Tuesday, 28 June 2022

TUESDAY, 28 JUNE 2022

TUESDAY, 28 JUNE 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

IAN McKELVIE (Assistant Speaker): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the Queen and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and peace of New Zealand. Amen.

Obituaries

William Rex Austin MBE

SPEAKER: Members, I regret to inform the House of the death on 23 June 2022 of William Rex Austin MBE of Ngāi Tahu, Waitaha, and Kāti Māmoe, who was a National Party member representing the Awarua electorate from 1975 to 1987. During his membership of this House he served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Fisheries, and he chaired the Māori Affairs Committee. I desire on behalf of this House to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and the sympathy with the relatives of the late former member. I now ask members to stand with me and observe a period of silence as a mark of respect to his memory.

Members stood as a mark of respect.

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

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

SPEAKER: No bills have been introduced. A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of David Famularo requesting that the House put the Longfin Eel on the Wildlife Act 1953 as an absolutely protected species.

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

CLERK:

Government Response to the Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on Pay Transparency

Statement of Performance Expectations 2022/23 of the Commerce Commission and the Climate Change Commission.

SPEAKER: I present the Report of the Controller and Auditor-General entitled Governance of the City Rail Link Project. Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the Accident Compensation (Maternal Birth Injury and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

report of the Governance and Administration Committee on the report of the Controller and Auditor-General, Strategic suppliers: Understanding and managing the risks of service disruption

reports of the Petitions Committee on the

petition of Eliana Darroch

petition of Qiao Liu

report of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the petition of David Aitken.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading. The report of the Controller and Auditor-General is set down for consideration.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In its fortnightly economic update, Treasury reports that, while weaker exports earlier in the year drove the March quarter contraction in GDP, business and household demand has remained strong. While there is no doubt pressure on many households and businesses, the New Zealand activity index—which is a composite measure of eight indicators—showed that activity increased in May, with particularly strong gains in the hospitality sector. Card spending also rose 1.4 percent in May, following a 7.3 percent rise in April. Despite this solid demand, there are, of course, still challenges ahead, with the high global inflation and supply chain constraints continuing to affect our partner economies as well as New Zealand.

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Our primary sector does continue to perform well. According to Statistics New Zealand, New Zealand’s exports rose 18 percent to $7 billion in May, compared to May last year. Imports also rose 24 percent to $6.7 billion. Red meat exports were the main contributor to the rise in exports, up 27 percent to $1 billion on the back of higher beef and sheep prices. Dairy products rose 11 percent to $1.6 billion, led by higher prices for milk powder and butter. Last week, Fonterra also raised its forecast payout for the coming season to a record level, as strong demand and a favourable currency move worked in its favour and the favour of the members of the cooperative.

Barbara Edmonds: What reports has he seen on international economic activity that affects the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Inflation pressures are affecting countries around the world, and many central banks are raising interest rates. In Australia, business and consumer confidence are both down, with inflation there expected to rise to around 7 percent later this year. The Reserve Bank of Australia has indicated it will continue to raise rates to bring supply and demand back into line. On the up side, activity in China appears to be recovering after widespread lockdowns, with industrial production and investment showing signs of improvement, and supply chain disruptions there beginning to ease. The global economy does remain volatile and the outlook uncertain, but New Zealand is in a strong economic and fiscal position to continue to support businesses and households through this difficult time.

Question No. 2—Internal Affairs

2. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: Does she have confidence in the current state of our fire and emergency services, when the NZ Professional Firefighters Union is reporting that FENZ management is failing to keep career fire stations open 24/7 and there are dangerously low staffing levels; if so, why?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): Yes, I have confidence in both Fire and Emergency (FENZ) and the 1,800 career firefighters, whom the firefighters union represent, and the 12,000 volunteers who do an amazing job at keeping our communities safe.

Jan Logie: What is her response to firefighter Nick O’Brien, who said last week: “In the last month alone, I did 110 hours of overtime. That is on top of my normal month’s work. … No-one should have to go to work 80 hours … or have to worry their equipment isn’t going to work when they are in an emergency.”?

