Wednesday, 16 March 2022

WEDNESDAY, 16 MARCH 2022

WEDNESDAY, 16 MARCH 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

NEW ZEALAND Winter PARALYMPIC TEAM

Congratulations

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister for Sport and Recreation): I seek leave to move a motion without notice to congratulate the New Zealand Paralympic Winter Games team.

SPEAKER: Just with a warning that we take a little longer over these things now. Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I move, That this House congratulate the New Zealand Winter Paralympic Team for their outstanding achievements at the Beijing Winter Paralympics.

With one gold, one silver, and two bronze medals, this was the most successful Paralympic Winter Games for New Zealand in 20 years. This was the biggest Paralympic Winter Games to date, so for the three person New Zealand team of Adam Hall, Corey Peters, and Aaron Ewen to win a total of four medals is quite remarkable. All three athletes can be very proud of their Paralympics campaign, which saw Corey Peters win gold in the men’s downhill sitting and silver in the men’s super-G sitting, and Adam Hall won a bronze medal in the men’s slalom and in the super combined event, the most technical of the alpine skiing disciplines. New Zealand’s newest Paralympian, Aaron Ewen, finished ninth in the men’s slalom, a brilliant achievement in his first Paralympics.

Corey Peters’ gold in particular was a remarkable achievement, given that that he hadn’t competed in a downhill event for two years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also missed the world championships two months ago after catching COVID himself. Adam Hall’s bronze in the men’s standing slalom was described by commentators as “millimetre perfect”, a reflection of his skill in this discipline.

Qualifying for the Winter Paralympics is an enormous achievement, and it’s made New Zealanders so proud to see the skill, determination, and hard work of our Paralympians come to fruition in Beijing. I’d also like to acknowledge the enormous contribution of chef de mission Jane Stevens, head coach Ben Adams, and assistant coach Scott Palmer to the team’s success, as well as Paralympics New Zealand and their chief executive Fiona Allan and all the other team officials and support staff.

The ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, including the challenge of competing in Beijing without their friends and whānau on the side line for their events, meant that the support staff on the ground played a crucial role in our success at these Games. We have a great tradition of achievement at the Paralympics, and that also serves as a platform to challenge misconceptions about disabled people. These athletes have shown us that achievement can be limitless.

Audiences for the Paralympic Winter Games continue to grow, and this was the first time New Zealanders were able to watch every Paralympic event, with TVNZ providing extensive coverage of the Games. Seeing the incredible performances across the full range of Paralympic winter sports has no doubt inspired disabled people and all New Zealanders. Again, I offer on behalf of the Government our congratulations to the members of the 2022 New Zealand Paralympic Winter Games team. They have made us extremely proud and are an inspiration to all New Zealanders.

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

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As National’s disability spokesperson, I am delighted to pass on warmest congratulations to the New Zealand Paralympic team as they return from Beijing. New Zealand has a notable history with the Winter Paralympics, attending annually since the second annual games held back in 1980 in Norway. Since then, we have won a total of 31 medals, including 16 gold, six silver, and nine bronze. This year’s team has been small but mighty, bringing home four medals—as Minister Robertson said, the most a New Zealand Paralympic team has won in 20 years. What a great result.

Special credit must go to Aaron Ewen, our youngest competitor, who returned to the Paralympics this year after an injury which prevented him from competing in 2018. This year, despite being unable to finish two events, Aaron still ranked ninth in the men’s super-G sitting and the men’s slalom sitting.

Adam Hall, one of our veteran Paralympians, added two bronze medals to his collection of three, amassed over an amazing 16-year career representing New Zealand.

Corey Peters continued to demonstrate what a special athlete he is with his drive and determination, on his first hectic two days competing in Beijing earning a gold in the men’s downhill sitting competition and a silver in the men’s super-G sitting.

Corey, Adam, and Aaron have made us all proud and have shown us that there really can be triumph over adversity, with the moments of triumph all the sweeter because of the struggles that they each have, as individuals, faced. Living with a disability takes courage and determination, and to then go on and scale the heights that our Paralympic team have done reflects remarkable fortitude. We can all learn from their actions. Despite what life has thrown at each of these men, they have not backed down and have not given up. Instead, they have set goals and focused with determination.

Corey, Adam, and Aaron are a great inspiration to us, but more particularly they are wonderful role models to the hundreds of children and young people across this country who live each day with a disability. These young people will have watched our Paralympians over the past weeks and dreamed of what is possible, and that motivation is indeed a very special gift to share. The camaraderie, enthusiasm, energy, and sheer sense of fun Corey, Adam, and Aaron showed together embodied everything that is good about sport. As the International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons said about the competitors in his closing ceremony address, “You produced moments of magic and moments to savour … You thrilled, you surprised, you inspired.”

We know our athletes were the stars, but we acknowledge the support from organisations such as High Performance Sport New Zealand, Paralympics New Zealand, and Snow Sports New Zealand. We also acknowledge and congratulate chef de mission Jane Stevens, her deputy Lynette Grace, head coach Ben Adams, and assistant coach Scott Palmer, who accompanied our Paralympians to Beijing and created the environment for athletes to excel.

Of course, the love and support of family and friends is always key to the success of athletes, and no doubt our triumphant New Zealand Paralympic team will be looking forward to returning home to celebrate their success with those who are closest to them.

We congratulate our Paralympians. We thank them, and we welcome them back to New Zealand. You have made us proud. Thank you.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to rise on behalf of the Green Party to congratulate our athletes who participated in the 2022 Winter Paralympics. Like many, I want to note that this was a very successful Winter Paralympics for our athletes, who brought home four medals. I want to pay tribute to Aaron Ewen, Adam Hall, and Corey Peters for their amazing their performances, as well as their coaches, support staff, and whānau who worked with them along the way.

Like many disabled people have told us across the years, it’s important that alongside congratulating our athletes we also look at the narratives that centre the Paralympics, and as part of that I wanted to take some inspiration from a piece from S E Smith, who wrote a blog—which I’d love to call, but it probably has unparliamentary language in the title. But they wrote The Olympic Paradigm: How the “Inspiring” Narrative Restricts and Fetishizes Disabled Athletes. I want to echo their calls about the language that we use when we talk about the Paralympics and how we must continue supporting disabled people who are constantly advocating to have equitable platforms in terms of coverage with the Olympics.

And so, as in my previous speeches on behalf of the Greens, I resume the calls to have the Paralympics happening at the same time as the Olympics so that they get equal coverage and that we continue advocating for the rights of disabled people so that the narratives about success are not limited to high-performance sports but are taken outside into everyday life. I hope that our future athletes are as successful as this lot, and that we all continue working alongside our communities so that they can thrive. Kia ora.

TONI SEVERIN (ACT): I’m proud to rise on behalf of the ACT Party as the disabilities spokesperson, to congratulate our Winter Paralympic team and support staff. Welcome home. As well, I’d like to thank their family and friends, who were unable to attend the Games, because they are usually their biggest supporters, but they were unable to attend due to our COVID times.

Firstly, Adam Hall, five-time Paralympic medallist: gold in 2010, Vancouver; gold and bronze in 2018, PyeongChang; now adding two new bronze medals to his tally. An interesting fact I found out about Adam Hall is he is actually a snowboarder at heart, but switched back to skiing to compete in the Paralympic Games in 2006. Corey Peters, four-time Paralympic medallist: silver in 2014, Sochi; bronze in 2018, PyeongChang; and now he’s added a gold and silver. Aaron Ewen, competing in his first Paralympic Games, was unable to compete in 2018 due to an injury. However, we cannot take the pride away that he achieved two ninth places and an 11th place—well done.

You have made us all proud, and I hope you have inspired many able and many disabled New Zealanders to achieve goals that you think are out of your hands. But we can all achieve; we just have to set those goals. Thank you.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Te Paati Māori support this motion to congratulate the New Zealand Winter Paralympic Team for their outstanding achievements at the Beijing Winter Paralympics. E mihi ana ki tā tātou tīma i kōkiri i te mana o Aotearoa i ngā Hākinakina o te Ao.

[I acknowledge our team who bolstered the prestige of Aotearoa at the Winter Olympics.]

I want to join by acknowledging our three sportspeople from Aotearoa who completed in this year’s Paralympics: Aaron Ewen, Adam Hall, and Corey Peters. All three of our athletes competed in alpine skiing. I mihi to Corey Peters for winning both the gold and silver medal and to Adam Hall for winning two bronze medals—a small delegation with a tonne of physical, mental, and X-factor talent. You have all done Aotearoa proud presenting our people on the global stage. You inspire us and you make us scared—a fear of the speed that you went by as well—but it was absolutely motivational. Hoki mai ki ō kāinga.

[Return to your homes.]

Te Paati Māori support the calls for the Paralympics to be held alongside the Olympics to increase the visibility and profile that it receives. All of our athletes deserve the same recognition, praise, and support. It is well past time that organisational structure, coverage, and institutional support reflected that. We also acknowledge that athletes with more severe impairments or disabilities face greater barriers to participation in sports that athletes with less severe impairments need. At the Paralympics the event viability rule often prevents those with more severe impairments or disabilities from competing due to a range of barriers. This needs to change. We need to do better. We must work together towards a world that is inclusive, accessible, and empowering for all people whether it is in sports or any other field. Let us commit to that. Tēnā tātou katoa.

Motion agreed to.

Speaker’s Statements

Parliament Grounds—Reopening Ceremony

SPEAKER: Before we move on to petitions, I want to apologise to the members who were not invited to the ceremony this morning. That was my responsibility in that we were limited to 100 people, and I felt that it was better to invite members of the community who had been locked out, as well as members of Parliament and staff, to that ceremony. I will place on my record my thanks to Te Atiawa - Taranaki Whānui for the work that they did and helping us with the spiritual or emotional cleansing that goes along with the major physical decontamination of the site that has occurred. I will note that it is my intention to hold a “grand reopening of the grass”, or something similar, possibly in early June, leading into Matariki, to which all members—COVID willing—will be invited.

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

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

SPEAKER: A petition has been delivered to the Clerk.

CLERK: Petition of Grey Power Hastings & Districts Association Incorporation requesting that the House urge the Government to keep water assets owned and managed by local councils.

SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK: Government responses to the referral of the petition from Juliana Carvalo and referral of the petition of Esther Hansen.

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

CLERK:

Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the inquiry into school attendance

joint reports of the Environment Committee and the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Te Kaitiaki Taiao a Te Whare Pāremata: A review of the funding and prioritisation of environmental research in New Zealand, and

the reports of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment:

Pristine, popular... imperilled? The environmental consequences of projected tourism growth, and

Not 100%—but four steps closer to sustainable tourism

reports of the Intelligence and Security Committee on the:

2020-21 annual review of the Government Communications Security Bureau, and

2020-21 annual review of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service

reports of the Petitions Committee on the petition of Sophie Handford and the petition of Linda Manning, and

report of the Social Services and Community Committee on the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading.

The report of the Education and Workforce Committee and the joint reports of the Environment Committee and the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee are set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK: Natural Hazards Insurance Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote): Kia ora e te Pīka. Does the—oh, sorry. To the Prime Minister: does she stand by her Government’s decision in 2017—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I think that might be the supplementary.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Thank you, it is. I appreciate it.

1. DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Government’s actions to increase wages and focus support for low and middle income earners, including reducing fuel excise duty by 25c and instituting half-price public transport to take steps to reduce the impact on New Zealand families during the continued volatility of fuel prices caused by the war in Ukraine. I also stand by our decision to increase the minimum wage to $21.20 per hour; to increase Working for Families, which will make around 346,000 families better off by an average of $20 each a week; adjusting the income thresholds for childcare assistance annually in line with average wage growth, benefiting 1,500 children; benefits to increase up to $35 a week from 1 April, bringing the total increases for beneficiaries with children to an average of $175 per week, including to $207 per week during the 2022 winter period; student allowances will increase by $25 from 1 April; and superannuation will increase to $52 per fortnight for a single person, and $80 for a couple from 1 April. There’s no silver bullet that will fix the cost of living, but we have a plan and are implementing a range of measures that, together, will help to make a difference.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Go for it.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Thank you. Does she stand by her Government’s decision in 2017 to ignore their own policy and not remove GST from fruit and veges?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When it comes to the policy of the removal of GST on fruit and vegetables, obviously, that was some years ago, rather than 2017, that that policy was held. I would point out that—just for the point of comparison—from what the member’s party has released today, which is the removal of GST, as I understand, off all food, it is interesting to point out that the Tax Working Group calculated a GST exemption on food would save families in the bottom decile of income roughly $15 a week, while families in the highest decile would save $53 a week. Again, I come back to the targeted policies that we’ve been promoting as a Government, like, for instance, increases to the Best Start payment for families with young children—which will also increase on 1 April—and those increases in the family tax credit, which, on those numbers, would, for many families, be a higher rate of increase than the removal of GST on food.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Yeah, just go for it—don’t wait. Don’t wait—all right?

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: OK, thank you. I know when I do that, you’ll kick me out. But anyway, back to the question. Why is she unwilling to regulate retailers and break up the duopoly to prevent unreasonable price hikes on food and prevent them absorbing savings if GST on food was removed?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, actually, the member in her own question has highlighted one of the issues that is often raised around the removal of GST in any space, and that’s your ability to guarantee pass on. It’s quite different to the way that the market operates for fuel, where we do have devices that can give greater transparency around pass on to consumers, and the Minister is using those tools to ensure that, for instance, the 25c being removed off fuel is being passed on. When it comes to the Commerce Commission’s report which they only released just recently into supermarkets, it has confirmed what we feared as a Government: that the market could be more competitive and that, currently, that is coming at a cost to consumers. We have taken seriously the recommendations. We’ll be taking those to Cabinet and giving an official response, but we have kept open the option of going further because we are concerned that there needs to be greater competition in the market for consumers.

SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Rawiri Waititi—clearly remote.

Rawiri Waititi (remote): Clearly, Mr Speaker. Kia ora. Does she accept that GST is a regressive tax that targets lower-income whānau, who are forced to spend nearly every cent they earn; meanwhile, the rich have untaxed wealth accumulating in housing, investment funds, and trusts?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: There are many areas in which the member and I would likely agree on policies. I actually reflect back on—it was the Māori Party at the time—Hone Harawira, in this House, who promoted, for instance, food in schools. I want to acknowledge that that is the origin of that initial policy debate that we had, and I’m proud now that it is a policy for over 200,000 children now that are benefiting from that policy. But when it comes to just the blanket removal across the board of GST on food, you will have heard me reflect that—by just taking it off all food, at a cost of $5 billion per annum—there are targeted ways where we actually can provide greater support for low and middle income families. That is what we have done as a Government, using the Working for Families tax system to make sure that whānau are receiving more in their pockets during this period, and you would, for instance, see greater benefits to higher-income earners through a blanket removal of GST.

Rawiri Waititi: Why has the Government, despite being in power for more than four years, not shifted the tax burden from the poor to the wealthy, through new taxes on accumulated wealth, such as on capital gains, “ghost houses”, financial services, and pollution?

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The question is quite a long way wide of the—I think we’ll be a little bit liberal now, but I think we might have a developmental session on making sure that questions are within order. I’ll ask the Prime Minister to respond, but with a bit of a warning that we’re not going to stay that wide in the future.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When it comes to our approach to tax policy, you know, I would argue that, actually, we have focused on trying to ensure that the incomes of our low and middle income families have increased. In fact, when you look at the impact of our policies on, for instance, the likes of a low-income earner, someone on the minimum wage, we have increased their wages significantly. We’ve also, at the same time, for instance, put in place an additional top tax rate at those earning $180,000 or more. We have introduced, for instance, an extension to the brightline test. We’ve removed interest deductibility and removed other tax loopholes, which we believe were weighting the market more in favour of those who are investors in the market, relative to first-home buyers. All of those things, we believe, are not only evening up the playing field but making our tax system fairer for all New Zealanders.

SPEAKER: Right, I’ve got a slight dilemma now because I was told the Māori Party was going to have five but no one’s taken the call for the fifth one. We’ll move on to question No. 2; it’s in the name of Christopher Luxon.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. In particular, I stand by this Government’s decision to bring forward the date for opening our border to tourists, in a move that will help further accelerate our economic recovery from COVID-19. From 11.59 p.m., Tuesday, 12 April, Australians will be able to travel to New Zealand, isolation-free, and just in time for the school holidays. Not long after, from 11.59 p.m., Sunday, 1 May, vaccinated travellers from visa-waiver countries will be able to travel to New Zealand again. This includes for our key tourism markets, like the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, Germany, Korea, and Singapore. We know it will take time to see tourism scale up again, but today’s announcement is a great boost for an industry who has had it very tough over the past two years. And, finally, to those considering a visit to New Zealand in the very near future, welcome. Can I say that we missed you.

Christopher Luxon: How much better off will a family with two teenage children, where both parents earn $60,000 a year, be after the Working for Families’ changes on 1 April?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: What I don’t have, necessarily, is a specific example—

Chris Bishop: Oh!

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —to run through for every—

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to interrupt right now. Standing Orders are very clear, and that is when a general primary question is asked, Ministers cannot be expected to give specific answers. And I will not have—I mean, the member’s probably got the disadvantage now that he’s closer to me and his loud volume interjections will appear to be louder than me. I will not have criticism of a Minister who does not have specific information that that Minister has not been asked for.

Chris Bishop: Point of order.

SPEAKER: If the member’s going to disagree with me now, he might have a short term in the Chamber.

Chris Bishop: I just want to clarify: am I no longer allowed to express reaction to the answer of a Minister?

SPEAKER: Not at that volume.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, the Speakers’ rulings are very clear: interjections ought to be rare and reasonable. He didn’t break any of those rules. Is there now—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat right now. I ruled it was unreasonably loud.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am happy to share two examples, though. For instance, if you took a single person at an income of $55,000, with children, they would be better off an average of $21 per week. I would note that it depends also on the age of the children. We are increasing the Best Start payment, which benefits low and middle income families if they have a child, for instance, under the age of three. The other example I could give that perhaps is in keeping with the member’s example in terms of wages, if you take, for instance, a new police graduate, who in 2017 may have been earning in the order of $62,000, they now, as a result of some of the wage work that we’ve done across the public sector, are earning an additional $12,292. I could give further examples across nurses and teachers as well.

Christopher Luxon: Can she confirm that that family with two people earning $60,000, and two kids, will not gain a single dollar in income from her so-called cost of living relief package, but if she reset the tax brackets for the last four years of inflation, they’d be $1,600 a year better off?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, it would depend on the specifics of the family make-up. But I would also point out across a range of examples that I could also counter with where the member’s tax bracket changes do not, for instance, benefit families to the same degree as, for instance, even with the reduction we’ve added with fuel, the family tax credit increase, the Best Start payment increase. It will come down to the circumstances of those families. Bottom line: the member’s proposals, which for some families on very low incomes delivers $2, in many cases won’t deliver the same amount as our changes, and, also, he has not demonstrated how he will pay for them and continue to provide the healthcare and the other range of services that Governments are obliged to provide. [Member interjects]

Christopher Luxon: Can she explain how a family earning the average household income, who have seen the cost of living increase by as much as $5,000 over the last 12 months, are supposed to cope, let alone thrive, when this Government is completely ignoring them?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I totally reject the premise of that member’s question. Again, if we run through all of the work that we as a Government have done since we’ve come into office, we have been completely focused on ensuring we’re doing what we can to lift the incomes of New Zealanders. Now, whether or not it is, for instance, our policy to get rid of school donations so we take a bit of extra pressure off families to be paying for when their kids are going to school when they should be receiving free education; whether or not it’s free doctors visits for under-14s; whether it’s healthy food in schools for 200,000 children across the country—even period products in schools. That is on top of the Best Start payment we introduced. That’s on top of extending paid parental leave; increases to the family tax credit, which was on top of those that we brought in when we came into office; or even the creation of the winter energy payment. We have had a relentless focus on the cost of living for New Zealanders since 2017. Now, I don’t deny that times are absolutely tough now, which is why you saw us this week, again, reduce fuel excise, whilst also making sure we don’t cut the projects that those families want us to continue with.

SPEAKER: Order! Before the Leader of the Opposition asks his next question, I do want to warn him that his last supplementary was out of order. The last phrase in it made it that way. While I’m on my feet, I will again admonish Mr Bishop. When he interjects he doesn’t interject in the second person. I think he’s a third-term MP now. He should know that.

Christopher Luxon: When she said yesterday that the Government was “giving back to … middle income earners”, does she believe someone earning $60,000 a year is a middle-income earner?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The first thing that I would say is that whether or not you are using tax cuts or tax credits, ultimately it’s a different way of ensuring that support is going to families, but the difference being there is either targeted or untargeted. By being targeted, we can reach low and middle income. I acknowledge, of course, median wage is putting people generally at about $72,000, from memory. But what we’re focused on is how we can lift the amount of support that exists whilst families are facing an increase in the costs of living—relative to the member’s proposal, where he would reduce taxes the most for those who are on the wealthiest incomes and cannot tell us how he will pay for the other services that those families rely on.

Christopher Luxon: Does she agree that resetting the tax brackets in real terms to where they were four years ago is not even giving back; it’s simply the Government not taking more of what Kiwis earn because of inflation?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I just said in my last answer, whether or not you do it with a tax bracket adjustment or a tax credit, it is simply a targeted way of trying to achieve that same thing.

Christopher Luxon: Will the Budget contain meaningful tax relief for Kiwi families earning an average household income, who are facing record price increases while paying more tax under Labour because of bracket creep?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As you will have seen from our initiatives, we haven’t waited. From December of last year, we saw, based on what many economists were forecasting by the simultaneous recovery globally of economies, that we would see extra pressure on supply, extra supply chain constraints—those things which have contributed to inflation in a number of countries and economies we compare ourselves to. So we moved in December to put those increases in place for 1 April, and then this week we moved immediately—

Chris Bishop: Immediately? Straight after a poll. Ha, ha!

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —when we saw just the volatility in fuel prices—within 24 hours from announcement, seeing reduction at the pump. If Mr Bishop thinks the 25c reduction is laughable, for many people it is not.

Christopher Luxon: Does she believe that families on the average household income, who are paying more tax while getting smashed with inflation, are somehow immune to the cost of living crisis, and, if not, can she explain why she is refusing to give them tax relief at the Budget?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I’ve already said in my answers, we have focused on using the tax credit system to ensure that we are lifting the incomes of our low and middle income earners—particularly focused on those with children and those with younger children, where we know the cost burden is higher, and that’s where the Best Start payment has been particularly useful. Contrast that with the member’s proposal, which would see a couple on $280,000 or more receiving an extra $23 a week as the result of his tax cuts at the highest-income bracket. Taxpayers need us to do a bit of everything. They need us to look at the cost of living—and we have with fuel and, of course, the package which comes in on 1 April. But they also want to know they can get the healthcare they need when they need it. They also want to know that they have the best-quality schools possible. Governments have to make sure that they do everything. The member has not told us how he will pay for everything with his policies and his fiscal hole.

Question No. 3—Finance

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The manufacturing sector is continuing to support the economy. Statistics New Zealand reported last week that manufacturing sales jumped 12 percent in the December quarter compared with the previous September quarter, as restrictions related to the Delta outbreak were eased. Stats New Zealand said this marked an all-time high for the industry since data collection began in June 1992. Manufacturing activity has remained resilient in 2022, and, on Friday, the seasonally adjusted BNZ BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index for February rose 1.3 points to 53.6. A reading above 50 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; while below 50, that it is declining. The long-term average is 53.1. New orders and production rose, while employment moved back into expansion. BusinessNZ called the result positive, but cautioned that the spread of Omicron could still affect business plans in coming months.

Dr Duncan Webb: What other reports has he seen on the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The labour market has remained strong, with job ads near record highs. Earlier this month, the Seek NZ Employment Report for February 2022 edged down 0.1 percent on January, but it is up 68 percent for the year. BNZ economists said that this may reflect the need for businesses to plan for staff with Omicron having to self-isolate, but the high number of ads also indicated that firms are taking a view of the labour market beyond the near-term impacts of the pandemic. One exception to the result was in hospitality and tourism, which declined 13 percent. But BNZ noted that the reopening of the borders, as announced today, and the easing of restrictions are expected to help revive the fortunes of these sectors. Overall, the BNZ said that the result signals that unemployment will stay at record low levels at the beginning of 2022.

Dr Duncan Webb: What reports has he seen on support available to deal with the challenges of Omicron on the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Index, reported earlier this month, shows that consumer confidence had fallen to its lowest level in the 18-year history of the survey. We acknowledge that this is a challenging time for New Zealanders, and these results reflect the spread of Omicron and the rising cost of living due to global factors. We have acted to support households through temporarily cutting taxes on fuel, and further support that will be available with the cost of living measures from 1 April. We’re also supporting businesses through this time, through the targeted COVID Support Payment. The second payment opened on Monday and so far has paid out $70.1 million to 14,627 applicants. When combined with the first payment, we’ve now had a total of $424.4 million being paid out to 85,794 applicants. We are continuing to protect jobs and support New Zealand businesses by providing cash flow and confidence. We recognise that this is a tough time for many businesses and we are here to support them. The experience overseas indicates that Omicron has an intense but relatively short peak, and, once that passes, confidence will return quickly and spending will rebound.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with ANZ economist Miles Workman that “Inflation is now running laps around wage growth”, and “households are going backwards at an alarming rate”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): First, can I congratulate the member on her new role. I note that Mr Workman’s comments are in a document titled, “Rebound 3.5”, which predicts a strong bounce back in December quarter economic growth. I agree to the extent that, at this current point in time, households are facing significant cost of living pressures as a result of high inflation driven by global factors such as COVID-related supply chain issues and the war in Ukraine. However, when it comes to the relationship between inflation and wage growth, I think it is important to look past temporary spikes and, rather, at long-term trends, which has seen wage growth outstrip inflation in recent years, something which is predicted to continue in years to come. Right now, the Government’s focus is on supporting the incomes of those New Zealanders most affected by the rise in prices, also while easing pressure caused by the global energy crisis, through a 25 percent litre cut to the fuel excise duty and equivalent reductions to the road-user charge.

Nicola Willis: Why does he keep gaslighting New Zealanders by claiming his stats prove—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will start—no, the member will start another supplementary now.

Nicola Willis: Why does he keep patronising New Zealanders by claiming—

SPEAKER: The member may start another supplementary now.

Nicola Willis: Why does he keep trying to fool New Zealanders by claiming his statistics prove they’re getting ahead under his Government, when they know they’re not?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I reject the premise of the member’s questions, and I would point her to the fact that wages have outpaced inflation between 2018 and 2021 and are projected to do so again. There are periods of time in New Zealand’s history when inflation does in fact outpace wage growth. One of those was in 2010 and 2011 under a National Government.

Nicola Willis: What does he say to Karl, who wrote to me saying, “I get what you would think is a nice amount of money a week. Yet even I am struggling at the moment.”, and can the Minister explain how he expects middle-income Kiwis to cope with the cost of living crisis, when they are not eligible for the 1 April changes to benefits and Working for Families?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the Prime Minister outlined in her earlier answer, the Government has instituted a number of measures across the four years that we’ve been in Government to help ease cost of living pressures, be it taking away school donations, be it things like food in schools and a range of other supports. On this side of the House, when we put a Budget together, we’ve got difficult choices to make. Among those choices is whether or not we stop investing in long-term issues, like, for instance, building roads or public transport routes, or whether we have to balance that against making sure that we support those on the lowest incomes. There are no easy choices. We have chosen the ones we have; the member’s party has chosen tax cuts for the most wealthy New Zealanders.

Nicola Willis: Is he concerned by surveys showing one in three under-35-year-olds are planning to leave New Zealand in the next five years, and does he agree with economist Tony Alexander, who says we could soon see a brain drain of Kiwis attracted to Australia by “lower house prices, lower cost of living, higher incomes”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’d be interested to know if the National Party’s policy was to ban the OE, because that’s what we heard just there from the member today. What we do know is that, in New Zealand today, we have the largest number of New Zealanders in work in modern history in New Zealand, the lowest rate of unemployment, and a Government that’s backing a productive economy. In contrast, we have a National Party offering tax cuts to the richest New Zealanders and two bucks—two bucks—a week for those on lower incomes.

Nicola Willis: What is his response to Merva, who wrote to me saying, “Who can afford $500 to $600 a week rent, when you are lucky to bring home $800 a week in the hand? Shame on the Government.”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would say to Mervyn is that this Government is building more houses than any Government since the 1970s, that we did not deny the existence of a housing crisis, and that record building consents mean that supply is now catching up with demand, and perhaps the Government that Mervyn was calling shame on was the last National Government that failed to build houses.

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to remind the member that including unparliamentary things within quotes does not make them parliamentary. I think the member probably knows that.

Nicola Willis: Does he accept his policies are failing Jordan, who wrote to me saying, “I too struggle to afford food. Sometimes we only eat toast. I’ve had KiwiSaver since I was 16. Now I’m 30 and I don’t have enough for a house deposit. I’m scared we’re not going to have a home for my unborn baby.”, and is he concerned that his policies are failing a generation of New Zealanders?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On this side of the House, we are proud of the fact that we’ve made a massive investment in housing to make sure that New Zealanders do have a secure future. On the other side of the House, they have a record of selling off housing, and now their promise to low and middle income New Zealanders is $2 a week while they—members in this House—would get thousands of dollars a year in tax cuts. That’s not the way to a fair society. That’s not the way to making sure that people have economic security.

Question No. 5—Energy and Resources

5. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What responses has she seen to the Government’s decision to cut fuel excise and road-user charges by 25 cents per litre?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): The most immediate response I saw to the Government’s announcement to cut fuel excise by 25c per litre was fuel prices across New Zealand dropping. Little over an hour after the announcement, prices at the pump started falling. From the lowest fuel price in Greymouth, there was a 29c per litre fall in the price of Regular 91 today, compared to Monday. For the lowest fuel price in Auckland, there was a 31c per litre fall in the price of Regular 91, Monday to Tuesday, and a 29c fall in Hastings, and these figures show our reduction in excise is already making a big difference to consumers across the country.

Tangi Utikere: What feedback has she received on the Government’s decision to cut fuel excise by 25c per litre?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I’ve seen a number of enthusiastic and positive responses to the Government’s decision to cut fuel excise and road-user charges by 25c a litre. The Auckland Business Chamber said that the Government’s reduction in fuel excise exemplified the decisive leadership New Zealanders expect and deserve. Julie Wyatt from Hospitality New Zealand said that the Government’s reduction was an essential move that would provide New Zealanders with urgent relief, while the Motor Trade Association has said cutting taxes on fuel without impact on funding for major roading projects is a win-win for motorists.

Tangi Utikere: What response has she seen from New Zealanders?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I’ve seen a number of responses from New Zealanders to the reduction in fuel excise. Radio New Zealand reported an Auckland mother who said the excise reduction will mean her family “can buy some of the things for the girls, more fruit, and some meals that are more healthy than just eating frozen vegetables”. Tema said the reduction “will really help us in this crisis situation that the whole country’s going through”. I’m proud of the action that our Government is taking to give Kiwi families immediate relief through the current global energy crisis, triggered by the war in Ukraine.

Question No. 6—Housing (Public Housing)

6. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): What was the national weekly median rent in October 2017, and what is the current national weekly median rent according to MBIE rental bond data?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing)): And can I congratulate the member on—welcome to housing. There are a range of measures used to analyse rent prices of which Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) rental bond data is one. The Government uses the Stats New Zealand rental price index, which shows that, from October 2017 to December 2021, rents rose 16.4 percent. To put this in context, we saw the same 16.4 percent increase between August 2013 and October 2017. According to MBIE tenancy bond data, the national weekly median rent was $400 in October 2017 and $550 in January 2022. I would note that officials and commentators have warned that the MBIE data is often significantly revised, often downwards. That is due to bonds for more expensive properties being lodged earlier, and lower bonds being lodged later. This can result in exaggerated rent increase data for the most recent months. This Government recognises that the rental market is under pressure right now and we will continue to support renters and that is why we have limited rent increases to once a year, banned rental bidding, and increased the wages and benefits for low and middle income earners.

