Wednesday, 18 May 2022

WEDNESDAY, 18 MAY 2022

WEDNESDAY, 18 MAY 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

Hon JENNY SALESA (Assistant Speaker): Le Atua Silisili ese e, matou te sulaina lau Afio mo fa‘amanuiaga ma tofi ua e fa‘au‘uina ai i matou. E lafoa‘i ni o matou lagona ma manatua ta‘ito‘atasi i le amana‘iaina o le Masiofo o Peretania. Matou te tatalo ina ia tonu ma fa‘amaoni fuafuaga ma fa‘ai‘uga uma i totonu o lenei Maota Fono. Ia talosia ta‘ita‘i o lenei Mālō ina ia maua le tōfā mamao, le fa‘apalepale ma le agamalū, auā le manuia ma le filemū o Niu Sila. O le matou tatalo lea, e ala atu i le suafa pele o Iesu Keriso. Amene.

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

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

SPEAKER: No select committee reports have been presented. A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of the Tourette’s Association of New Zealand requesting that the House request the Ministry of Health recognise Tourette’s syndrome as a disability for the purpose of ministry-funded support services.

SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee. A paper has been delivered for presentation.

CLERK: Student Loan Scheme, annual report 2020-21.

SPEAKER: That paper is published under the authority of the House. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK: Forests (Legal Harvests Assurance) Amendment Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: That bill is set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The International Monetary Fund, on Saturday, released its annual review for New Zealand, where they reiterated that New Zealand had found itself in a strong position as a result of the successful management of the pandemic, with strong health and economic policies supporting a quick recovery from lockdowns in 2021. They again highlighted that the economy had rebounded strongly in 2021 and that the expected border reopening will provide an additional economic boost to the tourism and education sectors. The IMF also noted that our public debt levels are expected to remain low compared with many of the countries we compare ourselves with, that our debt sustainability remains robust, and that there is substantial headroom to respond to further challenges.

Barbara Edmonds: What did the report say about fiscal policy supporting the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The IMF noted that New Zealand had started withdrawing across-the-board fiscal support due to the strong position we find ourselves in and that the pace of that withdrawal was appropriate. It says that, given the highly uncertain global environment, fiscal policy should remain nimble as economic conditions and the pandemic evolves and provide for additional targeted support where needed. Fiscal policy should also focus on promoting long-term growth while addressing emerging structural issues. We are taking a balanced approach and making sure that our spending continues to be carefully prioritised and targeted at the areas and people that require it the most, including supporting low and middle income New Zealanders dealing with cost of living pressures, through increases to Working for Families, superannuation, benefit levels, student allowances, and the minimum wage, as well as the resumption of the winter energy payment. Of course, we’ve also reduced fuel excise duty and road-user charges, and halved public transport fares.

Barbara Edmonds: What other reports has he seen on the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The resilience of the jobs market is continuing to support the economy. The SEEK NZ Employment Report rose 2.6 percent last month compared to March to a record high and is up 50 percent for the year. The BNZ said that this mirrored recent surveys, showing that firms do intend to hire more people. BNZ said the easing of restrictions was reflected in hospitality and tourism, with a 30 percent jump in job ads. Some of the—[ringing sound in Chamber] Some regions, such as Otago, which have a reliance on tourism, have exhibited the biggest gains. The strong jobs market shows that the Government’s actions in response to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic have proven to be the best economic approach, and the opening of the borders to foreign workers and tourists will accelerate this growth.

SPEAKER: That was a rather unsubtle comment on the length of the answer.

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) (remote): Yes, particularly this Government’s decision to partner with businesses to get ahead, transition to low-emission alternatives, reduce their reliance on volatile global energy markets, improve productivity, and futureproof our energy system to ensure that a cheaper, more secure energy supply becomes the norm. As part of our emissions reductions plan, we’re investing $650 million over four years to increase the size of the funding available to the successful Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) programme, enabling us to expand support to small business, and increase the number and type of projects that receive money, including high-impact decarbonisation projects of national significance. The original $69 million GIDI fund has been a huge success, having helped fund 53 major industrial decarbonisation projects, all contracted for completion by April 2024, and over their lifetime are estimated to save 7.46 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to taking 134,000 cars off the road.

Christopher Luxon: How can Kiwis have any confidence in tomorrow’s Budget spending announcements, when KiwiBuild—the Government’s flagship announcement in 2017—has only delivered 1.3 percent of the 100,000 houses that were promised?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because if you look over the lifetime of this Government and the investment that we have made consecutively through each of our Budgets, they have been unapologetically focused on New Zealanders and reducing the impacts of cost of living right from back to 2017. We started the public housing build programme, for instance, in Budget 2018, and it’s now delivered over 9,000 public houses. But we did more than that. In that first Budget, we extended free and low-cost doctors visits to children under 14—now reaching 56,000 young people—and extended eligibility for the community services card. We’ve now, through the Warmer Kiwi Homes project—which we announced in that first 2018 Budget—seen almost 80,000 homes insulated and heating installed. I could speak to examples in Budget 2020 and Budget 2021 where we’ve done the same.

Christopher Luxon: How can Kiwis have any confidence in tomorrow’s Budget spending announcements when this Government once promised to improve housing affordability, but instead delivered the fastest house price growth on record and a 360 percent increase in the State house wait-list?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, here I would contrast the Government’s investment in housing, which remains a critical focus for us, against the pledge of the Opposition to do nothing more than (a) sell public housing, as they did when they were in office; and (b) Resource Management Act reform, which this Government was the first to progress—despite them having nine years, they did nothing. As I’ve already said, 9,000 public homes have been built under this Government, more homes than any Government since the 1970s. We have record consents continuing to be delivered, demonstrating the work we’ve done to ensure that we have that ongoing stimulus in our housing market. This sits alongside the work we’ve done on transitional housing places, homelessness response, and our ongoing [Audio missing] continuing to get first-home buyers into the market. Finally, I contrast the work we have done to even the playing field for first-home buyers against the Opposition’s plan, which is to put $1 billion back into the pockets of those who speculate in the housing market.

David Seymour: If a publicly owned home is sold, as the Prime Minister just accused the Opposition of doing, can people still live in it or does it magically disappear?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, what I can tell you it doesn’t do is house those on the lowest incomes who need income-related rents and access to housing which is more affordable. That is exactly what we saw with the sell-down under the last National Government.

David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister tell the House the current market price of a New Zealand unit under the emissions trading scheme (ETS), and can she name one initiative in the emissions reduction plan announced this week that will reduce carbon emissions for less than that amount per tonne?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The current price, if my memory serves, is around $76, and if we were to stick with the plan—if you can call it that—that seems to be proposed by both ACT and National, it is to allow the ETS and the carbon price to do all the heavy lifting for the emissions reductions that New Zealand needs to undertake. That would mean, for instance, if we wanted to see the same reduction that we’re proposing in an increase in the uptake of low-emissions vehicles, you would have to see a considerable increase in that carbon price, and that would mean New Zealanders would, for instance, be paying at the pump.

Christopher Luxon: How can Kiwis have any confidence in tomorrow’s Budget spending announcements, when one of her first big promises—Auckland light rail—was supposed to be finished two years ago, but still doesn’t even have a business case, let alone a single piece of track?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because in the middle of an economic crisis, the likes of which we’ve not seen in a hundred years, we have received two triple A credit ratings from the two leading agencies, GDP is up 5.6 percent, we have some of the lowest unemployment on record, and our economy is in a better position than it was pre-COVID. If the only other point of comparison is, for instance, how this Government has done compared to the Government post the last economic crisis from the global financial crisis, then, toe to toe, we have outperformed.

Christopher Luxon: How can Kiwis have any confidence in tomorrow’s Budget spending announcements, when, despite announcing $1.9 billion for mental health, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission found that there has been no increase in access to specialist mental health services for the last five years?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I notice the member is wilful in ignoring some of the substantive points that were made by the commission, which acknowledged, of course, that the over a billion dollars’ worth of mental health spending that was put in by this Government was focused on building primary mental health care, which previously did not exist in this country, and as a result we’re seeing tens of thousands of appointments now available to New Zealanders that did not exist before. In addition, you’ve seen pre-Budget announcements just this week of additional funding going into acute mental health, which is another area of need. But if we want to reduce demand in acute mental health, we must provide earlier interventions for more New Zealanders, which is exactly what this Government has done.

Christopher Luxon: How can Kiwis have any confidence in this Government’s spending announcements in education, when, despite spending $5 billion more per year, there’s been zero improvement in maths and literacy, and only 60 percent of our children are attending school regularly?

Hon Chris Hipkins: Based on what statistic?

Hon Grant Robertson: Making it up.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because that additional investment—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I apologise to the Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister knows that it is out of order to accuse a member of making something up.

Hon Grant Robertson: I withdraw and apologise.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because, as the member may or may not know, the considerable investment that we’ve put in as a Government has been to overcome years of under-investment in our education system. That includes school property, of which we have put in $1.2 billion; and including, for instance, dealing with pay equity issues in the sector, to the tune of over $700 million; learning support, to the tune of $260 million; making it more affordable for our parents to access education for their kids by removing the requirement for donations; making it more accessible for our kids to go into post - secondary education, with first-years free; and a policy I’m especially proud of because of the impact it has on families with low incomes: the healthy school lunch programme. All of these are investments we’ve made into our education system which ultimately improve access and ensure that kids have access to the school services they deserve.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the most recent literacy and numeracy statistics available were from the Programme for International Student Assessment survey that was taken shortly after Labour formed the Government, of 15-year-olds, who’d received the vast majority of their schooling under the last National Government?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I can confirm that, and I also note this is a pattern of behaviour from the Opposition. When we first came into office, they spent a considerable amount of time accusing us of not having improved child poverty, when, in fact, the statistics they were using were for their time in office.

Christopher Luxon: Isn’t it the case that when this Government announces billions of dollars of more spending in tomorrow’s Budget, New Zealanders now know that all that new spending does not mean better outcomes because we have a Labour Government that simply cannot get things done?

SPEAKER: Order! The Prime Minister—

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: No, no. Order! That question is not in order.

Question No. 3—Health

3. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcements has he made on expanding mental health and addiction services?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Yesterday, I announced $190 million of investments over four years to allow the expansion of Mana Ake into five new areas and to improve specialist mental health and addiction services for those New Zealanders who have the highest mental health and addiction needs; $100 million of this funding will go towards easing some of the immediate pressures on specialist services over time by increasing the capacity of these services to see more people and by trialling new models of support to better meet people’s needs. Mana Ake is a school-based programme that gives children the skills and support to deal with issues that include grief, loss, parental separation, and bullying. In April 2021, the Prime Minister and I announced $12 million for the co-design of locally relevant Mana Ake services in Northland, Counties Manukau, Bay of Plenty, and Lakes and West Coast regions. The co-design has taken place, and we now know what services are practically required in those areas and how they might be delivered. The $90 million I announced yesterday will allow the service delivery of Mana Ake in those new areas.

Willow-Jean Prime: Why is this funding needed for specialist mental health and addiction services?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Specialist mental health and addiction services have been under considerable pressure for a long time. This means there are often waiting times for people to access the help that they need. People with severe mental health and addiction issues, and their families, have been patient in the face of inaction by previous Governments. For many people with severe mental health and addiction needs, treatment is most appropriately provided outside a traditional hospital setting. That’s why the funding I announced yesterday will include $27 million for community-based crisis services that will deliver a variety of intensive supports, such as residential and home-based crisis respite, community crisis teams, co-response teams, and peer-led services in the community and as part of care teams, and $18.7 million to enhance existing specialist child and adolescent mental health and addiction services so that around 1,300 young people can be supported by more clinical, peer-support, and cultural-support staff. This is a critical next step in rebuilding our mental health and addiction system.

Willow-Jean Prime: How many children will now have access to the Mana Ake programme, and what kind of services will they now have access to?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: One hundred and ninety five thousand primary- and intermediate-aged children will benefit from the continuation and expansion of Mana Ake services. Mana Ake empowers children with resilience and support when and where they need it to confidently cope with whatever life throws at them. The mental wellbeing supports provided by this initiative will vary by area, reflecting the needs of each community in their local context. The Mana Ake programme has a range of supports, which include whole-of-classroom approaches to promote mental wellbeing and increased resilience across the whole school population, targeted initiatives delivered face to face for children experiencing mild to moderate levels of distress, and group-based supports and support for whānau.

Question No. 4—Agriculture

4. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister of Agriculture: Does he stand by his statement that “the Government looks to all sectors to pull their weight with the Emissions Reduction Plan”; if so, does he believe agriculture will be pulling its weight over the first three emissions budget periods?

Nicola Grigg: Hates farmers.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Which member—was that Nicola Grigg who interjected then?

Nicola Grigg: Yes, sir.

SPEAKER: Right. That’s not helpful, especially given what happened yesterday.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Of course I do. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time and it is critical that all sectors play a part in reducing emissions so we can avoid the worst effects of climate change. This is particularly true for New Zealand’s farmers and growers, who are some of the most vulnerable in New Zealand to the effects of droughts, floods, and other direct effects of climate change. Another important reason why agriculture must look to reduce its emissions is market drivers offshore. Customers and consumers abroad are increasingly demanding products with low emissions and high sustainability. So New Zealand’s continued ongoing economic strength built off our world-leading food and fibre sector is dependent on continued innovation and adaptation to a lower-emissions agricultural sector. Yes, agriculture must play a part in reducing emissions, and it is doing so through the emissions reduction plan announced on Monday, which will see the sector on track to meet emissions budget targets. By 2025, we will continue to incentivise change by bringing in the world’s first emissions pricing system for agriculture.

Teanau Tuiono: What does he say to groups like Greenpeace and scientists who say that reducing herd sizes and phasing out synthetic fertiliser are major tools to reduce our emissions and protect the environment?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: There are two parts to that. In terms of nitrous oxide, for example, the Government brought in a maximum level of 190 kilograms per hectare of synthetic nitrogen that could be applied. The issue of methane, biogenic methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide, they all play a different part in the system, they all have different life cycles, and the Government’s working on all these particular areas. The issue of stock numbers and stocking rates: it is simply not sensible to have a set figure per hectare across the variants of soil types, of farming systems, and of individual capabilities of the farmers. So we think we’re doing the right thing in working with the industry.

Teanau Tuiono: Is agriculture the only sector to receive funding from the climate emergency relief fund without contributing to the fund through the emissions trading scheme (ETS) revenue, and, if so, what additional steps will be needed to ensure agriculture pulls its weight in reducing emissions?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: The primary sectors have earned, this year, over $50 billion in export earnings; they don’t do that by paying no commitment and no funding to the ETS. Everything they do, by way of fuel and energy, means they contribute. So they have contributed a large part already to the ETS. What we’re doing here is front-loading some funding for more research and development, and to accelerate that knowledge into the hands of farmers, to get it out there, and to make sure that we will—a system to reduce the emissions over time. Agriculture has a big part to play. It will ramp up as those tools get into the hands of farmers.

Mark Cameron: Does he stand by his statement in question time yesterday when he said he was a creating a “centre for climate action”, and when will the new centre for climate change action group ensure that Bovaer is approved for use in New Zealand, and, if so, when will that be?

SPEAKER: One of the three questions.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Bovaer is a Dutch technology that is fed to animals about 12 times a day, I am told. It doesn’t suit with the New Zealand pastoral-based system. Also, there’s an issue of definition of “Is it a medicine or is it a fertiliser?” We’re working through that. We will make the adjustments to allow that technology to be trialled, but what happened previously when we used a technology like that, dicyandiamide was applied to the pasture, was then picked up as a residue offshore, and put all our exports at risk. We don’t want to run the risk of that happening again, so we’re being cautious in this area.

Teanau Tuiono: Does he support stronger action on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, which has increased by over 600 percent since 1990, including a lower per hectare cap to reduce nitrous oxide emissions and prevent overstocking caused by artificial inputs that push farming beyond environmental limits?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Nitrogen is a critical part of plant growth and has played a big part in the success of the New Zealand agricultural sector. Previously, we’ve used legumes and clovers to fixate the nitrogen from the atmosphere into the ground. I believe that’s a good, sustainable way forward. We have used increasing levels of synthetic nitrogen. We have now put a cap on that and I think farmers are winding back their systems to be more sustainable into the future.

Teanau Tuiono: What message, if any, did he give to the dairy sector about their role in reducing emissions at the New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards in Christchurch earlier this week, and did this include a commitment to helping farms diversify sustainably?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: We’ve already rolled out, from Government funding, to support some research—a greater knowledge of regenerative farming systems. I pointed out to the reality that Nestlé want to source 50 percent of all their products from regenerative farming systems. I’m sure New Zealand will play a part in contributing to that supply chain in the future. Yes, they have the messages from the market, but they have systems that can’t be shifted overnight. I’m sure and am confident that they will move to a better space to address the increasing demands of the consumers offshore.

Kieran McAnulty: Does the Minister stand by his statement that the Government’s plan has strong support from the primary sector, “including Fonterra, ANZSCO, Ravensdown, Silverfern Farms, Ngāi Tahu Holdings, and the Livestock Improvement Corporation. [That] this is a true partnership between Government, industry, and our rural communities”—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! Order! Rereading speeches purporting to be questions is out of order.

Kieran McAnulty: I can do it from memory, if you like.

SPEAKER: The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Kieran McAnulty: I withdraw and apologise. Supplementary?

SPEAKER: No.

Kieran McAnulty: Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: No. No. The supplementary’s been ruled out.

Kieran McAnulty: Oh.

SPEAKER: The member’s just about ruled out too.

Question No. 5—Finance

5. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with Westpac economist Michael Gordon’s view that “Many households are already feeling the pinch on their finances, and that pressure will become more intense over the next few years”; if so, will he commit to tax relief in tomorrow’s Budget?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): As I’ve said a number of times in this House, the Government is very aware of the impact that the global energy crisis, supply disruptions, and the ongoing pandemic are having on households, particularly on those that are most vulnerable to increases in food and petrol prices. It’s the reason why we’ve acted to support low and middle income New Zealanders through cuts to fuel prices, halving the cost of public transport, increases to income support including family tax credit changes, childcare assistance, student allowances, and main benefits, as well as lifting the minimum wage. In answer to the second part of the question, there is only one more sleep until the Budget—

Chris Bishop: Aww!

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —well, perhaps two if we count Mr Bishop’s nap!—and I won’t be revealing any details of it today. What I can say, though, is that I agree with what the IMF indicated, that it’s not the time for major tax changes following a one-in-100-year economic shock. What it is the time for is a balanced approach that makes sure that our spending is carefully prioritised, with a focus on big, long-term issues such as heath and climate change.

Nicola Willis: Does he agree with BNZ economist Stephen Toplis, who said, “Our central forecast, currently, is that New Zealand’s growth stalls completely in 2023. The danger is that the wheels well and truly fall off”, and should New Zealanders be braced for more tough times ahead under Labour?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I am certainly not going to go into the detail of the economic forecasts that are in tomorrow’s Budget, but what I would refer the member to is the answer I gave to question No. 1 today, where the International Monetary Fund—having done a thorough review independently of the New Zealand economy—said that New Zealand was in a strong position as a result of the successful management of the pandemic, with strong health and economic policies supporting a quick recovery from lockdowns, that our debt sustainability remains robust, and that there is substantial headroom to respond to any other challenges.

Nicola Willis: Does he agree with economist Cameron Bagrie, who wrote: “You cannot spend and print money as a way to economic prosperity and wealth creation; you need to have some substance”, and does the Minister have any regrets about choosing this moment in the economic cycle to launch a record spend-up?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On this side of the House, I will never have a regret about properly funding our health system so that New Zealanders have the health services they need and deserve, wherever they live; I will never regret making sure that we reduce decades of inequities for Māori and Pacific health outcomes; and I will never regret coming to this House to make sure that the National Party never get their hands on the health system again.

Nicola Willis: Does he agree with Professor Francis Collins, who says of New Zealand’s economic prospects: “even if people have reasonable jobs, they are going to struggle, and they’re going to struggle to see decent economic opportunities for their family”, and does the Minister understand that New Zealanders will judge his Budget not by what it announces, but by what is actually delivered?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What has been delivered is annual average growth over 5 percent. Unemployment at 3.2 percent—a record low. Wages growing at over 4 percent. On this side of the House, we will continue to strike a careful balance: keeping a lid on debt, making sure we invest in the here and now, and addressing long-term issues like health and climate change.

Nicola Willis: Well, does he agree with Professor Collins, who said, “We’re likely to see higher emigration in the next few years, and we’re likely to do so because of this confluence of high house prices, high interest rates, higher cost of living”, and can the Minister confirm that one of the major deliverables of tomorrow’s Budget will be an acceleration in the New Zealand brain drain?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I can confirm is that tomorrow’s Budget will continue the record of this Government of getting a careful balance in investing in the things that make sure New Zealanders have decent hospitals; that their kids go to decent schools; that we actually build State houses, not sell them; and that we make sure that we support businesses, just like we did through COVID, to seize the opportunities of the future. I’m looking forward to the Budget tomorrow.

Hon Stuart Nash: Does the Minister agree with American investor Warren Buffett, who noted at Berkshire Hathaway’s AGM this year that the role of Government in the pandemic was to protect jobs and the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I wouldn’t always agree with Mr Buffett, but on this particular matter I certainly do and I am very proud of the fact that this Government stood alongside New Zealand businesses, households, and workers—supported them through COVID-19. That is the same thing we will do now to make sure that we meet the challenges and take the opportunities of the future.

Question No. 6—Forestry

6. RACHEL BROOKING (Labour) to the Minister of Forestry: How is the Government using investment in forestry to help New Zealand meet its obligations to lower emissions and mitigate the impact of climate change?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Forestry): The emissions reduction plan sets out actions we can take now in the forestry sector to support the transition to a high-value, low-emissions economy and enhance biodiversity in the natural environment. A total of $710 million has been committed to the wider primary sector, from the Climate Emergency Response Fund to achieve these plans. Just over half of this—almost $330 million—supports forestry initiatives. In particular, we will establish new native forests at scale; maximise carbon storage by developing more reliable information about sequestration rates of different species, especially native trees; and replace coal and other fossil fuels with an increased supply of woody biomass, including biofuels. These actions are achievable and show that every sector can play its part to reduce emissions and protect our economic security.

Rachel Brooking: What are the challenges for native afforestation, as opposed to exotic forestry, and how has the Government responded?

Hon STUART NASH: I acknowledge that establishing new native forest comes with multiple challenges. It currently costs more to grow and produce and purchase native trees and—everything being equal because of, for example, introduced pests—they have relatively low survival rates compared with some exotics. Commercial returns for native forests in the emissions trading scheme are currently lower due to incomplete look-up tables. The Government is exploring options to address these challenges along the full supply chain, to improve incentives for landowners and others to plant more native trees. We are investing $145 million from Budget 2022 in the forestry response in the emissions reduction plan to reduce the costs of native tree seedlings and increase the number available for planting in future years.

Rachel Brooking: How does the emissions reduction plan build on previous initiatives like the one billion tree programme?

Hon STUART NASH: We have spent the last four and a half years working to bend the curve on the trajectory of our carbon emissions, with programmes like the billion trees plan. Now is the time for forestry to play an even more prominent role in our future. Forestry has a strong economic and social history in New Zealand. It is one of our largest export earners, a significant employer of over 40,000 people in forestry and wood processing, and is central to our high-wage, high-skilled, and low-emissions economic transformation strategy. We set ourselves a goal of planting 1 billion trees by 2028. The annual planting season is just about to start, with an estimated 120 million seedlings expected to go in the ground during 2022. As at December 2021, an estimated 350 million trees have been planted, thanks to Government partnership and support through the billion trees programme. Forestry is a long-term game and, while the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now.

Question No. 7—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister) (remote): Yes. In particular, I stand by our announcement of a $100 million investment to support specialist and acute mental health needs. As you’ve heard from the Minister of Health today, this will fund community-based crisis services delivering intensive support, specialist child and adolescent mental health and addiction services, and more funding to develop our specialist workforce.

David Seymour: Does she agree with the statement by the Minister for COVID-19 Response that pre-departure testing for people entering New Zealand—“its days are numbered”, and, if yes, can she tell the House on what day people will be able to enter New Zealand without a pre-departure test; in other words, how many days do we have to count?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes. I do support the statement made by the Minister for COVID-19 Response. In fact, the member may recall that last Wednesday, when announcing the final phase of our reopening strategy, we talked about the return of those from non - visa waiver countries in July and at that point stipulated that we did not expect—in fact, were committed to pre-departure testing being removed at that time in July. Whilst I can’t give the member a specific date, work has been done as we speak to ensure that we have in place all of the preparations for the removal of pre-departure testing.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister also stand by the Minister for COVID-19’s statement at the select committee this morning to the effect that pre-departure testing is making little difference to New Zealand’s COVID response, and, if she does stand by that statement, why is she going to make people go through it for another two and a half months?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The first point that I would make is that New Zealand is not alone in the fact that there are still entry requirements from around the world. The world has not gone back to normal. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have requirements for entry into the United States. Japan hasn’t allowed tourists to return. There are a number of countries that still have entry requirements, some of which may be considered more stringent than New Zealand. So what the Minister would have been referring to is that probably the more effective and important ongoing policy we have is the screening regime we have once people arrive. But, at the same time, we do need to make sure we have in place infrastructure should we at any time in the future need to return to a period of using pre-departure testing.

David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister reassure middle New Zealand that the Budget will help them with their household budget, even if they don’t receive a benefit or tax credit but instead rely on something called “working” to earn more and pay their bills?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I would refer the member to the fact that 60 percent of families in New Zealand do receive, and have done for a number of years, the tax credit known as the family tax credit—60 percent of families receive that tax credit. And as a Government we have been focused on using tools like that to ensure that we’re supporting New Zealanders from low and middle income families. And I would point the member to the fact that families, even on a combined income of, say, over $100,000 in certain circumstances, will be in receipt of the family tax credit. It reaches a number of households and has been an incredibly useful tool for us as we’ve sought to increase the disposable income of low and middle income New Zealanders.

David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister reassure young New Zealanders that this Budget will do something different from prior ones to reduce the income gap with Australia that has grown by $6,600 per year since she’s been Prime Minister, or will this become known in history as the “Brain Drain Budget”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I would first of all point to our record. Since we have been in office, wage growth has outstripped the increases in inflation since the time that we took office, with the exception of 2022 when we were seeing the entire world, including Australia, go through an inflation spike during this period. So I would reflect on our record, and I would even reflect on the fact that even in this period of time, we’re seeing wage increases above 4 percent. The second point I would make is that one of the very tools that is being pointed to when you analyse the difference in New Zealand’s wage growth over a number of years, relative to Australia, is sector-based bargaining. It is one of the issues that many analysts point to as to a difference to New Zealand’s wage rates and Australia, and I note the member is opposed to it.

Barbara Edmonds: Does she stand by her Government’s policy the winter energy payment that assists over 1 million New Zealanders to heat their homes over the winter months?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Absolutely, and that payment was, obviously, introduced by a Labour Government and kicked in from 1 May, supporting low-income families but also superannuitants. Just this morning, I received correspondence from someone who pointed out that it enabled their family to use their heat pump more during the winter, particularly given they have a family member who suffers from frequent illness. We know it makes a difference. It’s a shame the member opposite is so diminishing of the impact that it has on people’s lives.

David Seymour: Will a worker on $70,000—for example, a nurse in the middle of the income band—be $2,300 better off, under her Government’s Budget, as they would under ACT’s alternative budget for real change?

SPEAKER: The Prime Minister can answer the first part of the question; she has no responsibility for the second.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously I’m not going to speak to the Budget, which the member only has to wait one more sleep in order to see the results of. But what I will point to is our record, where the member who asked the question believes in cutting the number of nurses that we have in the first place because he believes there’s been too much growth in front-line public servants. Well, I would question whether or not he believes in dealing with pay parity or pay equity issues. But, in this Government, we have a proud record of progressively improving the incomes of, for instance, the likes of our nurses, which, on average, have seen a 20 percent increase for some of our nursing workforce. And if you can peer back an experienced nurse at a base level, for instance, who had received in 2017 an income of $66,000, they’re now $16,000 better-off as a result of this Government.

SPEAKER: I think the member is aware that tomorrow is Budget day; therefore, the ACT Party gets fewer questions than they do in a normal week. He’s used all his questions.

David Seymour: A point of order, Mr Speaker. So much steam! I seek leave to ask an additional supplementary question of the Prime Minister.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? Yes, there is.

Question No. 8—Health

8. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: Why did he announce yesterday an expansion of Mana Ake with “$90 million set aside to start services in Northland, Counties Manukau, Bay of Plenty, Lakes and West Coast regions”, when he had already announced in April 2021, “The expansion of Mana Ake will start in five new DHB areas: Northland, Counties Manukau, Bay of Plenty, Lakes and West Coast”, and is he aware of any other recent Government mental health announcements that have already been announced?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): The member has got it wrong—again. In April 2021, I announced $12 million for DHBs and local communities to co-design Mana Ake services for their local areas. Mana Ake, introduced to Canterbury and Kaikōura by this Government, has been successful, but rolling out this successful programme further is not a matter of just imposing the same approach to different communities. With the co-design process having now been largely completed, we now know what is needed to practically roll out relevant services. Yesterday, I was proud to announce, along with my colleague Dr Tracey McLellan, $90 million that will allow these relevant and tailored services to begin in the Northland, Counties Manukau, Bay of Plenty, Lakes, and West Coast regions. In response to the second part of the member’s question, that has not happened. One difference is very clear between this Government and the last Government: we don’t turn our back on mental health services.

Matt Doocey: Why was $75 million announced to help deal with mental health and wellbeing issues in schools in November 2021, when the same $75 million for this initiative had already been announced in July 2020?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m not quite sure what the member is referring to, but we have a range of programmes in schools, including school-based health services that deal with a range of health issues for children in schools deciles 1 to 5. This is a Government that takes seriously the need to provide a full range of health services, including mental health services—including mental health services for young people—in a way that the previous Government simply turned its back on.

Matt Doocey: In light of the Minister’s answer to my primary question, where he said last year he announced $12 million to co-design Mana Ake, why in his PR put out on 15 April 2021, where he talks about the Government expanding Mana Ake and more children accessing it, is there no reference to the $12 million or co-design?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It was very clear when the announcement of $12 million was made—$12 million was not going to provide the range of Mana Ake services to five regions in the same way that was comparable to what was available then in Canterbury and Kaikōura. Sometimes it does require members in this House to take their brain cells and put two and two together. I’m sorry that that member fails to do that but that actually is what was required, and yesterday I was very pleased to announce that we now have the funding to roll out Mana Ake services to provide support to children in primary and intermediate schools in the regions that were announced. That will make a huge difference to those regions.

SPEAKER: Order! I am going to ask the Minister just to show a little bit more restraint in the tone of his answers. I think he can probably tell from the stimulation it provided, at least to the vocal cords of some of his colleagues, that it incited disorder.

Matt Doocey: Why, when questioned this morning on Today FM about his announcement over a year ago to expand Mana Ake services, did he say, “We didn’t announce the expansion; we announced the money.”, when his PR from a year ago is titled “Government expands Mana Ake”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The announcement yesterday was $90 million of funding to provide the services, the Mana Ake services, in five more regions so that we provide the help and support to young New Zealanders—children at primary and intermediate schools, in five more regions—who need that help, who are dealing with issues of grief, of parental separation, of loss, and who have not had that help ever before, including in the years immediately after the Christchurch earthquakes in the Canterbury region, and who are desperately needing that help. We are providing that help. This Government provides that help, because one thing is very clear: this Government does not turn its back on the need to improve our mental health services, unlike the previous Government.

Matt Doocey: Could the Minister tell the House for the $12 million spent and the 13 months that it took to co-design, what is one difference that was changed from the established service that has been running for five years in Canterbury?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Quite a significant difference, and the reality is you do not introduce a service that is requiring the input of local service providers, local NGOs, local communities, some where their school populations are predominantly Māori or Pacific or different population groupings where there are different needs. We don’t view the world on this side of the House as all white, like the members opposite clearly do. We are a diverse country with diverse communities in all the different regions of New Zealand, and when we provide very personalised services to people, they need to be relevant to those communities and their whānau.

