be truly effective, it means that if police officers are going to have to make it work on a practical basis, the Government needs to ensure that they have the appropriate resources. What we know is that police morale is low and declining under a Government that doesn’t really support police in the way that our police force should be supported. I’m very concerned that they won’t have the adequate resources to do this.

As a pointer to a lack of adequate resources, what we know is that there are far fewer random drink-drive tests being conducted in the country at the moment. It used to be a very common occurrence that drivers around the roads of the beautiful Coromandel electorate would be stopped and would have to give their name and address into a little machine, and then they would be tested. Now, I’ve noticed, as just a local driver in my part of the country, how infrequent those random tests are occurring. My concern is that this legislation will, finally, be passed tonight, hopefully, and I’m sure it will be, and then it will be—well, it may not actually be passed tonight, because it depends how quickly some of the Government members wish to speak, and knowing their record on this, I doubt that they will want to speak for long.

So we will support this legislation. We have all the way through because it’s the kind of legislation that a pragmatic, sensible National Government would have introduced years ago, given the opportunity, and it tried to—it tried to. It tried to, with Alastair Scott’s piece of legislation. But, no, this is a Government who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it.

This is actually a piece of legislation that should have already been passed, and I’m recalling a situation when, early on in the COVID pandemic crisis, that was used as an excuse for not passing this legislation. Unbelievable—unbelievable. We have a Government that seems not to be able to do two things at once, and so they don’t seem to be able to prioritise things that are important, and it’s suited them, actually, to use in this case—shamefully, in my view—COVID as an excuse for not speeding up this piece of legislation. So that’s come as no particular surprise to us on this side of the House.

Look, we do support this legislation. It’s been too long coming, it’s too late, and it’s been too slow, but, finally, this soft-on-crime Government has finally seen fit to deliver this piece of legislation to Parliament, and I can’t wait for it to be implemented and effective on the roads and streets around New Zealand.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe te Māngai o te Whare, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be speaking on this third reading of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill. I happened to be with the member for Ōhāriu, Greg O’Connor, and talking to the good men and women of the New Zealand Police service outside, and there was some discussion about reallocation of police resourcing. I wasn’t sure, but a quick Google between Greg O’Connor, the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and myself did find that actually when the other side were in, they had to look at shifting 111 road policing staff positions to other tasks. So they are concerned about this, we’re concerned on this side, and it makes me wonder—

Hon Member: Fake news, Paul, fake news.

PAUL EAGLE: —whether, sometimes you hear—it’s fake news! Well, well, well. Look, let’s focus on this bill, because we’re about saving lives, and that’s what we’re doing in terms of improving road safety outcomes in Aotearoa New Zealand. Look, this is, as has been said, long overdue. Let’s get on with it. What we have seen—and I know in my electorate there certainly are concerns about what’s being done in this area, and I was looking back at the road toll 2019: 110 persons killed where the driver was found to have drugs in their system; 2020: 101. This is going to bring in a new oral fluid testing regime—we’ve talked about the setting of criminal limits, and the fact that the Minister said this is a road safety tool only, and explained that eloquently. I’m not going to talk too much more, I commend this bill to the House.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou o te Whare. Drug driving is a real and legitimate problem that has resulted in the unnecessary loss of lives. The question that we, as lawmakers, face tonight is if, on balance, we think that this law will prevent those deaths and that harm from occurring. The Greens, on balance, cannot in good conscience vote for this bill at its third reading, having thoroughly and constructively engaged, seeking changes at every single stage, knowing that, as drafted, it risks baking in—forever—methods that are currently scientifically not robust and that may perversely cause further harm to our communities.

Madam Speaker, if I told you that I could cure cancer with this one simple, cool trick, would you believe me? No, I believe the answer would be. You wouldn’t. You would believe the experts, you would believe the scientists, the regulators, who are responsible for ensuring that these treatments and medicines actually work before they’re allowed to be tested on real people. If the regional public health authority, the New Zealand Medical Association, the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists told you that this medicine didn’t reach scientific standards for rolling out, as they did on the methodologies prescribed in oral roadside drug testing in this bill, would we do it? No, we wouldn’t. We’d be kidding ourselves, and we’d be pretending that we didn’t see the evidence.

