Thursday, 2 June 2022

THURSDAY, 2 JUNE 2022

THURSDAY, 2 JUNE 2022

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

karakia/prayers

karakia/prayers

ANAHILA KANONGATA‘A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Tatou ifo ma tatalo. 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.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Deputy Leader of the House): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Legislation to be considered next week will include the first readings of the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill, the Overseas Investment (Forestry) Amendment Bill, and the Water Services Entities Bill; and the third reading of the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill. There will be a further motion to approve COVID-19 orders. As discussed at the Business Committee, the House will go into urgency on Tuesday evening to pass the Medicines Amendment Bill, and Wednesday will be a members’ day.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I just ask the Acting Leader of the House what the Government’s intention is with regard to the Water Services Entities Bill—in particular, what speed the Government hopes to move that through the House at?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Deputy Leader of the House): I think we’ll have some further discussions with colleagues about that in the House next week, but it is an important Government priority to progress.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Can I just ask the Acting Leader of the House about the Organic Products Bill? What up?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Deputy Leader of the House): Can I thank and acknowledge the member for milking this issue for one further week, and just confirm for him that the Minister for Primary Industries is a consensus-based politician, who does continue to work this through very carefully. But none the less, I am advised that work on the Supplementary Order Paper continues to progress rather well.

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

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

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No petitions or papers have been presented. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Māori Affairs Committee on the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill

report of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the Civil Aviation Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of bills.

CLERK:

Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill, introduction.

Water Services Entities Bill, introduction.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: These bills are set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Disability Issues

1. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister for Disability Issues: Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. How is the Government delivering change for disabled people through Budget 2022?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Disability Issues): Malo le soifua, Mr Speaker. Budget 2022 demonstrates the Government’s continuing commitment to deliver change for the disability community by investing over $1 billion as we continue along the journey of reforming the health and disability system. Funding for disabled people in Budget 2022 includes $107.8 million to establish the new Ministry for Disabled People, $100 million for the implementation of the Enabling Good Lives approach, $735 million for Disability Support Services, $12 million to strengthen New Zealand Sign Language and education, and, additionally, funding into community-based services for disabled people and family careers.

Angie Warren-Clark: How have disabled people helped to inform these significant changes?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Disabled people, tangata whaikaha Māori, tagata sa’ilimalo, their whānau and aiga have been involved in the development of the Enabling Good Lives approach from its beginnings in 2010. Disabled people and tangata whaikaha Māori also make up two-thirds of the governance group establishing the new ministry. These involvements give a particularly powerful and practical demonstration of the internationally recognised motto of the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us.”, which seeks to ensure that disabled people can meaningfully impact change on areas important to them.

Angie Warren-Clark: Why are these changes important?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Approximately one in four New Zealanders identify as having a disability. That’s 1.4 million New Zealanders. Disabled people face accessibility barriers across a number of areas of society. They’re disproportionately represented in poverty statistics and experience heightened levels of discrimination. These changes will help to ensure disabled people have more personalised services, greater opportunities to choose how they live a good life, and improved outcomes across employment, education, health, and wellbeing. More broadly, Aotearoa New Zealand, as a whole, benefits from better inclusion of disabled people in society, including from enormous untapped skills that could add further value to New Zealand in a myriad of ways.

Question No. 2—Housing

2. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister of Housing: Does she stand by her statements that “KiwiBuild is alive and well” and that “Since Labour took office at the end of 2017, it’s been one of our government’s top priorities to fix the housing crisis”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): I stand by the full statement: “Since Labour took office at the end of 2017, it’s been one of our government’s top priorities to fix the housing crisis we inherited. We’re making good progress, but the problems caused by decades of under-investment in housing infrastructure, National’s gutting of public housing and failure to build more, and no action on growing affordable housing, was never going to be fixed in a few years. The reality is it’s going to take more time.” In regards to KiwiBuild: yes. So far, 1,365 KiwiBuild homes have been built for Kiwi families and another 856 are currently under construction. I note that the previous National Government delivered over a hundred affordable homes in nine years through the special housing areas. I also note that the statements come from a column I wrote correcting inaccurate comments about the Budget—errors the member himself replicated in written parliamentary questions this week.

Chris Bishop: If KiwiBuild is “alive and well” after just 1,365 homes have been built after four years, what would she define as seriously unwell, verging on dead?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: One hundred affordable homes over nine years by the previous National Government.

Chris Bishop: Has she seen the statement in 2012 by Labour Party candidate Megan Woods: “National are talking negative on kiwibuild. This crowd would’ve told Mickey Savage that he couldn’t do it … well he did and so will we”, and doesn’t reaching just 1.3 percent of the original KiwiBuild target show that this Government has failed?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Although I have no ministerial responsibility for Labour candidate Megan Woods, I do put our record of 1,300 families living in affordable homes over 4½ years against the 100 National delivered over nine long years, any day of the week.

Chris Bishop: Why has the Government removed or sold more State houses than it has built this financial year?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I’m very pleased the member asked this question. In order for us to do the once-in-a-generation build of State houses that we are doing, we are redeveloping the suburbs that we own. We have added over 9,000 new public housing places since we took office: 7,000 of those are new builds—and these are net numbers. If we look at the gross number of houses that have been added in 4½ years, it is over 13,000. I put that against the record of the National Party in Government, who finished office with 1,500 fewer houses than they started with because they’d flogged them off.

Chris Bishop: Why, after four years of so-called State house - built growth, is the Government demolishing or selling more State homes in this year than it is building, and when is she going to take some accountability for four years of failure?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I realise that member comes from a party where they need a 101 on how to build State houses, but in order to intensify on areas that you own, you do demolish houses. You build back more—that is exactly what our Government is doing. We have made a commitment to build 18,000 new State houses by 2024, and this is more than any Government since the 1970s. The member is wrong.

Chris Bishop: Why has the State house waiting list blown out to 27,000 people, a quintupling of the wait-list number since Labour came into office; and when will it return to the level it was in 2017 or—better yet—zero?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The reason why we are seeing the State house wait-list grow is because we do not have enough State houses, because, when in office, National not only failed to build State houses; they sold off State houses and—as I said in a previous answer—ended up with 1,500 fewer than they started with. If National had built at the rate that we have and not flogged off our State houses, we would have nearly 20,000 more State houses than we have today. When will we get to the end of that—when will we cure the waiting list? When we make up for the damage that National did in Government.

Question No. 3—Health

3. Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula) to the Minister of Health: Talofa, Mr Speaker. What recent announcements has he made about the Government’s response to the independent review of Pharmac?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Yesterday, the final report of the independent review of Pharmac was released and I announced the Government’s response to it. Our drug-buying system was set up nearly three decades ago and has delivered good benefits to New Zealanders. However, in the face of complaints about aspects of the decision-making approaches, it was appropriate to review the agency. I confirm that the Government has accepted most of the 33 recommended actions made by the independent panel, either in whole or in part.

Dr Tracey McLellan: How is the Government responding to the recommendations made in the report?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Many of the 33 recommendations deal with the need for Pharmac to improve its equity performance, and others deal with its decision-making processes. I’m confident that the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill, once enacted, will, by bringing Pharmac under the health sector principles, significantly improve Pharmac’s ability to achieve more equitable outcomes. Also, by collaborating more with other parts of the health administration and engaging more strongly with health consumers, Pharmac’s decision-making will improve.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What changes will New Zealanders see from the Government’s response to those recommendations made in the report?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The Government is requiring Pharmac to engage more with health consumer voices and to more actively collaborate and coordinate with other parts of the health administration. In some cases, the Ministry of Health will play its stewardship role—for example, in the development of vaccination and rare disorder strategies. Pharmac will have a critical role to play in these strategies, but it will not be an exclusive role—the days of the “Independent Republic of Pharmac” are over. Pharmac’s purpose will be to secure the best possible procurement outcomes to achieve all of the objectives set by any strategy.

Question No. 4—Foreign Affairs

4. Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Does she stand by all her statements and actions with regard to New Zealand’s relationships with Pacific Island countries, and China’s moves to build a closer China - Pacific Island countries community?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Foreign Affairs): Yes. In particular, I stand by the statement I made where I said that we were continuing to build on our already deep relationship with the Pacific. Further to that, I’m particularly proud of the 1.34 million COVID-19 vaccine doses and the $325 million in additional Budget support to support Pacific countries through the pandemic. I stand by the $1.3 billion climate finance package, of which at least half will be going to the Pacific to support climate change adaptation. I also stand by the increase to our overall aid to the Pacific for this triennium by 45 percent, compared to the previous three years. These actions show our enduring commitment to the Pacific.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Does she stand by her statement that the Government, in regards to the Pacific engagement, doesn’t “need to act in a way that makes us look desperate”, and, if so, does she believe the Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, with her two visits to the Pacific region in the same number of weeks, is desperate?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: The member misquotes what I said. In fact, the quote about desperation was in response to the Opposition members thinking that we weren’t doing enough.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Does she agree that her desire—as she puts it—not to look desperate has led to what she earlier described as a “relationship failure” between New Zealand and Pacific Island countries like the Solomons?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Again, I just want to clarify the reference to desperation. It seems as if the Opposition, by the way that they are talking down the relationship with the Pacific, are wanting us to act in a very desperate way. We do not need to, because we have a long and enduring partnership with the Pacific. We value our Pacific partners. We are showing and demonstrating that we are working with them towards Pacific-led solutions.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Notwithstanding the Minister’s attempt to re-characterise what she’s said, the comments were made in relation to the decision by Australia to see things as being urgent enough for the Foreign Minister to very quickly get into the Pacific to talk to counterpart leaders. That question wasn’t addressed by the Minister.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I disagree. I listened very carefully to both the question and the response from the Minister. She actually did address the question that the member has asked. It’s up to the member to take the answer and ask further supplementaries, if he wishes to.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Does she stand by her statement regarding New Zealand’s engagement with the Pacific that “We don’t have to rush into these things because the foundation of our relationship with the Pacific is very strong.”, and, if so, how does she square that with her earlier statement that the relationship failure between New Zealand and countries like the Solomon Islands has led to engagement with China?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Yes, I do stand by my statement, and, in relation to the security arrangements and China, I made the clear comment that it may not be a necessary set of arrangements if Pacific Island nations look to each other to ensure that their security needs are being addressed.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Does she think, having made only one visit to the Pacific in 18 months, that she’s pretty much nailed her desire not to look desperate about what is seen as potentially the largest geopolitical shift in our region in our lifetimes?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Notwithstanding the irony, the Minister can answer the part of the question within her responsibilities.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I’m really disappointed that the Opposition continues to talk down the important relationship that we have with the Pacific, because I have indicated that I will be attending the Pacific Islands Forum in person. As soon as borders opened in Fiji, I went there, Minister Henare went there, and Minister Sio is currently there. We continue to engage with the Pacific on virtual platforms. I met with the Deputy Prime Minister of Tuvalu when he was here, and also the Prime Minister of Cook Islands when he was here and the Foreign Minister of Tonga when she was here, as have other ministerial colleagues who have met with a range of ministerial counterparts from the Pacific. I’m disappointed that that member continues to choose to talk down the important relationship that we have with the Pacific. It is valued. It is important. We continue to engage in our enduring relationship with Pacific nations.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We come to question No. 5, in the name of Shanan Halbert—oh, sorry.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Supplementary.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK, we’ll go back. Sorry, I did not see you stand up. So supplementary, the Hon Gerry Brownlee.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Do you know what, Mr Speaker? If you didn’t see me standing, I wish the world all had eyes like yours.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I think it was code for “I don’t think you did stand up.”

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, I was being generous—we both wear glasses. To the Minister: is she telling us that there is no more work for New Zealand to do as an immediate response to what is now a second proposal put to the 10 countries that China has diplomatic relations with in the Pacific?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I am saying that New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific is important, and the agreements and arrangements that we make with the Pacific are critically important in order to support them to address the most important issue, climate change, and then economic resilience. Those are the conversations that we are having. Our foreign policy is not defined by any other country except ourselves.

Question No. 5—Economic and Regional Development

5. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) to the Minister for Economic and Regional Development: Fa‘afetai tele lava, Mr Speaker. What announcements has he made on transforming the advanced manufacturing sector?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister for Economic and Regional Development): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, I launched the draft industry transformation plan for advanced manufacturing.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Good work.

Hon STUART NASH: Thank you. Public consultation will run until 13 July. I would like to thank Brett O’Riley from the Employers and Manufacturers Association and Rachel Mackintosh from E tū union for their leadership in getting this plan ready for consultation. Advanced manufacturing is one of eight industries identified by the Government with significant potential for transformational change. Consistent with all industry transformation plans, the draft plan for advanced manufacturing was developed in partnership with businesses, workers, Māori, and wider stakeholders. It provides an overview of New Zealand’s advanced manufacturing sector and outlines a series of potential actions to accelerate its growth and innovation.

Shanan Halbert: Why was advanced manufacturing identified for an industry transformation plan?

Hon STUART NASH: Advanced manufacturing is vitally important for New Zealand. It is a broad, diverse sector and a major contributor to the economy, jobs, and our communities. However, we must lift labour productivity and capital intensity if we are to ensure a sustainable, profitable, and globally competitive advanced manufacturing sector going forward. Two trends provide an opportunity to accelerate the growth and transformation of the sector over the next 20 years. First, the sector was undergoing a fundamental shift through the application of advanced technologies and processes; and secondly, more focus than ever is being placed on economic activity that is high wage, circular, and low emissions.

Shanan Halbert: Has the Government allocated any funding to this transformation plan in Budget 2022?

Hon David Bennett: This is going to be good.

Hon STUART NASH: Budget 2022—and it is good, indeed, Mr Bennett—showed that the Government is committed to a high wage, low-emissions economy, with economic security for all in good times and bad. Industry transformation plans are a key part of this strategy. Budget 2022 committed a further $148 million to industry transformation plans, building on the funding allocation in previous Budgets. Thirty million dollars were set aside for advanced manufacturing to be drawn down when the transformation plan is finalised and particular areas for Government investment are identified.