SPEAKER: I’m just waiting to see if the member’s finished. The member will put his mask on, then.

Question No. 9—Transport

9. VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour) to the Minister of Transport: What recent announcements has the Government made about supporting the public transport sector?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Through the emissions reduction plan (ERP), public transport is identified as playing a key role in supporting the transition to net zero. As we look to the future, it is more important than ever to have effective, reliable, and accessible public transport services in place. That’s why we’re investing $40 million over four years to help local government accelerate the decarbonisation of around about 2,500 public transport buses, helping providers to meet the upfront costs of zero-emission buses and associated infrastructure. We’re also investing $47 million to ensure the reliability of public transport services around the country by covering a portion of revenue shortfall due to reduced patronage from COVID-19. These initiatives build on the Government’s record investment into transport services and infrastructure over the past four years and will allow more people to move around our towns and regions in a way that’s cost-effective and reduces emissions.

Vanushi Walters: What announcements has he made about workforce support in the public transport sector?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: To rapidly scale up bus networks and services across Aotearoa and meet the requirements of the ERP, the public transport sector will need to recruit and retain bus drivers to address existing bus driver shortages caused in part by the race to the bottom approach to wages under the current public transport operating model that we inherited. That’s why we’re investing $60 million to help providers lift bus driver wages, invest in better rest facilities for drivers, and make timetable changes to allow for more manageable shifts across peak and off-peak times. By making bus driving a more viable and attractive career choice, we’re enabling the public transport sector to scale up to meet our emissions reductions goals while also delivering more reliable public transport services for Kiwis and doing the right thing by our bus drivers, who have done such a great job for our country over the past two years.

Vanushi Walters: What other work has the Government undertaken to support the public transport sector?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: We’ve made record investments into public transport right around New Zealand, from major projects like Auckland light rail and Let’s Get Wellington Moving and the Eastern Busway to locally focused initiatives like supporting on-demand bus services in Timaru. We’ve also halved public transport fares for three months and upgraded public transport infrastructure around the country, and we’re supporting other active modes of transport like walking and cycling. On this side of the House, we know that, in 2022, Kiwis want real transport choices around the country. We’re making up for years of inaction with our investment in public transport right around New Zealand.

Question No. 10—Transport

10. SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga) to the Minister of Transport: Does he still believe that early construction on Auckland light rail will start in 2023?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Yes, and I’m pleased to note that last week marked a significant step in the Auckland light rail project with the release of a tender for the project inviting engineers, urban planners, designers, and industry teams to prepare to bid for the detailed planning and design work. Critically, the tender process incorporates the additional Waitematā Harbour crossing programme to help industry plan better for the future. I note the feedback from Claire Edmondson of Infrastructure New Zealand, who said, “To have this going out to tender as two projects like this in one is great for New Zealand.” This is a Government committed to investing in mass rapid transit to get our cities moving.

Simeon Brown: Given his answer that early works will begin next year, how many metres of Auckland light rail will the Government construct before the 2023 election?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Delivering a proper, functioning, linked-up mass rapid transit network in our largest city is one of our most important transport priorities. For 50 years, a proper mass rapid transit system for Auckland has been kicked down the road. This is a significant and complex project. We are getting on with the job of delivering it, that’s what Aucklanders expect us to do. We can engage in political barbs across the House about this, but what 1.7 million Aucklanders expect us to do is to deliver a linked-up network. That’s why we’re building the Eastern Busway, that’s why we’re building the Northwestern Bus interim improvements, that’s why we’ve extended the Northern Busway, and that’s why we’re now investing in mass rapid transit to the Shore and across the Auckland isthmus.

Shanan Halbert: Why is it important that the planning for Auckland light rail and the additional Waitematā Harbour crossing is integrated?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Because it is the Government’s priority to finally develop a proper linked-up rapid transit network for Auckland that futureproofs our largest city for hundreds of thousands of new people who will live in it in the coming decades. That is what successive local and central government administrations have failed to do over the last 50 years, and that’s why we’re getting on with the job. I note that planning for that additional Waitematā Harbour crossing has now been brought forward from the 2040s, which is where it was in the Auckland Transport Alignment Project that we inherited from the previous Government. We’ll be consulting on the options later this year.

Simeon Brown: Can he confirm that the Government’s position in 2017 was to construct light rail to Mount Roskill by 2021, and is it the Government’s current position that the Government would only deliver a final business case by 2024?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: As I said in one of my previous answers, members on either side of this House can continue to try and engage in political attacks and lob either way across the Chamber, but what the people of Auckland expect us to do is to get on with the job. It’s very well known that, in the previous term of Government, there was not agreement across the parties of Government to progress that project. As such, we have commenced it from the beginning of this term. In the space of 18 months, we’ve engaged with Aucklanders, we’ve developed an indicative business case, we’ve made a political decision around the route and the mode for the project, we’ve moved forward now to tendering for detailed design, and Auckland Airport has now announced a $300 million transport hub with provision for mass rapid transit. In that period of time, under the term of this Government, we’re making excellent progress.

Simeon Brown: So is the Minister saying the only progress that will be delivered by the 2023 election will be zero metres of light rail and part of a business case?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The member’s persistent line of questioning betrays why it was that on that side of the House they never delivered a single mass rapid transit project in any of our major cities in any of their time in Government. These significant urban renewal projects do take time to deliver here in New Zealand, and in any city around the world. It is absolutely common sense that before significant construction on a multibillion-dollar project like this can begin, that there will need to be significant work put into the design, the planning, the consultation, and the consenting for any project. The people of Auckland understand that. That’s why they support us taking forward this project, and that’s what we’re going to get on with.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Is it unusual for a Government’s commitment to a transport project and the commencement of the construction of that transport project to be significantly far apart?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: As the Minister of Transport, I have responsibility for overseeing a wide range of transport projects. I am aware of a number of projects which have taken longer than anticipated to deliver, including Transmission Gully—which we are very pleased to open early this term after many, many delays, which have been well documented. We’re also, as time moves on, actually opening up some of the roads of national significance, only three of which were delivered on that previous Government’s watch.

Simeon Brown: Is the reason why the Minister stood next to a big red zero—which was purchased by the New Zealand Transport Agency, at a cost of $5,000 to the taxpayer—because he wanted to tell New Zealanders how many metres of light rail this Government’s actually delivered?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The answer to that question is no. The reason that I support the Road to Zero campaign that Waka Kotahi is moving forward with is because we have a road toll in deaths and serious injuries on the New Zealand transport system that is higher than virtually any country around the world. The number of deaths on New Zealand roads in the last five years of that previous Government’s term increased by 50 percent. This Government is not prepared to put up with that, and that’s why we’re supporting a campaign right across the land transport system to save Kiwis’ lives. The member opposite might like to use that as a political barb or he might like to tweet about it and get some of his little fans excited, but we’re going to get on with the job of saving lives and building a transport system that is safe and accessible for all New Zealanders. [Applause]

SPEAKER: Order! Question No. 11, Arena Williams. [Member interjects] Order! Mr Faafoi will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Kris Faafoi: I withdraw, and I apologise.

Question No. 11—Youth

11. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Minister for Youth: What recent announcements has she made about supporting youth in New Zealand?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister for Youth): On Friday, I announced $15 million over four years as part of Budget 2022 to support young people through increased access to youth development services as part of this Government’s commitment to make New Zealand the best place in the world to be a young person. This investment is expected to increase our reach up to an additional 7,160 young people annually and increase stability and certainty for youth development providers.

Arena Williams: Why is this significant?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: This funding represents a 40 percent boost to support services funded by the Ministry of Youth Development (MYD), and it is the most significant funding increase MYD-funded services have seen in 20 years, outside of COVID-19 response - specific funding. Youth development services play an important role in terms of supporting young people to develop work-ready skills and resilience, strengthen their connections with their communities, and they help many to find a sense of purpose.

Arena Williams: What feedback has she received from young people about youth development services?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I’ve met many young people from some very difficult family situations who’ve said that they found their first role model in their youth worker. Many have told me that they’ve finally found a family. Many have talked about developing a sense of self-confidence and self-esteem and also strengthened connections with their marae or communities. Many have built support networks that have supported them through some really challenging times. I’m proud to be part of a Government that is investing in our young people and their future.

Question No. 12—Police

12. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister of Police: Does she stand by her statement, “in terms of what I am delivering as Police Minister … our people feel safer”; if so, why?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): Yes, because this Government has a strong track record of backing our police, as I outlined for the member yesterday. In addition to that, since we came to Government, we have also increased the police budget by more than 35 percent, after it had been, essentially, frozen for nine years; we’ve graduated 3,145 recruits from the Royal New Zealand Police College after police numbers had fallen over a number of years; and we’ve set aside funding in Budget 2022 to ensure that there is one police officer for every 480 New Zealanders, to ensure police numbers never fall again.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why did she tell the House on 3 May, in response to questions on ram raids, “I am confident the police are taking action by launching the new retail crime unit”, when the police stated yesterday that the new retail crime unit does not specifically investigate ram raids?

SPEAKER: No. Order! Order! Can the member do something which relates either to the question or the answer. One of the disadvantages of the question methods used by the leaders of the two parties that ask these questions is it gives them a broad opportunity to ask supplementaries, but I think it’s important that the member ties his supplementary into the original question. I’ll let the member have another go at it.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Well, Mr Speaker, just seeking some guidance: you’re right, the primary question is broad, and it relates to public safety.

SPEAKER: No, no; it’s actually relatively narrow. It’s not a general policing question. Have another go. It’s not hard for the member to relate it.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why did the Minister tell the House on 3 May that she delivered a response to ram raids, with the formation of the new retail crime unit, when the police stated yesterday that the new retail crime unit does not specifically investigate ram raids?

SPEAKER: No. Well, the member just asked the same question again. The question is about people feeling safer or the “whys”, which the member could’ve very easily picked something up out of what the Minister said. So the member’s used one supplementary; he can another go if he wants to—but he’s used one already.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Sorry, Mr Speaker. I do want to seek some guidance on this. The primary question—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! It’s the right of members to have a point of order; generally, it’s not the right to have a tutorial. But when people are asking me a question, I don’t expect raucous backbenchers to interrupt.

Chris Bishop: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Well, no. I’ve dealt with that; we’ve got one point of order on the floor now from Mr Mitchell. I’ll deal with that one first.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Well, I’ll concede to—

SPEAKER: Well, if the member’s doing that, he’s going to lose his opportunity to ask his one.

Hon Mark Mitchell: OK; I’ll ask my one first, then. Mr Speaker, it’s very clear in my primary question to the Minister that I’m talking about delivery as police Minister. My supplementary question, quite simply, talks about delivery. It’s very specific. It talks about how she made a statement in this House on 3 May, responding to questions around ram raids—

SPEAKER: OK. Right. The member will resume his seat. It’s very clear from the question that the member has qualified it by the second part of the quote. A further point of order, Chris Bishop.

Chris Bishop: Well, Mr Speaker, perhaps I’ll try and be helpful. We had exactly the same primary question yesterday and we had a whole series of exchanges around ram raids, and it’s exactly the same primary today, with exactly the same line of questioning. So I think—

SPEAKER: Yes. And the member, if he looks really carefully, he can have a look at the answer. The supplementary questions can relate to the primary question or to the answer. Supplementary question, Mark Mitchell.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Can I start again, Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: You can, but you’re on your second one.

Hon Mark Mitchell: What police unit is specifically responsible for ram raids?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: The whole of police—

SPEAKER: I’m going to let it go because I’m so frustrated.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I’m quite prepared to address the issue that Mr Mitchell raised earlier. The police are responsive to all the demands that come their way, regardless of whether they’re ram raids or burglaries or other crime. So it is an all-of-police response. In relation to the question that he asked about the delivery, in terms of the work that the police have currently under way, I want to point to two things. The first thing I want to point to is Operation Pryor, which has been operating since November in the Waikato and has made over 160 arrests around the issue of ram raids. I also want to point to the development and the launch of the national retail crime unit, which was also in November, which is assisting police in their development of a programme to speak to a very targeted issue, which is ram raids and how police can support small business to feel secure in their operation of their business.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why did—[Interruption] Sorry.

SPEAKER: The member’s only had one supplementary so far—one that counts.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why did the Minister, on 3 May, say that the newly formed retail crime unit was responsible for ram raids?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: The retail crime unit is responsible to support the police in the development, working alongside Retail New Zealand, to ensure that small businesses, who have found it very difficult over the last couple of years, are able to operate safely.

Golriz Ghahraman: On delivering for public safety, is the Minister confident that the training of the armed offenders squad (AOS) is adequate, and, if so, what is her response to the High Court finding, just yesterday, that the AOS officer who shot Iriheke Pere whilst handcuffed had received—this is a quote—no “one on one training … had not been inducted … had not had any mentoring … [and] There was no training plan in place for him”?

SPEAKER: Yeah, no. The police Minister is not responsible for that judgment and, again, it’s one which was not properly tied in. Although there was a more nimble attempt to tie it into the primary question, it was not a successful one.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: No. No.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: —I am prepared to address the question—

SPEAKER: Well, the Minister might be prepared to address, it but I’ve already ruled it out.

Chris Bishop: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No. Well, I hope it doesn’t relate to what I’ve just ruled.

Chris Bishop: Well, I was just going to encourage the Government to seek leave for the Minister to answer the question.

SPEAKER: Well, the member knows that that’s disorderly. [Interruption] No, the member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Chris Bishop: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: That concludes oral questions.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: No. The member’s had his supplementaries. I mean if the member can’t count to three, that’s not brilliant.

General Debate

General Debate

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

New Zealand is in a cost of living crisis with middle Kiwis squeezed to bursting, so there are big stakes for tomorrow’s Budget. You can see it on the faces of the backbench. They know—they know. They’re asking themselves: has Grant Robertson listened? Does he know how tough it is for New Zealanders out there? So I’m going to make a prediction—I’m going to make a prediction. In tomorrow’s Budget, there will be some big promises, but what will New Zealanders be looking for? They know that this Government gets an A for announcements but a D for delivery. And you can see it—you can see it on every single member of the Government benches.

You’ve got Grant Robertson there. Did you hear him in question time today? He said New Zealand has the best economic approach. Never mind that he’s delivered record high inflation, more deficits, more debt, rising interest rates, and lagging wage growth. New Zealand is going backwards, but he expects them to “Believe me, this time. I promise it’s going to get better.” And you know what? Do you know what his answer is? His answer to our economic challenge is more spending. He can’t manage the economy, but he’s not worried because, when the cash runs out, he and his handmaiden David Parker will tax Kiwis more to pay for it. The “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to economic management.

I’ll tell you who else will be making big promises tomorrow, and that’s Andrew Little. Now, never mind that we need to believe that they’re doing a great job in health. Never mind that the first thing they did was get rid of the health targets to measure the performance of the health system. So they’ve papered over those cracks. They’ve slipped back across every measure. Never mind that this is the Minister put in charge of the big spend-up in mental health, the $1.9 billion, but he didn’t manage to offer one single additional specialist health service. But don’t worry, New Zealanders are expected to trust him with a massive restructure of the bureaucracy. The health workers may be striking, the hospitals may be crumbling, but don’t worry. We’re meant to believe that this is the time for Andrew Little to rearrange the back office.

Now, if he wants some tips on transformational change, he needs to talk to Megan Woods, because she had the task of solving the housing crisis. Well, how’s that going? A hundred thousand KiwiBuild houses? Not quite; 1,300 delivered. But don’t worry. They’ve hired more housing bureaucrats than they’ve delivered KiwiBuild houses. Mind you, there has been some transformation. The State house waiting list has been transformed from 6,000 New Zealanders without a home to 26,000 New Zealanders without a place to live. Rents are up $150 a week. Housing’s the most affordable it’s been! It’s been a transformation.

Then let’s take a look at immigration. Well, Kris Faafoi promised this week that he was going to sort out the skill gaps. He stood up and he said, “We’ve got it all sorted. Here’s our new plan.” And what he wanted New Zealand to forget was that in the exact same location, in January, he promised 20,000 more critical workers would be gracing our shores. So I asked Erica Stanford, “How many did he deliver of that 20,000? Is he halfway there yet? Has he got to 6,000 yet?” “No.”, she said. “Has he got to 600?” “No.”, she said. Actually he’s delivered six. So at this rate, Kris Faafoi will be calling every ex-pat friend and family member and begging them to come home.

Meanwhile, you’ve got Michael Wood, who likes to claim it’s an achievement that he keeps talking about light rail, without a single metre of it laid.

You’ve got Chris Hipkins in education, who promised to revolutionise education. Well, how’s that going? As far as I can see, the biggest revolution is the kids who are leaving school in droves; 20,000 more chronic truants under Labour. That’s the revolution happening in education.

But I just want to spare a moment for credit where it’s due: Poto Williams, because, actually, she has got a huge fan club. The Mongrel Mob, Black Power—they love her. And in a country where lots of things are going backwards, she’s got things going forwards fast: ram raiders hitting dairies in Auckland every night.

But, not to make light, New Zealand is in a cost of living crisis. New Zealanders are facing extremely challenging times. It is a time for discipline and care and the Government should remember this: they won’t be judged by the announcements they make tomorrow; they will be judged by what they deliver. The report card is already in: D for delivery.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I am very proud to be part of a Government that makes health quality and public health system a priority—something we did not see for nine years under the previous Government. Tomorrow is going to be a very important day for our health system and for the public and publicly funded health services right across the country. Tomorrow is an important day. Tomorrow marks another foundation for the work that this Government is doing in rebuilding our health services that we started nearly five years ago.

We inherited a system that was not funded for population growth, a system that in funding terms just went backwards, a system where the buildings were left to run down, a Government that put roughly a billion dollars into the system over nine years. This Government has put nearly $6 billion into buildings and into rebuilding our IT infrastructure across health in the nearly five years that we’ve been in Government. We inherited buildings that were literally left to rot. We had buildings announced—new buildings announced—but with no funding, like the new Dunedin Hospital that we are now getting on with and doing.

We had nurses’ pay going backwards. Nurses’ pay went backwards under the last Government. The pay increases didn’t even cover the rate of inflation. And we had mental health services totally and utterly ignored, turned their back on by that previous Government. The reality is: National in Government does not care about health. They don’t care about public health services. And the important thing is this: all their talk about—they demand tax cuts, which is what they did previously in Government, and then people wonder why things like our health services are left to run down. New Zealanders are more canny than that. They now see what the price is of a party that insists on cutting taxes for the wealthy and enriching them and running down our public services like our health services.

The other thing, of course, that we saw under the previous Government was hideously worsening equity in our health services. Māori life expectancy now is seven years less than the rest of the population—Māori health services struggling to provide the services that their people need.

Well, it’s going to change. Good health services are vital to strong communities and strong whānau and families. Already, this Government has increased core health funding by 25 percent—that’s before tomorrow. We’ve increased Pharmac funding by the same amount, by every year we have been in office. Compare this to the three-year freeze under the previous Government. We’ve committed nearly $6 billion in capital spending for buildings and IT across the health sector. We’ve started rebuilding mental health services with the investment of $1.9 billion, and, man, what a difference that is now making: more than 900 people and new roles across the front-line health systems and GP clinics and community clinics, roles that were not there two years ago; roles that now thousands of people every month are turning up to to get the benefit of, because this is a Government that does not turn its back on the hardest problems, whether in mental health or any other part of the health system.

That’s what National does. They don’t care about public health services. They don’t care about New Zealanders’ health. They don’t care about their mental health and wellbeing. What they did to ensure there was no accountability was they abolished the Mental Health Commission. In 2012, they abolished the Mental Health Commission. They did not want an independent monitor telling them what was going wrong and what was needed and what the improvements were. They just cut it. They stopped the voice. That’s what National Governments do when they don’t want to hear the bad news.

Well, it’s changing. Yesterday, I was very proud to announce the new investments that this Government is making. We’ve started with the front end of mental health, the big gap identified by the He Ara Oranga report, of those with mild to moderate mental health issues. And we’ve started that work now, started the roll-out halfway through it. Now we get to work on the specialists in the acute end of mental health services—not more beds in the mental health ward, which is what the National Party talks about, but what the real gap is in community services, community residential spaces. Everywhere I go, that’s what the mental health specialists tell me we are desperately lacking. And now we’ve got an investment plan behind it—$100 million over four years to start to pick up and fill that gap. That’s the stuff you do when you care about health.

This is a party whose history is rooted in actually supporting public health services, back to the first Budgets of 1935 and 1938. That’s what Labour Governments do. And this Government is committed to health services that actually provide the care that people need, committed to health equity. That’s why we will have a Health New Zealand and a Māori Health Authority working hand in glove together; a waka hourua—working together to deliver a public health service that this country needs and has so long deserved.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I had this crazy feeling of déjà vu during Andrew Little’s speech then. It was like he was the Labour leader all over again back in 2016, where he spent almost all of his time talking about the National Party and all the things that National was allegedly doing wrong. The only difference is: it’s not 2016; it’s 2022, and he’s been a Minister in this Government for 4½ years. So it’s not good enough to stand up in Parliament and talk about 1935 and the first Labour Government and the long history of health funding and the welfare State, and talk about the problems of the National Government five years ago. He’s been a Minister in that Government for 4½ years, and it’s time the Government took some accountability for the massive increase in spending—particularly in the health sector—without any improvements.

Matt Doocey points out $1.9 billion appropriated in Budget 2018 and—as the Mental Health Commission found—no material improvement in mental health services, and that’s emblematic of the Government’s approach, which is that they’re really good at the talk, they’re really good at the tax, and they’re really good at the spend, and they are utterly, structurally incompetent at actually delivering better services for New Zealanders. So Election 2023 is only 18 months away, and they’re not going to be judged on how many 1 p.m. press conferences have been held, they’re not going to be judged on how much social media monitoring the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has done, they’re not going to be judged on how many versions of the traffic light framework that the Government can come up with. Election 2023 is going to be judged on traditional economic metrics. Is the economy going forwards and are Kiwis getting ahead or are they going backwards? Has the Government delivered on its promises and their commitments in housing, in child poverty, in transport, in light rail, and in all of their big commitments from elections 2017 and 2020? And are they good stewards of taxpayers’ money?

Because what has happened in the last five years is we have seen an increase of 68 percent in Government spending, and I put it to the House, and I put it to New Zealanders we have not seen a 68 percent increase in results and effectiveness. We’ve not seen a 68 percent reduction in congestion. We’ve not seen a 68 percent increase in cancer services. We’ve not seen a 68 percent increase in midwives around the community. We haven’t seen a 68 percent increase in hip operations. No, no, no. We have seen waste driven throughout the Public Service to the point where the New Zealand Transport Agency has a ten-fold increase in communications staff earning over $100,000. Corrections got a 400-person increase in Corrections staff in the back office, even though prisoner numbers are falling. So, Mr Speaker, I put it to you there’s been a big increase in spending but not the appropriate increase in effectiveness of results.

And there is a squeezed middle out there, and there is a cost of living crisis, and what they’re looking for in the Budget tomorrow is not the biggest increase in Government spending in New Zealand history, which is what will be delivered, a $6 billion new operating allowance, the single biggest increase in Government spending in New Zealand history. They’re not looking for that; they’re actually just looking for some relief from the endless pressure that they face out there in this economy with inflation at 7 percent and wages only rising at 3 percent per year.

I’ll tell you what else they’re looking for—particularly young Kiwis. They’re looking for a bit of hope, because they stare at a housing market where rents are up 150 bucks a week and it costs 200,000 bucks to get a deposit to buy an average house in New Zealand. They look at a State house waiting list that has quintupled in the last four years, and they look at the shameful fact that 4,800 Kiwi kids tomorrow will wake up in a motel room. Nearly 5,000 Kiwi kids will grow up in a motel room, and the Minister says, “Better than a car.” Well, that’s the standard. One of the housing Ministers—there’s five of them—stands and says, “Oh, it’s better than a car.” This is the pathetic standard that we have come to in this Government. This is the pathetic, shameful standard that this Government’s come to—“It’s better than a car.” This is the level of ambition; this is the poverty of ambition of the Government that it’s better that kids grow up in motels than cars. This is the level of the poverty of ambition. We started with 100,000 KiwiBuild homes. Five years later, the Government’s been reduced to, “At least they’re not in cars.” How pathetic. How shameful. And in 18 months’ time, Kiwis get the chance to throw out this useless lot.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): I woke up this morning to hear that member—Chris Bishop—on the radio, talking about Hutt Hospital. But what he didn’t do, unlike my colleagues, was commit to rebuild and reopen the Hutt Hospital. Will he do that? That’s the question I ask of him.

It’s an honour to stand up here as Minister of Agriculture, as someone that’s been brought up on the farm and lived farming most of my life. Sometimes you get things wrong—actually, when I go home, often I think it’s all the time. But, look, I marched in the 1980s against the removal of subsidies from farmers. I was wrong. We move on to the 1990s. Many farmers opposed the formation of Fonterra. They were wrong. We move into the 2000s. Farmers marched on Parliament against the carbon tax. They were wrong. Some still oppose the announcement of the carbon reduction plan yesterday, and they are wrong. We’ve got it right, finally.

What happened yesterday was a commitment by our Governments, by this Parliament—we hope, eventually—to an emissions reduction plan that will meet our targets to meet our international obligations and be part of an international emissions reduction programme. Because if we don’t—and the farmers were sometimes the most sceptical, because they live with changing climate every day, so they said, “The climate changes. We can’t have climate change. That’s a ridiculous proposition.” They’ve seen for themselves the acute events that they face almost on a monthly basis now, and they realise that they have to be part of the reductions programme.

This Government has committed $710 million from the Climate Emergency Response Fund to help agriculture; to help land users; to plant a few more trees—native trees; to make some biofuels out of trees, if possible; to work on how we can reduce carbon from trees but, more importantly, how we can put some money into research and development, in a centre for climate action, to reduce agricultural emissions so that we can be the best farmers in the world and the best farmers for the world. We will set up the centre of excellence, the centre of research and development, in conjunction with the industry, and many of the major corporates across agribusiness are going to help fund that and be part of that partnership. Let’s get that technology out the door as quickly as we can.

We await the report from He Waka Eke Noa. This is an industry partnership group who will make recommendations to the Climate Commission on how we can price our agricultural emissions. We will be the first country in the world to do that, just as we were the first country to ship refrigerated meat across the world, just as we have been the first country to do many things across our economy—leading things that have proven to be right and successful. We want to be the best farmers for the world. We want to produce sustainable, quality food and fibre products.

There is some concern about livestock protein. We rely on livestock protein for our economic wealth creation. If those concerns can’t be addressed, if we can’t prove to be efficient producers—as we have been, but become more efficient into the future—we may be shut out of some of the valuable markets that we see across the globe. Some of the things that are happening out there that we have to take on board are things like Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose all committing to carbon reductions, making sure that their suppliers are committed to net zero over time. Nestlé, a company that takes a lot of produce from Fonterra, our single biggest company, is committed to halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by having half of its produce come from regenerative farming systems. We have to make sure that we’re not shut out of those markets. Our EU-UK trade agreements have all had requirements around emissions reduction, sharing technology, sharing services around environmental management, high standards of animal welfare, better commitment to biodiversity protection, and, as I say, a low carbon footprint.

Our agricultural sector has an exciting future. We’ve laid the groundwork for that. We’re committed to a system to reduce our emissions from agriculture and be the best farmers in the world and the best country for the world. I’m proud to be the Minister of Agriculture. I’m proud to be part of this, and I look forward to He Waka Eke Noa and the partnership that we will develop to price emissions, to reduce our emissions, and to ensure that we do the best for the planet.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, as we keep being taunted, one more sleep. I have to say, we Cantabrians are expecting big things tomorrow after five years of neglect from this Government. Since 2017, the powerhouse of New Zealand’s economy has been overlooked and ignored repeatedly—time and time and time again. Well, we say, enough is enough. We want to see some real, tangible investment into our region.

One of the first tasks that this Labour Government did in 2017—does anyone remember when Phil Twyford was the Minister of Transport? One of his first jobs was to shave $5 billion off the roading budget. That, unfortunately, included the four-laning of the highway from Rolleston in my patch down to Ashburton—that included three bridges. It was a $2 billion job that would have poured thousands of jobs into our local economy. The first thing he did was run the red pen through it and it just kept going. Poor old Matt Doocey and the good folks of Woodend are patiently waiting for their bypass that was never going to be done.

But this Government will spend $50 million on planning a cycle bridge over the Auckland harbour, but it will not put $30 million into the Ashburton river bridge, the main thoroughfare of the South Island. The appalling response that that Minister, who just spoke, was partly responsible for—for the flood-hit farmers in May last year—was absolutely woeful. This Government should not forget: when Grant Robertson writes those cheques, he is writing them on the back of our agricultural industry.

Tourism businesses—yet another sector to be overlooked in our region. They have been wiped out by the border closures, but the $200 million tourism recovery fund—we did not qualify for it. Kaikōura, Mackenzie District, lakes district, Fiordland, South Westland; they have been pitted against our Canterbury operators.

Then there is the $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund (PGF). Greater Christchurch, a place that has been plagued by earthquakes for 10 years, was not deemed suitable. We were not deemed to be in support of any PGF funding. I would have thought, of any region, it would be ours. It’s taken a decade to recover; we should have qualified.

Do not even get me started on immigration. The lack of care or attention from that Minister has also been disgraceful. The Canterbury harvest has reduced; it has rotted because of this Government’s tin ear and refusal to listen to the pleas from industry that we need people through our borders and we needed them last year.

What about the health sector? In my own patch, we have two hospitals that have been closed. The Ellesmere Hospital and the Darfield Hospital have been closed because the Canterbury District Health Board simply does not have enough staff to keep them up and running—an absolute disgrace; it has ripped the guts out of those local communities and Leeston and Darfield.

You know what? People talk a lot about the red wave, the so-called red wave that hit Canterbury in the last election. But I have lost count of the number of inquiries, the number of visits from people, from constituents, members of the public that have come pouring into my office asking for help. They have MPs, they are from Rangitata, they are from Christchurch Central, they are from Wigram, they are from Banks Peninsula. They’re coming into my office saying their MP is missing in action—or even worse, will not take their calls and will not respond to them.

You know what? It is time. We are so tired of being overlooked. It is time for this Government to step up to the plate and start delivering for Canterbury because we are not going to stop demanding until we have run out of breath.

Tomorrow, the Minister of Finance is going to deliver his fifth Budget. He had the audacity last year to criticise Ruth Richardson in the so-called “mother of all Budgets”. Well, this man is about to have the “mother of all spend-ups”. We in Canterbury, we in the South Island, want to see some results. We want to see some tangible investment into our people, into our region, because never ever forget: it is our people that are doing the work, that are writing the cheques that this Government so casually spends. Thank you.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m going to concentrate my speech on delivery but, first off, I just want to talk about the delivery of a certain member across the other side of the House in his question time today, which, you know, I like Mr Mitchell, he’s a very personable man. You know, he’s got great personality. It’s unfortunate that he can’t add up to three. And I just want to help him because, you know, a couple of Sundays ago, I delivered a pre-Budget announcement that was $562 million—that’s a little bit more than three; it’s quite a lot to count up, Mr Mitchell, but I can help you out with this. That was a record investment in police. We have delivered 35 percent more funding in our time in Government than those guys. We’ve delivered 16 percent more cops on our side than those guys did. And all of that with us adding funding, to make sure we’ve got $94 million not just to deal with gangs but to supress and enforce, and also to deal with those young people that we can divert out of the gang culture in the first place. We are delivering for New Zealand.