Chris Bishop: Is she aware that rent has increased by $150 per week since the Government came into office, and why does rent affordability continue to decline under this Government?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I do accept is there are some people who are doing it tough right now, but we have made a number of changes to support our renters during this time. A married couple, for example, receiving jobseeker support now receives $88 more per week in their weekly benefit after tax compared to March 2020. The average rent reported by couples renting and receiving the accommodation supplement increased by $38 per week for the same period. An adult working a 40-hour week on the minimum wage saw their income increase by almost $75 per week after tax between March 2020 and December 2021.

Chris Bishop: Point of order. It was an interesting answer, but it didn’t go anywhere near addressing the question as to why rent affordability continues to decline. It’s just a bunch of stuff about welfare benefits.

Hon Grant Robertson: Speaking to the point of order, there were two questions, and, in actual fact, the member had actually answered the first of those in her primary answer.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: No, we’ll see if Mr Bishop wants another supplementary first. I haven’t—I mean, I don’t think I need to rule on it. I’m sorry, Mr Bishop. I’m sure you are aware that when you ask a two-legged supplementary that the obligation on the Minister is to only answer one of them.

Chris Bishop: She could have addressed both of them, but she didn’t.

SPEAKER: Sorry—order! The member doesn’t comment on my rulings. No, he’s not in the school debating team anymore; he’s in the House of Representatives.

Chris Bishop: What is her response to statistics which show the weekly median rent for three- to four-bedroom properties across New Zealand saw the biggest annual increase of 8 percent to $650 a week last year, and why does the average rental house continue to become more unaffordable under this Government?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I can say is that there is no doubt that there are people who are doing it tough right now. The response from this Government has been from the time we came to Government to increase the incomes of low and middle income earners to cushion themselves from just the kinds of shocks that we are seeing right now. Not only that, this Government responds to issues that come up by ensuring that we have wages that keep pace with the cost of living, that we are in a particular time right now due to the impacts of what’s happening in the Ukraine. And this Government responds by ensuring that families can have more of their income to put to those things because we reduce the cost to them in terms of petrol, in terms of payments to schools. We have, as a Government, made sure that families have got more in their pockets to cushion them against the times that come up, such as this one.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Is the member aware that the four-year increase since we came into Government between 2017 and 2021 of 16.4 percent in rents is exactly the same as the four-year period from 2013 to 2016 when the National Party were in Government?

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister has no responsibility for the 2013 to 2016 period.

SPEAKER: I’ve heard members from that side regularly ask for comparatives between the period that the current Government’s responsible for and the previous one. And that is entirely in line with that. And I just want to say, I think the member actually knows that. He is getting to the point of going from being disorderly to highly disorderly. Supplementary, the Hon Poto Williams.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Yes, I am aware. And, as I answered in the primary question, I am aware of that. But what I do want to say is: this Government recognises that the rental market is under pressure right now, and we continue to support rentals.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! The member has answered the question.

Chris Bishop: When does she expect rents to stabilise or drop under this Government?

Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Auckland, it’s 2.7.

Chris Bishop: I asked her, not you.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I can say is that—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. The member will now stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Chris Bishop: Withdraw and apologise. A point of order.

SPEAKER: If this is disorderly, the member will be leaving the Chamber.

Chris Bishop: Well, Mr Speaker, I asked a question, and as I was finishing asking the question, the Prime Minister answered for me, when the question wasn’t to her; it was to the Associate Minister.

SPEAKER: And the member, for the fifth or sixth time today, from a seat very close to me, referred to me in his interjection. He knows what the rules are; he’s not a stupid member. I can only assume he’s doing it deliberately.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Can I say one thing that I’m enormously proud of this Government, and that is for pressing ahead with increasing the supply of housing. If there is one thing that is going to ensure that we do our best to reduce the cost of housing, it is building supply. And that is what I’m proud that this Government is doing.

Chris Bishop: Does she think that there is a connection between weekly rents increasing by $150 per week since the Government came into office and 4,000 children growing up in motels, and, if so, what is she going to do about it?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What we have to do is increase the supply of housing. That is how we address the issues that that member has just raised. And that is what this Government is doing. The record number of building consents demonstrates the fact that we are well on our way to ensuring that we have got housing supply for our people, and I’m enormously proud of the work of this Government in that space.

Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Can the member confirm the direct correlation between increasing supply and rent increases, by the fact that when you look at the Stats New Zealand rent price index between February 2021 and February 2022, in Auckland increases are 2.7 percent—the area where we have seen record consents?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I can confirm that, and, further, I can confirm in places like Canterbury, where the supply of housing has increased, the same as evident. That demonstrates that increasing supply—

Chris Bishop: Nine years we’ve said that to Labour.

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: —has a positive effect on the cost of housing and therefore on the cost of rents.

Chris Bishop: Oh, turns out supply works!

SPEAKER: Order! I am now going to refer Mr Bishop to Speaker’s ruling 61/1(1): he will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Chris Bishop: For what? I withdraw and apologise, but for what in particular, Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: If the member—

Hon Member: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, I’ll deal with this one first. Does the member not realise when he laughs out loud so the House can hear him, while I’m on my feet, while I’m ruling about him? I was drawing his attention to one Speaker’s ruling; I’ll draw his attention to the second which is 61/2(3), and the consequences of that should probably have occurred already.

Question No. 7—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Government’s action to increase incomes of New Zealand families through a range of measures, including measures to protect lives and livelihoods during the one-in-100-year COVID-19 shock, including the wage subsidy and Resurgence Support Payment; our decision to increase support for those relying on main benefits that will mean 110,000 beneficiaries with children will be better off by an average of $175 per week; the introduction of the Best Start payment and its increase to $65 per week on 1 April; raising the minimum wage, which over time has come from $15.75 to $21.20 as at 1 April; introducing and extending the free Healthy School Lunches programme to over 200,000 students; reducing education costs for parents by increasing funding for deciles 1 to 7 schools that agree not to request donations; and by removing NCEA fees. All of these initiatives are one of the reasons we’ve seen progress against all nine child poverty indicators in New Zealand since we took office. I especially stand by the decision to prioritise these changes over the member’s plan to provide over $9,900 a year to someone earning over $300,000 and not a single dollar to someone earning $45,000. We’ll continue to work to grow the incomes of all New Zealanders, not just the highest-income earners.

David Seymour: A point of order. I find myself in a very difficult position, because the Prime Minister is telling the House what ACT’s policies are and getting it wrong. It actually would give a lot of relief to people—

SPEAKER: Well, the member will resume his seat. I think the member knows that I don’t have responsibility for the answers. If the member thinks that a Minister has got something wrong, there are ways of taking that up, but points of order is not one of them.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Speaking to the point of order—

SPEAKER: No, no. I’ve ruled on the point of order.

David Seymour: A fresh point of order, and I in no way mean to dispute your ruling; however, you said you don’t have responsibility, but, actually, the Standing Orders do require that answers do not contain unnecessary arguments or information. Now, the Prime Minister has, very arguably, done that. She’s not responsible for ACT’s policies and she doesn’t get them right either.

SPEAKER: Sorry, I’m just—

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Mr Speaker, may I speak to the point of order, given you haven’t yet ruled?

SPEAKER: You can. It will give me a chance to look up the references.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Somewhat tentatively, if I could buy you some time—speaking to the point of order, I would be happy to table the member’s own Supplementary Order Paper, dated Tuesday, 15 March, on the tax rates that he is proposing, which is the basis of the answer that I gave.

SPEAKER: No, I think now I’ve got to the point where I’ve got my head around the appropriate Standing Order and it is 367, and that is something which is done in writing. So we’re not going to go any further on this point of order now. If the member wants another supplementary question or if the member wants the first supplementary question, he can ask it.

David Seymour: OK, a fresh point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Unrelated?

David Seymour: Unrelated. In the point of order that the Prime Minister just raised, she offered to table a Supplementary Order Paper which has already been published publicly by the House. Surely she knows that, and it’s disorderly to suggest it.

SPEAKER: I’m trying to work out whether the member wants to stay or not. Supplementary question, David Seymour.

Chris Bishop: It’s a good point.

David Seymour: Point of order?

Chris Bishop: Ha, ha!

SPEAKER: Order! Look, Mr Bishop. No, the member will resume his seat. One thing that—you know, it may be a disadvantage to the member with a new seat; I have sat in that very seat.

Chris Bishop: I don’t think it’s going to be a new seat for me.

SPEAKER: Order! There he goes again—there he goes again. I mean, if I was either of my predecessors, he would have been gone half an hour ago. The member must not run a commentary on Speakers’ rulings. It may be that I can hear him more easily now he is sitting in that seat. I have sat there before and I know that it has advantages and disadvantages. And I’ll say to Mr Goldsmith: his running commentaries are much easier to hear as well now that he is sitting there, but what I’m not going to have is constant comments on my rulings. And if the member’s going to comment on this one, he’s asking to leave the House.

Chris Bishop: Just a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just—

SPEAKER: Well, as long as it’s not going to comment on this ruling.

Chris Bishop: I’m just trying to be helpful.

SPEAKER: If it does, he’s going.

Chris Bishop: I’m just trying to be helpful. Would it be useful if we had a coffee afterwards so that you can understand the difference between sotto voce when I speak and, actually, speaking in public? I’m happy to go for a coffee to discuss—

SPEAKER: Well, I’ll decline the member’s invitation for a date, because I have meetings that go on for some time afterwards. But I will say to the member: just because it’s quiet for him, doesn’t mean I can’t hear it. David Seymour [Interruption] Now, have we got up to supplementary questions yet?

David Seymour: I was just wondering if Chris Bishop would like to have a coffee. [Interruption] Oh, cool—see you later. After question time? Yeah, cool. Supplementary question, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: David Seymour.

David Seymour: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Prime Minister stand by the statement she made to this House just two weeks ago, “To simply carte blanche open the borders would be at a great cost, potentially, to New Zealanders, and we’re not willing to do that at this time.”, and, if so, how does she reconcile that with her statement this morning that “In short, we’re ready to welcome the world back.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Quite easily. We have said, even from the beginning of February, that the right time to open the borders would be at the point that we know when we are, essentially, reaching our peak, and when we have confidence that we are on the other side of it, and that cases are stabilising in our hospitals. Now that we are there, it is easier to anticipate how much longer we may expect some of that pressure on our hospital system.

David Seymour: Is the Prime Minister aware of a poll released on Saturday by news organisation One News showing 75 percent of voters want the border reopened, and, if she was aware, can she reassure New Zealanders it had no effect on her change of stance on opening the border?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It had absolutely no effect. At the beginning of February, we announced our reopening plans, and at that time I said it was highly likely that we would bring forward all of those dates once we had reached the high peak of our outbreak, because, at that point, experts had advised us that it would make less difference to have a large number of people coming in. We also sought expert advice on when that reopening date would be, preceding any of the measures that the member is pointing to. We have never based our decisions on people’s lives and livelihoods on something like a poll; we’ve based it on evidence and advice—I would assert that nor does the member, because I would have thought his policy, to say that everything that we’ve done on COVID should have been reversed because he believes we would have been better off with people dying, doesn’t seem to be based on popularity either.

David Seymour: Will the Prime Minister table all that advice she just referred to, to use the decision in this House, right now so everyone else can read it too?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We’ve always released the advice that we receive from Professor David Skegg. We proactively release our Cabinet papers. We publicly release our public health advice, and it’s contained in the Reconnecting papers that will also be released. The speech where I said that we would likely bring those dates forward, I believe, was on, possibly, 3 February, was live streamed, and is publicly available.

David Seymour: How many cases and hospitalisations will New Zealand avoid by waiting another six weeks to open the border to all tourists, and can she explain why this reduction in cases and hospitalisations is worth the cost of continuing isolation to businesses, families, and people up and down New Zealand?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Just to be clear with the member, what we’ve announced today is the blanket reopening for all tourists from Australia and visa-waiver countries, so it’s actually not purely a decision about lifting isolation. When it comes to how many additional cases we receive, even if you had half, possibly 65 percent of previous returnees, you’re looking at about an additional thousand cases on top of what you’re already receiving in any given week. What we have to be mindful of is the wider impact on our hospital system. So, yes, we have high case numbers now, but we also have high case numbers in our hospitals. Whilst we may have peaked in Auckland, we have not elsewhere, and some of our regional hospitals, of course, they do have smaller numbers of high dependency unit and ICU capacity. We have to balance the need to ensure that people get the hospital care they need with our economic recovery. The final point I would make is that, actually, many operators have welcomed these dates. The 12th of April means that we will capture the vast majority of school holidays and it gives them, albeit a short time, time to prepare for their re-entry trip into the country.

David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister confirm what she just appeared to tell the House, that she’s keeping the border closed for another six weeks to reduce case numbers by a thousand a week in a country that is experiencing anywhere from 120,000 to 140,000 domestic cases right now?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I said, that is only if you had, for instance, half, or roughly half, of those individuals return. And as we’ve always said, all of our decisions have been based on the best advice and evidence that we have, and that advice from the beginning has said—and Professor Skegg gave it just a week ago from the podium publicly—that their advice would be not to reopen generally to tourists until we had reached the peak. We’re not clear we have, but we’ve estimated that by 12 April we will be in the best possible position. Most New Zealanders have welcomed this decision. I would have thought this might be an opportunity for the member to as well.

Hon David Parker: What would have been the outcome for New Zealand’s pandemic in the January period when New Zealanders were on holiday, had the Government opened the borders in December before booster rates were higher?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member is correct that in this House it was the common position of both the member and the Leader of the Opposition to declare 1 December “freedom day”. That was within days of the World Health Organization declaring Omicron a variant of concern. We had only just begun the booster roll-out. Had we opened at that time, I fear that the outcomes in New Zealand would have been vastly different. Some people still trivialise COVID; it is not to be trivialised. Yes, we are working hard to bring as much normality back as possible. But when you look at the likes of Hong Kong that is experiencing similar case rates to New Zealand, the death rate is vastly different because—different in vaccination rates. It made a difference for us to hold Omicron back for the time we did. Seventy-three percent of our eligible population is now vaccinated, and soon we will be ready to safely fully reopen.

David Seymour: What would have been the effect on the pandemic had a country called New Zealand been at the “front of the queue” for procuring vaccines, and the booster roll-out was completed by December and we could open up and save billions of dollars?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member there is just wrong. There was almost no country that had completed a booster roll-out by 1 December.

Question No. 8—Education

8. CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (remote) to the Minister of Education: What actions is the Government taking to support schools and early learning services to keep children and young people safe during the Omicron outbreak?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education) (remote) on behalf of the Minister of Education: Nearly an additional million rapid antigen tests are being made available and easier to access in schools and early learning centres. Schools, kura, and early learning centres can opt in to be provided with rapid antigen tests to give to symptomatic children, young people, and staff, and the people in their households. I know this is an uncertain time for a lot of us, and we want to keep schools and early learning centres open while keeping young people and children healthy and well. The advice and feedback I have received from the education sector is that greater access to rapid antigen testing could help them to do that.

Camilla Belich: Is there any other provision being made for the use of rapid antigen testing in education settings?

Hon JAN TINETTI: On behalf of the Minister, early learning centres will also be able to access rapid antigen tests for reassurance testing so that parents can have confidence in their centre to stay open and for their children to continue to attend. Those centres that opt in will receive enough tests for staff to do twice-weekly testing. Staff at specialist schools and special-needs units will also be able to access rapid antigen testing for this purpose and will be prioritised for distribution, as will staff at school hostels. This is a voluntary short-term measure while we get through the peak of the Omicron outbreak. It will be reviewed again in a few weeks’ time.

Camilla Belich: What other protections do schools and early childhood centres have?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Schools and early learning centres already have very good protections in place, with all staff required to be vaccinated, mask use in year 4 and up, and good ventilation. In fact, portable air cleaners are already being sent to schools to be used in classrooms, staff rooms, and other spaces where there is a need to supplement natural ventilation. We expect all schools will have at least one portable air cleaner by May, with additional cleaners for larger schools. A further procurement is under way to identify suppliers to meet any future need for carbon dioxide monitors and portable air cleaners.

Question No. 9—Oceans and Fisheries

9. Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green) (remote) to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: Will the Government ban bottom trawling on seamounts in New Zealand waters and support similar measures in international waters, including in the South Pacific?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Fisheries New Zealand and the Department of Conservation are establishing a multi-stakeholder forum on managing the effects of trawling on the benthic environment in New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The impacts on seamounts and seamount-like features are being considered as part of the forum deliberations. Following the forum and public consultation, the Government will consider whether to impose additional restrictions on bottom trawling in New Zealand or EEZ waters. Bottom trawling in international South Pacific waters is regulated by the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation—SPRFMO. SPRFMO is due to review the issue at the 2023 commission meeting, and the issue is also being considered intersessionally by SPRFMO members, of which New Zealand is one. New Zealand will play a responsible role in that consideration.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Does he stand by his statement that “I do accept that bottom trawling has environmental impacts and we should be doing our utmost to moderate them.”, and, if so, why has he set up a stakeholder forum rather than taking immediate action to moderate these impacts?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes, and we will achieve that moderation through the steps that we’ve taken.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Has he received any recent advice on creating a framework for defining and identifying habitats of particular significance for fisheries management, in accordance with section 9(c) of the 1996 Fisheries Act, following the report of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser in March 2021, and, if so, what did that advice say?

Hon DAVID PARKER: If the member means “very recently”, no. Since the Chief Science Adviser’s report was received, I have received some advice on that. And it also informed the measures that the Government took in response to the sea-change recommendations in the Hauraki Gulf.

SPEAKER: Sorry, supplementary question, the Hon Eugenie Sage. Just a bit of a reminder: you get two and then you ask them after that. But we’ll keep going until you stop, OK?

Hon Eugenie Sage: Thank you. Does he agree with former Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark, who was reported last week as saying, “It is a concern to me that New Zealand still bottom trawls on sea mounts in the South Pacific high seas areas, and the Tasman Sea … there’s incredible damage being done to our seamounts from this kind of activity.”, and, if so, what action is he taking to avoid this damage?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I agree that bottom trawling causes environmental damage, as I have previously said. I don’t think these things are as easy to solve when you are in Government, as they appear to be after you’ve left.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Does he agree with the Rt Hon Helen Clark, who was also reported as saying last week that she hoped bottom trawling of seamounts in the South Pacific would be banned under a sufficiently strong global oceans treaty, and, if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I have great respect for my former leader, but I don’t agree with all of her prescriptions, which is not to say I disagree with this one.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Does he believe New Zealand’s position as the only country which has commercial fishing vessels bottom trawling on seamounts in the South Pacific is defensible in the face of an urgent global biodiversity crisis; if so, why?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’m not sure that I quite agree with the articulation of the way in which the member describes New Zealand’s position compared with other countries. I would observe that some of the countries that take positions through SPRFMO take different positions in other parts of the world, including areas where they fish.

Question No. 10—Social Development and Employment

10. GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What measures will take effect on 1 April to support people and whānau with the cost of living?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment) (remote): On 1 April, a suite of measures will take effect that will see the Government delivering increases to main benefit rates, student allowance and living costs, childcare assistance income thresholds, Working for Families tax credits, and the orphans benefit and unsupported child’s benefit and foster care allowance. Our Government are also lifting the minimum wage to $21.20, and, on 1 May, over 1.2 million New Zealanders will start receiving the winter energy payment. It is hard for many whānau right now. There is no silver bullet that will fix this issue; however, our Government are continuing to take action to ease the pressures on whānau.

Glen Bennett: How many people will be better off as a result of these changes?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The changes taking effect on 1 April will see more money in the pockets of approximately 1.25 million individuals. Compared to 2017 policy settings, and as a result of our increases to welfare support since taking office, 364,000 beneficiaries will be better off by, on average, $109 per week—increasing to $133 per week during the 2022 winter period. Of these beneficiaries, 109,000 beneficiaries with children will be better off by, on average, $175 per week, increasing to $207 per week during the 2022 winter period. It’s important people are aware of these changes and know what they’re eligible for. We encourage people to use the Ministry of Social Development’s online tool, which helps people find out what assistance they may be able to receive based on their individual or family circumstances.

Glen Bennett: What other changes have been made to lift incomes for people and whānau?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: In addition to the changes outlined before, our Government has continuously worked to lift incomes and improve support for people in need. Over the course of the last term and a half, our Government has raised benefit levels, removed the sanctions which impact children the most, invested $5.5 billion through the families package, increased the minimum wage year on year, raised the family tax credit, indexed benefits to average wage increases, raised abatement thresholds, and invested heavily in job training. We are seeing good progress, but we absolutely accept that there is more to do.

Question No. 11—Justice

11. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Justice: Is the Government taking all possible steps to reduce violent crime and to prioritise the needs of victims of crime?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): The Government has a significant programme of work under way in both of those areas. We’re taking steps to protect victims of family violence, including the excellent work undertaken by Minister Davidson to develop New Zealand’s first strategy to eliminate family and sexual violence. We’ve also introduced legislation to keep firearms out of the hands of high-risk offenders, and we’re also reforming the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act to hit gangs where it hurts: to seize their assets and money when they can’t prove it has been legitimately earned. Last year, this Government also passed the Sexual Violence Legislation Act, which makes changes to trial processes and evidence rules to reduce the unnecessary re-traumatisation that sexual violence complainants can experience in court. We’ve increased funding for the likes of the Victim Assistance Scheme to ensure that more victims get the support they need. And we’ve also invested in practical programmes to keep victims safe, like the Women’s Refuge, Whānau Protect, and the National Home Safety Service. All of these measures are designed to make sure we’re reducing violent crime and prioritising the needs of victims.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How does he argue these steps have been effective, when violent crime has increased by 21 percent over the past two years, while convictions have reduced 19 percent over the same time period?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: If the member is referring to some of the statistics that were released yesterday, I would also note that the overall number of charges that are being put on have reduced. So I would ask that the member take a glass half-full approach as to the current glass half-empty approach.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does the Government accept responsibility for the 50 percent increase in gang numbers under its watch, and does he accept this is why many New Zealanders are seeing an increase of lawlessness and violence in their communities?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I stand by the Government’s track record to make sure we give the police the legislation to clamp down on organised crime—as I have mentioned, the moves around the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act, and also our commitment regarding funding to the police to increase the number of police on the beat.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How can the Government possibly argue it prioritises victims, when the resolution rate, which measures when formal proceedings are brought after someone has suffered a violent crime, has declined from nearly 70 percent in 2017 to a mere 47 percent in 2021? That’s fewer than half.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I stand by our track record to support victims. As I mentioned, this Government has increased the support to the likes of Victim Support and the Victim Assistance Scheme by the tune, I believe, of around $7 million compared to when that party was last in Government.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Supplementary?

SPEAKER: No, the member’s used all his supplementaries. That concludes oral questions—oh, sorry, one more question.

Question No. 12—Tourism

12. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) (remote) to the Minister of Tourism: What announcements has the Government recently made about the future of tourism for Aotearoa New Zealand?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Tourism) (remote): This morning, the Prime Minister and I announced that international tourists will be welcomed back to New Zealand earlier than expected as the Government accelerates the country’s economic recovery. From 11.59 p.m. on Tuesday, 12 April, Australians can travel to New Zealand. From 11.59 p.m. on Sunday, 1 May, vaccinated travellers from visa-waiver countries and those with valid visitor visas will also be able to travel to New Zealand. To support that reopening, I’ve announced a new tourism marketing campaign launched in Australia by Tourism New Zealand to build demand for travel to New Zealand as we prepare to open borders for our first international visitors. That campaign is seeking to persuade Australians that our unique landscapes and Kiwi hospitality and friendliness are “Within Your Wildest Dreams”. Tourism New Zealand has been working hard over the past two years to keep “Brand New Zealand” alive in the minds of international travellers and tourists. And with the announcement today, we’re well and truly gearing up to welcome visitors to our little piece of paradise.

Shanan Halbert: Supplementary. Why is it important—

SPEAKER: The member may have a supplementary, but I’m going to warn the Minister that his answer was far too long, and this is the only supplementary he’s going to get.

Shanan Halbert: Why is it important that Aotearoa New Zealand is still marketed as a tourism destination?

Hon STUART NASH: It was a very important announcement today, Mr Speaker. It’s a shame that you’ve cut me off from one of my supplementaries. But anyway, reopening to Australia—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member—he can’t resume his seat because he’s sitting down already, but he’s going to stop talking. The member has commented on one of my rulings in the way that I’ve been admonishing members not to do today. That will now conclude oral questions—

Hon Todd McClay: Point of order.

SPEAKER: That now concludes oral questions. A point of order, the Hon Todd McClay.

Hon Todd McClay: Well, Mr Speaker, thank you. I was going to say a better punishment for the Minister would have been to offer the Opposition a supplementary question on this.

SPEAKER: Now, the member’s team sacrificed a number of supplementary questions by being out of order. If the member really wants to get supplementary questions, he needs to work with his whips or work with his front bench not to do that.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Well, it’s been another week of change over in the National Party. We’ve seen some shifting of the deckchairs once again, and I would like to welcome Chris Bishop to the housing portfolio. I know he was probably hoping for finance, but I’m hoping he’ll enjoy the housing portfolio. I’d also like to offer him some helpful advice because that’s the kind of person I am. I too have been an occupant of that chair, that seat in the House. I would like to call it the chair of doom, and suggest that no amount of attempting to date the Speaker will get you out of the fact that everything you say can and will be heard.

But this has also been a week when we’ve seen significant improvements for New Zealand families. We’ve seen that the Government, who has provided stable and united leadership through the most challenging of events for New Zealanders over the last couple of years, is showing that that is exactly the approach it will take in response to our recovery and how New Zealanders are faring. I do talk about the 25c-a-litre cut that we’ve applied to fuel, and this is already making a positive impact on New Zealanders’ pockets. They are already saving between $11 and $17 a tank every time they fill up their car. They will already be saving, from around the beginning of April, every time they get on public transport. This is significant, and this is going to make a difference.

We are a Government that has put the cost of living first and to the fore since we came into office in 2017. We’ve done a number of things, but there are some significant measures that will come into play on 1 April that will make a real and meaningful change to people’s lives. I’d like to point to the 60 percent of New Zealand families who will get an increase under Working for Families of an average of around $20. I do not think we can underestimate the rises to superannuation that we’re about to see: $52 a fortnight for someone on their own; $80 for a couple. That is something that I know all superannuitants will be celebrating. I also point to the fact that the winter energy payment will re-begin its payments on 1 May. I’d also like to point to the fact that we’ll see rises in student allowances. These are the kind of things that will make real and significant differences to people’s lives and to their pockets.

We can put what Labour is proposing and already doing—we’re already seeing that real change—against the proposals that we’ve seen from the National Party. We’re seeing a reheat—a reheat of Simon Bridges’ policies from the time he was leader. So I’d like to acknowledge Mr Bridges’ retirement from this House and the work the National Party is still continuing to draw on: the kinds of tax policies that are going to mean those on medium and low incomes will see something like $2.16 in their pockets a week, whereas those on the highest incomes are going to see thousands. I think on my rough calculation that I’m set to get somewhere between $7,000 and $8,000 under the National Party proposals, while many of the people I represent will get $2.16. This is not something that is going to benefit ordinary New Zealanders.

But what we’ve also heard is another reheat of the familiar “Bermuda Triangle” from National, which is that somehow we’re going to spend all this money on tax cuts for the highest-earning New Zealanders, but they’re saying that we won’t have to cut services. Services will have to be cut. We will see cuts to education, we will see cuts to health, and we will see cuts to housing. I’m already hearing the rhetoric from the National Party that they sound out, like they’re gearing up for a sell-off of State houses. I’d put the cutting of the Auckland regional fuel tax—I ask the rest of New Zealand how they feel about a party that was only offering relief for Auckland. There are many parts of the country that, indeed, were paying more for their fuel than Auckland. So this is a party that is not only out of touch but it also doesn’t realise New Zealand exists beyond the Bombay Hills.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, isn’t a week a long time in politics, because last week, petrol hit $3 a litre and MPs’ inboxes around the country were filled with constituents saying, “I can’t afford to top up my car.”; inflation was at 5.9 percent, twice the rate of wage inflation—so, in other words, Kiwis are going backwards—food prices are up 6.8 percent in a year, the largest increase in a decade, and it wasn’t, according to the Prime Minister, a crisis. She used every word under the sun she could possibly think of to call it anything other than a crisis. It was challenge, it was a problem, and she acknowledged the difficulty many people were facing, and what happened last week was there was a poll which showed the National Party ahead of Labour for the first time in two years. What did the Government do? They panicked. They went into panic mode, and they were embarrassed over the weekend into announcing on Monday a 25c reduction in fuel tax and road-user charges. Panicked—an embarrassed response from a Government that is out of ideas and is out of energy.

The Prime Minister refused to call it the cost of living crisis that all New Zealanders know they are experiencing every time they go to the supermarket, every time they go to the petrol bowser and fill up, and every time they pay their landlord. For the third of New Zealanders who live in rental accommodation, rents are up 150 bucks a week in the last four years. In Lower Hutt, Mr Speaker—an area I know you know well—rents are up 200 bucks a week in four years. Up from $375 when Labour came to office to $575 per week in Lower Hutt alone, and this is replicated in many places around the country. The simple reality is this Government is addicted to spending, and they can say all they like that it’s the fault of Ukraine or it’s the fault of international factors. Why Vladimir Putin’s got anything to do with the rents that people in Lower Hutt pay, I don’t know, but I’m sure we’ll hear more from Poto Williams about that in due course.

It is of course true that there are international factors driving fuel prices, but inflation of 5.9 percent is caused by Grant Robertson’s addiction to spending: a 68 percent increase since 2018. Now, I’ve got a question for New Zealanders: do they think Government services are 68 percent better than in 2018? Are there 68 percent more hip operations being done? No. Are there 68 percent more elective surgeries being done? No. Has there been a 68 percent reduction in child poverty? No. Has there been a 68 percent reduction in the number of people receiving the jobseeker benefit for longer than a year? No. Actually, child poverty has increased and the number of people on long-term welfare dependency has increased by 50,000 people, so we’re spending more, but we’re not necessarily getting more.

To make matters worse, Grant thinks it’s all OK—

SPEAKER: Order!

CHRIS BISHOP: Grant Robertson thinks he’s all OK, because he’s proposed in this Budget the single biggest permanent increase in New Zealand Government spending in history: $6 billion in the operating allowance, which from this year onwards will be baked into Government spending. In other words, it gets locked into the forward Estimates and it’s a permanent increase—$6 billion in this year alone. Even if you take out the National Party’s very sensible and very pragmatic proposals to just reduce income tax thresholds to what they were when Labour came into office, just what they were four years ago or 4½ years ago—even if you take the cost of that, which is about $1.6 billion to 1.7 billion, leaving Mr Robertson $4.3 billion, it’s still the single biggest increase in the operating allowance in New Zealand history.

So this idea that Grant Robertson is a fiscal conservative is just belied by the reality. He is addicted to spending and New Zealanders are paying the price for it. We think tax thresholds should be adjusted for inflation. We think that’s a reasonable and sensible step to take that would put real money in the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders to allow them to get ahead at a time of a cost of living crisis.

There are two big problems with this Government. The first is they think that good intentions are a substitute for good policy. We all care in this House; it’s what you do that actually makes the difference. The second problem is they think that Government has the answer to everything, that Government can do everything, and that every social problem is solved by more Government and more Government spending, and we know from the experiment over the last four years that the truth is the opposite.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Well, I enjoyed hearing the speech from my colleague opposite—the speech that he wrote two days ago when he thought that he was going to be the National Party finance spokesperson—but it was the same old story from the National Party. The same old story: wide-roaming criticisms of Government spending, but did we hear a single proposal for what they would actually cut because that’s what it comes down to. What actually is the vision? What actually is the policy from the members opposite about how they would secure our recovery and how they would take New Zealand forward, because it’s all very well for members opposite to stand up in this House and wax lyrical about Government spending, but it don’t mean nothing and it’s not a plan unless they can say what they would actually do.

So far, we’ve heard about boats: cameras on shipping boats. That is pretty much the one tangible proposal we have heard from the Opposition. If that party opposite, as per Mr Bishop’s speech just now, genuinely believes that there are billions of dollars of overspending within the Government accounts, then start naming it now so that the New Zealand people know what they’ll be getting if they vote for that party’s agenda. I’m very happy to tell the House what that agenda will be: it’ll be cuts to health, it’ll be cuts to housing, it’ll be cuts to education, and, most foolishly of all as we come out from a pandemic, it is a party that is unwilling to make any tough decisions and make any calls around building a robust and good health system for our country.