Question No. 6—Immigration

6. Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he agree with the Productivity Commission’s finding that the immigration system “does not undergo the same level of transparency, public scrutiny and robust policy assessment that most other public policies require”, and how can he be confident that his Government’s immigration rebalance will alleviate workforce shortages?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. In answer to the first question, no. A year ago this Government set out our intention to make immigration systems smarter and simpler, and that is what we have done through the immigration rebalance. I’m confident about the rebalance because the Accredited Employer Work Visa combines six visa categories into one and will have simple criteria and shorter processing times. The Green List provides clear and accelerated pathways to residence for more skilled workers. The median wage threshold protects against migrant exploitation and creates the right incentives for employers to transition away from reliance on low skilled, low-wage migrant workers. And sector agreements will help the sectors particularly reliant on migrant workers to transition to these new settings. The Government has been very open about our intention to move to a higher skilled and higher-wage workforce, and that is what we are delivering.

Dr James McDowall: Does the Minister believe that nurses are less valuable to New Zealand than multimedia specialists, given he gave multimedia specialists a fast track to residence but is making nurses wait two years?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The Green List, as the member refers to, was made up by skills that are in high demand in New Zealand. I know that the Minister of Health has talked about the shortage of nurses recently, and when we’re wanting to attract nurses to New Zealand, we actually want them to nurse. We have given more categories of nurses a streamlined pathway to residence, which is better than pre-COVID and under the previous Government.

Dr James McDowall: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The question very specifically asked, does he believe that nurses are less valuable, and I don’t think he addressed that.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I think he did. A member shouldn’t actually expect “Yes”, “No”, or an explicit answer. He can, by making the statement that he did, actually address the question, which he did.

Dr James McDowall: How does he respond to the Aged Care Commissioner, who, when asked about nurses not being given a fast track to residence, said in select committee yesterday that there is “a significant need for nurses in the aged residential care sector” and that they would “prefer to see nurses being able to get into New Zealand quickly, now”?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: My response to that would be that we have enabled about 2,500 nurses, or health workers, to get through the border while the borders have been closed, through the critical health worker visa process. And, also, both of the components of the Green List have given certainties to the likes of nurses and other medical professionals around residency.

Dr James McDowall: Is it logical that there are 17 varieties of doctor who are fast tracked on the Green List, while nurses, by far the most critical shortfall across the healthcare system, are excluded?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The nurses are on the Green List. They are on a work to residence two-year pathway to residence. We give them certainty that if they want to come to New Zealand and nurse for two years they will become residents.

Erica Stanford: Is it true that nurses currently coming into the country have access to the Resident Visa 2021, which takes around 12 months; so, in fact, the two-year pathway that he has created is in fact worse than what we have at the moment?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Well, the member will know that the residence visa announced last year is a one-off pathway. Through the rebalance, we are giving nurses certainty about being residents here in New Zealand, if they make a commitment to come to New Zealand and nurse.

Dr James McDowall: Does he believe that it is robust policy to make nurses wait two years before being able to apply for residence, given the Canterbury DHB alone is 250 nurses short, Christchurch Hospital is at 112 percent capacity, and that DHBs across the country are foreshadowing a worse than normal influenza season on top of COVID-19, all of which could cripple the health system?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Yes. We want to make sure that we are giving nurses who want to come to New Zealand a certain pathway to residence. I think it would be worse for those employers if we bring nurses in and they go and undertake different employment. We actually want to attract nurses to come here and commit to nursing. If they do that for two years, New Zealand is guaranteeing them residency.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does the Minister have any evidence that if nurses were to be given residency immediately upon arrival, they will be working in other professions other than nursing?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: As we went through the Cabinet process, I undertook consultation with the likes of the Ministry of Health. We did an assessment of the likelihood of nurses who are coming from offshore—the likelihood of them moving on to other occupations. There was a slightly increased risk of that and we did get feedback from the sector that they were concerned that if we went straight to residency, those nurses might move to different occupations upon arriving in New Zealand.

Dr James McDowall: Supplementary?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, ACT has run out of supplementaries.

Question No. 7—Housing (Māori Housing)

7. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing): How is the Government partnering with iwi Māori to deliver new homes for whānau?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing)): Alongside my colleagues Ministers Woods, Jackson, and Whaitiri, this morning we signed a new investment partnership between Government and Ngāti Kahungunu to build up to 131 new homes for whānau who need them the most. This partnership will see affordable rentals and papakāinga being built throughout the Ngāti Kahungunu rohe, getting whānau into dry, warm homes quickly, as well as helping some reconnect to their whenua. The partnership represents an innovative new approach to unlocking and enabling by Māori, for Māori housing solutions, and is funded from the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga Government’s record $730 million commitment to accelerate Māori-led housing solutions. We know that innovative initiatives like this are critical for getting a lot more new housing built where it is needed the most, and they will also help stimulate regional economies and our construction sector to recover from COVID-19.

Arena Williams: How does this partnership reflect the Government’s wider strategy for Māori housing?

Hon PEENI HENARE: Today’s signing follows on from our previous agreements with Toitū Tairāwhiti in May and Ka Uruora in April this year as part of the National Māori Housing Strategy MAIHI Ka Ora. We said we would do things differently and work in partnership with Māori to deliver a better Māori housing future for our whānau. Above all, we promised action, and action to change the status quo. The partnership today is $45.3 million in investment to enable Ngāti Kahungunu to get whānau into homes quickly while reconnecting with their whenua.

Arena Williams: What reaction has he seen from Ngāti Kahungunu about the partnership?

Hon PEENI HENARE: Chrissie Hape, the chief executive of Ngāti Kahungunu said, and I quote, “The ability to provide healthy, warm homes for our whānau will make a significant difference for our whānau over a number of significant social indicators. We look forward to the future and acknowledge the partnership, and the strength of the partnership, and we move forward with intention alongside the Government.” Just finally from me, an invite to the Opposition parties of this House to get on board with the kaupapa, and I can sum it up by saying, kia tapatahi, kia kotahi rā tātou tātou e. [Let’s be cohesive and united, all of us together. ]

Question No. 8—Agriculture (Animal Welfare)

8. RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga) to the Associate Minister of Agriculture (Animal Welfare): How does Budget 2022 support Māori agribusiness and Whenua Māori Programme land users?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Associate Minister of Agriculture (Animal Welfare)): The Māori economy underpins the broader wellbeing of Māori and is a significant and increasingly important contributor to the economic recovery of the wider economy of Aotearoa New Zealand. Budget 2022’s investment of $34.5 million over four years will support Māori agribusinesses and whenua Māori land users in achieving real economic growth, and help reduce the on-farm greenhouse-gas emissions. Mr Speaker, I report to you on our recent Māori Minister’s post-Budget engagements with our communities and regions across Aotearoa New Zealand, who have welcomed this investment.

Rino Tirikatene: How will this Budget initiative be implemented?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: Over the last 18 months, I have visited Māori agribusinesses up and down the country, and a need for specialist advice and support has been raised. Budget 2022’s investment of $34.5 million over four years will support Māori agribusinesses and whenua Māori land users in achieving real economic growth, and help reduce the on-farm greenhouse-gas emissions. Specialist advice and support, including tools and technology as well as boots on the ground, is what Budget 2022 will deliver.

Rino Tirikatene: When can we see these initiatives being implemented in our communities?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: Work is already under way in shearing sheds and on farm, as we speak. Budget 2022 includes funding to boost support for Māori agribusinesses to explore new products and markets, and provide workforce skills and training initiatives that will create new jobs and increase productivity of their primary-sector assets. Investing in mātauranga Māori—traditional knowledge—in both land development and science will further strengthen economic opportunities while reducing greenhouse gases. This will be trailblazing.

Question No. 9—Immigration

9. ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he stand by his statement regarding why engineers are on the fast-tracked ‘straight to residence’ pathway that “those skills are at high demand”; and why are nurses not on that pathway, when Hon Andrew Little, Minister of Health, recently admitted that New Zealand hospitals are around 4,000 nurses short?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Yes, under the immigration settings that were in place pre-COVID and when that member’s party was last in Government, there was only one class of nurse eligible for a work-to-residence pathway. Under the rebalance, the work-to-residence pathway is extended to all 13 classes of nurses. This is a significant expansion and recognition of the demand that the health sector is currently experiencing. The reason there is a work-to-residence pathway, rather than “straight-to-residence” pathway is that we want these nurses to work in the health sector when they arrive. In simple: we need nurses to nurse.

Erica Stanford: Who in the sector gave him advice that nurses tended to leave their profession when they got residence?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: In the formation of the policy, we spoke to the likes of the Aged Care Association and other home-based care stakeholders. Of course, through the pathway of this policy, we also kept in close contact with the Ministry of Health, and, also, I spoke to a number of colleagues.

Erica Stanford: Isn’t it the case that the Aged Care Association were only in favour of a two-year wait for residence if their nurses were tied to their employer and not the sector?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Well, they may have, but they didn’t necessarily get everything they wanted.

Erica Stanford: So aren’t we now in a position where we have the worst of both worlds, where we have a two-year wait for nurses to get residence and they can still switch between the district health board and aged-care sector, which is exactly what we were trying to stop happening?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I think we’ve made it pretty clear that we do have a shortage of nurses, and when they get here they can nurse.

Erica Stanford: When he said that there was a slight chance of a small loss of nurses out of the profession if they were to get residence, is this small loss more or less than the loss that we will lose to Australia or Canada or the UK who give residence immediately to nurses?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I think she might want check her facts, because I don’t necessarily think that happens in all of those jurisdictions.

Erica Stanford: Can he explain what makes a nurse more likely to change jobs once they receive residence, but not an engineer?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: We made our decision to put the nurses on a two-year pathway to residence, because of the demand for nurses, in order to give them certainty that when they arrived in New Zealand, if they stayed in nursing for two years, they would get residence.

Dr James McDowall: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave of the House for the ACT Party to have another supplementary question.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, the House can’t give you leave for that.

Question No. 10—Social Development and Employment

10. RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Is she concerned some of our most vulnerable tamariki in benefit-receiving households are going to miss out on the $350 cost of living payment?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Budget 2022 responded to the needs of tamariki in benefit-receiving households in a number of ways. It removed the policy which withheld child support payments to sole parent beneficiaries, permanently halved public transport fares for people with a community services card, increased the grant available for essential dental work, and invested in disabilities services’ budgeting services and also in the education and health sectors. On top of this, on 1 April, main benefits were increased to historic levels and, on 1 May, 350,000 main benefit households began to receive the winter energy payment. It’s really important to note that the winter energy payment supports around 200,000 children and is a permanent fixture of our welfare system.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Will the Minister consider wiping debts to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to lift the incomes of over 50,000 people who got into debt because they couldn’t afford basic essentials, such as dental care or school uniforms, and now have their benefit reduced by $24 a week on average—almost the amount of the winter energy payment?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: In so far as it relates to the primary question, the Minister can answer.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We currently have a cross-Government cross-agency work programme under way on how we respond to Government debt that New Zealanders incur. Currently, it’s treated differently across Justice, Inland Revenue, and MSD in particular, those three agencies, and there is some work that needs to go on with regards to making the system fairer and doing something to respond to New Zealanders who do have debt to Government. Are we thinking of wiping the debt that they have with any particular agency? That’s certainly not something that’s on the table at the moment.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Is the fact that hardship grants continue to go up a sign that people on a main benefit are not able to meet the basic costs of living?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We absolutely acknowledge that New Zealanders are feeling the bite with regards to the cost of living increases that have come about because of everything that’s happening internationally. We are not alone as a country; we are experiencing this alongside so many other countries. We have seen hardship grant increases. That’s for a number of reasons. Cost of living surely does play a part, but, also, we have lifted thresholds so that more low-income families can also access hardship support. And we have been going through a pandemic which has seen some job losses, has seen some people with reduced hours, and that has all led towards an increase in hardship need.

Ricardo Menéndez March: When she speaks of the cost of living pressures that people on a benefit face, will she commit to immediately doubling the winter energy payment, as she did in 2020, so that cost of living pressures are alleviated for families relying on benefits?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That is not a consideration for us. As I spoke about, in response to my primary answer, there are a number of changes that we have made to alleviate the hardship pressure on families and to address the income adequacy issues that many of our whānau who are on benefits face. There are more things that we have done alongside that, including things like indexing benefits to wages so that they go up more quickly on a standard year. Mr Benefit—oh, not “Mr Benefit”! Mr Speaker, I’ve never shied away from the fact that there is more to do, and we are absolutely committed to doing that.

Question No. 11—Community and Voluntary Sector

11. GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth) to the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector: Malo le soifua lau afioga le fofoga fetalai. What recent announcements has she made about proposed amendments to the Charities Act 2005?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Fa’afetai lou fofoga fetalai. This morning, I announced a range of proposed amendments to the Charities Act that aim to ensure we support charities to thrive while also ensuring sufficient public transparency. The changes include a new appeals process to improve access to justice for charities, expanding the decisions that can be appealed, reducing reporting requirements for very small charities, and improved transparency in the reporting of funds for larger charities. The work to modernise the Charities Act began in 2018. Public consultation took place in 2019. The work was paused when COVID-19 hit, and I picked this work back up last year and aim to introduce an amendment bill this year—just acknowledging the work of my predecessors, the Hon Peeni Henare and the Hon Poto Williams as well.

Glen Bennett: Why is this significant?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: There are about 28,000 registered charities—in case the Opposition didn’t realise—and they contribute greatly to the wellbeing of our communities across Aotearoa New Zealand. This was particularly evident over the past 2½ years, when charities provided a wide variety of support to those who needed it the most. More than half of these charities are small and volunteer led. The changes that I’m proposing aim to strike a fair balance between supporting them to focus on their work while ensuring that the public has trust and confidence in the sector. We’ve also heard from submitters that there is a need to increase the transparency of decision making by the regulator and to introduce a new appeals process given the inaccessibility of the current system, and we’re doing both.

Hon David Bennett: How will these changes benefit charities?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: In proposing to allow very small charities to be exempt from the external reporting board’s financial reporting standard, they will still continue to be accountable through annual returns, reporting basic financial information, and this aims to, again, strike that balance between the benefit of transparent reporting with the current compliance burden that very small charities experience. Charities will also be able to appeal significant decisions to an expanded taxation review authority instead of the High Court. This will improve access to justice by allowing charities to represent themselves, reduce legal fees, and appeal a wider range—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The Minister has—

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Sorry, Mr Speaker, I can’t hear you.

