Thursday, 10 March 2022

THURSDAY, 10 MARCH 2022

THURSDAY, 10 MARCH 2022

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

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

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

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House) (remote): Legislation to be considered next week will include the remaining stages of the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill and the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2021-22, GST, and Remedial Matters) Bill; the committee stage of the Māori Commercial Aquaculture Claims Settlement Amendment Bill, and the third readings of the Commerce Amendment Bill and the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill. Wednesday will be a members’ day.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I thank the Leader of the House for that update. I wonder if he might inform as to when progress is expected on the Screen Industry Workers Bill, which has been on the Order Paper for 18 months or so and appears to be making no progress.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): The House, of course, has a very busy schedule, and the Government—a very busy and very productive Government—has a lot of legislation that we’re trying to work our way through at the moment, but I can assure the member that in the fullness of time, at the appropriate moment, it will make its way to the top of the Order Paper.

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

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

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, no petitions or papers have been presented and no bills have been introduced. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Regulations Review Committee on the examination of COVID-19 orders presented between 16 and 20 February 2022

reports of the Social Services and Community Committee on the Girl Guides Association (New Zealand Branch) Incorporation Amendment Bill, and

petition of Trevor Reader.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading. The COVID-19 orders are set down for consideration.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Research, Science and Innovation

1. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) (remote) to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation: What recent announcements has she made about New Zealand’s commitment to global vaccine development?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation) (remote): Yesterday, along with Minister Verrall, we announced New Zealand’s continued support of global vaccine development through a further $10 million pledge to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations—or CEPI. CEPI plays a critical role in supporting the global scientific community and it was a major contributor to the development of most of the vaccines available for COVID-19 today. New Zealand’s continued membership of CEPI, and the participation of our researchers and innovators in its network, significantly improves our ability to respond to this and any future epidemics.

Shanan Halbert: How else is the Government supporting development of New Zealand’s science and innovation capability to respond to future pandemics?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We’ve supported domestic innovation to support future pandemic preparedness through the COVID-19 Innovation Acceleration Fund, investing a total of $33 million to develop solutions to manage COVID-19, including pandemic prediction and monitoring, wellbeing, and protective equipment. The Government has also invested $10 million into building vaccine research capability and links to New Zealand - based manufacturing through Vaccine Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand, and is investing $36 million into infectious disease research that will help us respond to future pandemics.

Shanan Halbert: How is New Zealand supporting our partners to respond to the pandemic, especially in the Pacific?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The Government is committed to ensuring Pacific Island countries are supported to meet their ongoing COVID-19 vaccination needs. So far, we’ve donated over 200,000 doses from our domestic portfolio to the Pacific. We are also making significant contributions to global efforts to reach the World Health Organization’s 70 percent vaccination target this year by contributing another 7.3 million fully funded vaccine doses to COVAX, which may help to accelerate vaccine access in the Pacific and Africa.

Question No. 2—Local Government

2. SIMON COURT (ACT) to the Minister of Local Government: Does she believe the Three Waters reform programme will result in better outcomes for ratepayers; if so, why have so many councils rejected Three Waters?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): Yes, and most of the local government sector agree the status quo is not working. The changes proposed by the Government are designed to deliver safe, reliable drinking water; a financially sustainable way of investing in infrastructure long term; better environmental outcomes—all of which are affordable for ratepayers in every community big and small, and we’ve demonstrated that in the modelling.

Simon Court: When even former Labour Party leader Phil Goff has said, “It is not appropriate to cede control over this infrastructure to … mana whenua”, isn’t it time for her to drop her plans for co-governance of three waters assets?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I reject the premise of that question if it is promoting co-governance. In fact, what I’d like to acknowledge is that Mr Goff is a member of the governance working group, did participate in some significant discussions around how to strengthen the governance representation and local voice aspects of the reform, and I thank them for their work. In relation directly to the point raised by the member, Mr Goff raised very specific views in relation to the Watercare arrangements and Auckland’s interests, and those are ideas that he has long held.

Simon Court: What evidence does the Minister have that co-governance of three waters entities will result in better water infrastructure being delivered so that people like South Auckland woman Jing Zhang, who it was reported was unable to move into her new home for over two years due to water connection issues, will be able to get their water connected?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: There were two spokes to that question and to some extent, if I go to the first part regarding co-governance, I just want to paraphrase the view of the chair of the governance working group, which is that there is some misinformation out there in relation to the issue of co-governance. That is not, in fact, a feature of the three waters model that I have been promoting and, in fact, the whole idea of ensuring that mana whenua participation alongside council at the representative level will deliver total sum benefits for communities big and small, and certainly to ratepayers.

Simon Watts: What does she say to Auckland mayor and former Labour leader Phil Goff, who said, “a one-size-fits-all approach does not meet our needs.”?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: The facts of the matter remain, which is that we have had decades of under-investment in waters infrastructure around the country. People have been kicking the can down the road for far too long and we’re a Government that’s not prepared to do that. What I will say to Mayor Goff, in relation to Auckland: Auckland has received the benefit of aggregation of water service delivery and the creation of a council-controlled model through Watercare, so it is in a very different position. But what I would also like to add to that is that the view of the governance working group, which I think brought some fresh thinking into the conversation, was that those recommendations continue to benefit every community, even Auckland.

Kieran McAnulty: What would she say to rural and provincial communities, many of whom are facing hundreds of millions of dollars of costs over the next few decades if reform of the water services does not continue?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: What I would say is that there is hope because the reform programme that we’re embarking on will deliver benefits to every ratepayer around the country from communities big, small, provincial, rural, urban, and metro. And what we have shown through the modelling is that the benefits of aggregation, balance sheet separation, the ability to ensure that communities are getting value for money and that it is affordable for all ratepayers—by and large, the Three Waters Reform Programme that we are proposing delivers on all that range of challenges.

Question No. 3—Foreign Affairs

3. VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour) (remote) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What recent actions has she taken to support further sanctions against Russia?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Foreign Affairs): I want to acknowledge that Parliament has unanimously passed historic sanctions legislation in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine. This legislation allows us to step up our response to Russia’s grave, unprovoked war on the Ukrainian people. The new Russia Sanctions Act enables me as foreign Minister to recommend specific sanctions against those who are linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine or who are of economic or strategic importance to Putin’s regime. Sanctions can include freezing assets, disrupting Russian banking, and banning Russian ships and planes. The legislation allows Government to ramp up its sanctions response as needed. The addition of sanctions builds on the measures we have already implemented to condemn and punish Russia’s actions. This includes targeted travel bans, export controls, and an initial $2 million in humanitarian aid to support those in Ukraine.

Vanushi Walters: What does the Russia Sanctions Act allow New Zealand to do?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: The Act sets a framework which enables me as foreign Minister to recommend specific sanctions through regulations which will be able to stop or restrict people or companies from travelling to or from New Zealand; or staying here, if they’re already here; moving assets to New Zealand; or using assets already here; providing or using services like banks, loans, legal services. This means we can, for example, stop the purchase or sale of property, the movement of marine vessels and planes in New Zealand’s waters or airspace, stop imports or exports or the movement of money. These sanctions will be targeted against those who are linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Act creates several new criminal offences, as well as civil enforcement mechanisms, and we’re also using existing laws like the Immigration Act to deport people, the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act to enforce these sanctions.

Vanushi Walters: Why was it so important to introduce a targeted bill?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine violates international law. The principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty underpins international order. In this case, a bespoke Act of this kind enables New Zealand to join other countries in imposing sanctions on Russia, and it’s necessary. While this Act is targeted at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sanctions are not limited to just Russia. It also enables us to respond to those States or individuals who might help Russia in their aggression against Ukraine, like Belarus. As I’ve said in this House in the debate last night, consideration of a comprehensive autonomous sanctions regime including Magnitsky provisions and human rights requires fuller consideration and consultation with stakeholders, and it’s my intention to progress work in this space.

Vanushi Walters: When will she be implementing the first sanctions?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: We’re already working with urgency on the initial tranche of regulations. The first tranche will align New Zealand with partners to prevent assets from being moved here. This will include more extensive travel bans, sanctions on Russian banks, and potential asset freezes based on discussions with international partners. There will be further phases as we build a bigger picture of assets here in New Zealand. The framework for sanctions allows us to evolve dependent on situations on the ground in Russia and the actions taken. It provides us with the ability to carefully examine the relationships and identify individuals and companies that meet the legal threshold outlined in the bill so we can have the greatest impact on Russia’s ability to sustain a war.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) (remote) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree that “Families across Aotearoa are struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living rises, and they are being made to make tough calls over the basics”, as stated in RNZ’s report Whānau across Aotearoa struggle with basics as costs rise yesterday, and, if not, why not?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I continue to acknowledge that New Zealand families are facing significant financial pressure right now from inflation, which is being driven by global factors, including the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Government has invested in supporting low and middle income New Zealanders through the pandemic and the elevated levels of inflation that are being experienced. As I’ve already mentioned in the House, we’re taking action through Budget 2022 to address some of this pressure, including through the family tax credit, which would see $20 per week on average for more than 340,000 families. I would note to the member that his party’s proposals would do very little for the people of Kaikohe who are mentioned in the story in his question, giving the one-third of them who are on $30,000 a year or less, $2.15 per week, while giving MPs in this House nearly 10 times that amount.

Hon Simon Bridges: What does he say to Jeanette, quoted in the RNZ story as “feeling the pinch” and whose partner has had to leave his remote Northland forestry job because they can no longer afford the rising petrol costs, so that their family of four is now relying on the benefit and who says, “it’s just too hard at the moment.”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said, I say to Jeanette, and all other New Zealanders, we understand that it is tough at the moment with the increasing cost of living that we are seeing. That is the reason why this Government has committed to supporting people like Jeanette and her family through increases to things like the family tax credit—also in a situation now where we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world. I also note that while I want to see Jeanette and her family back in work, while they are on the benefit, they are benefiting from increases that this Government put in place in 2020, 2021, and 2022—all of which were opposed by the member and his party.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (remote): Does the Minister accept there is a cost of living crisis and that it is considerably worse for Māori in Aotearoa, and, if not, why not?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I’ve said, I accept that there is considerable pressure on family and household budgets at the moment as a result of the inflation that we are seeing. We also know that Māori are overrepresented in lower-income households in New Zealand and that is one of the reasons why we stand proudly by our record of supporting Māori whānau, because we have consistently lifted the rates of income support, we have lifted the minimum wage, and we are increasing the family tax credit—all of which will provide significant money in the pockets of families; far more than $2.15 per week as the Opposition would have it.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Is the Minister concerned about the impact of the cost of living crisis on child poverty when the latest child poverty rates show Māori, Pacific, and disabled tamariki and their whānau are unchanged in the last three years and still experiencing the same material hardship?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What we do know from the child poverty statistics we’re seeing is that we’ve seen significant progress on all nine of the indicators that are included within the Child Poverty Reduction Act. We’re seeing significant progress most recently in reducing the number of children in material hardship. We will continue to invest here; the job is most definitely not done. The way that we do that is to continue to support low and middle income households through the changes that we’ve made. Doing tax cuts that would provide significant benefit to the highest-income earners is not the answer to improving child poverty.

Hon Simon Bridges: With all the support the Minister speaks so much about, what does he say to pensioner Timi, who sells sausages on the side of the street in Kaikohe and is quoted in the RNZ story that I’ve already referred to, saying that the cost of selling them has gone up from $1 so that “People can’t even afford a $2 sausage,”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would say to that person is that they would not be better off with an Opposition that gives $20 a week to the highest-income earners, that’s not prepared to support the initiatives that this Government has put forward to lift the incomes of low and middle income New Zealanders. I’m sure that gentleman knows that the priorities of this Government are to work in his favour; not the Opposition—not the Opposition—who favour those on the highest incomes.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can he speak so incredibly confidently and what does he say to the family man quoted by Newshub, who, visiting a foodbank for the first time despite having a good job—quote—“I feel sad because this isn’t a place I ever expected to be in my life. I have a decent job. I’m a department manager at a big box retailer. Now I’m in a position where I’m accepting food from strangers to feed my family. I’m embarrassed.”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would say is that this side of the House understands that, right at the moment, we have a significant increase in the cost of living that is affecting many families. It’s the reason why we’re lifting the family tax credit to give $20 per week on average to 340,000 families. It’s the reason why we’ve supported the lifting of the minimum wage. It’s the reason why we’ve supported increases in income support and BestStart and a range of other initiatives. All of those things have been opposed by the member and his party. The crocodile tears he’s crying now do not ring true.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does the Minister accept that, in light of the recent Commerce Commission report, the Government must support independent supermarkets, including Māori, to help lower the cost of groceries; if not, why not?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, as the member will know, the Government has received the report of the Commerce Commission. We believe that there are some initiatives in there that will be important in lowering the costs that people face when they go to the supermarket. Dr David Clark, in responding, has also said that the Government is prepared to go further than what is in the report if it does not achieve the goals of lowering those costs and supporting people in the cost of living

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Will the Minister recommend to Cabinet that, in light of the cost of living crisis, the minimum wage is immediately increased to $25 per hour and that it is tagged to increases in the cost of living, given that some people are working two or three jobs and still can’t pay their bills?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We have, most recently, increased the minimum wage by $1.20, taking it up to a level that is getting closer and closer to what is known as the living wage. We will continue to increase the minimum wage to support New Zealanders. I do note that those in the Opposition who are currently out there making opportunistic statements, like the member asking me this question today, have consistently opposed minimum wage increases.