I want to just say that is a stark contrast to the National Party when they were in Government. Let’s just have a look at their record on investment in police, and what that meant. June 2010, they had 8,768 cops. By the following year, they had lost—they had lost—70 cops. Oh my gosh! The following year—the following year—they had 9,000 police, and then June 2013, they’ve got 8,711. And—get this—in August of 2016, the then Minister of Police, Judith Collins, said, of her 8,898 police, “We need more cops.” Do you know what she did? The following year, she lost another 60 police out of the police force. Now, those numbers don’t lie. You cannot do more with less. We have invested in this police—not only to make sure we increase their numbers. We keep them safer. We’ve invested in a gun register to keep our communities safer. We’ve invested in programmes that help our young people stay out of criminal activity—unlike those people who, with their tax cuts, will go back to the way they’ve always been—

Hon Mark Mitchell: More ram raids.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: —funding cuts for the police. Now, Mr Mitchell says “ram raids”. Now, I have got one question for him that nobody has asked him: what would National do? What would National—[Interruption] Just a moment, my friends. Let’s listen to it: absolute silence, that’s right. It’s intense, isn’t it, Mr Mitchell? It’s intense because National would do nothing, because their record shows that they are hopeless—hopeless. They freeze budgets and they cut police numbers. They are absolutely hopeless. Next week, alongside police and the work that has been done with the national crime unit and Retail NZ, we will announce our delivery to the businesses of New Zealand about how we support them about ram raids. And what will National do? They will do nothing. They will sit on their hands and they will criticise this Government, when this Government is all about the delivery.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Consequences. That’s what we’ll do: consequences.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Now here he is, he’s barking over there—a personable man; he’s really nice but he has the odd bark—but will he commit to the one thing that will give me some confidence that he will be effective in police, the one thing that Chris Cahill has challenged him to do? Will he commit to it—commit to the population ratio? Will you commit to that, Mr Mitchell? Will you commit to that, Mr Bayly? Because it means funding and, if we look at past performance of the National Party and the National Government, there will be no funding. No, no. The National Party will not support the ratio. [Interruption] Oh, he’s saying yes. Well, he’d better ask his boss, because his boss is delivering tax cuts, my friend, and tax cuts mean cuts to Public Service. It means you cannot deliver—you cannot deliver. Not like the Labour Party. Do you know what? We’re going to have more cops. They’re going to be better trained, there’s going to be better intel, better deployment, and I’m grateful that I have been able to deliver a record—get this—$562 million and that member cannot even count up to three.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I ask those at home to imagine waking up in an energy-efficient, lovely, warm, affordable home. Imagine everyone in our beautiful country has access to such a secure place to live. Imagine leaving home and making one’s way along a wide path lined with native plants, native trees, we can hear birdsong, we can hear kids laughing as they make their way to school on their bikes or their scooters. Imagine reaching the intersection where the local farmers market is humming, and an electric tram or bus departs every few minutes, electricity in our country is 100 percent renewable, and no matter what people do—whether they care for children or the elderly, maybe they’re a marine scientist, maybe they’re helping retrofit or build new environmentally sustainable buildings, maybe they’re working in forestry, a teacher, a hospitality worker, a student—no matter what their situation, they have a livable income, and everyone in Aotearoa does. Imagine our oceans teeming with life, native forests regenerating. Imagine our rivers clean enough to swim in again, and growing our food and our timber and our other materials in a way that protects and enhances our soil and our natural ecosystems, our waterways.

The cost of living, the escalating climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity—none of this is inevitable; it is the consequence of powerful vested interests and political choices made by successive Governments for decades. It has enabled a very small number of people to become exorbitantly wealthy, while exploiting people and our planet. We can change it. It’s 2022. It’s time to do things differently. The Green Party knows that we have the ability to come together and to build an equitable and sustainable future together, starting with honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

A Green Budget tomorrow would have shown leadership and it would start to support people in communities to build this future together. It would address inequality. Here’s just a few ways that we could do that: a commitment to overhaul the welfare system before the end of the term, low-income families can’t wait; an in-work tax credit; and a package to eliminate child poverty.

A Green Budget would make housing affordable faster. We would expand the income-related rent subsidy to councils, we would build more sustainable homes, and we would ensure that Kāinga Ora was able to do this in partnership with iwi and hapū and communities and local government. We need rent controls while supply is catching up. We need 100 percent universal design in our publicly built housing supply.

A Green Budget would extend ACC to all birth injuries, including stand-alone mental injuries, injuries to the baby, and all disability and illness. In the interim, the Green Budget would extend and increase disability allowances. A Green Budget would have money for allied health workers. It would back nurses on pay equity and back-pay. We would ensure safe staffing and fair pay for care workers and early childhood education teachers.

A Green Budget would have hoki whenua mai, land-back fund. We have to start the process of decolonisation and a process of building an equitable future while realising the injustice of the past and making it right.

It would have investment in real evidence-based alternatives to prisons. We know that our overcrowded prisons are filled with members of our community who are suffering from brain injuries and serious mental illness. We know that rehabilitation and community-based solutions work elsewhere in the world.

It would have a commitment to fill our annual refugee quota for the first time after the start of the pandemic.

It would reprioritise the huge sums of money earmarked for a few new expensive highways that are going to be entirely counter-productive, and put it into sustainable transport options for people around our towns and cities, between our towns and cities, surface light rail in Auckland and Wellington, regional rail, rebates on utilities, and e-bikes and cargo bikes.

A Green Budget would invest in helping nature, protecting our oceans, more funding for fisheries research, marine science, more funding to stop bycatch, and investment in Jobs for Nature.

It would do all of this—incredible investment in our people, our nature, and our climate—by taxing wealth properly. A wealth tax would mean super-rich paying their fair share and giving us revenue for better health funding, the public services that we need, and so many practical opportunities to get better outcomes for people and our planet.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister of Defence): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much for this opportunity to contribute to the general debate. We’ve heard 15 minutes from the National Party of no solutions, and while I applaud the enthusiasm of some of the members, I cast my mind back to when I was in Opposition and how, despite all the enthusiasm in the world, a stark reality soon kicks in that you’ve actually got to come up with solutions. So I encourage those on that side of the House who haven’t been in Government to lean forward and speak to Mr Mitchell or others who have had the experience of actually having to do the hard work to meet the needs of our country.

I am really proud that on this side of the House, we are getting the mahi done. Sadly, though, today, in the official death toll of those who have passed away, sadly, due to COVID-19, we have just passed 1,000. Now, that’s a grim number, and I’m sure the House will continue to express our condolences and our support for the families during this time. But I can only imagine how much higher that number would have been had we not invested like we have on this side of the House into the services that matter to our people.

As an Associate Minister of Health, when I looked across the Māori health provider network in this country, I was blown away at the work that they did. But what was interesting was the work that they did; they did it literally on the smell of an oily rag. They were borrowing money or asking for money from the community simply to travel up the coast to deliver vaccines. That is a sign of under-investment in an important part of the health sector.

Under this Government, I’m proud to say that there has been record investment in Māori health providers up and down this country. The feedback from those providers and the communities that they serve has been hugely positive. I’m ashamed to say that it’s taken COVID for us to get there, but what I am proud to say is that as we build the health reform and the health sector that our people deserve, there is going to be more opportunity for services to be delivered in our communities to the people who need it the most, and the statistics are quite clear: our Māori population needs that support.

When I look towards the remote places in our country—a beautiful place like Te Tai Rāwhiti and beautiful places on the west coast in Taranaki—housing has become, clearly, one of the biggest challenges in those regions. As a housing Minister, I’m really proud that the announcements we’ve made recently with Ka Uruora and Te Toitū Tairāwhiti will look towards providing over 400 homes in those places.

Now, many of us travel around the country, and I can tell you that when you drive through small towns like Tikitiki or Ruatōria, it’s very rare to see a new house. It’s rare to see a new build, and I’m excited that we’ve enabled by Māori, for Māori solutions to be able to build new homes in places like Ruatōria, Tikitiki, and Ōpunake. In fact, one of the locals in Ōpunake said to me that the only new homes that go up in Ōpunake are multimillion-dollar holiday homes. Well, what our housing programme does with Māori iwi and hapū is deliver housing to the people who need it the most and in places where it’s needed the most, and I’m really proud of those particular investments. That’s because this Government invested $730 million in the Māori housing sector, which has been ignored for far too long.

For far too long, we’ve relied on big developers to make sure that they can meet these needs, these local needs of community. I’m proud that we’re developing that particular sector with the Māori population.

We talk about mental wellbeing. Mental wellbeing: many in this House will know Te Whare Tapa Whā. Sir Mason Durie provides the blueprint for wellbeing, not just for Māori but for everybody in this country. I’m really proud that just the other day, I launched, alongside Mr Mark Kopua and Dr Diana Kopua, a programme, or a kaupapa, called Mahi a Atua. That builds on mātauranga Māori for the spiritual wellbeing, the cultural wellbeing, and the mental wellbeing of Māori communities. This is something that has been ignored for far too long. Developing and using mātauranga Māori as a way to heal Māori population and, indeed, the whole population, I think, is an important part of our future.

Just finally from me: very shortly, we will be celebrating the first Matariki weekend. It’s absolutely awesome, and everywhere I’ve been around the country over the past few months, communities are saying to me how excited they are to welcome people into their homes to celebrate Matariki. But, more importantly, they are super excited about learning about Matariki and what that means for us as a country, and I’m proud today to stand alongside my colleagues here and I look forward to sharing that time with our people across the country.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, tomorrow is Budget day and the accountants could not be happier. But I must say, sadly, for Kiwis out there, there’s not too much to be excited about. We’re debating in the House today as out there in New Zealand, Kiwis are facing an economic crisis—a cost of living crisis with economic challenges that are impacting the hardest-working Kiwis. I want my kids to grow up in a New Zealand with a stable economic future, but, right now, New Zealand is a place that is going in the completely opposite direction.

The Budget that Kiwis need tomorrow is one that deals with the cost of living crisis, prioritises the squeezed middle, and makes sure that those Kiwis get the support they need. When National left office, we left the books in a state whereby there were going to be surpluses for successive years, but under this Government, Minister Robertson is not going to get our books back into the black until 2025, and what this means for Kiwis—it’s an absolute fact—is that they are going to be saddled with a huge burden of debt that is going to have to be paid back over generations and generations. I tell you what: that is not fair for my kids or my grandchildren.

And it isn’t just the balance sheets of the Government that we need to be concerned about. We need to also be thinking about the balance sheets of hard-working Kiwis out there, because, last week, it was announced that food prices had gone up nearly 8 percent year on year—that’s significant cost increases for Kiwis at home. Don’t even mention the cost of fuel in Auckland and other places—it is over $3 a litre. Lastly, the inflation element that we’re seeing is going to mean that Kiwis are going backwards under this Government. We need more focus on fiscal discipline and making sure that every cent the Government spends is getting the outcome and is delivering results. We need to stop the massive inflationary pressure of spending when there are no outcomes.

Families and communities across the country are finding it very hard to get ahead under this Government, and yet they are seeing wasteful spending in all areas and a Government that fails to deliver. ASB Bank predicted that New Zealand households will face an increase in costs of $150 a week. That is the reality of a cost of living crisis in this country.

In local government, we saw, last week, the Government spending $34 million on the failed three waters reforms. It’s trying to sell those failed reforms with an advertising spend but hasn’t put one single metre of pipe in the ground to deal with the wastewater and stormwater infrastructure. And while that’s great news for PR consultants who get to pay off their mortgage early, courtesy of Nanaia Mahuta, introducing reforms that are so poorly planned and spending money and wasting money around advertising brings no value to Kiwis. I expect that we’re going to see even more of that in tomorrow’s Budget—more spin, no delivery.

To me, three waters represents the attitude of this Government. They have ignored the alternative models. They have ignored the feedback from organisations like Communities 4 Local Democracy, and they are not willing to listen to hard-working Kiwis in our councils and our communities. And today, we hear that councils are considering withdrawing from Local Government New Zealand and withdrawing their membership in parts of this country. That is an indictment on reforms that have failed.

I live in the most beautiful electorate in this country, the North Shore, and I’m very humble to be the member of Parliament for that electorate. North Shore people work very hard, and I see unlimited potential for the people of the North Shore and the people of Auckland. But this Government has failed to deliver much-needed infrastructure in that part of the country. We are seeing businesses in our communities facing nightly ram raids, increasing crime, and that is impacting hard-working families across my electorate. Those families are going backwards under this Government. New Zealand and the North Shore are great places to live, but they can be better, and, unlike this Government, National has ambition for this country.

Under National, we’ll get this country back on track. We need to restore fiscal discipline that emphasises outcomes and doesn’t just throw money at something. We need a Government that puts struggling Kiwis at the heart of the Budget, not inflationary spending and not failed reforms like three waters.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. One of the things that I liked the most about my last job, monitoring child health, was you had the opportunity to sit back and look at the bigger picture. You could look at the trends underlying child health, you could look at the economic drivers that were driving some of those changes, and you could think about what you might do to achieve change. I think back in 2009, when the effects of the global financial crisis (GFC) were starting to be felt, it meant I had the time to sit down with colleagues and work out how we were going to monitor the impact of that economic downturn on child wellbeing. As a result, we produced the Children’s Social Health Monitor to track those impacts. And what we saw was, basically, as we were expecting, unemployment rose, and because there were no real buffers or shock absorbers in the system, that tracked through immediately to changes in child poverty and the knock-on effects to families in terms of health and wellbeing.

So, basically, when we started to see COVID coming through the country, and the Treasury back in April 2020 was starting to predict that we’d be seeing large rises in unemployment, and some of their models were really quite concerning—so in some of the scenarios, they were saying between 8 and 22 percent unemployment through to 2021—and so, basically, the question was: what was our Government going to do in response? And, thankfully, our Government chose to take quite a different path to what we saw during the GFC, and, as a result, many of those things that we were predicting never came to pass, because what we did is we put in the wage subsidies, and what they did is they made sure that workers were connected through to their employers and they stayed in their jobs.

We had COVID support payments to help out businesses, we increased benefits, we doubled the winter energy payment, and we also looked at, potentially, people that would need to retrain, and so we had the free trades training and also looked at providing that support for employers so they’d take apprentices on. So we saw some really good things that were happening as a result of those changes that we’d made.

The other thing that we didn’t notice so much and we’re not thinking about is the legacies that this time will leave across the country, and, for me, thinking about what’s happening down in Invercargill. Many of those projects that the Government invested in to bring forward jobs and to rebuild our infrastructure are going to have a lasting legacy. I was out in Bluff a couple of weeks back for the opening of six new kaumātua units out at Te Rau Aroha Marae, and the ability for kaumātua now to live adjoining the marae, and then to, basically, be able to mix with the kids in the kōhanga every morning—some really, really positive changes as a result.

Every week, as I drive to the airport, we’ve got these big stopbanks, the Stead Street stopbanks, that protect our airport from inundation because it’s pretty much at sea level. And, basically, what they’ve done is, with some COVID response, shovel-ready funding, they’ve put in place this massive sheet pile wall to stop the waves overtopping with high tides and with sea-level rise. So it doesn’t come across the road, and, basically, we’ve got better protection for the infrastructure in Invercargill—so some really permanent legacies.

But also thinking forward about how we can create jobs but at the same time manage our response to climate change. So I was at a couple of different nurseries that local iwi are involved with—native tree nurseries. The Jobs for Nature have assisted with the funding. So not only does that create jobs but it means that we can start to restore some of our region’s biodiversity. It means that we can start to improve our water quality and take us further forward in terms of our climate change response. So it’s wonderful to see how many of the innovations are actually doing those dual-purpose jobs, but also climate change but also permanent infrastructure for our region. So, basically, there’s a whole lot of stuff that I think’s going to be very positive out of the previous years.

But the problem we’ve got is nothing ever stands still, and I think the problem we’ve got is that we’re looking forward to the ongoing supply issues with the COVID pandemic. We’re looking ahead to the impacts of climate change on food production, and we’re also seeing the impacts more immediately of the war in Ukraine and the impact that’s had on cost of living.

But looking again at what we had in terms of buffers in the system when we went through the GFC, our Government in the last few years has put in place incredible—we’ve increased the minimum wage. We’ve increased benefits. We’ve got the winter energy payment. There’s a whole lot more buffers in the system that are going to help families as they negotiate that very difficult time, and then even much more recently looking at 25c a litre off fuel costs and also half-price public transport.

So, for me, we’ve only got one sleep until the Budget, and I’m looking forward to hearing more about what the Government is going to do next to take us through the year ahead. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This week is Budget week. It is the time when the Government tells us how much of your money it wants to spend and on what. Over the past few days, the Government has drip-fed little details of how much will go to whom. The media has, of course, lapped it up, and we’ve already seen them ask that inevitable question: who will be the biggest winners in this year’s Budget? Will it be billions spent on subsidies for film companies or millions on jobs that nobody wants, like the Jobs for Nature scheme, which has been a complete failure?

One group of people that I know will be watching are patients and their families, the New Zealanders wondering will there be enough money in this year’s Budget set aside for the medicines that they need to survive or live healthier lives—people with breast cancer, blood cancer, Crohn’s and colitis, spinal muscular atrophy. There are so many conditions.

New Zealanders have access to fewer modern medicines than in 19 other comparable OECD countries. We have publicly funded the lowest number of modern medicines in the past decade. I suspect the Government will announce a funding increase for Pharmac and medicines this week, as they did last year, pat themselves on the back, and congratulate themselves for seeming wonderful and compassionate, but they are not. Not only did they rule out funding from the review into our drug-buying agency Pharmac after ACT pushed them into a review, they have had that review for months, and patients are still in the dark. They haven’t seen it. The Minister should release it to those patients desperate to get their hands on it.

Any announcement this week is simply political theatre, and it doesn’t address the underlying issue. How have we fallen so far behind the rest of the world? Why can our cousins in Australia afford so many more medicines than us? It’s because every Budget, the Government and the media focus on who are the biggest winners, who receives the biggest hand-outs. But if we keep thinking of wealth as a fixed pie that’s divided up every Budget, we will keep gradually declining down the world rankings. Instead, we need to ask: who do we want to be as a country? Do we want to be a country with access to the same newer and modern medicines so New Zealanders can live longer, healthier lives? The ACT Party says yes. So how is it that we have fallen behind the rest of the world, and how do we change it?

It comes down to culture. We need to be a country that says to Kiwis: if you work, save, invest, and aspire for more, you will be rewarded, not punished. I spoke to a young kid last week about what he was going to do when he finished school. He said, “Engineering, and then I’ll move to Australia.” His friend said the same but said that he’ll move to the UK. I also had an email from a mother who said that she’s moving her four kids to Canada because “anybody who works hard, saves, and budgets is just punished here”. The Budget should give hope to that mother that if she strives for her family, if she works hard, she’s not going to be fodder for a hand-out culture, and that her kids can aspire for more. It also needs to create an environment that leads to more productive jobs with higher wages so that our best and brightest feel like they can have a future here.

ACT’s alternative Real Change Budget would deliver just that. We would reduce taxes, make them more competitive, to bring aspiration back. ACT’s tax rates would be 17.5 percent up to $70,000 and 28 percent from there. We’d reduce wasteful spending by cutting policies like the Jobs for Nature scheme, which has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a job shortage. We’ve found billions of dollars of wasteful spending that we can cut. We need to make sure our spending is high quality, our tax system is competitive, and our regulatory environment is welcoming, because that creates a more productive economy. Australia has a more productive economy. Their workers’ wages have grown $6,600 a year more than Kiwi workers’ here since the Government took over. We would make it easier to invest in New Zealand. It’s easier to invest in Myanmar and China than here. We would reintroduce 90-day trials. All of this would make New Zealand a more productive economy. That’s the only way that we can fund more modern medicines.

ACT’s alternative budget takes on these issues that politicians run a mile from because they’re scared of big, bold change. The question is not whether we can afford big, bold change; it’s whether we can afford not to. Do we want to be a pretty island nation that people visit or one where people stay?

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the chance to make a contribution today in this general debate on one of the most exciting weeks—Budget week—of all weeks. And what a start to the week it’s been. On Monday, we had climate change Minister James Shaw talking about the emissions reduction plan. Yesterday, we had the Hon Andrew Little talking about mental health investments, and if we think about today—obviously, this afternoon’s contributions from the National Party haven’t exactly been aspirational, but we’ve certainly had some examples of magical thinking, certainly some fuzzy economics, we’ve had some rewriting of history, and a couple of examples of things that simply never happened.

But getting back to the good stuff. Yesterday, it was a real pleasure to be with the Hon Andrew Little as he announced a $100 million investment in the specialist mental health and addiction area. I want to shoutout to Sally and the team at Te Ao Mārama for hosting and for their manaakitanga to really making us feel incredibly welcome and for showing us all of the amazing work that they do. The package includes funding for crisis services, for intensive residential and home-based support, mainly centred around the strengths of peer-led services and the aroha that’s out there to be had, and for us to make the most of in our communities. So I really want to acknowledge the Minister for his unwavering commitment to mental health and for his absolute leadership towards doing mental health differently and for understanding mental health differently—including building a new primary model from the ground up which improves access and is for the betterment of all.

One of the things I’m looking particularly forward to next week, after Budget week, will be catching up with Peter and his team at the Ara trades campus in Woolston, which is in my patch—the beautiful Banks Peninsula. Amongst the many things that, no doubt, we’ll talk about and catch up about will be the Apprenticeship Boost and the fact that this Government—the Labour Government—have extended that Apprenticeship Boost until the end of 2023, and what that means in terms of supporting an additional 38,000 apprenticeships. The key message that we heard from business is that they need more skilled workers, and unlike National—after the global financial crisis, and particularly after the Christchurch earthquakes—we understood and we understand the importance of investing and training New Zealanders to build our houses, to rebuild our houses, and to upgrade our infrastructure. And, importantly, we understand that these things are the things that actually help accelerate our economy and help accelerate our economic recovery. Importantly—and actually, vitally—it helps ensure that there’s good jobs for all New Zealanders.

Our economy is one of the strongest in the world, and we’ve heard from our excellent Minister of Finance—who is well-known as a safe pair of hands—that we have record low unemployment at 3.2 percent, and our economic activity is up on what it was compared to pre - COVID-19 levels. And that’s, in a large part, because of the investment that this Government has made in training, supporting, and helping New Zealanders into work.

Earlier, I mentioned the emissions reduction plan and the announcements that were made on Monday. And on Monday, the climate change Minister, James Shaw, announced New Zealand’s first three budgets, which I think is an absolute milestone on our journey towards a zero-carbon future. In actually meeting the budgets and in the process of meeting the budgets, what we’re actually going to create is new industries, which is exciting; higher-value jobs, which is exciting; lower household energy bills, which is exciting; and we’re going to achieve a more climate-friendly agricultural sector. We’ll have warmer, drier homes, and the by-product of a lot of that stuff is exciting new technologies, which we understand is the driving force for productivity in our economy—not to mention the protection of native species and our ecosystems.

So, as I said, this week is almost certainly one of the most exciting weeks in our parliamentary calendar as we usher in the Budget tomorrow. Despite the fact that—as my colleague Peeni Henare mentioned earlier on—we’ve heard very little solutions from the other side of the House, but, on this side of the House, we are absolutely focused on the things that we know make a real difference to the lives of everyday New Zealanders. There will be cost savings for businesses and a greater resilience in the face of increasing global uncertainty, and I look, very much, forward to hearing all of the other fabulous details that we will all share in tomorrow.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 4 May.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, te Māngai o te Whare. The Green Party is pleased to support the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill and congratulate Tangi Utikere for all of his work on the bill. And I think he can be very proud, because I know that Local Government New Zealand will be preparing quite detailed induction materials for all of the new councillors and some of the existing ones that will be elected later on this year. If this bill continues on its third reading today—which I’m sure it will—it will be part of those induction materials in terms of just the changes that the bill makes to improve transparency and to strengthen public trust and confidence in our democratically elected local authorities.

And I think, in terms of the way in which the bill has come back to the House, it really reinforces the benefits of going to select committee, the benefits of all of those who made submissions, and the select committee’s very thorough consideration of those submissions and its changes to the bill, clarifying a number of matters, and also adding some things to the bill, making it clear that the bill also applied while the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act applies, because that Act does prohibit members from voting on or discussing issues before the local authority in which they directly or indirectly have a conflict of interest. So this bill does not replace that Act, but I would encourage Mr Utikere to, perhaps, with his success here, go on and consider another member’s bill to reform LAMIA—the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act—because I know that Local Government New Zealand and others have been raising concerns about that Act for some considerable time about how it is 50 years old and somewhat out of date and has had quite significant problems in terms of its implementation.

So this bill is an improvement to local authority law. And some of the changes that were made in select committee were making it very clear, for example, that local councillors, when they were declaring a property interest—in the same way that members of Parliament do—it wasn’t to be the specific address of that real property; it was to be the general location. That was another example of the changes that the bill is implementing seek to put local councillors on a similar footing in terms of members of Parliament in terms of the interests that they have to declare and be transparent about.

But I would like to comment on the rather puzzling contribution from a National member: Maureen Pugh. We had a very thoughtful contribution from Simon Watts when the House was considering the bill previously about National’s support for the bill. But Ms Pugh, despite being a former Mayor of Westland District Council, seemed to be puzzled about the need for this bill. And yet I was puzzled because it was the Westland District Council, of course, which got the attention of the Office of the Auditor-General for the way in which they had carried out their work in terms of protecting waste-water infrastructure at Franz Josef in 2019. And the Office of the Auditor-General raised serious concerns about the way in which elected councillors had identified and approached potential contractors to do the work to implement the stopbank, and the Auditor-General concluded that there were numerous examples of poor decision-making and poor procurement.

So what this bill is seeking to do is make it very clear to councillors that they need to declare their interests in order to be transparent about that whenever an issue that potentially relates to those interests is being discussed by council. And we welcome the fact that, I think, all of the parties across the House are supporting this bill, because it will be a positive change to the law. Kia ora.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Madam Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call on this bill, which is being shepherded through the House by my good friend Tangi Utikere—well done to the member.

I’d like to begin by making a few acknowledgments and some thanks, and then I’ll move on to the specific aspects of the bill. So, first of all, my thanks to the Governance and Administration Committee, and I see the chair of the committee, on the opposite side, Ian McKelvie—

Hon Member: Excellent committee.

JAMIE STRANGE: It is an excellent committee. I’ve actually just joined the committee myself, so I should probably declare a conflict of interest on that. But, no, it’s a very good committee, and the committee did a good job hearing the submissions. I’d like to thank all of those who made submissions on this bill—also, to thank the staff. Look, we hear this quite a bit in speeches, but I’d like to hear it even more in terms of the thanks for the staff around this place. And, actually, if I could digress just very slightly to also thank the sound engineers in the box up on our right, or on the left for the people opposite, because if we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t have these microphones working to be able to have that debate. So just a brief digression to also thank them.

This bill so far has been supported by all parties, and it’s certainly my hope that all parties will support it at the third reading to, obviously, bring it into law soon. The first thing I’m going to talk about is really a philosophical view about the importance of trust in leadership within our democracy. Now, it’s important that we don’t take our democracy for granted. And living in, you know, a state of relative freedom here in New Zealand, the democracy that we have plays a very key role in that. The philosopher John Donne once said: “Mutual trust lies at the heart of all political processes.” That’s primarily what this bill is about. It’s about trusting the elected members. And as the elected members declare their conflicts or potential conflicts in a pecuniary interest form, that will raise the trust of those who have voted them into that position. I believe it will also increase voter turnout, because one of the reasons why people don’t vote is if they don’t have trust in their elected officials.

In the fifth century, Greece—sorry to take us on a brief history lesson, but the members will find it interesting—I don’t know if any members—

Matt Doocey: Hold on; Ian was there. I’ll ask Ian!

JAMIE STRANGE: There we go. One of the members has claimed another member or members that—it was certainly a long time ago. In fifth century Greece, 500 people were chosen each year to serve in the Government for one year. So, basically, 500 people were randomly, I believe, chosen to be the elected representatives and, after 12 months, those people were removed from office and another 500 were chosen. I see some nods from the members who certainly know about this. It’s interesting because our democratic philosophy comes from Greece, and it’s important that we don’t take our democracy for granted. We must value it. We must continue to value it. We only have to look at other countries around the world who don’t share our views to see what, I’m sure, most would agree, is some of the negative side effects of not having a well-functioning democracy. So this bill will play a further role in strengthening and protecting our democracy. And just a second quote on that topic by G N Briggs quite a long time ago, 1644, who said “Public office is a public trust created for the benefit of the whole people and not for the benefit of those who may fill them.” Very accurate words and words for all of us who have been elected here to continue to reflect on as we serve the people of New Zealand.

Some of the benefits of having that trust is, obviously, like I said before, the willingness to vote, promotion of public legitimacy, support for bipartisan compromises, and support for programmes. There are many benefits that we often take for granted. But if we lose that trust, if the people of New Zealand lose trust, whether they’re taxpayers or whether they’re ratepayers, if they lose trust in those people that they’ve elected, we’re on a slope that will end in a very dark place for our country on pretty much every level that you can imagine. So it’s important that we continue to uphold these principles and our knowledge, again, in the bill.

So one of the reasons why we’re supporting this bill on this side of the House is that it’s important for ratepayers to understand any possible influences on those people elected to represent them. We’ve got a local body election coming up soon. You know, we’ll all sit down and we’ll pick up a booklet. We’ll work our way through the booklet and we’ll see a number of candidates, and within that booklet there will be 200-word blurbs within that booklet. And for people who haven’t met all of the candidates, they very much are relying on that 200-word blurb—there’s probably a better word for it—candidate profile. So they’ll be looking at that profile and then they’ll be making a voting decision. You know, they’ll be talking to others and they’ll be using their past experience, but the reality is that 200-word candidate profile will in no way be able to outline all of the possible vested interests, all of the interests of these people, and try and give an accurate representation. So, look, this piece of legislation will support people making informed decisions about those people that are elected and subsequently re-elected. So transparency and trust and confidence.

It also brings consistency across councils, because some councils already have a form of something similar to what we have as MPs, a register of pecuniary interests, but some councils don’t. So at the moment, there’s an ad hoc system. This piece of legislation will bring consistency to the councils, which is a good thing. It also covers local boards—initially it didn’t; it only covered the territorial councils, but this now covers local boards, which is a good change the select committee made. I’m thinking of the example up in Auckland where there are a number of local boards and those local boards make significant investments of ratepayers’ money into their communities. So that was a practical, important, important change. This bill doesn’t cover CEO staff, CEOs or staff, only elected members. Just an important point to raise there. It’s for $500, but captures cumulative donations over $500.

There were some personal safety concerns around too much information being disclosed that would then therefore—well, let me put it another way: it was around information being disclosed that would impinge on the safety of elected members. Those have been addressed through the second reading, which is good to see. So it’s, really, more along the lines of general interest, not listing every client the councillor has. So some useful, useful changes there.

I think one of the big points in this bill that impresses me is that it aligns local government with central government, and I think that’s a really good thing. There’s often, you know, people saying, out in the community, that they can at various times feel like there’s a disconnect between central and local government. But anything we can do to bring those two closer together is useful. I personally value that myself very much, having recently been meeting with almost all of the elected members from the Hamilton City Council, and it’s something I will continue to do in terms of building that relationship.

I’d like to touch on something briefly which I heard a previous member speak on and I’d like to touch on, too, and that’s the remuneration for those in local government positions, the local government elected members. In my opinion, I would like to personally see that remuneration increase. I know that a number of councils find it very difficult to attract candidates who have governance experience to oversee large portfolios of both assets and income and spending, making significant decisions for their communities, because of that low pay. So that’s just something I’d also like to put on record. It’d be interesting to see how things may or may not develop in that space. But I’d like to acknowledge all of those who do stand, who are elected members and who will be standing again for those positions, and I’d like to see that income increase. So we will see what happens here.

I’ve just looked at the clock and seen that my time is finished. A very brief shout-out to Ross Robertson, a former member of Parliament, and a local government politician, who made an excellent submission on this. He highlighted the aspect of ensuring that citizens have trust in their elected members, like I outlined before. So I’d like to thank Ross Robertson for his submission. A good piece of legislation.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party supported this piece of legislation to select committee, and until it got to the committee of the whole House, we had hoped that the Government would respond to some concerns that people had, which, essentially, said, “Look, if there’s a loss of trust in local government, is this the way to address it or are there other ways?” What is the fundamental reason for a loss of trust in a local government? What ACT says is that, despite the fact that this member has chosen to bring this bill to the House, supported by the Government majority, it doesn’t actually solve the problem of loss of trust in local government.

A pecuniary interest register, where you ask people who want to stand for office to list all of their assets and interests, is actually not going to deliver what it says it will. I had proposed a Supplementary Order Paper to amend the bill to extend the requirements for disclosure, if there were going to be any, to people that actually made decisions about procurement and were responsible for awarding contracts, because if there’s anything that undermines trust and confidence in local government, it’s when local government wastes money and allows employees and senior managers to get away with fraud. But the Government majority voted down my Supplementary Order Paper.