SPEAKER: I’m going to let the Minister answer the question but I’m going to warn the member that quotes, if they’re to be used, are to be succinct; that wasn’t.

Hon JAN TINETTI: First and foremost, I want to be clear that our firefighters do amazing work and I want to support them as best I can within the remit of my role. I also want to be clear that, as an independent Crown entity, operational decisions are matters for FENZ rather than me as Minister of Internal Affairs. But I have met with the New Zealand firefighters union and heard the concerns they have raised, and I take them very seriously. As a result, I have made my expectations very clear to the FENZ board, the executive leadership team, and the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) as the monitoring agency. Now, the advice that I’ve received is that career firefighters work an average of 42 hours per week before overtime, based on two day shifts followed by two night shifts and four days off. Firefighters, on average, spend about 6 percent of their rostered time attending incidents. They are rostered so that firefighters can respond to multiple incidents 24/7. That said, some personnel occasionally work long hours and, like many organisations, Fire and Emergency has recently been impacted by absences due to COVID-19. I have heard these concerns from the union and I’m taking them very seriously within the remit of my role, which is why I continue to have discussions with the union and with the FENZ administration.

Jan Logie: Does the Minister recognise that the low base pay rates, and a desire to ensure that there is always a crew to be able to respond to an emergency in their community, makes it really hard for firefighters to refuse extra shifts even when they’re exhausted?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The member will be aware that industrial action is currently under way and, as the Minister, it would be inappropriate for me to get involved in any of the details to do with the bargaining arrangements. However, I do reiterate, as I’ve said, that I do take the concerns very, very seriously, which is why I’m keeping discussions and conversations open with both the union and setting my expectations very, very clearly with the FENZ executive leadership team and the board and DIA.

Jan Logie: Does the Minister think it is safe and reasonable for a local brigade to have to use a 40-year-old fire truck that’s been decommissioned, jerry-rigging a radio back into it, because no other trucks in the area were functional, as I was told by my local firefighters yesterday?

Hon JAN TINETTI: That brings a wider consideration around what FENZ took over when the organisation was amalgamated back in 2017. Once the new Act was passed and Fire and Emergency was established, the state of the assets inherited from the old rural fire authorities was known to be variable. But the true state of stations’ equipment and workplace culture was worse than anticipated. Fire and Emergency New Zealand also inherited a backlog of deferred expenditure. Significant investment has been required to bring assets and workplace culture to a reasonable state. The focus of the organisation over the last four years has been to put the investment in place to establish a modern fire and emergency service organisation, and in 2020 the Government funded $51.3 million to build or upgrade 26 fire stations in different parts of the country to ensure that these stations were fit for purpose.

Todd Muller: Does she think it is good value for money to spend $145 million on contractors and consultants when fire stations were closed over the last two weekends due to a lack of staff?

Hon JAN TINETTI: As I’ve pointed out, there were quite a number of inefficiencies that happened in Fire and Emergency when it was amalgamated back in 2017. And Fire and Emergency has worked incredibly hard to get on top of this. And as I’ve also said, I do take the concerns of the union very, very seriously, which is why I met with the union just last week. I have had a meeting with the Fire and Emergency executive leadership team to ensure that they are on top of those concerns, and I am looking forward to progress in that area being made very shortly.

SPEAKER: David Seymour. Sorry, can we go to Todd Muller just because that’s the normal way of doing things? I didn’t realise the member had another one.

Todd Muller: On what basis does she think $145 million on contractors and consultants is good value for money when the last year of the Fire Service, prior to the merger, spent $4.5 million on consultants and contractors?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The spend occurred over a five-year period, and we need to be aware of that—over a five-year period. The spend peaked during transition and integration periods, which would not be unexpected during those times. And, of course, once we had moved through those times, in the last year this spend has dropped. I am aware that there is still significant work to do to unify the organisation, particularly in systems, processes, and technologies where external assistance is likely required.