But, unfortunately, when it comes to particularly illicit drug policy, we tend to take a very different approach, as a Parliament over the decades; in our mainstream media reporting; and in the typically accepted, albeit slowly changing, social attitudes. That approach is often grounded in best intentions, and that does need to be acknowledged. We can see that drugs do and can cause harm. Some people have had profoundly harmful and sometimes deadly experiences. That, ultimately, makes this topic something really hard to debate, and an issue that can be very easily co-opted by those who are selling overly simplified solutions. When you are trying to distinguish between two critically important but two very different things—one, the reality that drugs, and that includes alcohol and prescription drugs, can cause harm; and, secondly, the question of how we actually, in reality, grounded in evidence, reduce that harm—there is a real tendency, particularly in the history of this Parliament, to miss that critical second question. That second question, however, is fundamental to making good policy, that does the things that we say that it will.

We have a ton of laws and policy that don’t do what they say they will. The Frankenstein Misuse of Drugs Act, my mortal enemy, is one of the best examples of that. Forty-seven years ago, this Parliament passed a law promising to try and eradicate illicit drugs from this country by criminally penalising the people who use and supply them. In fact, 47 years later, we have seen more illicit drugs on the black market. We’ve got far stronger illicit substances and far more of them. We’ve seen more drug users, more families, and communities harmed. We’ve had review after review, from the Law Commission in 2011 through to the mental health and addiction inquiry through to the safe and effective justice review, which have told us that that law is not only not working but is in fact causing more harm because it is so profoundly anti-evidence. And what’s happened as a result of all of those reviews? Well, nearly 50 years on and with immense collateral damage in its wake, that law remains on our statute books. There’s no real political consequences, it seems, for acting and talking contrary to evidence when it comes to the lives of people who use drugs—which, I might add, if we’re going to actually be honest about, is about 80 percent of New Zealanders who will use cannabis by the time that they are in their 20s.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Julie Anne Genter, who, in fact, the Minister did, as well as members of the Opposition, for her work in introducing this bill in a very unique three-party governance arrangement. It would have looked very differently, I think everybody in this House would agree, had it been a law drafted solely, and negotiated solely, by just the Labour and New Zealand First parties. The Greens are, of course, yet to hold our own parliamentary majority in Parliament, so we sometimes joke that perhaps our position and our role in Parliament is one of harm reduction. We do not have the numbers to outright prevent certain harm being caused. Those on the select committee, and members across this House, know full well that the Hon Julie Anne Genter worked tirelessly behind the scenes—even with the ACT Party, I might add, and the select committee report differing view—to try and improve this bill. And in constant conversation with the Minister and his officials—Minister Wood knew that we could not, in good conscience, support this bill at its third reading tonight without both of our Supplementary Order Papers in the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s name passing.

That is because, while a review is important—that is, of course, the Supplementary Order Paper that members in this House did enable to get through—a review alone with not fix bad law. We’ve seen that with the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, which continues to sit on our statute books, with all of its political inconvenience and accompanying harm and destruction, despite review, after review, after review saying that it is failing to live up to its promise. Our proposed sunset clause—voted down at the committee of the whole House stage on this bill—would have forced a future Government and a future Parliament to look at what might end up being a quite inconvenient truth: that this law might not live up to its promises; that it might be causing unintentional and perverse harms. We don’t know that yet because the science is not yet there. That future Parliament, had our proposed sunset clause got through, would have to proactively pass an amendment bill to keep a potentially otherwise ineffective piece of law alive, instead of conveniently ignoring it, as the current majority in our Parliament currently does with the likes of the Misuse of Drugs Act. If the law was in fact, as it may miraculously turn out, working, it would have offered a great opportunity to tighten things up with, I’m sure, not all too much political contention.