So what we’ll move on to is the loss of trust. There’s been a loss of local voice with central government taking actions that actually belong with local government. There’s been messing with voter representation. The Labour Party has introduced bills to this House messing with representation, like the Rotorua representation proposal, which allocates an unfair number of seats to people based on their ethnicity. There’s one thing that’s going to undermine trust and confidence in local government and democracy; it’s giving people different rights by virtue of their ethnicity. ACT opposes that, and we’ll continue to oppose it. In fact, the Attorney-General, David Parker, opposes it. So, for once, the Labour Party are getting schooled from one of their own on what’s good.

Another reason that people have lost trust and confidence in local government, which the member Tangi Utikere has failed to consider when bringing this bill to the House, is that they failed to deliver infrastructure—insufficient serviced land for housing. And we know that because we have local government organisations appealing developers, like those in South Auckland who are proposing to build tens of thousands of new homes. They’ve opposed it, and now they’re considering whether to appeal developments at Drury, for example, because of the infrastructure funding requirement. Well, ACT has a solution to that. What we’d say is that local government should share 50 percent of the GST on all new house building. That would cash flow the infrastructure, take the problem away from local government, and actually give local government trust and confidence that they can deliver stuff because they’d get the money that would otherwise be kept by central government.

There’s another problem for local government that’s caused a loss of trust and confidence: it’s getting off track with stuff that central government should be dealing with. I’ll give you an example: climate change. Climate change has driven Auckland Council and Auckland Transport to make some absolutely ridiculous commitments they can’t meet about reducing emissions from transport. And the reason they can’t meet and will never meet those commitments, and the reason they’ll spend tens of millions of dollars chasing this unicorn is because this Government has set completely unrealistic targets, and they are now cascading down so that, rather than focusing on relieving congestion, rather than focusing on building the roading connections that they should, they already zoned hundreds of thousands of people to live in new suburbs and failed to build the roading connections. What they’re doing is they’re wasting money. They’re wasting money on projects, like enormously expensive cycleways at $8 million per kilometre, in order to reduce emissions. It is a complete waste of time. They’re off the rails. That’s another reason why voters and local communities have lost trust in local government.

And then there’s the abuse of the Resource Management Act (RMA) perpetrated by local government. Just yesterday, I opened the Dominion Post—what used to be a newspaper of record now struggles to come up with good stories, but they had a good one yesterday. That was that the Greater Wellington Regional Council had wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, pursuing another council and landowners for disturbing a wetland that turned out not to be a wetland. It was such an egregious abuse of their powers under the Resource Management Act of property owners seeking to develop their own property that the Environment Court awarded half a million dollars of costs against the Greater Wellington Regional Council. And, in fact, the Environment Court was so aggrieved by this abuse of the RMA process by a council, they’re considering whether the Environment Court should also send an invoice to the Greater Wellington Regional Council for wasting the court’s time. So if there’s anything that would undermine trust and confidence, there are some examples, and this bill goes nowhere towards addressing any of those fundamental issues.

So the member Jamie Strange made some interesting observations. He described the bipartisan approach potentially as building more trust and confidence. There’s another name for that. The engineers at NASA who sent the Challenger up, knowing that tiles would fall off and it could catch fire and explode—they had a bipartisan approach to the problem. That’s called groupthink. And that’s why ACT MPs stand here in the House and we offer better public policy than any other political party in this House. We do not share in groupthink around climate change. We do not share in groupthink around electric vehicles. We have better policies.

The member Jamie Strange also talked about the candidates in this upcoming local government election and the 200 words that they get to describe what kind of candidate they are. Well, I can offer some advice to voters and viewers today. This is what you should be looking for in that 200-word blurb: a commitment to upholding private property rights. That means people should be able to use their property as they see fit without undue interference or control from central or local government—without having mad councils, like the Greater Wellington Regional Council, launch an appeal against building new houses in a paddock; what they called a wetland.

The other thing is local government should stop competing with the private sector in business activities that the private sector already executes very, very well and makes a profit at. I’ll give you some examples: waste management. Dunedin Council’s about to spend tens of millions of dollars, investing in building a new landfill. Well, there are technologies that would put landfills out of business. Why on earth is Dunedin City Council pursuing this opportunity? And, in fact, if you wanted to build and operate a landfill, you could simple allow the private sector to do it for you. There is no reason for Dunedin to be investing public money in such a thing.

You’ve got Auckland Council teamed up with the Government, with the Minister Megan Woods, to pursue a climate agenda, which is funding electric ferries to compete against Fullers in Auckland. If there’s anything that damages trust and confidence in local government, it’s central government and local government competing with the private sector to deliver services that private sector is already employing people to do. That’s what voters should be looking for when they’re looking at the candidate blurb. Stay out of business.

The other thing they should be looking for is: will this candidate support taking out car-parking in my local business district and damaging local business interests? If we want to talk about the history of local government, actually, it was founded in New Zealand by local businesses—small- and medium-business people who got together to raise money for things like town halls and to organise a street cleaning operation, and they paid for it from local business profits, and that’s something that’s absolutely lost on this Government.

That’s why ACT will reject this bill. We won’t be voting to support it, because it doesn’t solve the underlying problem of how to restore trust and confidence in local government. Mr Tangi Utikere, the member, was a former deputy mayor of Palmerston North City Council, so he, of all people, should know that what I’m saying is absolutely correct. But, of course, having to have a member’s bill you can bring to the House and say you’ve done something—well, Mr Utikere, this is not the thing that you should be doing. So ACT will reject it, and what we’ll be doing is proposing better ways to deliver infrastructure—sharing 50 percent of the GST with local government so that local government can cash flow the delivery of infrastructure to get more houses built. That’s what Kiwis are asking for.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill, especially since it comes from my friend and colleague Tangi Utikere. He is a new member of Parliament, and to watch him handle the debate that he did in the time in committee stage of this was actually just a wonderful thing for our entire intake of MPs, I think, to see how accomplished he was. That probably wasn’t an accident; that was because he’s come from a role as a deputy mayor, and that has informed what he has decided is an important thing to bring to this House. So he’s taken this on from another MP, who has become a Minister. Both of those people have their feet on the ground about this matter. They know what it’s like being in local government and where the catches are.

What I appreciate about this bill is it’s taught me a few things. It’s made me think about transparency and about conflict and about perceived conflict. And, yes, as my colleague Jamie Strange said, it’s made me think about what is very important in New Zealand in terms of reinforcing open, transparent, and democratic processes.

So I want to talk a little bit about that for a minute because New Zealand is a place where, I think, no matter what you do, you see that it is vulnerable to corruption. It’s a place where we all know each other, and sometimes that’s a really good thing; it means that we have a strong sense of community and it probably helped us recently in COVID. But the downside of that is it can be quite a lot of pressure on people. If your mate wants you to do something, it can be a situation where you can have corruption grow pretty quickly. You can be an open and good place to live and you can turn into somewhere where those things are happening in an insidious way really quickly if you don’t guard against it. I think that’s probably something that we all share as something that we’re watching all the time, because we all come to Parliament wanting to do the right thing. People who come to local body also come wanting to do the right thing. But sometimes, actually, they need guidance. This kind of Act will allow people to know exactly where the rules are.

So what the Act will do is it will actually reinforce trust and confidence in that process. I think it’s particularly important, because I see a great value in a lot of what we do in local government, where it is possible, because in local government there can be a real responsiveness. I really like that idea. But we can’t do that if, actually, by doing it, we’re taking a risk. So this is one of the things that will keep everyone safe. It will keep the public safe, because they will know what they are dealing with and who they are dealing with. It will keep the people who are brave enough to stand for local body politics safe too, because they will be declaring their interests constantly and they will habitually understand where those lines are.

So what they will be showing is they will be, every year, indicating what has happened in the last 12 months in their lives that might actually provide a conflict. They will declare when they’ve got more than 10 percent interest in a company. They will declare when they’re a director of the company. They will declare which companies they’re involved with even beyond that. For ones that they’ve got a significant stake, they’ll describe what the activities of that company are, and that’s really important for a public who, really, probably, often get baffled by the amount of information that is in the local body process, and if you write a company name, they don’t really know what that indicates, without an indication of activity. So the activities themselves are the things that are going to be the red flags to whether there’s a conflict, whether people really need to worry about that. That information is going to be provided on a 12-monthly basis and it will be the entire 12 months, and there are probably lessons to be learnt there, because, in Parliament, we actually declare them once a year, which actually isn’t as thorough as this. So I absolutely congratulate you on providing something that’s even more robust than what we have here, because anything somebody does in that time is reflected upon.

Then they will declare gifts of over $500. That’s a pretty important thing to do, because those things can motivate. They’ll declare travel that they do where somebody else has contributed. We always have in mind, in the Labour Party, a concern about that insidious interest that sometimes come in from a lobby group, that you get groups that come in and they have money, they have power, and it’s very important that, actually, we always, always keep an eyes on those things, and it’s very important that we distinguish between actually listening to people and actually having shared interests and thoughts and being won over by things like sweet deals, travel, and gifts. So that’s a really important thing for us to put right up there, and this bill does that.

It’s going to also mean that people declare their beneficial interests. Now, I thought that was a really interesting point that had been brought up and dealt with. It’s not just beneficial interests you know about; it’s ones that you should know about. So there’s a little bit more cover than usual.

And then there is the actual declaration of what real property you own. So, I think, in society, we’ve used things like trusts as a form of shelter, in many ways, but they come with a terrible price in transparency. Now, those things become just known to the public, and that’s a good thing. It means that people know if somebody has got them. We can, perhaps, keep some of those mechanisms that we’ve had but people aren’t actually going to be tricked by them. It is actually information that is key to us actually making an informed decision about who we vote for.

I’d really like to see more people from local government come into the Parliament. I think what is interesting about this is that the rules that are being developed around that area are ones that are actually becoming almost universal across our culture. Where we see a conflict, we now expect people to actually declare it. It’s true in professions that they need those kinds of rules, it’s true in here that we need these kinds of rules, and it’s true for our colleagues in local government. Actually having a set of rules across all structures which are of a similar ilk is actually a really good, good place to be as a country, because it’s a healthy place to be as a country. It might be uncomfortable at times, but it is actually going to serve us well in the long term.

Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of interesting podcasts about the UK and how many of these factors of lobbying have been problematic in one of our role models in terms of democracy. I think we are very lucky that we have not actually had that degree of conflict in our system. This puts our first and foremost call for citizens, their local government, on that same footing.

I take the point made by Jamie Strange that it also makes sure that one council is actually being given the same benchmark as another council, So it isn’t up to each council; everybody is up for the same standard. So we can all get used to the rules. There will be mistakes made, there always are. These things are not actually as easy as they seem. What you have to do under this Act, if you don’t declare something, is you have to do it as soon as you possibly can. I think it’s really important these systems are sensitive to the fact that the people who stand in these positions are brave, they’re vulnerable in lots of ways, and it’s really important that they’re actually treated with respect and that we all actually live under a scheme that is one of good faith, one of best transparency. That is what this Act does.

I would like to thank my colleague again—Tangi Utikere—for bringing it to this House and I think it will mean a real difference to our society. So thank you and congratulations.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Harete Hipango—five minutes.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a brief call. I’m just demisting my glasses and, with speaking to this bill, demystifying the bill as well—Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill. In speaking to the bill today, it’s a bit of a mare of a place in the Chamber. I look around the Chamber and we’re graced with the presence of former deputy mayors and mayors, on both sides of the House. In speaking to this bill, I acknowledge the member Tangi Utikere in the success with this bill being brought to the third reading, which is supported by the National Party.

So the member has presented, submitted, advocated, represented, and progressed this bill based on experience. I also acknowledge good colleague and friend Paul Eagle, a former deputy mayor as well and, again, bringing to the House that level of experience; my colleagues Maureen Pugh and Ian McKelvie, both former mayors of the respective communities that they come from. So, in supporting this bill, the bill is substantively enhanced because of the experience that members across the House bring. I also note my colleague Ian McKelvie chaired the Governance and Administration Committee in the transference and transmission of this bill through to the third reading, soon to pass into law.

Although it’s a small bill and relatively straightforward, it’s significant. In the House again today, but in the Chamber last night, there was the Data and Statistics Bill and members talked about the importance of transparency, and that’s what this bill attempts to improve—the public’s trust with the transparency, in building confidence in local government in relation to that. What’s been interesting is, although not sitting on these select committees, when we are invited to address the House and speak to these bills, we go on a journey ourselves in terms of reading the reports and looking at what amendments have been made for improvement to the bill.

So it’s noted that the report from the Governance and Administration Committee made a number of recommendations with amendments. Interestingly enough, what’s been reported back to the committee of the whole House, as a result of that, to this third reading, is that all of those recommendations for amendments from the select committee report have been picked up and those adjustments accordingly made to the bill.

So the purpose of the bill is that it creates a pecuniary interest disclosure regime that’s similar to one that Parliament has for the members. This is premised on local government and local authorities, thus demystifying what interests and pecuniary interests that those in public office have in giving service and representation. So the bill requires that councils maintain and publish yearly a register of elected members pecuniary and other specified interests.

I am to be followed by the last speaker of the National Party—most appropriately, really, to wrap this up—Ian McKelvie, who chaired the select committee, who calls and is duly recognised in the House, and warmly regarded by colleagues across the House. So Mr McKelvie will address the House in that chairpersonship role and also in the role of having been a long-serving Mayor of the Manawatū district—for some nine years I believe it was, Ian—and then being elected into Parliament in 2011, giving service thus far.

So I will wrap this up because it will be a matter of after the next speaker, my colleague will finish this off. In doing so, there are times when members in this Chamber, appropriately, should be gracious and acknowledgments appropriately afforded. So I do so, accordingly, to the member whose name this bill has been carried through into the making of law, Tangi Utikere. Ngā mihi ki a koe. Kia ora.

ANAHILA KANONGATA‘A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It is a huge honour and a privilege to speak on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill, in the name of Tangi Utikere. It’s an absolute honour as the chair of the Pacific caucus to speak on this member’s bill, which, hopefully, by the end of these spectacular speeches, will go into law.

I know the member who has just spoken, Harete Hipango, made an attempt to demystify the bill to us, so I will make a second attempt to see if we really can get to the core of the matter. This bill amends the Local Government Act 2002 to provide for the establishment of a register of pecuniary and other specified interests for members of local authorities, such as directorships, business interests, employment, and property. It is really important that I state why I support this bill. It’s important for ratepayers to understand any possible influences on these elected local council members. It’s important that voters and ratepayers understand what influences these elected people come in with. Secondly, the purpose of the bill is to provide transparency and to strengthen public trust and confidence in the decision making of local authorities. Thirdly, it will provide greater transparency in terms of the interests of members of local authorities to improve public trust and confidence and contribute to more robust decision-making by local authorities.

In this debate, we have heard about Greece from Jamie Strange. We’ve ridden on unicorns on rainbows—that’s from the ACT Party’s Simon Court. But I want to give factual information today in terms of New Zealand. The Corruption Perceptions Index in 2021, which was published in January of 2022, has New Zealand tied third-equal with Denmark and Finland for being the least corrupt country in the world. So I believe that this bill adds to and contributes to our international reputation as one of the least corrupt countries in the world.

I want to quote the member Tangi Utikere from when he released a press release to explain the reasons why he’s promoting the bill. I want to quote Tangi Utikere on this because it’s been challenged by some members on the other side in terms of why this bill is in the House and its relevance. I quote him: “Let me be clear: in promoting this bill, I am not suggesting that there has been any wrongdoing, but I am suggesting that there is currently an anomaly with the level of disclosure and transparency expected of members of Parliament and the level of disclosure and transparency expected in local government. And I don’t believe there should be a difference.” I think that’s really important, because there was some suggestion that there was little relevance for this bill in the House.

What does this bill do? It enforces one law for all. Currently, what councils do if there is a conflict of interest for a local elected council official is they use a conflict of interest register where they register the conflict of interest. What this bill means is that there will be an annual published register of pecuniary interests of elected officials so that the ratepayers know the influences they have in decision making about rates, about public money.

In my haste I forgot to acknowledge the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, Ian McKelvie—thank you for your leadership in the select committee’s due diligence in scrutinising and writing this bill. I take this opportunity again to congratulate the member Tangi Utikere for this bill, the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill, and I commend this bill to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill. It might be a short one, because there’s a very good bill coming up later in the night which we need to get to. I just wanted to, first of all, just comment a little bit on my initial view of this bill, because I did have some nervousness about this bill initially. I thought it would have the potential, I suppose, to intimidate people—put people off standing. In fact, we had one or two submitters who suggested the same thing. But I think we’ve got the bill, in my view, into a pretty good space now, and I’ve got every confidence in supporting it.

But I did want to make just one or two comments about the issue I just raised, because I think that a couple of our speakers earlier raised other issues which I’d be a little concerned about. And Helen White talked about making mistakes in pecuniary interests—well, frankly, if you’re going to make a mistake in a pecuniary interest, you shouldn’t be here. If you can’t fill your own pecuniary interest, then how can you fill someone else’s? That’s the first point I wanted to make.

And the other point I wanted to make was that Simon Court, in my view, missed the point of members’ bills. Members’ bills are really there to make a little difference to sometimes a big thing, to sometimes a little thing. And they’re generally bills that Governments would never consider putting in place because they take too much work and Governments are too busy. And so I think the point of members’ bills, to a large extent, is to do exactly what this member’s bill’s done, which is to make a little difference to something that might make, in some cases, a large difference. And if you look at Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch, probably a large difference, but if you look at Manawatū, Kaikōura, places like that, nowhere near the difference. And generally in places like the Manawatū, or Kaikōura for that matter, we probably know enough about everyone else’s business to know what they’re doing anyway. And so that’s the interesting thing about small communities. And so I guess that when you think that we’re looking at the pecuniary interest of people who are probably, in some cases, standing for a job that might pay them five or 10 grand a year, it’s hardly got great significance. None the less, the principle’s the same.

So I think the bill got to a good space there, and I think we had one or two submitters who made quite a difference. And I just want to mention Sir Maarten Wevers, because he came in and really straightened our thinking up on how the bill should work, because he obviously has a lot of experience in this because he runs the parliamentary pecuniary interests. So, from that perspective, he made quite a bit of difference to the way we thought about it. And there were one or two other issues that I think were really important.

And the member Tangi Utikere introduced a Supplementary Order Paper to the process which just clarified the relationship between the two bills that concern this, and one is the LAMIA bill—or Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act—which has been in place for a long time. So there has been some reference or control over this for quite some time now. And the relationship between those two bills needs to be clarified, because, if it wasn’t, there could have well been some confusion as to when you’ve got a pecuniary interest and when you haven’t, and I think that was necessary to be done. That was done during the course of the committee of the whole House stage.

But the other couple of other issues that were really important and need to be borne in mind as we go forward is there was a suggestion in the original bill that, for example, an accountant could have to declare all that accountant’s clients. And I think just as well that was tidied up in the bill and put in order. So I think the bill’s in pretty good order from that perspective.

I want to talk about just a couple of other things related to local government. The idea of bills like this is to improve the confidence in local government. And there’s been a suggestion that, actually, one of the reasons that local government voter turnout is so low is because there’s no confidence. I tend to take a different view on that. And I think that one of the reasons I think local government election turnout is so low is because, frankly, in most places there’s next to no publicity given to local government elections at all, and that’s quite a challenge for us. So for some of the bigger councils, no doubt some people will have big budgets. And I see some of the budgets that are being outlined for the Auckland mayoralty right now which is significant, but, in most places, those budgets are very, very small, and the advertising is next to zero. And I think that’s something we could well do something about in the future as a Parliament, because we don’t generate interest in local elections, even in our own elections, in fact. And, of course, we’ve got the Tauranga by-election right now. If we don’t generate interest in those things—we’re certainly going to—I think we’re never going to encourage more interest in what we do as politicians and what our local government organisations do.

So, with those few words, I just want to congratulate the member on what I think is an ideal member’s bill. It was well discussed by the select committee, it was put in very good order, and I think—as I go back to the comments that Simon Court made earlier—it’s pretty specific, this bill. It deals with an issue that for some people is important, and I think it’s well worthwhile. So it’s a very worthy member’s bill and we’ve got no problem commending this bill to the House.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to make the final call on the third reading of the member’s bill, the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill.

I have the honour, then, of finally acknowledging the member whose name this bill is in, for bringing this bill to the House. As we have heard in all of the readings, and particularly this afternoon, there is a significant amount of work that the Governance and Administration Committee did on this bill—and a lot of acknowledgment has been given to the member for first and foremost identifying this gap and bringing this member’s bill to the House, but also the way in which the committee worked really hard to make this the best possible piece of legislation, which we are debating this afternoon and are going to be passing shortly, in about another nine minutes.

The member is a new member, and so I think it’s wonderful that today his first member’s bill is going to pass. I watch with interest what the next one will be. What I love about this one is it is connected to the work that he did prior to coming into Parliament, and I think that’s one of the wonderful things—with that experience that you have and the opportunity that you get in here, to be able to put that experience to good use and to make meaningful changes.

So I want to talk, first and foremost, about the purpose of this bill and the purpose of the register. As described in the bill, the purpose is to “record members’ interests so as to provide transparency and to strengthen public trust and confidence in the local government processes and decision-making.” As I spoke in one of my earlier contributions, before coming to Parliament I too was an elected member. I was first elected on to the Far North District Council in 2013 and then a second term in 2016 before coming into Parliament on the list in 2017. So doing one and a bit terms on council. I wasn’t a member of the select committee, so when I was listening to the contributions and understanding what this member’s bill is proposing to do, I was reflecting on the time that I was on the Far North District Council, and I remember vividly that we had our interests listed on every agenda, actually, before every meeting. And so the issue there is I assumed—and found out I was wrong to assume this—that it was something that all councils, in fact, did. But as I was listening to the contributions in that debate, it became clear to me in the House that that’s not actually the case for all of our councils across the country. So while the Local Government Act requires all councils to have a code of conduct, it doesn’t require that code of conduct to have the requirement for a pecuniary interests register.

So here I was sitting there going, “Oh, I remember having to declare all of my interests, and, in fact, it was published on every agenda at every meeting.” I quickly did a google search of the Whangarei District Council, the Northland Regional Council, the Kaipara District Council, all those councils that are in my Northland electorate, and they too all declare their interests, they have a register for that. But coming back to the point that this bill addresses is that there is no consistency across our 57 councils—is it?—across the country. So by having this legislation, it will no longer be something that’s done ad hoc, but that is, in fact, required of every council. I think that that is important because, you know, you possibly have heard it in your electorates as well, but I often hear people say, “Oh, those dodgy councillors and mayors, they’ve got interests in these things” or “They’re hooking up their mates.” And that’s not helpful to local democracy. That’s not helpful to people who—as we heard the member Ian McKelvie say—might want to stand for local government and to have that perception or those things said about you. So I think that actually having the pecuniary interest register there, that you can point to when accusations might be made, is helpful and it will instil more trust and more confidence.

I wanted to also mention the benefit of having the select committee processes, that they picked up in that process that when the bill initially was introduced to the House, it was only for elected members of the council. However, the select committee discussed that elected members who are local board members and who are community board members undertake a very similar role. They often make decisions which have financial implications—and in the case of Auckland local boards, it’s quite significant sums of money. But even in the Far North, while a lot of smaller sums of money, our community board does make funding decisions and distributes a number of grants out into the community. So when I saw that the select committee had identified that as one of the gaps of the initial legislation that was proposed and made strong recommendations as to why it should be included, I wholeheartedly support its inclusion.

Not every council has community boards, but, in the Far North, we do have community boards. They are members who are elected into those positions by their community and so, therefore, they will be captured by this legislation. So I just wanted to talk to a couple of things that the members are required to include, the information they are required to include in their return: the names of any companies which they are directors of, but also every other company or business or entity that they may gain a pecuniary interest from. The next one is if the member is employed. Now, I do know that in the local government space, while it is a very busy role it is not well remunerated and many elected members do undertake other work as well. So it is important that that is disclosed somewhere, particularly if it’s going to be the subject of any of the decisions that they are making. It also includes the name of any trust in to which the member has a beneficial interest, or the name of any organisation or trust, and a description of the main activities that the member is a member of, the organisation or a member of the governing body of the organisation or a trustee of the trust.

I’m just reflecting on my last marae trustees meeting where we’re talking about the inclusion of a conflicts of interest register in our marae charter, because this is an issue that has come up and we had a great debate about it. The reality is: New Zealand is a very small place. We all wear many hats. I don’t know how many boards you’ve all been on in the past, often in a voluntary capacity, but those organisations that we are members of do, in some cases, make application to the councils, to the community boards, to the local boards, and, in the case we were debating at the marae, also to Government departments. So I do think that this is an important one to capture, because it was through that discussion that I saw that people—it’s that trust and confidence, again, in the people who are making decisions on your behalf, that the perceived conflicts of interests or any pecuniary interests are declared so that it’s known they can remove themselves from the decision making. That can all be clarified and people can have more trust and confidence in those who are making those decisions. It also includes any organisation that you hold as a member, as an appointment by virtue of being an elected member. I had one of those positions. I was on the Turner Centre, who in turn applied to the council for funding for its operations—it, essentially, is the community hall. So it captures that as well.

I’ve now come to the end of my contribution. I commend the member and I commend the bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 109

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 32; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 13 April.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana. Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It’s a wonderful opportunity to move from one great bill to another this afternoon. Can I just, obviously, speak in support of the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill, and, in doing so, I want to congratulate and acknowledge my colleague and friend Tāmati Coffey. I recall, actually, Mr Coffey’s contribution in the former bill that has just succeeded with its third reading, where Mr Coffey identified that he had not actually had a member’s bill that had been drawn from the ballot at that point, and then, I think, in the very next ballot that followed that contribution from the member in the House, his bill was drawn. So I know what it’s like to have a member’s bill drawn and I certainly congratulate the member on what he has brought to this House.

The title of the bill says it all, really. It is a bill that is seeking to improve the arrangements for those that are involved in surrogacy arrangements. Having said that, though, it does seek to do three key things, and the first is that it seeks to simplify surrogacy arrangements. The natures of them can be quite different from individual and whānau to whānau, but simplification is certainly a good thing.

The second is that it seeks to ensure that the information that is contained on a birth certificate is complete and that it recognises the child’s right under international obligations and conventions to know the genetic origins of the child themselves but also for identity purposes. This House has spent some time, certainly in this current term of Parliament, looking at issues around birth certificates and the nature of the information that is contained on those certificates. I know that the Governance and Administration Committee, which, obviously, has been kept quite busy from time to time, often does turn its mind to issues of that particular nature. But it’s also important for the historical record and for archival purposes as well. So that’s the second point.

The third one is that in the context where surrogacy arrangements have been made, there is actually provision for some form of enforcement. Enforcement certainly provides for certainty, and I hope that there is never a need for enforcement, but it acknowledges in the member’s bill that there may be situations and occasions from time to time where enforcement may be a necessary option and it may be needed. One such example that is cited in the member’s bill is that where intending parents don’t follow through, there is a requirement for child support to follow. So there are obligations and responsibilities that are contained within the member’s bill.

To me, it’s actually quite clear, and that is that New Zealand’s current laws where it concerns surrogacy but also, more broadly, adoption are not currently fit for purpose, they are not modern, and they are not up to date. So I congratulate the member on bringing forward a bill that seeks to address those concerns: to make the legislation more fit for purpose, to make it more reflective of modern situations, and to make sure that it is up to date.

When we look at the current context, those prospective parents who wish to adopt in the adoption space must wait for the physical birth of the child before they can even commence the adoption process, let alone consider the various aspects of diversification within a family unit that that might lead to as well. If a surrogacy arrangement is in place, then in that circumstance the surrogate child born into that arrangement is, effectively, arriving into a situation where there are no initial rights or responsibilities in relation to the child. Even if the parties—the parents and those that are the participants—are in agreement, there is currently no opportunity in law for that to be considered. So it is such an important issue.

It’s very clear that there is a need to balance the rights and responsibilities of all parties and all participants: the child, the intending parents, and, of course, the birth mother. When I have a look at the bill, the bill itself will actually seek to amend a number of Acts—five Acts and two sets of regulations—but also it introduces a number of specific clauses, which I won’t go through, that, obviously, give effect to what will occur in practice.

Just in conclusion, I do want to acknowledge that I understand that this will go to the Health Committee. I know that the Health Committee is a hard-working one, and I look forward to having that come before the committee and to work alongside colleagues. Again, I commend this bill to the House and, again, congratulate my colleague Tāmati Coffey.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and it’s a real pleasure to finally—it feels like there’s been a few attempts where I thought this bill was going to come up that didn’t quite eventuate—get to speak and offer the Green Party’s support for this member’s bill, the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill, in the name of Tāmati Coffey. And I too want to acknowledge Mr Coffey for getting this bill drawn—it’s a special moment in your experience in Parliament for that to happen—but also the amount of detailed thinking that has gone into this piece of legislation; part of and the will of it from lived experience and connection to others who recognise the importance of this. I believe they’re special moments when Parliament’s considering matters from people’s experience and members of our community, whose experiences are being brought into this House.

The Law Commission recognises—I think there’s about 50 children every year; that is their best estimate because we don’t actually know because there isn’t a formal framework at the moment for surrogacy arrangements, but 50 children, they think at the moment, every year in this country, are born in a surrogacy arrangement. But we have no enforceable or formal arrangements around surrogacy, so this bill seeks to do that. I do want to acknowledge the intersection between this bill and the work that the Government initiated in 2020, asking the Law Commission to look into surrogacy arrangements, and the Law Commission has had a consultation period over options that they’ve been considering, that closed in September last year, and we are expecting their report back this year. And the Greens will be looking at that really closely and are happy to support this bill, and hope that it aligns with the work of the Law Commission, because we don’t want to undermine that really chunky piece of work, but also recognise that it’s an opportunity to speed the implementation of what they may recommend, if the timing aligns with this bill, and that there are parts of this bill that go beyond what they were looking at that can be fruitfully examined.

I do need to say, too, that the Green Party—in terms of where we sit at the moment, not having heard the detailed evidence or the commission’s report back—do tend to gravitate towards the option A of the Law Commission’s Part 1 model, and that this bill is based more towards the option B. Our point around where we’re leaning more towards A is our understanding in terms of international best practice of enabling the person who gives birth to be that parent at that point and then sign a declaration around confirming the transfer of parenting responsibilities. The reason for that is: one, just around recognising that role of giving birth, but, secondly, if in a terrible situation something went wrong, that there’s a guaranteed parent. If those who are receiving the child actually decide that they’re not going to go ahead with that, the child doesn’t become parentless for any time in their life.

So that is why we are, at this stage, leaning towards the option A, and we are really excited to be able to explore this finally, because I do want to re-emphasise the point made by the previous speaker around how overdue it is for us as a country to be looking at this and to be looking at adoption laws as well—adoption laws 50 years out of date, at the time it was written, where we treated children as chattels. And it’s quite revolting, in terms of the framing of that legislation. I do want to acknowledge the member for some of the really sensitive framing in this bill around some of the detail that seeks to acknowledge that right to knowledge of your biological information, as well as your whakapapa in the fullest sense, as well as trying to create certainty and care and support for everybody involved in this process. And that, for us, is what’s at the heart of this, and we look forward to engaging on the select committee to get the details, to get the best result for our children and for birthing parents and for intended lifelong parents, out of this piece of legislation. Kia ora.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the chance to make a contribution on this bill. If I could be a little bold, just to start my contribution, given the contribution of my colleague Tangi Utikere, I’d also like to note to the member Tāmati Coffey my congratulations, and also that I, too, given his comments to Tangi, haven’t had a member’s bill drawn. So hopefully that will spur some sort of chain reaction. Let’s see how that goes. But anyhow, I digress.

My congratulations to my colleague Tāmati Coffey are very sincere, and it does feel like this bill has taken a wee while to sort of come to fruition, so the member who has just resumed her seat, Jan Logie, certainly hasn’t imagined that. It feels like over a matter of several weeks that we’ve been preparing to talk to this bill, so I can only imagine how excited the member whose name is on this bill feels tonight.