Hon Simon Bridges: In light of that, what does he say to Tāmati Coffey, bar owner of Rotorua, quoted by RNZ, “I noticed when I went to last fill up my petrol tank and last went supermarket shopping, yeah, I’d say that we were in really, really tough times. I wouldn’t say it’s happened overnight. This has been a crisis [for a while] – I’d also say it’s a bit of an inequity crisis that’s going on as well between those that have and those that don’t. It’s a pretty serious thing.”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I’ve said in this House consistently—[Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Do you want to hear the answer?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I’ve said in this House consistently—[Interruption] Shall I carry on, Mr Speaker?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, it’s really not worth answering, if members are going to behave like that. So the Hon Simon Bridges has asked the question, he deserves an answer.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would say is what I’ve said consistently in this House: that it is tough for a number of families now. Mr Coffey references the concept of inequality and inequity, and, on this side of the House, that’s why we’ve increased benefits consistently—opposed by every member over there. That’s why we’ve increased the minimum wage—opposed by every member over there. So while they sit here today and shout and yell across the House, they know they have opposed all of the measures that would address that inequality.

Hon Simon Bridges: Are Labour considering meaningful tax reductions and providing relief to New Zealanders, given Tāmati Coffey’s comments to RNZ yesterday, that “taking the GST off fruit and vegetables is something that’s been raised with me locally amongst my local Labour members, so it’s something that I wouldn’t mind seeing us have another go at. I’ll have to talk to more than just the leader [about it], to quite a few people actually that I engage with.”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would say is that we have meaningful tax reform coming in Budget 2022, through the family tax credit, that will deliver $20 per week on average to those families—far more meaningful than the member’s proposal of $2.15 per week, which would be taking over from the $20 per week for those low and middle income families and, instead, putting $20 per week in the pockets of the highest-income earners.

Hon Simon Bridges: Don’t Jeanette’s, Timi’s, Tāmati Coffey’s, and others’ experiences show that we have a cost of living crisis in our country and that New Zealanders need meaningful tax relief in Budget 2022?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: If the member opposite thinks $2.15 per week is meaningful for those households, when he would be taking away $20 per week from those who are getting the family tax credit, when he would be undermining our health, our education, our housing systems by all of those things, then he has got his priorities completely wrong. On this side of the House, we will continue to support New Zealanders with the increasing costs they’re facing.

Question No. 5—Police

5. GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South) (remote) to the Minister of Police: What recent reports has she seen regarding the disruption of organised crime?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police) (remote): I’ve seen a report that Police will continue a major operation to crack down on gangs and organised crime, with the extension of Operation Tauwhiro announced on Tuesday. Operation Tauwhiro is a nationally coordinated operation that we launched back in February 2021, designed to disrupt and prevent firearms-related violence by gangs and organised crime groups. The operation will now run until June 2022, ensuring that the incredible, successful year-long operation will continue to significantly disrupt organised crime in New Zealand.

Ginny Andersen: What successes, if any, has Operation Tauwhiro had in the past year?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Operation Tauwhiro is one of the most successful police operations ever undertaken in New Zealand to combat organised crime. As part of this operation, Police have taken 1,531 firearms off the street, arrested 1,255 people, taken 53 kilograms of methamphetamine out of circulation, and conducted 926 searches under warrant, as well as 634 warrantless searches. A key focus of the operation has been and will continue to be investigating and disrupting the illegal supply of firearms to gangs and organised crime groups.

Ginny Andersen: What other reports has she seen regarding police operations targeting gangs and organised crime?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Police have a number of major operations under way at any one time to break up gangs and organised crime. At the end of February, Police terminated a major operation at the border, alongside their colleagues at Customs. This successful multi-agency operation identified and terminated the shipment of more than half a tonne of methamphetamine arriving in Auckland Airport on 24 February. The street value of this seizure is estimated to be more than $245 million. The operation strikes a major blow against the importation of drugs into New Zealand.

Hon Mark Mitchell (remote): Is she aware that gang membership has increased by over 50 percent since Labour came into office, and is she surprised by comments from a local business owner, where a stray bullet from a gang brawl injured a staff member, saying that the Government is “delusional” when talking about its efforts to quash gangs?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: My sympathies go out to that business owner and the staff member. This Government has made record investments into our police and put more police on the beat. Those investments have supported Police to undertake operations such as Tauwhiro, one of the most successful police operations against gangs and organised crime. I would note that the previous Government announced firearms prohibition orders, for example, in 2014 and 2016, and yet failed to introduce the legislation. This Government has a bill before select committee that will give Police more tools to crack down on gun crime.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon Mark Mitchell—supplementary.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Mr Speaker, I only had one supplementary, but I’m happy to take another one.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh, I beg your pardon—my mistake. We’ll—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, you were called. You can’t be uncalled.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We’ll go on to the next question.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, hang on. You can’t do that, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I can.

Question No. 6—COVID-19 Response

6. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Does he stand by all his statements and actions in responding to COVID-19?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response) (remote): Yes, and in particular I stand by my announcement this morning that 28 of our 32 current managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities will be returning to being regular hotels by the middle of this year. Our MIQ facilities have served us incredibly well during the course of the pandemic, and the staff who have worked in them deserve particular acknowledgment for placing themselves on the front line between the virus and New Zealanders. It’s been difficult work. I think, as a country, we all owe them a great big vote of thanks for the enormous contribution they have made to our COVID-19 response.

Chris Bishop: Why did he publicly disclose information in a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) briefing relating to Charlotte Bellis that specifically said it was not for public comment?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I indicated to the member this morning, I don’t intend to make any further comment on that individual case. If a member acting on behalf of the person concerned wants to raise a matter with me and they have a signed consent form in order to do so, then they are certainly able to do that and I’ll certainly work with them on it. But I don’t intend to make further public comment. I don’t believe it’s in the public interest to discuss individual cases in a forum such as parliamentary—

Chris Bishop: Point of order. The Minister may not want to disclose any further information or answer the question, but he is subject to obligations to this Parliament. And it was a very simple question: why did he publicly disclose information? He has previously said he doesn’t want to, but that does not discharge him of his obligations to the House to answer the question.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: He has addressed the question and he said it’s not in the public interest. Therefore, the answer is appropriate.

Chris Bishop: Did he or his staff ask Nanaia Mahuta’s office for a copy of the MFAT briefing that her office received relating to Charlotte Bellis, and, if so, why?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That material has been covered in written answers provided by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in answer to written parliamentary questions to the member. I have nothing further to add to the written material that he’s already been provided.

Chris Bishop: Point of order. That’s actually not correct. That question I asked, I asked because it’s not covered in the written questions and he can’t refer the House to written questions to answer a question when that information is not, in fact, in the written questions. He needs to answer the question that has been put before him orally now, which is whether or not he or his staff asked Nanaia Mahuta’s office for a copy of the MFAT briefing that her office received.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: None the less, he has answered the question.

Chris Bishop: Well, he hasn’t.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, he has. The answer may be correct or may not be correct—I don’t know—but he has answered the question.

Chris Bishop: Did he ask Nanaia Mahuta’s office for a copy of the MFAT briefing that her office received at 12.55 p.m. on 31 January, relating to Charlotte Bellis?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I refer the member back to the two previous answers that I’ve just given.

Chris Bishop: Does he accept that he has done wrong in this matter and will he apologise to Charlotte Bellis?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Can I refer the member back to the two previous answers I’ve just given him. I think it is important that the House do continue to observe the tradition of not discussing individual cases. Individual cases get raised by members of Parliament with Ministers all of the time, and I think it’s important that members of Parliament are able to do that without, for example, thinking that those cases are going to be the subject of debate in the House of Parliament.

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Can the Minister confirm that the written questions referred to are written questions 3098 to 3101?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I don’t have those particular questions in front of me but, given that the Minister asking the question was the one that answered them, I’m sure that her numbers are correct.

Chris Bishop: They are correct but I’m not sure how that helped the House. Supplementary?

Hon Grant Robertson: You get to commentate, do you? Is that your job?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, you sort of don’t get to—

Chris Bishop: The Speaker’s the judge of order, actually, Mr Robertson.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, have you two finished? Oh, you have finished. Don’t stand up and give a commentary on a previous answer. Just get up and do your supplementary.

Chris Bishop: In light of what he’s just said around it being important not to talk about particular individuals in Parliament, will he apologise to Charlotte Bellis for breaching her privacy?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I refer the member back to my two first answers.

Question No. 7—Transport

7. HELEN WHITE (Labour) (remote) to the Minister of Transport: What recent announcements has he made about support for the aviation sector as New Zealand continues its reconnection with the world?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Today, the Government announced an extension to the Maintaining International Air Connectivity (MIAC) Scheme, providing support to the aviation sector through to March 2023 in order to maintain international connections and support New Zealand’s economic recovery. In the early phase of the pandemic, the Government moved swiftly to keep freight volumes as close as possible to pre – COVID-19 levels as passenger numbers dropped dramatically and, in doing so, helped to support our economy by maintaining critical links with overseas markets for exports. This one-year extension provides a pathway for airlines to exit the scheme as passenger numbers return to normal, which is expected over the coming months. As New Zealand reconnects with the world, we are keeping up momentum to ensure the airlines maintain these routes and, in doing so, we are bolstering our recovery from COVID-19.

Helen White: What have been the benefits of this scheme?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The MIAC scheme has played a vital role in ensuring that New Zealanders have been able to return home during the pandemic, as well as ensuring we get time-critical supplies such as medicines and special equipment into the country quickly. Since May 2020, Government support through MIAC has enabled more than 12,300 flights carrying 235,000 tonnes of airfreight with a trade value of $18.8 billion. During the same period, nearly 105,000 people have returned to New Zealand on these flights, which amounts to approximately half of those who have passed through our managed isolation and quarantine facilities. This scheme has protected our connections with the rest of the world and kept trade flowing.

Helen White: How does the scheme support our Pacific partners in their recovery from COVID-19?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Our supporting our Pacific partners has been an objective of the scheme since it was established in order to maintain key supply chain links and connections with New Zealand. The scheme has maintained a critical lifeline for our Pacific partners. There would have been no flights to Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands, and Niue without it. It has delivered essential air connectivity, including for passengers and critical supplies, which has helped these countries in their pandemic response by maintaining an economic lifeline and ensuring that they could access the supplies they needed to fight and recover from COVID-19.

Question No. 8—Social Development and Employment

8. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: How many people, if any, received jobseeker support for one year or longer according to the September 2017 Ministry of Social Development quarterly statistics and how many people, if any, received jobseeker support for one year or longer according to the December 2021 Ministry of Social Development quarterly statistics?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment) (remote): As the member knows, comparing different quarters of benefit statistics doesn’t take into account seasonal spikes. But to answer the question, the number of people on jobseeker support for longer than a year in the September 2017 quarter was 67,890. The more relevant comparison is December 2017 to December 2021. The number of people who had been on a jobseeker support for longer than a year in December 2017 was 69,087, or 56.2 percent of total job seeker numbers. For December 2021, it was 116,634, or 62 percent of total job seeker numbers, a small percentage increase of 5.8 percent, which is encouraging given the global emergency we have been dealing with. I’m pleased to say that throughout 2021 we saw a record number—119,700 people—exit a main benefit and go into work, around 40,000 more than in 2017.

Hon Louise Upston: Can she explain, at a time when businesses are crying out for staff, why 55,000 people have spent three years or longer stuck on jobseeker, an increase of 20,000 people under Labour?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Economic shocks such as COVID-19 affect more vulnerable people in the labour market. These people tend to have barriers to employment, such as remote location, lower skills, or no substantial work history. They tend to need more intensive support to re-enter the workforce, and this Government is delivering, with record numbers of people moving off the benefit and into work. We know there are jobs out there in industries such as construction and road transport, and we have been working hard to address the skills gaps by investing heavily in work-focused case management, industry partnerships, and programmes such as Mana in Mahi. These programmes are making a difference.

Hon Louise Upston: Can she explain, at a time of severe staff shortages, why the Government has allowed those stuck on the jobseeker benefit for five years or longer to hit 32,000, an increase of 7,500 people under Labour?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We have seen record numbers of people exiting benefit into work, and that is due to the Government’s investment in upskilling and training and employment. If we compare where we are at now with where we were at two years after the global financial crisis, we can see that about 11.4 percent of working-age New Zealanders are on benefit, but at that time 13.1 percent of working-age New Zealanders were on benefit. So we actually are doing significantly better now than what we were doing at that time. I’m heartened to see the numbers of people go down each week that are on benefit, and, actually, I’ve been advised—and these figures will be released tomorrow—that last week we saw over 6,000 people come off benefit.