If we want to talk about sizeably and meaningfully reducing drug harm on our roads, then we need to talk about the swathes of evidence-based drug policy and reviews which are proven to reduce drug demand: educate people on the dangers of what they’re taking, or—God forbid—regulate what on earth they are getting access to in the first place. All of those reviews and all of that evidence is currently being ignored for the sake of political convenience.

We need to talk—particularly—about roadside alcohol testing resourcing. That’s because alcohol still remains in fact the most harmful drug in our society but also on our roads. In 2020 more drivers were involved in a crash causing death having alcohol alone in their blood than drugs alone or even both alcohol and drugs. We are currently carrying out significantly fewer roadside alcohol breath tests than we were 10 years ago. We only did 1.5 million roadside tests for alcohol in 2020 to the 2021 period, despite aiming for 2 million. Ten years ago, in 2013, we did 3 million tests.

Roadside drug testing is also currently very limited in the number of drugs that it can detect. Synthetic cannabinoids are not likely to be covered, nor is GHB, which we know potentially impairs somebody’s ability to drive. We also know from the Australian experience that while substances may register in somebody’s system, that person may not in fact be impaired. So too, over 200 medications prescribed in New Zealand come with warnings about potential for impairment, but nearly 65 percent of New Zealanders are unaware that it is illegal to drive under impairment by medication.

As Julie Anne Genter wrote in the select committee report, and I quote, “The Royal Australasian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists was concerned that a harm minimisation approach is not implemented by this bill, as well as noting, ‘The presence of drugs in a person’s oral fluids or blood does not directly relate to impairment. We call for greater research in understanding the link between substance misuse and a person’s impairment’. The New Zealand Medical Association echoes this, stating, ‘the science to support roadside oral fluid testing is not quite sufficiently advanced although it is rapidly evolving. Key concerns include the inability of oral fluid testing to detect impairments, the absence of well-defined threshold levels and impairment limits for many drugs, and the potential for the bill to exacerbate inequities for Māori in the criminal justice system…’”—from that select committee report.

The Green Party will tonight reject this bill. Without the requirement to repeal what may end up being harmful legislation, this law risks becoming yet another potential relic of politicians doing something which hurts the people we claim to want to help.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. ACT will support the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill at this third reading. The ACT Party, as the member for Auckland Central pointed out, shared many of the concerns that the Green Party had about the operation of this legislation. There was still a great deal of work to do to establish an evidence base that roadside testing, for both prescription and illicit substances, would actually be able to detect that drivers were impaired, and that a testing regime would deter drivers from driving while under the influence of drugs.

ACT supports the Government having taken responsibility for roadside testing. Employers have been testing drivers who work for them for decades. I’ve worked in the construction industry and, during my time in the industry, I was required to submit to regular testing while operating motor vehicles, and heavy plant and equipment, as were many of my staff.

So it’s a fine thing that the Government is now taking responsibility for establishing a similar testing regime on the public roads. ACT supports this bill because it’s a practical series of solutions. They’re not perfect solutions but they’re practical, and they will help achieve healthier communities in the long run.

ACT will support this bill despite the fact that we have reservations around the data and the evidence that is available now to determine whether the testing regime, the testing methods, whether they be oral or otherwise, are actually of a sufficient accuracy and repeatability, so that people who are stopped and tested as part of a routine exercise, one that we’re familiar with through what used to be commonplace drink driving stops—although they’ve become less common while the country’s police force are engaged in managed isolation and quarantine duties, stopping people from escaping from hotel rooms, rather than policing the nation’s highways. And we know that the police themselves feel very unhappy about that.

But despite the fact that there are still gaps in the evidence and the data, the ACT Party supports this because there was an amendment proposed by the Green Party, which ACT supported, and which the Government accepted, to include a review clause in this legislation. So that after three years the data and the evidence on roadside testing will be reviewed, and a report will be provided as to whether the legislation is working as intended, and what other operational measures have been identified to improve the working of the legislation. Because it is important, both for the safety of the public—for people learning to drive, for people who have been driving a long time, for people who drive for work—to know that drivers who get into a car to drive while impaired with prescription drugs or illicit drugs are deterred from doing so.