Chris Bishop: Put out a press release about it!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The Minister has addressed the question.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Great. And just people can—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No.

Question No. 12—Police

12. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister of Police: Does she stand by her statement, “I reject the premise that gang tensions have increased under this Government’s watch”?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): Fa’afetai afioga fofoga fetalai. I stand by the full context of all my statements, including my statement that the way to deal with gang tensions is by giving police the tools and resources they need, and that is why Budget 2022 includes $562 million for Police over four years, of which, $94 million will go towards tackling gangs and organised crime.

Hon Mark Mitchell: What does the Minister consider the most important tool the Police need inside her firearms prohibition order (FPO) bill?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: As it relates to the primary question, Mr Speaker, the—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No; I’ll be the judge of that. I’ll get the Hon Mark Mitchell to ask that question again.

Hon Mark Mitchell: It was a question in relation to the Minister stating what tools the Police needed, and it was: what tool does the Minister think is most important that’s contained inside her firearms prohibition order bill?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, it definitely relates to the answer that you gave. The Hon Poto Williams.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Thank you. There are a range of measures under the FPOs that are important to Police being able to ensure that they deal with the most serious of our offenders, as opposed to previous legislation introduced by a member on that side of the House, which only dealt with gang members.

Hon Mark Mitchell: What is the most important tool inside the firearms prohibition order bill?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: It is to deal with the most serious offenders, as opposed to what a National member introduced, which was just around gang members.

Hon Mark Mitchell: How does she reconcile her statement with the horrific scene of a three-year-old left covered in blood yesterday, following an alleged attack by a Mongrel Mob member?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: There is no doubt that our communities are feeling some incredible distress with the recent activities. But in response to that, the Police have been working diligently. They’ve launched a major operation around disruption and suppression, and it includes the deployment of armed offenders squads to conduct search warrants and make arrests. Can I go on to say that 15 search warrants and warrantless searches have been carried out across Auckland, which have led to 17 arrests, the seizure of firearms and ammunition.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Would she say that gang tensions have increased as a result of the 14 drive-by shootings over the past few weeks?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I would point that member to is the fact that gangs’ serious crime rates were at their highest in 2010.

Hon Mark Mitchell: What would the Minister consider is a rise in gang tensions?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: There is no doubt that, from time to time, gang tensions elevate, but gangs have been a feature of our communities for over 50 years. What I would also like to point the member to is the fact that we are charging gangs more than ever—up to 92 percent, which is more than that Government ever did.

Hon Michael Wood: Will Police be better positioned to deal with gang tensions and violent events with higher or lower police numbers?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I think the answer to that is obvious. The absolute record investment in Police, the commitment of 1,800, and the commitment to a population ratio, means they will have more people, more resource, and better training to do the work that they need to do.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why have gang—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. Sorry; the National Party has run out of supplementary questions.

Special Debate

Inquiry into School Attendance—Report of Education and Workforce Committee

MARJA LUBECK (Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee): I move, That the House take note of the report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the inquiry into school attendance.

Talofa, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to kick off the debate on the report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the inquiry into school attendance. This was a robust and constructive inquiry, and as chair of the select committee, I’d like to begin by thanking all the submitters who took time to write or present to us, officials of the Office of the Clerk and Ministry of Education, and my colleagues on the select committee for their contributions in the sphere of this inquiry was handled in.

I will start with how and why this inquiry started. As we noted in the introduction of our report, regular school attendance is the foundation of student achievement, and it will be no surprise that research undertaken by the Ministry of Education has found a direct relationship between attendance and achievement. However, there has been an increase in chronically absent students since 2015, and it has doubled to 9 percent between 2016 and 2022. Longstanding challenges with regard to attendance rates have been further impacted by the two years of battling with a global pandemic, COVID-19. Forty percent of students with reduced attendance did not have concerning attendance patterns at the beginning of 2020, prior to COVID-19.

As I mentioned in my annual review debate contribution for the education portfolio last year, the Minister has noted his concern with school-attendance rates with the select committee in the past, particularly during the 2020 lockdown. During the annual review process, the Minister took the committee through the Government’s priority to set up a means of measuring and managing the speed at which attendance rates improved post lockdown. And I would like to thank the Minister for engaging with the committee, discussing what could be done to improve the attendance of schools and kura. Off the back of this, we initiated an inquiry into school attendance on 7 July 2021. We drafted terms of reference, seeking to understand the long-term trends and factors that have impacted school attendance, and that is why we looked at the 20-year period.

Within this, however, we were also interested in the changes made in 2013 to the ministry-funded Attendance Service and the impacts this has had on attendance and engagement outcomes. We wanted to hear directly from schools and other stakeholders to ensure we understood this as best as we could. Through this inquiry, we planned to identify examples of effective practice within schools and kura and other parties, where relevant, that have led to strong trends in attendance and engagement in schooling. This would allow us to identify potential strategies that could be implemented to increase attendance and inform the Government’s attendance strategy.

When submissions closed on 30 September 2021, we had received 133 submissions representing a range of perspectives and interests. They included students, parents, teachers, families of disabled or neurodiverse children, iwi, Attendance Service providers, and non-governmental organisations. We also had 55 oral submissions—six of which were specifically invited due to their success or experience in high levels of school attendance. In addition, we also conducted a survey, using the New Zealand Parliament Instagram account. The report on the review of the Standing Orders in 2020 recommended select committees use alternative forms of public engagement to make sure that we reach a wider range of New Zealanders. This being an inquiry into school attendance, it was very important that we heard from our rangatahi. So, through the survey on Instagram, we reached those students who otherwise may not have been able to make a submission. We received 49 responses to that particular survey, and I want to thank the Parliamentary Engagement team for their close work with us on this particular piece of work.

The ministry presented their final departmental report to us on 15 December 2021. I want to thank the ministry for their support and advice because they provided that important context that the submitters’ experiences were occurring within, and also, the work that was already under way. From the figures we were presented with, it was clear that attendance rates held largely steady from 2011 to 2015 before they started to decline. The decline can be seen across all ethnicities. However, it’s greater for Māori and Pacific students and is most heavily felt in our lower-decile schools. We said in our report that while societal causes for non-attendance cannot be solved by the education sector alone, it’s worth discussing what the sector can do and what they are already doing. So our report recommended the continuation of the Ka Ora, Ka Ako/Healthy School Lunches Programme—something that Ngāpuhi iwi social services mentioned was a contributing factor to seeing returns to school. Boyd Swinburn, professor at the University of Auckland, was in full support of the programme, calling it the biggest child-nutrition intervention, by far, in decades.

In regard to the in-school causes of declining attendance, we heard submitters that pointed to the importance of providing safe and inclusive learning environments. Nearly one quarter of the submissions commented that schools are not inclusive nor welcoming environments. We heard about how students can feel unsafe, alienated, and as if they don’t belong—stemming from racism, bigotry, bullying, academic streaming, and cultural competence.

I want to make a special mention of the following year 13 students: Sean Brownlow, student at Takapuna Grammar School; Silas Zhang, head student at Riccarton High School; Ashleigh Putt-Fallows, Southland Girls’ High School, Invercargill; and fa‘afetai to Iszak Tuala, year 13 student in Christchurch. It was great that we have these student voices amongst the 55 oral submissions that our select committee heard. They spoke to us about the importance of manaakitanga and of taking the holistic approach to issues of school attendance, and the need for complex and nuanced approaches to address these—with ākonga at the centre of that solution. These young submitters clearly understood that the underlying causes of non-attendance are complex and that there’s not an easy fix.

To quote our report, “Every part of the education system has a role to play in ensuring students feel safe and included at school. We acknowledge that schools have different approaches to achieving this, but we also recommend that the Government continue to engage with schools on the importance of the national education and learning priorities, that they support the Te Mahau to continue to facilitate local solutions to non-attendance, and that the Ministry of Education develops a communications plan about the importance of regular school attendance targeted at families and communities.” To address regular-attendance decline amongst Māori students, we supported uniquely Māori solutions for Māori students, including the further support and funding of Māori-medium schools, mixed-medium schools, iwi organisations, and Māori Attendance Service providers. Submitters told us of the importance of tino rangatiratanga and Māori-Crown partnerships and that the factors identified to impact attendance have led to Māori disproportionately suffering.

We had many other recommendations to make, from early intervention policies led by Te Mahau to prevent students from becoming chronically absent to the idea that any redesign of the Attendance Service should aim to improve its relationship with those providing early intervention. We heard from submitters holding a range of views on the Attendance Service, and we heard from some that the changes made in 2013 for efficiency reasons took the service out of local community hands—with one submitter describing this process as a restructuring being an outsider solution to a complex inside-the-community problem.

On the topics of what accountability measures and sanctions are used in other countries, the evidence provided through the committee concluded that punitive measures are proven to be ineffective in improving students’ attendance problems. Punitive measures do not address the underlying drivers of poor performance, especially for those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. We recognise that where some students would attend school regularly, there are barriers due to disability and neurodiversity. We recommended that the ministry, in conjunction with the new Ministry of Disabled People, establish a mechanism for monitoring the number of students who do not regularly attend school full time because of their learning-support needs. We also recommended to make increasing school attendance a focus of the highest-needs review. In total, then, our report makes 22 recommendations, and the Government response is due on 9 June. Our Education and Workforce Committee members are looking forward to it, and so am I.

I want to, again, thank everyone who took the time to contribute. All those who we heard from have made a really important contribution and helped shape the important piece of work. I’m proud of the finished report our committee has presented, and I think it will provide a strong foundation for long-term planning to address our declining attendance rate. In the words of the Minister, the Hon Chris Hipkins, “This is important and complicated work, which this Government is committed to funding and fixing.” Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d just like to echo some of the words of our chair, Marja Lubeck, and the thanks to the submitters—the 55 oral submitters that came along and spoke really passionately about what happened at their schools within their kāhui akos. We heard from principals, teachers, attendance officers, and parents and students alike. They all did a great job and informed the report that you see today.

The report starts by talking about the importance of attendance when it comes to achievement. It talks about the fact that there is no safe level of non-attendance at school. In my view, and the National Party view, education is your passport, your ticket to the future, and any level of non-attendance is diminishing your ability—or our students’ ability—to reach their full potential. It’s really interesting to take a look back, as we did in the report, about how we used to collect data, and how advanced we are today and the fact that it’s done electronically. And credit to the Government that in 2020 it was changed to mean that we collect data every single term.

Unfortunately, one of the things that came out of the report is the fact that there is a huge delay, a huge lag, when it comes to that data. So while we might collect data electronically every term, the delay in getting that data to the ministry, to politicians, and to the Minister is many, many, many months. In fact, it was only last week that the data from term 4 attendance was provided to the Opposition, but we know that it was only a couple of weeks before that that the Minister had it on his desk and the Associate Minister had it on her desk. Now, the question begs: how can the ministry direct resource to those schools most in need when there is a five-month delay in that data coming forward? I had a conversation with officials, just in the last few days, and they agreed on that front and said that they are working to try and bring that down. But the fact that there is such a very long lag in getting that data is a real problem.

One of the other things that came out of this is the fact that schools are not required to give their data—it is done on a purely voluntary basis. Now, while most schools do, in fact, give their data across, there are a number of schools who don’t. In the National Party minority view, we made the strong point that it should be mandatory for every school to make their data available. It should be collected and made available very quickly by the ministry and it should be publicly available.

I think it’s worthy of talking about the history because Marja Lubeck talked about the history. Indeed, there has been a decline over a very long time. But I would like to point out that the changes made in 2013 were for the reason that, at the time, the National Party were concerned that there were children falling through the cracks—at 66 percent I think; in 2019 we’re at 58 percent attending regularly. Back then, 66 percent, and we were very concerned about that. We wanted to give responsibility to varieties of groups, especially community groups and iwi, who knew their people and were, we believed, in a better place to connect with those communities, engage with those families, and engage with those students and get them back to school.

It’s worth of noting that in the two years that followed those changes, the rates went up to just under 70 percent of children attending regularly. In fact, in the just over four years between 2013 and 2017, when we left office, the rates of attendance only dropped by 3 percent. So we went from 66 percent to 63 percent attending regularly. So yes, it was a decline. But the decline really came in the two years between 2017 and 2019, when we saw a 6 percent drop. Now, I’m not convinced that the method of delivering the service is the one, big, silver bullet—it may be that this Government decide to change it. I’m not sure that rearranging those chairs is going to make a significant difference, I think there are other things—which I will go into. But I think it’s worthy of noting that over four years since the change, there was a 3 percent drop, and in the two years after Labour took office, a 6 percent drop.

I want to talk about also the effects of COVID. In the report, when you read it, it does mention the fact that we were at just over 58 percent of children attending regularly in 2019, indicating that this was a problem. You can’t blame it on COVID, although COVID, I would argue, has made things much worse and I’ll talk about that in a moment. But this existed well before COVID.

COVID made things much worse. Although the regular attendance data looks pretty similar, when you look at the chronically truant data, which has exploded over the last couple of years, that’s where we need to really put our efforts into. In the last five years, those numbers have over doubled. These are kids who are attending school less than 70 percent of the time. If you take it down to decile 1 schools, those kids are attending school 40 percent of the time. So it’s pretty shocking and we need to do a lot about it.

But the point is that over the two years of COVID we saw an explosion of these chronically truant kids. In fact, in term 4 alone last year—the data that we saw come out last week—we added an extra 10,000 kids to that list. We have 70,000 kids who are chronically truant, who are not attending school regularly—in fact, less than 70 percent of the time. That was 60 percent in term 3. But can I point out that in term 4 of 2019, right before we went into COVID, that was 40,000. We have added nearly 30,000 kids to the chronically truant list. Can I point out that half of those kids are Māori. We have failed, over COVID, the most vulnerable, low decile, and Māori populations. We have to put a lot more effort into those chronically truant kids.

We talk about the ministry having a strategy, and that’s all very well and good, but the point that I want to make today is that a number of the principals that came and spoke to us—and there are a couple in particular who I’ll speak of—made some really good points.