Hon Louise Upston: Does the Minister accept more people are in long-term benefit dependency compared to when this Government took office, and does the Minister believe this is a problem?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: What I accept is that there are more people on benefit now, and Treasury had forecast much more than what we’re currently seeing. I think it’s important to note that, in 2017, the percentage of people receiving a main benefit for longer than a year was 70.7 percent. At the end of 2021, it had only risen slightly and was at 72.5 percent. So, proportionately, we’re not doing much worse than what we were doing previously. However, the raw figures of people that have been on a benefit for more than a year or three years is higher because the overall numbers are higher, but thank goodness not as high as what Treasury had originally forecast we may get to.

Hon Michael Wood: Can the Minister confirm that changes that the Government has made to abatement thresholds mean that some people who are still receiving benefits have, in fact, been incentivised to move into the workforce?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That’s certainly what it’s starting to look like. Also, the preliminary view of the information I’ve seen, although it does need more interrogation, is looking like there are a number of people who were working part-time at the time the policy was introduced who then became eligible for a benefit, so this actually supported them with being able to get more of an income. So in both ways it has worked for a number of New Zealanders, and I think that it’s realising the policy intent that we intended when we implemented that.

Hon Louise Upston: Why has the Minister allowed benefit dependency to spiral out of control, when it harms not only those trapped on benefit but the lives of the one in five New Zealand children now growing up in benefit-dependent households?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I think it’s very disingenuous for that member to say that benefit numbers are spiralling out of control, when that member knows that Treasury had forecast a much darker predicament than what we’re currently experiencing. To boot, with regards to the fact that we haven’t experienced the height in terms of the numbers of beneficiaries that Treasury had first anticipated, we’re also experiencing an unemployment rate of 3.2 percent, which I believe is the lowest that we’ve ever had, or the lowest we’ve had since something like 1986. This Government’s investment into upskilling and training and employment opportunities is very apparent. I’m proud of our track record. We recognise there’s more to do, but we’re the Government to get that done.

Chris Bishop: Point of order. During the back and forth of the exchange there, the Minister referred to information that was going to be released tomorrow. Pursuant to Standing Order 386, whenever a Minister quotes from a document relating to public affairs, the member may require the Minister to table the document. She referred to information that’s going to be released tomorrow. She was quoting from it. I ask her to table that document.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I’ll ask the Minister if she was quoting from it. Mentioning it or referring to it isn’t quoting from it. But, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, were you quoting from an official document?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I wasn’t quoting from it, and I did seek advice earlier with regards to what I was allowed to say with respect to information that hasn’t yet been published. I didn’t give the exact number. I said greater than a certain amount, so I do not believe that I need to table that information today.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. That’s answered that question.

Question No. 9—Pacific Peoples

9. ANAHILA KANONGATA‘A-SUISUIKI (Labour) (remote) to the Minister for Pacific Peoples: What is being done to improve opportunities for Pacific students in Aotearoa New Zealand’s schools and universities?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): This year, a record number of our secondary and tertiary students will be getting support thanks to the Toloa STEAM fund, which encourages study in the science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematical fields. There will be a total of 238 Toloa secondary school scholarships for our students in the coming year which will be going to 83 schools and cover school fees and equipment for one year to the maximum of $2,000 for the first time. I’m also delighted to say that a further 50 Toloa tertiary scholarships have been awarded for Pacific young people to undertake tertiary studies. This scholarship will cover tuition fees and compulsory course-related fees up to $10,000 for a year of full-time study for science-, technology-, engineering-, arts-, and mathematics-related courses.

Anahila Kanongata‘a-Suisuiki: What about the Toloa STEAM providers, are they being funded?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: We are building up funding for emerging providers for the Toloa capability fund. I want to build up the capacity and capacity for delivering STEAM programmes to Pacific communities. This year, 10 applicants were presented with funding; eight in Auckland and two in Wellington. I’m also pleased to say that another six providers from Auckland, Palmerston North, Hamilton, and Porirua will receive funding from the Toloa substantial provider fund. This will go a long way to supporting our proven and experienced providers to deliver Pacific-centric STEAM programmes.

Anahila Kanongata‘a-Suisuiki: What do the Toloa scholarships mean for the wider Pacific community?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: The Government has made empowering Pacific Aoteroa a priority. Education is one way to achieve this goal. Pacific people have been under-represented in the STEAM fields for a long time and we are working hard to change this through the Toloa STEAM programme. We want Pacific peoples fulfilling their potential in the belief everyone in Aotearoa has the opportunity to succeed, be able to provide for their families, and contribute to the general economic recovery and wellbeing of Aotearoa New Zealand. With Toloa, the Government has created an ecosystem with Pacific learners, providers, and Pacific leaders where Pacific parents are feeling confident and excited about their children pursuing STEAM studies, and our Pacific youth are equally excited that they will own the digital economy. I congratulate all of our Toloa scholarship winners and I wish the students and their families the very best of luck as they pursue their dreams, leading in the forefront of the new Pacific Aotearoa.

Question No. 10—Workplace Relations and Safety

10. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) (remote) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Does he stand by all his statements?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Yes, in the context in which they were made. In particular, I stand by my statement that “Our Government has sought to build a modern and fair workplace relations environment through policies like increasing sick leave entitlements to 10 days per year, increasing paid parental leave from 18 to 26 weeks, and increasing the minimum wage from $15.75 in 2015 to $21.20 in April of this year, all while keeping unemployment at record low levels.”, and that “On this side of the House, we reject the outdated and binary view of workplace relations in which any investment in the workforce is seen as a negative for business.”

Hon Paul Goldsmith: In rejecting the premise yesterday that Government decisions that have imposed costs on businesses have contributed to the cost of living, is he arguing that significant Government-imposed costs on businesses, large and small, for which he’s responsible, have not flowed through to higher prices at all in this country?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I stand by my statement yesterday, in which I provided very clear information—for example, the extremely minimal inflationary impact that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has assessed increases to the minimum wage on. And I pointed out the clear evidence—for example, from Treasury and its comments on the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update—that most of the cost of living pressures that New Zealanders are feeling relate to international supply chain factors.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How can he stand by his statement yesterday, “What I accept is that under this Government’s policies, wages, whether they are measured by average hourly earnings or average weekly earnings, have consistently outstripped increases in the cost of living.”, when Government statistics are clear that in each quarter of 2021, average hourly earnings growth was less than inflation?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I can do that because that’s what the figures very clearly show, and I can assist the House in this. For example, if we take the quarter two figures year by year under the term of this Government, in 2018, median hourly earnings were 1.1 percent higher than the Consumers Price Index (CPI). In 2019, they were 0.4 percent higher than CPI. In 2020, they were 4.3 percent higher than CPI. They were a little lower in 2021, owing to some of those cost impact pressures that we have seen from COVID. But the clear record of this Government is for wage increases that are consistently higher than increases in the cost of living. We acknowledge the pressures that people are under now, but it’s no answer to that, as the member would have it, for us to not increase things like the minimum wage, that will actually help the most vulnerable workers to deal with those cost pressures.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Point of order. Isn’t it the case that if a Minister makes a statement in the House that is factually wrong, which he did there, where he said that hourly earnings were consistently higher than inflation, when I’ve just demonstrated that they weren’t in 2021, is the Minister not obliged to correct it at the first opportunity?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not the way to go about such a matter. If the Minister believes that to be correct, then he has made that answer. The member should use his supplementaries to, perhaps, debate that issue.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: OK, I will, then. Does he concede that the labour cost index, which measures changes in salaries and wages for a fixed quantity and quality labour input, shows a 2.6 percent increase in 2021 compared with inflation of 5.9 percent, indicating that the cost of living is going up twice as fast as wages?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I stand by all the comments that I’ve made in the course of this discussion whereby I’ve pointed out that, consistently across the term of this Government, workers have received wage increases in excess of the cost of living, while acknowledging particular pressures that have been felt here in New Zealand and around the world, due to the impacts of COVID-19 and supply chain factors. But the associated point I make is perhaps the most important one—the question is: what do we actually do about it? What we’ve heard from that side of the House is that they actually oppose the minimum wage increase that supports the lowest-income workers in New Zealand, and that side of the House, with the honourable exception of Nicola Willis, who supported the Government’s position, would see the living standards of the lowest-income workers go backwards. That’s not what we believe in in this Government.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he surprised that some Kiwis wonder whether his Government understands the reality of what we on this side of the House recognise is a cost of living crisis, when its workplace relations Minister denies clear, factual evidence that wages are not keeping up with inflation in 2021 and 2022?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I am surprised that that member and others consistently raise the issue of the cost of living, and then every single time that this Government does something to actually make sure that Kiwi workers get a fair go and get fair wages, they oppose it. I recognise that that member still wishes that it was 1991 in the height of free-market extremism, but, actually, on this side of the House, we believe that Kiwi workers deserve a fair go, and we’ll take steps that we need to, including increases to the minimum wage, to make sure that they do.

Question No. 11—Energy and Resources

11. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) (remote) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does she think that a nearly 60 percent increase in the combined profits of the four major electricity companies suggests the electricity market is delivering fair power prices for New Zealanders?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources) (remote): I have long signalled my view that the market is not working perfectly for everybody. I do note that if you unpack the combined 60 percent increase in profits number the member is referring to, the underlying operating profits increased by 1.8 percent. I’m concerned about the impact of recently high wholesale electricity prices flowing through to businesses and, potentially, to households in the future. Recent wholesale price increases have been attributed to constraints in the gas production system and the need to use more coal last year as hydro lake levels were unusually low. This highlights to me why we must transition our electricity system away from fossil fuels and why I am investigating an enlarged pumped hydro scheme, and similar options, to help with that objective. Last year, I spoke with the Electricity Authority about the effectiveness of competition in the wholesale electricity market. They are now investigating the wholesale market and I look forward with interest to the authority’s report. Despite my ongoing concerns about the wholesale market, I am pleased with the progress the Government is making following the Electricity Price Review to promote fairer electricity prices.

Teanau Tuiono: Is she concerned by the findings of a Consumer survey last year that claimed 18 percent of Kiwis had trouble paying their monthly power bills, and one in 10 Kiwis have been refused service by a power company because they have missed payments?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: It was precisely those concerns around energy hardship that led our Government, in the last term, to carry out the Electricity Price Review. The findings of that review identified that there were a very large number of New Zealand households that were experiencing problems with their power bills, and why we’ve put in place measures to address some of that hardship. What I do ask the member to do is when he hears that—all members of this House, for people that cannot pay their bills—not only to seek the normal support with paying the actual bill but to look into options for reducing power bills through initiatives such as the Warmer Kiwi Homes, the insulation and efficient heat source. That, of course, can be accessed through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), and I invite members to get constituents to call 0800 749 782.

Teanau Tuiono: What is the Government doing to incentivise energy efficiency, the uptake of household solar, and to ensure low-income families do not suffer energy hardship in light of the removal of the low user tariff?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The removal of the low user fixed charge will actually result in 60 percent of New Zealand households getting fairer pricing for their electricity. I know that a number of the families that I represent are large families that live in homes that aren’t as well insulated as in some other parts of the country or, indeed, my city, and those people will actually have fairer power bills as a result. But, for those people that are coming off the low fixed-user charges, there are a number of supports in place. As I indicated, there is support for families through things such as the Warmer Kiwi Homes programme. We’ve also done the work through making sure that homes are insulated when they are rented, with the change in standards there, and I encourage people that are struggling with their power bills to contact EECA.

Teanau Tuiono: What alternatives, if any, did she consider to phasing out the low user tariff, and would any of these have reduced electricity costs for large low-income households while promoting energy efficiency?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The decision to phase out the low fixed-user charge was, of course, a recommendation of the Electricity Price Review which was aimed, very much, at the concerns that the member is sharing in the House here today, which is around those families that are experiencing energy hardship. For reducing costs, larger families who aren’t low users, because of the nature of the size of their family and their homes, will more potentially be better off under their changes. They will not be cross-subsidising people, like myself, who live in a smaller family unit in a very well-insulated house. So they will be better off under those. In terms of energy efficiency, that is something the Government is putting a lot of work into, I refer the member again to the answers in regard to Warmer Kiwi Homes.

Teanau Tuiono: Do the excessive profits gained by electricity companies indicate that the response to the Electricity Price Review does not go far enough, and will the Minister commit to bolder reforms, including to the wholesale market?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As I outlined to the member in the answer to the primary question, I am awaiting a report on the wholesale market from the Electricity Authority, and further advice. But I do caution the member about using the 60 percent combined profit figure that was the headline in a recent media article that, actually, if you dig into it, what it includes is Mercury’s sale of its share in Tilt Renewables and the combined net profit falls slightly to 412 million, which is actually less than the period before. As I said, it is actually a 1.8 percent increase in operating profit, but that does not mean I am not continuing to look at issues around the wholesale electricity market.

Question No. 12—Climate Change

12. MARK CAMERON (ACT) to the Minister of Climate Change: Is he confident that New Zealand’s primary industries have all the tools at their disposal to offset emissions, and does he believe there will be a significant cost increase to farmers from the emissions pricing schemes proposed in the He Waka Eke Noa discussion documents?

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): In answer to the first part of the question, yes. In answer to the second part of the question, it depends.

Mark Cameron: Does he agree with the director of He Waka Eke Noa, who said that “We’re trying to get something that will actually drive change, but not put people out of business.”, and, if not, how many farmers will be driven out of business by the He Waka Eke Noa proposals?