Modern families are increasingly diverse, and it’s vital and incredibly sensible that our legislation simply recognises that and that it facilitates and supports loving whānau and all of the various ways in which they’re made up. This bill, the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill, is, in fact, a modern bill for a modern family, and it’s also importantly closely aligned to this Labour Government’s broader commitment to children and our commitment to families. It’s a commitment that’s expressed and has been implemented in various ways.

One of our election commitments, which we take very seriously, was to review the adoption laws and, in particular, to have a keen eye at removing any kind of discriminatory sort of provisions. In June last year, the Minister of Justice announced that he and his department are delivering the suite of legislation, including this bill, that will ensure that we also deliver the latter.

In recent years, it has been simultaneously—I was going to say “sad”, but let’s say “moving”—moving, and, importantly, quite heart-warming to read and to hear of the very personal stories shared by my colleague Tāmati Coffey with regard to his own whānau, and also to hear the personal stories and the experiences of the Harris family and that of Christian Newman and his husband, Mark Edwards. I note tonight in making this contribution that their experiences really are the genesis for this bill. Each of those experiences have, in their very different ways, highlighted some pretty obvious flaws in our adoption and our surrogacy system, and those flaws affect a wide range of people and whānau. But fortunately, the good news is that those experiences also reveal, in a pretty meaningful way, I think, the things that we need to do to illuminate a sensible sort of path forward.

I’d also like to acknowledge and confirm the Kiwis—I think it was tens of thousands—who signed a petition to this end at the end of 2019. I’m sure that they’ll be absolutely delighted to see the introduction of this bill today.

The birth of a child is one of the most special events in family life for a lot of people, but it is never stress-free, and it’s especially true for those who face difficulties or who can’t conceive a child of their own. The law governing surrogacy in New Zealand certainly doesn’t help. I think my colleague Tangi Utikere has run through several examples, so I won’t say those again, but it’s really clear that when you look at the legislation and the arrangements in place, that it just places really unnecessary burdens on both the surrogate mother and the intending parents. I think there were a couple of quotes at the time when this bill was drawn, alluding to the fact that it really amounted to people having to jump through unnecessary hoops and to experience a very different experience than most people would assume was fair and reasonable.

So this legislation is an important step forward to easing those burdens so that families can simply focus on what’s important, and that’s each other and doing the best by each other. So I’m pleased that this bill is receiving broad support from across the House. I’d again like to congratulate my friend and colleague Tāmati Coffey. I’m trying not to sort of go into a string of puns about the conception of this bill and how we’ll be looking forward to nurturing it through probably only a trimester of readings and, hopefully, in a few months’ time adopting it as law, but that does sort of capture the sentiment. I look forward to hearing from the submissions as a member of the Health Committee, and—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party today in support of the first reading of the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill. I want to commend my colleague Tāmati Coffey for bringing this important bill to the House. ACT offered our 10 votes in support to bypass the ballot process because we did believe that our laws around surrogacy do need modernising. And as luck would have it, Tāmati Coffey has been lucky enough to have his bill drawn from the ballot and not requiring those votes.

So we’re one step closer by having this reading to modernising our laws for a modern New Zealand. This bill will simplify surrogacy arrangements and ensure the completeness of birth certificate information for New Zealanders whose child is delivered via surrogacy. Our job as politicians is to create laws that make life better and easier for New Zealanders. This law change would simplify those surrogacy laws and make the process of having a child via surrogacy easier, and that can only be a good thing for modern New Zealand.

Children are wonderful. I love the curiosity of children, as their minds work a million miles to figure out the big wide world around them. I often walk through Cornwall Park, which is near where I live, and I see families with their children all the time playing in the park, dads teaching their kids how to ride a bike and how to fly a kite, and we see mums pointing out the cows and sheep and seeing their children’s eyes wide with amazement. There are so many firsts that parents love to see their children have. And many, many people dream of having those options for themselves in the future. Options of starting their own family and seeing them bring a new life into the world that will grow up and become good citizens of New Zealand, wondering what on earth their children might do with their lives. I think it’s beautiful.

For many New Zealanders, it’s as easy as that. They want to have a child, and they do. But for others, they seek more alternatives because it’s not as straightforward. And for myself, I’m personally going through egg freezing because I know in the future that I may need IVF. And so that’s an option that I would like to have for myself, because many New Zealanders know that IVF gives them more chances to have a child in the future, and similarly with surrogacy. Surrogacy allows people who may have difficulties to have a child and have no other option, to have that option of bringing new life into the world. I think it’s wonderful, and I think it’s great that our new laws should reflect that.

But the law currently is not very simple or clear, and this bill clarifies a few things—that is, that a couple could pay actual and reasonable expenses for somebody going through the process of carrying that child for them; you know, somebody who’s given up their time and their energy, and their body, to carry that baby. I think our laws should reflect that a person should be able to pay the costs that go into that. It creates a register for matching people who wish to put themselves forward to be a surrogate, and I think that’s wonderful too, because, many times, people reach out to their family and they can’t find somebody—they reach out to their friends, and they can’t find somebody, so they go online and they try to find people through forums who might give up their time and their body. But having a register of people who are willing and able would simplify that process. It also ensures that the person who is the intended parent could be on the birth certificate at birth, to make sure that in those first days and weeks of that new child’s life, they’re not having to go through those legal hurdles and worry about the implications of getting that right or wrong, when they’re just wanting to spend time with their newborn child. I think that’s important.

This is a complex ethical and legal area. The ACT Party supports modernising our surrogacy laws and looks forward to seeing the work that the Health Committee will do. But we also know that the Law Commission is looking into this law, so we look forward to seeing the scrutiny of this bill versus the Law Commission’s reports.

The ACT Party commends this bill to the House for the first reading because we believe that our laws do need to be modernised. Many New Zealanders struggle with fertility; our laws should make that process easier for people, and we look forward to working constructively on this law.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. I rise with pleasure this afternoon to speak on the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill, which has been brought here by my friend and colleague Mr Tāmati Coffey. I’d like to congratulate and commend him for bringing this bill forward to the House. We’ve heard from many of the previous speakers about the importance of this bill. I just wanted to highlight that the petition that was brought to Parliament in 2019 had on it 32,239 online signatures that recognised that this law should be changed, because it does need to be simplified. At the moment, we need to update the legislation in order to balance the needs and rights of both the expecting, intending parents, the surrogate themselves, and, of course, the child. This bill is designed to simplify those arrangements.

Currently in New Zealand, the law doesn’t actually give any automatic rights to what the law describes as the “intending parents”. So, when born, the child’s parents, in law, are the surrogate and their partner, and the intending parents then need to go through the full and dense adoption process. The child itself may have come from the implanted embryo that was made, if you will, from the intending parents’ egg and sperm and it may bear no genetic similarity to the surrogate, but still the intending parents are not regarded as the parents until they have gone through that full adoption process.

Now, Mr Coffey, in his first reading speech, did say that this is not a gay issue, and it’s not. It’s not a straight issue either. There are a multitude of reasons why a person might seek the support of a surrogate. The reasons for infertility, for example, are many, and are often the cause of great distress. Having worked, myself, with people who are experiencing loss after sad loss in their attempt to complete their family, I’ve seen the benefits that the use of a surrogate can bring. Some women may not have a uterus; for some, pregnancy might be dangerous; or, yes, like my colleague Mr Coffey and his husband, they may be a same-sex couple who seek the support of a surrogate.

To be a surrogate is, in my view, an extraordinarily altruistic thing to do for somebody else. I can’t say, with all honesty, that it’ something that I could do myself, so I stand in awe of those who do, because as a surrogate you really are putting someone else’s needs before your own. Even if you experience a completely uncomplicated pregnancy in birth, you’re going to be experiencing challenges, you’re going to be experiencing physical and emotional challenges, and that is really for the benefit of somebody else.

So surrogates will know that some of those challenges are unavoidable, but one of the challenges that I feel should be preventable is the financial challenges that might come from actually carrying a child and giving birth. Personal, reasonable, and actual expenses in this bill are to be covered. This isn’t the same as being paid to be a surrogate. I think that all of us can quickly see that paying somebody to be a surrogate, in itself, could open a whole new can of worms, but also that it’s completely reasonable and fair to cover actual expenses. I’m thinking back to my own pregnancies; I probably would’ve needed some financial support for my Russian fudge cravings that I experienced in both pregnancies! But also, more reasonably, things like if the pregnant person needs to pay for additional scans, if they need new clothes to fit their changing body, transport to appointments, and there are many things, I don’t really feel that it’s fair for them to be paid for by the surrogate themselves.

But we do need to have this conversation; it does seem fair and sensible at first glance. I’m really looking forward to this bill coming to the Health Committee, ably chaired by my colleague Tangi Utikere. I commend Mr Coffey for bringing it to the House. I’d like to commend this bill to the House.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand here and to listen to people’s personal stories, and for this piece of legislation to actually be about people’s lives. So thank you for those who have shared personal stories, have shared their own experiences, and have shared the challenges that they are facing and that they may face when it comes to surrogacy.

I want to speak in favour this evening of the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill. I really want to talk about this bill being about enabling, it being a bill about empowering people. It’s a bill, as we’ve talked and heard about already this evening, that is looking at the 21st century—2022. The ways that families are formed in 2022 are quite different to the good old, or the bad old, or the whatever old 1950s, or before—was it 2.1 children and a mum and dad? And there’s so many different variations of what families look like today.

I guess I stand here as someone in that category who hasn’t gone through the surrogacy process. My husband and I have talked about it but haven’t really landed on whether that’s something we want to do. But, in terms of being a foster parent, and through the Oranga Tamariki system, for years now, having young people who are my family who are now growing up and having their own families, it’s always a weird look. I know; I look so young and fit! But when a youngie in the supermarket says, “Koro Glen”, and everyone looks and thinks “Glen, you’re far too young for that.” But, actually, it is a makeup of family that is different to what was the norm back in the 1950s or 1940s or 1930s; we’re in the 21st century. So this bill is around recognising families and how they can be formed.

A colleague of mine actually asked one of their friends, who is looking into surrogacy, and said, “What is it you’d want shared tonight if you could have a say?” The first thing they said was: “Catch up New Zealand, come on. Let’s just get on with it. Let’s catch up. Let’s keep moving.” But they also talked about the fact that the bill, again, is around enabling and empowering. Here’s a few things that they said: “I’ve never personally felt more disempowered by something.”—in the process they’re going through at the moment. They also talked about that you’re making intending parents, basically, prove their fitness to be a parent. For many families that conceive in more ordinary ways, there’s never a question or a conversation around “Are they fit to be a parent, is it the right financial position right now to be a parent?” So the fact that we’re normalising and we’re bringing surrogacy into the 21st century is very much around protecting people and making people feel empowered.

We also went on to say that the power imbalance across the whole surrogacy process was really hard, that the power imbalance was tough for them, and is tough for them as they go through that process. So we want to tautoko those out there who are looking, who are exploring this space—as my colleague Sarah Pallet said, to acknowledge and thank those who choose to put themselves in a place where they are a surrogate, where they carry a child for someone else. What a gift that is; what a sacrifice that is. So as we move through the stages of this legislation, hopefully we can celebrate what others are doing, in terms of giving back and sharing with others.

So to Tāmati Coffey, thank you for your work. I don’t thank your work getting out of the biscuit tin because that is chance, let’s be honest, but your work in creating and developing this piece of legislation, and, obviously, having the foresight of your own personal journey but then sharing in the journeys of others around Aotearoa when it comes to surrogacy.

So I support this piece of legislation. I am not on the Health Committee—as much as I’d love to be, it feels like everyone in this room is—but I look forward to following and tracking, actually, with submissions and hearing people’s lived stories, lived experiences around this. I’m in support and I want to commend this bill to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the National Party in support of the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill. Like every other speaker this evening, I would also like to offer my congratulations to Tāmati Coffey—not only for having your bill drawn but, I think, to you and your husband, Tim, for going through the process of bringing a wee boy into the world in this way, and may that bring you all the joy in the world.

It is like other speakers have canvassed. You know, it’s so good to see proposed changes that update and modernise laws to fit modern society. This is going to be a curlier one, I think, for the select committee to deal with. It is a complicated proposal to amend, I think, five Acts and two sets of regulations—all in all, about 32 clauses—but let’s not be put off by that.

A number of speakers this evening have talked to the streamlining of surrogacy arrangements, but I’d actually like to focus my contribution on the slightly less canvassed component of the bill, and that’s Part 1, which amends the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act—or, as we call it, HART.

This amendment will mean a law change that will allow for fair and reasonable compensation for sperm and egg donors for their time and expenses. I think that this is really important, and I personally would really like to see the select committee pay particular attention to this. We have a huge shortage in this country of people willing to donate sperm and eggs because, I think, of the significant time and costs of doing so. Like Brooke van Velden alluded to, I also know for a fact that having your eggs harvested and frozen is a $15,000 process.

In 2021, Fertility Associates reported they had just 39 sperm donors registered and 41 egg donors registered. This is to try and assist the fertility needs of hundreds of New Zealand couples seeking treatment these days. There are around 400 women alone waiting on a list for sperm donors and 160 waiting for egg donors. I think that these miniscule numbers of donors is quite clearly related to the lack of ability to compensate for those costs, for that time off work, for travel time.

As the current law stands, I think as much as a petrol voucher is in breach of the law, we are also so far behind other countries and other jurisdictions in this space. In the US, most egg donor patients will be recompensed about US$5,000. For the UK and Australia, it’s similar—in the UK, donors can get up to about £750, and Australian fertility clinics are offering about A$5,000. I think that, in doing this, these countries have vastly improved the supply of gametes available to couples and/or people who desperately need them.

I just want to be really clear, though, that this bill, and the comments I’m making, in no way are seeking to create any form of industry “for profit”. It’s simply seeking to allow for fair and reasonable costs to be covered, so as to encourage the donors to come forward for those couples—be they gay, be they single, be they infertile—who desperately need that kind of support.

So just to wrap up this evening, it seems that the current, strict prohibition is what is directly contributing to those very long waiting times and those very long waiting lists. I very much look forward to hearing the select committee inquiry and report back, and I commend this bill to the House.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It really is my privilege this evening to speak on the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill, a particular bill that is put forward by my very good friend of a few decades Tāmati Coffey. I’ve been able to watch his journey to be married to his wonderful husband and to have our very beautiful nephew that’s a part of our lives within the Labour Party. But this bill is designed to simplify surrogacy arrangements, ensure completeness of birth certificate information, and provide a mechanism for enforcing surrogacy arrangements.

Only a few weeks ago, I turned 40. Yes, the big four-oh. And once I got to that age—unfortunately, as I turned 40, I tested positive for COVID 19—I had a lot of reflection time in self-isolation. One of the things that caught up with me was thinking about future generations, but thinking about the possibility if at some point, turning 40—probably I needed to make a decision soon about having children. Not only just for myself but the other thing that I think of within my wider whānau is the importance of continuing whakapapa, or our genealogical lines, between my family and our family in Mōkai Pātea. But there’s some challenges in front of me that this particular bill, I guess, aims to address, to work through, to deconstruct, and to repack into modern legislation. So I consider myself, I guess, an end user and so I’ll take particular interest in this piece of legislation and how, in fact, it’s going to affect some of the decisions that I make moving forward and the decisions for my wider family.

It’s a privilege to be the deputy chair of the Petitions Committee. We do a lot of work and I acknowledge those members in the House that are part of that select committee. But when you see a petition that comes through—and we see many—one of 32,000 signatures is significant. We’ve seen large-scale signatures like this one in things like banning conversion practice and some of the other work that we have done, but this is a lofty amount of New Zealanders in Aotearoa that want to see change in this outdated law.

We support this bill, because we understand that New Zealand’s existing laws around surrogacy and adoption are not up to date and are in need of modernisation to bring them into the 21st century. The evidence of this can be seen, as I mentioned, in the petition that was presented to Parliament in 2019. Currently, prospective parents must await the birth of their child before beginning the process of adoption, and the child of a surrogacy arrangement is born into a situation where his or her or their social or caregiving parents may have no legal responsibilities and rights in relation to the child. And one of the challenges that is before me is that while I can contribute to a child being made at birth, there’s a few steps that I would have to go through to be the legal father.

The Government has asked the Law Commission to conduct a review of surrogacy laws in New Zealand and they are expected to report back on their findings in the first half of 2022. I really look forward to those findings, because they will address significant pieces that the member Tāmati Coffey has acknowledged in this first piece of legislation. When I look across the areas that I’m involved in—in petitions, in Māori caucus, Māori Affairs Committee, and as Labour’s chair of the Rainbow Caucus Committee—this particular piece of legislation is important in all of my professional and political roles. But, more important, it is a piece of legislation that will impact my life and my family’s life and our future generations. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Tāmati Coffey in reply.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Lived experience is everything. And as I stand here, having listened to all of the speeches from around the House, I do get emotional, because this is a journey that I’ve been on for quite some time. When I think about our experience, I think about our surrogate that helped us get to this place, I think about her family that said, “Are you bonkers?” when she said to them that she was going to be doing it. But, actually, just sitting here, my colleagues right down in front of me both started talking about their mokopuna. They started pulling out the little phones, because that’s what this bill does, it actually encourages people to think about children, think about their grandchildren, their mokopuna, their moko tuarua. This is a bill that will help Kiwi families to grow, and that’s why it’s so special. And can I thank every party in this House for their support on what isn’t a gay issue, as my colleague said; this is a New Zealand issue, this is a family issue, this is a whānau issue. This is about making mokopuna decisions—that’s what we say back home.

I want to talk quickly about the New Zealand Law Commission mahi that they have done. I understand that that is sitting with the Minister, and it will be made public very soon. I look forward to looking through that report, like many members of this House, to see exactly what they’ve managed to do, remembering that this bill was dreamt up by both Louisa Wall MP and myself, and we decided at the time that we’d try and peel off a few things that we could contain inside a member’s bill, knowing that there was a lot more work that needed to be done. And I want to thank the Law Commission for the work that they’ve done—their deep dive—I look forward to reading that report.

This bill is going off to the Health Committee, and there have been a few questions raised as to whether or not that was the appropriate committee. We chose to send it to the Health Committee because this is a health issue. I wanted to take it away from previous conversations where, in this House, issues such as abortion, talking about women’s bodies, have been viewed historically by this House as a justice issue, as a law and order issue, and I don’t believe that that’s the right place for it. I believe that this is a health issue, this is a women’s issue, and we need to talk about it with the right framework, so therefore it’s going to the Health Committee. I believe it’s the right place to go.

I want to thank Christian Newman for putting the pressure on way back in 2019, in October, when he brought the petition, 32,000 people signed it. And last night, I was on the phone to him, saying, “We’re going to get there.” And he was saying, “Tāmati, it’s 2022. How long does it take in that place?” And I said, “It takes a little bit of time for some things to make it through the process.”, but we are here right now. I want to thank the New Zealand Labour Party. It is my party, and in 2020 it was put into the manifesto: a commitment to surrogacy. And I want to thank Andrew Little in his role as the Minister of Justice in the last Parliament where, in his role, he made sure that the Law Commission did do their report. It’s an issue that I’ve felt passionate about, and I’m glad that our party have been there to help champion it along the way.

I want to acknowledge the science that’s involved is surrogacy and shout-out to all of our scientists out there who make this happen. Right now, there are 13 embryos sitting in a freezer in Hamilton somewhere that belong to me and my partner, Tim. And the wonder of science and the miracle of science and the advance of science is one of the reasons that we’re here right now—as my colleague said before—trying to catch up with the law. And, thankfully, this law is going to be able to do that. So thank you to our scientists, actually.

A biological parent should never have to adopt their own child—I’ll say it again: a biological parent should never have to adopt their own child. And when we had to go through that, that was painful, because we were standing in a court of New Zealand law, knowing that this was the system and that, as the biological father, we were standing there having to go through this insane, archaic process where we had to adopt our own biological child.

So this bill is for all of the beautiful children that have been born as a result of a surrogacy arrangement, this bill is for all of these surrogates that have thanklessly but beautifully given over themselves to be able to help other families grow, but, most of all, this bill is an acknowledgment of all of those families out there that have been able to grow because of surrogacy arrangement. Modern laws for modern families is what we’re trying to achieve here. I look forward to championing this through the select committee process. It’s going to be a journey and I’m up for it. I commend it to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill be considered by the Health Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Health Committee.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, it’s come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.

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

Bills

Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) (Definition of Significant Criminal Activity) Amendment Bill

First Reading

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): I move, That the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) (Definition of Significant Criminal Activity) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

We need to have this bill. We need to have it in place, and the reason why is because crime is totally out of control in New Zealand. The reason why crime is totally out of control is because we have a Government that is soft on gangs, soft on punishment, and soft on answers. Five years—five years—they’ve been in Government, and law and order at the moment is at its worst.

The Commissioner of Police wants to police by consent and the gangs are taking full advantage of that, and while policing by consent actually does nothing for the victims of crime, we are now producing the next generation of ram raid kids. They should be at school, learning an education, not out on the streets, learning how to be criminals.

But the big problem that’s facing us now is the serious gun crime—serious gun crime committed by unlicensed, unconcerned, unrepentant drug-fuelled thugs. Did the firearms confiscation make us safer? No. It targeted those that obeyed the law. It didn’t get the guns off the streets. It took 60,000 firearms from the police-approved, secure safes, and how many gang members handed in their guns? How many contributed to the 60,000 that—

Hon Stuart Nash: That’s where they get their guns from.

NICOLE McKEE: —were voluntarily handed in? One—one gang member, one firearm, Minister Nash. It was doomed to fail the safer communities goal from the start, because it targeted the wrong people. The Government failed New Zealand, and they double down on legislation that’s continuing to fail New Zealand.

My bill is designed to assist police with meeting realistic and achievable forfeiture thresholds. It’s designed to hit the gangs where it hurts—in their pockets—and let me tell you why. It’s because we’ve chosen the path of asset seizure. Studies have shown that sending gang members to jail is like sending kids to a candy store—it’s one of their favourite places to be, because they can recruit more members there. The studies also show that domestic violence within families that come from gang-affiliated homes is often serious violent harm, so the threat of losing one’s family doesn’t even appear to have that much effect, either. But the moment you talk about taking away their bling, their assets, well then—just like we do with the Labour Party—you hit a nerve. To them, money brings status, it brings power, and it brings envy.

Currently, police have criteria to meet in order to freeze and seize assets, and this includes meeting thresholds within section 6(1) of the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 as to what makes a significant criminal activity. Not only does the offending have to consist of one or more offences but it must be punishable by five years or more in prison, and police must prove that the property, proceeds, or the benefits to the activity actually amount to $30,000 or more. Now, the police have told me that they actually wait until they know the assets are at a value of over $100,000 before they apply, because having to prove the $30,000 value of ill-gotten assets can be difficult, especially when section 6(3) excludes any expenses or outgoings used in connection with criminal activity.

We can make it easier and fruitful for police. All of us are familiar with the headlines that we hear and we read in the news when police raid a criminal’s premises. What do they find? Three things: drugs, cash, and guns. This bill will make the finding of an illegally held firearm a new threshold to freeze and seize assets. It’s designed to hit the gangs where it hurts—in their pockets. It’s to deter the use of illegally held firearms. It’s about holding gangs and criminals to account, and making sure there is a price to pay for having a firearm without a licence but with criminal intent—that is a place where significant criminal activity occurs. It’s about giving police another tool—a real tool, an effective tool—to go after the gangs.

What sorts of figures are we talking here? Well, in the five years between 2017 and 2021, the seized assets valued $626,360,911. It was made up of some very big asset seizures, including $123 million in 2019, and $220 million in 2020—$626 million over five years—and yet this Government budgeted only $95 million to fight organised crime, but they’ll put $200 million for setting up a registry for firearms that the gangs and criminals will have absolutely no intention of using. Only Labour wastes money like this during a cost of living crisis.

Not only that, the Government often claims that they’ve taken all this money from the gangs, but statistics tell us a different story. Nearly $500 million of the $626 million—that’s nearly half a billion dollars—that was recovered actually came from white-collar criminals, not from the gangs. This money should be used to fight the gangs, not fund them.

This bill is an opportunity for the Government to actually do what they claimed that they would do when they used our line and said that they wanted to hit the gangs where it hurts—in their pockets. I expect that the Government will say that they’ve got their own ideas, they’ve got their own criminal proceeds and recovery bill, and they’ve got their own firearms prohibition orders, because to them, it’s about the politics, not the people.

But I must say, with all due respect, that if you don’t understand the problem, how can you actually fix it? This Government has so far wasted their five years and hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars on what should be used on service to our communities. By failing them, which you’ve done now when it comes to law and order, you’ve wasted the money. Going after licensed firearms owners has also wasted taxpayer time and money. It’s caused anger and distrust from nearly a quarter of a million people towards the Government and the police. Relationships built over decades were destroyed in weeks because the target chosen was the easy, law-abiding one.

It’s time to grow some there, Labour, and tell the gangs and their criminals that there is no place for their destructive activities in our neighbourhoods. We want thriving communities, not scared ones. Support our small businesses, Labour, our retailers—those trying so hard to make a living, but who are under constant violent attacks, which is threatening what needs to be a healthy economy as we push our heads above the COVID parapet.

Police have publicly acknowledged that they are finding more and more illegally held firearms at their raids, and we are all concerned about public and front-line police safety. Illegal firearm use is most certainly gang-fuelled. There is a lot to do with retaliation, or utu. It involves drugs, it involves violence, it involves money, and it’s involving our women and our kids. Give that some consequence.

One thing we can do with my bill is to make it financially painful to be caught in the illegal possession of a firearm when undertaking organised crime activities. I recall recently the “two Jareds”—that’s Jared Savage and Jarrod Gilbert. They wrote an excellent article detailing that one piece of legislation alone would not fix an intergenerational problem, a problem made worse by drugs. Well, ACT are committed to law and order, and we’re not going to stop here. Tony Severin has a rehabilitation bill in the ballot box that will ensure that prisoners are released on parole after they’ve completed a rehabilitation programme. We have a policy on intergenerational welfare use, and with ram raids, we certainly need to bring back the charter schools and have them re-established. We will align our police numbers to population growth to stop them from being a political football—as we first said—and we have a stack of other good ideas to rebuild our communities and have them thriving again.

This is Labour’s opportunity to actually get guns off the streets, not from police-approved, secure homes. Target the right people and make better use of taxpayer money during a cost of living crisis. Can they walk the talk and commit to truly focusing on the real perpetrators of gun crime? I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 (CPRA) enables the restraint and forfeiture of any property in New Zealand that is derived from significant criminal offending. To initiate restraint and forfeiture under the CPRA requires a person to have engaged in activities that consist of an offence punishable by a maximum of five years imprisonment or more, or have led to the person acquiring property assets or benefits of a value of $30,000 or more.

The member’s bill proposes amending the CPRA to also enable restraint and forfeiture where a person has committed any criminal offence that occurs at a place where “4(1)(b)(i) there are prohibited firearms or firearms that are possessed unlawfully; and (ii) a person is present who is a member of a gang or organised criminal group.” The bill would result in only a very small number of additional proceedings being taken under this amendment bill and would not significantly disrupt criminal behaviour.

The member’s bill also creates a number of issues. It does not provide definitions of some of the critical terminology needed to implement the bill, such as defining membership of an organised criminal group. This would make the process for seizing criminal assets more challenging and time consuming, as police would need to prove gang or organised crime group membership every time the proposed amendment was used. There have been suggestions the national gang list could be used to do this. The list, as I’ve said many times, is an internal intelligence tool and was not designed to meet the standards required by the court to prove an individual is a member of a particular gang.

The member’s bill focuses on people with firearms; however, CPRA already allows police to seize assets derived from the trafficking of firearms or other illegal firearm activity. In addition, the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 already allows the police to seize and dispose of firearms that are possessed unlawfully in breach of the Arms Act 1983.

Gangs destroy lives, and this Government is focused on targeting gangs and organised crime. We have never been more active in cracking down on gangs and organised crime and getting gang leaders off our streets. This Government is investing in police to support them in their efforts to tackle gang activity and gun crime. This is why this Government is investing $94 million into tackling gangs and organised crime in this year’s Budget, and why the Government’s Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill is currently being considered by the Justice Committee. The Police are committed to targeting the offenders who do the most harm in our communities and to making New Zealand the hardest country in the world for organised criminal groups to do business. Our focus is on strong enforcement, while also working with communities to put in place smart prevention by addressing the social factors that lead to people joining gangs in the first place. We are pursuing amendments to the CPRA to strengthen the targeting of assets—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I appreciate that the Minister is giving wide context to—

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Sure.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I haven’t finished—is giving wide context to this bill; however, it is a first reading of a member’s bill, and I invite the Minister to pay closer attention to that bill.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don’t have much more to say in terms of the member’s bill. Just to say that we conclude by addressing the fact that there are a number of significant issues with the proposed amendment in the bill and the assumptions that underpin it, particularly with regards to how we define an organised crime group. So in conclusion, we are unable to support this bill.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, that says it all, doesn’t it? You’ve got the Minister of Police in the House, who stands and can barely squeeze out a four-minute speech in relation to a bill that, actually, will go a long way to supporting the staff that she purports to stand in this House and support every day. And I want to acknowledge the member Nicole McKee; this is a good bill. We’ve had a 40 percent increase in gang numbers in this country over the last four years. We’ve had a 21 percent increase in violent crime. We’ve got gang members—

Anna Lorck: Who put a freeze on police?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: What’s the member saying?

Anna Lorck: Who put a freeze on police numbers?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Who put a freeze on police numbers? Well, maybe the member could stand and take a call on this and explain to us why you’re not going to give the Police a power that they need to start taking weapons out of the gangs’ hands, because I’ve got very, very bad news for that member: under her Government, under this Labour Government, New Zealanders are seeing a proliferation of gang members, they’re seeing a proliferation of firearms—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I do beg your pardon. It is well known in this House that interjections are to be rare and reasonable, and a barrage of shouting is not acceptable.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: And just in response to that member, tomorrow I have Diane Hunt arriving in our capital city. She’s the mother of Matthew Hunt, who was shot and killed in broad daylight in the streets of West Auckland by a gang member with a high-powered military rifle—an illegal rifle. His partner, David Goldfinch, a father of two, barely escaped with his life and will have serious injuries that will follow him through the rest of it. So I don’t need to be harped at and lectured by the Labour Party when a member brings a bill to this House that would actually give the Police the powers that they need to be able to take the type of weapons that Eli Epiha was carrying on the street that day when he shot and killed Matthew Hunt and shot and wounded David Goldfinch.

This is a serious bill, and I don’t appreciate the Labour Ministers treating it as if it isn’t. It’s a bill that actually gives our police officers the ability to go to an address to search it, and if there’s an illegal firearm there, they can start seizing assets. And I’ll tell you what: if you want to make a real difference, the feedback that I’ve had from serving officers—from detective inspectors through to detectives on the front lines, the people that are actually doing the work, the people that are out there in the middle of the night, having to kick doors in and trying to police and trying to make our communities safer—is this is a good bill, because what gives them the real power to start to deal with these gangs—and, by the way, the Labour Party think they can cuddle up to the gangs. Let me tell you something: the gangs think that you’re a joke. They’re not listening to anything that you say.

Soft on crime—to actually call this Government soft on crime almost feels too nice. It shouldn’t be “soft”; it should be “mushy”, or something else, because under this Government, we’ve seen a massive growth in gang numbers, we’ve seen a massive increase in assaults on police, we’ve seen terrible assaults on members of the public in broad daylight, by gangs that are emboldened and think that they can operate with impunity, and we see firearm incidents every day—and I’m sorry, but, tonight, there was an incident with a gang that shot into a family home where a child was almost hit. That’s happening daily. And the Minister comes to this House and she makes some innocuous points that aren’t relevant to the bill at all, the Speaker has to draw her back to the bill, and then she goes, “Oh, well, I’ve really got nothing more to add.”, and leaves—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member is not to bring the Speaker into the debate.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —yeah, thank you, Madam Speaker—and then leaves the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member does know and has realised that he does not refer to a member’s absence. I don’t want to have to get to my feet every two minutes.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: The Labour Party is going to vote this bill down tonight. They probably won’t support the petition of Diane Hunt tomorrow, either, for her son Matthew. They’re trying to scrap the three strikes legislation. At some time they’re going to have to wake up and they’re going to have to realise—stop with all the nice platitudes—the Police actually need some genuine support. They’re trying to do their job with one hand tied behind their back. The Minister referred to the firearms prohibition order—it’s a toothless tiger. It’s got no warrantless search power in it. So how are the Police supposed to take the guns out of gangs’ hands, when they can’t stop them and search them? Wake up. On the select committee we had two senior officers from the Police National Headquarters turn up, and they couldn’t agree with each other on whether or not section 18 was going to give the powers that it needed. This Government actually needs to wake up and needs to actually start doing something real and tangible to deal with the gang situation in this country.