That isn’t the only confusion, the only lack of detail, that we’ve had over the last week, because I have to say that I’ve been watching very closely the comments of Mr Christopher Luxon on the matter of the minimum wage over recent weeks. We’ve had a range of positions from the Leader of the Opposition. First, we heard that he was very concerned about the possible impact of a 10c increase on the price of his trim piccolo because the person serving him might have to be paid the minimum wage. We did then have a bold position and a noble one from the deputy leader and new finance spokesperson, Nicola Willis, who told us that actually the National Party isn’t opposed to the Government’s recent increase in the minimum wage. That got brought back into line pretty quickly. On breakfast television this morning, though, Mr Luxon was very happy to tell us that, in fact, “Well, we’re very supportive of increases in the minimum wage.” before telling us that he opposed the one that we made last year at the same time as we got unemployment down to 3.2 percent.

Well, I think it would be very helpful indeed for the House and for the country for Mr Luxon and the National Party to actually just narrow it down a little bit to just the one position on the minimum wage because it’s my view that the cleaners, the security guards, the bus drivers, the supermarket workers who serve every single member of this House and who help to make our society work and who have got our country through COVID need to know what’s at stake for them. This is a Government which has stood up for our low-wage workers, which is proud of the fact that we’ve retained their standards of living and kept unemployment low during the crisis of COVID, and we don’t actually know what that side stands for. Well, I think we know; they just won’t say it. It’s this side of the House which stands with them.

The challenge that we have here is that at this time, as we move into a recovery from COVID-19, we need steady and focused leadership that is actually focused on dealing with the long-term issues that New Zealand faces, and that is what this Government is focused on. Our country has come together so well to deal with the challenge of COVID-19, and now is the time to recover and to move forward. That is why the announcements in recent days about New Zealand’s plan for reconnecting with the world in a careful and staged way are so important. We can see the way forward there for our businesses and for our tourism, but if we had to follow the lines of the Opposition last year, we would have opened up New Zealand to enormous health risk, and I’m so proud that we held firm there and we have a steady and focused plan.

Our economic recovery plan is about making sure that we continue to invest in the infrastructure that New Zealand needs for the future, including the record transport infrastructure spend that our Government is rolling out to build the infrastructure of the future. I was really pleased this morning, Mr Speaker, to visit the Hutt workshops—a place that you would be very familiar with—with the member for Hutt South, Ginny Andersen, where we saw the huge work that is going on to follow up on the Government’s investments to make sure that we have a rail system that’s resilient and reliable after years of it running down under that previous Government. Two weeks ago, I was very pleased to visit the first stage of the Takitimu North Link in Tauranga, funded by the Government: $650 million and a critical piece of transport infrastructure, employing New Zealanders, employing apprenticeships, and partnering with local iwi and Māori to get people into work on that important project.

Of course, this is a Government that’s focused on those issues that matter to New Zealand, and we’ve dealt with it in the last few days, dealing with those cost of living pressures in a way through fuel excise duty and road-user charges and making sure that public transport is more affordable for the people of our country. This side of the House is focused on securing New Zealand’s recovery.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party today to talk about law and order, and specifically about gangs, because we’ve found that from that side of the House we’ve had a lot of laws but not much order.

Every day we open a newspaper, we turn on the radio, we switch on the television, we even check our social media, and we see lots of stories of gang-related serious and often violent crime in our communities. Why is this happening? Why is there an increase? I can tell you why. It’s because on that side, they are soft on crime. We have a Labour Government that has allowed gangs to grow at over 50 percent in numbers during their watch.

What are they doing? Well, let’s have a look, shall we. The Minister of Police, Poto Williams, must be wearing Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, because we don’t see her out there with the front-line police. In fact, do the front-line police know her name? Do they know who she is?

What about the Minister of Justice, Kris Faafoi? He seems more interested in locking up people for hate speech than for committing a gang crime. In Kris Faafoi’s world, calling someone is mean name is far worse than dragging someone out of their car and beating them to near death, unprovoked.

He wants to do away with three-strikes legislation, which keeps our most serious and violent offenders locked up. In Labour’s world, the message sent to our communities is that if you join a gang and commit a crime, it’s no big deal. Heck, you may even get $2.7 million to help you get off the drugs that that gang probably got you hooked on in the first place. But if you dare say something that Labour doesn’t agree with, then they’ll pass a law to have you locked up. No wonder the gangs are feeling empowered.

Gone are the days where you had pockets of bad behaviour that wore leather patches in your local neighbourhood. Now you see patches everywhere. They’re on T-shirts, they’re on hoodies, they’re on jackets, they’re on faces. Lots of new laws; where is the order? The Government blames the 501s exported from Australia. The reality is that the 501s only make a tiny proportion of this growing gang problem. The truth is it’s a home-grown problem. More are recruited locally.

Labour promised our communities 1,800 police. Good old Poto Williams—I congratulate her for admitting that Labour are not going to make that target even when the Prime Minister still won’t.

But it’s not all bad news. You see, ACT is not just a party of effective and good opposition; we have great propositions that will keep our communities safe. Rather than making police numbers a political football and making promises that we can’t keep, we will take the politics out of policing and increase police numbers in line with population growth.

There’s also a bill in my name that will shortly be heard. It is a criminal proceeds and recovery amendment bill that will allow the courts to seize gang assets upon finding an illegally held firearm when doing a raid. Does this sound effective and good to everyone in the House—yeah? Well, Labour doesn’t think so. They indicated that they won’t be supporting it.

But wait, there’s more: we have a gang injunction bill in the ballot box that would allow the courts to impose restrictions on gang members to curb that hunger for crime and violence. This bill would take away the power from individuals within the gangs and actually give it back to police.

We can hand this all to Labour on a plate, but it appears that politics, not communities, drive their decisions. The tide is turning and the polls are showing it. The gangs should be scared. ACT will not be soft on crime as this Government is. We will aspire to ensure that a child’s best option is to get an education and to grow up and get a job and contribute to our society and the betterment of it, not join gangs and wreak havoc. ACT will ensure that we have healthy and thriving communities with good laws and more order. Thank you.

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Conservation): It’s always a delight to speak in this House, and particularly after a member of the ACT Party. What that member Nicole McKee just said is that New Zealanders want to grow up and get a good education and get a job. Well, that member should be on this side of the House, because have I got a story for you: we are currently sitting at 3.4 percent unemployment. Labour is the party of the workers. Labour is the party of people, to get them into jobs, good jobs, and what we are doing is ensuring that we look after workers in decent employment. That is our mantra and I am so glad to lead on from that member on the opposite side of the benches, who could have been singing our praises; I think she was.

What this Government has done over the course of the past couple of years: well, we’ve had a Prime Minister that has led us through some of the most turbulent times that our generation has ever seen. Two years into a global pandemic, and we have had some of the most stable, united—good word for the Opposition to learn this week, particularly this week. They thought they had a good poll and then, oh, they still couldn’t get united and get themselves over the line—anyway, united. We have remained steadfast in the face of adversity.

Now, as we come past this second year of a global pandemic, we also have over on the other side of the world a terrible situation emerging, which has flow-through consequences not just in Europe and the surrounding countries around Ukraine and Russia and the like but it has flow-through consequences through the rest of the world.

This week, we saw this Government do what Governments should: listen to the people. We saw the issues that are emerging across the board, and what did we do? We listened. Now, the first thing that we could do and do swiftly is that we could make moves to cut 25c a litre off fuel excise, and not only that: led here by the Hon Michael Wood, we could cut 50 percent off public transport costs, because there are people that rely on public transport throughout the country, and you get bang for your buck two times there. Not only do we cut the costs to people in the pocket but, of course, we help address the issues of climate change by getting more and more New Zealanders into public transport and helping shift behaviour.

This is a Government that has really prioritised the lifting of incomes and tackling the cost of living since 2017. Now, in a couple of weeks, on 1 April, we are going to see 110,000 beneficiaries with children—they will be better off by $175 per week, increasing to $207 per week during the 2022 winter period, and 363,000 beneficiaries will be better off, on average, by about $109 per week, increasing to $133 per week during the winter period, when the energy incentives kick in.

We have worked really hard to lift wages here in Aotearoa. A new nurse is paid over $10,000 more per year than what they were in 2017, when the other side of the House left the Treasury benches, and experienced nurses are paid $16,000 more than what they were in 2017. A new police officer today, compared to when the other side left this side of the House—they’re paid $12,000 more per year.

This side of the House is focused on increasing incomes and reducing costs for families, and this is legacy stuff that we’re building on—legacy stuff that dates back to the days of Sir Michael Cullen, who introduced family packages. We’ve increased those and we’ve wrapped around them by providing targeted assistance to low and middle income families with kids. The Families Package has benefited 330,000 families in its first year, and the winter energy payment provides additional support to a million New Zealanders every single winter. At a time when we know that costs are hitting their pockets and it’s happening across the world, this side of the House has our people at its centre. Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Mr Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity. Well, we’ve had another week of drama in New Zealand. The cost of living crisis rages on, where Kiwis are struggling to afford their everyday needs, wages are going up 2.6 percent but the cost of living is going up 6 percent at least—it’s much more than that in many other areas when people visit the supermarket. We’ve seen the return of the scourge of inflation in this country, such as we haven’t seen for 30 years, and this Government—this Labour Government—has lost control of the economy and lost control of New Zealanders’ living standards because it hasn’t been able to discipline its spending.

Then we’ve seen the destabilisation of the post-War order in Europe, and that of course is concerning many New Zealanders and many people around the world. What does that mean for us as a country? What does it mean for peace and stability?

Another thing we’ve seen this week is we’ve seen a team of groundsmen outside, fixing the front lawn after the chaos and riots that we had in front of this Parliament only a few weeks ago. It’s a reflection of the breakdown of law and order in this country.

We’ve also seen the retirement of Simon Bridges, and I do want to pay tribute to Simon—a good friend. He’s made a great contribution in this House and to New Zealand. He’s fought hard for Kiwis and fought hard for New Zealanders, and we wish him and his family all the very best.

What else have we had? We’ve had a poll. The people of New Zealand should thank TVNZ because that poll led directly to a cut in petrol prices, so people can enjoy the cut that this Government has done because they saw that their popularity was going down the gurgler. All of the list MPs up the back there realised that they were going to be having to go looking for a job. They didn’t have any chance of getting a decent job and they were panicking, and they all went into caucus in a mad panic and they’ve reduced the petrol prices. So people should be very thankful to TVNZ for that.

We’ve also had this new team put in place by Chris Luxon. I’m very proud to be part of his team taking the fight to this Government alongside Nicola Willis, who is going to be a great finance spokesperson and will hold Grant Robertson’s feet to the fire.

The challenges that we face in this country continue to be, fundamentally, and first and foremost, the need to develop sustainable economic growth that can sustain genuinely world-class incomes in New Zealand so that New Zealanders have the opportunities for themselves and their families to succeed, to prosper, to do well, and to be ambitious for your family. To look after your family and do well—that’s what we want. That’s what we want in this country and what we aspire to in this country. But what we’re seeing from this Government is an economy that’s based purely and simply on debt-fuelled Government spending on a colossal scale and incredibly low interest rates, which is not sustainable because it’s leading to inflation. Also, ultimately, if you can’t control your spending, you end up overwhelmed with debt.

There is no reference anywhere in Government policies, really, to growing the economy, or improving our competitiveness internationally. You’d never hear Michael Wood talking about how we’re going to improve our competitiveness; only how he’s going to increase costs for businesses. Their idea of lifting incomes is to lift the minimum wage and to increase public sector pay rates. Now that’s part of the job of any Government, but that’s not going to help everybody. That’s not how you increase wages sustainably in the long term. You increase wages sustainably in the long term by having a more productive economy that produces goods that the rest of the world wants and is prepared to pay for. That needs a competitive market, and part of that is flexible labour markets, and I’m going to be fighting hard against the proposed rigidity that this Government wants to put back in our labour markets with their so-called, inappropriately named fair pay agreements.

Then we need to talk about delivery. This Government, of course, famously hasn’t delivered on housing and will never deliver on housing. It hasn’t delivered much on transport. After four years of talking about the slow tram down Dominion Road, it hasn’t started. It’s colossally overpriced and it’s a very bad idea. I haven’t yet met anybody in Auckland who thinks that of all the priorities in Auckland transport, a slow tram down Dominion Road is the most important priority for the next $26 billion we’re going to spend, or whatever it is.

On justice—oh my goodness, on justice—we’ve got an increase in violent crime, we’ve got 50 percent increase in gang members, we’ve got a sense of lawlessness on the streets, and we’ve got very slow access to justice in our courts, and what’s this Government doing about it? Not very much. They haven’t delivered the police that they promised, they are focused on hate speech—well, let’s see what they come up with there—but when it comes to actually keeping New Zealanders safe, they’ve made no progress at all. Instead, what they focus on is dividing New Zealanders between those that they want to support and those that they don’t.

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

I was hoping that Paul Goldsmith, the member that just contributed across the way, would actually share some of their insights or their policies that are going to address the many challenges that this side of the House has had the actual privilege to manage, but I didn’t hear one policy from that particular member that I could just actually debate. So I’ll leave that there, because I want to turn to what this Government has done in securing our recovery as a nation, given the enormous impacts that COVID-19 has had in terms of protecting our people and, of course, minimising the impact of COVID-19 in our community.

So I want to turn to the portfolio I am responsible for, and that is customs. Today, I want to add my congratulations to the Customs Service team who busted New Zealand’s largest seizure of cocaine—700 kilograms—in Tauranga today. So I want to send—and I’m sure all members of this House will send their congratulations to the Customs team working in conjunction with, obviously, our New Zealand Police. Members from ACT talked about our law and order. This is just a small sample of our response. The biggest investment in front-line police has been instigated by this side of the House. Let’s not forget that.

The interception of drugs in very trying times when borders are closed goes to the heart of what Customs have done in keeping our communities safe with today’s seizures. But it’s protecting people and minimising the impact of COVID-19 in our communities I want to also talk about, because I’m proud of what Customs do in the trade space, with the secure trade lane that we are doing with Australia and, hopefully, Singapore. The work we do in the Secure Exports Scheme to ensure those exporters’ goods get to market is an intervention that I’m really proud that Customs has continued to do during these last two years.

So while we are all focused on ensuring our communities are safe—which this side has done by enormous investments in our health system, our hauoras, and our iwi providers around the country to ensure our most vulnerable communities, particularly Māori, are protected during this incredibly trying time—it is important to acknowledge the investment and the leadership on this side, under the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, to address, not one, not two, but multiple crises, and putting people first has always been our economic recovery. But now we need to up the ante in terms of securing recovery and our economic investment, and that is what this side of the House has heard, because we are all electorate MPs—a majority of us on this side—and we enjoy the returns back to our electorate to hear the struggle that’s happening. But I am proud of the Families Package. I am proud of what that is delivering in terms of reducing children’s poverty. I’m also, like I said, proud of the investment in the housing build, the biggest that we have seen in this nation, and we are working hard to build that.

I want to pivot to our Māori Ministers, particularly in the Whānau Ora space. The largest investment in working alongside our Whānau Ora providers, up and down the country, has delivered the vaccination rates that keep our people safe, and I want to acknowledge all our Ministers and also our providers.

I want to talk about Māori trades training, because we’ve seen an unprecedented number of young rangatahi and not-so-young rangatahi who have benefited from this side’s investment in growing trades and sustainable employment for our people, and I want to acknowledge that. Papakāinga: you’re seeing the largest growth of Māori homes—Māori homeownership and Māori homes—on Māori whenua. That is a policy that I’m very proud of on this side of the House, and the continuation in investment is creating homes for our people.

But the big one for me and for every Māori member on this side is the marae oranga programme, where almost every marae around this country has not only been renovated but we’ve created employment opportunities for those Māoris on the trades training scheme. It is an absolute delight to know that as we travel around the country, marae, who have always struggled to maintain their infrastructure, have been invested in. On this side it’s a contribution to our identity as a nation but it also builds resilience into our employment, and I’m really proud on this side to be involved with that.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): When New Zealanders are facing a cost of living crisis, is it responsible for this Government to be proposing to spend up to $29.2 billion on a slow tram from the Auckland CBD to the airport—$29.2 billion—which amounts up to $16,000 per household for all New Zealand households? Let me remind this House of what this Government promised. The Leader of the Opposition at the time, Jacinda Ardern, said in 2017 that light rail will be built to Mount Roskill from the Auckland CBD by 2021. Well, last time I looked at my calendar, it’s 2022, and nothing has been done about this.

But the problem is, not only has nothing been done—their promise has failed—but the cost keeps going up every time they keep talking about it, and the Minister of Transport had the audacity to speak in the House about what parts of the Budget should be cut or where should savings be found. Well, I can tell you that “Mr Doolittle”, the Minister of Transport, could find heaps of ways to try and save money by stopping wasting money in his transport portfolio: $50 million for a cycle bridge—$50 million for a cycle bridge—cancelled; $35 million for Let’s Get Wellington Moving. Well, nothing’s happened. All they’ve done is propose a pedestrian crossing and slowing a few streets down. Let’s Get Wellington Moving has become “Let’s Get Wellington Consulting”.

And what about that Te Huia train between Hamilton and Auckland: $90 million, and—guess what!—a subsidy of $280 per passenger per trip. It’s faster to go in your ute between Hamilton and Auckland and it emits more than going in your ute. There’s some more money that could be saved by the Minister of Transport.

But let’s get back to light rail, with the $29.2 billion price tag. It promised to be about $1.3 billion in 2017. Then it went up to $6 billion as soon as they got into Government, and some officials told them to be a bit careful. Then it became $10 billion when it was going down the twin-track process. The twin-track process sounded very exciting; it didn’t go anywhere. Then it got cancelled just before the election by some coalition partner before coming back in this term and being put forward as an indicative business case, which said $14.6 billion.

But wait, there’s more: Treasury has now come out with its advice, where it said it could cost up to $29.2 billion. I think the public needs to hear what Treasury advised this House about this project. It said about this project that “Based on the lack of detail provided on how urban development will be achieved, we have low confidence that these benefits will be realised, resulting in poor public value.”

But wait, there’s more: they went on to say, “We are concerned that overall affordability of the project is not factoring into analysis or advice from the Establishment Unit.” They’re not even taking into account the actual thing called affordability. During a cost of living crisis, they weren’t even thinking about affordability. They then said, “It may be timely to remind the Unit of the need to ensure affordability of the project is a key consideration.”

But wait, there’s more: they then went on to say, “We are supportive of consideration of options to progress the project and note the full suite of options should also include”—wait—“stopping the project.” Well, how’s that gone, Mr Wood? Did that go into the advice? Did that go into the consideration that Cabinet took into account when announcing in January the preferred option? They also said, “Don’t come up with a preferred option till you’ve done a bit more work.”

Well, I come back to my original question. During a cost of living crisis in New Zealand, is it responsible for this Government to be proposing to spend up to $29.2 billion on a slow tram from the CBD in Auckland down to the airport at a price of up to $16,000 per household in New Zealand? I know what people in my electorate are coming up and saying: “We can’t afford to fill up the tank of gas to get to work this week. The rent’s gone up another 50 bucks. The price of food and groceries at the supermarket—it’s becoming more expensive.” These are the issues which people in New Zealand are caring about. The Government should take the advice, stop the project, and actually focus on the cost of living crisis that New Zealanders are facing.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (remote): Today marks a huge milestone, and it really shows we are out of the COVID response and into COVID recovery. Today we announced the opening up of our borders to tourists from 1 April, and closing our border was one of the first actions we took to keep people safe. It worked. We have one of the lowest COVID mortality rates in the world and one of the strongest economies to emerge from the pandemic, and it’s now time to open up. Like so many New Zealanders, I am grateful that we had the borders closed and we had time to get vaccinated and we had a plan to keep our economy going, despite the significant challenges.

People are doing it hard. The cost of living has risen. That’s through international events pushing up inflation. We’ve had a pandemic. There’s a war in Ukraine. We’ve had a housing crisis, which has been decades in the making. National has a script which involves a tick every time they mention “cost of living crisis”. We heard that admitted in this House last week from the shadow Attorney-General, Chris Penk. So, Paul Goldsmith and Simeon Brown, well done today, but it wasn’t enough to get either of you National’s finance role.

But let’s do some myth-busting about the National Party. Yes, people are doing it hard, but the myth is that National actually cares about those who are doing it hard. The fact is that National is planning to target tax breaks to the highest earners rather than those most affected by rising prices. National wants to get rid of the top tax rate of 39 percent, a tax that affects only the top 3 percent of earners. So we’ve heard that those earning $250,000 per year or more would get a $5,000 tax break. Meanwhile, the lowest-income earners—cleaners and so on—would get $2.15 per week, and those lower-income earners are mainly women. Women are doing it hard. Mothers are doing it hard—mothers who are juggling kids and jobs and working from home and dealing with historical pay gaps that see some groups of women earning an average of close to 30 percent of Pākehā men.

So myth number two is that National and ACT care about women. National and ACT are election bedfellows, so it’s good to test how that marriage might work. Chris Luxon says he’s a feminist, even though he has spoken against abortion reform and voted against safe areas for women having abortions. David Seymour has even said on record that he would cut the Ministry for Women.

Now, it’s great that National finally has a woman in the National Party finance role, and I congratulate Nicola Willis. I would ask that member: would she agree to cut the Ministry of Women, and would National and ACT delete free period products in schools—something introduced by this Government?

I raise that because the Opposition maths doesn’t add up. If they are cutting tax without reducing infrastructure spend, then the money has to come from somewhere. The indications from the so-called feminist Opposition benches is that the first place those cuts will take place will impact on women.

Why is that important? Well, we know that policies which support women make a significant difference to ending child poverty, because the most at-risk children are in one-parent households led by women. Now, the data shows that we have a lot of progress there, but there’s still a long way to go. So I’d like to hear what Nicola Willis has to say about that too, because child poverty can’t end without policies which elevate the financial status of women.

Myth number three is that National is better at managing the economy—not true. There’s report after report that comes to the Finance and Expenditure Committee which talks about the good performance of the economy—outstanding performance—record unemployment, and so on. We’ve heard about record manufacturing results in today’s question time from the Minister of Finance, and that success has been deliberate. We have used economic stimulus to keep people in jobs to maintain confidence and certainty, and part of our response to the business sector has been targeted COVID support payments. That is to continue our commitment to provide cash flow and certainty for business.

Now, under National, how can we have confidence and certainty when there’s a constant change in leadership, flip-flopping on borders, a succession of finance spokespeople, fiscal holes in their budgets, and policies which actually advantage men in the workplace? What is true is that National is better at increasing the inequality gap, including inequality for women.

We have heard many of the things today around housing. We have heard things about “Who do we trust?”. Our recovery is already well on track. We’ve heard from my colleagues about the difference that we will make to people by increasing the minimum wage from $15.75 in 2017 to $21.20 from 1 April next month. Now, that’s something that Chris Luxon complained about in November last year. He said that that was something that business would have to stomach. Well, I say to the member, women have had to stomach pay inequality for decades. The women—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time is up.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green) (remote): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. There have been a series of in-depth and really well-researched reports from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Rt Hon Simon Upton, in recent months. They’ve highlighted the shortcomings in our environmental research system and funding for environmental research, how well our biosecurity system deals with native ecosystem weeds, and the fate of chemicals in the environment.

Today, the parliamentary Finance and Expenditure Committee and Environment Committee had a joint briefing from the Parliamentary Commissioner on a report he’s released on wellbeing Budgets and the environment. That report looks at the way the environment has or hasn’t been included in the process of constructing wellbeing Budgets. It was published last year, and it looks at how and why the environment has or hasn’t been well integrated into the formation of Budget packages.

In Budget 2021, we saw that the oceans really missed out in terms of funding. There was no extra funding for oceans, no changes in the fisheries appropriations in Budget 2021, no new policies or outputs for the oceans, and no additional funding for fisheries research. That needs to change in Budget 2022.

It’s long been recognised that we’ve got a huge information gap in terms of fisheries management and big gaps in our information about fish stocks and about species bycatch and the ecosystem impacts of fisheries, and the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Dr Juliet Gerrard, highlighted this in her report about commercial fisheries management in March last year. She highlighted that more resource is needed so that the regulator, the Ministry for Primary Industries, can keep pace with ever-changing stocks and that we need to make that data more accessible.

We’ve got about 30 percent of the fish that we catch, and, commercially, it’s some 228 stocks—we don’t have stock assessments for those. It’s not good enough to be doing this extraction in the absence of information, and in Budget 2022 we need to recognise the importance of the oceans for the climate, for biodiversity, for our economy, and for providing food for millions, and in buffering us from the worst impacts of climate change, because, of course, it’s been the oceans that have absorbed 90 percent of the extra heat associated with global warming and a third of the carbon dioxide. We’ve seen with increasing sea surface temperatures major changes to weather patterns, more extreme weather events, melting sea ice, kelp forest decline, and ocean acidification from excess carbon dioxide, causing the collapse of our coral reefs and real problems for shellfish. So we’re in the process of losing much of our marine biomass and biodiversity across the world.

Now, the Parliamentary Commissioner this morning highlighted that we could improve the Budget process by identifying some key long-run environmental issues and challenges and developing investment priorities to systematically address them to better mitigate future risks and to identify and address tipping points. The declining health of oceans and our fisheries should be one of those key issues. We really need to recognise their value and we need a much greater sense of urgency around policies and programmes for oceans and fisheries because, after all, with the fourth-biggest exclusive economic zone in the world and with 85 percent of our indigenous wildlife being in the sea, and yet with so many of those species threatened with extinction—90 percent of our seabirds, birds like albatross and mollymawks; 80 percent of our shore birds, and 22 percent of our marine mammals—we need to safeguard their future and ours.

At the moment, we’re seeing really ponderous policy work around the oceans. Consultation started on marine protected areas on the south-east Otago coast back in 2016-17. We still have no marine protected areas. Similarly, with Revitalising the Gulf, work was well under way last term in terms of responding to the Sea Change process, and yet the Minister has said we won’t see legislation to establish new marine protected areas until 2025. That is too late.

We need urgency and we need much greater investment in the oceans. They are protecting us from the worst effects of climate change and they are a rich storehouse for a number of taonga species. We need to invest in them and we need to protect them. Thank you.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Before I start my speech, I want to acknowledge the fact that today, the Ministry of Health have reported 24 deaths of people with COVID-19, two of which were from Wairarapa. These are the first deaths that my region, our region, has seen since the pandemic began, and this will hurt. We are a close-knit community. These are people’s family members, they are people’s friends, and the region will be hurting. I wanted to take the opportunity to express my heartfelt and sincere condolences to those that are impacted by those deaths today.

What we have seen over the last few days in this House is a good example of the genuine differences between the Government and the Opposition. Now, we’ve all heard it. We’ve all heard it as we walk around our respective electorates—people that come and say, “There isn’t much difference between National and Labour.” Well, we’ve seen that this week. We have seen the tired old, retried approach from the National Party in response to a time when people are really struggling, and their answer is to give tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the rich and give very little to those that are struggling most.

The reason I am pointing this out by way of comparison is that when you compare what this Government is doing on 1 April, where 60 percent of New Zealand families will see an increase through Working for Families—a programme that families depend on and a programme that the National Party voted against—they will benefit more from what this Government is doing, from our prioritisation of low to middle income earners, than anyone in that category will under the proposed tax cuts. When there are 1.1 million New Zealanders who will not benefit from National’s tax cuts, but the top 3 percent of earners will see hundreds of dollars a week flow their way, that demonstrates the priorities of the National Party.

Over this side of the House and under this Government, we are helping those who are hurting the most. We are seeing beneficiaries have an increase. We are seeing minimum wage workers have an increase, which, incidentally, the National Party do not support. They have the gall to stand up and say, “New Zealanders are leaving for overseas because wages are better.”, yet every single initiative from this Government to raise workers’ wages and improve conditions, they have opposed. Every single year when that side was in Government, they put the minimum wage up, and then when we do it, they vote against it. They like to play politics with people’s wages, they like to play politics with people’s livelihoods; we take this seriously.

Superannuitants will be seeing a significant increase in their incomes coming up from 1 April, with a $52 per fortnight increase for a single person and an $80 increase for a couple. Of course, the superannuation only goes up when wages go up. It’s indexed. It demonstrates that New Zealanders’ wages are increasing under this Government.

What would they do with tax cuts? There would be less money to put into the wages of nurses, which have gone up under this Government. There would be less money to put into the wages of police officers, which have gone up under this Government. You cannot promise to reduce revenue, to pay down debt, and to spend more—it is a falsehood. It is a falsehood that they got caught out with at the last election, and they’ve fallen into the same trap. My message to the National Party is that New Zealanders are not fools. They will not be tricked by this sort of falsehood. They will see right through the gaping fiscal hole in their plan.

By contrast, they will see in this Government here that it is responding to the current cost of living crisis that is under way. They recognise that because the COVID situation has had an impact across the world and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has seen fuel prices go up across the world, it is impacting lower to middle income earners the most. When you look at the numbers, you will see that it is this Government that is benefiting those people, and that side wants to give it to their rich mates.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The National Party is proud of our food producers because our farmers and our growers have supported this country through COVID. The PM spoke today about healthy food for families. Well, news to the people on the other side of the room: the healthy food comes from our farmers and growers. We keep getting a question from the other side of the House: what is the National Party going to cut? Well, the National Party is going to cut the red tape that this Government has forced on to our food producers because when we talk about the cost of living, we’re talking about the cost of living of our healthy fruit and vegetables and proteins rising in price in New Zealand due to the red tape that’s been pushed on those producers by this Government. So the red tape is increasing the cost of living.

When you think about what’s happened over the last couple of years, yes, we’ve had to close the borders because we’ve had COVID, but we’ve had completely COVID-free people who could have come to this country and picked fruit, and what did this Government do? They prevented them. They took away their income, they took away our growers’ ability to pick the fruit and they let it rot on the ground, and then they have the gall to talk about everything else in the world causing inflation.

Look, we all regret and are very saddened about the war that’s going on with Russia on Ukraine at the moment, but the Government talks about this as if it’s the only cause of inflation. Inflation was at 5.9 percent before this war started, and it’s always the world’s fault. The Prime Minister is always waxing lyrical about it being the world’s fault. Well, take some accountability, Government, because some of this can be sheeted back on your own Government.

So I think the other thing that this Government needs to realise is that we all want good policy in the area of climate change, but the obsession that the Government has of banning and taxing and going through climate change objectives in a way that just pushes the price up is also adding to the cost of living. We know now in energy what’s happening with gas prices, and the Commerce Commission has said it’s perfectly OK to raise the price of gas because the assets don’t have an expected life that they did have, thank you to the policy of this Government. Well, no thank you to the policy of this Government.

We also know that they’re pushing the price up on food producers by charging a ute tax. Now, we all know that even if there was a ute available, those utes would be powered by electricity that was fuelled by Indonesian coal. So the nuclear-free moment, so called by the Prime Minister, of the oil and gas ban has actually become an Indonesian coal moment and it’s not doing anything for our climate change, and I suspect that’s probably what this Government would push our food producers to if they’re given any more chance, which is why the public is not going to give them any more chance in 2023.

I haven’t seen anything from this Government. We’ve got 3-nitrooxypropanol products that would reduce methane. The applications are sitting on the desk of the Environmental Protection Authority and I haven’t heard the Government encouraging those to be brought in. We have rye grasses in other parts of the world that can reduce methane that we’re currently not able to use in New Zealand due to our regulation. Where has the Minister of Agriculture’s support for those been? Missing. The research and development—there’s a lot of carbon and we could increase our carbon sequestration in our soils. Where’s the science? Where’s the conversation around that?

All we hear is about ban it, tax it, and all the rest of it. We never hear about any R & D, and we hear a lot from the conservation Minister about jobs for nature. Well, guess what? We’ve got some very, very, very good people out there who do their own jobs for nature. They are called farmers. They do it out of the willingness of their heart and they do it out of the cost of their own pocket, and they are improving the environment day by day. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill

Second Reading

LOUISA WALL (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. I move, That the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill be now read a second time.