So this piece of legislation is part of the Government’s Road to Zero plan, as the Minister alluded to. It’s one small part of a much larger plan which we understand, having heard the Minister’s announcement last week, is part of a $1.2 billion scheme involving additional road policing and other measures to make the roads safer. This particular piece of the Road to Zero plan focuses on the human factor, on behaviour, on deterring people who might otherwise get behind the wheel while under the influence of illicit drugs or prescription medication. The aim of Road to Zero is to reduce the road toll by 40 percent over a 10-year period. That started in 2020. So that’s now 40 percent by 2030. Last year, 2021, 319 people lost their lives on the road, but the injury toll tells the real picture. The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) received 32,528 new claims for injuries on the road in 2021 alone, with a total cost of $568 million in claims to the taxpayer through the ACC account. So it’s important that every possible measure, having weighed the costs and looked at potential benefits, that every possible measure that stacks up from a benefit-cost ratio analysis is implemented.

That’s why the ACT Party, while supporting this bill, does take issue with other measures in the Road to Zero approach, such as simply applying blanket speed limit reductions across entire regions—as is proposed for Northland or on that vital link, the Napier-Taupō road, reduced to 80 kilometres an hour for its entire length—and not considering the social and economic costs on communities of a blanket approach, which fails to recognise actually the Government has another responsibility, and that is to recognise that humans do make mistakes. Drivers do make errors. That it’s not just about road policing, lowering speed limits and then enforcing them with the radar gun and severely increased penalties, which we know the Government is considering.

Actually, the Government has a responsibility to identify where it should be investing in roading infrastructure, in addition to legislation like this which is about improving driver behaviour. For example, road safety infrastructure such as guard rails and wire rope barriers have saved dozens and dozens of lives; people may well have been injured but they can still go home to their families. And yet, rather than investing in road safety infrastructure, rather than upgrading roads designed in the 1950s, two-lane roads with six-foot deep ditches either side, lined with trees and power poles practically in the carriage way, rather than making those investments, the Government’s chosen to invest in other transport priorities which actually don’t contribute to reducing the road toll and reducing injuries on the road at all, like a light rail project in Auckland or like a bike bridge in Auckland—both projects which are doomed never to be built by this Government.

These 1950s-designed roads we call State highways in other countries would be modern, multi-lane, and often grade separated four-lane highways. I’ll give you an example of Sweden, a country which has a much lower road toll than New Zealand: 5,000 kilometres of roads in Sweden, round about the same distance of State highways as New Zealand. Half of them, 2,500 kilometres is separated by median barriers. In New Zealand we’ve only managed to separate not even 500 kilometres.

That is why, in terms of Road to Zero objectives, this bill only goes a very small way. It will be very difficult for the Government to identify the benefits and reduced fatalities from this legislation. ACT will support it because it’s important that the Government puts its money where its mouth is and at least implements the same testing regime that employers and businesses have been undertaking with their workforces that use the road for decades. But it doesn’t go any way to solving the real problem with this country’s State highway infrastructure, with all of those design, engineering, and other issues with the State highway network which mean that when a person makes a mistake on the road, they are more likely to suffer serious injury or even death in New Zealand than they would be in a country we would normally compare ourselves favourably to, such as Sweden, which has made a real investment in road safety infrastructure.

Hon Member: 50 percent taxes!

SIMON COURT: The former Minister of Police brings up the matter of “50 percent taxes”. He might not realise that New Zealanders on the top tax rate plus GST already pay over 50 percent in taxes; they pay road user charges and fuel excise duties and they’re still not getting safer roads—to the former Minister of Police over there.

That is why the ACT Party believes that, in addition to this legislation, it’s vitally important that adequate investments are made in prioritised road safety infrastructure including State highways. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.