Firstly, there was a woman, her name was Karen Wellington, a principal in Upper Hutt of a decile 3 school—60 percent Māori, 50 percent Pasifika, and had a 90 percent attendance rate. Now, the points that she made resonated with me. She made points like, “We set expectations with parents, the relationships we have with our families are key, we have a plan for truancy, there is accountability in our school for the rates of attendance, we phone, we email, contact is ongoing, and there is constant contact with these parents.” They have a plan for those chronically truant kids—they are immediately reported by teachers. There is immediate action. There are two calls and the principal gets in her car, she drives to the student’s home, and she gets them out of bed. It is that accountability that’s so important.

Mark Brown from Newtown Primary School—a school of 400 kids, 70 percent of which are non-English speaking—again echoed those same comments. They have a plan, they have systems in place, they have strategies, expectations on parents, they make it easy for kids to get to school, they work closely with attendance officers, and their Māori kids attend school 90 percent of the time. I just want to bring to the House’s attention a comment that he made that resonated with me when he said schools need to be proactive and not accept that it’s OK to not turn up.

Now, what worries me over COVID is that we were asleep at the wheel. We put billions of dollars into keeping workers attached to their businesses and yet when it came to students attached to schools: almost nothing. The one thing that this Government did was put $50 million into a contestable fund that officials have admitted didn’t have any targets, didn’t have any outcomes, didn’t have any expectations, and they weren’t able to measure those outcomes. They did a post-report, they did a survey of schools after that, but that weren’t able to—in fact, there was a briefing to the Minister which actually says they weren’t able to confidently say that money increased attendance.

What I’m really worried about is that the Minister will do the same thing again, and she announced a $40 million package over the next few years to reduce truancy. Those officials I met with the other day, again, said there were no targets, no expectations, no accountability tied to that money. And how could that have gone through a Budget process with no outcomes? I’m worried we’re going to see the same things happen over again where we pour money in with no set expectations. Someone at the ministry needs to be accountable for school truancy rates, as do principals and boards of trustees. Thank you.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green) (remote): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. First of all, I’d like to start by thanking teachers out there that have been doing all that they can do to make sure that they support our tamariki. I’m just mindful that it’s important that we support those that support our tamariki. I was just reflecting on a headline that popped up which said that teachers may be catching COVID-19 at a higher rate than other adults. Here’s the thing, right? If you’re talking about attendance, first of all, you need to make sure that our teachers are attending as well. So making sure that they have all the support that they need to actually be able to do this really, really important job should be at the forefront of all the different things that we are organising. I’m mindful that we face a possible second COVID-19 peak over winter. And, at the same time, as the open borders are bringing new viruses into communities, communities need an expert-led plan to support children’s access to education and protect children, school staff, and their families from COVID-19 and other winter respiratory infections.

So it’s important to really acknowledge the impact of COVID over the last couple of years. I do agree with previous speakers as well. What COVID-19 did was just put a limelight, if you like, over the problems that were already there. We already had an inequality crisis—it was already there—and COVID has just exacerbated that. That was already there as well. I think it’s really, really important, and that’s what I learnt over the process at the times that I managed to attend the select committee as well, which was well chaired by Marja Lubeck. I’m not a permanent member of the select committee, but I often visit and I do enjoy and like the deep reflections that many that have come from the education sector, the members around the committee, bring to this debate but also educational issues in particular.

I think it’s really important that we don’t get lost and see the wood between the trees. It’s important to not get lost in the weeds. It’s important to step back and actually take a look at the whole forest. If I can extend this metaphor, as well, we’ve got to understand the part that education plays in the whole ecosystem of all of our social determinants, which impact on whether tamariki can attend school or not.

Because here’s the thing, right? If the tamariki, the children, who are hungry show up to lunch, well, that’s an impact on the educational outcome. If they’ve got to take time off work because mum or dad or uncle or auntie or granddad or grandma, or whoever’s at home, can’t work and they’ve got to go take some shifts down at the supermarket, that impacts upon their educational outcomes. If they can’t call the school, well, then, that impacts their educational outcomes. So we’ve got to look at all of that.

I do acknowledge the comment in the report which said that the wider societal causes of non-attendance include housing affordability, transience, and poverty. Social causes of non-attendance cannot be solved by the education sector alone. So we’ve got to be mindful of that.

But I think it’s really important for us—to sort of pretend and throw our hands up in the air to say that this stuff is all difficult, because there are certain things that we can do. We can commit to livable incomes for everybody. We can commit to warm housing. We can commit to making sure that most of people’s wages aren’t getting pulled off on to rentals or high mortgages and so on and so forth. We’ve got to create that foundation, because the concern that I have—and I do take the point around the data; data must be strong. We must be able to analyse what the situation is. But, then, if we just pour on and devolve all of this responsibility to teachers, all of this responsibility on to schools, and not give them the resources, not provide those wrap-around services and not to give those wrap-around services which should also be culturally appropriate as well, then we are not doing our jobs properly. We’ve got to see this whole thing; take a step back and look at how education is impacted by all these other different factors.

If I can just say, because I don’t have much time here, it’s really important that we commit to making sure that every child deserves a high-quality, free, accessible public education that gives them the best possible start in life. This is what we must commit to. We want all children to reach their full potential and to make sure that we take a step back and understand what those levers are and to deal with the poverty issues within some of our communities. If we commit to that and we see the links between housing, income, and health, we will do the job that Aotearoa New Zealand has elected us to do. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Truancy: the action of staying away from school without good reason. The ACT Party believes—I’m sure, like most people—that that reason would have to be pretty good, and no amount of truancy can really be accepted. I was a bit concerned when the report first got initiated that it might become an avenue to attack the school system and teachers, but I’m really pleased that it didn’t occur, and the committee did a great job in sticking to the problem and didn’t get too side-tracked with some potentially divisive issues.

There are a lot of things going on in people’s lives that affect kids going to school, but education is the most important thing that determines happiness and success, and we must treat it with the importance it deserves—not just academic subjects but going to school builds relationships. They learn how to get on with people, along with the sporting and the cultural activities. It’s hugely important to students when they’re developing their own identity and creating a thriving community. When I went through teachers college in the early 1980s, one of my best lecturers said to us all, “Just remember that the majority of a student’s learning is done outside of the classroom.” A teacher’s role is a complex mixture of passing on academic, pastoral, and life skills to ensure that students have the ability to face what the big wide world has to offer when they leave.

The report identifies a number of areas that are working and things that need to change in today’s schools. The recommendation that truancy be a focus for the Education Review Office will, I think, be enough to make schools look very hard at their processes. I had to laugh when the committee was discussing truancy targets and a Green Party member confidently stated, “Targets don’t work.”

I’d like to thank all of the submitters and all of those who contributed to this report—the many opinions about what the issues were and what should be done about them, from changing the Curriculum, changing school hours, to getting truancy officers, all sorts. There were some common themes. Having the rules and expectations firmly set in place when parents enrol their child was a big one and, I think, was really important.

Bullying came up quite a few times and needs to be taken seriously. We must remember that bullying isn’t confined just to one demographic, and that to concentrate energy in any one particular area can become quite divisive. I know a student who changed schools because of the constant bullying about her red hair. But alongside dealing with bullying, schools must also teach resilience and give students the tools to deal with some of the unkindness they might face and the ability to function in all situations. This means parents and teachers making rules, setting boundaries, and challenging students’ behaviours; it doesn’t mean just being their friends.

Another common theme brought up by many submitters was the huge issue of the increased need for mental health services in our schools. I believe many adults, and a number of people in this House, are responsible for the huge increase in the need for this service. Kids need hope. They need to know that there’s a purpose for everything they do, whether that’s studying maths, training for netball, or practising their violin. There has to be an end goal. In the quest for a better planet, the promise of hope and purpose has gone for many young people. They see no purpose in living in or contributing to a world that they’re told daily is going to end. Rhetoric like “Keep under 1.5 degrees for our survival” and constant talk of mass extinctions, from those to my left, is messing with kids’ heads in a huge way. Climate anxiety or eco-anxiety are common mental health issues now. Whatever message is intended, we must still give kids hope that they have a bright future and there’s a reason to look forward to it. I was teaching in 2019, and condoning climate strikes is condoning truancy. You just can’t have it both ways.

From my experience, two things are imperative to a young person succeeding. The first are parents. Read to your kids. Numerous studies have shown that kids who arrive at school with a basic reading ability are ready to learn and are at a huge advantage from day one. The second thing is for teachers. Teachers must genuinely care about their students. Kids are perceptive and won’t want to come to school if they think that the teacher doesn’t really care. Truancy isn’t just a school problem. All of those involved in a young person’s life—parents, whānau, other agencies, and teachers—have a part to play in ensuring that a child has the best opportunity to fulfil their potential. Kids haven’t changed, but the way we treat them has. Gone are the days when police dropped students off to school in their pyjamas—I did that a few times—but we adults need to step up. Attending school regularly will go a long way to helping all kids to succeed, and I’m actually pretty optimistic about the future.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā tātou e hika mā, tēnā tātou i Te Whare, talofa lava. Tēnā tātou i te āhuatanga o ō tātou mate ki tērā o tātou pāpā ki a Jack Taumaunu kua whakahoki atu ki Whangārei i tēnei rā, nō reira tēnā tātou.

[Greetings, everyone, greetings to us all in the House, greetings. Greetings to you all, in the light of the many recent deaths, specifically of one of our uncles Jack Taumaunu who has returned to Whangārei today, therefore, greetings one and all.]

Well, I’m reminded of my own schooling experience and the experiences of many other Māori in the mainstream education system today, and I stand here to address some of the committee’s recommendations to keep tamariki in school.

Experiences that are so normal for Māori they can’t be so easily captured in reports and parliamentary inquiries—experiences of having their taonga ripped from their necks, to cover tā moko, to cut their hair, which is tapu to tangata whenua and tangata moana. I know of too many tamariki who have had to take days off because their school does not provide kai or because their classroom is damp and cold and their winter jacket does not match their uniform, or because the teacher pronounces their names wrong when reading out the roll, or because they come from poorer whānau who live in poorer communities—housing issues, social issues, health issues, etc. I recently learnt of a teacher in a high-decile primary school who would leave the names of the kids whose parents had not paid their school fees on the whiteboard to shame them in front of the kids whose parents had. All the names on the board were Māori. I could go on for days, but I only have five minutes.

These are the tamariki we are talking about. Most of them do not know how to speak up for themselves against poor teachers and against poor schools. Some of them eventually just stop turning up, and who can blame them. It has always been clear to Te Paati Māori that the mainstream Pākehā education system fails our tamariki. It is racist by default. It is a hostile environment for Māori and especially for students from lower-income families.

So I would like to acknowledge the Education and Workforce Committee for running this inquiry, and I would like to endorse a few of the recommendations, in particular the recommendation to further support and fund Māori-medium schools. If you need a road map for this, feel free to look at Te Paati Māori’s policy manifesto, which would ensure that all Māori-medium education from kōhanga reo to kura kaupapa, kura ā iwi, wharekura, and whare wānanga are funded equal to their mainstream equivalents. Māori-medium education not only immerses children in te reo Māori but in tikanga kaupapa and wairua Māori. It is a holistic approach that is the foundation of kaupapa like Te Aho Matua, which probably should be the kaupapa for every school, which provides pathways for education, educational, cultural, social, and spiritual achievement and excellence.

We also can’t lose sight of the fact that most Māori students are in mainstream education. We need to ensure that those students are embraced for who they are, are able to learn their reo and history, that we invest in Māori models of delivery, that there are Māori staff on senior leadership teams, and that all teachers are skilled in te reo Māori competencies.

I would like to endorse the recommendations that the Government continue to provide period products to schools and continue the school lunches programme. Te Paati Māori would like to see that expanded to free breakfasts and lunch to be funded in all low-decile primary and intermediate schools.

Te Paati Māori support the committee’s view on punishment for absenteeism. We would actually remove the ability for schools to expel students who are below the school leaving age of 16 altogether. We know Māori students make up 50 percent of the students who are excluded from school and the irreparable harm this causes. If you need evidence, just look at the fact that 55 percent of prisoners have been kicked out of school.

I want to conclude by acknowledging students with disabilities, neurodiversity, and learning differences who have been most let down by our system. Around 26 percent of Māori identify as disabled, 40 percent of the Māori adults with disabilities have no formal education qualification, almost double the proportion of non-disabled Māori. We need to massively overhaul funding for support teachers, appropriate facilities, and professional development for all teachers. I was shocked to find in the Māori Affairs Committee inquiry into learning support for ākonga Māori that of the 600 learning support staff across the country, only two fulltime-equivalents were designated for kura kaupapa Māori and Māori-medium schools. We need to establish a task force led by Māori with the mandate to transform how Māori students with neurodiversity and learning differences are taught and supported. Otherwise they become problematic because these issues, they start as behavioural, then eventually criminal because this is how the school and society see them. I think a Māori education authority is in order. Kia ora tātou.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Children): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on behalf of the other four education Ministers we have in this Government, and I’d like to thank the committee who participated in the inquiry for your work. I’d like to also take the opportunity to respond to three points that other speakers have made.

I’d like to acknowledge the contribution of Erica Stanford. She spoke about schools setting expectations in terms of achievement and then following up on those expectations. If I could tell a little anecdote about my time as a school principal, the last school I was principal of had average attendance of about 85 percent and I said that wasn’t good enough, and I set an arbitrary figure of us having average attendance of 96 percent, which was two days of term that I said was acceptable that a child could be absent.

All we did—and there’s some real low-tech things that schools can do. [Member’s phone rings]. Sorry about this. There’s some low-tech things that schools can do. What we did was we actually employed somebody who was on a benefit and topped up their benefit by $30 to $40 a week, and their job was to collect the rolls every day and then to ring up the parents whose children were absent. We found that although they hated it—because we sort of did harangue them a bit—it actually did make them accountable. We got the attendance up to about 93, 94 percent. That was a very low-tech solution.

I’d also like to acknowledge what Chris Baillie mentioned about bullying. Bullying is an issue and it is something that drives children away from school. Now, I was told when I became the principal of Kaitaia Intermediate that the whole school was feral, that, you know, it was just terrible, that the misbehaviour was atrocious, and that all the kids were bullies. So what I did, another low-tech solution, was put a piece of paper in front of each of the children in the school—there’s about 300 in the school—and I asked them two questions: “Have you been bullied in the last month; and if the answer is yes, write the name of the bully.”