Hon JAMES SHAW: In answer to the first part of the question, yes. In answer to the second part of the question, I’m not sure that the industry has provided any figures that would enlighten the member on that.

Mark Cameron: If he agrees we are facing a climate emergency, why has an application for the Bovaer methane inhibitor, which has been approved in the EU, sat on the desk of the Environmental Protection Authority for 13 months?

Hon JAMES SHAW: I don’t have responsibility for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Mark Cameron: What would he say to claims that reducing production from New Zealand farmers, who are the most efficient in the world, will increase global emissions and make New Zealand poorer as demand for agricultural products stays high and less-efficient overseas farmers with higher emissions take our place?

Hon JAMES SHAW: I’d say that I’ve heard that assertion a number of times but I’ve not seen any evidence that it is true. If you look at, for example, the work that Silver Fern Farms have done, they have just released a net zero beef product into the US market, which is selling very well, and they’re looking to expanding that to other product lines as well. There are a number of farms and farming businesses throughout the country that have actually increased their profitability whilst reducing both methane and nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere, and what that suggests, actually, after many years of research and trial and error, is that it is entirely possible for farming to be both more profitable and lower-emission.

Bills

COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill

First Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General) (remote) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill.

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

Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 31 March, and that the committee has the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day in which the House has been sitting, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 193 and 196.

I’m sure we agree across the House that access to the courts is a cornerstone of a fair and democratic society and that the judiciary must be able to achieve access to justice while keeping the courts and all participants as safe as is possible. In the near term as the country responds to the impacts of Omicron, more proceedings of courts are happening remotely. None the less, in-person hearings remain very important and this bill is necessary to support safe, physical, in-person court proceedings. When people attend court they must have a reasonable assurance of safety.

This bill will help enable this in a number of ways. It will remove current legal barriers facing the judiciary and the Ministry of Health when addressing health and safety risks in the courts and in some tribunals, whilst also ensuring access to justice, and that the rights of people are preserved. Physical court proceedings do present a risk of COVID-19 transmission. However, there are many instances where the physical process is the fairest way to decide cases and therefore must be able to continue where possible. This bill will not change a person’s entitlement to access the courts when they are legally compelled to do so—for example, if they are a criminal defendant, even if they don’t meet the proposed entry requirements. It’s important to note that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act applies and will continue to apply to the actions of the judiciary and the ministry, meaning that all of the requirements will need to be consistent with that Act.

COVID-19 has largely been kept out of the courts prior to Omicron, even when it has been circulating in the community. However, the safety measures used previously are not sustainable long term. They came at the cost of postponing many hearings, particularly jury trials, and restricting the number of people accessing the court. It is untenable to keep postponing hearings, particularly jury trials. This is true for those defendants in custody while awaiting trial and also for victims, families, and others involved in court proceedings. Ongoing delays can, of course, delay the exercise of justice and prolong the distress that is occasioned by proceedings. So this bill allows the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice to address the COVID-19 risks in the courts.

It is the judiciary and the ministry that are responsible for the safe running of the courts. They have prepared the courts as far as possible to operate under COVID. They’ve introduced new measures, including more remote participation, vaccine requirements for ministry staff and contractors, staggered court hearings, and entry requirements. They’ve delayed some jury trials, and I’d note that some of these actions have been taken by the judiciary themselves, not by the Ministry of Justice. However, they are encountering some legal barriers, some of which I suspect were accidental at the time and this bill is necessary to strengthen and clarify the ability of the judiciary and the ministry to manage issues which arise. It’s also necessary to remove the legislative barriers that are preventing the judiciary from implementing safety requirements they believe are necessary to support safe jury trials.

Without these changes, people who are attending court, many of whom are legally compelled to, could be exposed to a heightened risk of COVID-19. Without changes, some people may be unwilling or unable to attend court because of safety concerns. Surveys indicate there is a public concern about serving as a juror in the current environment, and representatives of the legal profession have indicated significant concerns amongst lawyers about the safety of some court processes, which also threatens to undermine the safe functioning and efficient functioning of the courts. Some people may also seek to challenge the outcomes of their cases because of the impact of safety measures without these changes. If these risks eventuate, then further delays in access to justice could occur disrupting court business and increasing the already lengthening number of cases awaiting jury trial. I would like to reinforce that the bill will not change a person’s entitlement to access courts where they’re legally compelled to do so even if they don’t meet the general entry requirements.

The bill is an omnibus bill and it makes three sets of changes. Importantly, the changes allow the heads of bench, that’s the senior members of each court or tribunal, to impose safety requirements for those divisions or courts. This means that requirements can be introduced consistently across, for example, a court or tribunal. All of the provisions are temporary. They will only exist for the period required to manage the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the bill will be repealed when the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 is repealed. A few transitional provisions relating to the deferral and excusal of people summoned for jury service will continue in effect for a further two years.

The three classes of change, firstly, go to the judicial and ministry powers as to managing entry in the courts. This is achieved by amending the Courts Security Act 1999, clarifying that the judiciary and ministry can set and enforce conditions for entering and remaining in courts and in some tribunals to take into account COVID-19. The second class of changes are judicial powers to permit the judiciary to safely manage jury processes. The bill amends the Juries Act 1981 to allow judges to set additional requirements for selecting and managing juries to reduce the mix of close and prolonged mixing of proposed jurors and juries. It also permits a registrar or judge to excuse or defer a person’s jury service if they confirm they do not meet the requirements. The bill enables jury selections to take place in venues other than the court building to reduce mingling in the courts.

Thirdly, the bill clarifies how safety measures relate to open justice protection. The bill amends the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 to clarify that the right of the public and media to be present at criminal hearings does not affect the ability of the judiciary and the ministry to conduct hearings remotely or to set requirements relating to entry and remaining in the courts. Without these changes, there is a risk that remote hearings could be inconsistent with the existing law and open to challenge.

The bill carefully balances access to justice and safety requirements or considerations. It strikes this careful balance by making the changes temporary and including a number of safeguards. Notwithstanding the new general rules, the judiciary and the ministry can only set new requirements where reasonably necessary and in the interests of justice to respond to COVID related health and safety risks. As I said before, the requirements even then need to be consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The bill also includes a safety valve so that judicial and ministry safety requirements do not inadvertently compromise a person’s rights. The bill gives a discretion to the judge to direct that a person can enter or remain in a court or participate on a jury where this is necessary in the interests of justice, even if the person does not comply with the safety requirements.

The judiciary and the ministry will set the requirements subject to the safeguards I’ve described. I understand they have two key priorities: strengthening the foundation of existing entry requirements and setting new requirements to support the safe selection and running of jury trials. I understand the judiciary’s considering requirements under which all potential jurors will be asked for evidence of vaccination, but an alternative will exist: a recent negative COVID-19 test and willingness to undertake testing during the course of a trial. A person could also be deferred or excused from jury service if they are not willing to meet these requirements. A judge will also have a discretion to allow a person who did not meet these safety measures to none the less be a juror if this was necessary in the interests of justice. A person who has been deferred or excused from jury service can appeal against that decision. For the vast majority of people, these changes won’t change the way—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! The Minister’s time has come to an end. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand to give the initial response from this side of the House, and I can confirm to the Minister and others who will be interested in our position that we do support the legislation. The Minister is correct to say that across the House—or certainly I can speak on behalf of National, we do support the notion of access to justice being fundamental to maintenance of the rule of law.

We do have, perhaps, some points to make around the timing of this legislation, and, in fact, if anything, we’re bemused to see that the press release put out by the Government earlier in the week, describing the importance of the legislation, suggested that it would be important to avoid disruption and avoid delays and avoid backlog in response to the Omicron outbreak. In fact, we’ve seen those things already. They are, to be fair, longstanding problems in our justice system. They have been exacerbated by the Government’s response to COVID-19. So it is now that in March 2022, we are seeing for the first time a legislative response to the problems that have been apparent for some months, if not years. And it was obvious to anyone who has any involvement in the court system, and also to those on this side of the House, that such measures would be needed.

Indeed, we raised concerns, exactly such as the legislation is aiming to address, when the House passed the COVID-19 Protection Framework legislation, the traffic light system, and colleagues such as Chris Bishop and I asked the Government at that point whether it intended to include within that framework and that regime the courts and tribunals that make up our judicial branch of Government. The legislation itself was silent on that matter, but, on questioning, the Government stated that it would not be appropriate for Parliament to insert itself in the affairs of the court to that extent. I think that was a reasonable position, as far as it went, but it was disappointing that the Government hadn’t turned its mind to the question at that point, and certainly hadn’t provided for that to take place, and so it has been that in the last several months, the courts themselves have been asked to fill the vacuum, to formulate their own policy, and a number have done that, of course, in an inconsistent fashion, at least with each other.

So, to be really clear, we do support measures that will improve access to justice, and the Minister is right to acknowledge some pretty gnarly issues, some challenging issues, in relation to the fact that we have participants in the court system who are compelled to take part. We shouldn’t take lightly the fact that we are placing them in an environment that might be challenging from a public health perspective, even at the same time as we require them to do so, and that fundamental rights, such as the ability to be tried by a jury of one’s peers, are also affected. So we don’t say on this side of the House that these matters are simple, but we do say that they deserve addressing and, what’s more, they deserve to have been addressed some time ago. Nevertheless, we are where we are, as they say, so not only the access to justice point we would emphasise but also similar points regarding certainty and consistency.

I’ve touched on consistency, and it’s been disappointing to observe, at a distance, but relying on advice from contacts within the legal profession that courts have developed almost in an ad hoc fashion their own procedures in a way that is different from other courts who likewise have been seeking to fill the legislative gaps. Certainty is important because, as the Minister has alluded to, we need certainty in the court process for those involved, not only so that they can participate with some confidence at the time but also for the integrity of the system such that we will not see large numbers of challenges to the results or the judgments of courts on the basis only that procedural aspects have not been properly provided for and requirements such as this legislation provides haven’t been put in place. So that’s a pretty high-level discussion about the issues at stake. I’ve said my piece on the timing. My colleague Chris Bishop may wish to say more, including recalling those points that we’d made at the committee the whole House stage.

But I will move on in a prospective way, at this point, and talk about the fact that we need to be clear that the rules that are being made and being allowed to be made are going to be fit for purpose. The select committee process will be important for that, albeit that it will be a truncated process. The Minister has stated that he will seek that the select committee report back by the end of this month, and to meet the publicly stated aim of having the law in place by mid-April, that will be necessary. So it will be something of a scramble, unnecessarily so, in terms of not having had this action before now. But in the sense that it is needed now, without further delay, National will support that relatively short process. We’ll welcome the participation of all those who are affected by the court system and who have great knowledge of its workings.

It will be interesting to see, for example, if the practical requirements around providing ID outside courts will be enforceable. For those participants in the court process who might not have access to current valid ID, that might be problematic, for example.

We would say, on this side of the House, consistent with our position on matters COVID, and restrictions more generally, that we don’t want to see restrictions placed for longer than is necessary from a public health point of view, although the point’s been made by the Minister about the fact that we will need some period of time for the arrangements to be followed through—and I’m paraphrasing, but, certainly, that point was made in the legislation itself and I think there’s a two-year period for that. I do have some sympathy for that argument, notwithstanding, as I say, that general principle that the arrangements shouldn’t be required longer than is actually necessary.

Having said that, I think that, actually, we do have an opportunity now, as a Parliament, and the justice system more generally has an opportunity, to think about ways that we can use technology better to enable remote participation not only in the context of a global pandemic but, actually, following through beyond that period of time to allow the huge delays and the backlogs to clear and to enable people to interact with the justice system in a much more timely fashion, a much more efficient fashion, and in a much more cost-effective fashion as well. We will be asking, for example, that the Government consider amending the Courts (Remote Participation) Act to clarify that which is probably already in place, to allow judges to have evidence heard—or a hearing, perhaps I should say, more accurately—in relation to sentencing matters where the parties consent and, therefore, might have a right to an in-person hearing but be prepared to waive that right in the sake of efficiency and not give up their fundamental freedoms in doing so. So, on these kinds of practical matters, we will be interested to explore or work constructively with the Government, for any matters that will improve the justice system, as a whole, into the future, as well as in terms of the short-term response to the COVID-19 problem.

So I think it’s worth just touching on, before I resume my seat, the relationship between the courts and Parliament. I’ve referred to that already in the context of the Government’s reticence to legislate too heavily into this space. I think it’s right to be cautious in that regard, so I don’t think that the Government’s been unreasonable on that. I think leadership now is important to ensure that the courts have the measures and the certainty and the comfort that they need to be able to run their own affairs. So it’s a fine distinction. It’s not Parliament taking its hands off the wheel completely, but it’s also not trying to be a backseat driver, necessarily. It’s giving the Government the ability to drive its own affairs to provide the rules and the architecture for those rules, the secondary legislation that will allow that.

On the note of secondary legislation, of course, wearing a different hat than court spokesperson for the National Party, namely, the chair of the Regulations Review Committee, I know that my colleagues and I will be interested to see the regulation-making powers and in due course regulations themselves will be of interest too. So, for those reasons, we have much to look forward to, and let us hope that throughout the passage of the legislation starting today and proceeding, no doubt, in the week following the select committee’s consideration, we’ll have the opportunity to strengthen the access to justice, as is so currently challenging, provide more certainty in the court processes, and some consistency across the board. These are worthy aims and so the National Party, at the first reading, does support this legislation.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South) (remote): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s pleasing to hear that members opposite are supporting the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill.