Hon STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The one thing, as a former Minister of Police, that I think is abhorrent is, first of all, Mitch, you’re better than making politics out of Matt Hunt’s death. That was an absolute tragedy, and every single police officer that goes out there, every single day—

Hon Mark Mitchell: A point of order, Madam Speaker. I am going to take—sorry.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sorry, I hadn’t finished speaking. The Hon Mark Mitchell.

Hon Mark Mitchell: I am going to take personal offence to that, and I am going to ask the member to stand, withdraw, and apologise, to say that I’m politicising the death of Matthew Hunt.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK, thank you. The member has taken offence. The member will withdraw and apologise.

Hon STUART NASH: I withdraw and apologise. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Look, if there is one thing that this Government is not is that it is soft on crime. Let me outline a little bit of history about what happened in the three years before we came into power. Police numbers dropped in the last three years of the National Government—they dropped—and during that period in time, gangs flourished. Meth got out of control, and, in fact, if any member was to have a look at the Police annual report when that member over there was the Minister of Police, it actually says the police are going to have to do more with the same numbers to 2020. In fact, if it wasn’t for the pressure that the Labour Opposition at the time put on the Government of the time, the numbers wouldn’t have increased all.

So what did we do to deal with this? We did what every New Zealander wanted us to do—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member is one minute 45 into his contribution. I invite him to come to the bill.

Hon STUART NASH: Point of order, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I have just—

Hon STUART NASH: Yes, and I demand a point of order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No, no, no, no. I have just ruled. I’ve invited the member to come to the bill, and I invite him to do just that. If the member does have a point of order, it must not be related to the matter I’ve just ruled on.

Hon STUART NASH: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I’ve listened to about 15 minutes of speeches on this from the ACT member of Parliament and the National member of Parliament, and all they talked about, by and large, was how Labour is soft—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. That is not a point of order, but I will speak to it. This is a member’s bill. Members have every right to respond to comments made by another member, but those responses and those comments must be in passing. This is a first reading speech on a member’s bill. I invite the Hon Stuart Nash to resume his speech.

Hon STUART NASH: A substantial part of this bill is talking about firearms and firearm crime, and gangs and guns. We recognised, at one point in time, that guns were a real problem—certain types of guns were a real issue in our community—where we had a terrorist come in with military-style semi-automatic weapons and mow down 51 Kiwis. As the Minister of Police at the time, I talked to a number of people involved in the firearms community—a wide range of people in the firearms community—and do you know what they all said? “You don’t need these guns.” Hunters said you don’t need a military-style semi-automatic to hunt. Duck shooters said you don’t need a barrel with eight bullets to hunt. So what we did—the first jurisdiction in the world—is we actually banned weapons that were produced to kill people—to kill people. We said any legitimate weapon for hunting, for duck hunting, for farms, we’ll leave those there. And the vast majority of gun owners, the vast majority of Kiwis, understood why we were doing what we were doing and they bought into it, because the thing is, when it comes to guns and when it comes to gangs, we all know—and Nicole McKee, I believe you know, because you were a very staunch advocate in this—that where the gangs—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member will not bring the Speaker—

Hon STUART NASH: Oh, for goodness’ sake.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate. The member will not reflect on the Speaker’s rulings. I’m warning the member that if he doesn’t come back to the bill—he has just under two minutes left of his speech. If the Minister does not come back to the bill, I will terminate his speech. He’s had several warnings.

Hon STUART NASH: That member of Parliament who has brought this bill to the House, I believe, is out of touch with the vast majority of good, law-abiding citizens. All the research shows that where the gangs get their guns from is they steal them from good, law-abiding citizens. In order to deal with the gun problems and gangs, we brought a bill to this House which made it a lot more difficult for gangs to get guns, and, lo and behold, the ACT Party and the National Party voted against that bill.

This bill will do nothing to address the really serious problem we have in this country, and that is gangs and that is guns. The things that will deal with this are more police on the streets, which we are implementing in a way that no other Government—the way to deal with this issue is to go after the gangs with gang focus units, which we have put in place. The way to go after and achieve the objectives that member would like to see in this bill is to ensure that those who are caught with illegal weapons go down for a long time, which is what we put in place and that member’s party voted against.

There is a great body of work that is going on right across the police service at the moment to deal with these issues. If that member understood what the police were doing, what the Minister was doing, what the focus of this Government is, to address these issues, then I think she would realise that she is wasting her time with this bill. When that member talked about a waste of time—Nicole McKee, I am sorry, you are out of touch with what the police are doing to solve this important issue.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I hope to bring the House back to the bill, after several contributions from both sides of the House that have diverged quite a fair bit away from it. I would just quite like to ground us all in the criminal justice system from the perspective of someone who worked in it for a decade.

How do proceeds of crime legislations work? They came in under the last National Party Government. They seek to take away what purportedly is an incentive for crime, which is property. Most New Zealanders, though, would be horrified to find that, whilst in this country we determine guilt of criminal offending through a criminal justice process, where there is a burden of proof on the Crown and a standard of proof of beyond reasonable doubt—so you have to prove the person did the crime—proceeds of crime legislation don’t apply those same standards. This is a balance of probabilities. You don’t have to have been proven to be in a gang. You don’t have to have been proven to have committed a crime. You certainly don’t have to have it proven that the property that the Crown is seizing was the proceeds of a crime. It’s all done on balance of probabilities.

And who do we see our criminal justice treat as if it’s more likely that they are a criminal, more likely that they’re in a gang, and more likely that they shouldn’t have property? It’s not a fair and just system when it comes to accusations, and that’s who this bill will impact. It will be Māori. It will be Pacific peoples. It will be poorer communities.

If you can’t prove the person was in a gang, why are you taking away their rights to their property? That doesn’t seem like something that a libertarian party should be doing. They should be raising the standard of proof to or beyond a reasonable doubt standard.

Let’s come back to the criminal justice system. Let’s come back to sitting across the table from someone who has been accused of being in a gang—or someone who has been proven to be in a gang. You put their file in front of them. Can they read it? Almost never. We talk about protecting children. Who’s in gangs? Almost every person I came across in the justice system who I represented had a mental health report that showed that they’d been removed from their home or that they’d been kicked around homes. Their tattoos—often facial—were put on there at early adolescence so they could look tough so they could fend off their abusers. That’s who we’re talking about. We have a system that abuses children from a certain background and then kicks them into a criminal justice system, and this bill wants to lower the standard of proof for guilt.

We want to lower the standard of proof of guilt. We want to shift the burden on to the person to prove their innocence. We want to double down on the prejudice, on the racism, and on poverty that causes crime whilst we tell victims we’re keeping them safe!

We’re not allowed to accuse each other of dishonesty in this House, but if we keep doing criminal justice without evidence—and that’s on both sides, because more police aren’t going to keep anyone safe either, by the way. That’s just to this Government, who just put half a billion dollars into front-line police instead of mental health care and instead of addiction treatment.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I invite the member to come a little more closely to the bill. Thank you.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

This bill purports to take away property without proof that anyone is guilty of being in a gang, has committed a crime, or has done anything that’s in fact going to address criminal offending. It won’t keep anyone safe. It’s certainly not commendable, and it’s actually a shame that we’re doing things in this archaic way again and again whilst telling the public we’re keeping them safe. On behalf of the Green Party, I would never commend this bill to the House.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei) (remote): Kia ora and good evening, Madam Speaker. I sit with Ms McKee on the Justice Committee and I would like to have supported her member’s bill, because it is a milestone. Unfortunately, sitting in select committee also demonstrates the dangers of allowing in an unnecessary or a badly designed bill, however many clicks it generates its owner. The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act (CPR Act), which this bill seeks to amend, is designed to enable the forfeiture of property that has been derived directly or indirectly from significant criminal activity. It’s an Act about making sure crime doesn’t pay, about depriving people who offend or profit off that profit.

But instead of improving the Act’s ability to strip criminals of their profits, this bill dispenses with any real link between asset and offending, scooping up into the net a whole lot of not-very-organised-at-all criminal conduct and a whole lot of assets with little, if any, relation to criminal activity.

Let’s imagine “Uncle Bob”, usually a law-abiding person, who forgets to renew his gun licence. Now Uncle Bob’s holding an unlawful gun under the Arms Act. But before he can rectify this situation, his misguided “Nephew Billy” from the local gang pops around for a cuppa and a chat about turning his life around, only to find himself in the presence of an unlawful gun and in the middle of a crime scene. Now uncle’s worldly goods are forfeit under the CPR Act, as amended by Ms McKee, despite the fact those worldly goods are the proceeds of precisely no crimes because none of his wrongdoing has produced an illicit dime.

The amendment is inconsistent. It’s overkill and it’s unfair, and—as Minister Williams pointed out—would cause considerably more work for our police. It’s also unnecessary. If the focus is on gangs and gun crime, the police can already use the CPR Act to seize their assets because illegal firearm trafficking is already punishable by 10 years’ jail under the Arms Act. Even unlawful possession of a prohibited firearm has a five-year term, sufficient to trigger the existing Act. Short of these, the Arms Act allows police to seize unlawful firearms even for offences under the CPR Act threshold.

But, finally, this bill is an irrelevance because the Government is already cracking down on guns and organised crime or gangs. We’re already working on real improvements to the Criminal Proceeds Act to enable better targeting of organised crime, so that where a person’s legitimate income is unlikely to have been enough to acquire an asset, they will have to demonstrate a legitimate source or lose it. Our firearms prohibition orders will make it illegal for high-risk people such as members of organised crime fraternities to own firearms, in a bill which has already passed its first reading in February. By this December, we’ll have a dedicated police firearms unit for regulatory activities, and by June 2023, a firearms registry to fill our 30-year-old gap about what legal firearms are in our communities.

We are committing resources on to the ground to protect our communities on a scale never seen before. We’re ahead of schedule in delivering the biggest police force New Zealand has ever seen, and, in Budget 2022, we’re increasing it and putting another $94 million specifically into tackling gangs and organised crimes—and it is working. In four years, we have seized over $500 million in cash and assets from gangs and criminals, we have seized 1,500 firearms, arrested 1,200 people, and seized 53.74 kilograms of meth.

It’s great to have a member’s bill, but it’s only worth the effort—not just by the member but by this House—if it’s actually going to make a difference. This one won’t. It’s a day late, a dollar short, and I cannot commend it.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): It is a privilege to take a call on the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) (Definition of Significant Criminal Activity) Amendment Bill first reading in the name of Nicole McKee from the ACT Party. It is a privilege to support such an important piece of legislation through its first reading and, I hope, to select committee, but that does not seem to be the way it will go with this Government that is in charge.

This is an important piece of legislation because it sends a very clear message that being a criminal gang member will not pay in New Zealand. We heard it from the other side: crime shouldn’t pay. But they’re going to vote against the bill. Crime shouldn’t pay, but now they’re voting against the bill which will make sure that crime doesn’t pay in New Zealand.

It’s a very, very simple principle in this piece of legislation: if the police turn up to a property and they find a gang member with an illegal firearm, they are able to take that gang member’s assets. I’m sick and tired of hearing people apologising for gang members in New Zealand. The apologising for gang members that’s come from the members on the other side and the Green Party up in the far corner is actually quite disgusting. We live in a country which has become overridden with gang members under this Government. There have been more gang members recruited under this Government than police officers. It’s grown faster, the number of gang members than police officers, but all we hear is apologies—apologies for the gang members. And when they stop apologising the next thing they start doing is actually funding the gangs. They take the money, using the proceeds of crime fund, and then they start giving it back to the gangs. That is absolutely disgusting.

But what the criminal proceeds of crime fund—the legislation which this bill amends is about saying, “Crime shouldn’t pay, and we will take your assets, and then we will put it to crime prevention and actually keeping New Zealanders safe.” This Government says, “We’re going to take some money off the Hawke’s Bay Mongrel Mob, and then we’re going to give it back with interest.” They literally gave back twice as much as they took in the first place. That’s how this Government operates, and, quite frankly, New Zealanders have had enough. The poll results say, “Enough.” Seventy percent of New Zealanders think the police Minister is soft on crime—70 percent. That is an embarrassing number for the police Minister. Fifty percent of Labour supporters think the police Minister’s soft on crime. That is absolutely embarrassing.

Hon Stuart Nash: Speak to the bill.

SIMEON BROWN: So what this Government should be doing is supporting legislation which actually does make a difference, Mr Stuart Nash. Actually making a difference, to actually give the police the tools they need to go hard against the gangs—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order!

SIMEON BROWN: —take the assets off them and actually make sure that crime doesn’t pay in New Zealand. I heard the previous speaker say that gangs are just a fraternity. They’re not the Rotary club, for goodness’ sake. These people are shooting people, killing people.

Hon Member: They play tiddlywinks.

SIMEON BROWN: They’re not—well, these guys are playing tiddlywinks with the gangs. The gangs have got this Government wrapped round their little finger, and it shows every single day. It’s quite disgusting.

Then you’ve got the Green Party saying, “Oh, we’ve got too many police in New Zealand.” They want to defund the police. Well, what they’ll do is the next piece of legislation will say “defunding the police in New Zealand”. Absolutely disgusting. What we need to be doing in New Zealand is actually supporting our police, giving them tools that they need, like the tool in this bill, which is an excellent tool, which actually gives them tools to go after the gangs and go after their assets. That is exactly what this piece of legislation will do.

So I’m very grateful that the member from the ACT Party, Nicole McKee, who is an outstanding advocate around law and order and justice issues, is bringing legislation to this House. Legislation which should at least be sent to a select committee. They crow about firearm prohibition orders. They’ve had 4½ years. What have they done? Four and a half years, what have they done? Minister Stuart Nash, you were told in 2017, in your briefing to the incoming Minister that came on your desk, we need firearms prohibition orders, and nothing happened while you were Minister of Police—nothing happened. And now you’re trying to complain from the sidelines. Chirp, chirp, chirp from the sidelines. Nothing happened while you were the Minister of Police. What a fail—what a fail. Well, the people of Napier will have a thing or two to say about that next year, won’t they?

And so what we need is legislation which will make a difference. The ACT Party’s brought legislation. National’s bringing legislation. We’ve got a plan to tackle gangs in New Zealand. But this soft on crime Government is embarrassing, and next year they’ll be gone.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. I think that the first observation I want to make is that that last contribution, from Simeon Brown, seemed to be more about the member’s own member’s bill that failed to get support in the House, than the one that we’re actually talking about tonight. So let me bring us to the bill that we are actually talking about tonight, and that is the bill of Nicole McKee on the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) (Definition of Significant Criminal Activity) Amendment Bill.

The main point that I want to make from listening to all of the contributions tonight, which I think that many are missing because they are just wanting to talk to the politics of it all, is that I have failed to be convinced that there is actually a need for what this bill is proposing. It is really clear that the bill proposes unnecessary changes, because the police can already use legislation that we have, the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act to seize assets based off the crime of firearm trafficking, which has been the subject of many of the contributions tonight. Illegal firearm trafficking is an offence under section 55E of the Arms Act 1983 and is punishable by up to 10 years. Under the Arms Act, it is also unlawful to possess illegal firearms, or without the necessary authorisation. So this means that police can already seize unlawful firearms, even if the crimes committed—wait for it—are below the thresholds in the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act, which is what this bill proposes to do by expanding the definition of “significant criminal activity”. I haven’t heard, in any of the contributions tonight, anything to convince me that this bill is required to be able to do all of the things that everybody has mentioned.

I do just want to acknowledge Dr Emily Henderson, my colleague and member of the Justice Committee, and neighbour in the Whangārei electorate, and the perverse outcome that she described could happen with the hypothetical “Uncle Bob” and “Nephew Billy” in this case. So thank you to Emily, who explained for the House what this could mean in practice, and I’m sure that’s not what any of us wants to actually happen.

As I have said, I believe the member’s bill is unnecessary because we already have legislation which enables our police, gives them the tools that they need to address the issues that have been raised, even if they don’t meet the threshold.

In terms of other things that have been raised in the debate to try and strengthen the argument for why this is necessary, again, you have heard the Minister of Police say, the former Minister of Police say, and others making contributions, that we are already working to amend the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act to introduce new power, enabling seizures of assets of those associated with gangs. So we are changing legislation but we are also better resourcing our police to actually be able to do this. So one small amendment in an Act that doesn’t have the resources given to it to be able to actually implement it isn’t going to be that effective.

We are being effective. The Government is committed to protecting our communities, and, in the last four years alone, $500 million of cash and assets has been seized from the gangs.

Hon Member: How much?

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: $500 million.

Hon Member: $500 million?

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Yes, that’s right, just in our first term. Introduced in February 2021, Operation Tauwhiro, which is a nationally coordinated police operation cracking down on gangs and organised crime, has seized 1,531 firearms, arrested 1,255 people, seized 53.74 kilograms of methamphetamine, and conducted 926 searches under warrant and 634 warrantless searches. The actual initiatives that we have started and that we are funding are working. And in this Budget, we have announced that we are going to be doing even more in terms of that, with the unit being set up for it this year as well.

So, just in conclusion, as I said at the beginning, I’ve listened to the debate this evening, I have not been convinced by any of the contributions that this particular piece of legislation is necessary; in fact, there already are the powers that exist to be able to do it. On that basis, unfortunately, I won’t be supporting the bill this evening.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): What’s fascinating, as you listen to the left wing—or the radical far left, off to my left here in the Green Party, who want to defund the police—is that, according to them, there is absolutely no problem with criminals in New Zealand. There are no problems with criminals with guns! And, lo and behold, there is definitely no problem with gang members with guns committing crime!

Now, some of us live in the real world, which is where six constituents of mine in Glen Innes were shot at. In Wairoa tonight, gang members unleashed numerous rounds into a house. In my electorate alone, we’ve had 30 ram raids. As my colleague Simeon Brown pointed out, we have got more gang members now than police. In fact, the gangs are recruiting, particularly through Corrections—where’s Kelvin Davis? Where is Kelvin Davis on this, by the way?

There’s no problem, according to the left and the far left; it’s all tickety-boo. The problem is—and you can sense it, you can just feel it, if you’re more intuitive in this House. You can just feel the other side knows—they just know—that they should be for this bill. You can absolutely feel it. Because this is a good bill. It’s a simple bill. It’s a simple proposition. That’s illustrated by a couple of ways. We get lectured ad absurdum, ad infinitum, ad boring—probably bad Latin—from the other side of the House. We should always let bills go through the first reading, should always let them go to select committee.

But isn’t it funny, when we’re dealing with crime, gangs, holding people to account, not taking excuses for victims—no, no, Labour and the far left of the Greens: “We’re going to block it.” That’s the first option. The second is, tonight, we’ve heard from one of the other members talking about lived experiences, everything. Well, what is fascinating, to that Labour member: first and foremost, “Lived experience is everything.” is one of the weakest, stupidest irrational arguments possible.

Anna Lorck: Speak to the bill.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: You would know, wouldn’t you?

SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh, no, sorry, this is my lived experience! Thanks Labour, just want to put that out there—it’s my lived experience; it’s everything, according to your colleagues. But I just want to note that the member promoting this bill—to Nicole McKee, thank you. I back her lived experience, as a licensed gun-owner and advocate, more than any member of that Labour caucus and the far left, the radical far left which is the Green Party.

What’s so wonderful about this bill is it does two things at once; there’s a wonderful serendipity. And note they’re getting so upset on the other side because, you know, again, it’s just tweaking them. They know they’re wrong. Cross the House, guys; it’ll be good for you. It’ll stretch your legs. It’s great for your coronaries. But the great thing about this bill is it does two things at once. Firstly, it’s a bill which disincentivises having illegal guns. On the other hand—on the other hand—it makes real consequences for those gang members who hold them. It’s so simple. On one hand, don’t own or don’t have an illegal firearm. On the other hand, there’ll be serious consequences if you’re found with one.

To the members of the public watching, it’s just so incredibly simple. Unfortunately, your Government—your Government—doesn’t quite understand it.

Ginny Andersen: Got it now. Got it.

SIMON O’CONNOR: What makes it even more clear is there’s heckling going on at the moment. But you know what it is? It’s just noises. There’s actually no words being used; it’s just noises. I think that sums up the Labour and the far, extreme left of the Greens perfectly. When it comes to crime, when it comes to protecting people through this piece of legislation, let’s be very clear: the centre right, National and ACT, will vote for this. But tonight, the Labour Party and the Green Party, and, I suspect, the Māori Party will vote against it. They will vote for the gangs. They will vote for firearms. They will vote against safety. And they know, deep down, they’re wrong.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Look, that was really interesting. We’ve had some fantastic speeches, but none of them are really talking about this bill. Let’s read the bill, because I’m trying to figure out—so I think what is intended, by reading this, is to increase the power to seize assets if a gang member’s got a gun. I think that’s what it’s trying to do. We’ve heard a whole lot of different stuff tonight from National members, but I think that’s actually what they’re attempting to achieve tonight, not successfully at all. It attempts to amend the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act to expand its definition of “significant criminal activity”.

Now, I’d like to remind those members opposite that in the nine years that they were in Government, they promised to switch the onus on organised crime. They promised to switch that onus. The legislation that will be passed in this term that this Government will deliver alongside of firearms prohibition orders (FPOs)—they promised to switch that onus, to make it easier for police when finding assets; that it’s on that person who owns their illegal item to prove that they got it legally. They tried for nine years, alongside FPOs, to get that over the line, and they failed to do it. So this is yet another half-hearted “looking like we’re tough but can’t deliver” antic that we see from those members opposite.

And the reason why Labour doesn’t support this bill is because already there is very good work in this space. The bill proposes unnecessary changes, because police already use the proceeds of the Crimes Act to seize assets based off the crime of firearm trafficking. Illegal firearm trafficking is an offence already under the Arms Act, and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. So someone hasn’t done their homework, because there’s already grounds in there to make those changes and to seize assets under existing legislation. This is an age-old problem: not knowing the law that’s there already and not being able to use it in the way that’s needed.

Under the Arms Act, it’s also unlawful to possess illegal firearms, and, lo and behold, guess what? Most gang members don’t have a firearms licence! So “without unnecessary authorisation”—this means that police can seize unlawful firearms even if the crimes committed are below the thresholds of the current Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act. So it really renders this entire bill and the idea behind it redundant. The whole purpose is to establish a regime for the forfeiture of property that has been derived directly or indirectly by significant criminal activity, and it has been an incredibly successful programme. Hundreds of different activities. Fog cannons. We’ve had different programmes in terms of outreach and preventing crime, whether it be through alcohol and drug or other treatment being funded through a programme—where we are smart on crime and take those proceeds and put them in the bank and put it back to addressing those underlying drivers of criminal activity, which we on this side of the House are ready to engage on.

The Government is already making changes to make it illegal for high-risk people to own firearms by introducing firearm prohibition orders, which failed to be introduced by the previous Government. This will strengthen action already being taken to combat the influence of gangs and organised crime and breaching the conditions of a firearm prohibition order. It will be a criminal offence.

I’d like to reiterate that the Government is also already working to amend, as I mentioned earlier, the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act to introduce a new power enabling seizure of assets of those associated with organised crime where the person’s known legitimate income is likely to have been insufficient to acquire that asset. That is what was attempted for nine years under National and that is not what has been achieved in the past.

This Government has committed to protecting our communities and, over the last four years, $500 million in cash and assets has been seized from criminals by police. Gangs, quite clearly, should not be making money from exploiting our communities. This Government is incredibly clear we will not tolerate organised crime and gangs and we are working hard to disrupt that, and the number one reason we are doing it would be the $94 million invested in this Budget in front-line organised crime. That money has never, ever in the past, under any previous Government, been invested. The 1,800 cops on the front line? Never before. So you can talk tough and you can walk the walk, but you don’t talk to—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will not bring the Speaker into the argument.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a debate we’ve had across the House this evening. Look, I want to talk a little bit to some of the things that were raised from the Labour side across the House, because I genuinely think that they’ve lost the entire concept of what this bill is actually about. What I’ve heard over there from the Minister of Police is that, “Well, Nicole, your bill is not actually going to make that much disruption, so we don’t want to support it.” And the former Minister of Police had to be told to sit down so many times because he couldn’t actually get to the bill itself, you know, so when I hear some of the rhetoric that is coming from across the House, I think I actually need to explain the bill again. Because the Labour member who wanted to talk about Uncle Bob and nephew Billy—let’s just run through that scenario again, shall we?

So Uncle Bob has a firearms licence and it’s expired, and nephew Billy belongs to a gang and he comes over to Uncle Bob’s house, which is being raided and we’re saying that his gun should not be taken away. So we’ve got a law that’s been broken already. He’s in illegal possession of a firearm because his licence has expired, and 250,000 people who have licences at the moment cannot hold on to their firearms once their licences have expired. That’s an illegal thing. There also has to be significant criminal activity occurring in that place. Now, I know that Labour do like to give gangs their licences, but if there is a significant criminal activity taking place at Uncle Bob’s place when nephew Billy turns up, then we’ve got to wonder what on earth Uncle Bob was doing with a firearms licence in the first place. This comes down to fit and proper, and maybe we should go back to the royal commission of inquiry’s recommendations, which said we should have a separate independent authority administrating firearms legislation. But I am going off topic and I will bring it back in.

We have members not only of gangs, but criminals, those that are wanting to become gang members, using illegally held firearms illegally. This has occurred already—this evening we are hearing reports of a house in Wairoa being shotgunned and a child’s bedroom being shotgunned by gang members retaliating to another firearm gang attack. Now, this bill, it’s not about seizing firearms. It’s about having a disincentive for gang members to be in possession of illegally held firearms. It’s about adding a new threshold to freeze and seize assets.

As I had mentioned in my earlier speech, if we’re going to have a good economy and a thriving community, we need to make sure that we have trust in our Government and also our police. We are losing that at the moment because our homes are being shot up by gang members. And that is soft. That is soft on punishment, it is soft on action, it is soft on crime, and ACT will not have a bar of it. We want to make sure that our communities can thrive. They need to, especially when we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

So let’s take away the bling and the money from the gangs, because quite frankly that’s all they care about. You can do it by adding an illegally held firearm at the time that there is a raid at a place where there is significant criminal activity taking place. If you add an illegally held firearm, it becomes the new threshold to freeze and seize, and we know that that will actually have an effect on the gangs. We know that. It’s a pity that the Government doesn’t, and it’s a pity that the Government are more interested in handing out $2.75 billion to the gangs instead of using $626 million to help really fight organised crime. It’s a pity, but we’re not going to stop. We’re not going to stop, we’re going to keep on going, because our law and order policies are there for New Zealand. It’s to make our communities thrive, it’s to help boost our economy, and it’s to make sure that those licenced firearm owners who Labour just chuck in the same box as gang members are actually recognised for the fit and proper people that they are. I’m proud to be a part of that and to be one of them and to represent. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) (Definition of Significant Criminal Activity) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 42

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 77

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Education and Training (Freedom of Expression) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): I move, That the Education and Training (Freedom of Expression) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I further nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider this bill.

As we go through my bill this evening, I hope that we can all reflect on how fortunate we are to be able to freely participate in the process and debate the issue at hand. We’ve certainly been doing that this evening. How about that? Two ACT bills in a row. Get used to it. This is the essence of liberal democracy. In this context, it is easy to take free speech for granted, and open debate as well, particularly as we are operating under the guise of parliamentary privilege. That being said, we should never take freedom itself for granted. Free speech is fundamental. It is the cornerstone of liberal democracy and a proven method to confront tyranny, injustice, and oppression.

In the lead-up to this bill, I have spoken about freedom of speech and academic freedom. These are actually distinct concepts. Freedom of speech, an ideal within the broader construct of freedom of expression, is the ability to express one’s thoughts without restriction, so long as you are not harming others or inciting violence on others. Academic freedom, on the other hand, is the ability of academics and students to question ideas and to put forward new ones without being censored, or, worse, risking your career or enrolment status. For academics, it is crucial that they are able to teach and undertake research that challenges the status quo, even if it’s a bit unorthodox if they choose to do so.

Universities are, by their design, centres of inquiry and intellectual debate, most of the time, by which new ideas are brought to life and tested. Virtually every scientific breakthrough and accomplishment throughout history has pushed the boundaries of their times. They were often criticised by academic institutions as immoral and offensive, but are now accepted as fact.

This bill requires that tertiary institutions protect freedom of expression and gives them significant say over how they do so within existing laws. The bill enables them to issue codes of practice that are set out in procedures that students and staff should follow to uphold freedom of expression. Universities will need to take responsibility to maintain lawful freedom of speech for their faculty, students, and visiting speakers.

Having such a process actually helps universities, as it enables them to clearly identify when a speaker presents a real risk of inciting harm or criminal activity, while protecting those who may have unorthodox or slightly strange or controversial views but are otherwise harmless. Massey University released their own policy—of sorts—on freedom of speech, which cites mental harm to students as a reason that speakers may be de-platformed or events cancelled. This is entirely open-ended and subjective, and it will result in a process that is informal and behind closed doors. Taxpayer-funded institutions, through their management, should not be forcing whatever world view they have and that they possess on students, using dubious claims to do so.

A recent survey conducted by Curia Market Research on behalf of the Free Speech Union gathered over 1,200 responses from university-employed academics. In the findings, almost half of the respondents felt constrained to raise differing perspectives and to argue against the consensus—and even more so in discussing the Treaty. On the latter, almost a third ranked themselves as feeling very unfree. If academics feel unable to speak out on any issue, this will have long-run and long-term consequences and effects on students. Their ability to engage in critical thinking will be diminished.

The results of this survey are troubling, and they show that the issues are real here in New Zealand universities. Universities should be environments of genuine diversity and open debate, with the free exchange and exploration of ideas without fear, yet the survey demonstrates that there is fear, and it is only getting worse. If we do not confront these issues, we risk not only losing our freedom but also our problem-solving abilities. It is frankly disappointing that we are even here debating this issue in 21st century New Zealand. In a healthy culture, people are allowed to say unpopular things.

Simeon Brown: Careful!

Dr JAMES McDOWALL: Speech isn’t—yeah. Speech isn’t about left versus right, believe it or not. As part of the broader attack on liberalism—

Simeon Brown: He needs to be cancelled!

Dr JAMES McDOWALL: Gee, they’re upset now. Freedom of speech has been contested on both sides of the political spectrum.

Shanan Halbert: What about homophobic ones? Transphobic?

Dr JAMES McDOWALL: While in contemporary discussions it tends to be pushed by those on the right, for sure, history clearly shows that freedom of speech was the key enabler in many social justice issues pioneered by the left, even if they refuse to believe it—like right now. Kate Sheppard was likely one of New Zealand’s greatest speakers, but her views were radical at the time. We nevertheless became the first country in the world to have universal suffrage to give women the vote when Parliament passed the 1893 Electoral Act, and it is one of our greatest achievements made possible in a culture that enabled free speech.

The anti - Springbok tour is another example. It would not have been as successful as it was had it had been an environment where we weren’t allowed to make unpopular statements. In modern times, we have seen the likes of the group Speak Up For Women repeatedly being shut down. I’m not saying I necessarily support everything they say, but regardless. And of course, I have to mention the case—the famous case—of Don Brash and Massey University’s decision to cancel him, despite the fact that he was only going to go there to talk about his political career. Even the Prime Minister from that party over there called their refusal to host Brash an overreaction. Minister Hipkins said he wouldn’t have cancelled him either and that universities should have a very high threshold around allowing free speech, enabling it, and having robust debate. What a good idea. Thank you, Minister Hipkins. We also have seen issues such as posters at Massey University supporting the Hong Kong protests being torn down, and Auckland University of Technology scrapping Tiananmen Square commemorations after the Chinese Government communist officials intervened.