We found that out of those 300 kids, there were six that were bullies, and we focused and targeted the behaviour of those six children. The Ministry of Education did a bit of a survey at the start of May of the one year and then they came back in May of the next year. They found that there’d been a 90 percent reduction in bullying at the school—a very low-tech solution.

Thirdly, I’d just like to address the issue that Rawiri Waititi raised about Māori-medium education. Now, only 10 percent of our Māori children actually attend either kura kaupapa or bilingual units in mainstream schools. That’s not good enough; just 10 percent. We know that children in those kaupapa Māori settings actually achieve better and attend better.

That’s why we have said that we would like to raise or triple the numbers of Māori children attending kaupapa Māori schools from 10 percent to 30 percent. That means there’s about 20,000 Māori young people now in kaupapa Māori education; we’d like to make that 60,000 by 2040, which means 250 more kura, which means 3,500 extra fluent kaiako. That means, you know, obviously resourcing of those kura and resources to support those teachers to teach bilingually. So there is work going on that the Government is trying to do to make education more attractive.

I’d also like to acknowledge the comments of a mentor of mine, or a principal when I was a young principal starting at Kaitaia Intermediate School. An older principal at Carmel intermediate school by the name of John Smith said to me, “Kelvin, what you need to do is make sure that school is the best adventure in town.” So if young people are excited about what they’re going to do each day in school—if they’re looking forward to what they’re going to do—then they’ll be there at school.

So we’ve got to make sure that schools cater for—are relevant; the curriculum that we teach in schools is relevant to the children. So Māori children need to have the kapa haka, there needs to be the sport, there needs to be the outdoor education, the camps, the science experiments—all those sorts of things that really excite our young people and get them into school. We can’t sort of just narrow down the curriculum to just reading, writing, and arithmetic, because if they’re drilled with that, then it actually turns them off education. We know that our young people like to—as well as, you know, reading, writing, and arithmetic is important, but it’s not the only thing. We need to make sure that we provide a balanced curriculum so that all children will find something that they can be successful at and want to be at school.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this debate. Having initiated this inquiry back last year when I was the education spokesperson for National, I’m thrilled that it was carried out by the select committee and that they highlighted the importance of the issue, because, you know, the reality is, looking at the education sector in New Zealand, there’s an obvious issue around our falling achievement in terms of literacy and numeracy, which is fundamental to our nation’s prospects in the future and the prospects of the lives of the young people coming through so they can succeed and do well in the global environment and be able to obtain good jobs and a good living and be able to look after their families well. A good, global standard of education is one of the most important gifts we can give anybody in this country.

When you’re looking for reasons why we might be falling off the pace, a pretty obvious place to start is, well, are the kids actually at school? The answer, of course, has been, well, not many of them have been. I started a year or so ago looking at the Ministry of Education’s website, and in all the priorities and all the programmes and plans and all sorts of things that have been discussed—curriculum review, all sorts of other things—nowhere was there any real focus on that core issue of whether the kids are at school or not. So we raised this issue time and again last year, and the biggest shock I had was rocking up to Whitiora primary school in Hamilton one day, talking to the headmaster, who said that their average regular attendance, the number of kids in the school regularly attending school, was only 15 percent, and I couldn’t believe it—I couldn’t believe it—and it had been that way for years. And across the country, the average is only 60 percent, which is staggeringly appalling, but there are so many, many schools where it’s only 15 percent or 30 percent or 40 percent. The previous speaker, the Hon Kelvin Davis, mentioned Māori immersion schools being so much better in terms of attendance. That’s not true, actually; it’s about 50 percent regular attendance across that sector as well.

So in all these places, the kids are not at school, and the issue that we face, most fundamentally, is that we’ve allowed a culture of excuses to develop in this area. I couldn’t believe how many principals and how many people in the education sector would come up with all manner of excuses as to why the kids weren’t there—“it’s all a bit hard.” We heard that from the previous speaker, who was saying, effectively, that school’s not exciting enough, and, you know, if you make them do maths, they’ll find it difficult and they won’t want to come. That is such a backwards way of looking at the issue, and that is why our maths achievement is falling off the cliff. It’s not that maths is too hard; it’s that we’re not doing an effective job at teaching it in many cases. Of course, there are some brilliant maths teachers out there doing a brilliant job, and I encourage them, with every opportunity, to do more. But across the board, we are failing to engage our kids on these topics.

So we have to drop the culture of excuses. The best example I saw of that was Manurewa Intermediate, where there’s a flashing sign out in front of the school saying, #NoExcuses and “Get your kids to school!” That culture of no excuses, there is no excuse, whether you’re feeling a bit off colour—well, that’s not to say that if you’ve got a particular sickness you should be at school, but there is a whole lot of excuses that are given for why kids are not regularly at school, and we shouldn’t accept them. We should see it as an absolute necessity for parents to get them to school.

The critical thing is to get some accountability back into the sector. Parents, of course, are the ones who are most accountable for ensuring that their kids are at school. At the moment, of course, there are no consequences for anybody anywhere if they don’t send their kids to school, and that has to change. There’s no consequences for the school, of course. The principal, in my view, should be thinking about nothing else—well, first and foremost, “Are the kids at school, and what am I doing in my school to ensure that they’re turning up regularly?” And there should be some accountability for that school. If, year in, year out, only 30 percent are turning up, there needs to be some very, very serious questions asked; there needs to be change, not continuing on as we carried on. Secondly, we need to have inspectors out there knocking on doors, making sure the kids are at school, and making sure they turn up. And that has fallen off a cliff over the last 4½ years.

So I’m very pleased that we’ve done this report. There is so much work to do and there is no more important thing that can be done in the education sector. Thank you.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand to do a short speech on the report that the Education and Workforce Committee did into non-attendance at school. I’m a member of this committee, and I actually found the experience to be really, really positive, despite the huge challenges that we face in relation to attendance in New Zealand.

In reflection of what the previous speaker—the Hon Paul Goldsmith—was saying about attendance, I actually didn’t hear excuses from the principals and schools that came to talk to us; what I heard was solutions. I think the answers to non-attendance in New Zealand are already known, I think they’re known within the sector, and I think what we were able to do in the select committee was really examine the issue, look at how widespread it was, look at best practice, and look at how things are working in certain schools and in certain communities to really increase attendance. So I actually found it really positive and I did find that the people that were submitting were providing very, very useful solutions to what is—and I think we all accept around the House—a very serious problem that we’re all taking very seriously.

This inquiry was actually initiated as part of the select committee, and it was genuinely initiated from both sides of the House, because, I think, we do agree that there is value in looking into this problem. What we found was that there’s not a single reason for non-attendance in New Zealand; there’s a myriad of reasons why children might not attend school. Some of those reasons are to do with the design of the schooling system itself. The other reasons that we found were things that people might not assume were included in non-attendance—for example, if you go on holiday, you get permission from the school, that’s still included as non-attendance and is still included in the statistics. Obviously, there’s the really obvious thing that we’ve dealt with through COVID, which is sickness, which has definitely been exacerbated through the period of the pandemic. And there are equity issues, and I think we all accept that there are serious equity issues within the education system, as there is in society itself, that should be addressed, as well.

So why did we end up in the situation where we had attendance that is lower than what we would expect in this country? I think we can look to relatively recently when we had a decentralisation of the Attendance Service under the previous National Government in 2013. Now, the problem with this was that it meant that the problem of school attendance was taken away from the communities that know the students and actually put into a centralised form with people that didn’t necessarily know the communities they were working in and didn’t necessarily know the students or the families or the issues that they faced. Since that time, we’ve seen that school attendance has been declining, since 2015, and, as we know, and we can expect, COVID-19 has made those statistics worse. So what we found was that all of those were contributing factors to the situation we are now in where we would like to increase our school attendance. The reason that we want to increase school attendance is not because we want to punish students. We want students to be at school because we know that high attendance is likely to lead to better academic success, and better academic success is likely to lead to success in the future, and we all want that, I think, for our students.

So in this inquiry, we did a few unusual things. We did engage with the Parliamentary Engagement team. We had responses from school students—we really wanted to hear from them. We had, I think, submissions from students who are actually at school, who were reflecting on what their fellow students had said were the reasons they weren’t attending, which was really, really important and valuable feedback to have. We had interest from colleagues around the House. I’d like to acknowledge my colleagues Barbara Edmonds and Shanan Halbert for attending the committee, because they had a particular interest in this area and also supporting submitters from their areas. So we had a really positive, as I reflected earlier in my speech, experience.

The reasons we found for non-attendance, as I have mentioned earlier, were bullying, health-related absences, disabilities, lack of household resources—a huge range of issues, including things like a lack of access to period products, which this Government has tried to address; and food insecurity.

In the brief time I have left, I just also want to mention another initiative that my colleague Ingrid Leary has been working on with the Human Rights Commission, which is the new school uniform guidelines. They were launched last week by the Human Rights Commission, and the Race Relations Commissioner, Meng Foon, described them as huge. They will help increase inclusivity and that feeling of belonging within schools.

Now, we are expecting the Government’s response to this report early this month, and we really look forward to seeing that and I hope that it includes a lot of the recommendations that we made. Thank you.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to rise and speak on this inquiry which was initiated by one of my colleagues the Hon Paul Goldsmith.

This report highlights—and my colleagues have also emphasised it—this rise in chronic absenteeism: 70,000 young people chronically absent from our schools. That’s a huge number, and when I think of it in context, it’s 50 percent more than the size of Invercargill City. It is a large number of young people that are not in school, and it is, quite frankly, frightening.

One of the things that I was pleased to see that came through in the report was the noting of barriers due to disability or neurodiversity. I’m very pleased that the report notes that this needs to be monitored in the context of learning support needs. That will be something that I’ll be paying particular attention to.

But I want to talk about those young people that don’t particularly enjoy traditional success in our schools. I saw a lot of this in the vocational education sector. In fact, I listened to the Hon Kelvin Davis talking about the things that excited some young people in schools, and I thought he was reading out a very good description of charter schools which, obviously, offered some different experiences for those that don’t necessarily achieve in the traditional school environment.

My fear is that the young people that I was dealing with in the vocational education sector who weren’t necessarily enjoying traditional success in the school environment are now not there at all. I saw the work that we had to do embedding numeracy and literacy in level 1 to level 4 vocational qualifications to try and bring those young people up to speed with their numeracy and literacy, because many of those young people were the ones that went on to be our outstanding young trades people. They were young people who were really good at practical skills. They knew how to do and make and fix things, and so they are a really important part of our society. My fear is that we won’t have those young people coming through, because they’ve gone from not enjoying school to actually not being there at all.

I think we are in real danger of having depleted a pool of young people who would have been coming through to fill some of those trades roles in the future. I’m really concerned that this is a Government that has been characterised by having strategies and announcements but inaction. This is a problem that cannot have inaction. This is a problem that can’t just have academic debate and working groups. It must have action or we are going to be providing a disservice to 70,000 young people—70,000 young people every year who are missing out on the basics of schooling. If you miss out on the basics of schooling, those people are being abandoned and being led into a life of poverty, a life of crime, a life of being disenfranchised from society. And so we’re setting up not only those individuals for a life of misery, but our communities and our country is going to miss out on those thousands of young people who should be going forward and having meaningful careers and meaningful lives.

This is a serious problem: 70,000 young people not in school is a serious problem, and we cannot afford inaction. We must see real solutions to solve this problem. We will be watching this Government very closely that they come up with solutions. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Today, it is not an economics lesson; today, we’ll start with a history lesson, shall we, from someone who was in the thick of it in 2010 when the challenges of student engagement and achievement were brought to the attention of the Hon Anne Tolley. And she responded. She reviewed the systems and how they respond to our vulnerable students, and she made some reforms, including putting more money into prosecuting parents. I wonder why that didn’t work. She also reformed the truancy service, as we’ve heard, combining 77 district services and the non-enrolled service into contracts with 11 providers nationwide, including the establishment of the electronic service. Over the years, the number of those providers has grown, because it was really clear from the outset that what got lost in there was the relationships in our communities, our ability as teachers and their schools to connect with whānau, to wrap around their children.

Their intentions were good—continuity and improvement—something that I acknowledged, as the president of the Post Primary Teachers’ Association at the time, but there were concerns raised by us at the time that this new national structure would be too far removed from school communities, students, and their whānau, and relationships would not be sustained. In 2015, not only was the Attendance Service stretched but schools, as they always do, stepped up. They employed truancy officers for themselves. They knocked on doors. We heard that from the Opposition this afternoon. And they worked really hard to provide additional wraparound support for those who started to develop a pattern of non-attendance. But this heroic model is not sustainable, and our schools and students deserve more. In our recent inquiry, we heard that the current situation is worse and has been exacerbated by COVID. We heard from numerous organisations, schools, teachers, and most importantly our students about the impacts—not only the reasons why they’re not attending school but the impact that has on their lives.

But there is hope, Mr Baillie. Just like with climate change, being honest about the problem means that you can collaborate and come up with a solution. We learn from our innovators. We learn from our communities that were successful in turning things around—just like our honourable Minister reflected this afternoon, about how we can effect change. Schools did step up, and in our inquiry, as Camilla Belich pointed out, we got stories of hope. We got stories of hope, and the recommendations are extensive, evidence-informed, and actually show that localised, responsive, well-resourced solutions are what we need—not excuses but reasons. Being honest about the problem means you can address it. And I’m really pleased that all of those challenges, about having to do something—we’ve got an answer for that; obviously somebody wasn’t paying attention over the last couple of weeks. We haven’t sat around. This year’s Budget: early interventions, student attendance around school lunches, period products—let’s see, Incredible Years, Check & Connect, kaupapa Māori interventions, PB4L refresh. And then, when things get a bit tougher, Mana Ake, counselling in schools, the regional response fund. This is about empowering our communities to look after our students.