It is an absolute pleasure to stand in this House, 34 days after the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill was introduced to Parliament. I particularly want to thank the Governance and Administration Committee for an expedited process, so to you, Mr Chair, who is the Speaker this afternoon, I thank you very much and the members of your committee.

For background, this bill will enable the name of Paige’s late mother, Katherine Harris, to be recorded on her New Zealand birth record. Paige was born of surrogacy and was carried by a close friend of Kyle and Katherine, Renee Johnson. Renee was supported by her partner, Josh, who we found out through the select committee process was the number one advocate for Karl and the family, and we certainly appreciated his contribution. Paige’s biological mother, Katherine, died before Paige was born, and Paige will turn two on 25 March 2022.

In deciding what I should contribute today, I want to begin with the submission of Alison Fraser, who is Paige Harris’ grandmother. Katherine Harris was her daughter. Alison Fraser’s contribution to the select committee deliberation was, essentially, that laws for surrogacy and adoption in Aotearoa New Zealand are not fit for purpose. How can we be in a situation where the genetic mother of a child is not registered on her birth record and therefore can’t be registered on her birth certificate? For those who don’t know the story, currently Paige Harris’ birth certificate has “mother” as “not recorded”. And that’s what this piece of legislation, this private bill, is attempting to do.

I think from that perspective we have to decouple in some ways surrogacy from adoption, which is the current practice within our jurisdiction. We have an ability to decouple adoption from surrogacy within the context of my colleague Tāmati Coffey’s member’s bill, and I know Tāmati will have an opportunity to contribute to this debate as well, because, along with me, he was the other submitter on this piece of legislation.

So the philosophical change that this bill will, hopefully, bring about is to enable an ethical process at the beginning of a surrogacy that will ensure that a genetic parent does not have to go through an Oranga Tamariki assessment, does not have to go through a court process that can cost up to $10,000, and does not have to adopt, in fact, their own biological genetic child.

From my perspective, I focused in the submission process on the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child and the fact that convention 3 reinforces the best interests of the child, and in Paige’s case, the best interests of Paige is for her mother, Katherine Harris, to be recorded on her birth record and therefore her birth certificate. Under convention 7, Paige has the right to a name and nationality and convention 8 is about the right to an identity, which I think is at the heart of this legislation. Paige’s identity stems from the fact that she is Kyle Harris’ and Katherine Harris’ daughter, and so we are here today to ensure that this piece of legislation enables that.

Finally, in terms of those submissions, I want to give a bit of a shout-out to Josh Johnson, a very good friend of Kyle and Katherine. It was his wife, Renee, who was the surrogate, and he fronted up to the select committee and told an incredibly compelling story of an over two year process, before Katherine passed away, of trying to find a solution so that baby Paige could have her mum, Katherine, listed on her birth certificate.

I just want to say again to Josh, as I did during that process, what an amazing advocate and friend and spokesperson he was for Kyle, who I want to acknowledge did not participate in the process. After a two-year fight and the fact that his wife had died and he had been motivated to seek his redress for his daughter Paige—he had previously said he would fight his entire life for the right of his daughter to have her mother on her birth certificate—I think the realisation that it was about to happen, that this Parliament had unanimously supported it, that we were expediting this legislation on his behest because he wanted it completed before his daughter turned two, was incredibly overwhelming. But, Josh, you were incredibly compelling and I want to thank you again for your contribution to the debate on Paige’s bill.

An amendment that has been proposed by the select committee is to replace “registration of birth” with “birth record.”, because, in fact, you have to register the birth of Paige before you can then obtain a birth certificate from the Department of Internal Affairs, from Births, Deaths and Marriages. So that will enable a subsequent birth record to reflect that Katherine Elizabeth Harris as mother of Paige Katherine Elizabeth Harris, alongside the details of Kyle Jason Harris as Paige’s father. That’s what we are enabling through the passage of this legislation through the House today. So, without further ado, I commend the bill to the House. Kia ora.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is my first intervention in the House since yesterday’s news that that my good friend and colleague the Hon Simon Bridges was going to retire from it. I mention that in this context for two reasons: one is Simon Bridges and Todd Muller were actually involved in this case in the early stages—so this has been a success with a number of contributors—but, secondly, when he was asked by media yesterday what he would remember most about his political career, he did talk about a few transport projects, but he actually talked about the really important work that we as MPs do for the people we serve. I wouldn’t trivialise it by saying the smaller things, but the things that have a really, really big impact on individuals’ lives, that we don’t always get success for, but, when we do, picking up the phone and being able to say we’ve got a solution for you, we’ve got a win for you with ACC, or Housing, or Immigration, is actually one of the great moments, I think.

Louisa Wall probably has more luck than any other member in Parliamentary history in member’s bill ballots, and will pass more legislation in her time here than some Ministers will. So I’m confident that, in Louisa Wall’s rocking-chair moments, she would look back on this piece of legislation as a really important thing for the Harris family, but actually emblematic of what good we can do and how important that job of an MP is.

I’m not a huge fan of expedited processes, as the House knows. I think we risk, sometimes, rushing bills and getting them wrong—and this isn’t one of those occasions. I think all parties were pleased to agree to a process that had this legislation passing, I think it’s prior to the end of this month, and the selection of people to make submissions, to the invitation to make submissions, the excellent work that officials did in advising the committee—so ably chaired by the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, a person, Mr Speaker, you know very well, and I congratulate that person—and a real shared sense of wanting to get this right for Paige.

In Tāmati Coffey’s submission—I mean, I went on a bit of a voyage of discovery. I didn’t know much about surrogacy law in this country but I was staggered that, as Louisa Wall has just alluded to, the revelation that the biological parents have no rights at birth without having to go through a prolonged process—indeed, to change the law in this case. We’re changing outdated legislation all the time, some of which was passed in the 1980s and 1990s. This is an Act, the Adoption Act, I think—from 1955; it was a busy year, 1955—that could not have possibly foreseen technology and society changing in the way that it has to even give rise to the sorts of situations we have, and so I am wholly supportive of Mr Coffey’s member’s bill. My mild rebuke might be that it is important enough to, frankly, be on the Government’s agenda, and I think there’s a wider review of the Adoption Act that’s necessary and probably going on. So I look forward to that also being expedited.

But it really is absolutely staggering to me that the biological mother, tragically taken prior to the baby’s birth, has to go through these hoops to be recognised, and for Paige Harris to have a birth certificate that reflects reality. It’s not a waste of this House’s time but we don’t want to be doing this again—there have been a number of times where we’ve had to do this. I hope we can, just as quickly, expedite Tāmati Coffey’s bill—well, not just as quickly, but as smoothly—because there are some questions in it that will mean that this is the last time we ever have to do that. I look forward to this passage, today, as quickly as possible.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The question should have been that the motion be agreed to and, fortunately, it was. I call—and it’s a remote call—Tāmati Coffey.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I acknowledge the family, actually, who will no doubt be listening this afternoon and will bring, for them, closure on what’s been a harrowing and emotional rollercoaster of a journey, one where science, as the previous speaker has gone and alluded to, has gotten ahead of our wider area of law which deals with the issue of surrogacy. Science has indeed taken off, and there is a lot more work to do in the area of surrogacy to make it fit for purpose so that we have modern laws for our increasingly modern families that choose to use surrogacy arrangements to be able to start their families. When I gave my submission to the committee, I wanted to focus on that, and I think it’s really important that we don’t lose sight of that.

This is about growing families. This bill is about growing a family and giving it the strongest foundation that we can possibly give it in the eyes of the law to make sure that they are able to move forward into this world, albeit without Paige’s mum, Katherine, but for the rest of their family to know that baby Paige has a mum and has a dad and is part of a village, actually—a village of people—that love and support her.

For many people, they may think that just a name on a birth certificate is a little thing, but, actually, when it comes to identity, as my colleague Louisa Wall has mentioned, it’s everything, because what it does is it connects you. Just this week, I put a post up on my Facebook page, having taken a trip down to Wellington and spent the weekend reconnecting with my Te Ātiawa side down there. I put a post up talking about how whakapapa is everything. Family connection is everything, and as we talk about the cost of living, actually, let’s just spare a thought about the best things in life, which are free, and those things are the fact that we do have relations. We do have grave sites that we can visit to go and connect to those people. We do have reminders in our family via cousins and aunties and uncles and people that wrap around us at times when we need them.

Connection is everything, and I hope that today, while we do this, we really do amplify the voices—the many voices—that have come to Parliament seeking justice in the area of surrogacy, such as Kyle and Katherine, Josh and Renee, baby Paige; such as Christian Newman, who fronted up to Parliament asking for wider changes around speeding up the process so that we can get families started on their journey, be it surrogacy or be it through adoption. There is a lot more work to do on this, and I’m glad that the Law Commission are taking that opportunity too. We should be expecting their wider, deeper dive into the area of surrogacy. Their report is expected to be back with us really soon—next month, in fact. So I’m looking forward to seeing that and to seeing issues like this dealt with through their report.

They’re also looking into wider things like international surrogacy and where things should land on that, and I’m hoping that my little member’s bill—I’m hoping that it actually gets, after it’s had its first reading, whenever that happens to be, swallowed up by a lot of the wider reforms that are going on in this area. But the idea of a surrogacy order is really important to this conversation, because in my bill I talk about a surrogacy order, something where, well in advance of a couple deciding to enter into a surrogacy arrangement, if there is a court order where they’re able to go through the process with the surrogate as well and make sure that they have nutted out all of those terms and conditions formally through the court, things like who goes on the birth certificate—those things can be dealt with in advance. Should a person die in that process, then, actually, the surrogacy order should have dealt with this. Unfortunately, the bill’s not passed, so we’re here putting through this private bill.

I want to thank again Louisa Wall, my colleague, for doing this. Michael Woodhouse, my other colleague, from the other side of the House, is incredibly right: she has a way of working this political system from the inside to achieve change for people like Kyle, people like Katherine, and for people like Paige. Can I finish my contribution just by acknowledging Josh, who has been the person who has called up the MPs, whether it’s Todd Muller or Simon Bridges or Louisa Wall or myself. He’s the one that’s been doing the hard yards, calling everybody up and making sure that this was an issue. I got a phone call about this from Paddy Gower, because, actually, this had hit the media, this story, and rightfully so.

I also had a phone call from the Children’s Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft. He was really concerned about this too, and he was looking for avenues to be able to support. So that was all because of you, Josh. If you’re listening, this is all because of you, and you’re a top friend to Kyle and a top uncle to baby Paige as well. When this passes today, I hope that you are able to breathe that sigh of relief that you’ve been looking for for quite some time. But I’m going to be standing here, ushering this through, and when we finally get wider reforms in the surrogacy area, I’ll be here ushering that through as well, because, as the former speaker said, there are some anomalies in the law that currently exist that shouldn’t be there: the fact that a biological parent should have to stand in a court of law and adopt their own child shouldn’t happen. We should be able think of better ways to be able to go through a surrogacy arrangement and make sure that everybody leaves with their mana intact. At the moment, that’s not currently the case.

So, through this private member’s bill, if we can get some instant change, then that should be encouraged. I’m heartened that this has got support from all around the House, and I do look forward to the first reading of my bill when that time comes, but hopefully also wider reform in this area too. So, with that said, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to take a short call on this and acknowledge, obviously, the family involved here, but I also want to acknowledge the work of Louisa Wall who, as the former MP for Manurewa—she and I with our electorates, or her then electorate, sitting very close towards mine on boundaries—we’ve had an awful lot to do with each other over the years. And what I’ve seen is, with Louisa, and I think this is true for the whole of the National Party caucus, I think I speak for us all on this, when I say we have a tremendous amount of respect for Louisa, and her ability to reach out across politics and political views, and to be able to engage with us and others in Parliament in a responsible, adult manner without any personal animosity. So thank you, Louisa, for taking up this cause, reaching out to a family in need.

I think many of us who look at this and think of the situation: this darling little girl, her mother died three months before she was born. Of course, when we were growing up—and I think I include us all here—this was just simply not possible. But, with technology, with science, with research, innovation—all areas very close to my heart—this has actually been able to happen. But it’s also been able to happen because of the tremendous kindness of friends—close friends—to Katherine and to Kyle. So this little girl, aged two years old now, she cannot be expected to go through life with no mother recorded on her birth certificate. This is simply not acceptable. And it is a big thing for Parliament to take time to look after one little girl. But, as has been said today, this is one little girl now, Paige, but can we ever imagine her trying to even get registered into school or being able to get a passport, with no mother recorded on her birth certificate? She’d have to explain everything over and over and over again. She’d have to explain that her mother, Katherine Elizabeth Harris née Fraser, died on 28 December 2019, at the very young age of 37, and that she was a much-loved daughter, wife, and, now, mother.

So we need to correct the situation and—I’m sure the whole House knows that I’m a lawyer—I think the law has to constantly evolve. It’s got to constantly evolve to meet the challenges but also the opportunities that technology and science innovation actually give us. For something like this to happen, whereby the House is, in a very quick manner, going to be able to remedy the situation of Paige’s mum’s name not being on the birth certificate, it is important—and Tāmati Coffey has referred to it, of the need to better reflect the surrogacy laws—to reflect the reality for a growing number of New Zealand families.

I am very fortunate to be very close friends with a family who have had children by surrogacy. Their children have been born overseas; they have had to go through the process of adopting children. I have, myself, in practice, been involved in adoptions, as a lawyer on the odd occasion. Very few cases ever went through, and now most of them are about surrogacy. So that tells us we need to adopt and adapt to the modern world, and the fact is that, yes, sometimes people are having children later. Sometimes people do need to have the help of a surrogate. But I also think that we need to look at the recognition of those surrogate mothers. To do what they do to be able to help their family, friend, or even someone that they’ve met and they want to help them, to have a child, is an extraordinary thing. What a marvellous thing to do for someone else. I don’t think I would do it—I mean, obviously not now—but I don’t know how they could even do that. Because it is such a gift, such a wonderful thing to do for somebody who is otherwise going to miss out on the joys of parenthood.

So I would like to acknowledge the family of Paige, and those who’ve enabled this to happen—for a surrogate mum, for surrogate mum’s husband, but also for her dad, who has helped so much to have this happen. This is a great day, when Parliament can sort these things out, and I look forward to us being able to address these issues in a wider context, so that we better reflect the people that we represent. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I want to reiterate the support from the Greens for this bill around the House. I want to begin by acknowledging the love of Kyle and Katherine. I want to acknowledge that it is that love which has stopped the House tonight. It is that love and commitment for them, and for their child, which has made us actually, as MPs, take a step back and really think about what’s really important. Often in this House, things go backwards and forwards and we argue about stuff, and they seem important at the particular time, but it’s moments like these when we actually step back and think, “Hey, you know what’s important? It’s that love between parents and children; it’s the love between that wider village, our whānau.” Those are the things that should be guiding this house on a daily basis.

So, Kyle, tēnei te mihi atu ki a koe, otirā ki a koe, Katherine, haere atu rā, haere atu rā, haere atu rā. Waiho mai tēnei me te aroha ki tō pēpi, ki a Paige hei maumaharatanga mōu ki tō whānau whānui.

[Kyle, I acknowledge you; and you, as well, Katherine, may you rest in peace. This is left with love for your baby, for Paige as a memento for you to your wider family.]

I would also like to acknowledge Katherine as well, acknowledge that her pēpi that she leaves behind here is her legacy of that love and that commitment.

When Louisa was sharing this bill around the House, I had to give it a second look and then a third look and then a fourth look, because you think these things would have been sorted out in the law. You would have thought that, you know, if you’re a biological parent that you wouldn’t have to go through the adoption process and the complications that many people have with surrogacy. I want to acknowledge the bill that will be coming to the House, and the kōrero from Tāmati Coffey just earlier about trying to smooth that stuff through a bit more, because some of these laws that we have, they’re archaic. They don’t actually fit the modern reality of what it is as a whānau, but also in many ways, they also don’t fit the reality of how whānau have always been, they have always been interconnected, they have always been fluid—it is about that love between parents and their children, but also the connections to that wider whānau and that village that some of the members have talked about before as well. Those are the things that really ground a child, those are the things that are really, really important. It forms that foundation about who that child is, and for them to know who they are connected to.

People have spoken earlier before about whakapapa, the importance of whakapapa, the importance of genealogical connection. How you are connected in this world to your parents, to your whānau, and to your wider village, and, of course, to wider society. These are the things that help a child orientate themselves in the way that they move through the world. So I see this bill as making us take pause as a Parliament, making us take a step back and to ask and question ourselves about why the law was like this in the first place and what we need to do to come together as parliamentarians to correct that and to fix that and to take a wider view across all of these types of laws which don’t, but should, have whānau at the centre, should have children at the centre—have that connection between parents and their children at the centre.

I’d also like to acknowledge te koi me te pukumahi [intelligent and hard-working] Louisa Wall. I’ve only been here for about a year and a bit, and I wanted to acknowledge the Manurewatanga of Louisa Wall. I met her in Manurewa a couple years back—I’m from Manurewa myself—and seeing the way that Louisa has been able to go out and talk to all the different parties to really advocate for an issue to really get into the detail. I know there was this engagement process with the officials to really work with them to figure out “Hey, this is a massive issue, how do we get through it?”, and Louisa went and did that. So I do want to acknowledge that.

So kāore i roa taku kōrero [I won’t speak for long]. I won’t be taking a long call on this, but once again I want to reiterate a mihi to Kyle, to Katherine, to Josh, Renee, and, of course, to baby Paige Harris for the day, for the night that they made Parliament stand still and pay attention. Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Our next call is a remote call, and I just need to apologise to the deputy chair of the Governance and Administration Committee for ignoring her! Rachel Boyack.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson) (remote): Thank you for the opportunity to take a short call on the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill. I will keep these comments brief, as our goal tonight is to pass this legislation to ensure that Paige’s birth record may be corrected, enabling a new, accurate birth certificate to be provided to her as soon as possible.

The passing of this legislation will also give Kyle, Paige, and their friends and whānau their privacy back. I want to acknowledge Kyle and his friends and family, especially Josh, for their bravery and tenacity in raising this issue—first, in the public domain and then through the Parliament. In doing so, they have corrected a wrong and highlighted that our adoption and surrogacy laws are not fit for purpose.

It was upsetting that Kyle Harris had to go through two adoption approval processes, where his suitability to adopt his own biological daughter was assessed twice. Mr Harris completed these assessments with his wife and Paige’s mother, Katherine, before she passed away. After Paige was born, Kyle had to complete the entire assessment again while he was grieving his wife and raising his young daughter. He also had to jump through extra hoops as our adoption policies do not allow single men to adopt female children, even though Paige is Kyle Harris’ biological daughter.

The select committee was united in its view that our adoption and surrogacy laws need to be updated for modern times, and we look forward to Tāmati Coffey’s bill progressing through this House so that situations like this never happen to any other families in Aotearoa again. As you know, the select committee did make some minor technical amendments to replace the words “registration of birth” with “birth record” to more accurately reflect the official record that needs to be amended in order to produce an accurate, correct birth certificate.

It was a privilege to help guide this bill through the select committee, and now through the Parliament, for Paige, Kyle, and their family. Today, our Parliament speaks with one voice to pass this bill and right a wrong for Paige, Kyle, and Katherine. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is my pleasure to take a call on behalf of ACT in support of the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill in its second reading. First and foremost, I want to acknowledge Kyle Harris and his family. Not only have they suffered a terrible loss when Katherine passed away but they have had to overcome significant hurdles to get to this point. I spoke to Kyle this morning and, for him, the passing of this bill, as I’m sure members can imagine, is a huge relief. It’s the end of a two-year process that has been mentally exhausting, but, at long last, Paige’s birth certificate will have her mother’s details listed. I hoped—I really hoped—that the Harris family and close friends could have been here in the gallery today to witness the proceedings but, unfortunately, with the restrictions on visitors that isn’t possible. Nevertheless, this is a significant moment for the family and I wish them well for the future.

This private bill, although highly targeted, really puts the spotlight on the need to modernise our surrogacy laws and the laws surrounding adoption in New Zealand. I imagine that many people, including politicians, possibly didn’t fully appreciate just how clunky the system is. So I really thank Kyle for putting his story out there, for raising awareness, and to all of those who signed the petition and helped the bill along its way. The Adoption Act 1955 is obviously outdated and inadequate, especially given the advent of surrogacy and because it will, no doubt, be something that is used more in future. The fact that parents have to legally adopt their own biological children if born via surrogacy is just so out of step with common sense, and when a situation like this arises, it really emphasises the problem.

I thank Louisa Wall for her work on this bill and I thank the committee, officials, and other MPs for being on board with what needs to be done not only in this case but for wider reform as well on these issues. Finally, I once again wholeheartedly wish Kyle, Paige, and the whole Harris family and their close friends all the very best for the future. Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): In accordance with the determination of the Business Committee, this bill is set down for committee stage forthwith. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill.

In Committee

Preamble

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, the House is in committee on the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill. I remind members that they are able to participate remotely. If you’re on the Zoom and want to take a call, please type “call” into the chat. You should also use the chat if you would like to raise a point of order. We come first to the debate on the preamble. The question is that the preamble stand part.

KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): Point of order. Thank you, Madam Chair. I seek leave for all parts to be taken as one debate.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Is there any objection to that motion? The question is that the preamble and clauses 1 to 5 stand part.

Preamble and clauses 1 to 5

Preamble and clauses 1 to 5 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): In accordance with a determination of the Business Committee, the bill is set down for third reading forthwith.

Third Reading

LOUISA WALL (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. I move, That the Paige Harris Birth Registration Bill be now read a third time.

Can I begin, as Kyle’s agent, given his promotion of this private bill, to do a few thankyous. I’d like to thank Pavan Sharma, who’s at the top of my list, from the Office of the Clerk, who guided us through the private bill process. It’s incredibly prescriptive and Kyle, Josh, and myself could not have done what we have managed to achieve without you, Pavan, and I want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your work to ensure that we complied.

I would also like to thank Prue Tamatekapua, who provided the draft for this bill. She did so without charge. I think that deserves recognition. I would like to thank Jessica Kruger from Parliamentary Counsel Office, who helped edit and oversaw the draft of that bill in terms of its compliance with the Standing Orders. I want to thank Wendy Stevenson in my office, who helped ensure again that we complied with the Standing Orders, advertising the bill, having the bill available, enabling the public to engage with this process as they so choose. And finally, can I thank the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), its advisers and those who will continue to assist in the implementation of this piece of legislation. To Jeff Montgomery and your team, can I thank you for already reaching out to Kyle to make sure that the next part of the process is as seamless and easy as possible for the whānau.

So to the congratulations, and I say to Kyle: “Congratulations. You made a promise to your wife and you, through this piece of legislation, will fulfil that promise.” To Josh and Renee, you have stood by Kyle and Paige and the whānau throughout this process, and I want to thank and acknowledge you for your work. To Katherine’s parents, John and Alison Fraser, I want to thank you for your contribution to this process, and I acknowledge Katherine’s brother, Stuart, and I want to acknowledge Kyle’s family—his mother, who sent an email after the first reading and wanted to make sure that all those who spoke to the bill were extended her gratitude. So to Kyle, to the Harris family and friends, congratulations to you. Your collective effort has brought about this piece of legislation, which will enable Katherine to be recognised on Paige’s birth certificate.

I also want to extend appreciation to Paddy Gower and also the 59,435 people who signed a petition, and that petition was to let Paige have her mum’s name on her birth certificate. So to all those New Zealanders who took an interest in those kaupapa, who supported this kaupapa, I want to thank you. And finally, I want to thank all those colleagues across the House that came together to support, as I highlighted before, the expedited process. We went through the Business Committee. We all universally accepted that this was an injustice and we wanted to work collectively as a House. And I think that this is symbolic of the way that Parliament can come together and can work together for the greater good.

Finally, I’ve got some words for Paige. So for you, darling Paige, this process highlights how much you are loved, how much you are adored, and how the adults that surround you will do anything and everything for you, and this process also highlights how much your dad loves your mum. As I said before, he has fulfilled his promise. I have a poem or a quote from Maya Angelou, for Paige, on loving our children, and I quote: “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination, full of hope.” So darling Paige, I wish you a happy early birthday. And by 25 March, I know that your dad will contact DIA to make sure that your mum is on your birth certificate. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll just take a moment; I cry at sad movies. In the interests of not blubbing in the House and expediting this process, I want to associate myself with all of the thanks and congratulations that Louisa Wall has mentioned.

I was going to mention Paddy Gower in my second reading speech and I forgot, so I will just make a mention of that. Many of us, those who were here from when he was in the press gallery, will have fond and not-so-fond recollections of him. I used to refer to him as Bruce, the shark from Finding Nemo—“Politicians are our friends.”, I think I could imagine him saying in the press gallery corridor. But when he took on an issue, he did so with a gusto that was tenacious and to generate an interest in an issue around an individual that created a petition of 50,000 signatures is indeed quite some feat in highlighting the folly, I guess, of the law and the fact that we have to be here to make things right. But we will, and I’m sure Paige Harris will live a happy—I hope a long—life surrounded by loved ones, but in the knowledge that her mum, Katherine Harris, is on her birth certificate. I’m sure there’ll be stories told of her every day. This is a good day.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Some say that the wheels of Parliament move very slow, and on this particular occasion it’s moved pleasingly fast. And so it should have, because there’s a family out there that really needs it. And again, they’ll be listening to everything that we’re saying. So again, I want to acknowledge them. It has been quick and, again, I want to thank Louisa Wall for her tenacity. If there’s one thing that Louisa is, she’s tenacious. She picked up this and she ran with it, and here we are 34 days later, I think she said, with the third reading of this bill helping to settle something that’s been outstanding for far too long.

There’s a few Māori words that I want to use to describe this moment that we’re going through right now, and taking into account all of the kōrero that’s been said. The first one is ōhākī, and that word is a very significant word. Ōhākī, in te reo Māori, it refers to a dying wish. And that’s what this is. The reason that we’re all here is because Katherine Harris made a dying wish that she had friends that would pick up the mantle and run with this and not rest until her name was on baby Paige’s certificate, so that baby Paige would always know that her mum was there for her, walking beside her through every step of her life. So ōhākī is the word, and I think it sums up perfectly the reason that we’re all here right now.

The second word is the word that I referred to before, around whakapapa. Again, whakapapa is everything. It can make you furious, it can make you want to dig deeper. I sometimes describe it as a 1000-piece puzzle that you’ve got plenty of pieces missing, and sometimes it’s really hard to find all of those pieces. But for people that have a real knack for genealogy, whakapapa is the thing that binds us and it connects us. Today, this is all about whakapapa and acknowledging the power that it has to bring people together.

The last word that I wanted to mention here was the word aroha, because actually aroha is an all-encompassing word, but it shows that through this process there’s been a lot of aroha that has been shown, given, displayed for us to all be here today. The aroha of, first and foremost, Katherine for her daughter Paige and her ōhākī to correct a wrong. The love of Josh for his mates Kyle and Katherine, and Baby Paige—the love that you have for them has been on display here and is very apparent and we feel it. I want to mention Renee, the love that you had for your mates as well, to be able to give over your body as a surrogate for nine whole months—well, it’s actually longer than nine months, but the love that you have for your friends to be able to step into the breach for them when they were unable to, when they needed a friend that was able to produce a baby for them, you stepped in. So Renee, the aroha and the selflessness with which you and many surrogates around Aotearoa and the world have done, I want to acknowledge you.

I want to acknowledge the aroha that’s being displayed in the House, and may we all continue to feel the aroha for moments like this. Sometimes, our parliamentary House can get a little bit rough and rugged, and it’s nice to know that we can all agree on certain things, especially when it comes to crucial moments like this.

I also want to finish on a note to baby Paige, who is only two, and if she’s anything like my two-year-old, she’ll be just picking up the odd word here and there and will be at the start of her very long journey. But to baby Paige, who will one day, hopefully, look back on all of these speeches and all of the good things that people are saying about her mum and her family and her village, to baby Paige I want to say this to you: a mother’s love is always with her children, and losing a mother is one of the deepest sorrows that a heart can know. But her goodness, her caring, her wisdom, they all live on like a legacy of love that will always be with you. May that love surround you right now and bring you peace. On the many Mother’s Day days that you will face and people will ask how your mother is and where she is, may how you find strength on those days and know that her legacy lives on in you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, I commend this to the House.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll just take a short call on this. I think we’ve got overwhelming and fierce agreement right across Parliament. I often to say to people that Parliament is best in select committees, because we knuckle down, we get down to it, and we sort things out—and we so often agree. But, actually, on days like today, when we have wild and fierce agreement across the House, with everyone saying, “Go little Paige—you’re going to get your mum’s name on your birth certificate, your dad’s going to know he’s fulfilled his promise, you are going to be acknowledged as someone who had a mum.” I can’t think of anything much worse than to be born without your mum—it’s just totally unacceptable that we could ever have little Paige to have a birth certificate without her mother being acknowledged.

It is a joyful moment not only for Paige and her family, but I think for MPs who come to Parliament to do their very best; even if we often disagree, we try to do our best and it is wonderful to see that this has come to pass. So, again, a big acknowledgment to the family of Paige Harris, and to her very close friends, and also Renee for the work that she’s done to help allow Paige to have a life. What a wonderful thing. And a big thankyou to all the MPs involved.

I’d also like to acknowledge Ian McKelvie for the work he did in the National Party, bringing this bill to us as an issue, and, obviously, encouraging our support for it. I believe it’s the right thing to do, and I’ve already acknowledged Louisa Wall this afternoon—thank you for making this happen—and a big thankyou to Parliament for being at our very best. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

NAISI CHEN (Labour) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This whole entire afternoon, I’ve been thinking about what else I could say to add to this debate already. And I think, apart from echoing everything that my colleagues have said—all of the facts that they’ve given—I would like to add my own, I guess, well wishes to the family as they begin the next part of this journey as well.

I know that there will always be a hole in everyone’s heart in the shape of Paige’s mother, and I think it’s always got to be something that—she’ll always be dearly missed and it’ll be something that will always bring about pain. But also I hope that this bill will bring a bit of healing, will be the start of that journey to healing, but also to finding a different way of remembering Paige’s mum, as well, through her birth certificate and through all the speeches that we’ve given here this afternoon in the House.

Can I just, please, add my admiration to Josh and Renee for everything they’ve done for the Harris family—and everything, especially, that Josh has done in terms of advocating, of speaking to our select committee. I was extremely humbled to be able to take part in this legislation process through the Governance and Administration Committee. I was very humbled to be able to talk to Josh and ask him questions and hear his stories from his mouth and be able to just, kind of, feel what he has felt as a surrogacy dad in this whole situation. All I have felt is just pure love for his friend and for his friend’s family.

To little Paige, I just wanted to add my well wishes to you. Just know that the whole nation is behind you, and at this moment—as representatives here in Parliament—all our love goes to you. And just know that you’re always loved and supported. If you need anything else, please, we’re always here for you, and we’re always rooting for you. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. There has been some great kōrero going around the House tonight. It’s my privilege and my honour to join with colleagues around the House in support of this bill. And, yeah, I’ve got a kōrero for future Paige, as well. Two-year-old Paige probably wants to play with Duplo, but future Paige, I hope, will look back at this time, at this night, at this particular time in the Parliament, where the love of her parents made this Parliament stop, that the love of her parents and her wider whānau made this Parliament actually take a step back and really think about that. So, future Paige, you will, hopefully, go back in the Hansard and you will note that the love that your mum and dad had for you and the love that Josh and Renee and your whānau had for you made us all take a step back, made us all really reprioritise and think about those things that are really, really important: te aroha o te māmā ki te pēpi, te aroha o te pēpi ki te whānau, te whānau ki te hapori whānui [the love of a mother for her baby, the love of the baby for the family, and the family for the wider community]—that love and connection that parents have for their children, that connection that parents have with their whānau, and also that wider village.

I’d also like to support the kōrero around all the hard work that went into this. I haven’t been here that long, and the 34 days seems like a long time, but my short time has shown that that has been a very, very quick time. So I would once again like to commend Louisa Wall for her mahi around the House, getting to talk to all of us, getting us up to speed, showing the massive hypocrisy—if I can put it that way—looking at the way that the legislation was put together without knowing that the fluid nature of family and whānau would change in ways that we should really think about how families have always been different and diverse.