Freedom of speech is a core principle in classical liberalism and should be protected by law in any democratic nation. It is worth noting that, here in New Zealand, it is neither entrenched in law nor absolute. Instead, freedom of expression is loosely protected by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In theory, the law enforces the right to speak, associate, to think, and to participate in the democratic process. Liberalism emphasises tolerance and dignity. A person does not have to agree with their fellow citizens about important issues, but acknowledge that each individual should get to decide what they are, who they are, what they think, and how they express themselves without interference from the State. In theory, liberalism lowers the temperature of politics, though I think this evening it’s not working out so well, so it probably reflects more on what’s happening on the Government side over there.

Human dignity is about people having an equal right to autonomy and freedom of choice. Every individual wants to shape their lives as they see fit.

Shanan Halbert: Freedom of choice to be transphobic!

Dr JAMES McDOWALL: If a significant part of society rejects liberal principles and seeks to fundamentally restrict speech, then dignity is lost, identities take over, and liberalism can no longer maintain peaceful political order. The Government’s proposed hate speech laws, which are being developed under a veil of secrecy, could significantly challenge this inherent dignity.

In closing, I would say that we can be certain that the threats to free speech are not limited to our university campuses. The effects can be felt throughout society—chilling effects. This bill is none the less a positive step to mitigate the growing phenomenon of woke cancel culture in places of learning where open debate should be protected and encouraged. I commend my bill to the House.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s my privilege to stand and respond sensibly and thoughtfully to this bill, the Education and Training (Freedom of Expression) Amendment Bill. While we appreciate the member’s attempts to look after what happens in universities, this goes nowhere near resolving the issues he thinks exist.

He talks about protecting in law freedom of speech and academic freedom, and luckily we already have more than one law that does that, whether it is the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or the Human Rights Act, or whether it is the Education and Training (Freedom of Expression)—oh no, that one’s no good—whether it’s the Education and Training Act. The Education and Training Act is really interesting because it protects the freedom of speech of academics more than the other Acts that already exist.

So we know that we are acknowledging, in current legislation, how precious it is to protect our academics’ ability to challenge us as a society, to bring new thinking, new evidence, and new science to us and to confront us and our status quo. We protect it; we cherish it.

What this bill does is it doesn’t protect that any further. What it does is it tells academic institutions that the politicians in this House have a much better idea of what it is they should be looking after as far as knowledge goes and science goes in their institutions. We are absolutely supportive of the idea that the law recognises academics as being a critic and conscience of society—and we’ve heard so many times over the last few months as we brought our bills to this House that have protected and extended how we behave as a society.

Years ago, those thoughts and things that are absolutely—and quite rightly—front and centre, normal, and regular today were at the edges of academia a generation ago. We absolutely understand the importance of academics challenging the status quo. The danger when we take away any opportunity for institutions to regulate that—because there is a tension to manage, and those institutions should be free to do it—is that when we shift from dissenting views that are based on evidence and based on science and academic rigour, and we shift into views that are opinions that are based on falsehoods, demonstrable misinformation, what that does is it actually undermines performing a role as critic and conscience of society. What happens is, we’re reducing the independence of our institutions to do what is best for academics, for their students, and for their staff.

We should be trusting them; we shouldn’t go, “Oh, well it’s OK if someone might physically hurt but not if there is mental injury.” They should be entitled to absolutely be trusted to make sure that science has space to breathe.

Academics versus speakers—and we’ve heard about Don Brash coming into Massey University. This is not about academic freedom. Talking about some overseas visitors bringing in their racist attitudes to public spaces in Auckland is not about what institutions do. This is not going to have an impact on what happens in a public space in Auckland.

What this does is it impacts on the freedom of our institutions to do what is right, to make sure that we have a safe space for science and for evidence and for progress. There is a really, really good reason why we trust our institutions to bring true academic rigour to their spaces. It’s really interesting that we hear that we’ve got people who think that the institutions should be told what they use to judge what helps keep their workers safe under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Mental duress and injury; we keep hearing from the other side of the House how important it is to support our young people and the challenges they have with their mental health—except if somebody’s got a point of view that they don’t like.

Mental injury, mental duress; why should that be any less of a consideration for these people who must care for their students, who must care for their workers, and must care for their academics and their freedom?

By giving visitors more voice, some students and staff may actually feel unsafe, and it actually might reduce the academic rigour that we require. I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve walked on to a campus and had a good debate with your lecturer. Some of us have done it as recently as last week, and it’s wonderful to be in that space where you feel safe to really, really challenge the science—not the misinformation, not the baiting, but the discipline about academic rigour. It’s a beautiful place to be, and I’m sure many of you remember it, some of us more recently than others. But it’s wonderful, and by bringing this Act to fruition, we are going to limit an institution’s obligation to protect that space.

The ability for visitors to have a greater right to bring misinformation—to bring viewpoints that actually undermine science—isn’t helpful. Like I say, it can constrain true academic rigour and debate, and it can impact on a prospective learning decision to study in a particular field.

We should be making institutions safe places—safe places—for academic rigour, not places where we bring in misinformation and it gets the same status. This bill actually stops institutions from making a solid academic response that’s well-rounded and in the best interests of their workers, their students, their academics, and of course, because they challenge us to be better for all of us.

So it is because of that that I will be opposing this bill and I will not be recommending it to the House.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in support at this first reading of the Education and Training (Freedom of Expression) Amendment Bill brought in the name of Dr James McDowall. Congratulations, Dr McDowall, on having this chosen.

The bill’s purpose is seeking to ensure that tertiary institutions who receive public money have some accountability around properly balancing their health and safety obligations, on the one hand, and their obligation to be a place of open debate, on the other hand. Now, the Education and Training Act 2020 and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 requires our institutions to uphold academic freedom and freedom of expression. Our universities are required to be the critic and conscience of society; however, there is no consequence for them failing to do so.

This bill shouldn’t be needed—it really shouldn’t be needed—but we’ve seen a number of examples of why it is needed. Let’s have a wee look just at April this year: Auckland University of Technology cancelling, bizarrely, a talk on feminism, advocacy, and free speech. Back in July last year, seven University of Auckland professors dared to take a position on mātauranga Māori and NCEA science and were publicly chastised by the vice-chancellor. And, of course, the example that we had back in 2018, when Don Brash was cancelled by Massey University for health and safety reasons that were found not to be health and safety reasons and had to be reinstated. So if we weren’t seeing this disturbing trend of things such as this happening, the bill wouldn’t be needed, but, sadly, it is.

But unlike the current Government that when it decides on something, everything has to be centralised and they have to make the decisions, this bill gives the institutions the ability to issue their own codes of practice, to set out their own policies and procedures that student and staff should follow to uphold freedom of expression. So it gives the responsibility back to the institution to ensure that they can get that balance right, but not lean on health and safety as a reason for cancelling.

So if institutions are found to be stifling free speech or de-platforming speakers as a general practice, they may lose all or part of their public funding for failing to act in the public interest.

Now, universities are worried about speakers encouraging violence—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! With apologies to the member. Masks are to be worn in this House unless the member has an exemption or is making a call. So members may not remove their mask, even if only partially to make a call, under these circumstances.

PENNY SIMMONDS: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So if universities are worried about speakers encouraging violence or inciting lawbreaking, they have plenty of protection already. The Crimes Act, the Summary Offences Act 1981, the Broadcasting Act 1989, the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, the Harassment Act 1997, and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 all place constraints on what people can say, to protect against harmful speech. So tertiary institutions should not be falling back on health and safety, when they have those protections in place. Tertiary institutions should be maximising free expression within these limits, not trying to further constrain it.

National is supporting this bill at first reading. If, by chance, the Government members might vote for it and the bill goes to select committee and beyond, there would have to be some consideration made to how the bill could actually enforce these obligations. In the case of loss of funding, how will that impact some unrelated work at the same institution? How much, and why—and all those details. But I’m sure that Dr McDowall is working on that and is prepared to see a select committee work on that. But given this growing trend of tertiary institutions disinviting or de-platforming speakers, we believe this bill is necessary.

JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Madam Speaker, thank you very much. I’m pleased to rise and take a call on the Education and Training (Freedom of Expression) Amendment Bill. Can I acknowledge the MP James McDowall and congratulate him on having his bill drawn from the ballot. I will, unfortunately, not be able to support it this evening.

We only had to turn our television on a few days ago and see the terrible shooting in America, in what appeared to be a racially motivated hate crime—

Simeon Brown: What’s that got to do with the bill?

JO LUXTON: Well, if you’ll listen up, Mr Brown, I will tell you what it has to do with it. Just listen up—less talking, perhaps more listening.

A young person who was radicalised and emboldened by what happened here in New Zealand at the mosque attacks in Christchurch a few years ago—actions based on hate for someone of a different race or religion. People are being exposed to so much, particularly at the moment. There is so much misinformation and disinformation out there, and we’ve seen it firsthand out here on our front lawn. Our place, the people’s place, was desecrated while people had a platform to spread their mis- and disinformation, where they spoke about freedom and freedom of speech; they also spoke about hate.

Simeon Brown: They weren’t at a university. Last time I saw, this wasn’t a university.

JO LUXTON: Now, as a mother of three children, it is innate for me to want to protect them. Mr Brown, you said you wanted to know what it was about. You need to listen instead of hooha-ing across the House. I want my children to go out and explore the world. I want them to attend university and other learning institutions. But I want to know they are as safe as possible while they do so. I can’t tag along to uni with them, so, as parents, we put a lot of trust in those places—that they will do all that they can to keep our children safe, and that means minimising the risk of mental harm, minimising the risk of physical harm, which they are obliged to do under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. This proposed piece of legislation takes that away. How could I, in all good conscience, agree to a bill that potentially increases the risk of harm not only to my children but to young people all around New Zealand?

Yes, it is important that people have freedom of speech. Yes, it is important that people have different points of view. But it is not OK when people want to talk about hateful things, to spread misinformation, to spread disinformation. So it should absolutely be the right of the tertiary education institutions to maintain their autonomy and to be able to disallow speakers, faculty members, students, and visitors, from preventing hateful and even possibly extremist speech.

This bill even suggests that the tertiary education institution should be penalised and have funding withdrawn, revoked, or suspended if they fail to comply with the requirements to protect freedom of speech. On this side of the House, we have a Government that wants to ensure that Aotearoa New Zealand is a safe place, where people feel safe, where they feel valued, and where people are exposed to the richness of different cultures, different religions, different opinions and views that are contrary to their own, but without the risk of harm.

Simon O’Connor: Oh, for goodness’ sake!

JO LUXTON: Yes. Just keep on listening, Mr O’Connor. You may just learn something. There is no way that we should take away the rights of tertiary institutions to make their own choice about who speaks on campus. There is no way that we should introduce punitive measures and remove funding. Funding that is removed or withheld is funding that is taken away from the very people attending the tertiary institutions—in effect, penalising the students.

So in summary, I don’t support a bill that likely increases the risk of exposing people to harmful, hateful, or extremist speech. I don’t support a bill that wants to financially penalise tertiary education institutions for not exposing people to harmful hate speech and in turn penalising the students by withholding or removing funding. I do not commend this bill to the House.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai, tēnā koe, tēnā koutou e te Whare. I just want to start my contribution today by acknowledging Dr James McDowall, as other members across the Chamber have, for the good luck and good fortune of having his bill drawn. I do, however, hate to inform him that the Greens will not be voting for his bill, which I’ll, of course, address in the next five minutes—

Simeon Brown: Cancel culture, Chlöe!

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —if you’d like to listen, Simeon Brown.

So I never thought that I would see the day that the ACT Party thought that more cumbersome and complicated bureaucracy would somehow be a solution to a problem, let alone a hyped-up problem that we actually already have the legislative infrastructure to fix if we are to pay true heed to the noted purpose of this legislation.

So let’s be really, really clear. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 section 14 says—and I quote—“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” Of course, per section 3 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, this right applies to our universities and to our tertiary institutions. Section 5 of that same legislation, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, belies—and I quote—“Justified limitations” that is subject to reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. What that means for anyone who is listening to this debate tonight—

Simeon Brown: Oh, they all just turned off.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: And I really would invite some meaningful contributions here, not just those of purported absolutism and really blurring the lines about what we’re actually discussing in this legislation, Mr Brown. What it means is that when these rights, as outlined in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, rub up against each other—such as, for example, freedom of movement, freedom from discrimination, or the likes of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure—we in this Chamber choose how to balance those rights, and those in State institutions, and those responsible for provision of those campuses in these institutions to which this bill seeks to prescribe how they could balance, and actually not balance, because it is absolutely about absolutism.

There are very recent examples of how we go about trying to balance those rights, as prescribed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, beyond actually those of COVID-19 and the many COVID orders through this House. In fact, I’d refer many members—particularly those from the National Party, who I’m sure will soon stand up and lambast this contribution—to speak to the fact that, for example, they, with the then Attorney-General declaring it an unjust inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, made the decision in the last National Government to deny the rights of prisoners to vote. That is a denial of a right, as prescribed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and something which those on the side of this House who are now seeking to prescribe absolutism to the freedom of expression are saying shouldn’t be balanced.

Every day there are balancing acts that need to occur with these rights that law cannot be too prescriptive in. In a free and democratic society in which we have the opportunity to debate, it is, in fact, necessary. And I’d actually like to acknowledge the fact that ACT themselves acknowledged this when they voted with most of us in this House—not those who have been really barracking the rest of us throughout the rest of the contributions in this debate, but ACT acknowledged, along with most of us, that safe zones around abortion clinics are an appropriate balance of the rights to protect those who are going in to get access to those abortions against the rights of those who are seeking to harass those in the vicinity of those abortion clinics.

This bill does away with that balance, quite explicitly, in fact, by requiring universities to discard any considerations of the health and safety for workers, visitors, and students, to give privilege to whoever wants to come on to a campus and say whatever they want to say. Of course, that could just be spoken word poetry, or it could be to blurt out incessant white noise, or it could be to recruit members for a violent and perhaps bloody coup, like, you know, as acknowledged today and the ACT Party’s Tauranga candidate seemed to so flippantly endorse.

Your right to freedom of speech is not a shield. You can say whatever you want to say, Mr Speaker or other members of this Chamber, but it does not entitle you to protection from the consequences of it, nor does it entitle you to a platform. Perversely, this bill would also seek to remove the freedom of speech of those who oppose the statements of those who are coming on to these campuses to spread their own. The Green Party cannot support this bill in good conscience. It’s far too complicated, unwieldy, and does not achieve the purpose as outlined.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Order! Order! There’s a lot of noise in this House. And, whilst the last speaker had a very loud voice, this speaker doesn’t.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a very shouty night in House tonight, and we talk about the freedom of speech. Can I remind the House that this week, we will celebrate and recognise Pink Shirt Day on Friday, and that particular kaupapa will work to collectively stop bullying in our country. Yet, tonight, we’re putting forward a piece of legislation that is quite counter to what we’re asking. So I ask all members in this House tonight: on Friday, when you wake up and turn up to this place, will you be taking a photo in your pinks? Will you be having your Pink Shirt Day moment to celebrate anti-bullying? Yet, on this Wednesday evening, you’re supporting a bill that puts forward the opportunity for freedom of speech in places that directly impacts negatively on people, how they feel, and their wellbeing.

Also when we go to Pink Shirt Day—and, yesterday, out the front of our Parliament, we raised the flags to celebrate and recognise the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism, and Transphobia. And when we talk about freedom of speech, freedom for who? For those that are transphobic? For those that are homophobic? Are those the people that you want to speak on university campuses? Are they the racists that you want to have the right to speak on our university campuses? Are those the people that you are putting forward in support of this particular bill? I throw you that question, and I ask you to consider that this coming Friday on Pink Shirt Day.

But if I come back to what we’re putting forward, like our member Swarbrick, I am confused why the ACT Party would want to be putting more regulations on the tertiary institutions. Why would you want to do that? You don’t stand for that. That’s why this bill is so confused, right? It aims for politics, it aims for media grabs, and we are about something more substantial in this House this evening.

I look over to the comments of Penny Simmonds, the member who was a former leader in the tertiary education sector. Can she actually tell us this evening that she would allow these people to speak on a campus openly on such subject matters at the Southern Institute of Technology? Would she do that, and honestly, has she obstructed academics on her campus—not to speak—in her past career? I would question where she sits on this bill, even though she has played to the National Party narrative this evening.

What we do have in our country is tertiary education rules that enable academics and all allied staff members in these tertiary institutions to kōrero, to talk openly, respectfully, and academically to deconstruct, reconstruct, and talk about things that are important to people and communities; things that matter. But I come back to the start of my speech because the people that you are asking for, in this particular bill, are going to put forward kaupapa and discussions that hurt other people. They’re not topics. They aren’t topics, the ones that you’ve talked about. They aren’t topics where people aren’t going to be hurt, and you’re asking them to stand up on university campuses and have their say. I oppose this bill. I oppose it once, twice, three times, because that subject matter has no place in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Can I also remind James, who I respect, on our Transport and Infrastructure Committee, actually—a place where we do agree on some things but not on this bill—when we think of women’s suffrage and Kate Sheppard that you mentioned, when we think of the Springbok tour, people had their say; they didn’t need this bill in order to achieve their voice and to move this country forward. I do not support this bill, and I do not commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Order! Just before I call the next speaker, interjections should be witty, funnily enough, and they should be to the point and not altogether that frequent, and frankly, when you wear hearing aids, it’s like a constant groan in your ears, and it’s very boring.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Against the spirit of free speech, Mr Speaker, may I suggest that for mine, you can turn your hearing aid off for five minutes and then turn it back on!

To illustrate the very problem that the left and the radical left are putting across tonight, I would just like to say I have found every contribution from the Labour Party and the Greens—$200,000 - Chlöe Swarbrick—offensive! It’s hurt me! I’m mentally anguished by what they’ve said! My tribe, my community, and my identity has been deeply offended, and no one on that side could dare to critique that, because that’s my experience!

Don’t you dare question what I’m feeling! My feelings trump anything you think and anything your group thinks! My tribe, my feelings, are right, and I am very upset tonight!

I want everything that the Labour Party and the radical Greens say banned! I don’t want to see them on the universities, because if I walk there tomorrow, I could have a hurt feeling—I could have a hurt feeling!

Do you know what—do you know what? I could go to a university and someone could say “Simon O’Connor, we don’t agree with you.”, and do you know what? That’s just going to cut—according to the Labour Party—so much to my heart! They’re going to say, “Gosh, you’re a Catholic.” Oh, what terrible sin could that be? That’s a terrible thing, you know, and I’d feel really hurt about that! “You’re an academic—you’ve studied. You’re privileged.”—gosh, that’s going to hurt!

I’m doing this as parody, because what doesn’t seem to get to the left is that freedom of speech relies on the ability for, actually, an array of ideas. The whole point of freedom of speech is not for the speech we agree with; it’s the speech we don’t, and, unfortunately, our universities have been captured by a bunch of left-wing progressives.

It only needs one quick example: Auckland University of Technology—I’ve written to them recently. Guess what? A bunch of women—that’s probably the wrong pronoun and collective pronoun, but anyway. A bunch of women—I want to be really specific about that gender; a bunch of women—wanted to go on to the university and talk about women, and do you know what happened? They were banned. Women were banned from talking about women’s rights, and not only that; they were abused, they were given hateful speech, they were harassed, and they were bullied from people who called them inclusion officers—from academics. It’s an absolute disgrace—it’s an absolute disgrace.

Let’s be under no illusion here: this is nothing to do with freedom of speech from the other side; it’s all about control. You will only be allowed to think, say, and preach what they believe in. That is autocracy, that is a totalitarian mind-set, and it infects our universities, like a virus. It’s an absolute cancer, and like any cancer—and the doctors know this—you rip it out, and the best way you rip it out is some sunlight.

There is an absolute arrogance—an arrogance of the highest degree—from the left and the radical left that they know best. The thing is that you don’t, and I can say that with confidence, because I might be on the other side and I might have a different opinion, but do you know what? I don’t think I know best. I think I have an opinion; I could be wrong. I’m actually willing to be told I’m wrong without having a bloody cry-baby in the corner—“I need a safe space.” Grow up.

To those academics, those of you who responded to the survey talking of freedom as some appropriated colonial concept: get out. We pay our taxes; you’re an absolute disgrace. To those academics, including those who fought for COVID, who bullied and harassed other academics, those seven who stood up the Royal Society—an absolute shocker and a shame. To those COVID scientists being paid huge amounts of money by this Government harassing their colleagues—an absolute disgrace.

So we need legislation like this. We need more legislation like this, because at the end of the day, our universities are no longer filled with academics. They’re filled with activists, and their mind-sets are weak—and they shake their heads on the other side. We know it’s so weak, because they cannot even sustain the most coherent, simple, basic arguments without crying.

University has flourished throughout the world. It’s been given to New Zealand. By the way, universities are appropriated into New Zealand—I just thought you left-wing academics needed to grow up. They have a lineage of free speech and ideas.

So the final message is really simple. To those on the left, to those academics who do not believe in freedom of speech: grow up. And if you’re not prepared to grow up, go and become a kindergarten teacher.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I had written a speech, but before I read what I was trying to say initially the last speaker, Simon O’Connor’s words were quite unfortunate and sad, especially for somebody like me who, as a man of colour, has faced a lot of abuse—including to the point when I was running for election. The sort of comments the speaker was making are the sort of comments behind which a lot of people hide behind and make those comments—not just in private conversations but also out in public. So I just want to say the last five minutes were very unfortunate, and the words that came out of that speaker’s mouth were really, really unfortunate.

Having said that, I do want to congratulate Dr James McDowall for having his bill pulled out of the biscuit tin. I won’t be—obviously—supporting the Education and Training (Freedom of Expression) Amendment Bill.

Just when I had been elected as a new MP, I received a message one day from one of my constituents saying that a white supremacist group was organising a meeting under a false name at one of the community centres in Hamilton. They got in touch with me, they got in touch with the community centre, and then the community centre—who see their role, their job as bringing people together in Hamilton—felt that this meeting should not be organised by this white supremacist group because it does not reflect the values of the community centre. It does not reflect the value of the community, because these people were trying to sow the seeds of division. Now, the community centre cancelled this right-wing group’s meeting. Now, replace this community centre with an educational institute. Right? Imagine a university or polytech where a similar event is being organised. What this bill asks is that the educational institution shouldn’t be able to refuse speakers they consider extremist or harmful from speaking.

According to this bill, the freedom of expression should be protected by taking away the freedom education providers have in making a sensible decision for the welfare of their students and staff members. So, basically, if this bill goes ahead, tertiary education institutions will not be allowed to rely on their duty to eliminate or minimise potential risk of mental harm to students and staff under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. Not only this, the tertiary education institutions will be ineligible for funding and may have funding suspended, revoked, or withdrawn if they fail to comply with the requirement to protect the freedom of expression.

This bill fails to balance the harm reduction with protection of democratic freedoms like freedom of expression. This bill believes that people should have the ability to express and speak freely, irrespective of the harm or damage that it could be due to induce on its audience. This bill cuts through the institutional autonomy provision in the Education and Training Act 2020, which already has the academic freedom provision for staff and students. What this bill does is it gives the visitors the same rights as the staff and students. As my colleague Angela Roberts recently mentioned in her speech, this can lead to students and staff feeling unsafe, students and staff feeling that their academic freedom is constrained, while also impacting on prospective students—in this particular setting—from being part of that education programme.

Currently, within the framework of the 2020 Tertiary Education Strategy, tertiary education institutions are already expected to ensure that robust policies, plans, and support are in place to address some of the concerns that I mentioned around racism; around bias—both for their students and their staff members. Institutions are expected to provide a safe place. Given what we have seen in this country in the last few years, it is important that we strengthen social cohesion in New Zealand. That’s not going to happen with a bill like this which empowers people to be able to speak against people who might not look like them, whether it is the colour of their skin or whether they associate being part of the rainbow community or—

Simon Court: Sharma! Tell us, which ideas are unsafe? Tell us which ideas are unsafe!

Dr GAURAV SHARMA: I have just given you three great examples, Simon. Bills like this don’t help the discussion that we need at this point in our community, in our country. I will not be able to commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Just before I call the next speaker, I’ve had to interrupt between every speech and I don’t tend to interrupt but those of you who are meant to wear masks, please wear a mask.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Members may recall a couple of years ago that two Canadian provocateurs who had very strong views about the correlation between race and IQ were denied access to public facilities in Auckland in order to hold public meetings, and that caused quite a furore.

Now, I raise that point because at the same time as that was going on in New Zealand, in Dunedin at the University of Otago was one of the world’s leading researchers, the late Emeritus Professor Jim Flynn, who wrote extensively on race and IQ and gender and IQ and would have had a hundred arguments to refute Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux, the two Canadians who couldn’t come. We had a choice as a country to say: do we allow them to hold their views and express them, however offensive they may be, and then kick them out of the park, or do we shut them down and prevent them from doing so on the basis that their offence could be harmful?

The irony of that is that Professor Flynn, a radical leftist who stood in the old Dunedin North electorate for The Alliance and New Labour, a very left-wing academic, was nevertheless one of this country’s strongest proponents of free speech. In 2019, he wrote a book called In Defence of Free Speech, which his publisher refused to publish because it was going to be considered incendiary. He eventually got it published, and the new title was A Book Too Risky to Publish. And the sad thing about that is that Professor Flynn, in the cradle of the place where people should be able to freely express differing views, could see what we’re debating tonight, and that is that our universities—despite what Angela Roberts has said about this being unnecessary, who then went on to say that universities should be safe. Professor Flynn and I agreed on this: universities should be anything but safe. They should be places to take risks, to challenge, to identify, and—if necessary, or if it happens—to offend. I’ve been on the campus enough to have been accused of being a white supremacist, a transphobe, a homophobe, a religious fundamentalist. Some of that was offensive, to which I say: I get over it, I debate it, I defeat it, I refute it. But I don’t go and hide in a corner and find my safe space, as Jo Luxton would have me do, because the universities are the very place where people need to be put at risk.

I appreciate what Shanan Halbert said. I consider him to be one of the more thoughtful members of the 2020 intake and I understand his concern. But he interjected on Dr McDowall to say “Freedom of speech means freedom to be transphobic.” Well, firstly, the definition of transphobic will be different just about in every single person’s mind in this place. Who decides what their definition is and who was going to take offence to it? The answer to that question of who decides is not so much “who decides”, but how we decide. We decide by dialogue, a two-way transaction of ideas. And the very place to actually consider that are our universities, amongst our young who go out into the world, having often left home, particularly at Otago, to think, to be provoked, to argue, to learn, not to be safe. I think if anybody goes to university to be safe, they are in the wrong place.

Despite what Jo Luxton said and Angela Roberts said, the opposition to this bill—which I believe is necessary for the very reasons of the trend that we are seeing away from free speech, even though it could be harmful and offensive—is the very reason we need it. I don’t want people to be offended, but if they are: argue. Argue against it. Counter the argument, refute the argument, defeat the argument, but don’t hide the argument.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I stand against this bill, for three reasons. It’s recognised in law and in ethics that freedom of speech is not absolute. Secondly, it’s incredibly ironic and hypocritical for ACT to suggest that what they are doing is anything except limiting the self-determination of academic institutions; itself a lasso on free speech. And thirdly, as seductive as it is to look at universities as a group of institutions in their own right, actually the focus around free speech needs to be on content, not on place. So it’s a red herring and can lead to all sorts of other questions about where we might want to make freedom of speech absolute and not look at the harm that is caused.

But I do thank the member Dr James McDowall for getting his ballot drawn, because it has raised a really important debate. I don’t think that free speech has ever before been as critical as it is now, when we weigh it against misinformation, hate speech, and some of the things we see that are going on in the world. I’ll call to mind even the misinformation we’ve seen in the New Zealand context this week, with Business New Zealand and its active misinformation campaign against fair pay agreements, where the manipulation of a headline was done to make something look like a fait accompli and to hoodwink the public. So we all do need to be vigilant about our right to free speech but also our right to be free from misinformation.

There are the needs for limits on unfettered free speech. Penny Simmonds raised health and safety as being incidental; if there was ever a reason for there to be a limit, it would be for reasons of health and safety. What could be more important than that?

It’s also hypocritical for the Opposition to suggest that an institution doesn’t have rangatiratanga around its own free speech. If I look at how they’re doing that, the bill cuts across institutional autonomy provisions in the Education and Training Act. It narrows the choices that institutions can make about how they operate. It provides for regulations about free speech. It requires a code of practice on free speech. These are all anathema to free speech and to freedom of choice. But also, the safety impacts are around students and students’ decisions to learn, and that goes to the question of harm.

The other element that I find really interesting is ACT’s requirement to tag this bill to funding—what a transactional way to look at the world. It doesn’t surprise me, but it’s really interesting that something as fundamental as academic freedom and issues around free speech would be tagged to something around funding. It’s very transactional and it’s very short-sighted.

Simon O’Connor talked about hurt feelings and saying that it’s about crying in the corner—it’s not; it’s about the balancing of rights. If we look at the March 15 attacks, if we look at the harm that can be done to people who are visibly different, even in my own electorate recently with the case of a young woman at school who had her hijab pulled off in what was a racially motivated attack and a religious attack, that is different from being a Catholic. Catholics can’t be determined from how they look, but people who look different, who seem different, are subject to these. When I look at the diversity on the Opposition benches, it’s easy to see why they may not have any empathy with that argument, because they’ve probably never been in that situation themselves.

So, in summary, nobody has a monopoly on the truth, and as we grapple with these issues that relate to individual freedom to speech, we have to ask: where is the freedom to denigrate, where is the freedom to incite violence, where is the freedom to incite anarchy, where is that line, and where is the place for human dignity? These are important questions.

In going forward, we will need to debate them because we live in a context of populism, of misinformation, and of overseas funding coming into our institutions and into our society in a way where it’s really difficult for people to navigate their way forward according to their values and according to what they know to be the truth. So I welcome the debate. I hope that we can take the debate to a more thoughtful level than what has been offered tonight. But these are very strong reasons why I won’t be supporting this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I call Dr James McDowall—five minutes in reply.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, that was a pretty confusing contribution there. But nevertheless I thank all members for their contributions and airing their views. That’s what it’s all about, that we can have this free debate without restriction. It’s too bad that, you know, perhaps some of these views would not be allowed on university campuses, which is actually what this bill is about.

I just want to thank National Party speakers in particular. As Penny Simmonds said, of course the existing legislation should be enough to deal with this issue. We should not have to debate this. But the reality is we do. De-platforming does happen under very bizarre pretences sometimes. The previous speaker, Ingrid Leary, spoke about where is the line? Well, there already is a line in law with criminal activity and incitement to commit violence. These things already exist. One of the examples was somebody being racially abused, which is horrendous, but they were attacked, physically attacked. Well obviously, this bill has absolutely nothing to do with that. So I think the irony of most—if not all—of the Labour Party speeches is just the sheer quantity of misinformation coming from those benches.

I want to further just point out, because I think it’s quite important, people spoke tonight, particularly on that side, about terrorism, about shootings. Several speakers spoke of the mosque terrorist attack in Christchurch, the actions of a deranged individual who came here from Australia, who never actually attended a New Zealand university. Somehow this bill will make others do something similar or had something to do with that. I think the comparison—and also talking about shootings in the United States—is utterly ridiculous and pretty disgusting, actually. It probably falls under their own guidelines of what hate speech might be, so anyway.

All the talk of people feeling potentially unsafe and then people shouldn’t be allowed to spread falsehoods on university campuses, these are ideas. Who decides what is true information, what is false information, and what we need to regulate or don’t. That’s the point of a contest of ideas, is that you can actually air these out. They do say sunlight is the best disinfectant.

This bill is not about enabling bullying. It is to rein in bullying from university coordinators and vice chancellors who enforce their world view on students. I think it was Shanan Halbert, I believe—the Kate Sheppard example was spoken about, given I mentioned it earlier, and the Springbok tour. Shanan pointed out that they didn’t need these laws. Well look, times have changed. Things have changed. Speech’s actually gotten worse—well, the freedom of speech has gotten worse in many aspects of our society. Again, another Labour MP spoke of white supremacy, an event in Hamilton at a community centre. They declined to host them. Well, again, a comparison to a university is just not there. You know, it is misinformation, I’m sorry.