I heard something about charter schools. Well, funnily enough, a bit of a history lesson about those, too. There is nothing we saw in a charter school—nothing—that is not already supported in our dynamic and diverse system that we currently have. The only thing they had differently: they had more cash, all right? We are proud of our system, and we know that with better support our communities and our schools can respond to the needs of our students going forward. I hate to channel my mother, but sometimes she gives me a bit of an “I told you so” moment. Well, this is a bit of an “I told you so” moment. If the last review and reform to attendance issues had been better engaged with our students, with their whānau, with schools and teachers, with iwi and NGOs at the outset, as we have done through this inquiry, and as our Ministers have done as they have pursued this issue relentlessly, we may not have had, more than a decade on, reforms that did not work. They did not work. I’m proud of what we’re going to do—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Motion agreed to.

Report noted.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for further consideration of the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill

Bills

Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 1 June.

Clauses 1 and 2 (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Members, the House is in committee for further consideration of the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill. I remind members they are able to participate remotely. If you’re on Zoom and wish to take a call, please type “call” into the chat. You should also use the chat if you want to raise a point of order. Finally, it would be helpful for members to ask multiple questions of the Minister during a call, if they have them. When we last considered this bill, clauses 1 and 2, the preliminary clauses, were being debated. Therefore, the question is that clauses 1 and 2 stand part.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Chair. I refer to the Supplementary Order Paper from Dr Shane Reti, where he suggests the amendment of replacing, in clause 1, “Pae Ora (Healthy Futures)” with “Centralising Healthcare”. I believe this is actually a very important point in terms of the transparency of what is happening here. Dr Reti referred in his speech on this to what is happening in the polytechnic sector, that centralisation of the vocational education sector. So I think it is really important for the Minister to explain to us how this centralisation of healthcare is not going to repeat the mistakes that are occurring with the centralisation of the polytechnic. I think this is particularly important because in the polytech sector it has caused some disarray, but in the health sector it could be an absolutely overwhelming thing for our health sector when it is currently having to deal with the pandemic.

So I want to talk about the things that are not occurring in the polytech centralisation, basic things of change management—things like no integration plan, no financial sustainability plan, no operating model, no organisational structure. This has led to a sector that has now more than doubled its deficit and, in some of the polytechnics, it has doubled the staff turnover. Can we imagine what would happen to our health sector if those same outcomes of a poorly managed centralisation doubled the deficits of our DHBs and doubled the staff turnover?

So I think it is really important that this Government speaks to us about what they have learnt from the disaster of the polytech sector centralisation, be very transparent and up front with the public that this is a centralisation, this is a very major change management centralisation—and what will be done differently to ensure that those same very poor outcomes, that same disarray in the sector, does not occur with the centralisation of our healthcare. I would have to say that the timing of this—and, again, when COVID hit, those of us in the tertiary education, vocational education sector tried to urge the Minister to delay the start of that centralisation of the vocational education sector. Again, we should be urging the centralisation of the healthcare sector to be delayed until the sector is not having to manage the pandemic that they are now dealing with.

So the naming of it must describe what is happening, and I don’t believe “Pae Ora (Healthy Futures)” does describe it, because if in fact the outcomes are as they have been with the failed polytechnic centralisation, they will not be healthy futures. They will be very unhealthy futures for all the citizens of New Zealand. So I would urge the Minister to be very transparent about what is being done to have very good change management processes in place, and not the example of the failed polytechnic centralisation. Thank you, Mr Chair.

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

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): The question is that Dr Shane Reti’s amendment to clause 1 to change the bill title to the “Centralising Healthcare Bill” set out on Supplementary Order Paper 161 be agreed to.

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

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.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 42

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 1 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 42

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 2 agreed to.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Bills

Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill

Second Reading

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister of Defence) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill.

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

Hon PEENI HENARE: I move, That the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill be now read a second time.

The three-strikes law is unique in New Zealand because it prevents judges from fully considering the context of offending and the individual circumstances of offenders at sentencing. This law should be repealed because the courts already have equivalent sentencing options available to protect the public from people who commit serious offences—from limitations on parole eligibility through to the possibility of life imprisonment without parole.

Given the distorting effect the three-strikes law has had on sentences, strong evidence of its effectiveness would be needed to justify its ongoing existence. Instead, there is little evidence the three-strikes law has worked as intended to deter or prevent any kind of serious crime. There is, however, clear evidence of the disproportionate impact the law has had, including requiring judges to impose sentences so extremely excessive they breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Further, we know the three-strikes regime exacerbates the overrepresentation of Māori in the prison population. Māori are almost nine times more likely to receive a first strike than those of European or other ethnicity, and over 18 times more likely to receive a second strike.

For these reasons, it is the Government’s view that the discretion should be returned to the judiciary, who are best placed to respond appropriately to serious and repeat offending. When approaching the repeal, one of the Government’s main concerns has been minimising any effect of the repeal on victims. We engaged with the Chief Victims Advisor during the development of the repeal legislation to ensure that any potential impacts were understood early and could be effectively managed. As a result, we developed the repeal legislation in a way that will not impact victims of strike offenders.

I want to be clear that no victims of those currently imprisoned for a strike offence will be impacted by the repeal. We are not proposing to provide for resentencing or early parole eligibility for these offenders. We heard from victims’ advocacy groups and from victims themselves that to do so would risk causing additional stress and hurt, and that is not our intention with this bill.

What this bill does is acknowledge that the three-strikes regime does not achieve the goals it set out to achieve and it does not keep victims safer. Victims’ safety was never a goal of the three-strikes law when it was introduced. We know from international evidence that these kinds of laws can instead have a negative impact on victims. This is because they discourage offenders from pleading guilty, meaning more victims have to go to court and go to trial than otherwise might.

The excesses of the three-strikes law do not support victims and do not contribute to a criminal justice system that focuses on rehabilitating offenders. That is why this Government has committed to repealing this law. The Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill was introduced on 17 November last year and referred to the Justice Committee. That committee recommends, by majority, that it be passed with minor changes that I support in full. I thank all members of the select committee for their thorough consideration of this bill.

Submissions were received from a wide range of submitters, including those with first-hand experiences of the three-strikes regime. Submitters included legal practitioners, victims of crime, criminal justice advocacy groups, and strike offenders themselves. Many of those who made submissions to the committee made some very important points, and I thank everyone who took the time to make a submission.

As part of its examination of the bill, I asked the committee to consider whether sentences imposed under the three-strikes regime should be reviewed in some way. Taking into account feedback from submitters, the Justice Committee has not recommended any provisions be included in the bill that would provide for the reconsideration of any sentences handed out under the three-strikes law. The committee has reported such measures would be complex to administer and would have significant effects on the victims of these offenders. I want to reiterate that the Government has accepted this position and will not be introducing any measures that would allow for the resentencing of strike offenders. I thank the committee for their careful consideration of this issue and for reflecting the concerns of submitters in their decision.

In their report on the bill, the committee noted that while compensation arising from the repeal of the three-strikes regime is precluded, the relevant provision should be more clearly worded to avoid interference with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is a necessary clarification. As we have seen in the short amount of time since the bill was drafted and introduced, the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal have found sentences imposed under the regime to be in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This Government does not and would never direct the judiciary in their consideration of how these breaches should be responded to, and the amended clause makes this clearer.

I do also want to acknowledge the submitters who did not support this bill. I understand there are those who feel strongly the three-strikes law should stay in effect, and I appreciate those who have shared these views with myself and the committee.

The courts stand firm on the evidence that this law has been ineffectual. It was the price the previous National Government had to pay for support from ACT, which they did not agree with at the outset; they should have trusted that instinct.

Finally, I acknowledge that this bill is likely to inspire debate in the House and in public about the way we approach criminal justice and how we treat offenders. I want to reiterate that when the three-strikes law is repealed, judges will have the same range of sentencing options at their disposal. New Zealand’s most serious offenders will continue to receive appropriate sentences of imprisonment and will only be released on parole subject to the oversight of the parole board—when they no longer pose any undue risk to the public.

I want to be clear this is about taking a smarter approach to criminal justice policy. It’s about ensuring we have appropriate tools to hold offenders accountable and use evidence to build a justice system that ensures less crime, less offending, and fewer victims of crime who are better supported.

I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I rise to stand against this Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill, brought in by a Government that is out of touch, soft on crime, and tone-deaf to the realities of what people are experiencing on the doorsteps and on the streets and in our communities in terms of a rising crime situation. This Minister and this Government are out of touch when it comes to the reality of what’s going on in our communities.

One of the greatest shocks of my political time was becoming a new Minister back in 2014 and rocking up with my many priorities that I was going to do as Minister of Commerce and discovering that the officials looked at me and said, “Well, of course you might want to do your 10 things, but we can only do five bills at once and four of them are compulsory, and if you want to do another one, you’ve got to drop three others.” The ultimate consequence of it is that a Minister learns very early on that they need to prioritise how they’re going to use their ministry and the limited resources that they have to focus on what really matters.

Then we look at this Government’s priorities in justice, and what is their priority? Their priority, looking at all the situations that we see in justice like the rising crime, the ram raids going on left, right, and centre, people getting shot in their communities, drive-by shootings everywhere, an increase of 21 percent in violent crime and more than 40 percent in gang membership in this country—they look at all that and they conclude, “What is our priority in justice? Well, actually, we think we’re too tough on the most serious offenders.” That’s the conclusion that they’ve drawn—that we should focus on repealing the three-strikes legislation because, overall, we’re too tough on the worst violent offenders in this country, and our priority when it comes to justice is making life easier for them.

Well, how tone-deaf can you be? That’s what this Government is when it comes to—they’re hanging their heads in shame over there because they know, particularly the many of them in slightly marginal seats, that they won’t be back in 18 months’ time because they are not listening to what the community wants when it comes to law and order, and that is that. Rather than what the Minister rather lamely referred to as a smarter approach, they don’t want to see a softer approach that they have seen from this Government.

I heard, again, the Minister saying that the evidence was that this bill, the three-strikes legislation that was introduced a decade ago, has been “ineffectual”. There is no such evidence. That was nonsense. He should really come back into the House and apologise for saying something which is completely unjustified. The Ministry of Justice brief on this bill was that “There is no substantial international or New Zealand evidence on the effect of three strikes laws on crime.” There is no evidence—no evidence. “The existing evidence is”—I continue with the quotation—“mixed and more robust research is needed to understand the true effects of these laws.” Well, that doesn’t strike me as a strong, sound basis for repeal, does it? It certainly doesn’t justify all the nonsense that we’ve heard on the other side of the House saying, “Oh, these haven’t worked. This bill hasn’t worked; therefore, we need to throw it out.” There is no evidence—that’s what the Ministry of Justice says.

Well, it’s appalling that in the last 4½ years of being determined to remove it, they haven’t looked for any evidence. They haven’t tried because they don’t want to know, they don’t want to see, and they don’t want to understand what New Zealanders are seeing on their streets, which is a rising tide of violence that needs to be dealt with effectively.

Rather than a Government coming in and having all sorts of other priorities in the justice sector other than keeping New Zealanders safe, they are not drawing the conclusion that this Government has drawn that, on balance, when you look at the whole justice sector, our main problem is that we’re too tough on the criminals. That is a bizarre conclusion to be drawing. So when we look at the victims of the crime—well, we don’t hear anything from them in this bill and in this focus. We heard from them in the select committee process. We heard from people like Sunny Kaushal coming in and talking about the terrible effect that repeat violent crime has had in the dairy sector—the people lying in bed at night at 3 o’clock wondering if their dairy or if their shop is going to be the one that is smashed over tonight, or is it going to be tomorrow night. We hear of the families who have lost loved ones to violent crime incidents, and from repeat offenders, on many occasions. They are asking themselves, “What about us? What about our family?”

The main goal of three-strikes legislation is to remove the most dangerous offenders from circulation for longer. That is what keeps our community safe. We’re not talking about large numbers of nice people. When we look at the figures, they tell the story. There’s only been, after the 10 years or so that it has been introduced, just under 13,000 people on the first-strike offence—13,000 people. You know, maybe if it was totally ineffectual, as the Minister claimed, as a deterrent and as a piece of legislation we might have seen another 13,000 people on the second strike, but we don’t. What we see is 640 people on the second strike across the country, and then, if it was totally ineffectual at that point, maybe we would see 640 people on a third strike. But, no, we see 21 of New Zealand’s worst offenders on a third strike.

So all this focus of ministerial effort in the House and all the grandstanding by this Government for this legislation is over a piece of legislation that has managed to keep the 21 worst repeat serious offenders in this country in jail and out of circulation for longer.

Hon Andrew Little: So why is there a rising tide of crime?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: And then—The Muppet Show continues over there. We have some people pointing out some flaws in the way that the legislation has worked, and there probably are some flaws in the way the legislation has worked. Now, there are examples—very few examples—such as the lack of rehabilitation programmes available for prisoners who are not eligible for parole, but that is something that could be reviewed or changed in the legislation. The obvious point would be to say, “OK, 10 years on, there are a couple of kinks in the system. Let’s deal with those.”, because the fundamental element of the bill is about keeping New Zealanders safe. Let’s keep that and deal with a couple of the issues that have come up in the course of the inquiry that we’ve had.

But that was not the approach that this Government has taken. What’s happened is that they made a promise during the election campaign that they’re going to throw it out, because this was, again, the priority for Young Labour and whoever else was pushing the Labour Party’s agenda—it might have been Mr Little. Who knows? He’s moved on to much more effective areas in health where he’s got that all under control after he made no progress in justice for a long time, but there you go.

But they promised to do this, and regardless of whether it makes any sense, they have spent the rest of the time dreaming up a justification for it where it doesn’t exist, and, like I say, when a Minister of the Crown stands up in this House and says, “Oh, the three-strikes laws were ineffectual.”, he is wrong. There is no evidence at all that he can point to to show that this legislation has been ineffectual.

The only point I’d make is when we look out there, for those of us who go outside and see what is going on in our communities, who see the rise of violent crime in our communities, who read every night over the last few weeks—every night—that another house has been shot at and it’s only a matter of time before innocent people are going to be killed—only a matter of time. They see what’s going on, they see the ram raids, they see the 11-year-olds stealing cars and smashing them into buildings, and they look at the challenges that we face as a country—

Hon Andrew Little: It really is working—yeah!

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Oh, here we go. Here we have another argument from the great legal scholar Mr Little, which is to say, “We haven’t got nirvana in this country. Therefore, the three-strikes legislation hasn’t worked. Therefore, we should throw it out.” Well, I suppose that if we follow that logic, we might as well just throw out the prisons entirely. It’s clearly not working. Let’s give it up, and we won’t try any more because it doesn’t work. Well, what a nonsense kind of argument it is that we’re seeing from the Minister there.