I would just like to take a moment—it’s the first time I’m joining Parliament virtually—to thank all of the staff and officers behind the scenes who make this dual sort of interface work each day. So it’s a great feat to make it work, and I know there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to make it happen.

The Government is progressing legislation in this space to ensure that courts can continue to operate safely and effectively as COVID-19 spreads throughout our community. Access to justice through the courts is vital to a fair and democratic society, and this Government strongly supports that principle. To date, measures to keep COVID-19 out of our courts have largely worked well. However, additional safety requirements are needed to manage transmission risks under the COVID-19 Protection Framework as more and more people are active while there is COVID-19 in our community. The Government has, therefore, agreed to make legislative changes that will apply during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the changes encapsulated in this piece of legislation will strengthen the ability of the judiciary and the ministry to set and enforce conditions people must meet when entering and remaining in any court and in some tribunals, as well.

This will enable the judiciary to set additional conditions for selecting and managing juries to reduce enclosed, prolonged mixing of jurors, basically, for good public health safety measures. For example, court security officers will be able request evidence of a person’s compliance with entry conditions by the judiciary and ministry to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, and, potentially, to refuse entry and remove people based on non-compliance with those conditions. The changes will also mean that jury selection can take place outside of court buildings, where alternative venues can be used to reduce close physical contact between jurors and, again, try to reduce the ability for transmission to occur.

The ministry and judiciary intend to set these conditions where it’s required to respond to COVID-related health and safety risks. However, a judge will be able to depart from general safety conditions in individual cases to ensure people’s rights are not compromised. People will also need to be able to access courts when they are legally compelled to do so—an example of this is if they are a criminal defendant—even if they do not meet the entry conditions, so it’s necessary to have flexibility in these areas.

We support this bill because it’s a strong way of promoting access to justice through the courts, given the current conditions in the pandemic. Access to justice through the courts is a cornerstone of a fair and democratic society. During previous periods in which COVID-19 was circulating in the community, the virus was largely kept out of our courts. However, that came at the cost of postponing many hearings—particularly jury trials—and also restricting access to the courts. Urgent legislative amendments are needed to remove legal barriers to the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice addressing COVID-19 health and safety risks in our courts.

Some people who are essential to our justice system operating fairly, such as jurors and lawyers, are apprehensive about entering the courts for their own health safety reasons. Courts do carry transmission risks, and they do involve people mixing for extended periods of time. In the near term, as we respond to the impacts of Omicron, more proceedings are happening remotely, and this bill is necessary to support safe physical court proceedings.

Without this legislative change, people going to court, many of whom are legally compelled to attend, could be exposed to a heightened risk of COVID-19, and some people may be unwilling or unable to attend court because of safety concerns. These issues could delay justice, disrupt court business, and, potentially, even exacerbate existing jury trial backlogs. This bill enables those processes to continue. It supplements the ability of the judiciary and the ministry to respond to safety and security risks in our courts, and it does this by strengthening the ability to set and enforce conditions for entering and remaining in the court system.

The ministry and judiciary will continue to be responsible for assessing health and safety risks in courts. The bill will ensure that they have the ability to implement appropriate safety requirements in response to those risks. The bill does not mandate any particular measures.

The safeguards that will apply when the judiciary and the ministry set requirements are that the law change is temporary to respond to the pandemic, and also the requirements may only be set where it is reasonable and necessary to respond to COVID-related and health safety risks in the interests of justice. These requirements need to be consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In addition to this, there will be judicial discretion to make directions in individual cases that enable exceptions to the general safety requirements.

The bill won’t change people’s entitlement to access the courts when they are legally compelled to do so—for example, if they are a criminal defendant—even if they do not meet the entry conditions. The bill, therefore, ensures that appropriate steps are taken and can be taken to reduce risk while maintaining access to essential services and access to justice. This is a good bill that keeps our courts working as best as they possibly can, given the current circumstances New Zealand is now operating under, and I commend it to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill, the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill, and I’ve got to say, it is with some—I won’t say pride and I won’t say “I told you so”, although I’m dearly tempted to do so, but I’m a humble guy, but it is interesting to be here, because I remember at the tail end of last year, right coming towards the end of the year, standing in the House very close to where I’m standing now, and we were going through the very expedited process on the COVID-19 Protection Framework legislation. I remember myself and my good colleague here, Chris Penk, the venerable chair of the Regulations Review Committee and shadow Attorney-General and a much more qualified lawyer, may I say, than I am—I remember saying, “Are you sure you’ve got this right when it comes to the courts?” And we were assured by the Attorney-General at the time, who, actually, to be fair to him, did engage in the debate. Unlike other Ministers sometimes in the committee stage, he did engage in the debate. He said, “Look, nothing to see here. Don’t worry about it. We’ve got it sorted.” Well, actually, it turns out they didn’t. It turns out that we’ve had to quickly come down here in March 2022, and we’re going to pass through this COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill.

I missed the select committee instruction, but how long is it going to the committee for, Mr Penk?

Chris Penk: End of the month.

CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, end of the month. OK, righty-o. So here we are, on 10 March. So it comes back on 30 March, is it?

Chris Penk: Yes, that’s right.

CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah, OK. So 20 days—righty-o. So it’s a very, very quick process. It’s certainly not the four months that normally bills would go through. Look, we support taking sensible measures, obviously, to make our court system operate in a safe way. But I suppose my starting point is to say this was eminently predictable. In fact, it was predicted by some people, notably us, and the origin of the problems go back to the speed with which the traffic light framework was developed. I’m not making a particularly political point. It’s just the truth. It was done very, very quickly. It was done in a rush, it was done in haste, because the Government had to work out how we were transitioning from an elimination framework into what could be described as a suppression framework where it became very clear as August, September, October, and November wore on that Delta was not going away and it was going to be here and we had to cope with it.

So the Government’s answer, after putting its head in the sand for most of 2021, was to say, “OK, we’ll dream up this thing called the COVID-19 Protection Framework.”, colloquially known as the traffic light framework. But the problem is that the work wasn’t done. It just wasn’t done. There was not enough work done quickly enough to develop it. So that’s why we end up with situations like the Prime Minister saying, “Well, we’re not using vaccine passes in New Zealand. We’ve got no intention of using vaccine passes.” Everyone went, “OK. Cool.”—banked that, and then three weeks later, the vaccine pass is introduced and we’re told by the Government and told by the Prime Minister that it’s an explicit public policy of the Government to set up a differential treatment between people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated. In fact, the Prime Minister proudly said so on TV in an interview. A month previously, she had said, “We’re not going to use vaccine passes in New Zealand because we don’t have any need to.”

Now, look, we supported the introduction of vaccine passes. In fact, we called for it before the Government did, because back then they were a pathway to freedom for vaccinated New Zealanders under Delta, particularly vaccinated Aucklanders who, of course, were stuck in that awful 100-day - plus lockdown. But the critical point is that Government policy was all over the show when it comes to this and we went from a position where we weren’t going to have vaccine passes and we were just all under pure elimination, to very quickly having to pivot away from that. But in the meantime, the Government hadn’t done the work on the replacement framework and so they had to move with haste. Because they had to move with haste, we ended up with a traffic light framework that basically—it’s not even in legislation. I mean, that’s the thing, and there are some serious issues regarding that; it’s all delegated to the Minister.

Dr Duncan Webb: Have you read the bill?

CHRIS BISHOP: And so we were—yeah, I’m explaining the background to why this bill’s so needed, Dr Webb, and why we will support it, but why this should have been done in December, Dr Webb. The Government just simply didn’t do the work until the situation was forced upon them last year. And so of course we support the intention of the bill, and of course we support the objective to make our court system and our tribunal system safe; I’m just simply making the point, in response to Dr Webb, that the haste with which the traffic light framework was developed is why this bill is needed.

The traffic light framework is not actually in legislation—to return to the point I was making. What we’ve done as a Parliament is delegated enormous powers to Ministers. Actually, Mr Penk’s select committee, the Regulations Review Committee, is doing an enquiry into some of these related matters. It’s a critical issue, and we heard from the Human Rights Commission yesterday and Jonathan Orpin-Dowell and Paul Rishworth QC in relation to it. I actually do worry a little bit about the powers that we have delegated to Ministers in relation to the traffic light framework bill. I know a lot of other people worry about it as well, because generally in this Parliament, when we are dealing with rights, rights as a matter of principle should not be altered by fiat, they should not be altered by ministerial decree, and that is what this bill does.

Dr Duncan Webb: No, it doesn’t.

CHRIS BISHOP: It does do that—it does. It does do that. Of course it does, Dr Webb, and it’s what the traffic light framework bill does as well, because it subsumes to delegated decision makers decisions around fundamental rights.

Dr Duncan Webb: Oh!

CHRIS BISHOP: It does do that. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and there are differential treatments for vaccinated and unvaccinated, and there’s some impact on rapid antigen tests and things like that. So of course it does, and of course I’m just simply making the point that we need to be careful around that and I’ll look forward to the inquiry of my good colleague and others. It was a pleasure to join the committee yesterday for some of that consideration.

The second point I want to make is in relation to the time limit. So the explanatory note of the bill notes that the bill, or the bill when it becomes an Act, will be in force for the time that the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 is in duration for. Now, that is much vexed piece of legislation. It expires currently on 30 June—I think I’m right in saying—this year, 2022, unless Parliament extends it. The Minister for COVID-19 Response did a good thing, which is he basically made that Act to be self-exploding—for want of a better phrase—unless Parliament says that it can continue, and there has to be regular re-authorisations now. And, clearly, in the current Parliament, that is in some ways a matter of course because the Labour Government has an absolute majority. But as a matter of principle, that is the right thing to do, because that Act, in and of itself, imposes extraordinary restrictions and regulations and gives the Government extraordinary powers.

Chris Penk: They could cross the floor.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, my colleague Chris Penk says colleagues could cross the floor; it’s unlikely, given the iron-clad discipline that the Government operates under. The Act expires, but some of the rights, or some of the powers and some of the clauses, will continue for a two-year period after the Act expires. I’d just put it to the House—and we’re going to get into this in select committee—that it may be that we want to alter the bill so that the expiry date is actually earlier than the public health COVID Act. I’d put it to the House that my suspicion is that the Government is not going to give up the powers in the COVID Act too easily. I think what they will do is extend the COVID Act for quite some time, and I would say to the House that the powers in this Act, the court safety Act, should expire before the other COVID Act powers expire. The reason I say that is that Governments are very good at attaining power; they’re not good at giving it up, and the lesson from history is that Parliament should be jealous about the powers that the people have, and we should be careful about giving Governments too many powers, because they don’t like giving them up. The Government has accrued for itself extraordinary powers through this pandemic, and the sooner we can return to some form of normality and erode and get rid of those powers, the better. So I think colleagues who look at this on the Justice Committee may well want to look at bringing forward the time line for the expiry of this particular Act. Thank you very much.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just wanted to begin my short contribution by responding to my colleague across the House—Mr Bishop’s comments about public law. He noted that secondary legislation can’t or shouldn’t address the New Zealand Bill of Right Act rights and that simply is not true. Secondary legislation does that time and time again. The courts have the power to overrule secondary legislation when it’s ultra vires, unlike primary legislation, and therein lies the protection.

I would say it’s undeniable that over the past two years the biggest skill that many parts of our essential services have learnt, possibly all of us have learnt, is a new kind of adaptability, and courts are really no different, and in many ways I think the need to respond to the risk of COVID has made us much more conscious about what we understand the right to justice, the right to access justice, means. And there is some utility in this, and my colleague Chris Penk spoke to this, that in reality there are some parts of our justice system—and this isn’t unique to New Zealand—where there are delays, COVID or no COVID. If we view this as a learning opportunity there’s real potential to address some of the longer-term challenges our courts and access to justice face.

But, in this instance, this bill is a temporary and limited response particular to our COVID response and it has within it a number of safeguards in place to ensure that it doesn’t impede unduly on rights. In the context of COVID there’s a need to ensure that access to justice, to courts, remains fair and safe for judges, for staff, for the accused, for witnesses and for juries. And the big risk, as my colleague Ginny Andersen mentioned, is without this bill people who are compelled to attend court could be exposed to a heightened risk, and for some, that may put them in the impossible position of having to make a decision about their safety versus being compelled to attend court. So, clearly, the best way to do that, to address that situation, is to ensure the courts themselves have the powers they need to support the safe and effective operation of both the courts and tribunals by making amendments to reduce the risk of transmission for those who visit the courts or carry out work there.

Others have already spoken to some of the key provisions of the bill, and I sort of thought it was interesting when I looked at this to consider the measures that other jurisdictions have put in place in this regard to accessing court systems. In Canada, for instance, there are requirements about only accessing public areas unless fully vaccinated, and in some parts of Canada, such as Manitoba, they go a bit further, requiring jurors to show proof of vaccinations, whereas in New South Wales in Australia, there’s a rule that’s much more focused around rapid antigen tests. So, again, there’s quite a bit of diversity internationally and I’d again come back to the idea of flexibility but flexibility with consistency, which is another thing that Minister Parker referenced—so consistency across particular courts or tribunals but flexibility for rules that suit them.