David Seymour: Why did the number of management and support staff increase by 14.7 percent in the first three years of FENZ, despite the number of career and volunteer firefighters, who actually fight fires, increasing by only 7 percent and 6 percent respectively?

Hon JAN TINETTI: That is an operational matter that does not come under the Minister’s remit.

Jan Logie: Is the Minister comfortable with firefighters putting their lives on the line, regularly attending traumatic events with equipment they can’t rely on, and being paid a base pay rate of less than the living wage?

Hon JAN TINETTI: No qualified firefighter is getting paid less than the living wage, and I have gone and I have double checked that today to make sure that that is the case. That is not a fact that is happening. I do take these concerns—and I have said that in this House this afternoon—incredibly seriously, which is why I will keep the dialogue open to make sure that we get these concerns addressed in a reasonable manner.

Jan Logie: Supplementary. [Chlöe Swarbrick holds up a t-shirt with a slogan written on it]

SPEAKER: Order! The member just lost her supplementary because of the behaviour of the member next to her.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I referred just earlier today to the Standing Orders, which include the ability to use a visual aid as a member supporting a member asking a question or providing a speech.

SPEAKER: Yes, yes, and the ability to use slogans is not one of them. Does the member have a further supplementary? She’s used one out of that exercise.

Jan Logie: Will the Minister commit to an independent investigation of FENZ or at least expand the ongoing Belinda Clark review to encompass the concerns about low staffing levels, pay, poor equipment, and a breakdown in relationship between front-line fire workers and FENZ management?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The member will be aware, as she’s pointed out by referencing the Belinda Clark independent review, that there have been reports of bullying and harassment in claims within the organisation. And that’s something, again, that I’ve taken seriously as the Minister, and it’s why I’ve commissioned some independent work through the Public Service Commission to seek greater assurances that that is in place and is working. Therefore, I want to see that work through to its degree and its end at this point in time. So at this stage, no further reviews of that nature that the member is referring to are planned.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by the Prime Minister’s statement that “we are well placed to recover, with one of the best economies in the world”; if so, is he confident that New Zealand’s economy will grow faster than Australia’s over the next four years?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Acting Prime Minister): With characteristic modesty, I note the full quote of the Prime Minister: “in the midst of a crisis, in the midst of such tough economic times globally, we are well placed to recover, with one of the best economies in the world. And … there are many reasons for that, [but] Grant Robertson is one … and for that, I thank him.” In answer to the second part of the question, the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update forecast gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 4.2 percent for the year ending June 2023, moderating to 0.7 percent, 1.6 percent, and 2.5 percent in each of the following years. By comparison, the Reserve Bank of Australia estimates GDP growth of 3 percent in 2022/2023 and 2 percent in 2023/2024—a slight moderation on the Australian Budget forecasts. Global economic growth is forecast to be slower and inflation higher than even just a few months ago, and that makes forecasting uncertain. What I am confident in, though, is the resilience and strength of the New Zealand economy, and that both New Zealand and Australia have done well with dealing with COVID and are in a good position to deal with the challenging times that we’re in.

Christopher Luxon: Is he concerned that Treasury’s average growth forecast for the next four years of 2.1 percent is a full percentage point lower than the equivalent forecast in Australia?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said, there are changing forecasts all the time. I’ve mentioned the Reserve Bank of Australia. The most recent forecasts in Australia were to see GDP growth of 3 percent and 2 percent, as compared to 3.5 percent and 2.5 percent, as the Australian Treasury did. These are very difficult and uncertain times, but I remain confident in the resilience of the New Zealand economy.

Christopher Luxon: What impact will faster economic growth in Australia over the next four years have on the number of Kiwis moving across the Tasman?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As we know, for many decades we have seen New Zealanders go to Australia from time to time for work opportunities. What I do think is that when you have a Government in New Zealand that is continuing to invest in our people, making sure that they’ve got the skills and the training that they need, making sure that we’re investing in the infrastructure deficit that we inherited and rectifying that, that there will be ever more prosperous growth in New Zealand. New Zealand remains a small country beside a large country, and many countries around the world in those circumstances experience people leaving from time to time. There is every reason to stay in New Zealand, with a productive and resilient economy.