So I have no more to add to that. Heoi anō me pēnei ana te mihi, e mihi ana ki te ōhākī o Katherine, ki tōna pēpi, ki tōna hoa rangatira, ki a Kyle. Nō reira, Paige, i a koe e pānuihia tēnei o ngā kōrero nā te aroha o tō whānau, nā te aroha o te hapori, nā te aroha o tēnei o ngā Pāremata māhau e arataki i tēnei wā ki roto in ngā āhuatanga o te aroha, te manaakitanga. Otirā tēnā koe, otirā tēnā tātou katoa.

[However, my acknowledgment should be this: I acknowledge the dying wish of Katherine, to her baby and to her partner Kyle. So, Paige, when you read this story, because of the love of your family, because of the love of the community, because of the love of this Parliament you will be led at this time in love and care. Therefore I acknowledge you, I acknowledge one and all.]

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real privilege to be able to speak on this particular bill today and I have a couple of reflections to offer before some final words to the beautiful family.

The first I want to offer comes from my own experience and my husband’s experience as we battled our way through infertility ourselves, and our three daughters are the great blessing of our lives. But because we battled our way through infertility, it made me think about the nature of what it is to be a parent, and I think we can separate parents out in many ways. There is a genetic parent, the person from whom the DNA comes, and then there is the gestational parent, the woman who carries a child and the person—usually a man; sometimes someone else—who supports her, who is also a gestational parent as they support, go through a pregnancy. And then there is a social parent, the parent who raises a child.

Usually all those three roles are contained within the one person: a person is a social, a gestational, and a genetic parent and they never really think about dividing those roles up. Why should they? But it turns out in our times, we have learnt through the use of science, we have learnt through love, to see those roles as being something that can be done by a number of people. But our law doesn’t recognise that yet. Our law doesn’t understand the difference between a genetic parent and a gestational parent and a social parent. And, hopefully, in Tāmati Coffey’s bill, we’ll discuss that a little bit more because it does deal with this particular issue. In this particular case, the law simply had not caught up with the particular circumstances that applied for wee Paige’s family—that there was a difference between the gestational parent and the genetic and social parents. Today, we’re helping the law to catch up to that particular problem and to sort it out today. I’m very glad we’ve been able to do that.

The second reflection I want to offer is about the process that had to be gone through here before we could make the law fit this family. Josh, one of the gestational parents, came along to the select committee and he told us about how hard he had worked to get Parliament to take notice of this issue. He’d emailed and emailed and emailed some more and he’d taken to emailing every day and couldn’t get a response. Eventually, he went to the media and thank goodness he did because from then, of course, the issue was picked up by Louisa Wall and we have resolved it very quickly in parliamentary terms. But what it showed to us—for me in particular—was that Josh just didn’t quite know how to approach our Parliament.

I’m really worried that that’s the case for lots of other New Zealanders—that they just don’t know how to approach our Parliament, how to get something done. In fact, it was an experience of mine a few weeks ago when I sat down with a local who just didn’t know how to get going in politics. We live and breathe politics in Parliament every day, so we understand it. But so many of the people we try to serve don’t, and I think that’s a real challenge to us. When I was an MP, I spent a lot of time out at community events and the like, and in part it’s just so that people get to know how to approach our Parliament. Again, I don’t want anyone like Josh to have to go through that again—that they email and email and just don’t know how to do it. So that’s another reflection from this process.

But today, we’ve spent the time of this House, which is quite precious and we normally spend it on big matters like human rights and the health system and budgets and the like—today, we have spent it on in some ways what is quite a small matter. But it is huge for Josh, for Renee, for Katherine, for Kyle, and for Paige, and it has been wonderful for us to stop and take notice of this incredibly important matter for this beautiful family. I’m so glad we could do it for them. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a beautiful time in the House, a beautiful day in the House, and I appreciate all of the support and the comments from my colleagues, and I know the family appreciates it and the work that’s been done. So just my love to the family, and I won’t make them wait any longer. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

LOUISA WALL (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. I move, That the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

To begin this contribution I want to acknowledge Dame Margaret Sparrow and Terry Bellamak, and thank them for their years and years of advocacy and support for the right of women and people who are pregnant to access services. To you I extend my congratulations—we are almost there.

I want to reinforce the kaupapa of this piece of legislation. It seeks to ensure, firstly, the safety and wellbeing, and, secondly, the privacy and dignity of women accessing abortion facilities. For practitioners providing such abortion services, it wants to ensure that they are protected, including from information and opinions communicated in a way that will harm them, hurt them, and are not beneficial to them, and therein, I think, lies the fine balance that the Hon David Parker in his role as Attorney-General has helped the committee to find.

I do want to highlight the very, very good practice and process in terms of the section 7 report—the original one. Under Standing Order 269(5), when a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issue was alerted to the House and to the committee in February 2021, essentially the Attorney-General said that the use of word “communicate” was overly broad. Therein then ensued a discourse, a discussion, an engagement initiated by Dr Liz Craig as the chair of the Health Committee, and I want to commend Liz as the chair of the Health Committee for her focus and steadfast resolve that they as a group would find a solution to the section 7 issue that had been highlighted by the Attorney-General.

They were able, through making amendments to this legislation, to get to a point whereby on 10 November 2021, before the second reading of this legislation, the Attorney-General was able to write to the House and inform the House that because of those amendments to the bill, he was satisfied that while there would still be a limit of freedom of expression within a safe area, under section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, it would do so in a way that is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society under section 5.

Section 14 obviously is a focus on freedom of expression and the rights of people who don’t believe in abortion and the rights of people who think they have a right to tell women or people who are pregnant about whether or not they should have an abortion. He said that there was a good balance now between that right in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and section 5, which is about justified limitations.

I guess my focus on him making that declaration was that it should satisfy this House that this legislation has now reached a very fine balance in upholding both those: the right to freedom of expression and the justifications on the limitation of that expression. From a medical perspective we have to ensure that people’s actions do not harm other people, and that they do not act in a way that will hurt someone and will not provide any benefit.

In addition to Dr Craig, can I also acknowledge Chris Bishop, Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, Dr Anae Neru Leavasa, Dr Tracey McLellan, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Sarah Pallett, Dr Gaurav Sharma, Penny Simmonds, Tangi Utikere, Brooke van Velden, and Simon Watts as members of the Health Committee. But I particularly want to acknowledge the work of Jan Logie. Jan has been an amazing advocate for abortion law reform, and in the previous Parliament she was on the Abortion Legislation Committee, chaired by the Hon Ruth Dyson. It also included the Hon Amy Adams, the Hon Tracey Martin, David Seymour, and I want to acknowledge my colleague Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki.

This bill from my perspective also represents a commitment to freedom from discrimination for groups that have been historically discriminated against, such as women, and within this particular context, vulnerable groups such as pregnant women. The UN has determined under Sustainable Development Goal No. 5, the empowerment of women and girls: empowerment over our bodies, empowerment over the health services that we choose to use, without feeling unsafe and with the State providing those services in a way that meets our needs. So specific and safe abortion services, I believe, is about our value as equal citizens within our democracies.

I found a piece of—I’ll call it research. It was actually a survey from the New York Times before their last election, titled “Gender Equality, the Status of Women and the 2020 Elections”. The findings within the context of this abortion safe areas legislation are such that I really do want to highlight those who don’t support abortion and also those who don’t support safe areas. Anti-abortionists, from this survey, are hostile to gender equality, and this movement fundamentally is misogynistic. What is misogyny? It is a dislike, a contempt for, an ingrained prejudice against women. It also highlights that some women can be anti-abortionist too, because just like internalised homophobia, they can experience internalised sexism. On every question that was asked: do men make better political leaders than women, do you want there to be equal numbers of men and women in positions of powers, if you are anti-abortionists, half of you said yes, but if you were pro-choice, that is, you believe in the power of women to decide for yourself, 80 percent of you said yes.

So anti-abortionists don’t like the Me Too movement. They don’t think access to birth control impacts women’s equality. They don’t believe sexism is a problem, and they are hostile to women’s rights.

I also want to highlight the work of Dr Diana Foster, who is the director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California. So she is a professor, and she provided an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court case on abortion in November 2021. She talked about a study, the Turnaway Study, a thousand women over five years who were forced to have children when they were denied access to abortion. What does it lead to? Serious physical health consequences from continued pregnancy and childbirth, including death; greater, economic and other hardship; more likely to continue to be exposed to intimate partner violence; less likely to have futures where they have intended pregnancies; and an inability to achieve their educational and other aspirations. So accessing abortion services safely, based on the need identified by the pregnant woman, matters.

I would like to thank colleagues from across the House for supporting this legislative reform. Your vote with and for women is also a vote against sexism and misogyny. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I rise as the member of Parliament for North Shore to speak on the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill at its third reading. I wish to first acknowledge Louisa Wall who has brought this member’s bill to this House. I was fortunate to be part of the Health Committee that participated in improving this bill, and I acknowledge Louisa’s engagement with that committee in a positive and proactive manner, and the mannerism in which she took to be both supportive to the challenges that we had with the bill, but also constructive in terms of the aspects that we did subsequently improve. And I think it is a reflection of the process that we go through in this House—that the value of the select committee process does contribute and bring value in terms of improving legislation.

As we’ve heard, the purpose of the bill is to protect and safeguard women accessing abortion facilities in a safe manner. The Health Committee got 890 submissions, of which we had 100 or so in person. I acknowledge the large number of women that came and provided their stories to that committee, many of which were very personal to what they had experienced, and had an impact on all members of the committee, no doubt. This aspect particularly impacts young women. It impacts about 55 percent of those women in the age range between 20 and 30, and for 65 percent of those women this was their first child. So it is acknowledged around the impact that this bill will have on those individuals, in protecting them from the emotional harm that is, and was, incurred as a result of not having these safe zones in place.

Louisa Wall acknowledged the key change in the amendment of this bill, which is to section 13A, in clause 5, which is around making it consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, so the limitations on a person’s right to freedom of expression were minimal. The process that the committee also looked at, was around looking at the way in which these safe zones would be applied. Initially, it was going to be on a blanket approach, but again we’ve decided that should be on a case-by-case basis, again to not conflict with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

I’m pleased that the Health Committee invited the Attorney-General in to provide further review and further input in terms of those amendments that were made, and as a result he confirmed that the amendments and recommendations addressed his concerns. I wish to quote a statement that he provided, because I think it is quite relevant in this last reading of this bill: “I consider that the safe area restrictions would serve the important purpose of protecting people providing and accessing abortion services from intimidation and emotional harm, and that the proposal would not limit rights and freedoms more than is necessary to achieve that purpose. Freedom to protest in relation to abortion would be maintained in all places outside of safe areas.”

It is a pleasure to have been part of the process in order to bring this bill to its third reading. I acknowledge all of those that made submissions as we went through this process, both for and against. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here for the third and final reading of this bill. I’d just like to start by acknowledging my colleague Louisa Wall for bringing the bill to the House. This is a bill that the Health Committee spent a considerable amount of time on, because I think we felt that it was important to get it right, and I think it was because on the one hand, we wanted to make sure that the bill set out what it wanted to achieve, and that’s to protect the privacy and the dignity of woman accessing abortion services, but also the staff that are working in those facilities. But on the other hand, what it was important to do was to make sure that the bill was consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and making sure that those freedoms of speech and other freedoms were preserved in that bill. I think, as a committee, we managed to achieve this.

But what I wanted to do is just share with you some of the views and the stories of the submitters that we heard. We heard a whole range of different people talking about this bill, and I think as we started to listen to those submissions, it became quite clear that there was an issue that needed to be addressed. I want to start with just some of the submissions from the Abortion Providers Group Aotearoa New Zealand, and what they talked about was the fact that they’d sent out a questionnaire to clinics in June 2020 because there had been quite a bit of debate about whether this was an issue or not, and they asked them about their experiences of current protest action over the past three years, and they got 13 responses back. Of those, eight reported that they did see current protest action, and six of those said there was protest action every week, and it was usually on the days that abortions were provided. One had monthly protests and one had them annually. And apart from that larger annual protest, what they talked about was sometimes single, or up to 10 regular protesters, and one clinic reporting 15 to 20 people turning up regularly. Some qualitative comments within that survey, one said that “Now they’re not allowed in the main hospital, but sometimes on occasion people managed to bypass security and they know where our department is and they’ll question women attending appointments.” And another comment, “One person in question will give money to women as an incentive for not proceeding with their appointment.” So just really signalling that this is an ongoing issue for many providers.

But also the stories of individual submitters, and we had a few. Some just actually said “I support the bill”, and that was it, in their written submission, but some actually talked a little bit more. One said, “I’ve been a victim of verbal abuse in the past while attending a clinic for a routine scan, and there were protesters outside. I was pregnant at the time and I found out that I was having a miscarriage. It was a highly emotional time and to exit the building and have people protesting about abortion as murder was very upsetting.” I can’t imagine a young woman with no support trying to make the best decision for her and her baby hearing the same. So I think there was a real suggestion that this is an area where we did need to provide some protection.

But on the other hand, we also had a number of submitters coming in with quite opposing views, and a lot of them said, “Look, we’ve got really deeply held views about abortion, and we feel that this bill impacts negatively on our freedom of speech.” So I’ll just read you an example of a quote from one of those, that says, “I’m completely opposed to this bill. It effectively removes the right of freedom to peaceful assembly for us as citizens and the right to peacefully object to the practice of abortion. If those who are in favour of abortion want to have it as a right, we believe we deserve the right to dissent and object.”—and so, basically, those tensions.

But the other issue that was raised by the Attorney-General, as we’ve had spoken about in a number of the meetings, was that clause 5 of the bill he felt was not sufficiently narrow enough, so it was inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and that the term “communicating” in his view was overly broad and it may not be interpreted as just relating to issues around abortion or abortion related matters. He thought that might be a problem also about inadvertently capturing, say, discussions by family members that were accompanying people into the services. There were also other broader issues with clinicians who might be discussing bad news about a baby, and that might be inadvertently captured. So, basically, I think where we’ve ended up as a committee is the recommendations that we’ve made, I think, have achieved the right balance between protecting women’s privacy and dignity, but ensuring that we’ve gone sufficiently narrow in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

I think how we’ve managed to do that was, basically, by prescribing a certain range of things that it would be prohibited for people to do in the safe area, and those are things that could be safely seen and heard by somebody accessing abortion services. I think one of the issues that we were so concerned about was the concept of a protected person, because in the bill as introduced, it was around a protected person being impacted by the behaviour. But a protected person was somebody that was then attending those services for the purpose of accessing abortion services. So the concern we had was the ability for people to be able to testify, but in testifying they would also have to then declare the reason they were in the safe area. We felt that that would actually prevent a lot of people stepping up and saying, you know, “I’ve experienced this” and testifying in court.

So with the changes that we recommended and made, we removed that whole provision of having to have somebody that was a protected person and rather, instead, made it a range of behaviours that were quite clearly defined. So what that meant was that while you would still need evidence of the behaviour occurring, it didn’t have to be actually that person accessing services themselves that could bring that forward. So I think that added an extra layer for those who wanted to be protected so that things could still go ahead without them having to be the one to do it.

Then, just finally, the timeliness issue was something that was really important to the committee, because there was a real sense that we needed to get on and provide protections in a very timely manner. The question was that there was a range of options considered, but if we could put in place a blanket protection 150 metres from all abortion services—could you do that quickly—and I think that brought up a whole range of questions about, “OK, if you’re sitting in a safe area that is 150 metres from the service or from the building; is it the building itself or is it the land on which the service is located?”, because you’ve got a lot of services that may be delivered in a big hospital complex where the land area is rather large. Where do you put that boundary? Then there are other issues around private property, and could you include private property in a safe area? I think where we landed was going back to the original provisions where we’ve got a customised regulation-making power so that each facility has its own regulations developed around that so that we’ve got the ability to work out for each area how to potentially exclude private property, but also make sure we’ve got the maximum protection.

So I think this was a bill where submitters really suggested that something needed to be done. We had to work through the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provisions, but I think where we’ve ended up is a good balance between the two. So I think that I’m really happy with where this has landed and I’d just like to acknowledge all the work of those involved in the select committee, and again acknowledge Louisa Wall for bringing this bill to the House. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei) (remote): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I’m rising to speak to this bill tonight, with gratitude. I was not a member of this House when the primary legislation was passed, making abortion a legal medical treatment that women and pregnant people were free to seek over their own bodies. Nor was I a member of the select committee. I have watched your work, my sister Louisa Wall, from afar, with gratitude and a very clear awareness of how difficult it is to operate in a space like this one, to take on board all of the very intense emotions that are generated by talk of pregnancy, of termination, and of the right of women to choose how they operate within their own bodies and their own spaces, and our control over our reproductive rights.

I am lucky in that I am someone who has never faced the choice between a pregnancy and a situation where I was not able to raise a baby. All of my four babies, I was able to welcome into a family that was capable of coping with them and loving them and joying in them. I was raised in a family, also, where babies were joyous and welcomed. But I was also raised by feminist parents and a mother who was a registered nurse in the 1960s, so I was raised with a very clear awareness that the choice to have a baby can be one that is intolerable for some women. I vividly remember the stories from my mother, of nursing a young mum, who, after three children and a very happy marriage, she and her husband simply could not afford a fourth child, and after much travail they chose a backstreet abortion, which was all that was available to them, and as a result that woman contracted a most terrible infection and died horribly in hospital. That is what you people have done: in making the abortion act legal, you have avoided any young women like that young woman, her young husband, and her three children going through that trauma.

To be pregnant is just such an intensely vulnerable time. So it is so important that we take this step of protecting women who are in the appalling situation of having to make a decision about their bodies from the pressure and harassment of those who have very strong, and sometimes ill-considered, ways of expressing their opposition to the personal choice of a woman or a pregnant person over her own body.

When we look at the Attorney-General’s report, we consider the advice that he gave to the select committee as to the scope of what should be prohibited or what it was lawful to prohibit under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. He was alarmed by the word “communicating”. He felt that that was too wide a term and that that could not be used in the context of prohibiting free speech. Let us remind ourselves of the words of section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, that our rights and freedoms are “subject only to such reasonable limits [as] prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” Rights are never absolute. Finding the boundary between where one’s own rights of expression unjustifiably infringe upon the freedoms and liberties of another is a difficult job.

So I commend the select committee for the work that they did and the way in which they came down on a careful, considered, and, I think, eminently reasonable approach to this. So, rather than a person being prohibited from merely communicating, we now have the clear advice in new section 13A, inserted by clause 5, that it is prohibited to obstruct a person from trying to access abortion services; to visually record that person in a way that is likely to cause them distress; to try to interfere with their decision, without their consent; or to engage in protest. And that, as my friend Dr Craig has said, also is ameliorated by the fact that the 150-metre rule and exclusion zone is negotiable depending on the circumstances. This is a sensible, straightforward regime that is going to protect people at an incredibly vulnerable point in their lives.

I sometimes wonder whether those who protest, including outside my local hospital, quite realise the level of vulnerability, and, indeed, shame there still is around women and pregnant people accessing what is a perfectly legal service in control of their own destinies and their own lives. I sometimes wonder whether their efforts would, in fact, be better served—if indeed they have such aroha for women and for children—in perhaps going out and supporting our young mums who struggle to raise babies; maybe it would be better served by an effort to volunteer at your local after-school care programme or perhaps to donate food or offer practical support rather than to harass and bully—however well intentioned you may be—women at such a vulnerable point in their lives.

But I can understand why people feel that right to interfere with women at that point in their lives, because we are used to being allowed to interfere with women’s rights over our bodies. To be born into a typically female body is to be born knowing that society will never leave you in any doubt as to your choices over how to use that body, whether it is what you wear, who you associate with, or whether you have or have not children. To be born into an apparently female body is to be born into a society which assumes it can tell you exactly what it likes about that body. That is not OK. Our women need—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! My apologies to the member. This debate is interrupted. We will resume after dinner at 7 p.m. Kia ora.

Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON: Kia ora, Mr Speaker. For the reasons discussed prior to the dinner break, I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much. Hey, I will be continuing to oppose this bill. It sits very firmly, as I mentioned in the first reading, within the scope of some of the most fundamental freedoms of a proper functioning liberal democracy, and that’s freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly. I think others have rightly noted, including the proponent of this bill, that rights always interact. Along with those rights, we have also the right in society to not be, if you will, molested, abused, harassed, and so forth. So, fundamentally, for me this bill doesn’t strike the right balance, and hence I’m opposing it. As people will know in this House, I’m more than happy to argue and debate abortion—I think, relatively confidently; you don’t have to agree with me but I’ll debate.

But that’s not really, ultimately, what this bill is about, because it’s situated for me in a growing number, if you will, of safe spaces. It doesn’t matter if it’s the spaces themselves, the ideas that need to be kept safe from people, right through to more and more legislation in this House. It’s been a growing concern of mine for many, many years—in fact, even from my early days in university, which was a long time ago now. We seem to have this increasing desire to isolate ourselves as a society from ideas and opinions which we don’t like, and some speakers tonight—and it’s been a respectful debate, so I want to keep it in that tone—have said we’ve just got to keep those opinions, those ideas we don’t like, away from us. They could be harmful, and there’s been a stress particularly on emotional harm. Of course there’s emotional harm, but we should never conflate that, I would suggest, with obviously higher levels of harm and violence such as physical harm, and so forth.

There has been, unfortunately even around this debate of safe spaces, quite a conflation out of the American situation, which is often quite heinous, actually, the behaviours of pro-lifers or anti-abortionists or whatever nomenclature you want to use. It can be very, very aggressive, but it’s conflated and drawn over as if that’s happening here in New Zealand. But by and large, and from my own understanding from reading the select committee report and others, more of it is just seen as offensive, problematic, that someone might be outside, in this case, an abortion clinic offering an alternative opinion. As I’ve noted before in a different topic and speech, a nun standing out with rosary beads is now deemed as harmful—emotional harm. I just think we’re treading an unfortunate path as a society and as a democracy if we’re beginning to limit actions like that simply because something is perceived to be harmful.

I want to stress again: a lot of the conversation tonight’s not been about physical violence. We all abhor that. The law rightly covers that already. We’re talking about ideas which are seen as harmful, opinions which we don’t like, and it doesn’t matter if it’s increasing safe spaces because, of course, as I put before, what’s the next safe space that is required to protect another group from ideas, again, or opinions that they don’t wish to hear? We’ve had laws passed through this House which, effectively, criminalise conversations. We’re still having discussions, or the Government certainly is and some of its activist friends, of introducing hate speech: certain words, ideas, have to be banned. Then we look in the wider society to, I’d suggest, the overflow—the harassment, for example, of the seven professors because they happen to have a view around issues like mātauranga Māori.

So it sits, this bill, within that purview, within that context of a tightening of the grip, particularly by the State, on ideas and opinions, and I don’t think that’s right. I think fundamentally too—and it’s probably why abortion in this one becomes quite important—this is a controversial topic. No matter what people think, it is controversial. There isn’t a singular view. It won’t, again, surprise the House and those listening in that I sit on the side that when things are more controversial, you need more leaning in to the rights and freedoms to have a different opinion. So that’s the first point.

The next point I think we have to touch on, and it has come up in some of the speeches tonight but it’s more manifest outside in society, particularly those who rightly say there shouldn’t be harassment, who are themselves often involved in a lot of harassment and abuse of people. You often see it in the likes of social media, and so forth. I want to stress: it’s not here in the Chamber. But absolute abuse of anyone who might, in this case, hold a pro-life—you might hold a different view. If they’re not part of the monological view on particularly ethical issues, they are to be derided, insulted, threatened, and so forth. Well, at times I’ve been one of them, but I’m not asking for a safe space to be put around me. People are welcome to have contrary opinions, and I’m sure those who deride people like myself who have a different view are more than happy, as they continue to be, to protest, to yell, to scream, to threaten, and so forth. So there’s a paradox, a hypocrisy, if you will.

But we’re also seeing more and more in society the labelling of people and denigrating them. There’s again been hints of that tonight: the suggestion that someone who might be pro-life is misogynist, and then that begins to be applied to women as well. It all gets, for me, wrapped up in pseudo-academics to try and explain how this is all internalised, and so forth. But it is ultimately a denigration, and I’d say, particularly to those academics, they are just activists. They’re just activists who masquerade, coming up with ever-latest terms, particularly in the panoply that is identity politics and intersectionality. I think it’s dehumanising, ultimately, because it doesn’t allow, again, this forefront of a proper functioning liberal democracy—which is all people are inherently good and trying to actually articulate views which are very deeply held by them.

I’ll begin to finish here. We are seeing a dangerous trend developing in particularly the Western world that who you are as an individual is becoming secondary to the group, and the more insidious element that’s coming through in recent years is that your identity within the group is now defined by the group. So if you’re a woman, you’d think you were in the woman group, but unless you hold to a set of views that, you know, a certain group have defined, as I say, you’re now a misogynist. So you’re a woman who’s a misogynist. It’s the same as we’ve seen in the anti-vax movement—or, rather, people at the moment running around saying everyone’s anti-vax who might have a different opinion. The fact that a whole lot of people are vaccinated but have a different view doesn’t make them anti-vax. It’s the same when we talk about cultural or race issues. Just because someone has a different view doesn’t make them a racist.

Got friends in America—God, you could bring it here to New Zealand—who are themselves Black Americans, or Māori here, but now they’re being called racists or white supremacists. It’s this bizarre, dehumanising labelling that’s going on, and I think it’s an unfortunate dynamic that’s even coming through as we discuss safe spaces tonight, that people who might have a contrary opinion are being, I would suggest, mislabelled. I think it would be useful for people to reflect on that, particularly if they are wanting to argue that they should have particularly opinions around abortions protected—they need a safe space. They are making life, if you will, unsafe for another group of people by deriding them. As I say, this groupthink, I think, is becoming a problem.

Again, to address what was a very particular charge or suggestion earlier, that any women—woman, sorry; I’d better get my wording and grammar right—who opposes this bill, and I know thousands of them, are all of a sudden not proper women or they’re misogynist is just wrong. It’s just this manifestation of a growing groupthink: you can be a woman so long as you follow a whole lot of prescriptions of particularly the academic left; you’ll be Māori so long as you fit a certain set of views. That’s why, amongst many, many reasons, I continue to oppose this bill.

Our liberal democracy functions best when, firstly, we’re not dehumanising people, we’re not labelling them, and we’re not trying to degenerate—or, rather, denigrate—their views. So freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association are so fundamentally important, and, as I said at the start too, so is the freedom to not be harassed, if we get into the negative freedoms at different levels. Those are important too, but the fundamental point is the more controversial a topic is, the more discussion there should and needs to be. So we’ll have to continue opposing this bill. I’m not going to go into all the details. That would have been dealt with in committee of the whole House and, obviously, within second reading.

I will acknowledge, to the sponsor of the bill, what we have here now is a huge step forward from where we started. Things are better defined. Still not enough for me. As I say, conceptually I don’t like the idea of safe spaces, and I asked a rhetorical question of the House: what’s the next safe space that we have to create? Safe spaces around parliamentary offices from Green Party activists? You know, of course I don’t want that, but why not if you want to follow that argument through. We shouldn’t be, if you will—and I’ve said it in a different context before: ideas and opinions are never safe. They always challenge us. I again just want to reiterate in this House tonight: I worry of this continuing trend to try and limit what people can say, think, or be. So with that, I’ll leave it there. Thanks, Mr Speaker.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a call on the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill. This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to speak on this bill, and I’m pleased to do so, albeit from my home in Auckland.

I have a few comments, first of all, to make in relation to the last speaker, Simon O’Connor, who talked about concerns he had about this type of legislation in New Zealand and what was almost a concept of creep into certain areas where we would need safe zones, and—from his perspective, if I’m characterising it correctly—people wouldn’t be free to share their opinions. I want to really challenge that idea. I don’t think there is an equivalent medical procedure that occurs to me that is similar to abortion. It is such as important health issue that women need to be able to access, and it is such, such an important human right that they are able to do that.

What we are actually looking at with this bill is not a situation where people can’t oppose abortion. We know that people have different views on abortion. We know that it’s important that people are able to express those views. All we are trying to do—and what I imagine the member who’s brought this bill, Louisa Wall, is trying to do—is to allow women to access a key medical procedure free from harassment, free from intimidation, so that they can go about their lives and live them in the way that they choose. That is why I fundamentally support this bill, and disagree with the comments of the last member respectfully.

I was first made aware of the concept of abortion safe zones or buffer zones, as they’re sometimes called, in a borough that I used to live in, in West London, that introduced them in 2018. They were used, in that instance, to prevent the harassment of those seeking abortions, staff members, and members of the public. It was a first for the UK, and these safe zones proved to be effective, and so, in 2021, the safe zone was renewed.

I’m also proud of the recent work that New Zealand has done to allow those who wish to access abortion to do so safely and legally. The change last term to legalise abortion and to take it out of the Crimes Act was historic. I’m also proud of the work undertaken by my friend and colleague the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, to increase access to abortion through the use of telehealth services that she’s recently announced. This bill really builds on that progress. It will ensure that people seeking an abortion will be able to access this important health service free from harassment, free from intimidation. The right to access abortion safely is an important human right, and I would respectfully ask all those colleagues from across the House to consider this when they cast their vote on the final vote on today’s third reading.

I want to also congratulate my colleague Louisa Wall for bringing this bill to the House, and for being a champion for women’s rights. It’s not always easy and, as we’ve seen, not everyone always agrees. But when we came to this House, we did so to make a difference, and casting a conscience vote in favour of this bill will certainly do that for those wishing to access this important health service. I commend this bill to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and it’s a real treat to get to rise and speak in support of Louisa Wall’s member’s bill, the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill at this, the third reading. It really is getting the job finished that was started quite a long time ago. I really want to acknowledge Louisa Wall’s very adept shepherding of this through the House, and increasing support for it through the process, and, again, to acknowledge the chair of the Health Committee, Liz Craig, and all the other members because, unlike one of the previous speakers—who suggested that while, yes, it had been improved, that actually this was a fundamental attack on fundamental rights—this has been given a very clear vet from the Attorney-General in terms of being compliant with our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which protects those fundamental rights.

The committee spent a huge amount of time making sure that we got to that point and, to be honest, I was on the committee considering the abortion legislation back in 2019-20, and this was an area of that piece of legislation that I was uncomfortable with. I was totally willing to be voting and supporting it because it was a really tenuous dance, and I didn’t want to do anything to interfere with the progress of that legislation, because it was such a watershed moment for us as a country to secure the bodily integrity and protect women from forced pregnancy; a pretty important moment in our history.

I was OK with supporting the safe zone provisions as they were, but I had levels of discomfort. So I’m really pleased that we got to consider this in its specificity and go through the detail of it, and I think we’ve got a much better result now than what we had in the original legislation, because it is the balancing of rights, but also it recognises the fact that the provisions in our law at the moment that protect against harassment are fundamentally useless, because they rely on the person going for an abortion to be providing evidence in the court, to be able to take that case. That’s not really something anybody wants to do. You imagine: you’re going through this medical procedure, you are harassed, and then you have to deal with the police on top of that, and then at some date well out into the future, you have to then stand up in court and relive all of that in front of a public audience, and spill your guts. There’s a reason those pieces of law are not being used, because nobody is going to do that. So we have fixed that problem in this piece of legislation, and I think that will make it effective as well, and I think that’s really important.

I do want to address the perception that was given by a previous speaker that this is an attack on the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet clearly says it is not. It is consistent with those rights in our society. That same speaker said that he disagreed with harassment but he didn’t seem to believe that we had a problem with it, and I’ve seen some other people opposing this legislation who say that there is no problem because there are no court cases. Well, I’ve just explained why there are no court cases—because nobody’s going to go through that process. What we heard very clearly in select committee was evidence of patients being chased into clinics. We heard of pamphleting with anti-abortion and inaccurate images, and information that is just blatantly untrue; of loud hymn singing; of blockading of doors; of protesters approaching and speaking to patients, and calling individual staff by their names; photographing of staff and patients; people refusing to leave when being asked. We also heard of a situation, and we had somebody present to us in the committee who had previously been arrested for violent protests outside an abortion clinic, who was telling us that this is God’s work—to be protesting outside clinics—and we could not deprive them of that work.