So the only point I’d make is this Government is tone-deaf when it comes to what is going on in our community, and if it really thinks that the big issue in justice, right here, right now, is that we’re too tough on the worst criminals, then they should go home and find something better to do. Mr Speaker, thank you very much. We oppose this bill, and we will continue to oppose it.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, if there was ever a “Muppet Show”, that was it—that was it indeed—because the three-strikes legislation does need to be repealed. It’s important that that happens, and I’ll give you three good reasons why that should happen.

First of all, I’d like to acknowledge all of those people who submitted on the bill, whether they were for or against. I would like to acknowledge all of those organisations who gave quite detailed information, and I’d like to speak to some of that information today.

The first point I’d like to make as to why we don’t need this legislation any more is that some of that really important advice we got from officials and through organisations was on the theory of deterrence, and this is really the heart of what we’re debating today: whether the idea of deterrence works. It’s a theory that punishment can effectively shape human behaviour, and the threat of punishment will somehow outweigh any potential gains that crime might glean. This assumes that all human behaviour is the product of conscious and rational decision-making, and what it fails to do—for those who are streetwise and tell us about what happens in day to day—is it fails to reflect the actual nature of serious offending in New Zealand. In the seconds before someone commits a crime in our country, they do not scan the most recent amendments to the Crimes Act. They do not weigh up whether the impending sentence is in fact worth it or not. It is done on impulse, it is done in an instant, and it is more often than not done under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Now, let me be very clear. I want to make it incredibly clear on the record that in no way at all should our society tolerate serious criminal acts, but let’s not fool ourselves that bigger sentences make one scrap of difference in the rate of offending or in making our victims safer. There is no—absolutely no—consistent pattern to changing crime rates before and after the three-strikes regime was introduced, and Mr Goldsmith admitted that himself in his first speech.

To be very fair, the one piece of information we received was that there was a 1.4 percent decrease between a first and a second strike. That’s as close as we can get over the entire period of this legislation being implemented of any marginal difference. The Ministry of Justice evidence brief in 2018 recorded crime rates for three highest-volume offences—serious assault, sexual assault, and robbery offences—from 1996 to 2014, and, based on those trends, the recorded crime rates at that time, it was concluded that there were few changes that could easily be attributed to the three-strikes law. Quite simply, this three-strikes regime has not reduced offending as ACT and National had promised it would when it was introduced.

The No. 2 reason why we don’t support this bill is it stops the judiciary from doing their job. It stops a judge from actually looking at the circumstances before them at that time and weighing that up. Under three strikes, judges must sentence offenders to maximum sentences on a second- or third-strike offence, regardless of any relevant context, and the manifestly unjust component has been used in many of those instances to try and change it. It is an anomaly in New Zealand law, because it severely limits judicial discretion in sentencing to be able to impose a sentence and consider issues like the seriousness of the offending, like the other people involved, and like the mental health of the person who’s standing on trial. In fact, the Supreme Court themselves found that this legislation has, in fact, breached our own New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

The fact is that this has resulted in absurd outcomes and hasn’t made our communities any safer. In one case, a person was jailed for 10 years for an offence which the sentencing judge would have ordinarily imposed an 18-month sentence in prison. Courts, in fact, can already impose sentences equivalent to those under the three-strikes regime, where appropriate, such as preventive detention for repeat serious offenders, such as public protection for extended supervision orders, and such as minimum periods of imprisonment and maximum penalties up to life imprisonment.

My third point is that this piece of legislation has damaged Māori communities. Māori have been disproportionately represented in the three-strikes regime. The sad statistic, which everybody in this House should know, is that of those 23 offenders who have received a third strike, 81 percent of them were Māori.

I would like to wrap up by saying that this Government knows that to reduce offending we need to focus on the root causes of crime, and this means getting smart on crime. If National was in Government, we would have a mega-prison at Waikeria, we would be in the dark ages, and we would continue just to lock people up. But instead of doing that, what this Government does is we have stepped in and built Māori pathways, which has just started the institutional change that our criminal justice system so desperately needs.

We have put in alcohol and drug addiction, and mental health treatments into prison where no treatment was ever offered previously. We have provided alcohol and drug treatment courts, which have got evidence-based best practice to get people out of offending and out of recidivism. We have introduced Te Pae Oranga panels across New Zealand that reduce the crime by addressing the first underlying drivers of crime when they first present to the justice system—huge success rate and huge rate of not reoffending—and rangatahi and Pasifika courts all across to make sure that we re-engage young people with their culture in order to provide a better platform for the delivery of effective interventions.

There is more to this problem than just locking people up, and I am incredibly proud to be part of a Government that is focused on reducing crime in a real and lasting way, and not going for quick shock-value political points. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): You know that this bill is a complete and utter waste of this House’s time and should never be here, when you have the Minister that speaks to it that can’t even get a 10-minute speech out of it. Then you’ve got the select committee chair that can barely get to five minutes and actually talk to the bill. Do you know why that is? It’s because there is no reason, there is no evidence, there is no advice that’s come from Justice or from anyone else to say that this Act isn’t effective and it’s doing the job that it was intended to do.

By the way, the Ministers on that side hate being referred to as a soft-on-crime Government. If you want no better example of a soft-on-crime Government, you just think about this—and any of the Kiwis that are listening tonight to this debate, just think about this. Government’s priority at a time in our country when we’ve had a 40 percent increase in gang numbers, when we’ve had a 21 percent increase in violent crime, when we’ve had a 31 percent in violent retail crime, when the Police need the powers that should be contained inside a firearms prohibition order piece of legislation, do you know what they prioritised? Do you know what’s leading in the House? It’s the repeal of the three-strikes legislation. So don’t come to this House and don’t cry crocodile tears out there to the media when you keep getting referred to as a “soft-on-crime Government”, when you have prioritised legislation that weakens sentencing for violent offending, over legislation that would’ve given the Police the powers that they need to take guns out of the hands of gangs. That’s why you get labelled a soft-on-crime Government. You’ve got your priorities wrong.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can I just warn the members, just be careful about the personal pronouns. You are bringing the Speaker into the debate. Refer to the Government, if you like.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry, Mr Speaker. Very quickly, this is not the first time they’ve had a go at this; they had a go at this when I was the justice spokesperson and we stood in this House and we debated it and we managed to defeat them and stop the legislation from being repealed, because, at that point, they didn’t have a majority. I’ll tell you what: if there’s ever an example why a majority creates absolute power, and absolute power is not a good thing, it’s the example of the repeal of this bill.

I noticed that the Hon Andrew Little became quite animated in response to my friend and colleague Paul Goldsmith’s speech. As much as I like Andrew on a personal level, I can tell you that he fronted up to this House, as the Minister of Justice, and the excuse that they used then to repeal the three-strikes legislation bill is that they used the terrible example of a female Corrections officer being pinched on the bottom. That’s how they characterised a sexual assault on a female Corrections officer. The offender, they were able to get sentenced under the three-strikes legislation. I stood in this House and I confronted the Minister about it, and I notice that his head’s down now and he’s not wanting to comment on it; there doesn’t appear to be a lot of noise coming from the other side of the House. That’s because it was a disgrace that Labour brought to this House and characterised a sexual assault on a female Corrections officer as “a pinch on the bottom”. I can tell you now that the emails I received from female Corrections officers after that happened, you would’ve been embarrassed, ashamed, and you would have stood and actually made an apology, which, by the way, none of the female Labour MPs during that period of time would actually stand and take a stand on that.

Ginny Andersen: What’s this got to do with the bill?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: This has got every—who just said that? Oh, so I’m talking about a really important issue, and an issue that we should actually address in this House, and the female chair is laughing now—the female chair of the Justice Committee says, “What’s this got to do with the three-strikes bill?” Do you not know the history? Do you not know your party’s history and what you’ve actually tried to do with this bill? Do you not know the examples that you’ve used, and do you stand by them, do you think that’s a good example? A female Corrections officer was sexually assaulted, was held up in the corner in the prison, in her workplace, and your party decided to characterise it as a “pinch on the bottom”—do you agree with that? Do you think that’s a good use of an example to repeal three strikes?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Yep, I gave the member a warning about using the personal pronoun “you”; by using that, you are bringing the Speaker into the debate. There are many ways and other alternative words that the member can choose to use and still have the same effect.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry, Mr Speaker; I tend to get a bit passionate about that issue. So let’s go back to it. The member Ginny Andersen, the chair of the Justice Committee, she’s laughing and she’s joking about this matter. So I will put to Ginny Andersen: does she think that it was appropriate to bring an example into this House of a sexual assault on a female Corrections officer, in her workplace, and have it characterised by her party as “a pinch on the bottom”? She had a lot to say—she had a lot to say a few minutes ago. There was laughter and banter; now she has her head down and she won’t address me, because do you know what? Ginny Andersen won’t actually answer that question, because she knows that it was wrong, and, at the time, none of her colleagues stood up and actually stood up for that female Corrections officer. None of them said that that was wrong—

Kieran McAnulty: Will the member yield?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Absolutely I yield.

Ginny Andersen: I think I’d like to respond to that. I take accusations of sexual abuse or sexual misconduct in the workplace incredibly seriously. I take offence that that member has indicated that I do not care about such issues of huge importance, and I object to that language being used in the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Mr Speaker, can I carry on?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: So let me clarify for the member: everything that I’ve said is exactly what’s happened. So if the member wants to stand and if she wants to dispute anything that I’ve said, then she’s welcome to do that. I’m glad that the member takes sexual assault on a woman in the workplace seriously; it’s just a shame that she didn’t stand when the Minister brought that issue to this House, and get up and say that.

Hon Member: And that there was mocking behaviour during the debate.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yeah, and that’s a very good point. The reason why I asked the member to respond is because there was mocking behaviour—there was mocking behaviour when I raised that issue, as if it wasn’t serious, as if it was trivialised, as if they thought it was funny—and it’s not.

Getting back to the three-strikes legislation bill, that got voted down that time round—

Hon Andrew Little: No, it didn’t; it’s never been to the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —and it should have been voted down. Well, it has absolutely—

Hon Andrew Little: No it has not.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Absolutely it’s been to the House.

Hon Andrew Little: The member has got it wrong. The member is just plain wrong.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: The Minister is now saying that there was no debate in the House about the repeal of the three-strikes legislation, so I’m very happy to be corrected on that.

When the Minister came to the House today and delivered his speech on the reason why they’re repealing the three-strikes legislation, he said it was to stop offenders because to have strong sentencing, as is contained in the three-strikes legislation, may be a deterrent for offenders to stop pleading guilty. We received no evidence, on the select committee, at all, to say that there was anything to show that the three-strikes legislation, or legislation like it, stopped offenders from pleading guilty. I think that is misleading the House, and I would expect the Minister to come down and correct that statement, or point us in the direction of where that evidence was received on the committee.

The heart of the matter is that, for some reason, the Labour Party feel deeply offended that the judge has been given some clear direction because of the way that most people in New Zealand feel that, actually, there should be some clear consequences and there should be some very, very clear sentencing around recidivist violent repeat offenders, which is what this bill deals with. But, instead, they go, “No; we know better.”

The interesting thing around the submissions that were received in the select committee was this: the victims advocate groups and the victims themselves—and you don’t hear victims talked about much these days, do you? But, actually, victims should be at the centre of our criminal justice system. They all got up and spoke in support of the three-strikes legislation. They made very strong submissions in support of the three-strikes legislation, the victims themselves. The groups that spoke against it? Guess what! Lawyers—lawyers that go on to become judges and get a bit offended and a bit sensitive by the fact that they don’t retain the full say, the full ability, to actually decide on the sentence.

Do you know what? If you surveyed New Zealand—especially at the moment with the incredible amount of violent crime that we’re experiencing in the country; completely unprecedented and outrageous for a peaceful country like New Zealand to be experiencing—they would say that they’re not confident in the sentences that are being handed down. They’d say that they’re not confident in the way the judicial system is supporting our police. They’d say that the youth justice system doesn’t seem to be responding strongly enough to the tsunami of juvenile and youth offending, and, actually, they’d like to have some confidence that there’s some legislation there that will mean that there are some strong sentences laid down and there are some serious consequences for repeat recidivist violent offenders, especially.

But what do these guys do? What do the soft-on-crime Government do? They prioritise the repeal of the three-strikes legislation; the only legislation that, at a time when we’re experiencing massive crime, violence, and lawlessness in our country, they’re saying, “You know what? Let’s take away that tough piece of legislation because we don’t like it.”

Nicole McKee: “We want to cuddle them.”

Hon MARK MITCHELL: “We want to cuddle them.”—exactly. Absolutely.

So I’m embarrassed that this House is dealing with this bill. I’ll continue to get up and make impassioned speeches when I have the opportunity, because I think this is wrong. By the way, I come back to the fact the firearms—

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

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Impassioned speeches are wonderful, but incorrect ones are just incorrect. As one of the women in this House—and I don’t just mean Labour women—who has spent decades advocating against sexual violence and against sexual harassment for ourselves, for our friends, for our colleagues, and for our clients, and now who do so frequently in the House, I did take offence. But I am going to use my time to speak on the bill, and where I want to start is actually our commonalities, because, as a member of the Justice Committee, what I know, what I have felt in those rooms at its best times is that we are all there for similar reasons. We all want safe communities, and we all feel outraged when we hear accounts of people who’ve had to suffer as victims or as survivors.

But there is a difference between that side of the House and this side of the House in terms of how we respond to issues of justice. Where that side reacts, we respond, and I think you can hear the verbiage of reaction from that side of the House today. It’s cut and pasted a fair amount. It’s sounds like “soft on crime”, and if any of you were keeping a tally, we certainly got up there with Mark Mitchell, the last speaker. It’s things like “They say that we’re being too tough on criminals.”—that is the verbiage of reaction. Reaction is irresponsible. It does not bring us safer communities.