Christopher Luxon: Does he believe that inflation outpacing wages for 10 of the last 17 quarters is a major factor pushing more Kiwis to move overseas?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the member well knows, 2022 is the only year where inflation outpaces wages in New Zealand. In terms of the forecast period and in terms of the period coming into this, 2022 is a very challenging year. I would note for the member that Philip Lowe, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, made the statement just in recent days that Australia’s inflation will reach 7 percent by the end of the year. Most forecasters in New Zealand are forecasting New Zealand to peak at around 7 percent inflation.

Christopher Luxon: How many more months, then, does he expect real incomes to fall?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Treasury’s forecast is that continues through 2022, and then when we reach 2023 we move into a period of time where New Zealanders’ wages outpace inflation. I do note the member’s sudden interest in the wages of New Zealanders, and the failure of the National Party to support measures that might actually increase wages in New Zealand—for instance, lifting the minimum wage or, indeed, fair pay agreements, something that had been a feature of the Australian economy for some considerable time. So if the member is looking for policy ideas out there, perhaps he might look to Australia and fair pay agreements.

Christopher Luxon: What impact will New Zealand’s slide in the IMD Global Competitiveness Rankings—from one spot ahead of Australia in 2017 to now 12 spots behind them this year—have on the number of Kiwis moving across the Ditch?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, that survey is one particular survey. I would say that what that survey tells us is that in the last year, New Zealand has improved its position on real GDP growth, real GDP growth per capita, labour force, long-term unemployment, exchange rate stability, GDP per capita, foreign currency reserves per capita, the unemployment rate, the export of goods. There are many, many reasons to be optimistic about the New Zealand economy. The member might like to talk it down, but on this side of the House, we’re proud of New Zealanders.

David Seymour: Is the Minister aware that in the time his Government has been in place, the gap between the median New Zealand wage and the median Australian wage has grown by $6,600, and if he is aware, what has he got to say for himself?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I am aware of is that all of the agencies who come to look at the New Zealand economy have said that it is in good heart, be that the OECD, who said that the near-term economic outlook is positive and the New Zealand economy has recovered strongly from the pandemic, or be that the IMF, who said that New Zealand’s economy has reached a strong cyclical position enabled by sound management of COVID-19. We will always seek ways, on this side of the House, to improve the wages of New Zealanders. That includes the actions we take, like lifting the minimum wage and introducing fair pay agreements, and it also is in supporting small businesses, making sure that we’ve got the infrastructure to improve productivity. We do need to invest to do those things.

Christopher Luxon: Does he agree with Infometrics that now is, in fact, the worst time in 65 years to be a first-home buyer, and what impact does he believe this will have on the number of Kiwis moving to Australia?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That particular study from Infometrics makes its judgment based on, effectively, the capital gain that someone will get over the lifetime of purchasing that house. So they do a guesstimate of what they think interest rates will be over a 25-year period. I think when most New Zealanders are considering whether or not it is a good time to be a first-home buyer, they are considering how easy it is to get into the market. On this side of the House, we’ve done demand side measures such as the interest deductibility removal, such as the extension of the brightline test, such as the ban on foreign buyers, and we’re building more houses than any Government since the 1970s. So I don’t agree with that report—

Christopher Luxon: Outcomes. Outcomes.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —because I actually—well, no, Mr Luxon, whose favourite thing, I might say, is to tap a table and say the word “outcomes” as if somehow or other he’s going to draw that out from the table. The outcome is that more first-home buyers have been getting into homes because of what we’ve done.