What I would say in the time that I have, again, I respect the views of everyone. I think there was some good contributions, but also some very strange ones that were borderline defamatory as to my motivations behind this bill. I would say that we are creating a cohort of young people who are hypersensitive and no longer daring, no longer prepared, to basically think of the unthinkable. They’re deprived of intellectual rigour and freedom on campuses. This was a chance to actually address that and put it through to select committee, perhaps, and actually take this seriously.

David Seymour: They could still change their mind.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL: They could change their minds, you’re right.

So we shouldn’t forget that universities are there to provide us with scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and so on. They are not there to provide us with State-sponsored political activists. So it is a shame that the bill is most likely coming to its end now. But I’m glad that we had this debate. It seems I have potentially touched a nerve or two and started some sort of culture war; at least there’s a culture war going on, on that side. Anyway, that’s all for me. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training (Freedom of Expression) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 42

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 77

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): I move, That the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.

This is a simple bill but it deals with a complex and difficult matter of sexual harassment. The bill itself extends the time during which a person can make a personal grievance claim from 90 days to 12 months in cases of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is an invidious and difficult issue to talk about, let alone take action to try to prevent or to seek redress when it is found to have taken place. Our law does try to deal with it but it could be better.

Let me set out the problem. First of all, we have a definition of sexual harassment in workplace settings in the Employment Relations Act (ERA). Section 108 says that in workplace settings sexual harassment occurs when an employer or representative of an employer (a) directly or indirectly makes a request of that employee for sexual intercourse, sexual contact, or other form of sexual activity that contains an implied or overt promise of preferential treatment; or an implied or overt threat of detrimental treatment; or an implied or overt threat about the present or future employment status of that employee; or by the use of language, either written or spoken, of a sexual nature; or the use of visual material of a sexual nature; or physical behaviour of a sexual nature that directly or indirectly subjects the employee to behaviour that is unwelcome or offensive to that employee, whether or not that is conveyed to the employer or representative, and that, either by its nature or through repetition, has a detrimental effect on that employee’s employment, job performance, or job satisfaction. That’s how we define sexual harassment in workplaces.

It can also occur when a customer or client engages in similar behaviour. If an employer takes action to ensure that sexual harassment doesn’t happen and prevents it from occurring again—ensures that employees are safe and comfortable in their places of work—then, of course, no personal grievance to sexual harassment can arise. So far so good.

The difficulty arises with the nature of sexual harassment. People are often reticent about sexual matters; it’s not something we discuss particularly openly and we can be embarrassed to admit that something of a sexual nature has happened. Sometimes we may not even understand what is going on. Add to that the power dynamic in a workplace. If a senior worker, or an important client, or even just an older employee makes life difficult for someone, then all too often it is hard to speak out. Our cultural norms of shame and fear can hold us back. The power that another person holds over us can hold us back. We can be so upset and traumatised by the experience that, for a while, all that can be done is to retreat. And that can hold us back. The fear of retaliation can hold us back. Of course, there’s still the narrative out there that she must have done something to cause this, which can hold us back.

Therein lies the problem that this bill addresses. Ninety days may just not be enough time to raise a complaint in cases of sexual harassment. This is not just a theoretical problem, we know that sexual harassment is a common work problem.

In 2018, the New Zealand Law Society commissioned Colmar Brunton to investigate the realities of bullying and harassment within the legal profession: “When asked if they had been sexually harassed in a legal environment at some time in their working life, 31 percent of women and 5 percent of men said they had.”

Lawyer Zoë Lawton started a blog collecting examples from within the New Zealand legal profession of what went on. Here’s an example from that blog. It’s quite long but I’ve chosen it because it illustrates the range of problems that people deal with.

“I am grateful to have the opportunity to share my experiences in an anonymous forum. I wish I were courageous enough to make my comments publicly. I worked at one of the large commercial law firms in Auckland for about four years. During my time there, I experienced the following: the male solicitors ranked all of the female solicitors on a three-tier ranking system. They openly discussed women’s rankings in the office. When a young female lawyer travelled up to the Auckland office to assist on a case, several male solicitors took turns to walk past the office where she was sitting and then indicated whether she was worth sleeping with by giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down. The women in the team were given nicknames that corresponded with their physical attributes. When a young woman was frustrated about a legal issue, she was asked if she was on period. A partner was talking on the phone to a client and assured the client that there were ‘plenty of good looking sheilas in the office’ and he would make sure he sent one down to deliver the documents. Many, many loud conversations in the office, during work hours, where the men discussed their Tinder exploits in graphic detail. Men who would walk past women and make gestures as if they were ‘motor-boating’ them. They thought the women didn’t realise what they were doing. A partner with a creepy reputation who always found a way to end up going home in a taxi with a particularly drunk female solicitor, ‘just to make sure she got home ok’. This happened several times. I don’t know what happened after they left the function.

Many of these are not offensive enough to warrant a complaint to HR [on their own]. However, looking back on the experience, I now realise that this was a toxic environment that was rife with sexual harassment.”

That is just one entry in Zoë Lawton’s blog. There are pages and pages and pages of them. Sexual harassment is commonplace, despite all the work we’ve done in past decades.

But when the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment took an in-depth look at bullying and harassment in a report in 2020, it found that, between 2015 and 2019, the ERA considered just 14 cases where sexual harassment was the main basis of a personal grievance, and the Employment Court considered none. That seems odd. We know that people experience sexual harassment at work. We know it is far from uncommon. We know it causes people to leave their jobs.

In that Colmar Brunton survey of lawyers that I referred to earlier, of those who said they had been sexually harassed, 39 percent said it affected their emotional or mental wellbeing, and 32 percent said it affected their job or career prospects. People are badly affected by sexual harassment at work, and yet the ERA hears very few cases about it. That suggests that something is wrong in our settings.

Employment lawyer Susan Hornsby-Geluk says that one of the issues is that three months is just not long enough when it comes to sexual harassment. Although there is an exceptional circumstances clause in the law, which means that a case can sometimes be heard even if it’s raised after the three-month deadline, in practice, none have been because the ERA has interpreted exceptional circumstances very narrowly. So there is a problem in respect of raising personal grievances with respect to sexual harassment—it’s just not happening.

Of course, the same might be said about bullying in the workplace and other causes of personal grievance. Three months is just not long enough to consider and then lay a claim. However, that is a matter that the select committee might examine. As is, indeed, the issue of when the 90 days—or, if this bill is passed—the 12 months begins. Is it at the first instance of sexual harassment, or the second, or the last? What if there is a pattern of low-level events, how does that affect the time during which a personal grievance claim can be made? I hope that the select committee will examine these issues and I look forward to hearing what they think might be done in this regard.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the woman who did much of the work that lies behind this bill—from assembling the evidence, to meeting with the Minister for workplace relations, and with my Green Party colleague Marama Davidson, and meeting with me. Zoë Lawton, thank you for your work. If this bill, in due course, becomes law, it will be in large part because you made it happen. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. And thank you for the opportunity to speak on this, the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill in the name of Dr Deborah Russell MP. This, for those people tuning in, is what’s called a member’s bill, where this member has had the good fortune of having won the ballot in order to get this bill considered by Parliament. And she’s had more luck than I have on these matters.

This is a bill that we in the National Party will support to select committee. And we do want to put this legislation in front of the wider public for them to comment on and give some feedback on, because we all know that the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace continues to be something that many workers and employers have to face. It’s nothing new; it’s been around since the dawn of time, and my sense is that there is far less tolerance for it now than there was in the past, and that’s a good thing. But there is still an enormous amount of work to do to show and give a clear indication that any form of harassment is not acceptable in the workplace, let alone sexual harassment. It extends in all sorts of workplaces in all circumstances. Certainly I remember being a victim of it myself in my teenage years, and many people in society have had to deal with unwanted attention in this way and have had to cope with it and all the things that have come along with it, and have had nowhere to go, not knowing what to do, and it takes time to work its way through. So the basic argument behind this bill or this proposal is that 90 days—three months—in order to lodge a personal grievance on this matter may not be sufficient time, given the nature of the circumstances behind what kind of harassment went on. And so, on the face of it, definitely worth considering.

I suppose the issue that we have to consider, and what we’ll hear some advice from, of course, would be to say, if we were to extend the time available for personal grievances across the board from 90 days to 12 months, then that would create, I think, a lot of problems. Because you’ve got to think in terms of small businesses and small-business owners and the uncertainty that would be created in the minds of those business operators having the potential for some sort of personal grievance to be raised extended over many, many months and towards a year. So at least at 90 days people have some sort of sense of certainty of how things are going and what’s going to happen.

If you extend that to 12 months, then that uncertainty hangs in the back of the minds of a small-business owner in particular because of the very severe consequences that that can have for their business if a personal grievance is raised and the whole process drags them into the ERA—the Employment Relations Authority—the court structure, the many thousands of dollars involved in lawyers and in pay-outs and things like that can be an absolute nightmare for small businesses struggling to stay afloat. And so we certainly wouldn’t want to be adding to the challenges that those businesses have to face at the same time. So we’ll be very keen to get a sense of how this would work in practice and whether or not this particular aspect, sexual harassment, is a special case. Then, naturally, we would be very cautious about extending this to all sorts of other cases of personal grievances so that that uncertainty that many small businesses would face would be extended further. So that is something that we’d be very keen to hear from in the select committee process.

So just for those people tuning in, what happens is this is a bill that’s been introduced by a member. We’re having our first reading now, and if it passes, which it looks like it will do, then it goes off to the select committee, who will call for submissions, and everybody in the public will have an opportunity to have their say. I’m sure we’ll hear from many people advocating for this extension. We may hear from some people voicing a note of caution about how this should operate and some of the dangers therein, and then we’ll reflect upon that and report back to the House.

So that’s a process that we’ll be looking forward to, but overall we in the National Party do share deep concerns—well, do share a common opposition that everybody in this House, I’m sure, extends to sexual harassment in the workplace or, indeed, in any part of our lives, and wanting to send a very clear message that it can’t be tolerated and that all New Zealanders, male, female, whatever, should be able to work without feeling the oppression that comes from ongoing sexual harassment. So there is no clearer message that can be sent, and so we’re looking forward to the discussion and thank the member for bringing this opportunity before the House, and look forward to the further debate this evening. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This evening I rise, with gratitude, to speak on the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill. I say “with gratitude”, because this is needed legislation, and I’d just like to thank my colleague Dr Deborah Russell for bringing this to the House. We’ve heard the need for this from two of our colleagues already, and I imagine that we will hear more before the evening is up. But I just wanted to add to the words that my colleague Dr Russell said, and just to define for the House, again, what we mean when we’re talking about sexual harassment. Sexual harassment, as we’ve heard, is any unwelcome or offensive sexual behaviour that is repeated or is serious enough to have a harmful effect, or which contains an implied or overt promise of preferential treatment, or an implied or overt threat of detrimental treatment.

This bill is asking for a very simple change to the Employment Relations Act. Basically, what it’s asking for is that it will extend the time that a personal grievance involving sexual harassment can be brought to 12 months. I understand that, in the select committee process, this may not be where the bill lands, but certainly that’s what sits before us at the time. And we know that this is primarily an issue that affects women, although by no means exclusively. We’ve heard from Mr Goldsmith this evening that he was, sadly, a victim himself. I can say that I, too, have been a victim in my past, of sexual harassment. And I would be astonished if anyone here could say that they had not. Although I obviously can’t speak for any of my colleagues, I can speak for my friends and for people who I’ve spoken to on this issue, and they confirm that this is a widely felt issue of deep concern.

As Dr Russell said, the Colmar Brunton survey did reveal that 31 percent of women said that, in their lifetime of work in law, they had experienced sexual harassment. Thirty-nine percent of the people said—and that included the men—it had affected their emotional or mental wellbeing, and 32 percent said it affected their job or career prospects, so this is no small issue. Nineteen percent of lawyers said that they had resigned from their job, and so why is it, do you think, that we see so little reporting? Well, people report fear of consequences; they fear that things will be made worse by reporting. The fear that this is not felt to be serious enough. And that’s what the lawyers were saying they felt. Others report concerns that this won’t be kept confidential, and that we know that reporting sexual harassment, in itself, is traumatising. So we can understand that there is a need for a little extra time so that people can come to terms with what’s happened to them, to maybe get the help that they need, get the support that they need to ensure that, when they do come forward, they are not at risk.

It’s undoubtedly true, as I said, that this is an issue that primarily affects women but, as well as affecting men, we know that our rainbow whānau are also disproportionately affected by issues around sexual harassment. Men, though, and women, I challenge you to not let this be our future. At 54, it breaks my heart that this is still a reality; that I’ve had to listen to young people come forward and describe changes that they’ve made to their careers as a result of experiencing sexual harassment. We know that men are victims too. Men and women and everyone: I need you to step up. I’m going to put a challenge. I’m going to ask you that, in addition to passing this piece of legislation, we actually challenge it every moment, and at every opportunity, any issues that we see in front of us, of sexual harassment. Don’t tolerate it, because this needs to stop. This is going to go some way to helping, this bill, and that’s why I commend it to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to get to rise this evening and provide the Green Party’s support for the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill in the name of Dr Deborah Russell. I’d like to congratulate her on the luck of getting it drawn but also for seeing a very discrete intervention that would make a difference and bringing that legislation to the House.

I also want to echo Dr Russell’s acknowledgment of Zoë Lawton and the work that she has done to bring survivors’ voices into the public to help reform our systems. It is incredibly important work and we have much work to do.

This piece of legislation, in extending the time that people have to raise a personal grievance that involves allegations of sexual harassment from 90 days to 12 months, does just make sense because of the dynamics of sexual violence as well as, often, some of the dynamics in the workplace that relate to sexual harassment. It makes sense to provide more time for those cases to come forward.

I note that in the consultation that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) released in, I think, October 2020 around bullying and harassment at work in that document, they noted that they’d heard concerns about the lodging of cases with the Employment Relations Authority—that an employee must raise the personal grievance with their employer within 90 days of the alleged action. That is noted in that consultation as a problem, so it’s great to see that being addressed through this bill here. I’m still waiting. MBIE put out the consultation on that in 2020. It closed in March 2021 and we’re still waiting to hear from the Minister what the Government’s next steps in response to that public consultation will be. I’ve got to say I’m waiting with bated breath, because it is really important.

We have an incredibly complex system for responding to sexual harassment. We have the Employment Relations Authority, we have the Human Rights Act provision, and we have the WorkSafe provision, and we have our criminal justice system. And they don’t fit neatly together.

All except for WorkSafe require two parties and require the victim of the abuse to come forward and be potentially challenged and go sitting across from the person who they have experienced violence from. Rather than in the WorkSafe example, where they’re not necessarily having to—and there’s someone questioning this idea and saying they should have to, when actually it’s possible to investigate a situation and find the evidence and hear from the person accused. Nobody’s ever saying that that would not be part of it—but without requiring people to sit in the room together and be against each other.

So there is a lot of work that needs to be done in the system. When the MeToo movement was really erupting, and this is part of where it came back into public consciousness—that was in 2018 and we were really challenged as a country to do better. The Government took actions in terms of making sure that WorkSafe actually started responding appropriately to sexual harassment. That work has started, but more needs to be done, and this piece of work sits inside of that work being done by MBIE to look at the employment relations response.

We do need to get on with this because we’ve had like a wave of public concern around sexual harassment in the 1980s and we all thought we’ve got it fixed. Then it went out of public consciousness because we get awkward and uncomfortable and don’t want to talk about it, and then nothing happens and everything reverts back to the toxic environment that had been before.

This time, we have to make sure that we sustain our efforts and change our systems in a way that will ensure those who are causing harm are held to account.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it is a real pleasure to stand and speak to this bill in the name of my colleague and very dear friend, Dr Deborah Russell. Dr Deborah Russell, I have to say, is one of the staunchest feminist women I know, and I utterly adore the fact that she has this bill in her name. I just really want to congratulate you, Dr Russell, for this bill, and appreciate the fact that if any bill should come before this House in your name, it should be this. So congratulations.

Look, the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill—long name, but very clearly does some really useful things. What we know about sexual harassment—and we’ve heard from each and every speaker who’s kind of given us a bit of a definition: sexual harassment, under the Human Rights Act, and I’m just going to abbreviate it, is any unwelcome or offensive sexual behaviour that is repeated or is serious enough to have a harmful effect. I think we all, sadly, probably understand what sexual harassment is, from either our own experiences or family or friends. So I don’t think we need to go into that in any more depth.

However, what we do need to do, as a society and in this House, is to acknowledge the great harm that occurs with sexual harassment. We also have to acknowledge the shame that is attached to it, and this is one of the reasons I am quite delighted that, at the moment, the bill is proposing that we go from a 90-day period to a 12-month period. I hope that that sort of time frame sits in a longer period, because the shame that people feel in having been sexually harassed, and the experiences they feel—they need to spend time to get the courage up, generally, to report. They may have had to leave their employment. They may have had to go into counselling or some kind of support to be able to take this step and to report. And that is because, quite often, in a gendered society, in a patriarchal society, we blame ourselves as women. And I just want to acknowledge that for those who are concerned about sexual harassment, to take courage and to do what needs to be done.

I want to come very quickly to the overall beliefs and values that my colleague Jan Logie spoke about, and I want to just acknowledge the work of Te Aorerekura, which is the work around family and sexual violence, the policies that we have. And in that, the very first stage of this work is around changing societal views and values, which is where I think this bill sits. It sits at the beginning of the process of change. And I also want to acknowledge what Jan Logie said in regards to—we did sexual harassment in the 1980s, and then we forgot about it, and it’s back.

I’d also like to just acknowledge the fact that we here in this Parliament have had some quite consistent and serious matters raised in regards to sexual harassment. So I am holding up here Bullying and Harassment in the New Zealand Parliamentary Workplace, which is a Debbie Francis report. We have done some significant work in this Parliament to make some changes, and I think that this piece of legislation will add to our the safety. So I would just like to acknowledge the fact that the first thing that we have in this House, for parliamentarians and for those in Parliament—the first thing that we say here is we show that bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment, are unacceptable. For me, that is incredibly important, because it shows us as leaders in this country, but also to those who work here that this is unacceptable.

So I would like to commend this bill, absolutely, and I would like to acknowledge my friend Deborah Russell for bringing this to the House, and I thank you. I commend this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I call—[pauses]

Chris Baillie: Chris Baillie.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I was expecting to call your next door neighbour. Sorry, Chris.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to take a call on the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill. Certainly a lot less contentious than the last couple of bills we’ve heard tonight, which must be a good thing.

This bill is an uncomplicated bill that extends the period a personal grievance related to sexual harassment can be brought from three months to 12 months. It reflects the view that due to the nature of sexual harassment, victims often take longer to come forward. ACT will support this bill to select committee. The current 90-day deadline puts a relatively short time frame to advance a grievance, despite the grievance being serious in nature. There’s a reasonable case to suggest that the grievance would still be present after the extended period of time. New Zealand has a pretty poor record around sexual harassment and violence, and ACT is empathetic to the serious issues of sexual harassment in the workplace.

There are a couple of things that will be heard during the select committee process that may require more information. The impact on business is difficult to quantify, but I can’t imagine it having a huge effect on anything. The current personal grievance process is very employee-biased, and any misuse of this bill needs to be treated very seriously. I was talking to a business owner last week, actually, who had one of his labourers take his ute home without permission, and he got a drunk driving charge. The employer couldn’t trust him. The next week, on Monday actually, and he’s up for a personal grievance because he reduced his hours. Or the waitress who was asked by her female manager to smile more when serving customers a couple of months ago; that led to a personal grievance for bullying. So we need to be really careful to make sure the personal grievance process is used how it is meant to be used.

I think we will hear in the select committee that this issue, and it’s been alluded to earlier by a couple of speakers, isn’t gender specific, and I think many examples won’t fit the expected profile that we all are going to assume.

We look forward to ironing out some of these issues in the select committee process and progressing this bill. We support this bill. Thanks.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s a pleasure to stand to take the opportunity to speak on the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill. First and foremost, I’d like to congratulate my colleague Deborah Russell for knowing where to change the law in the right way. We know from previous members’ bills that sometimes a very small change in the law can make a very significant change in the daily lives of people in New Zealand, and I think this bill does exactly that. So the simple change of enabling a longer period to be able to lodge a personal grievance gives people time to process what may have happened to them, and to do that in a way that they feel comfortable and confident in being able to do that.

I think it also sends a strong message that we need to be more accommodating to enable people to come forward, and that’s exactly what this bill does. So currently only 90 days is able to be done for a report of sexual harassment. That can be difficult because that behaviour may be ongoing. That behaviour may have been occurring for a number of years. So coming to terms with that and being able to come forward is an important part. It is an imperative that employees have time to consider what has occurred and to feel safe to raise it with others. This bill will ensure that there is time to process and proceed in a manner which best suits that person and their family.

The current deadline seems an arbitrary number of days that imposes a deadline on victims of workplace sexual harassment and makes it less likely that they could potentially formally raise concerns about the behaviour of their colleagues. This bill will improve the personal grievance process for victims to consider what has happened to them before deciding to come forward.

I think importantly, it sends that message that it is OK to come forward. I’d like to share a story. My first job was when I was 15 years old, working in a supermarket, and I worked alongside other females at a similar age. Our boss at the time was sexually harassing one of the members of staff, and we did not know what to do. We knew it wasn’t right. We knew what he was saying was kind of a joke, but it wasn’t a right joke. Then it proceeded that he was offering driving lessons to one girl in particular after hours, unbeknown to her parents. It was me who at the time raised it with the superiors. I was terrified when I did it, but I knew that it was not right, and that member of staff was transferred to another supermarket. It was only when he was transferred that the victim broke down and cried. It was only then that she came to the full realisation that she had been a victim of sexual harassment. That experience, that stepping up and making a stand, got the full support of my female colleagues and formed and forged my experience in workplace relationships going forward to know that you need to call things out when you need to.

So I would like to hope that this bill sends a strong message to all those 15-year-old women or men in workplaces around New Zealand who are yet to be full adults and know what’s going on, or maybe who just think you’re along with colleagues in any of those circumstances. If you do not feel comfortable or do not feel right in your workplace, you have the right to challenge that, and you should not be curtailed by 90 days in order to be able to carry that forward. So I commend Deborah and her ability to take something that needs to change. I look forward to more laws in this space to continue to grow this strength of having good and strong workplaces where everybody can feel safe and enjoy their work every day. I commend this bill to the House.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak on this member’s bill in the name of my colleague Dr Deborah Russell, and I thank her for bringing it to this House. Sexual harassment is certainly very different from the sort of situation which Mr Baillie described about a worker taking a company car without permission. It is right that we treat the way that you might raise a personal grievance about those two issues very differently. But I’ve also reflected on the speeches in this House and about what sorts of situations one might raise a personal grievance in. I heard the words of my friend on the other benches Jan Logie ringing in my ears, when she said, “We get awkward and uncomfortable and nothing happens when we can’t talk about these things.” What is the cost of that inaction?

The cost of that is in situations like when I was in year 11 at high school. I went with my friend to a doctor’s appointment and I sat down with her in the waiting room, distracting her with a quiz in a Dolly magazine. As soon as we got into the office, she burst into tears, and it was up to me to explain to the GP why we were there. I told this GP that my friend had been working in a cafe for three months. Her manager had started hugging her on the first day that she was on the job. He would text her at random times of the night. He would hold her hand while he gave her the best shifts in the roster. He would hold her arm while in front of customers. One night, when he was dropping her home, he pulled up on the side of the road and undid his pants. We were in the waiting room of the doctors, waiting for an appointment because my friend was worried she was pregnant. It was the GP who told these two 15-year-old girls in our school uniforms that this was sexual harassment at work, among other things. As she organised tests and medication for my friend, the GP told me that we could get help for someone who had been harassed so severely at work. She wrote my friend a letter confirming the medical exam and she told us that she’d give evidence if my friend wanted to take it further. But my friend never did take it further. She felt shame and so much embarrassment, even to this day, about her own naivety. But I look back on that and see someone who couldn’t get away from a manager who was acting publicly like he owned her.

So this bill would improve the personal grievance process available to people in her situation, people who need time to think on the experiences that have happened to them, people who need to speak to their friends, people who need to seek the guidance of their doctors, of their church ministers, of their teacher, of people who they trust. This takes time, and 12 months to be able to do that as a young woman, for anyone in this situation, is what we need to improve this law. It’s a useful change, because everyone has the right to feel safe at work and, more importantly, have the time to safely raise issues with their employer.

The bill is a small change but it will significantly impact on workplace culture and, particularly, silence towards sexual harassment. This culture of silence towards sexual harassment is something that all of us need to address. It’s right that we’re doing it in a member’s bill and with the support of the Parliament. I would implore all members around this House to take note and pay attention to the way that this bill strikes a careful balance between the rights of everyone involved in the employment process and the grievance process, because we need to get this right. It needs to be enduring. We cannot have a system where we revisit these rules, because the cost of not doing anything and the cost of not talking about these things and the cost of not making constant progress to improve the situation of workers—whether they are young, whether they are women, whether they are working in jobs where they are disempowered to raise issues with their employers—would fail all of them.

Ending violence against women, wherever it is—whether it’s in the workplace; whether it’s at home—has to be a priority, and changing our culture around raising these issues is a big part of that. This bill does it.

Now, speaking directly to people who might be going through this, it’s not your burden alone and it’s not the friend who was in my position who would be alone, is what I would say to them. There is a framework of legislation that my colleague Jan Logie outlined that deals with this sort of thing. The health and safety requirements at work require everyone to stamp out this kind of behaviour—not just your boss, not just your manager, not just the owner; everyone around you has a role to play in this. Making these processes easier for people and their situations is something that we can do in this House very proudly. I commend the bill.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I can’t say that it’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill tonight. What I do say is that it’s sobering to take a call and that it’s a trigger for many who have been through the experience of trauma associated with sexual harassment. I commend Deborah Russell in bringing this bill to the House for something that is profound and has a profound impact on people’s lives.

So I often speak about members in the House speaking from a level of experience, and for those of us who experienced trauma and the effect that that has on our lives, it does take time to deal with it. So the purpose of this bill is to extend the time for an employee to raise a personal grievance alleging sexual harassment from 90 days to one year. The impact of trauma on a person is something that does take time, and many who will be listening will find that this will be a trigger from past experiences and that it’s important to have the time to be able to process. So this bill is supported by the National Party, and it would seem that it has cross-party, throughout-the-House support for it to go to the select committee, which I understand will be the Education and Workforce Committee.

I listened to Dr Russell as the first speaker talking about this bill and the personal trauma and experience that Zoë Lawton has pursued with Dr Russell and also with this bill coming to the House. It prompted me, also, to look to the legal definition of sexual harassment, and it prompted me to go to the WorkSafe website, which outlines a guide there for persons who have been subjected to sexual harassment. There’s a guide there on the WorkSafe website, and a definition of sexual harassment has been addressed under section 108 of the Employment Relations Act 2000, and Dr Russell read and detailed that. On the WorkSafe website, sexual harassment is also defined by the Human Rights Act 1993 as any unwelcome or offensive sexual behaviour that is repeated or serious enough to have a harmful effect or which contains an implied or overt promise of preferential treatment or of detrimental treatment. So the definition of sexual harassment is both in the Human Rights Act and, specifically, section 108 of the Employment Relations Act.

This bill is important because, as I’ve referenced and listened to Dr Russell sharing Zoë Lawton’s experience and other persons’ experience of trauma particular to sexual harassment, it takes time, it take courage, and it takes support to be able to confront and to be able to expose what’s going on. Trauma’s debilitating, it’s crippling, it’s sickening, and it’s disempowering. This bill is invoking a process to empower, to encourage, to promote, and to confront those perpetrators of sexual harassment.

The Education and Workforce Committee will go through the detail of this bill to ensure that there is consistency with amendments to the Employment Relations Act in addressing grievances for sexual harassment in ensuring the appropriate extension of time from 90 days to 12 months is invoked. On that note, the National Party commends this bill to select committee for further deliberation.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s an absolute privilege and honour to speak in the first reading of this bill tonight. Before I start, can I also congratulate the member and my colleague Dr Deborah Russell on bringing this kaupapa—this really important kaupapa—to the Whare and starting that change that we know is needed in this space. While it seems like quite a small change in terms of the change to the Employment Relations Act, amending section 114 of the principal Act to extend the period that the PG, or the personal grievance, may be brought to 12 months from the nine months where that personal grievance involves sexual harassment. It has big ramifications, much bigger than just that simple change.

You’ve heard many of the other speakers talk tonight around the difference in terms of sexual harassment as a PG, especially for women, but, actually, for anyone who has experience of sexual harassment at work, it is about that power imbalance and it is about making sure that people who have experienced that have the sufficient time to process that. It’s not that I think anyone who has ever experienced any kind of sexual harassment or sexual violence can truly process what that means for you. For everyone, it’s different, and it certainly warrants the time to be able to not only seek the support that you need to work yourself through that traumatising experience but also the courage and support that you might need to report that and also take the personal grievance, if you have the courage to do that. Unfortunately, as other people who have spoken tonight have said, that is not always the case—certainly, with people who have experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence.

So, again, although this is quite a small change, it is a big change in terms of making sure that we give that ample time for people to be able to seek that support. I would also like to add that while it is a high proportion of wāhine, or women, that do, where they can, report the sexual harassment, there are others as well. Other people mentioned tonight are the takatāpui, or the rainbow whanaunga, who also are prone to experiencing sexual harassment and other bad behaviours in the workplace, but it is also men, we know, as well.

So this is another bill, I believe, that goes to the bigger mahi that this Labour Party is doing and the Labour Government is doing in terms of making sure that workers are safe. No matter what that looks like, workers are safe when they go to work, and this is part of that bigger mahi we are doing with the fair pay agreements. We are making sure people have a voice. We certainly are making sure that women have a voice and that they feel encouraged, that they will be listened to, and that there’s a process there for people to be able to take their voice and their concerns through to.

It is really heartening to hear that others are supporting this across the House as well. We know, not just as women but, actually, even those that are not, you have your mothers and your sisters and your daughters—nobody wants to know that their loved one who happens to be a wahine or a takatāpui whānau goes to work and that they’re feeling unsafe or they’re feeling pressure, like our colleague Arena Williams spoke of tonight, around being pushed into a situation where they have no control over what that looks like for them. So, again, a small change, but actually massive ramifications in terms of being able to support our people who need this space to be able to figure out where they’re at, process that trauma, and then be able to make sure that they stand up for themselves and shift that power imbalance and remind people that this is not OK.

I just want to thank Dr Deborah Russell again. This is a really good bill. This is something that is really at the core of what the Labour Government stands for, and it’s for that reason I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I call Dr Deborah Russell—some minutes in reply.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will make this a brief call, given the time of night, just to summarise on the last matters of this bill. I’d like to thank my colleagues from across the House for their support of this bill. I appreciate that my colleagues in the ACT Party and the National Party have promised support as far as the select committee stage, but I think that discussion at the select committee will be very, very useful indeed.

A couple of the speakers raised issues around what it might mean for businesses. Of course, the cheap answer is that it has no consequence for businesses where there is no sexual harassment. That is the cheap answer. The better answer is actually to consider the balance of rights and responsibilities of both businesses and employees, and to work out how we can make that a little bit better. The contention of this bill is that three months is not long enough for employees. I have suggested 12 months would be a better balance between businesses and employees; I will leave the select committee to examine that.

I’d like to thank my colleagues who pointed out where this bill fits in the whole pattern of bills around sexual harassment and sexual violence. That was really helpful to put it in context. I’d especially like to thank my colleague Arena Williams for her story, which brought life to the whole matter, which made us really understand why it is important.

A final thought: I often say patriarchy harms men too—patriarchy harms men too. And, of course, men too can be sexually harassed, but this is a gendered issue. It is typically women, but men do get sexually harassed too. Nevertheless, if we sort this out it helps all of us to get along better, to run our businesses better, to be better employees, to fit together better in this world. And, indeed, fixing this problem, which might look as though it concerns mostly women, is something that, actually, helps us to dismantle the patriarchy and it helps us all. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The question is, That the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House is adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 10.02 p.m.