We also heard the survey from providers who are doing this work, showing an increase in activities around clinics. One clinic who had previously not had any protest action was now reporting twice-weekly protests on the day that they provided services. An escalating protest was reported in another clinic, and, one clinic noted that after more than 20 years of experiencing protesters, they were tired of the ongoing rights that the anti-choice protesters had, but their patients’ right to privacy and safe access without harassment was continually being ignored.

hat right is not being protected in our current situation, because people areThis piece of legislation is recognising that they have rights—as staff and as patients—and our code of disability rights recognises this. It guarantees consumers the specific rights to privacy, respect, and the right to freedom from discrimination, coercion, harassment, and exploitation. Now, t—from so much of the evidence we heard—experiencing harassment and, even in the peaceful protests where people are just standing, praying with anti-abortion signs usually, that are often inaccurate, but even then they lose their right to privacy. We heard from submitters that sense of sometimes they’ve known people in that group, and they have wanted to go and access their right to abortion, but have felt intimidated or unable to because they have known that there would be people known to their family who would be observing them accessing that service. That is not consistent with our fundamentals of a safe and appropriate healthcare system.

This safe zone does not stop anybody protesting. I recognise that, where people are saying that people have the right to access, they have the right to oppose. When people were presenting to the committee and they would say that, and I would say, “So would that right still be in place if you were 150 metres away?” That right would still be in place. They can absolutely continue to oppose abortion—they can just do it 150 metres away so that they do not impinge on the rights of the patient accessing healthcare. That, to me, is an absolutely essential part of the work that we are doing, which is to protect that right and balance the right of freedom of expression, and protest, and assembly for others.

I think the other piece I wanted to touch on, because I, initially, wanted to have automatic safe zones, and that was what I came into this thinking—and we didn’t get to that at the end of the process, because we could not guarantee a process to set that up that would have a logic to it, now that abortions no longer just happen in a very limited number of places, where they could be provided through mobile clinics, or in doctors’ surgeries around the country. How would we coherently do that, to set them up automatically? Also, if we set them up automatically with set areas, without thinking through the logistics of the space, actually it could have some perverse and negative outcomes that wouldn’t achieve our desired goal. While it may not be what I initially wanted, I think this will work, and again, next week it will be two years since this country decriminalised abortion. We’ve seen in recent surveys an increase in the number of people in this country who believe women should have the right to choose what they do with their body. That represents progress; this represents progress. I look forward to a time when women and pregnant people are free of all stigma, to be able to care for their own health.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Members, before I take the next call—

David Seymour: Mr Speaker—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Oh, well you’ve actually done what I want to ask for; before I take the next call, I wanted to say this debate is limited to 12 10-minute speeches, and because we’re taking calls all over the place, it’s very useful if I knew who wished to take the call. I now know who wishes to take a call in the House, but I’m going to go to Sarah Pallett, who’s been waiting remotely for a call for a while. So thank you, you two, David Seymour and Simon O’Connor. I take it no one else wants a call?

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with great pleasure that I rise to speak for the third time on the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill. I want to take a couple of seconds just to add my thanks to those of previous speakers to Louisa Wall, who brought this amendment bill to the House, but also to my colleagues on the Health Committee, chaired really ably by Dr Liz Craig, and to the clerks and officials. Because, actually, as you’ve probably heard, this piece of work was indeed a piece of work. Because we all wanted to create the very best piece of legislation that we could, we did need to do a decent amount of work on it. As other members have mentioned, we had issues with the first draft with New Zealand Bill of Rights Act compliance, which we worked extremely hard to make sure that we had actually covered. So I’m really proud to be able to stand—in a seated position remotely—to support this bill and to bring it forward.

We had 890 submitters, as we’ve heard in previous speeches, and 97 of those submitted orally. But what we’re really doing here is this bill aims to protect, as we’ve heard, the safety and wellbeing and respect the privacy and dignity of women accessing abortion facilities, as well as for those practitioners providing and helping with abortion services. We’re not here to relitigate the provision of abortion as lawful healthcare. We’ve had and heard many, many speeches over an extremely long period of time before we passed the primary legislation. I really want to emphasise that we do often have differing views about the provision of abortion services. My position is obviously that it is lawful healthcare, and it’s one that’s vital and often lifesaving for the pregnant person or woman who is pregnant. Often, it’s necessary for complex medical reasons. But, again, we’re not here to relitigate. What I think is really important is that this is not about that. What this is about is about allowing people who are accessing lawful healthcare to do so without intimidation, threats, and harassment. And you can support that and not actually be personally in favour of abortion yourself. You may choose yourself to not support it, but you can still respect the rights of people and healthcare providers to access this healthcare without being threatened or harassed.

Now, one of the earlier speakers, Mr O’Connor, was describing this harassment as an isolation of views that we disagree with. I fundamentally disagree with this assertion. This is not an isolation of views that we disagree with; this is about people who are literally going about the business of accessing lawful healthcare. As Jan Logie said, just now, you can do that from a maximum of 150 metres away. The safe area provision is literally a maximum of 150 metres, and so those banners can be held, those chants can be chanted, and the very loud prayers can be prayed, but 150 metres maximum away. The safe area isn’t going to be applied automatically. The individual providers will need to apply for a safe area and there’ll have to be a good reason for it, although previous harm or threat will not be one of those contingencies. I think we need to ask ourselves, if you disagree with this and you feel that the rights—the need to bring those banners into the faces of people accessing healthcare, some of whom are going through extremely difficult and challenging times—if you feel the need to be allowed to have overt and often fact-bereft banners in people’s faces, I think you need to ask yourself why. Why do you need to do that in the faces of people that are providing healthcare? Why do you need to do something that you know, because you’ve been told, is threatening, is harassment, is challenging, and does cause trauma. It’s not about hurt feelings or feeling offended; it’s about actually, literally, causing trauma and pain to somebody who may already be in a great deal of it, although sometimes not.

So we’re not here to relitigate and we’re not here to stop peaceful protest. We’re not here to stop a nun standing with a rosary, Mr O’Connor, because that won’t be prohibited under this piece of legislation, and it’s a shame that you didn’t read it thoroughly enough to realise that peaceful prayer that doesn’t involve the carrying of banners is not something that’s going to be prohibited. It won’t fall into the legislation, because we don’t intend to do that. We really tried hard as a committee—and bearing in mind that the committee did hold differing views on the provision of abortion itself—to make sure that the rights of people to peacefully protest were upheld.

Peaceful protest is something I think you’ll find that we’re all strongly in favour of. But we’re all really aware that sometimes peaceful protest is not necessarily what all protesters intend. We’ve seen a really solid example of that recently outside our House, our place of work. We’ve seen people being threatened and harassed with violence. The nooses came out on day one for journalists and politicians, and they didn’t go away until the protesters went away. Those protesters did interfere with people going about their business. They stopped schools running. They made businesses closed. We’re really clear that there was a line that was crossed where all the namastes and yoga tents in the world are not going to persuade you that these were people who had peace in their hearts and minds, and so we need to move that elsewhere. And it’s 150 metres away, maximum. Your right to protest peacefully, I would say, is one that we upheld. It’s a bit like your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.

So what we’re doing here is prohibiting actions and behaviours that cause extreme distress, as described by some of the people who presented to us. It’s worth noting that all of the healthcare providers were supportive of this legislation. We have no intention of restricting people’s rights to protest peacefully or pray quietly, but we do want to protect people who are accessing lawful healthcare and their healthcare providers. And as one myself, I can say that I directly experience some of the threats coming to me. I was vocal in my support of the provision of abortion as lawful healthcare, and so I’ve experienced personally threats from somebody who was quite cheerily doing that in front of my children. It was not an enjoyable experience, as I would encourage people to look into their hearts and ask themselves what it is they would want to achieve. What’s their goal? What do they want by actually going into that 150-metre zone, and ask themselves if it’s something that they want to support or not. I would encourage those who’ve previously maybe voted against this bill to change their minds and realise that all we’re trying to do is to keep people safe just in a really small and restricted area and not interfere with their broader rights, as has been confirmed by the Attorney-General. And with that, I commend this bill to the House.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to speak in favour of this Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill. I understand that all ACT MPs will be voting for it, although there’s a limited number of speeches.

The genesis of this bill I had a little bit to do with. The Abortion Legislation Bill would have included the original version of “safe areas” that were in this bill before we had amendments made to it through the Health Committee. And I want to take a bit of time to explain how it is possible for someone to be stridently pro-choice and in favour of a woman’s right to choose abortion without State interference, and yet have concerns about these safe areas, and then how ACT has watched this legislation change to a point where we believe it is consistent with the values of free speech and we can support it. Altogether, a very good story. The Abortion Legislation Bill is one that I supported stridently. I was one of 20 members of the House at the time who voted for option A, which would have made abortion a choice between a woman and her doctor at any stage of pregnancy, rather than after 20 or so weeks, which we actually ended up with.

And I believe in a woman’s right to choose and I am pro-choice on this issue, for a couple of reasons. One, it just seems right that if it’s your body, it should be your choice. But when you drill into what anti-abortion laws really mean, practically, they mean that somebody wants the apparatus of the State—the police, the courts, corrections—to actively go out and force women to take pregnancies to term against their will. And I seriously struggle with why people think that would be a useful thing for the State to do. I think anyone that believes in freedom would have to ask themselves how you can really talk about freedom once you have done that. So it’s very easy for me to be pro-choice. It’s the right thing to do, and I think our country is a much better place having passed the Abortion Legislation Bill two years ago, which, effectively, decriminalised abortion, and that is something we’re proud to have supported it.

But it’s also true that it was my amendment that took safe areas out of that bill, because there’s a tension: you can be in favour of a person’s right to choose, but also be concerned about free speech. The bill, as originally introduced in this case and as a subpart of that Abortion Legislation Bill, would have said that it is prohibited to communicate with a person on any terms within a safe area. And I think it’s true—I find myself agreeing with some of the earlier speakers, and even Simon O’Connor, which is rare; the Venn diagram of beliefs that intersect for us is a very tiny sliver, it has to be said. But, nevertheless, he’s right that we have a real problem in the Western World, that people find it harder to disagree without being disagreeable, to have honest conversations and work through our problems in a way that’s respectful. And we also have a terrible habit of commodifying people into identities, rather than focusing on our universal humanity in an objective reality that we can observe and work through together as equals because we’re human. That’s a big problem, and it’s a problem throughout the West. And if we look at the situation in Europe, I think it becomes more and more important that we understand, articulate, and stand up for those basic, classical liberal values.

So when we were confronted with legislation that said a Minister of Health can define an area—a part of New Zealand, a public place—and say it’s illegal to communicate in that area, well, here’s the thing: standing up for free speech seldom involves defending people that you’d want to have over for dinner. In fact, I don’t think I’ve done any defence of free speech on behalf of anyone who I actually like, yet—but you never know; the way that this Government’s going, they might widen the range of people who need defence of free speech. And so it’s easy to say that you really detest the odious ogres who stand outside and shout at scared, often young, women who are going to have a pretty traumatic medical procedure, and abuse them because of their own sense of justice or belief or spirituality. It’s pretty easy to be opposed to all of that, but still think it would be wrong to have the gradual creep of State power to ban communication within an area. And when this bill was introduced, the Attorney-General and Crown Law advice agreed with ACT about that. They said that the word “communicate” being included was actually a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, particularly the right to freedom of expression, and it was a breach that exceeded what was demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society.

Now, here’s the good thing—sometimes it happens: people listened. And the select committee did its job, and often select committees can function very well on these cross-partisan issues, when people take down their political party affiliations and actually work on the issue. I just wish we could do that in Health Committee sometimes—I know Chris Bishop will agree with me on that.

Chris Bishop: That’d be a fine thing.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah, it sure would. But the select committee listened, and what they achieved—they said, “We’re going to listen to the Attorney-General. We’re going to take the word “communicate” out.” And so our big concern about a Government banning communication, even communication that I personally don’t like—that has been resolved by the select committee changing this bill.

And what the bill now says is that if there is an abortion clinic, a premises they call it, then the Minister has the ability to define an area—doesn’t have to be a 150-metre radius, but up to 150 metres around that premise—and say this is an abortion safe zone. And in that area, you must not “obstruct a person who’s approaching, entering, or leaving”. Well, that’s reasonable. I don’t think anyone in a free society should be physically obstructed. So we support that. It’s a big tick. “Make a visual recording of another person in a safe area in a manner that’s likely to cause emotional distress”—well, frankly, you know, I would defend a lot of freedoms, but the freedom to go and video people that are going to get an abortion—that’s not of the freedoms we need to defend. I don’t think it’s a priority. In fact, I think it’s pretty grotesque. So very happy with that. And it says, “do any of the following in a safe area in a manner that could easily be seen or heard by another person who may be accessing, providing, or assisting with abortion services: advise or persuade against it; inform them about matters relating to the abortion, other than if you are actually a clinical person or engaged in the procedure; or engage in protest about matters relating to the provision of abortion services.”

You can’t do those things, but you can still communicate. You can still do silent prayer. You can still do things, if you really want to, and you can still communicate. There’s not a ban on communication. And if you do do those things, a police officer can come along and ask you to stop. Here’s your opportunity: just stop doing it. And if you don’t, then the law gives them the right to arrest you without warrant, and you can be fined up to $1,000. So that is how this law works. And then, every five years, the Minister has to review and check if it’s still necessary, the safe areas that have been put in place. That’s how it actually works in what you can and can’t do in these safe areas, and how they are established, and how they’re reviewed, and how the police behave in them, if necessary. And I think that is a pretty reasonable place to land. The Attorney-General has revised his opinion in light of the changes made, and said, actually, this is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

So I think this is a very good example of how this Parliament can work: people send their representatives here, everybody has a voice, people listen, there’s deliberation, the laws can actually change and be made better and more consistent with our values and principles—such as freedom of expression—that are so sacred in this place and up and down our country, and we can get to a place where we have better laws that protect those people who just don’t want to be harassed and also not impinge on those other values that we need. We’ve found that balance. And I’m very pleased to have stood on principle to make this possible, by ensuring that a safe area provision inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act was taken out of the original Abortion Legislation Bill, which I stridently supported in every other aspect, so that it could come back and be properly and separately debated and improved by a select committee and made consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That’s a very good ending for a piece of legislation. I commend Louisa Wall for her indefatigable approach to lawmaking and making this possible. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour) (remote): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Knowing that this bill was coming up for its third reading, I dug an article out of an old family storage box, and it was published on Sunday, 9 August 1973, in the Sun, which is a Sri Lankan paper. It was written by the then president of the Ceylon Medical Association and entitled “The CMA President asks for liberal laws to terminate early pregnancies”. The president at the time, Dr S. Rajanayagam, was my grandfather, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, and it’s this that I dwelt on over the weekend. While I tend to approach arguments in this space in the dialogue of rights balancing, the entirety of his argument, as a medical practitioner, for liberal laws was health-bound. It was a very practical and real argument for access to healthcare.

He, unfortunately, wasn’t successful in his advocacy. Sri Lanka continues to have one of the most Draconian laws in regards to abortion, which actually dates from 1883. But reflecting on my grandfather’s advocacy made me reflect on the advocates here in New Zealand over the years who have championed women’s health issues, often in the face of aggressive and what was in some cases very personally directed opposition: Dame Margaret Sparrow, Terry Bellamak, and there are many more, including women in this House, one of whom is Louisa Wall, whose bill we usher through the House today.

Ultimately, this bill reminds us that a right to a health service means nothing without the ability to access it safely, and I do want to address briefly the apparent rights arguments that I’ve heard sitting in some of the objection to this bill, with the first argument, of course, being that freedom of speech should not be interfered with. I spoke several weeks ago to the Conversion Therapy Prohibition Bill, providing some examples of how freedom of speech is frequently limited in places like consumer law, employment law, electoral regulation, copyright, and, actually, many other areas as well. I noted especially that rights aren’t things to be verbally wielded around one’s head, and I often cringe when giants of thought like Voltaire and Mill are selectively quoted without acknowledging the broader context of their theories, which often include recognising the limits that harm can and should place on freedoms.

Rights require precision in definition and analysis in imposing what are reasonable limitations. The analysis requires us to consider, first, the definition of the right itself, which in some cases actually might limit how we understand the right, and then, if the right is engaged, we need to consider whether it’s limited in a reasonably justifiable way.

So the consideration of justifiable limitations in a free and democratic society means walking through explicitly a number of steps. The first is to establish that there is a sufficiently important objective to curtail a right, which there is in this case, in terms of allowing individuals to safely access healthcare.

The second is that there must be a rational connection between the limitation proposed and the objective sought, which, again, there is in this case, as we know that women face obstruction and harassment as they attempt to engage healthcare of this nature.

Thirdly, the limitation must be no more than is reasonably necessary to sufficiently achieve the objective, and I’ll quote Terry Bellamak here, who said, “The right of anti-abortion activists to express themselves is not being curtailed, it is [simply] being moved down the road … 150 metres. What is being curtailed is their ability to target people who are there to attend a medical appointment”. We’ve heard how the Health Committee very carefully considered this aspect of what is the reasonable limitation, and, indeed, I’ll acknowledge that there were changes made at the select committee on that front.

Fourthly, the limitation must be in due proportion to the importance of the objective, and here I want to commend the select committee for their work, again. In my view, the limitation that the select committee landed on is, in this instance, a reasonable one. In this case, this health access proposal doesn’t remove a right to free speech. It proposes reasonable, stepped-through limitations. Women should be entitled to be able to walk up to a healthcare provider’s premises without worrying about being harassed or obstructed.

Some talk about the chilling effect on freedom of speech when we put in any limitation whatsoever on the right to freedom of speech, but—let’s be honest—the absence of law in this space has created a chill. Without this change, many women who need to access safe healthcare simply wouldn’t risk it.

So I’d like to end just by offering my sincere thanks to the many advocates for women’s healthcare, both women and men, who have done the mahi to get us across many hurdles over the last decades to a place where we can usher this bill through the House today. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on this, the third reading of the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill. I’ve enjoyed the debate. As always in these matters, it’s helpful, I think, that we have such an opportunity, in this case for me, to make a second contribution, having spoken at the start of the legislative process—so to bookend it, so to speak, with some thoughts that I’d like to share with the House and, indeed, anyone who may be watching.

First, may I place on record what I would hope would be an obvious wish that harassment not be visited upon anyone, at any time, anywhere, for any reason, but that general desire and hope is not the stuff of legislation. We are concerned, of course, in this House, or should always be concerned in this House, with the specific application and implication of laws that we pass in this place. So within my time, I’d like to focus a little bit on some arguments around what this bill might add to the statute book relative to those provisions in other laws that are already on that; second, to give a bit of context in terms of the constitutional interplay that we had with the Attorney-General’s original vet and then discussion, effectively, with the House through the select committee on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act implications; obviously then to look at the specific provisions of the bill, including and especially the extent to which it may capture behaviour that may or may not be intended by the Parliament to be caught; and then, finally, a reflection on the unique nature of the services that have been—protesting about the nature of the services at stake in this particular bill, as opposed to protest more generally.

First of all then, relative to existing laws, I do note that the select committee report addressed the fact that our statute book has already various pieces of legislation that substantially do cover this area. So I’m just quoting from that in a way that would more usually take place at second reading, but, noting that I didn’t speak at the second reading, they note that the Summary Offences Act 1981, to which I’d add section 4 “Offensive behaviour or language”, has provisions that are very much in the space of preventing behaviour that is deemed to be offensive, or language included; the Harassment Act 1987, the Trespass Act 1980 under which notices can be issued, and so forth.

We’ve heard from a previous contributor to the debate, who was arguing in favour of the bill, that one of the issues with such legislation is it would require evidence to be given of such wrongdoing. When the State gives itself the power to forcibly remove a person and to limit their rights in such a way as this bill is seeking to do, the giving of evidence about the things that have taken place is a feature of our system, not a bug. We should tread very carefully when we contemplate giving the power—physical, coercive power—of the State over human beings in relation to matters in which evidence is not required for the exercise in application of such force.

The second point—but actually I’ll just pause on that note briefly. I think there is a legitimate argument around the privacy aspects. I think in this country—and this is a personal view; I’m taking the liberty of expressing it under the guise of a conscience vote—but I think our privacy laws in this country are seriously deficient in many different areas. And so I would have sympathy for the view that’s expressed in the House that that the privacy of people generally needs to be protected much more rigorously than it currently is.

On the point that I’ve appealingly described as a constitutional point, but bear with me, I do want to acknowledge the interaction which I regard as very positive in itself between the Attorney-General and the Parliament through the select committee. The member in charge of the bill is nodding and I’m pleased that she acknowledges that point, and other colleagues have spoken on that—I think approvingly in every case, notwithstanding that other views on the bill may differ. So I think it’s positive that the Attorney-General, having given a report on the inconsistency of the bill as introduced with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, then became subject of the dialogue between the select committee and the Attorney-General such that he suggested, I think, a couple of amendments. I think the suggestion came from him, and I think I’m receiving affirmation again from the member in charge of the bill. The select committee responded by making, essentially, the suggestions that are amended. So I would say on that basis that the bill is better than it was. But of course, in order to cast a vote in favour of a piece of legislation, to me, at least, the test is not whether merely that it is better but that it is good enough and specifically that its positives are not outweighed by its negatives.

So in terms of the issue that was raised by the Attorney-General, his view—with which I agree, for what that’s worth—was that the phrase “communicating with” was too broad in the bill as introduced at first reading. So we have now three sets of behaviour, if you like, that are prohibited under new section 13A, set out in clause 5. The first is that a person cannot be obstructed in a safe area. Well, that’s already covered by existing law. The second is to make a visual recording of another person in a safe area in a way that might cause emotional distress. I do actually have sympathy with that. As I’ve said, I’m happy to place on record I don’t believe that such behaviour is valid anywhere in New Zealand, including in this context. So, as I said, that fits in with a more general view I have about the need to protect New Zealanders’ privacy in any kind of intimate situation, notwithstanding that such recording may take place in a public space.

Then the third set of behaviour includes a provision in new section 13A(1)(i), which I still have difficulty with and I refer back to my comments in the first reading. So it would be an offence to do any of the following, including in the one particular I wish to highlight: to “advise or persuade [person] A”—the one who may be accessing, providing, or assisting with providing abortion services—“to refrain from accessing or providing abortion services (unless the advice or persuasion is by a person who is, with the consent of A, accompanying A)”. So they have covered the consent possibility but this doesn’t preclude the possibility, or doesn’t exempt from the application of the bill, that the other parent, if I can use that shorthand, might wish to seek to persuade their partner, so to speak, against accessing abortion services in relation to the unborn child.

To me, that remains objectionable and it is, of course, entirely possible that a person—it would more typically be a male partner; not necessarily, I suppose—would wish to say, and the other person might not agree, that the abortion procedure should not take place. And we are providing a pretty heavy hand of the State on that person and preventing them from doing so with a fine of up to $1,000, the commission of an offence, and the ability of that person to be taken into custody without a warrant. So I refer there to the following provision which is new section 13B “Power of constable to arrest without warrant”. It is pretty serious stuff and as a Parliament we should take very seriously the impinging of liberty in such areas, and I don’t believe that we should legislate as lightly as it seems we are about to act in this space, bearing in mind, you know, different rights and balances that need to be struck in those areas.

I do want to acknowledge the arguments that have been made, I think on both sides of the debate, but including by proponents of the bill, that this is not about abortion, it’s not about relitigating the legislation of 2020. And I agree with that. I agree strongly that we should be considering this through the framework of rights. But nevertheless, it is. It is about abortion and the clue’s in the title of the bill; the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act is the one that is being amended. So while it is true in a way to say, as a previous contributor has, that abortion is a key medical procedure, it is unique in its own terms and that was put forward as a reason to allow this as an exception to the general rule that we allow freedom of expression.

But, actually, it’s also unique in the sense that it’s on our statute book alone as an act to end a human life without the consent of that human—other than in self-defence. I’m conscious that some might say that’s just my view. It’s also the view of science, of course, that an independent, separate, human life is involved. As I say, that’s my view; others have different views. They’re entitled to these, and those who hold the same view as me are also entitled to theirs. So for that reason, and with the caveats and qualifications that I’ve put on it, I cannot support this bill at this, the third and final reading.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Members, I’ve got one 10-minute call left; I have two speakers wishing to speak. So I propose to offer Karen Chhour five minutes and Dr Gaurav Sharma five minutes, but go second. So I call Karen Chhour.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I move that the debate be extended by 10 minutes to allow both speakers to make a 10-minute call, if they so desire.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Is there any objection? There being none, I call Karen Chhour—10 minutes.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to take a call on this from the point of view of a parent. I have two daughters, and I would like to know that when they grow up, and if they have to make a difficult decision like this, they will feel safe and they will feel like they are not going to be intimidated, harassed, or made to feel shame for what can be a very difficult time in life.

Women do not make these decisions lightly, but these are decisions that can affect us for the rest of our life no matter which way we decide to go. If we decide to keep a child, that’s a lifetime decision. If we decide not to keep a child, that can also be a lifetime decision in our minds. We never forget; we just learn to live with the decision we’ve made.

I think we hear and we see people in the public that make assumptions about a decision we’re making, without the full facts of why that decision has been made. Putting your opinions on to others may be your right, but just remember: with your right comes responsibility—comes the responsibility of understanding the damage that could be done to the person that you are obstructing, intimidating, and forcing your opinion on. They also have a right to make a decision about their body, about their future, and about their lives and how it affects the people around them. So we need to find a middle ground where both parties can have their right to freedom, to make a choice, and to decide how they feel about something, without interfering and without stopping one or the other’s right.

I have seen the effects that this has had on some women. We have a huge mental health issue in this country. When you’re dealing with a decision like this, it can affect a woman’s mental health for a very long time. They can be down on themselves, they can be questioning the decision right up to the moment they walk through that door. Who are we to interfere with that? Who are we to tell this person, “You’re wrong.”? Who are we to ask somebody to justify their decision to a stranger—to a person that has nothing to do with them?

So I would just like to remind people: yes, you have the right to disagree with abortion. But you do not have the right to abuse my daughter, to abuse me, to abuse my future grandchildren because you don’t agree with them. They have a right to freedom of movement without obstruction and without being harassed, and that’s what this bill is about. It’s not about the abortion; it’s not about that discussion any more. It’s about freedom of movement and freedom from harassment. And with that, I would like to support this bill.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West) (remote): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Whare. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill. I’ve been meaning to speak in the previous readings, but have not been able to due to other parliamentary commitments but also, because of the interest that other members have shown, it has been hard to get a successful call.

I, first of all, would like to thank Louisa Wall for taking up this important cause and addressing the current gap in legislation.

While I was hearing Mr David Seymour speak today, I had to look out my window and just see if the sun had risen from the east and was actually setting in the west, because it’s not often that I agree with the comments he makes, but it’s interesting to be on the same side of history and to be supporting this very important legislation.

I know many members today have spoken for and against this bill based on personal experiences. I want to add to this discussion, based on my own experiences as a medical professional. I know one of the speakers recently talked about pseudo-academics who were involved in this bill, so I wanted to give some real-life experiences from the ground.

I want to start, first of all, by saying that in my time as a GP I have never met a person who has not taken the decision to have an abortion seriously. Every single patient I have seen who has wanted to access an abortion has not only spent a lot of time considering the decision but has also had support both psychologically through the clinic and also after long discussions, often with their own families.

What this bill is about is providing a safe area that can be no more than 150 metres from any part of a protected facility. These safe areas are designated spaces around premises where abortions are provided, where it will now become unlawful to intimidate, obstruct, or interfere with people who are there to receive abortion care or provide it.

This isn’t just about providing protection for our wāhine but it’s also for our medical professionals. Many times on my own way to work in the hospital ward, and not in the abortion clinic but a medical or often a surgical ward, I had protestors harassing myself and other staff members as we just went about our normal day entering or leaving work. I want to again reiterate that these are staff members who are not working at the abortion clinic; they were just working in other parts of the hospital, and they still got harassed. Many got harassed not only at the hospital while they were coming in or going out but also online, similar to the women who are trying to access these services—getting harassed not only at the spot but again online.

It is important that the patients have the right to access healthcare with their privacy intact and without coercion. When the bill came to the Health Committee, one of the concerns was around the right to the freedom of expression, and a lot of members today have talked about it and raised it. As a member of the Health Committee, I can assure you that the committee worked really hard to make sure that the rights to freedom and the rights of patients were balanced. This is why clause 5 inserts new section 13A, which removed the definitions of “prohibited behaviour” and “protected person”, and specifically [Audio cut] the types of behaviour that would be prohibited in a safe area. In addition to this, there was a provision made that if the patient gave their consent, that a person could carry out any of these specific prohibited activities while the patient was there, it was OK.

We also heard from people who talked about praying for patients while they are accessing these abortion services. A lot of these people were actually very well meaning. I definitely agree with the power of prayer, but I say to these people that you don’t need to be 150 metres away from the hospital to pray for someone; you can sit at home and still pray for someone and their wellbeing.

Finally, I want to say to those who are worried about the right to freedom that the decision to make regulations creating a safe area would be made on the recommendation of the Ministry of Health in consultation with the Minister of Justice. The specific size and exact location of the area would be determined on a case by case basis as appropriate for that individual facility. So what this does, then, is that the bill has a provision to make sure that our medical professionals can go to work without having to be harassed; that our wāhine can actually access healthcare in a dignified manner while having their privacy protected, like any other medical procedure, all the while making sure that the right to freedom of expression is minimally, if at all, limited.

So, with that, I want to commend Louisa Wall for bringing this very important bill to the House and I would like to highly recommend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 62 (Allan, Andersen, Ardern, Belich, Bennett G, Boyack, Brooking, Chen, Clark, Coffey, Craig, Davis, Eagle, Edmonds, Faafoi, Halbert, Henare, Henderson, Hipkins, Jackson, Leary, Lewis, Little, Lorck, Lubeck, Luxton, Mahuta, Mallard, McAnulty, McLellan, Nash, Ngobi, O’Connor D, O’Connor G, Omer, Pallett, Parker, Prime, Radhakrishnan, Roberts, Robertson, Rurawhe, Russell, Salesa, Sepuloni, Sharma, Sio, Tinetti, Tirikatene, Twyford, Utikere, Verrall, Wall, Walters, Warren-Clark, Webb, Whaitiri, White, Williams A, Williams P, Wood, Woods); New Zealand National 24 (Bayly, Bennett D, Bishop, Bridges, Brownlee, Collins, Dean, Doocey, Goldsmith, Grigg, Kuriger, Luxon, McClay, McKelvie, Mitchell, Mooney, Muller, Reti, Simpson, Smith S, Stanford, van de Molen, Watts, Willis); Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 12

New Zealand Labour 3 (Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, Leavasa, Strange); New Zealand National 9 (Brown, Hipango, Lee, O’Connor S, Penk, Pugh, Simmonds, Upston, Woodhouse).

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 2 March.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Sorry, I was expecting that someone else was going to complete their call rather than jumping straight into it.

Look, the biosecurity information bill, it’s been well traversed in a number of ways.

David Seymour: Tell us some more.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Well, we could, but, you know, it could be an element of security.

David Seymour: What does the bill say?

SIMON O’CONNOR: Well, Mr Seymour, it begins with the definite article “the”, so it’s probably useful for you, and we can move on from there. Look, National’s well traversed this bill. Put really simply, it’s about—I suppose part of the reason I’m struggling is it’s a good bill—

Hon Kris Faafoi: You started.

SIMON O’CONNOR: —in its intention. No, I know I do, but in fact, it’s so exceedingly simple that all it’s really doing is asking that biosecurity information be provided across multiple mediums at the border. That’s a good thing. I really want to say that to the person putting forward the bill and to the House. But as I say, part of the reason I’ve been hesitating tonight is that really there isn’t too much more to it than that.