I’d also say that one of the interesting provisions of the bill is new Schedule 1AB, outlining that a hearing may be conducted by audiovisual link or audio link, and that includes members of the public and others who wish to observe the hearing, members of the media. I’d note that again, this isn’t new, this isn’t different. In the last year, the Supreme Court in the UK, courts in Brazil, in Singapore, in India were all conducting hearings by video link. So it’s not necessarily all the hearings, but certainly a substantial number. And, again, this is a huge learning opportunity as we tackle some of the future challenges in the courts and access to justice. I’m going to leave my short contribution there, and just say that I commend this bill to the House.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. I rise on behalf of my colleague Golriz Ghahraman to support the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill. We note that this is an omnibus bill that amends the Courts Security Act 1999, the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, the Juries Act 1981, and subordinate Jury Rules. It also applies to tribunals covered by the Courts Security Act 1999. This bill will support the safe and effective operation of courts and tribunals by reducing the risk of transmission of COVID-19 among those who visit the courts or work there. It also enables heads of bench to make rules for conduct at court proceedings necessary to address health and safety risks.

Not being a lawyer, I had to look up what “heads of bench” meant. So for anyone else watching who had no idea, each court is headed by a senior judge, usually described as the Chief Judge or Principal Judge of that court, and those positions are often referred to as heads of bench. In this country this also includes the Chief Judge of the Māori Land Court in respect of both the Māori Land Court and the Māori Appellate Court. So those heads of bench have administrative responsibilities in relation to the court but no direct authority or responsibility over the judicial work of the judges.

Having established that, this bill enables those heads of bench to, for example, require physical distancing of visitors and staff within the courtroom, and the wearing of masks. They’re also able to hold the proceedings in whole or part by audiovisual or audio link. So we support the heads of bench having this appropriate level of power in addition to the massive power they already have as judges.

Frankly, I’m quite concerned that given all the COVID restrictions that exist, we need to pass a law for this purpose at this time. Have the courts not already been doing this, and if they have, does that mean that they’ve been illegally keeping people safe—the public and their staff—all of this time?

Now, the Greens have supported measures necessary to protect public health and adapt to the ever-changing presence of COVID amongst us in a way that minimises harm, particularly to vulnerable populations such as Māori, Pasifika, people with disabilities, and immunocompromised people. We’ve consistently raised the importance of safe workplaces during this pandemic, because any worker in this country should be able to go to their work and know that they are safe—whether that’s paid work, whether that’s voluntary. But they should also know they have access to support in the community should any one of them or their whānau succumb to this virus. So we agree this is urgent, and we support this bill going through the truncated select committee process.

This bill also changes jury provisions. They can be deferred or excused if potential jurors do not comply with COVID requirements, like having a vaccine pass, or they’re vulnerable to the effects or have household members who are, or their income will be significantly disrupted by COVID. I would say that at any time a juror should be able to be excused if their income will be significantly disrupted by them having to attend and not be at their workplace. However, for Māori, because of systemic racism in the justice system, Māori are disproportionately more likely to appear before the court, and because of systemic racism in the health system, Māori are also proportionately more likely to be infected with COVID.

So these public health measures are very, very necessary for Māori but also anyone who is compelled to be at court for any reason. Of course, being able to take part in the jury process shouldn’t be a risk to your health because of the close and prolonged mixing of jurors. Otherwise, again, there’s potential risk of low representation of Māori in juries.

As of midnight last night, only seven of our 20 DHBs had reached 90 percent double doses for Māori. Congratulations to Wairarapa, who just passed this milestone. With cases skyrocketing even despite likely under-reporting, it seems very belated to start insisting on vaccine passes into a place. We reiterate our earlier position that the wider use of rapid antigen tests should be able to broaden access for people who are not vaccinated to prove they are not infected so they can, in this case, have better access to the justice system.

However, we note that these changes are intended to be temporary. This bill expires when the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 is repealed, or earlier if my colleague Chris Bishop has his way. We all look forward to that—when mandates are removed, when restrictions are lifted and we can walk maskless in the world. So, for as long as it is necessary, let’s do our best to keep our people safe in the courts, regardless of how they come to be there and whatever their role might be. So I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT to speak to the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill. This bill aims to strengthen the existing ability of the judiciary and the ministry to set and enforce conditions for entering and remaining in courts and some tribunals. It also enables the judiciary to set additional requirements for selecting and managing juries to reduce close and prolonged mixing of jurors. It clarifies that the health and safety measures in remote hearings are consistent with the legislative open justice protections. It embeds in legislation the ability to use an audiovisual link, which is currently already being used extensively, and I suspect this is the reason for this bill—to avoid any future litigation of any technicalities that haven’t been thought of yet, and the technicalities that probably should have been thought about. The bill also gives more power to court security to check and remove those who don’t comply with the rules.

Clause 6 of the new schedule refers to, as was mentioned, heads of bench, and there are 38 examples of identified positions, not just judges but presiding judicial officers who have the discretion to make the conditions of a hearing and who attends those hearings. The heads of bench are a wide range, as was mentioned before: from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to the chair of the Weathertight Homes Tribunal, and it just makes you ask why CEOs and employers and managers of businesses, those who care about the welfare of their staff and are trying to run a business, aren’t trusted with similar discretionary powers—for example, allowing staff to work if they have a rapid antigen test, so they can keep trading and keep paying their employees.

The timing of this bill is interesting, because currently the courts are running relatively well with the number of COVID provisions already in place—for example, people without a vaccine pass who enter a court that requires a vaccine pass just have to have a negative PCR test, and that’s adapted from 72 hours to 48 hours currently. If their attendance is required at court they can have a rapid antigen test and that’s available until 30 June 2022. In terms of health and safety there may be a limit on the number of people allowed into court—it’s already being achieved—and who can be physically present.

The High Court has already gone to the red setting, and it’s just assumed that they do remote participation, along with the Youth Court, to get through their workload. Criminal and civil jury trials have continued, and the health and safety measures include rapid antigen tests for jurors and other participants. At the end of January, under these protocols 87 percent of scheduled court events were able to take place. This is currently what’s going on, and just last month the Chief Justice said, “It isn’t business as usual, but I’m really pleased that we have been able to conduct a considerable amount of work over the last 10 days.”

We’re two years into this pandemic and the Government is just sorting out the court system. It really makes you wonder what they’ve been up to besides little jigs and patting themselves on the back. Schools have had to adapt. Every business has had to adapt, and if they can’t, they can just be regarded as collateral damage. Even Parliament has had to adapt. We’ve got COVID-positive healthcare workers able to return to work, and around the world restrictions are being relaxed or dropped completely. Supermarkets have put up screens to protect workers from the customers. I’ve been in many courtrooms and there’s plenty of room for Perspex screens.

While justice delayed is justice denied, we have to ask whether this bill is really necessary. The Prime Minister has said that Omicron would peak mid-March, and then restrictions would be reduced. This bill will come into force in mid-April. ACT believes it’s time to move on from the fear and take back control of our lives, and with that in mind we won’t be supporting this bill.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei) (remote): It’s wonderful to be able to take a short call on this bill and thus prove the effectiveness of remote participation in our most fundamental democratic institutions. I want to first turn to the point raised by my colleague Dr Kerekere: yes, the courts have been handling this themselves. They have a range of measures much like those that have already been described in terms of seeking that people give vax passes, where necessary, and amending those procedures where someone is compelled to attend, such as a defendant. They’ve been doing it themselves.

This also goes back to my colleague Mr Bishop’s point, which is why haven’t we done this earlier, because it is absolutely crucial that Parliament stays as far away from the day-to-day operational matters of the court as possible. These are fundamental constitutional matters. Courts guard their constitutional independence to run their own hearings very, very strongly, and it is right that they should do so. So we are intervening now because they are concerned that they need the backup to ensure that things continue to run smoothly. That is what we are doing, and this is the appropriate moment to do it at.

Now, there is of course concern from some members that these measures such as remote participation might actually further endanger the right to trial, and it’s my pleasure to be able to say that not only have we got the COVID experiments that we heard about from my colleague Ms Walters but, actually, things like remote participation have been tried for many, many years in many different courts that we compare ourselves to. So, to give one example, Western Australia has been running its cross-examination of child witnesses remotely for about the last 25 years. It did that because this is a province where the trials need to be conducted over a huge geographical distance. They don’t find it a problem at all. I have spoken to the defence counsel. They say the only problem with remote participation is when you have to listen to the recording of yourself—rather like having to watch or read one’s Hansard back. They say it is intensely boring.

I would like to take the point, lastly, that my colleague Ms Walters made. These are things that are going to disappear with COVID in terms of this legislation, but the innovation that we get to trial now, with no threat to the fair trial, is something that we can learn from and that may actually last into the future. So I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thanks, Mr Speaker. I’m going to take a short call on this, effectively, court safety legislation. I thought I’d just pick up on one element that the previous speaker Emily Henderson touched on. She said that the Labour Government hadn’t done anything prior to the courts to enable the courts the freedom to manage their own affairs and that this was a matter of what we’d call, technically, comity: courts do their things; we do our things. If that argument is right, then why are we doing anything at all at any time? So I thought I might just reflect that back.

Look, it’s a relatively good bill. As Chris Penk, our lead on this, has mentioned, we’re going to support the bill through first reading and into select committee because there are a number of little curly questions that need to be dealt with, and, look, fundamentally, as others have intimated, this bill—well, actually, they haven’t intimated it; they’ve said it very explicitly and clearly: this bill is giving powers to the courts to run their own affairs, which makes sense.

I’d make the point, though—actually, two points: first and foremost, National has beaten this drum and, I think, rightly so. This was something we mentioned when the COVID orders were first going through with those first bits of legislation that the Government was pushing through the House, and I think, rightly, we opposed. This was something they should have considered back then. It is a bit of a “told you so” situation. Maybe I’m not as humble as Chris Bishop, who first raised it. These were very specific elements. When you look at this legislation, a lot of the aspects, including access to audiovisual technology, was something that was mentioned previously, in previous debates. The Government ignored it at the time, and, as has become a little bit of a habit in this place, we’ve got to return into the Parliament to fix up, if you will, a piece of legislation.

The second point I would make is just how far this goes. I mean, we in this Parliament, I think—and particularly through COVID, but not singularly so—are having a bit of a habit of passing what I’d call blank cheque legislation. It’s an enabling piece of legislation which then in turn allows the Minister, or Ministers, to, basically, just make any regulation they want. That’s bad law, and we as a Parliament have to stop doing that, regardless of what political parties are in charge.

But I would mention—particularly as this bill is set around COVID—and go back to a theme I often hit on, which is proportionality. As we’ve learnt over two years how to manage COVID and as we’ve vaccinated people left, right, and centre, we do have to ask ourselves how many more restrictions are actually required in the state that we are in today. So, I suppose, to those looking through this bill and to the courts themselves, to the extent that a parliamentarian is allowed to pass comment on the courts, I think the way they approach this should be with a very light touch. The ability of New Zealanders to access justice should not be too overly controlled by COVID any more. We’re two years in, we’ve learnt a lot, and we’ve got a number of protections in place. Now, as I say, we’re all pretty much vaccinated significantly. I would just like to see the courts take a very, very light touch in managing things and not be too ruled by fear or worry.

New Zealanders need to access justice. That’s probably my final point, which is, unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if it’s the weathertight homes court or all the way through to the Supreme Court, New Zealanders are already experiencing unacceptable delays in justice, so anything we can do to speed it up is a worthy cause. Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I commend, of course, the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I call Tangi Utikere—a five-minute call.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m delighted to take a brief call on this piece of legislation, because equitable access to justice is a fundamental tenet of a free society—and, indeed, that’s the case here in New Zealand—and this bill goes quite some way, actually, I believe, in enabling that within the current context of a global pandemic.

The proposed legislation is temporary—that is, generally, it is tied to the life of the COVID public health legislation—so that gives some context. But judicial officers, which many probably—actually, when you look at the list that’s contained in the schedule within the bill, it’s much longer than perhaps I think many people might think. But, generally, most people think of judicial officers as judges, community magistrates, and the like, and they need to be able to facilitate proceedings in a way that they consider to be appropriate.

I can share with the House that I’ve actually had some experience in this space as a judicial officer who has presided over hearings—

Dr Duncan Webb: Judge—the judge?

TANGI UTIKERE: —not a judge, Dr Webb—in courtrooms within the District Court jurisdiction, largely around arrests, remand, and bail hearings, and I have done that for over 10 years. Actually, Mr Speaker, I spent some time in your electorate presiding over bail hearings and traffic hearings in the Feilding District Court. So there’s the connection and the link that we make, sir. Of course, your courthouse is no longer there.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Don’t need it!

TANGI UTIKERE: But what it does, I think, signal is that there are many courtrooms and court facilities all around the country that are very different. The infrastructure is different. The six courtrooms that exist in my Palmerston North courthouse are all quite different in themselves, but, distinctly, they are different from other courtrooms and courthouses around the country, and so what this bill will do is it will provide an opportunity for presiding judicial officers, within the context of some guidance from the heads of bench, to issue determinations that they consider appropriate within the context of specific proceedings. So the flexibility is important, because on the one hand we want to ensure that these proceedings can continue to take place where people have considerations such as health and safety at play but also it doesn’t undermine an individual’s right to a free and fair opportunity when it comes to justice and natural justice.