Reacting loudly is still just reacting, and it’s a very one-dimensional approach that the Opposition are bringing to this discussion, which isn’t surprising, because they’ve actually removed reference to a number of the principles of justice which we ought to turn our minds to. That is what a responsive approach in the justice space brings. A responsive approach in the justice space is about turning our minds to the principles of justice in a democratic society, which includes rehabilitation and accountability, keeping communities safe, and the experience of victims, the context of the offender, and—importantly—it includes the proportionality of the penalty to the crime and ensuring that the decision makers who are closest to the facts of the case retain reasonable discretion. The three-strikes law, when it was embedded, took a sledgehammer to those last two principles.

So is it ever OK to entirely remove core sentencing principles? No, it’s absolutely horrific. Some people might say: well, perhaps you can do it if you justify it, but that hasn’t been done here. In fact, if you look at the minority views on this bill, there is no mention of some of these principles and why they’re justifiably removed. In terms of judicial discretion, the National Party minority view argues that judges can still choose whether or not to apply three strikes if it would be manifestly unjust to do so. They are ignoring the submissions of those who work the closest to the ground, who told us that this threshold was far too high. It doesn’t amount to proper discretion. So they’ve turned their heads away from the principles.

The second piece that this side of the House looks at in the justice space is what does the evidence say. Now, in 2010, if you hypothesise that applying a new three-strikes framework will dramatically reduce criminal offending and that, years after that, we don’t have data that demonstrates that, that’s not a case to keep it going. That’s the case that it doesn’t work, and if you ever had to worry about a statement by the Opposition, read their minority view here. It, essentially, says, along with the statements made when this law was brought in: “We’ll put in the justice system a three-strikes system that takes a sledgehammer to two core principles of our justice system. There’s now evidence that shows it’s not really working, but we don’t think that there are grounds to repeal it.” Wow, I think we all need to be worried about the analysis here.

Now, I do also want to touch very briefly on what’s happening internationally, and we received several robust submissions that seem to have been disregarded by the Opposition. The Auckland District Law Society talks about what’s happening overseas and they say, in summary, that “These overseas examples further demonstrate that three-strikes laws (or their equivalents) do not work, are unjust, are against human rights principles, and unnecessarily contribute to high incarceration rates and disproportionate representation of indigenous peoples in the penal system.” They reference Australia, the United Kingdom, the US, and the EU, all who show examples that it doesn’t work and the system is seen to be unjust.

Very briefly: in the select committee process, we had robust submissions. We considered in detail submissions both from victims—as we always should—as well as from academics and from practitioners. The changes made at select committee were, very briefly, focused on the compensation provisions and we received an excellent submission from the Wellington Human Rights Lawyers Association on that point, which was more really a clarification of the compensation section as opposed to changing it dramatically. Few changes, but really robust discussions were had in that process.

I just go back to where I began, which is the value of community safety and a value that I genuinely believe across this House that we share. I am often really disheartened that discussions about justice and crime go into this automatically divisive space. They do not need to be there. You do not need to react. You can apply the principles of justice. You can look at the evidence. You can work through a rational, logical argument in terms of addressing this important issue for New Zealand.

This side of the House is doing that not only through repealing this bill but through the totality of the policy and legislation we’re putting in place around that. That includes the $94 million announced in the Budget to go towards addressing gangs and organised crime. It includes putting the most police on the beat. It includes the $6 million announced by Poto Williams in terms of responding to the ram raids that have been happening. It also includes the investments in alcohol and drug courts. It includes the investment in mental health and addressing truancy.

This is a Government committed to community safety. We are about responding. I commend this bill to the House.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m grateful for following my friend Vanushi Walters in this debate—rather than some of the most emotive and, as she stated, offensive speeches from the Opposition—as someone who’s also worked in the justice system and is deeply committed to preventing the kinds of harm that we’ve been accused of supporting or caring little about.

I worked in the criminal justice system, at that front line, for about a decade before coming into this House, and I can tell you the reaction at front lines from lawyers, from judges, from probation officers, from all the people that the original three-strikes Act rendered impotent and silent when that law came into effect. It ranged somewhere between embarrassment for the lawmakers who had followed no evidence, who had adopted something so regressive, so perverse, without the knowledge that people felt should have gone into lawmaking, to something like indignation because we were being undermined in that way. This law, when it came into effect, did breach the separation of powers that Westminster systems like ours normally uphold. We as Parliament make law, and the courts interpret and apply them in individual cases. It instead tells the courts and the public who come into contact with the courts that that discretion is gone, that there is no discretion to take account of.

Let’s look at the principles and purposes of sentencing in the Sentencing Act that this bill washed away. They are things like the circumstances of the offence, the circumstances of the offender, the victims’ views, the purpose of sentencing that goes to keeping the community safe in that particular case, what accountability looks like in each case, what deterrents might look like in each case, and, most importantly, because our justice system is geared towards keeping communities safe, what rehabilitation and successful reintegration of a prisoner back into the community requires in each case. The three-strikes law said that none of those principles and purposes of sentencing matter as much as parliamentarians looking tough on crime. Washing away the courts’ discretion said that to the courts and to the public.

Who are the people who would ordinarily be making those decisions? They’re judges, who we have appointed to our criminal courts after a lifetime of service in the justice system—legal experts, if you would. They’ve seen the prison system, they’ve seen the justice system, they’ve often worked on both sides, and they’ve risen to the bench. We’ve got prosecutors, we’ve got defence lawyers—and I’d remind us all that actually having a right to a defence is a fundamental New Zealand Bill of Rights Act right. So, if your defence lawyer doesn’t get to influence the outcome of your case, you’re also taking away that aspect of due process. We’ve got probation officers, who write pre-sentence reports after having interviewed the offender and others involved in the case. We’ve got mental health experts, who write pre-sentence mental health reports, where it’s appropriate. All of those people, who deal with hundreds of cases per week, if not per day, were being told by that past Government who enacted the three-strikes Act that none of their expertise or their work matters.

So today we’re restoring the right of sentencing based on those principles and purposes of the Sentencing Act but also of our system of justice, because, if we do say that we’re trying to keep communities safe, we have to go with the evidence, not what makes us feel good, not what makes us sound tough, but what we know works. Now, rehabilitation has to be a part of that. It absolutely has to be a part of that, because we know that most people that go into our justice system will get released at some point. How can we say that rehabilitation and successful reintegration of those who go into our overcrowded, prejudiced prison system isn’t going to be a part of the sentencing process? That’s irresponsible.

What does it look like when someone offends a couple of times but might not be suitable for something like a maximum sentence? Because I think the public get sold these types of laws as if they are dealing with a premeditated case of someone just callously going through the community committing crimes. What this law, in fact, did is say, for example, if you’ve committed a couple of this type of offending when you’re 17 or 18 and then gone on to have a life without crime—lived a life for another couple of decades, three decades—something else happens, maybe a huge change in circumstances, a relationship break-up, a bankruptcy, and you offend again, the court can’t take into account the way that your recidivism took place.

What are some of these crimes? Because we’ve got that emotive language of “You don’t care about sex crimes. You don’t care about violence.” Something like aggravated robbery can be committed by two 17-year-olds going up to another person and saying, “Give us your shoes.” Now, that’s terrible; we don’t want the community to be terrorised in that way. If they did it three times in one day, and we don’t know what the circumstances are—what we do know is that under-19-year-olds in our criminal justice system have overwhelmingly experienced a trauma-like abuse very close to the time that they start offending; leaving that to one side. If something like that happens two or three times in one day and you’ve got someone being sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment, who does that help? I think New Zealanders would be horrified to find that kind of American-style so-called justice was imposed in New Zealand by the National and ACT parties in Government. The millions upon millions of dollars being thrown away instead of investing in the types of things that we know keep our communities crime free—like the mental health care system, like addiction treatment, like housing and jobs, like the national action plan that the Hon Marama Davidson just announced as the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, an action plan that they didn’t put in place, having declared themselves the only party to care about sexual offending—that seems wild. Domestic and sexual violence has been at epidemic levels in New Zealand for quite some time, and they didn’t have an action plan, but we do.

So this law change is good. It’s the bare minimum that the Government can do to return our justice system to a place where rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners back into the community safely is at the centre of our justice system, but there is a lot more that we do need to do. We do need to invest, like our Scandinavian, like-minded nations do, in alternatives to prison. What does community-based rehabilitation look like? What does having a rehabilitation system that’s standardised across our justice system look like? Because we don’t have that either yet. Investing in mental health, investing in rehabilitation, investing in housing and jobs, and all of those things that keep communities stable, with a Te Tiriti - based approach, is the way we should be going, starting with this bill. I do commend this to the House.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party and oppose this Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill. I’d like to start by noting that, at a time when crime is really getting out of control, Labour is showing New Zealand communities and families just how soft on crime they really are, how out of touch with reality and the mood of our country when it comes to serious violent crime, just how out of touch they are when they attempt to cut all the consequences of really bad behaviour out of the criminals, and just how out of touch they are at a time when parents are putting their kids down to sleep at night in the front rooms of their homes and they’re scared to do so.

This Labour Government has repeatedly turned its back on the victims of heinous crimes, and ACT will not turn their backs—either on the victims or on the criminals. We meant it, back in 2010, when we implemented the three-strikes law with the National Government’s backing, and we still mean it now. ACT puts our communities first, the people first, and makes their safety paramount. How can we achieve thriving communities if the worst of the worst of New Zealand’s criminals are slapped on the hand and given a bus ticket straight out of prison and back to be a neighbour near your family? We want thriving communities, not scared ones. But this bill will mean that there are no dire consequences for really serious violent behaviour. The Labour Government, along with the Greens, truly believe this approach is best for our local communities.

And what has the Government’s approach shown us? Well, the left side of town, the Labour and Greens, think it’s more important to have a chat and a cuddle with these bad boys—and they are all bad boys, there’s no girls on the third strike—and then send them on their way, hoping they don’t commit any other serious violent crime. Even the Human Rights Commission, in their submission to the Justice Committee, did not mention victims once. And when I asked them why, they got all uppity with me for doing so. There is no thought at all for the victims, because if there was, Labour would make sure that there are serious consequences to the serious crimes that are being committed. After all, you don’t get a strike for committing petty theft, Golriz Ghahraman.

Out of all of the charges that you could have laid against you, there are only 40 qualifying offences for a strike—and they are regarded as being serious violent offences. The offender is not hit with a full sentence straight away, they’re given a warning—that’s their first strike. They are released after serving the full sentence imposed on them in their second strike. And if they do get to the third strike, it is the maximum penalty for that offence with no parole.

Do not give me the excuse that they don’t know or they don’t understand—that’s simply saying that they can’t help but be serious violent criminals and our society should be accepting of it. Labour is telling our communities that it’s OK to have harm wreaked upon them because the violent offender was misunderstood and we should all be understanding. Don’t give me the reasoning that it’s a racist act because Māori are disproportionately affected. That would occur because those people who identify as being Māori are the ones that are committing the crimes—these serious violent crimes.

And this also tells me that the victims of these crimes are mostly also Māori. But we don’t talk about victims in the Labour Government now, do we? There are 21 people who are currently serving a third strike. And the Greens want these 21 people to have their sentences re-examined and possibly shortened. The Greens say because it’s only 21 people, it’s not that many. That actually says that because there are only 21 perpetrators, then there aren’t that many victims—and so that’s OK. Someone’s mother, daughter, sister, grandparent, or other family member who is a victim of these 21 third-strikers, or the 640 second strikes—they don’t matter and the criminal getting a lesser sentence actually matters more. Well, the ACT Party will not be supporting that Supplementary Order Paper.

And let’s put some data around three strikes, shall we? The person with the least number of accumulated convictions has eight, and six of them are for sexual assault. The person with the highest number of accumulated convictions has 156 of them. Of the 21 people serving a third strike, they average 75 convictions each between them. These serious offences actually only make up 1 percent of the total convictions; that is, three strikes are used on the worst of the worst criminals, like the man who punched and kicked and hit his victim with a piece of wood for his first strike. Then he stalked and sexually assaulted a 17 year-old girl for his second strike. And his third strike came after he stabbed someone in the leg.

Or what about the story of the aggravated robbery of a man dragged from his car before it was stolen, giving that offender his first strike? The second strike came when he assaulted a person refusing to hand over his money and his phone. The third strike came when a person, also the victim of aggravated assault, had their head stomped on by this criminal. And because of three strikes, this offender—who had, by the way, 105 convictions—got the maximum five years instead of 18 months. ACT says there is no excuse for repetitive violent crime and our communities should not have to tolerate it.

To see if there is a deterrent effect, the Act actually needs to be in place for at least 20 years. Offenders actually have to serve time, get out, commit another serious offence—not a petty offence—and be incarcerated again, serving a full sentence before being released again. And because we are talking of serious offences, this means that on the second strike the full sentence requirement is probably going to be for some lengthy period, such as five years for the head stomper that I just told you about.

Already the statistics are showing a minor deterrent effect. If 20 years were attributed to this regime, ACT believes that three-strikes legislation would show its usefulness and the need to keep our society safe from violent recidivist offenders, and it would be justified. ACT’s decision to implement this law, back in 2010, showed New Zealand we intend to be tough on crime. Twelve years on, and we still have that intention.

Three strikes has sent a strong signal about keeping New Zealanders safe from recidivist offending. The Labour Government, however—they’ve sent a message that the offenders are more important than the victims and that society should sit back and let this sort of crime happen to them. And they wonder why police aren’t getting reports of all the gun crime that’s actually happening in South Auckland, as an example—apathy, they say. ACT says it’s community knowledge that the police and the Government won’t actually do anything about it, so why should the community fear retribution for speaking out.

Labour’s stance on law and order, and the commitment to tackling crime, is like farting at thunder. Our communities should be thriving under a Government that puts them first. ACT’s ideas and policies on law and order will never stop because we, the representatives of the people, have their interests at heart.

The three-strikes regime should stay and the clear message should be sent to criminals that if you can’t respect another’s personal rights and freedoms, if you want to continue to commit serious offences against others—not once, not twice, but three times—then you lose your freedom for the full sentence available, so you stop wreaking havoc. Healthy, thriving communities cannot exist with out-of-control violence in our society. ACT does not support the repeal of the three-strikes legislation, and insists that our communities most certainly need three strikes to keep them safe. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, this debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 7 June, 2022. Tōfā soifua, manuia le po.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5.02 p.m.