I suppose it does highlight to us in the House an aspect of why these things were missed, if you will, in the first place. I suppose it’s a humble option for all of us to reflect on the fact that, you know, even with the best of intentions, the work of ourselves and officials and others, things can slip through. So this is, again, a good bill. It’s fixing up a particular aspect that needs tidying. Being able to have information around the biosecurity of New Zealand presented both visually and aurally makes a lot of sense, so that it extends that protocol, that it tidies things up—that’s a really, really positive thing. And hopefully it’s a no-brainer to people in the House that we want to continue to protect our biosecurity. We’ve had issues in the past, we’ll have issues in the future, and to the extent that this bill enables our biosecurity to improve, I’m delighted to therefore commend it to the House. Oh, and if in the spirit of this, it had been in both forms, I’m more than happy to provide a written copy of my speech, as well.

JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is my first time speaking in the hybrid House, so it’s quite a different feeling, actually. But, actually, it’s a pleasure to take a call on the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill, and there’s far more to it than what the previous speaker, Simon O’Connor, has alluded to.

Can I congratulate my colleague again, Steph Lewis, for having this bill drawn out of the ballot, and I want to acknowledge the work of the committee and the submitters, which has resulted in some changes that the select committee proposes to this bill that I will come to a little bit later on. I’d also really like to acknowledge my colleague Kiritapu Allan. I was in her office having a meeting with Horticulture New Zealand when this issue arose. We heard that it was currently only optional to provide passengers with information about our biosecurity arrangements, and I think we were all actually really, really surprised by that. So from that, the idea for this bill was born, and I know that Horticulture New Zealand was absolutely thrilled when it was pulled out of the ballot.

This bill seeks to amend the Biosecurity Act 1993, and while it’s not a large bill, the importance of it is huge. It will strengthen our biosecurity system and protect our primary industries, our environment, and our way of life. Doing everything to protect our environment—it’s paramount. Our beautiful, natural environment, it’s world renowned. It’s what attracts tourists to our shores. They want to experience and enjoy all that New Zealand has to offer. It’s quite upsetting to know that more than 3,000 of our native species are in serious trouble or at risk of extinction, and these are native to New Zealand, they’re our taonga, and in order to ensure that future generations can also experience and enjoy our native environment, incoming passengers do need to be aware of what their role is to protect our environment. As we open up our borders and welcome friends from overseas back here, it will be particularly important to remind them.

Our primary sector has been at the forefront of our economic recovery from COVID-19, and so it’s got to be protected—tight biosecurity is crucial. Mid-Canterbury farmers in my electorate are now producing nearly half of the world’s carrot, beet, and hybrid radish seed. Close to 90 percent of the $240 million of seed and grain exported by New Zealand growers comes from there, and the impact of an unwanted pest would just be catastrophic to our local economy regionally and nationwide. We’ve seen the devastating impacts of Mycoplasma bovis amongst our cattle and dairy herds in my electorate and in areas such as Ashburton. It’s been a severe impact from that.

It’s not just the toll that it takes on our animals but it’s the toll that it takes on farmers and other people that are involved, and the impact on mental health. Equally, our horticultural sector could be impacted if pests were able to make their way here, and that would also have catastrophic effects on our export and our economy. So again, I say that we must do everything possible to protect our primary industries. It only takes one small pest or disease to enter New Zealand and the result is devastating. So again, a small bill, as Mr Simon O’Connor alluded to, but hugely important.

As I mentioned before, after hearing submissions and receiving advice, the committee has made some proposed changes to the bill just to ensure that the integrity and the purpose of the bill is maintained. The committee proposes a change to the commencement date, which amends clause 2. As introduced, the bill will come into force after the day that it receives Royal assent, but the committee was aware that having a set date for the commencement could be too prescriptive. The ministry and industry representatives probably need to have some flexibility to respond to issues that could arise and interfere with their ability to have everything in place on time—disruptions like COVID, for example. The committee recommended instead that it come into force on a date specified by Order in Council or 12 months after the bill receives Royal assent, whichever comes first.

As the bill was introduced, it was quite prescriptive that the person in charge of the craft had to provide biosecurity information to people on board in written and audiovisual form. The committee heard that that could create some logistical issues for aircraft, where weight and space restrictions are extremely important. Submitters also highlighted that moving away from paper-based information will help aircraft reduce their carbon footprint. So the committee therefore recommended amending clause 4 in proposed new section 17AA, subsections (2)(a) and (2)(b) that describes how the biosecurity information is presented, and instead create secondary legislation regulations that stipulate that the person in charge of the aircraft must provide biosecurity information to passengers before arriving in New Zealand. It doesn’t specify exactly how and what format, so it does allow some flexibility for this to happen and also to be able to be changed fairly quickly, which is quite important for the needs around biosecurity when we have threats and incursions that create those changes, or the information needs to be changed fairly quickly. It also gives the Ministry for Primary Industries the time and the ability to consult with airlines and others that will be impacted by this bill.

We had lots of discussion around the different types of craft that enter New Zealand. So, as introduced, in clause 4, the bill required all craft coming to New Zealand to provide biosecurity information. That ended up being more than what we might typically think of when we think about craft entering New Zealand. We tend to think about aeroplanes and cruise ships and the like, but actually, when you get down into the weeds of it, aircraft such as air ambulance and donor organ retrieval flights would be captured within the bill. So, practically, that didn’t make sense because types of craft and fishing vessels and cargo ships, etc., already have a high level of compliance with biosecurity measures. So I think that what the bill was trying to target was those passenger vessels, as mentioned before, and passenger planes and, say, the cruise ships with lots of people and generally associated with bringing tourists into the country.

So we worked through that and made changes to narrow the scope to include commercial passenger craft with 20 or more passengers on board. So we replaced the term “craft” with “large commercial craft”. Now, the committee also heard that the biosecurity risks are lower on craft that carry 20 or fewer passengers because they have more interaction with ministry inspectors on arrival. As introduced, the bill required a person on board to receive biosecurity information, so that also meant that crew would also be captured, meaning that biosecurity information would have to be provided to the crew every time. So we decided that that was pretty unnecessary and decided to agree to change the persons on board to “passengers”. So again, I want to thank those that made submissions. It was evident from those that this bill is very important to them for one reason or another. It is of paramount importance to protect our environment, our primary sector, and our economy. So I am pleased that this bill and the proposed amendments to it were agreed to unanimously by the select committee. Again, I just want to thank and acknowledge Steph Lewis for bringing this bill to the House, and I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): I move, That the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

In this Parliament, we have different types of legislation. Some of it is things that make profound and significant changes that fundamentally change something. Other times, what we do is we modernise and update and incrementally improve the law as it stands. This bill falls into that latter category.

It is a member’s bill, and I want to acknowledge that it is unusual to have a member’s bill of such technical matters, and actually, of such complexity as we have in this bill. I want to acknowledge Government members for supporting this member’s bill in a way that I think has been very constructive and collaborative, because it matters. The reason we need to modernise unit titles law in New Zealand is that we have far more people today living in multi-dwelling housing arrangements than we did when the Unit Titles Act was first enacted.

Actually, we want to continue to encourage more New Zealanders to feel confident about choosing this style of housing. That’s because we are, now, in New Zealand, one of the least affordable places in the world to own a home. I have given many other speeches in this House about why that is, and what the underlying causes of that are. But certainly I think we can agree across the Parliament that one of the solutions to increasing the choices and options of the kind of housing there’ll be available to New Zealanders is to encourage higher-density housing in our urban areas and to ensure that New Zealanders are readily able to choose that kind of housing when it suits their circumstances.

However, at the moment, there’s a lot of people who are very scared about buying an apartment. This bill is about making it less risky for them and taking away some of their fears. Furthermore, there are a lot of people who aren’t just concerned about the buying process and what might or could go wrong during that process. There are a lot of people who are concerned that once they live in an apartment or a multi-dwelling block, they will be constrained by difficulties in the bodies corporate and all sorts of challenges in how shared property will be arranged. So this bill is a very good step forward in addressing some of those concerns.

It’s a bill which, I think, has had many mothers. So I want to acknowledge, in particular, the Hon Nikki Kaye, who, as the Auckland Central MP at the time, picked up the need for reform in this area. She had many apartment dwellers living in her electorate who pressed home to her how important it was that this law be modernised. She picked up reforms that had been canvassed through a review in 2016 that had been conducted by the ministry of business and progressed them in this member’s bill. The member’s bill has also been in the name of Judith Collins, then National’s housing spokesperson, and I have willingly taken it up.

The bill, essentially, does five big groups of things. It has a better disclosure regime for buyers, with the intention that they be able to access and have confidence that they will get the information relevant to their property before they offer on it. It improves the governance of bodies corporate; it improves the regulation of body corporate managers and ensures professional standards apply; it puts better rules around long-term maintenance planning; and it improves dispute resolution practices.

It’s a bill that has been much enhanced by the select committee process. I want to thank the 85 submitters who submitted on the bill, and the officials who helped us work through the issues that they raised. We had a range of experts submit, many who’d lived in apartments themselves, others who’d been tied up in litigation or legal disputes arising in part from the poorly drafted law, and some individuals had terrible stories of what had gone wrong for them, for what they saw as inadequacies in our current unit titles regime. We also had brought to bear people with international experience who were able to provide us some comparison with how behind the pace New Zealand’s unit titles regime has become relative to other countries. The submissions varied in terms of the areas that they focused on. There were a range of views, but broadly, there was consensus about the need for greater transparency, greater accountability, and protection of unit title owners.

The select committee made a range of changes. They’re detailed very well in the select committee report. I would encourage those interested in this debate and these issues to read that report thoroughly. I would summarise the judgments that were made as this: that the balance must be struck—it was the view of the committee—between ensuring that those who are purchasing a property in a unit title arrangement or living in a unit title arrangement have their rights and interests protected and are able to access good amounts of information, balancing that set of rights with the need, also, not to create such a cumbersome and bureaucratic regime that, in itself, it puts people off this kind of living. Striking that balance, as you’ll appreciate, is challenging and involves some nuanced judgments. So the committee, I think, would join me in my gratitude towards the officials for helping us work through some of that balancing act and the resulting changes that came out of it.

However, as is often the way with these things, having published our select committee report, I have gone and engaged further with people living in apartments or who are experts. They have highlighted for me three residual issues, which I believe and hope we, as a House, can continue to collaborate on to make this an even better bill in the committee of the whole House. I wish to signal that I will be putting forward three further amendments. I have written to the Minister to highlight that I would like to work with her and her officials on these, if possible. Those three issues are, first, around the disclosure regime. Now, this is an area where there are conveyancing lawyers who have a range of opinions. I would summarise where they have come to is saying that they share the intent of the officials, but they do not believe that the drafting, as it currently stands, adequately meets their intentions. I understand that behind the scenes they have been meeting with Government officials to explain and further understand those concerns. I would simply ask that the Minister gives mind to that and that we consider whether further technical amendment is needed in this area.

The second key issue is around remediation reports. Now, it was noted by some stakeholders following our select committee report that, actually, we should be quite specific about the fact that people buying an apartment should be able to access, as of right, any remediation reports that have been produced. I find myself in favour of that.

Finally, we had quite a debate about proxy voting. This was about limiting the number of proxies a person can hold and exercise in a body corporate. The bill in its original form is, as it was brought to this House, sought to limit those proxies. Now, some submitters said—and this is a debate that will be familiar to members of this House who have taken part in political committees and other groups where proxies are exercised. Others said, “Look, it’s going to be very hard to make quorum if proxies aren’t enabled in the way that they have been previously.” We did, in this process, seek to alleviate that by allowing unit title holders to direct and specify how their proxy vote would be cast on their behalf. However, I have had it put to me by people with direct experience that they believe as a committee we did underweight the reality of proxy farming as it stands, and its ability to subvert the democratic process when it comes to the governing of bodies corporate. I propose that we do continue to progress some limits to proxy voting, and I will be putting forward an amendment to achieve that.

I want to acknowledge Chlöe Swarbrick who, as the member for Auckland Central, has taken a particular interest in this bill, carrying it on from the Hon Nikki Kaye, who previously had shown such an interest in it. This has been a truly collaborative cross-parliamentary process, the drafting of this law. I want to thank the Minister for her generosity in providing her officials to the committee. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (remote): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you for this. It’s a real pleasure to speak on this bill. It is, as the member said, an important bill. It might be seen as more of a tidy up, but I think its importance can’t be understated because we really need to make sure that people who purchase homes which are in unit titles can do so with a degree of confidence, and with as few costs as possible, and that those homes are properly kept and maintained in the housing stock. That’s, I think, what this bill seeks to do.

Look, as chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which looked at this, I’m surprised that the member’s coming up with some more amendments by way of Supplementary Order Paper, but I’m sure they’ll be looked at very, very carefully indeed. Look, all members around the table had a lot of input. As a central city MP myself, I was very interested in unit titles, and I know that Helen White also took a significant interest in exactly how we can make, essentially, apartment dwelling and living in a more compact way more efficient and effective. The committee did give the bill a good old working over, I must say, and there was some, as Nicola Willis alluded to, some really important debates.

I’m going to go to proxy voting first. There are a number of things I want to talk about, if I get a chance, but I actually want to talk about proxy voting because she has raised it, and this spectre of proxy farming was identified. Now, in another life, I’ve had a fair bit to do with unit titles, and I know that the politics of unit titles can be almost as fierce as the politics of this place. But I struggle with a rule which refuses the right of one person to give their decision-making power to another, should they choose to do so. If I have a trusted adviser or friend, or even a trusted committee member, or a trusted manager, then why can I not let them exercise my vote on my behalf? Now, I accept that unit titles, as with any neighbour dispute—disputes in unit titles can be fierce, and people can feel that the process was wrong when they don’t get the outcome they want. But I’m not sure that proxy voting, or restricting the amount of proxy voting, is the way to address that.

In committee, we did look at this, and it went to and fro—one of the joys of virtual Parliament is I can see Chlöe Swarbrick quite clearly taking notes, and I’m sure she’ll have something to say on this. But what we did do is something quite important and that is address two things: remote voting is one—the ability of unit title holders, who couldn’t otherwise make the meeting, to attend a meeting remotely and vote remotely—and also to vote in advance, electronically, perhaps by email. And the third thing was to give a proxy to a third party but direct how that proxy is exercised. So they’ve seen the motion, and they have made clear that it’s to be voted for or against, so it’s a very limited proxy. So I think proxy farming, the idea that somehow it’s illegitimate to go out and get votes for a particular course of action—even if we accept that, I think there’s a really substantial set of things which address that in the bill itself.

One of the other things that we did was look at body corporate managers—because, of course, many bodies corporate, simply by dint of their complexity, need a manager—and that places the body corporate owners at something of a vulnerability. So whilst the original bill wanted, essentially, to require industry membership, or membership of an industry organisation—a professional body of some sort—we thought that that was going to be difficult given the fact that there was no real industry organisation that was quite suitable at the present time, and we didn’t think it was appropriate in a member’s bill to construct one from scratch. So, rather, we went down the road of a code of conduct. We thought that it was quite appropriate to impose a code of conduct on body corporate managers to make clear what their obligations were, and, essentially, to give rights to unit title holders if they overstep the mark. Obviously, things like conflict of interest and due diligence and those kinds of things are going to be critical as well.

One of the other things we looked at was long-term maintenance plans. When you’re digging in here it might sound very dull and unimportant but, I can assure you, thank you—I can see you again, Chlöe—but when your roof is leaking and no one has put money aside and it’s a $100,000 or $200,000 job, you get pretty excited about it. So it is really important. For myself, I was a bit sceptical of the ability to opt out of long-term maintenance plans but, once again, if you’re a body corporate and you want to opt out of having them, it’s a big call but over to the owners, ultimately. But what we did do was recognise that there’s a kind of distinction between a long long-term maintenance plan—30 years—and sort of the immediate long-term of 10 years. In 10 years you can have, essentially, a schedule of maintenance, but in 30 years, what you’re going to say is out there we expect we will be re-roofing, or re-cladding, or whatever it might be. So it’s a different kind of plan. The first requires a lot more detail; the other ones are high level.

I’ll just touch on, if I can, one other area, because it was, in fact, new to the bill, and that’s around the role of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), because, at the moment, if there’s a problem in a body corporate, it’s up to the body corporate members to fix that problem, or to litigate, or to go through a dispute resolution process. In some of these large bodies corporate, that may not work. There may be absentee owners, or the owners simply don’t have the wherewithal to do that. So, essentially, MBIE has been given some enforcement powers, including the power to request documents. The one that we really wrestled with, and we really did, was a power to enter. I can say that the committee members, and I think we were pretty much all one here, were concerned about a power to enter. So that power to enter, to see whether the Act is being complied with, will only exist by order of a Tenancy Tribunal. I think that’s a really good protection, to have a sort of quasi-judicial oversight, because, particularly for entry into a residential property, I think the threshold should be set very high, and I think we probably got it about right there.

So this is a really, really important bill. There is a lot in it. The material around disclosure is going to be important, and there was a significant discussion around how it would work in conveyancing terms, particularly with the later disclosure—the ability to cancel or not for non-disclosure. Now, there’s pre-contract disclosure—the kind of pack that you get when you sign the contract—and then, just prior to handing your money, there is the immediate disclosure, or the pre-settlement disclosure. Now, that’s usually an update, and we thought whilst you could defer settlement if you didn’t get it in a timely manner, we didn’t think it appropriate to have a cancellation right in there. So that’s maybe something that the member will be asking us to have another look at. But, certainly, it’s an important point to make sure that people get the right information and that they can look through it.

The idea was to simplify the disclosure process. Again, it’s about cost, because putting that documentation together, the original bill, I think, was a little onerous. It required too much of the seller of a body corporate, and that’s just another transaction cost which will drive the price up, string out a settlement process, and make it more difficult for these really important housing units to be bought and sold.

So, look, this is an example of the House coming together effectively to try and improve something—another little piece of the puzzle of housing in New Zealand. I’m really happy. You can see that there’s probably going to be some debate yet to come. If we make the bill better that’s good, but I’m happy to say that I think the Finance and Expenditure Committee did an absolutely fantastic job and worked really hard with officials on making this bill as good as it possibly can be.

So kia ora. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend this to the House.

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

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to take my first call as National’s new housing spokesperson on a bill that I won’t pretend to have had anything to do with, but I do want to acknowledge the very hard work of Nicola Willis, who has the custody of this bill, but also Judith Collins, who I see is in the House tonight. The former National housing spokesperson who introduced this bill was the Hon Nikki Kaye, who did all the sort of heavy lifting on it as a member’s bill back in 2016 and 2017 at the tail end of the last National Government.

Nicola Willis: Oh, they were better days.

CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, they were glory days—

Hon Member: Glory days.

CHRIS BISHOP: They were glory days. It’s just one of those lessons, I suppose, that good things take time. And a real example of building support within a particular community and going away and doing the research, which Nikki Kaye did as local MP for Auckland Central—I remember she ran the apartment blues session and a lot of people told their stories, in some cases horror stories, of owning and living in apartments, and then she worked with the sector and developed a bill. And, like many members’ bills that attempt to deal with complicated areas of law, it wasn’t probably perfect when it first turned up, but now it’s been introduced and sent to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and it’s come back in better shape. And so here we are in early 2022 considering it, and I understand that there’s further changes proposed by the member, and we’ll wait and see whether or not they meet with the support of the House.

But I do want to say that today’s member’s day is really an example of Parliament at its best because we’ve just had the debate on the abortion legislation, the safe areas bill, and as David Seymour noted, that is an example of a bill that again wasn’t in a particularly great shape when it first came into the Parliament. It was sent to the committee. It’s been fixed. It’s now met with near unanimous support of the Parliament over an extended period of time. And this is another example where perhaps not perfect when introduced, but a good start addressing a serious issue or a series of issues, improved by a committee, where a committee put their head down and really got on with the job. And I want to acknowledge Duncan Webb, who I understand is a pretty fair and good chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Just in passing, I will say that the treatment of the abortion bill and also this unit titles bill stands in contradistinction to the treatment of my bill, which is the lawyers and conveyancers bill, which went to the Justice Committee and met with unanimous support of the Parliament at first reading, and there was no good faith attempt by anyone to improve the bill and work together with the officials to—

Kieran McAnulty: Sour grapes.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, it is sour grapes. I’m annoyed about it because politics has got in the way of access to justice, and Labour members will have to justify on the campaign trail in 18 months’ time why they have disenfranchised 8,000 lawyers from doing pro-bono legal work who want to do work. So, I mean, good luck with that if you want to defend that. Good luck to you, but I think you’ll struggle to explain why 8,000 lawyers are prohibited from doing pro-bono legal work on the basis that Labour members don’t like me very much. OK, that’s cool. You can do that. But maybe, maybe they like Nicola Willis and Judith Collins more; maybe not.

Kieran McAnulty: That’s not true.

CHRIS BISHOP: Oh “That’s not true.”, says Kieran. See, we play in the parliamentary cricket team, and I know that Kieran thinks I’m all right, but maybe his colleagues don’t. But anyway, that was really just an aside, and he’s right. I do have sour grapes about it, but that’s OK.

This this is an important vote. My first home—[Interruption] What was that?

Hon Member: He’s 12th man.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, he’s actually our best player, so we can’t make him the 12th man. [Interruption] I’m trying to be nice. We never got that coffee earlier today that we had after a little tête-á-tête with the Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I remind the member to come back to the bill.

CHRIS BISHOP: We can go for a coffee too, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! Thank you. Back to the bill.

CHRIS BISHOP: Anyway, I was going to tell you, Madam Speaker, and Mr McAnulty, about my first house or apartment—you know, my first home, which was an apartment. And like many New Zealanders, I bought my first home in my mid-twenties and I couldn’t afford a house. I was living in Auckland at the time and I could see house prices going up. And like many Kiwis, you want to get on the property ladder and you don’t want to miss out; you’ve got FOMO, fear of missing out, and that drives a lot of price increases. This was back in 2013 and the first home I could afford was an apartment and I bought an apartment in Ponsonby. I can testify to the House that the prospect of owning an apartment did scare me, because you do hear the horror stories—you do. You read about people who buy apartments and it all looks great when you first turn up and you buy into the body corporate, and then a year later, you find that you’re up for the lift, which has broken down and no one has put aside the money to upgrade it. And you’re stung with a 15 grand bill, and when you’ve just bought the apartment, you probably don’t have that much spare cash lying around. So you do read these stories.

And many people listening, although I suspect there’s not that many at this time of night, but people listening in Wellington will know of stories in Wellington and Auckland that are very similar to that. But the critical point is this: we need more apartments, we need more apartments built, and we need more apartments that people live in. And we want people to have confidence to be able to buy an apartment, not necessarily even for their first home. There are many older New Zealanders who move out of the big three and four bedroom house with the picket fence in the suburbs because it’s too big for them. The kids have left home and they want to downsize, and actually there are many older New Zealanders for whom a nice one or two bedroom apartment in the city is something they want to move to.

So the critical point is we need a range of housing types. We do need the suburban greenfields housing houses and we do need the medium and high density townhouses in and around public transport corridors and spines, and we do need apartments in the CBD. And I, for one, would like to see more apartments in Auckland and more apartments in Wellington, because it’s ultimately by getting greater variety of housing types and greater housing supply that we will start to grapple and tackle our housing challenges. And so this bill’s aim of promoting confidence in apartment buying, and particularly bodies corporate, is extremely important. I look forward to the debate as it progresses and as National’s new spokesperson, I’ll be participating in that debate. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and I look forward to this bill progressing further.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee in support of the second reading of the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I’d like to acknowledge not only the member whose name is on the bill, Nicola Willis, but also my colleague Helen White, who has in my opinion picked up much of the real work in making this a better bill. She has helped us get to the result we see in the second reading today. I’m looking forward to hearing Helen White speak on the many parts she has driven as a city-based Auckland MP with many of her constituents living in apartments and coming to talk to her about their issues.

This has been a very large piece of work. When it started at our committee, it started with our member Nicola Willis, who was on the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) at the time. Then she left, and then we had Chris Luxon, and then he left, and then came along Simon Bridges, but only for short time, and now he’s left too. I would like to wish him very well in his future.

Now the member whose name was on the bill is coming back, and I do wish her well in her new role as well today. She may also be returning to our great select committee, which is chaired by Duncan Webb, who has highlighted some of the real challenges that this better bill [Audio failure]

I would also like to acknowledge my colleague Barbara Edmonds, who chaired the [Audio failure] through all-day submissions from Auckland. It was an excellent and efficient day, I must say.

As a regional MP, I have to admit that when I first started working on this bill, I was not as passionate as many of the city-based MPs, and much of this has been brought about by these multi-storey - plus high apartment buildings in Auckland and other cities. So it was much to my delight when I found we would be hearing from a submitter from my own electorate of Tukituki, from Frimley Lifestyle Village in Hastings. The submission aims to highlight a villa; a single-storey, village that comprises 66 villas, made up of 23 duplexes and 20 single units. We heard that in a development like Frimley Village, there are no common spaces like lifts or stairs, and they raised specific concerns, including the requirement for a body corporate manager to engage professional experts and to have a long-term maintenance fund.

They argued that they had already made the longstanding decision to retain in the village all functions of managing the development. Now, that’s not to say that they might not, if they choose, engage professional assistance to help from time to time. The same could be said, as they raised in their submission, about having the unnecessary costs of having, say, a professional surveyor or engineer. Now, I’m pleased to say as the local MP on the FEC that had this submission, they were listened to. I have also been able to follow up with the chair of Frimley Village, actually today when I spoke to Trevor Helson and thanked him for making the submission. He had actually been able to make strong submissions that we listened to.

Now, in the bill, we have, in the second reading, an opt-out provision, which would allow flexibility to manage their own affairs as they see fit.

In cities like Hastings, where we are seeing more density of housing, going up, not out, as part of the place-based housing being proposed, I believe there will be situations where this amended bill will have important protections for unit title holders. And we will be seeing this happen more in the regions. So as a provincial MP I am pleased to have participated in this legislative process, and how relevant it will be for growing regions like Hawke’s Bay in the future.

The main purposes of the bill being introduced tonight in the second reading are: improving information available to prospective unit buyers, strengthening body corporate governance arrangements, increasing the standards of the body corporate managers, ensuring that unit title development adequately plans for and funds long-term maintenance projects, and strengthens the dispute resolution process.

Housing is a huge issue for everybody. We want to have great homes, a range of different living options, and a modern, bright future for everyone. I am very proud to speak to this and to acknowledge Frimley Lifestyle Village in my speech tonight. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I call the next speaker, I’d like to remind all the members in the House to keep the interjections and the noise down. One of the reasons why there was a period of time when we couldn’t hear the member who was giving her speech via Zoom was because it was picking up the noise from this House.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central) (remote): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koe e te Whare. I want to start by acknowledging Nicola Willis, who, as she herself stated, initially inherited this bill from the Hon Judith Collins and the Hon Nikki Kaye, my predecessor in Auckland Central. Nicola has done a stellar job in stewarding this through Parliament and the politics, I might add, associated since then. And I want to thank her for her willingness to collaborate with me, and, actually, for her work as well with the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) in seeking to improve what might seem a very niche and nerdy law but impacts hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders’ lives.

Such is a sign of the times: I am giving my first ever virtual speech in the Chamber whilst isolating as a household contact in my apartment in Auckland Central, in the same way that I had the privilege of working with the Body Corporate Chairs’ Group. I want to here particularly acknowledge Tim Jones and the Auckland City Centre Residents’ Group, and thank you particularly to Noelene and to Adam on apartment isolation guidance for bodies corporate. So too I have had the privilege of working with them every step of the way as this bill has progressed.

While Parliament has recently passed historic laws to increase density and amenity in our cities, which others have referred to, this bill is concerned with how we govern the communities that form in those buildings. It is, at a basic level, about the information that people are entitled to when they are looking to buy into a place. It’s about the conduct that we expect of the professionals brought in to help manage increasingly complicated administration and maintenance. It’s about the reasonable limits to power by any one of the owners within that building, or a block of those owners. Ultimately, it is a rulebook for more and more of our future living.

The first reading of this bill in Parliament happened actually almost a year ago today, on 10 March in 2021. Unanimous support across the Chamber took it to the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC), which I was stoked to see Nicola Willis agreed with me on, and I’m pleased to hear, given the party reshuffle, that Nicola will soon be joining us back in her rightful place on FEC. I want to say thank you, as well, to the Minister for agreeing to lend us officials to our committee for the purposes of improving this law, because, indeed, they have. They helped us to process 85 submissions from interested individuals and organisations, 39 of which gave us in-person submissions.

Thank you to all of those submitters who meticulously picked through the issues. It was brilliant to have been able to hold one of those sessions, in a COVID-free period, in the one and only electorate of Auckland Central. Throughout the process of public hearings and evidence, we heard some of the incredibly complex circumstances, the legal fish hooks, international best practice, and local challenges, be they our country’s position on a fault line and earthquake risk and the requisite reasonable planning required; all about the New South Wales model; increasing numbers of developments with shared amenities skirting the grey area of the law and causing future headaches for buyers who couldn’t have known better. And we heard so much more. Those submissions helped to improve this bill substantially, as others have reflected on.

But there were three key issues that I ended up having a sole differing view from the committee, as reflected in our report. As the Green committee member and as the representative of Auckland Central, I still believe that they are requiring as a serious revisit, and I’m confident, as far as the major two go, as Nicola Willis has just reflected on—and I’m keen to see her Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) to that effect—that we will see progress. We wait in hope that the Minister and Labour members are as well. I might add that I have some SOPs up my sleeve, as well, if they are needed.

The two big issues regarding those changes are disclosure to potential buyers and proxy voting. The third issue, while currently periphery, I do think could pose future issues if not pre-emptively professionalising body corporate managers. There is fulsome mention of it in the select committee report, so I won’t labour it, but I think that we have found, time and again, that where this Parliament has had a good opportunity to professionalise sectors, particularly the property industry, there’s been a broad refusal to act until it is too late. The select committee majority removed previously required professional industry organisation membership for body corporate managers on advice from officials that we had not yet seen enough of a problem to justify the need for it. But just like Parliament refused to regulate property managers in 2008 because at that point in time there wasn’t a sizeable enough evidence of a problem, leading us to 15 years later and now having to fix that problem after a lot of collateral damage, I see this as an unnecessary, missed opportunity to not tighten things up now. It’s gutting that other members of the committee didn’t agree, and I hope a future MP isn’t looking at this speech in Hansard in the future, as I did on the point of property managers, in another 15 years’ time.

But back to the major two points on which I believe we now seem to have, at very least, by virtue of the leadership of the member in charge of this bill, broad consensus to address and to fix, on disclosure and on proxies. I wouldn’t really hesitate to suggest that there weren’t many MPs—although, as we just heard, I would never doubt the intellectual prowess of our chair, “Dr Dunc”—sorry, that’s Dr Duncan Webb—that many of us could seriously follow the changes made in committee to pre-contractual disclosure statements, nor the rationale for the removal of the pre-settlement disclosure. I’ll be the first to admit that I couldn’t, which is why I again registered a dissenting view. It has in turn been validating to know that those are sentiments shared by those with property, conveyancing, and broader legal experience. It’s heartening to know that the member in charge, Nicola Willis, now agrees and that we will be continuing work together to amend those clauses to a far more practical, accessible, and workable set of rules. I feel that this one, hopefully, will be relatively easily resolved.

The second major issue is on the removal of limits to proxy voting. For the uninitiated—very lucky of you—proxy voting is when you get the right to vote on somebody else’s behalf. While that seems to make sense generally, as elucidated by Dr Duncan Webb—life happens, after all—problems, and I mean huge problems, can arise with what’s come to be known colloquially as proxy farming. This is where one group, or individuals, do their darnedest to collect as many votes as possible to force through their will on everybody else. It’s where I’ve heard countless reports of, effectively, corporate takeovers, where owner-occupiers are plunged sometimes into debt by egregious costs forced on them as a result of entities who capture enough of the votes to require excessive work in common areas in order to split the bill and flip their property for more money. It’s particularly dangerous in instances of absentee landlords.

If I may register it on the parliamentary record, I know of many current instances where such proxy farming has occurred in my electorate, with a number of overseas-based landlords caring about not much else more than profit maximisation, resulting in cuts to amenities, security, and upkeep for everybody else in the building. Where those situations are in their most egregious and lessening neighbourhood safety, I have, unfortunately, found that some people, some politicians, and even some news reporters have wrongfully begun to lay the blame in the stigmatising concept of Kāinga Ora tenants, which, firstly, could not be any further from the truth, but it does satiate a deeply dangerous narrative about who does and who doesn’t belong in our neighbourhoods. The fact of the matter is, we should be creating rules to prioritise the views and the values of those who live and breathe our communities, not profit maximisation and fast decisions when they can be bad decisions. While the majority of the committee—everyone bar this lonely Greenie—originally agreed with the removal of those limits, as Nicola Willis has just told us, she has since held conversations that have swayed the National Party stance, and I sincerely hope that Labour colleagues follow.