I think this is a piece of legislation that will go to the select committee. We’ll hear from the select committee as a result of this working through the process, and I am happy to commend this to the House.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. Look, I really just want to make a brief comment around some of the concerns raised from the Opposition to make it clear and reinforce what the Minister introducing the bill noted, which is that these restrictions absolutely must be New Zealand Bill of Rights Act - compliant. There is, of course, a very strong presumption set out in the Drew case, I think, that this House will not pass legislation which—and Fitzgerald, the three-strikes case, as well made it clear the presumption that this House will not intend to pass legislation which breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Further, when we get into regulation and acts of the executive, of which some of these restrictions under this Act will be, it’s simply the case that the executive don’t have the power, that they are constrained in their actions by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and that in the absence of a truly extraordinary statement by the legislature that they can breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—one which doesn’t exist in the law—there is essentially an irrebuttable presumption that any powers conferred on the executive must be exercised consistently with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

So, access to justice and—can I just say one other thing—open justice and the ability of people to know what’s going on in the courts, whether they’re a party to a proceeding or not, is of critical importance to our constitutional system. This is really a part of making sure that that continues in this modern, COVID-affected age, and I commend it to the House.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and it’s very good to see you in the Chair. I stand—well, I come in here from remote in Auckland to support this bill, the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill. Nobody would deny the importance of the issues covered by this bill, which is to say to try and reduce the amount of interruption to our justice system during the COVID crisis that, unfortunately, we continue to face coming up to two years since we first encountered it.

This legislation does deal with issues through the courts and tribunals in terms of creating a safe and effective operation of the courts to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. It knocks out a couple of legislative barriers to having the courts respond in a way that enables safety but also enables the practice of the courts to continue. So, look, we’re not going to oppose it, but we do feel obliged to point out some pretty obvious things, the first of which is that this is arriving far too late in the piece for New Zealanders.

Now, we’ve heard the Chief Justice in her first annual report referring to real issues in terms of access to justice in this country. We hear of people waiting sometimes two years or longer for their cases to come before the court. That is, frankly, a dysfunctional justice system, in my view. If we have such long delays to justice and this COVID situation has made it worse, it was entirely predictable, and what we see here with this legislation is that finally, in the final sort of “Hurrah!”, we have a piece of legislation that might come into effect in mid-April, at a time when I think most New Zealanders will be hoping and expecting that the vast majority of the COVID restrictions will have been removed.

So, with blazing trumpets and people waving palm ferns, this legislation will arrive just at the moment that everybody’s wandered off and got back to their normal lives. Meantime, for the past few months, we have continued to work through real restrictions and complications in the court system that this legislation, if it had been introduced earlier, may have helped.

Now, people might say, “Oh, that’s a bit harsh on the Government. They’ve been trying to do their best.”, but I think that any rational review of 2021 would demonstrate that that was the year of missed opportunities. In 2020, New Zealand followed a strategy of buying time for COVID-19, which was to say we would spend an enormous amount of money to secure New Zealand, to close the boundaries, and to subsidise businesses that were affected by that in preparation for vaccinations and for improving the health system so that we could cope with a COVID outbreak. Then 2021 came along. In the first half of 2021, we waited for everybody else in the world to get vaccinated before we started. The Prime Minister said that other people needed it more than us, so that delay was directly attributable to the more than 100-day lockdown in Auckland and the severity of it.

Second, no progress was made on any more ICUs, so we found ourselves this summer, with the outbreak of Omicron, with the same issues that we had back in 2020 in the sense of a worry that the health system would be overwhelmed and the need to go back into highly, highly restricted circumstances, notwithstanding the fact that New Zealanders in their millions responded very quickly when they did, finally, have the opportunity to get vaccinated.

So, now, we are very highly vaccinated: well over 90 percent. We have a higher number of boosters. The health system, notwithstanding the limited progress on ICU, is able to cope so far, and yet we continue to be in what is becoming almost a virtual lockdown, with so many families now in isolation.

My guess is that public demand for the steady reduction of the restrictions around COVID over the next few weeks will dramatically change the rules. So having this legislation, like I say, emerging mid-April—hopefully—will be too late from a country point of view, but it really does reflect very badly on the Government that they didn’t deal with this much earlier in the piece.

I would also state that this legislation obviously can’t deal with the broader issues around access to justice. If I step back and look at the justice sector more broadly, a rational person looking at it would say, “Well, what are the big issues?” The big issues are a rise in violent crime in this country, a 50 percent increase in gang membership and that link to rising crime, and a sense of lawlessness in parts of our country. Then, secondly, I think a big issue is this whole area of the slowness and cost of getting access to justice, not just in the criminal courts but also in the civil courts.

I do think any Government worth its salt would be focused on those issues. Sadly, when we look at the legislative focus of this Government in the justice area, that is not where they’ve put their attention, generally, and they haven’t really dealt with these issues. They make big announcements. Budget 2020 announced a huge amount of money to be spent on the courts. Very little has actually been spent of that fund in the last two years. A lot of talk; not much actual delivery.

I understand—I’ve been told—that only four out of 17 Auckland courts are able to do audiovisual work and are wired up for it. I mean, that is an astonishing figure. They’ve been very slow to get the systems into place that we need to be able to respond.

Then we’ve heard Government speakers referring to the fact that “Oh, in Australia they’ve done this. In Canada they’ve done that. In Sweden they’ve done that.” All these other countries have done these things weeks, months ago, and yet we have twiddled our thumbs and thought about it for some time.

I do think there, frankly, are issues in the criminal space about the threshold for jury trials, and I think long term we need to think about these things in terms of dealing with the massive delays that we face. So, look, those are broader issues that I hope that the Government will be looking at over the next few months. This legislation deals with specifics around COVID. It’s very much part of the Government’s overall response to COVID, which is swinging in months too late with some changes that, yes, make sense, but actually most of the country is very rapidly moving on.

I do want to finish by paying tribute to the many New Zealanders who work in the court system, particularly the judges and—well, all the people, from security to the clerks and the many people who have been trying to do their best, the lawyers defending and prosecuting. I’m not going to thank the criminals, but I will acknowledge particularly the victims of crime who have had to struggle with the effects of the delays.

Can I just pay tribute to our court workers and the judicial system in the broader sense and encourage them that we understand the difficulties that you face. We do want to do in Parliament everything that we can to enable you to do your job productively and effectively. When you think about justice, yes, the quality of the decision, or the accuracy of decision, is critical, but, equally, timeliness and costs are very important as well, because it’s all very well if you arrive at the perfect judicial decision, but if it takes 10 years and is unaffordable for many New Zealanders to access, then there is no access to justice. So speed and costliness are important issues, and we all need to be absolutely focused on them.

Finally, I had another point, which I have forgotten what it was, so I’ll leave that for the time being. I’d just say that—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The member’s time has expired.

HELEN WHITE (Labour) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am pleased to be speaking in support of this bill, which will go to select committee.

It’s been rather churlish, reluctant support from the National Party today. However, it is a bill that there is mostly support over. I’d make the point to the Hon Paul Goldsmith that we aren’t really over the need for something like this. We have Omicron, and this piece of legislation is very much designed around it. What we had was the use by the court of their inherent jurisdiction and, yes, absolutely a respect for the powers that they have separately. This is something that is being done cooperatively and supportively. So what this will do is actually just give shored-up support over things like the Juries Act, the Criminal Procedure Act, and the Courts Security Act, and what it is about is actually access to justice.

Access to justice is an interesting concept. We throw it around and we don’t think about it much, and, actually, what that is about is it is about all the vulnerable people who come into a court situation. That involves victims and it involves defendants, it involves the media being able to watch the proceedings, and it involves lawyers. I was mindful that Golriz Ghahraman—who has not spoken on this bill, but her colleagues spoke on her behalf—would be one of those lawyers that would have found this very difficult. Going into the court for her, because she’s got immune-compromised issues, would have been difficult, and her clients, no doubt, would have been the poorer for it.

So it’s very important we have safe settings in courts, because people don’t go there for fun. They’re actually pretty vulnerable when they go in. So this produces some of those balances, and what I think is very important is that it is subject to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I take my colleague Dr Duncan Webb’s point that this is actually built into our system: when people make decisions by delegation, they make them mindful of their obligations under that Act. It is temporary, and that’s important too.

It is something where I think the most interesting part of this is the discretion that the judge has, despite the decision of the heads of court, in, actually, every single case. So they are actually thinking about what they do, mindful of those principles and respectful of them in making sure that access is actually something that’s real. So I commend this bill wholeheartedly to the House, and I look forward to it coming back from the select committee.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 110

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

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The question is, That the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

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

Ayes 110

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

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Instruction to Justice Committee

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill be reported to the House by 31 March 2022 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 193 and 196.

As we’ve heard through the course of this debate, this bill is an important one, and it’s needed to mitigate safety risks as soon as possible to ensure that courts can operate both safely and effectively, particularly as we face Omicron spreading in the coming period. If key court participants including jurors, defendants, lawyers, communications assistants, and others are either unwilling or unable to participate in court proceedings, then they may need to be delayed or adjourned. If proceedings have to be adjourned part-way through trials, that can significantly extend time frames beyond the extent of the delay itself; in fact, it can potentially require a trial to be stopped and a new trial to be rescheduled. A break of just three or four days in a trial can potentially create this. An Auckland High Court trial could potentially get delayed by up to a year if this occurs.

Court operations have been significantly impacted by COVID-19. Since August of last year, when Delta restrictions had an impact on court operations, around about 80,000 court events have been impacted. That means that around about 25 percent of court activity over that period has been impacted to some degree. The number of active criminal cases in District Court is now almost 8,500 cases more than we had pre-Delta, which gives an indication of the kinds of impacts that we’re trying to mitigate here, including an additional 428 jury trials awaiting trial.

The Government is moving rapidly through this bill to give the judiciary and the ministry the ability to address safety concerns. In doing this, we do need to be sure that people’s rights are protected. The Government has worked closely with the judiciary to understand the issues and to try and strike the right balance before we move through with this legislation.

So while this process does allow for a short select committee consideration, we believe that is the appropriate balance to strike, and, as such, we think that the process that I have outlined is the right way forward for this bill.

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

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll perhaps only take a short call. I understand that my colleague Hon Paul Goldsmith is also keen. I don’t know that he’s managed to indicate that in the chat yet, but if he does, then I’ll truncate my remarks.

It’s perhaps just worth placing on record that National has supported not only the legislation and the fact of it being referred to the Justice Committee—as most parties in the House have also agreed—and even the truncated process. The reason that we’ve done that is because this is a matter of some urgency—to use the lower case “u” for urgency, not technically in the parliamentary sense—and this is a problem that requires resolution as soon as possible.

Of course there are always dangers inherent in rushing legislation, so this is somewhat of a compromise, bearing in mind that with the legislation having taken so long to come to the House as an alternative to inclusion in the COVID-19 protection framework Act in the first place, and bearing in mind that even with an effective date of mid-April and regulations then to come out of that at some time subsequent, it will be difficult to justify any further delay. So for that reason, reluctantly, we do agree that a truncated select committee process will be necessary.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to rise on behalf of the ACT Party to take a call on this referral motion to the Justice Committee.

I have a few points that I wish to raise, and the first is how short the select committee time is. The select committee is an extremely important part of the parliamentary process. The main function of it is to allow for there to be time to hear from members of the public and to hear their thoughts on what Parliament is passing through this Chamber into law.

Now, the date that the Minister has referred back to only gives a period of about three weeks for the select committee to sit, but if we walk through what has to actually happen in that time for select committee, it doesn’t really give much time for the members of the public at all. So if you think starting from, I guess, today, you’ll end up with advertising needing to occur so that submitters even know that we’re talking about this law. The submitters then have to have time to be able to prepare their statements for the House. They have incredibly busy lives, and that might only give you a couple of days—and then the clerks have to sort all of those submissions. Then you have to call people in for an oral hearing, if that’s what they’ve requested.

Once that’s happened, you would hope that the select committee has done their job well and picked up on any recommended changes that might need to happen, so they’ve drafted some amendments. Those all need to go through the Justice Committee for everybody’s acceptance. The report then needs to be finalised and, before you know it, you’re not actually giving a lot of time.

So, if I look at the calendar here, open on my phone, and if we work backwards and you actually look at how much time that’s giving you to put in place all of that work, you’re only really giving at maximum a week for the actual select committee hearing process. If we’re talking about the judiciary, these are extremely busy people. I don’t see how it’s acceptable that we could end up in a situation where we’re putting a new law on how the courts will operate, and yet the people who we depend on to be our judiciary, who are working extremely hard in a time-sensitive manner, will have to work around the clock to make sure that they can get their submissions in on time. I hope that this process will actually be fulsome and that it’s not just ticking boxes.

If you think of the types of people that you’d hope would be submitting on this type of law, you’ve got the judges: the people in charge of the courts. You’ve got those who might be doing the jury trials and those will be doing judge alone. Then you’ve got the registrars: the people who make sure that the court process are followed and they’re helping the judges. Then you’ve got the juries: people who have actually sat on jury trials and might be able to give you their opinion on how this will affect jury trials going forward.

The prosecutors: the lawyers or police officers, who are trying to prove that the defendant is guilty. You’ve got media, who quite often cover court cases; defence lawyers, who, quite clearly, are lawyers for the defendant; and the actual defendants themselves. I think that’s incredibly important and shouldn’t be skipped over.

People who are police escorts and prisoner escorts, who help out at courts; people who sit in the public gallery—also very important for victim support—and witnesses. We have court victim advisers—another very, very worthwhile member of the court and judicial system—the witness support person, which is the person that a judge has agreed can support the witness in court; and the witness, who is actually giving evidence on what they saw happening in front of them or on what they know about a particular case.

When you take all of those people who will be affected by this law change, we want to be making sure that we have given them the sufficient time to get their thoughts in order to make sure that they have an effect on this law. That’s incredibly important.

I think there is an element that Chris Baillie from our party talked about earlier in his speech. We already have changes that have gone through the court system, and I think it’s really important that if we’re changing this law, then we’re actually giving time to even ask questions of submitters back to them in that select committee process to ask why the changes that have occurred already in the courts have already been able to do that without having this law change, because if I just refer to the Chief Justice’s latest post on requirements of the court, it shows a lot of things that have happened.

The Chief Justice said—operational from Monday, 14 February—that “The Chief Justice has today published revised protocols for the operation of the Courts of New Zealand. The protocols have been adjusted to allow for an extended period in the Red traffic light setting, following the Government’s announcement of its three-phased public health response to the Omicron variant on 26 January 2022. All court protocols are available here on the Courts of New Zealand website …

“The court operating protocols set out a framework to ensure that everyone who needs to participate in proceedings is able to do so. The primary considerations that underpin the protocols, and decisions made under them, are the interests of justice and the protection of the health and safety of those in court buildings. Key changes to the protocols published today: the protocols issued last week have been adjusted and republished today to ensure that courts are operating as safely and fully as practicable during the Omicron outbreak, within the current legislative settings that govern access to courts and the right to be present at hearings. The revised protocols will take effect on Monday 14 February 2022.

“The main changes to the protocols are as follows. For those entering the Courts without a My Vaccine Pass, the requirement for a negative PCR test to be administered has changed from 72 hours to 48 hours. If a person whose attendance is required presents at court without a My Vaccine Pass and is unable to provide proof of a negative PCR test and is asymptomatic, free supervised Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) will be available at pharmacies until 30 June 2022. For health and safety reasons, there may be limits on the number of people not directly involved in proceedings who can be physically present in courtrooms and court buildings. The High Court has moved to a presumption that at the Red setting its business will be conducted to the extent possible by remote participation. In remote hearings in the High Court and District Court, media representatives who are present must introduce themselves to the judge. A new triaging process has been introduced for the Youth Court. This includes judges reviewing lists at least two days before a hearing to determine which cases can be dealt with remotely. Matters requiring an in-person hearing will be allocated time slots to reduce numbers of people present in Court.

“Jury trials: criminal and civil jury trials in the High Court and District Court continue as scheduled and will be subject to enhanced health and safety measures including rapid antigen tests for jurors and other participants.”

But if I look at what this bill is seeking to hope to do, they’re starting to talk about some people being maybe unwilling or unable to attend court because of safety concerns, and they’re wanting to remove legal barriers to desirable safety measures. It appears the courts have done most of this already, and I think this select committee needs to hear from those who make these decisions in the court. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this debate. We’re about to, if we get to it—the next bill to be debated is around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and parliamentary processes for debating decisions made by the court in relation to that, and this debate that we’re having here is another example of those processes that have been introduced to the way that Parliament operates to ensure that decisions made by the Government have consequences in the House and they’re forced to explain themselves. So what we’ve got here is this Government wanting to rush through some legislation in response to COVID-19 and not having the normal amount of time that you have at select committee looking at a piece of legislation.

The point of a select committee process is to allow New Zealanders from all walks of life to submit on the bill and on what is proposed, recognising that the 120 MPs and the hard-working and very focused ministry advisers in Wellington don’t always know everything, and they miss things. They misunderstand things in draft bills. When a bill is introduced into the House, very often, if enacted, it would achieve the exact opposite of what they had set out to achieve or it would have all sorts of unintended consequences, and so, very often, public feedback on legislation allows New Zealanders to point out: “Hang on a moment, you’ve got this wrong, you’ve got that wrong.”, or “What about this?”, and “If you do this, this is what’s likely to happen.” So in our wisdom, when Governments do propose to rush through legislation with a shorter select committee process, they have to have this debate to explain themselves.

Now, Mr Michael Wood, the Minister, gave the explanation at the start of this debate, and his justification seemed to be, in essence, that it’s a terrible thing that justice has been delayed because of COVID restrictions under Omicron fears that people have around the spread of the disease and that this is having a material effect and possibly seeing trials delayed for as much as a year because of delays in the process. So this is a terrible situation that we face. It’s an urgent problem, therefore we need to deal with it urgently. Ultimately, we are prepared to support this speedy process and this legislation. Partly, we support the speedy process, because if it was even longer, then the bill would be enacted even later—even more months after most New Zealanders will have moved on and want to get on with their lives—and it will be even more redundant than it would be if we had got on with it in a quicker time span.

But the point I was making, though, was his arguments for urgency really just underscore how disappointing the whole thing is in the sense that it would have been much better if the bill had been introduced earlier so that we could have got ahead of the issues that have been raised. My colleague from the ACT Party Brooke van Velden pointed out, of course, that the courts on their own bat have made a number of changes already. There are a few legislative issues that we’re trying to deal with here. It’s probably not going to be the end of the world, but it may be helpful at the margins, and it would have been helpful if it had been brought in sooner, particularly when the Government introduced the red light process legislatively back before Christmas, when, as we pointed out, they’d missed a whole lot of things.

So, look, unfortunately, we’ve had a pattern over the last couple of years now of a Government responding on the back foot to a whole lot of things that were eminently predictable and likely to happen relating to COVID-19. Everybody jumped up and said, “Watch out, this is going to be an issue in the courts.” They do nothing about it until very late in the piece, and then rush legislation through Parliament. Quite often, as a result of that, they’re getting it wrong and having to come back with more legislation and further tweaks, and then in the meantime, the poor people who are working in the system—in this case, in the judiciary and in the justice system or the court system—suffer the consequences for that. But they have to go with that.

So we will with some regret support this truncated process. We understand the urgency; we just do wish that this bill had been introduced much earlier in the piece.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with some concern that I hear the submissions on this motion from our fellow opposition party, the National Party, supporting it with reservations.

There’s been a number of motions for urgent select committee referrals that have come to this House since I was elected as a member of Parliament in October 2020 and took my seat here in November 2020, and on each and every occasion there’s been a motion seeking an urgent or truncated select committee consideration of a piece of legislation. It’s for a number of similar reasons: there is a longstanding problem, whether it’s social or environmental or economic—in this case a problem with the functioning of the justice system that the Government has known about for a very, very long time—where people affected by the operation of the justice system, in this case, have raised issues with access to justice, the functioning of the courts, and whether trials are delayed because a lawyer gets sick or a witness is unable to attend because of another emergency or their car running out of petrol. These are not new problems, and yet today, again, we have a Minister telling the House that the select committee report-back period of only a few weeks is absolutely necessary in order to solve a problem that is so incredibly urgent that if it’s not solved by Parliament in the next few weeks, then a whole lot of things will happen that are bad.

But if we look at the records, in fact, the Minister himself mentioned that even before COVID a delay to a High Court hearing in Auckland, an adjournment, could result in a delay of up to a year before another hearing date was available. Having this bill referred to select committee as proposed for a truncated hearing period and consideration period of only a few weeks will not address a backlog of over 8,000 cases that have built up during the COVID period. They are 8,000 more cases than the actual backlog, which I’m sure is many, many, many thousands more.

So my point is—or point one—that referring a bill for a truncated consideration at select committee is a completely unacceptable way to address what are in fact long-term, structural problems that affect the lives of everyday New Zealanders, whether they are seeking justice through the court system, or whether they actually have been accused of an offence and are seeking to demonstrate their innocence in some way. So whether this bill is in fact necessary itself is questionable, and, again, that comes back to the rushed approach. If a Government, if a Minister, or if a department can’t get the problem statement right, how on earth do they expect to solve problems that affect everyday New Zealanders like access to justice, and if they can’t get the problem statement right with all the resources of Government, all the time available and all the advisers, how on earth do they expect the people affected by poorly thought out legislation to develop their own submissions and to consult with their own stakeholders?

I can give an example from a recent select committee hearing I was involved with with the Environment Committee on the enabling housing amendment bill to the Resource Management Act, which had a similarly truncated three-week report-back time frame. There was a large number of submitters who came to committee, and they said that all of the problems that the Government and the National Party, who had held hands, like they are today, on a podium and announced a piece of legislation that had to happen under utmost urgency to solve a problem that was so urgent, despite the fact it had been developing over decades. Actually, many of the submitters told us, “We’ve come here with our submission. It’s four pages long, and it summarises the things we could get down on paper in the week that we had. We weren’t able to go back to our governing bodies. We weren’t able to go back to the executives of the organisations that we worked for and make sure that everybody in our executive leadership team understood the risks that this Government’s legislation were likely to cause, and therefore say what was our organisation going to propose to the Government as an alternative.” They weren’t even able to get sufficient legal advice on what all the implications were of a piece of legislation that was brought to the House, and were then told, “Well, we’ve only got a week to make a submission, a week for hearings, and then a week for the committee to consider.”

It’s an appalling way to develop legislation, and if this Government really wants New Zealanders to think that they are all about solving long-term problems that affect our communities, then they would do well to actually take their time, because these problems are not new. There are 8,000 additional delayed cases compared to March 2020. That’s a lot, but it’s not because of COVID; it’s actually because the court system appears to be under-resourced and to be operating in what appear to be archaic modes of working. They don’t appear to have an effective programme management system that enables them to move resources or move court hearings around, and if they’re insisting on still sending notices to people by mail when most people rely on electronic communication, it’s probably not this piece of legislation that’s going to solve the problem of access to justice for people who need to get to court, either as defendants or as witnesses or as jurors or as victims during this period—which may well only go on for a few more weeks—of a COVID pandemic response.

This bill is actually a COVID-19 response court safety legislation bill. The courts have been operating since March 2020. When New Zealand shut its borders and imposed some of the harshest lockdowns in the world, the courts have continued to operate. Serious criminals have been through the criminal justice system and have been sentenced to prison. Appeals have been heard. So it’s not just whether the Government has actually come up with a problem statement that leads to the need for legislation; it’s actually: is this Government reading the tea leaves, are they reading the newspaper, and are Ministers and members of Parliament of the Labour Party getting out into their communities and actually seeing what’s going on in their communities?

Because if they were, they might see what members of the ACT Party who visit their local communities see, like my colleague here, Mr Mark Cameron, who’s a member of Parliament who’s based in Ruawai in Northland, who spends some of his time when he’s not in Parliament talking to people in the dairy sector and in the Ruawai community about issues that affect them, and my colleague here Toni Severin, who, with her partner, has had an interest in an industrial water-blasting and cleaning business for many years. Now, her customers and the customers of that business tell them that they actually still need to get their buildings cleaned, and it turns out that you can clean a building, you can milk a dairy cow safely, and you can also operate a court system safely because the courts are operating safely. Therefore, the justification for a truncated select committee process is not proven.

The ACT Party will oppose this motion to refer the bill to a select committee for only a short period of three weeks before it reports back, because, in fact, the need for urgency is not demonstrated. The problem is not clearly defined and the stakeholders who would want to submit on the bill will not have sufficient time, and if the bill in fact does pass in the time frames that the Minister and the Government insist on, the bill itself provides an almost farcical situation where if the COVID-19 rules change and none of the other things around vaccine mandates or vaccine passes are even used any more, people who start their court process during the period this legislation is in effect will still be subject to all of those controls for two years, while somebody else who walks through the door of the court the day after the vaccine mandates drop won’t be. For that reason, the ACT Party opposes this bill.

KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

TONI SEVERIN (ACT): Mr Speaker, thank you. I’d like to speak on the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill. Like my fellow colleagues here, we think this, again, is a rushed bill, and we totally agree that justice is needed. However, if you don’t already trust what has already been implemented; if you don’t trust your COVID-19 testing system, where you can do PCR testing or rapid antigen testing; and if they’re concerned about the safety of people catching COVID-19 within the court system, there is surely enough room within a court, in most courts, that you can—can—separate people within it and limit the numbers that are sitting within that courtroom.

I feel this is so unjust on our lovely select committees, who are just so busy. Having to have these things dropped on them so fast and so quickly is just totally unfair on these staff members, when they are already at capacity. Also, some of them are probably at home with COVID themselves, and so they are probably working on limited staff.

I think this should not be rushed in the time frame. We need to give our lawyers, our judges, and even the witness protection people—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Sorry to the speaker. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 15 March 2022.

The House adjourned at 5 p.m.