I’m really looking forward to the committee of the whole House stage in the next fortnight or so, where we can see these improvements come to fruition and, hopefully, debate some awesome SOPs. The Greens are incredibly proud to support this bill, and we will be striving to improve it for all New Zealanders, current and future, who will bring all of this talk of density to life and community-building. Kia ora.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (remote): Everyone knows somebody who has bought a leaky home or apartment, and with the massive growth in apartment dwelling over the last couple of decades, sadly the incidence of those who’ve been lassoed with faulty dwellings and massive repair bills has also grown. The damage here isn’t just the financial side, it’s the stress of uncertainty, it’s infighting within bodies corporate, rising repair bills—I know people in my electorate, Taieri, who are living in Dunedin who say their families have actually been torn apart, and their lives have been ruined by the purchase of a leaky apartment, and I don’t think they’re exaggerating their pain.

I want to shout-out to my former TV colleagues, Rachel Stace and John Hagen, for their documentary A Living Hell: Apartment Disasters and then the follow up, A Rotten Shame. They’re both fine storytellers, and their documentaries on leaky apartments that they’ve made are a real labour of love, and they’re an example of the fourth estate doing its job really well. They lift the lid on the leaky apartment sector and some of the cowboy developers who for decades have exploited New Zealand’s housing crisis by making sub-standard dwellings. And so that’s part of the housing crisis that Labour inherited when we came to office.

There’s a lot of work to do to review and modernise the Unit Titles Act 2010. Labour committed to that in 2020, and we will be introducing legislation that is broad and pretty much overhauls the way unit titles are managed. But in the meantime, this bill before us tonight moves in the right direction, which is why we’re supporting it. So it’s really good to see it in the House again, and as others have said it is the end of a long select committee process. So for taking on a pretty messy and problematic sector, and for her perseverance working with us all on the Finance and Expenditure Committee to panel-beat the original bill into shape, I do commend former committee member Nicola Willis, and look forward to seeing her back on the committee.

Labour supports increasing transparency when it comes to the information owners disclose to prospective buyers. We also respect that all-important legal maxim, caveat emptor, and in this bill we think we’ve got the balance right. Others have mentioned what the bill changes—it creates a proportionate utility cost, a code of conduct for body corporate committees, requirements for long-term maintenance plans, and a yearly audit of those plans for complexes larger than 10 units. And it requires sellers to disclose information about a unit to potential buyers, and prevents bodies corporate from entering service agreements for longer than 24 months. So this member’s bill makes some of the changes we would like to see.

When it comes to unit titles, as I’ve said, there’s a lot to sort out, so the bill goes some ways in addressing some of those issues. Many of the changes created by the bill seek to implement recommendations from a 2016 review of the unit title regime. Those recommendations were really about trying to empower apartment owners and avoid leaky home - type situations. So specifically, the changes seek to give prospective owners more information, so as to be able to make informed choices when buying dwellings like apartments; make the governance of apartment buildings stronger and more accountable; increase the standards of body corporate managers to safeguard the interests of apartment owners; and ensure that unit title developments adequately plan for and fund long-term maintenance projects, as we’ve heard; as well as strengthening the dispute resolution process.

As I’ve mentioned, the bill tonight looks quite different now to when it was introduced, and as a committee, we felt the industry-wide obligations were unduly onerous, so we worked hard to make sure the industry compliance was reasonable while still keeping with the intent of the proposed obligations and duties. As a one-time lawyer myself, I could appreciate the real value of having a professor in law chair our committee in the form of Dr Duncan Webb, as we painstakingly made our way through the hundreds of clauses, as we’ve already heard. We discussed things like whether a broom cupboard might be misconstrued as a room for the sake of a long-term maintenance plan, we debated parties’ rights and responsibilities if disclosure is incomplete, inaccurate, or not provided in a timely fashion—including a right for buyers to delay or cancel settlement. We were concerned that some of the original submissions didn’t appropriately reflect how properties are usually bought and sold, and actually most of the submitters shared similar concerns.

So I’d like to acknowledge my Labour colleague Helen White MP, who worked really hard to ensure that what was being proposed made practical sense on the ground in Auckland with the many apartment owners that she had spoken to over many months. They told her that sellers often hire agents to fulfil those requirements, and therefore it seemed to us that requiring disclosure discussions specifically with the purchaser, excluding their agent, put an unreasonable obligation on the buyer, especially at the pre-contract disclosure stage. We heard a diverse range of opinions from submitters about exactly what information should be included in a pre-contract disclosure statement. And based on those views and advice received, we changed up the information required, again, to fine tune the balance and ensure that they worked in a practical sense.

So, for example, we included the requirement for details of any weathertightness issues that had not been remediated. Plus, we included needing details of any other known significant defects that might require remediation. We also said a copy of the body corporate’s long-term maintenance plan should be in those disclosures, along with the body corporate financial statements and audit reports for the last three years—and that was opposed to seven years in the bill as it was introduced. So those are just some of the examples of how technical we got, however we believe the changes were important because they would strengthen the overall disclosure regime while balancing the rights and the obligations of the parties.

This Government believes every New Zealander should live in a warm, dry, secure house, whether they own or rent. There’s no quick fix to the housing crisis we inherited, but we are determined to do it. It’s a problem that’s been decades in the making, and just like the unit titles problem it is basically that there’s not enough new affordable homes that have been built—and our policies are on track to do that. We first moved to stop housing speculation with our ban on foreign buyers, and now we’re removing tax advantages for property speculators. We’re on track to deliver 18,000 public and transitional homes by 2024. We’re replacing the Resource Management Act, which is a massive step in the right direction. I’d like to shout out to my colleague, Rachel Brooking, MP, who’s based here in Dunedin and Otago and who brings her considerable expertise to this work. We’re also introducing new building intensification rules, which other speakers tonight have referred to, and that will mean up to three homes of three stories can be built on most sites without the need for a resource consent. So new rules will result in tens of thousands of new homes built in the next five to eight years, and I’m looking forward to seeing that in my electorate of Taieri. We’ve got lots of people needing homes, apartments thanks to our record low unemployment rate, and needing housing.

So there’s one thing this unit titles bill has taught me, along with the assignment that I attempted a couple of weeks ago for my postgraduate studies into finance and policy. I attempted to do my own analysis on the housing crisis. And what I learnt was this: housing is complicated, unit titles are complex; there is no quick fix. But Labour is using the right levers to sort out both the supply side and the demand side, and unit titles are part of the equation.

So the member Nicola Willis, and before her, Judith Collins, and I think before her, Nikki Kaye, they took on a mammoth task bringing this particular bill to life. They should be commended for shepherding it through this House, and they can take heart that despite the panel beating that it has had—because it is a complex area, as we’ve heard tonight, and I guess the bill was many years in coming. A lot of changes have happened and there were also just a lot of changes still to be made by us—and we’ve heard tonight that there are more changes being suggested by Nicola Willis, which we are interested to see. I think that the bill that came to us at select committee was in a shape where we could work on it. We’ve done that work, we’re happy where it landed. I don’t think it needs any more work, but let’s wait and see. It’s well on its way to becoming law.

So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise tonight on behalf of the ACT Party, in support of the second reading of the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. It must be quite a while since we had the first reading on this bill, because I was in my office earlier and I went and checked Hansard on what I had said in the first reading, and I had said in that speech that I don’t own a home. It’s coming up to nearly a year since I bought a property, so I thought it was quite incredible how long this process must have been at select committee, and how much has changed in that time.

At the time, I referred to the fact that I wanted to—in the future, hopefully—be able to afford a three-bedroom weatherboard home with enough room for a dog, and a garden, and enough surface-level problems to justify weekend trips to Bunnings. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to afford a home with three bedrooms that’s weatherboard, and it doesn’t have room for a dog—definitely not. It does, however, have enough surface-level problems, because I have already gone to Bunnings with dripping taps, and I am very proud that I am able to fix my own home, like many other New Zealanders. But I have been in the situation where I bought into a body corp, like many New Zealanders who have also bought into body corps, because we’re seeing more and more apartment buildings and more unit titles being used for long-term residential development nowadays. And while my home is a well-established one, there are a lot of townhouses and apartments going up all around New Zealand, and more people will be finding themselves delving into the depths of body corporates, and figuring out the ins and outs of what’s happening, and maintenance funds, and long-term projections, and how they get on in a relationship with everybody else who lives around them.

Apartment dwelling and living in townhouses, it’s more than just students in temporary accommodation. It’s more than just young professionals renting in town, wanting to get to live closer to their work for a short period of time until they move out to the suburbs. More and more people are actually choosing to live in unit titles, and to raise their families without a back garden, and without a larger spot of land—but close to parks, and close to their family.

Around 150,000 New Zealanders currently live in apartments, and that is expected to double in the next 20 years. There is a need, when people are buying into these types of developments, to know what they’re buying into: what the maintenance issues are actually going to look like, how the body corporate even operates day to day, and whether they have set aside contingency funds for any future issues. I found, when I was in the process of trying to look for a place, that the body corporate minutes are a goldmine, a treasure trove of really interesting relationships and interactions—things as specific as whether or not a specific unit should have the ability to own a dog, whether one person has complained about the type of carpet that their neighbour has laid down in the other unit next door, and the fact that somebody stomps too loud overhead. There is so much information, and some of it is quite hilarious.

But there’s also some serious points that happen with bodies corporate that happen too. That is, the interactions between, for example, people who live long term in a unit versus people who own them and rent them out as landlords, and the conflicting relationships that can exist between whether people want to put more money aside for long-term maintenance plans or the particular type of roofing style that should be used in the future. There are huge issues, and this bill seeks to go some small way to improve the governance for existing owners, and the disclosure for potential new owners, and strengthen dispute resolution that is inevitable to happen in any form of body corporate or unit title arrangement.

And there’s a really good example, when I was reading through the report from the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC), that says that when you are trying to obtain information about a unit title development, it can be a lot more difficult than what you find on a standalone property. For example, a buyer cannot reasonably assess an apartment building’s ventilation system. However, as a member of the body corporate, they might be liable for the shared obligation for repairs and upgrades to the system, and the integrity of the disclosure regime relies on the seller being able to access that information in order to disclose it to the buyer. So there’s a really important relationship there that exists, which is in the interests of both the seller and the buyer and the body corp. Nobody intends to buy into a new apartment development to not be transparent about what’s going to happen in the future. But you can certainly see that you might, in good faith, buy into what you think is being run very well and in 20 years’ time nothing’s been maintained but it’s not through any fault of your own; it’s through the management of the body corporate system. And before you know it, you’re finding it incredibly hard to sell because the information that you rely on to be able to sell your own home isn’t actually able to be found through the body corp. There’s information that the seller needs and there’s information that the buyer needs, and there’s information that the body corporate should be making available. So this goes some way to trying to fix that and make it in everybody’s best interest.

There are also the important points of making sure that we’re not putting too much a costly burden on people that outweighs the benefits. And I thought one really good change that the FEC came back with was about the long-term maintenance plans. They said that they “empathise with submitters’ concerns and agree that it would be difficult to account for the future unknowns, such as inflation or new technologies,” when they were planning on changing the long-term maintenance plans from 10 years to 30 years, and they instead settled on a bit of a middle ground that there should be a detailed cost estimate for the first 10 years and then projections for the following 20 years. So it’s important that people know what they’re buying into and what the long-term maintenance plans are, but not putting such an unnecessary burden on the people who are living in that development that it’s going into too much detail where those costs outweigh the benefits. So I think that is a good middle ground that we’ve settled on.

Parliament should be here to help fix issues to make New Zealanders’ lives better. We should be there for better public policy, and I think this bill is a step in the right direction. On my final note, I would just say that I particularly like the change that allows for more proxy voting via electronic means, and I certainly look forward to being able to vote in my body corporate when I’m down here in Parliament. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

HELEN WHITE (Labour) (remote): Madam Speaker, thank you for letting me take a call on this bill, and I would first of all like to start by congratulating Nicola Willis on this bill. It’s a very important bill, and I’m very pleased that it has progressed with the cooperation of all parties.

I’d also like to thank Nikki Kaye, whose bill was really the first iteration of this bill. She promoted it and she worked with, as I understand it, Grant Robertson on this bill because Grant Robertson is in another big city, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that’s where we’re seeing a passion for the changes, which are fairly necessary.

First of all, what I want to say about this is that the bill has changed enormously, and it’s changed enormously not because anyone did a bad job, but because times are changing and we’re learning about living together. We haven’t lived together in the same way in cities in the past in New Zealand, and a lot of our habits are actually not particularly useful when you do live together—we don’t really know how to do it. I suspect that in other cities in the world, we’d get this right more often, but we are used to making our own decisions about our own situations and not actually sharing and cooperating. So one of the things that I think this process taught me was that this issue actually goes well beyond the unit title. It goes to the whole area of community living, and we’re going to have to have a really good stream of work on that beyond this, because this was a gnarly piece of work.

It was really hard to get the balances that we did, but it’s only a piece of the picture, because there are still quite a few structures beyond it—things like people who don’t have body corporates, people who are actually living in company structures, etc. So those are the kinds of things that maybe in the future are places we need to go, but right now, what Labour saw was a pragmatic situation where it could add value to this bill and work cooperatively with the National Party and Nicola Willis to make this bill work.

So you will see a lot of change from the first iteration. Those changes are ones that are based on the stories we heard, and the stories we heard were actually fairly dramatic. This is people’s most expensive purchase, and it is also one which is going to attract a lot of people who can’t afford a house in the suburbs.

There’s a lot of vulnerable people buying apartments, and so we heard some pretty sad stories about people who have been caught up in a culture that wasn’t really ready for them. We’ll remember that a lot of the apartments that are in central Auckland are ones that were built at the time of leaky buildings, which adds to the issue, and they have been not necessarily handled in a mature fashion. So those issues that we had around disclosure, which were about making sure that we got the rules right about what was disclosed to a purchaser—those issues came out of really painful experiences for people. I hope that by bringing in this law, I can go from being a person who went through this process very worried about the purchases that people were making on apartments to actually being able to be feeling that people were safely making a purchase which is the most important purchase of their lives.

The first thing that has been done here is there’s been very much a balanced approach taken, but there will be a level of disclosure that a purchaser gets, and there will be a level of comfort about what happens if not everything is disclosed. So there is delay if, in fact, not everything is disclosed, and there’s enough records that they are getting that they know what they’re buying. It’s very, very important that people actually engage in good faith in these things, but these rules will, hopefully, set a culture that is actually one of good faith.

Another part of this is that when people engage a body corporate manager, they put a lot of faith into them. It’s very vulnerable when you do that, because that person has power over a lot of things, and this bill was one where we had actually gone for a code of conduct in that area. So those managers will be expected to behave in a certain way.

There are also issues, really, around remote voting. We’ve got this issue about proxies that perhaps will come up for a little bit more debate because it sounds like there may be a Supplementary Order Paper about this, but one of the things to keep in mind about proxies and the information around those is that now people will have an option of voting for themselves remotely. So they won’t necessarily have to engage in the proxy voting situation by giving their vote to someone else in the same way. They will be able to actually directly engage in a process when they are involved with their body corporate.

There’s also a real distinction made between very big body corporates and little ones. There’s been very much a pragmatic approach taken to how much we can expect simple structures to do, and you’ve heard my colleague Anna Lorck talk about that. Simple structures won’t have to do the same amount as the big structures, because having a big apartment—like we heard from somebody from Metropolis. Metropolis is, basically, a city. It’s 500-plus people. That is going to have a lot more complex issues and it’s going to need a much more professional level of management. We heard about that alongside other people we heard from who are in single-level dwellings that are connected by shared walls, but they have simple structures, and those structures won’t have the same level of need for maintenance, etc., and they won’t have the same level of professionalism required in their management.

The code of conduct that was used for body corporate managers was actually borrowed from Queensland. Queensland has quite a complicated structure, and we leaned on it because it had got it right in this instance. So I’m confident that that part of the bill is spectacularly robust.

We’ve also got maintenance plans. When you think about when you buy something that’s so important, it’s very easy to fool yourself that you’ve got a great deal if you don’t actually know what the cost of upkeep is going to be. It’s pretty important that people know what they’re in for, and so there is a plan here to maintain the building that is much more detailed in the first 10 years and is high level out from that, and that will actually let somebody buy a house or buy an apartment knowing what they’re buying. We’ve been pretty pragmatic about that, as I think you’ve heard from other people, but we haven’t made it rigorous at the level of that later part of the years, because, practically, it wouldn’t be possible. It’s very hard to tell what happens in the future, but it’s pretty easy to actually plan out to 10 years.

We’ve also put in a dispute resolution process, and that’s important because the processes that we had weren’t fit for purpose. We’ve actually just raised the cap and we’ve put the disputes of under $100,000 into a much more user-friendly pathway, because when litigation is so expensive and so intimidating, it tends, again, to come back because of the people who are feeling most vulnerable and whose purses are tightest. They’re the ones who suffer under that system.

As Dr Duncan Webb said, we took very seriously the issue about the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment people entering the property. We had a good look at it because, obviously, it’s something that we probably—many of us on the committee are lawyers and we all care about powers of entry. So that really did get a lot of scrutiny.

Finally, penalties. Penalties are something that are there for non-compliance. You’ve got to have teeth in these things, and there are teeth, but, basically, this is a very, very pragmatic bill that has moved a long way from where it started.

So I am grateful to Nikki Kaye for bringing this issue into the ballot originally, and I’m grateful to Nicola Willis for pursuing it. Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thanks for the opportunity to take a short call on this bill. This is a bill that had a lot of the work done by the Hon Nikki Kaye. I don’t think that Grant Robertson did anything at all, actually, other than to note in a Wellington Central meeting that he did think that there were some really good points in the bill but the Government wasn’t supporting it. I was with Nikki Kaye at a meeting with Phil Twyford, who was then the Minister of Housing, in 2018, where we suggested that the Government take over the bill and actually turn it into a Government bill so that it could have all the work done that the Government was saying needed to be done, and that request was refused. So I don’t think we should suggest that this is—in any way, shape, or form—a Government bill. I think the current Minister of Housing is correct, though, to support this bill, and I’m pleased to see that sort of cross-party support for it.

We all know, those of us who have lived in apartments instead of a freehold single-unit property, that living in an apartment in a body corporate situation is significantly not the same as living in a freehold property with land around it and your neighbours a wee way away. There is required a significantly more respectful acknowledgment of the fact that your neighbours are upstairs, downstairs, and beside you, and that consequently when we get to some of the horror stories that come from apartments, it is not just that people are being picky; sometimes it’s because the way of life that some people undertake is actually not suitable for apartment living. At this stage, we are currently living in an apartment as we have more renovations done to our house, but we are living in an apartment block where there are no animals allowed. So there are real restrictions on people’s decisions, and that is something which people know when they buy into or rent into these properties: that there are restrictions.

This, however, is a bill that deals with things such as the issues around long-term maintenance programmes, the ability of people who are buying into properties to actually understand what the costs might be. I think it’s a real shame that we see, sometimes, properties advertised as having no body corporate fees. What that generally means is that they’re a cross-lease, which, by the way, brings its own issues. But there is this sort of myth around, and I don’t know whether it’s because of the stories about leaky apartments—I mean, you could say the same about leaky houses and leaky anything else, too—but it is important that we address the fact that we do need to have more people able to access apartment living in a way that gets them housed.

I look at the fact that the United Kingdom is slightly smaller than New Zealand in size, they have 68 million people; we have 5 million people and we can’t house the people that we’ve got. There’s something incredibly wrong. That’s why I support the ability of housing to be intensified in ways to get people housed. It is an absolute disgrace that property in this country costs so much. It is an absolute disgrace that we have people, 25,000-plus, on the State house waiting list. It is an absolute disgrace that we don’t have enough housing for people. There is no reason, other than restrictive use of land, the cost of land, the fact that we have so many rules. And we’re worrying about leaky homes; we should be worrying about the fact that we’ve got people in tents and living under bridges. It’s about time that we do have an obligation to make sure that people have an opportunity to purchase a home; to have a stake in the ground, as such; to be able to have something to leave to their children—an opportunity to be part of a property-owning democracy and to know that nobody can kick them out of their accommodation. That is something that we should celebrate.

I’m very happy to have been the member whose name this bill was in, and I’m very happy, also, to pass it over to Nicola Willis, who is already doing a fantastic job in the portfolio. Thank you.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Good to see the member opposite remains an irony-free zone. A shame that speech wasn’t made in about 2013, when the Salvation Army were told by Bill English in his office that they had a major housing problem coming and could they help with it, and they had to tell him they couldn’t. What a shame that that member didn’t stand up and make that speech about then, because we probably wouldn’t be in the situation we are now, where fortunately—I’m very proud to be a member of a Government that has actually now hit record number of consents.

Hon Judith Collins: Point of order, Madam Speaker. The member, who has now resumed his seat, has no idea about what speeches I gave at those appropriate times.

GREG O’CONNOR: Well, if I get a lazy moment some time over the winter, then I’ll go through Hansard and find one, shall I—to that speaker. I’m sure that there’ll be some riveting reading.

But anyway, perhaps I should get back to the topic. This is a topic that really is a time, because even that last speaker did speak of how many people there are in the UK. In fact, just a bit of accuracy: if you overlay a map of the South Island over the UK, you will see it’s actually vastly smaller than the whole of New Zealand land area itself. But she does make a good point: as you do walk around the UK, around anywhere around Europe; any of the major capitals, Barcelona comes to mind—where certainly you’ve got to walk a long way from city centres before you’ll see any single-level dwellings. You may get the odd relic of wealthier times in the area, but certainly living in apartments, living multi-storey, is part of life in the Northern Hemisphere. As a result, the laws around, the regulations around, and the way that people live have evolved accordingly.

Of course, in New Zealand, we haven’t. We have looked forward to our quarter-acre paradise, designed at a time when those people who owned those houses, or were even renting them, were expected to put in a garden out the back, there was room for it, and they would actually grow their own vegetables and supplies. Well, those days are well and truly gone. If you go to any town or city in New Zealand of any medium size, you’ll find many of those back lawns now have been subdivided and the dreaded cross-lease that the previous speaker talked about is a reality, even if it is really only down a driveway.

I personally nearly bought a property recently myself, became aware of the complications that were going to arise as a result of it being a unit title, particularly since one of the people on the unit title didn’t live in either of the flats on the property but did own the land around, and was going to be able to do, essentially, what he wanted as an equal partner in that.

Many speakers before me today have spoken of finding out just—well, human nature initially, particularly where there is a sharing, because when you live in those sort of confines, if you can’t rely on human nature, if you can’t rely on the goodwill of your fellow man or woman in that area, then you will actually require some sort of governance; some sort of oversight.

In fact, it’s quite important that while we discuss this tonight, it is an amendment bill, to go back to actually what the Unit Titles Act 2010—it’s the law governing building developments, where multiple owners own a unit title, and there is shared ownership of common areas such as lifts, lobbies, or driveways.

More New Zealanders are choosing to live in apartments and townhouses. The annual number of townhouses, flats, and units consented exceeding 10,000 for the first time in August. So, again, all talk really, be it around your local territorial authority, your local council, district councils, is all now about intensification, particularly in the city. While many residents’ associations and others are naturally concerned to preserve the nature of their areas, the reality of it, I think we all know, is we can’t continue to just build out, particularly where you drive into work and you see what once was beautiful, growing, luscious, and fertile land now being housing. That’s pretty much the case around most cities and even towns in New Zealand now. It simply can’t continue, and the reality of it is: we simply must go up. If we’re going to go up, we need the sort of rules and regulations and guidelines that this piece of legislation actually enables.

This long-term maintenance plan—I think I was on the committee that considered this bill and really that was, I suppose, the part of it that really struck me, as we started talking about the need for a 30-year long-term maintenance plan. So what’s that all about? Well, clearly that’s the sort of plan—there’s nothing worse than buying into a building, into an apartment, into a unit, and suddenly finding out the lifts are going to need replacing in five years’ time and it was well known to those who perhaps got out, perhaps to those who have been part of the body corporate, not minuted, and so there was no way they would have been able to find out. So you get in and all of a sudden find not only is it the dreaded “leaky” that many speakers have spoken about tonight but actually you’re up for the lifts.

Also, just another aspect is of where someone who did buy into a body corporate, they were on the property, the property they actually occupied was industrial property, which wasn’t even connected to the largely residential and semi-commercial property connected to it, which did have lifts, had quite high maintenance long-term maintenance costs, and although these particular tenants or these owners were never going to be beneficiaries of that, they were also up for the costs. So these are the sorts of protections that people will need—just working through the bill, the various aspects of it—as I say, going back particularly about the long-term plans.

The other thing—and again one of the earlier speakers talked about how it has been some time since we did discuss this bill here. Since we did so, of course we’ve now had COVID, we’ve all learnt how easy remote access can be, evidenced by the mere fact here we are standing doing a virtual Parliament or a hybrid Parliament, something that was inconceivable—actually wouldn’t be conceived; some people wouldn’t conceive it last year, but actually it was inconceivable at all before 2020. So for the bill which we are in, we are concerned about the proxy part of the bill—proxy farming. I think anyone who’s been involved in many of these organisations, and they often are amateurs, know that some hopefully well-meaning individuals who can take over, who have probably got time on their hands, can take over the running of these things, can get proxy votes from those who either deliberately or just through ignorance are quite happy to have their vote going to individuals who may or may not have their own best long-term interests at heart.

So, again, when one looks at this bill and says, “Why are we digging so deep into this”? it is an incredibly important part of ensuring that we do give the protection to what is really going to be the next generation. What I’m finding in my own Ōhāriu electorate is that some of the developers up there who probably experimentally started building what we’d call side-by-sides or tenement buildings, they felt that they probably wouldn’t really be selling, suddenly found there was a huge demand for the types of buildings they built as something of an experiment and now they can’t build enough of them. So what we are seeing is that we have got a generation coming through that probably doesn’t necessarily need or want the maintenance of a back lawn, which on the surface of it looks nice, but don’t get a nice growing spring, making one bored enough either from reading Hansard of the previous speakers’ speeches or watching grass grow, which are probably about the same. But some people actually don’t necessarily want that type of property and will end up very happy to be living downtown or living in a city where they can walk to the type of things that perhaps the next generation is more keen on.

So there was a lot of work to do on this bill. It was certainly a learning experience for many of us, I know, on the committee and I think that we have got it into something of a workable bill and of course I do have to at this stage congratulate those who have been part of getting it to this part of the process. So I’m happy to commend it to the House.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would actually like just to take the previous speaker, Greg O’Connor, to task. There was a bit of a gratuitous flick or two at the Hon Judith Collins—quite uncalled for—and I thought it was a bit rich to say he would be implying that reading the Hansard would be quite dull. Well, we had to just suffer 10 minutes of dullness, so I think it was a bit rich.

I would like to say that actually in 2018 I remember the Hon Judith Collins bringing this bill to caucus. So this bill’s been around quite some time, and it’s great congratulations to the member Nicola Willis for bringing this right through at this point, and the Hon Nikki Kaye, who’s been involved with it. This is a really technical bill. It is very unusual for a bill of this technicality and how dense it is to be a member’s bill. And I know from my own experience with the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions (Regulatory Improvements) Amendment Bill or Act in my name, which was quite technical as well, how difficult that can be when you don’t have the resources at your disposal that a Minister would have. So it actually speaks a lot to the capability of the member in charge of the bill that she managed to get it through in the form that it has; although, albeit that we’ve had member after member standing up and taking credit for improving the bill on the way through. But I can assure you, Madam Speaker, and the House that the quality of this bill has a lot to be thankful for from the member Nicola Willis who has steered this admirably through this stage.

I have been on the Finance and Expenditure Committee for part of this bill’s life—not all of it by the way—and I can say sitting through some of those hearings was really interesting, but boy you had to pay attention. It was very technical in nature, and particularly if it was a part—coming in fresh, it took a bit to catch up on. And as someone who’s got involvement with some body corporates, I know how important it is. It is usually that a home or an apartment is the biggest investment that people actually have in their entire life, so it’s not only money that they’ve got invested in that property, it’s their heart and soul. And they are putting everything on the line in something that most of us don’t have a lot of expertise in. Even if you know how to wield a hammer, that doesn’t mean you understand how a lift works and how the various maintenance activities are needed on those particular buildings. I think that where people fall down is not because of ill will usually, it’s because of lack of skills in that area.

This bill is trying to capture those gaps in the legislation and make it much fairer for those people who are members of a body corporate. I think it’s never going to be perfect. I think we’ve got it into a very good state. I’m not claiming, unlike others, any credit for that, but I think it is the people that came along and gave evidence to the select committee that actually had a massive impact on the quality of this bill in the end. It is testament to the select committee process. I think most members of the public don’t realise how important this is. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got all the resources of the ministry behind you or it’s a member’s bill, it’s never perfect when it goes to a select committee, and it’s really dependent on evidence from those people coming before the select committee, the committee’s work to try and distil all that evidence, decide what needs to be done and what not to be done that ends up with a piece of legislation that’s workable. So I’d like to thank all those people that did come along to the select committee and give up their time. It was very important, it was appreciated, and we all listened very intently to their evidence.

So I think, as Nicola Willis said earlier, that this bill had very many mothers. Like what John F Kennedy said, which was that success had many mothers and failure was an orphan, this bill is not an orphan. This is going to have, as we’ve witnessed tonight, lots of mothers and fathers in this House tonight.

There were 85 submitters with a lot of experience in different areas. It was quite an effort by everyone concerned.

I note that Nicola Willis is going to bring some Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) through the next stage, particularly around conveyancing and remediation reports. I think that’s really important. I know from one of the bodies corporate I was involved with, with earthquake damage here in Wellington—and I think that the importance of getting all of those details fairly to the purchaser is really important. That’s one area where dishonesty is—there’s a real opportunity there for someone to be dishonest about what they know, and when you get a deal where one party has more information than the other, that is a very dangerous place to go, particularly that, as I said earlier, this will be one of the biggest investments that most people make, and it’s all on the line. For them to be led up the garden path, as it were, or buy something that is a liability they were not expecting, is very unfair. I’m sure the SOP will go some way to fix that.

Also proxy voting, which has been touched on by a number of people—that was a very contentious issue. I’m still not sure what the right answer is. I note that the member bringing the bill is clearly not quite satisfied with where it sits at the moment, so she’s going to bring an SOP to fix this bill, or remediate the bill. I would really look forward to reading that SOP and debating it when we get to the committee of the whole House. So I think that is going to be a very important area. Because of the nature of these things, often people don’t live in their bodies corporate all the time, and therefore find it difficult to attend meetings and be a part of the process. So it’s really important that they have their say; albeit we don’t want that to be used in an unfair way either. So I look forward to reading that.

We had some debate at the end about the size of the UK, and I think that the Hon Judith Collins is a bit closer to the geographical facts, anyway, than the other member.

But it is a growing trend that I see, anyway, in New Zealand, of building apartments. I note that I had the pleasure, with Andrew Bayly, to visit a company called Hector Egger down in Queenstown, building modular homes. I think these are the type of thing that we’re going to see in New Zealand—much, much more of—and this is a really positive thing. Joseph Mooney was on that visit as well. I can’t speak highly enough of that particular company and the type of home that they are building. We have a shortage of homes in New Zealand for lots of reasons, and I think the Resource Management Act has a heck of a lot to do with it, setting urban limits has got a lot to do with it—all of those sorts of things. But building modular homes that are put up in three days, as Hector Egger are doing in Queenstown, is absolutely the way for New Zealand to go. That is the future. They can build a very good house at a very good price, and a lot of those are going to be in bodies corporate.

So it is essential that we get this legislation together. I congratulate the member once again. I look forward, very much, to taking part in the next stage of this, and then ultimately seeing it become an Act. I congratulate all those involved. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō mārie.

The House adjourned at 9.59 p.m.