Christopher Luxon: Has he seen ASB’s estimate that household disposable incomes over the next 18 months will drop a combined $15 billion, and is he concerned that his Government’s legacy will be more Kiwis than ever before choosing to leave the country?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I think that the legacy of this Government will be that we supported New Zealanders to get through the really tough times of COVID, that we supported businesses and that we supported households, that we put ourselves in as good a position as possible to get through these tough economic times, and that on this side of the House, we truly believe in lifting the wages of New Zealand. We’ve taken action to do that, every one of them opposed by the National Party.

Question No. 4—Police

4. Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei) to the Minister of Police: What recent reports has he seen on the changing nature of the Police workforce in New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Police): Good news: last week, I received the latest report on Police workforce trends. Police have increased their planned recruitment levels for the 2022-2023 year to ensure that they are not only replacing the police officers who are leaving the workforce but they are further supporting Government’s commitment to recruit an additional 1,800 police officers to the front line. Current projections are for recruits graduating from the Royal New Zealand Police College to be in the 750 to 850 range over the next financial year, meaning we’re likely to see between 60 and 80 new recruits on the beat every month.

Hon Mark Mitchell: With attrition, that’s 10!

Dr Emily Henderson: How will these—

SPEAKER: Order! Mr Mitchell, you know how to ask question. You shouldn’t be interjecting during this.

Dr Emily Henderson: How will these numbers ensure that there are adequate police officers on the front line?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The growth in constabulary numbers achieved by these new recruits will mean that Police will soon have one officer to every 480 people in the country. On coming into Government, we did inherit a ratio of police officers to the general population that had fallen to unacceptably low levels, and we’ve been working hard to get those numbers up and to get more police on to the beat.

Dr Emily Henderson: What do these numbers mean for the number of women in the New Zealand Police?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: More good news: for the first time ever, one in four of our front-line police officers—a quarter of them—are women. This represents a 50 percent increase over the last five years in the number of women in the police force. That’s an additional 800 women working on the front line compared to where we were five years ago. For a point of comparison, the previous growth of 800 women in the Police took 22 years to achieve. That demonstrates the acceleration in the diversity of our Police workforce.

Dr Emily Henderson: What other measures is the Police taking to encourage wāhine Māori or other groups historically under-represented to apply to join the service?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: A very big focus for the Police has been on ensuring that the staff reflect the communities they serve. Police’s main recruitment marketing campaign for 2022 has had a specific focus on attracting wāhine Māori. That programme features interviews with wāhine Māori during the recruitment process, talking about their motivations to apply, and the barriers that they are overcoming to become police officers. While the campaign is specifically designed to attract wāhine Māori, experience and evidence shows that these campaigns are also effective at attracting other under-represented groups who may have experienced similar motivations or barriers to recruitment.

Question No. 5—Housing

5. RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote) to the Minister of Housing: Does she stand by all the Government’s statements and actions on housing?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing)) on behalf of the Minister of Housing: On behalf of the Minister of Housing, yes, and in the context in which they were made.

Rawiri Waititi: How can she stand by the statement of her predecessor who in 2018 said, “we’re determined to make sure Māori whānau get the benefits of the KiwiBuild home ownership programme”, when new figures reveal a pathetic 4.8 percent of KiwiBuild homes have gone to Māori?

Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, we can stand by that statement because since then we’ve looked towards resetting KiwiBuild to make sure that it is accessible to more Māori and other peoples in this country, to make sure that our whānau—wherever they might be—can access KiwiBuild homes. But we also stand by that statement because recently this Government has made an over $780 million investment in Māori housing in particular, that has seen quite a large number of whānau being able to build their first homes on papakāinga whenua, but also being able to create a Māori housing ecosystem in places where Māori housing hasn’t been seen for many years.

Rawiri Waititi: What specific changes has she, or will she, put forward to the KiwiBuild programme to ensure greater Māori uptake in light of her own statement that KiwiBuild “isn’t shifting the dial enough when it comes to Māori and Pasifika families”?

Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, we’re looking to make changes aimed at scaling up the delivery of KiwiBuild homes in locations throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. This includes looking towards the kinds of houses that we are building, typologies that suit a range of needs across our communities, and this also includes the delivery of homes that will be suitable for larger families. Both of these things should provide more opportunities for whānau Māori to purchase KiwiBuild homes.

Rawiri Waititi: What is her response to Māori housing expert and architect Jade Kake, who said the new figures evidenced are “system failure to raise Māori homeownership rates, both through KiwiBuild programmes and across the board”?

Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, in respect to Ms Kake’s quotes, I acknowledge that we do need to do more work in KiwiBuild, but across the entire Māori housing sector, what we’ve done is we’ve increased kāinga whenua Māori loans—

David Seymour: How much more?

Hon PEENI HENARE: —and the member might want to listen up here. We’ve increased the cap to make sure that we can build houses on papakāinga—kāinga whenua—land. We’ve also invested in Māori housing that’s seeing large-scale Māori housing built across regions, such as Taranaki, Tairāwhiti, and, in recent times, in the Bay of Plenty. So we’ve got a large number of work going on in the Māori housing sector and I do want to note that Ms Kake has also continued to support our announcements on Māori housing, and I stand by the work of this Government to deliver for Māori on housing.

Rawiri Waititi: How can she stand by the Government’s record on Māori homeownership when only 4.8 percent—4.8 percent—of KiwiBuild houses went to Māori; last year’s Māori housing package has only housed—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s got a question in there with a bit of repeating.

Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, the reason why I can stand by Māori housing settings made by this Government is because through Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga, we’ve approved over 675 homes, 286 Māori-owned and occupied homes to be repaired, $5.3 million invested in building capability of Māori housing providers, and 850 infrastructure sites enabled. That’s why this Government’s delivering on Māori housing—something that’s never been done in the past—and we’re proud of it.

Question No. 6—Finance

6. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement on the economy that “the recovery is gaining momentum”; if so, is he concerned that, according to Westpac, “household budgets are being squeezed in a way that they haven’t been for decades”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I do stand by my statement in its full and proper context: “The economy is bigger than before the pandemic, unemployment is at a record low, and exports are growing. The recovery is gaining momentum in the easing of restrictions, and opening up to skilled workers and tourists will help businesses and the economy rebuild.” With regard to the second part of the question, I’ve stated on many occasions that the challenging situation that is being faced by many New Zealand households and businesses is a top priority for the Government. Indeed, as I noted in the same statement that the member has quoted from in her question, “2022 continues to be a challenging year for many New Zealanders facing the impact of global inflation, and our resilience will continue to be tested.” That is why the Government has taken a range of steps to support low and middle income earners in particular through this period, through our 1 April package of increases to income support, decreases to fuel excise duty and road user charges, and half-price public transport. I’m well aware that these measures are only a contribution to the increased pressure that a lot of households are facing, but they are consistent with the balanced approach that we have consistently sought in responding to COVID-19, which requires us to target support to where it is needed most while making sure that we don’t make the problem of inflation any worse.

Nicola Willis: How can he characterise the economy as gaining momentum when, according to Westpac’s confidence survey, New Zealanders and their families are more pessimistic about the economy now than at any time since 1988?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As we’ve traversed in the House last week, obviously at a time when New Zealanders look around the world and see inflation averaging in the OECD over 9 percent, when they see the impact of COVID-19 on supply chains, when they see the war in Ukraine, of course that is going to have an impact on their confidence, but I also note that Westpac, in their recent report, have said that, while households will be affected differently, demand in our economy is likely to remain resilient.

Nicola Willis: Has he seen a report from ASB saying that households will be $15 billion worse off in the next 18 months because of rising prices and mortgage rates, and if so, how can he continue to claim the economy is gaining momentum?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes, I have seen that report, and in the following sentence it says, “This looks reasonably manageable, not least because it should be offset by strong growth in labour incomes over the coming 18 months.”

Nicola Willis: Well, isn’t it the case that real incomes are still declining, with prices growing much faster than wages, and can he explain to everyday New Zealanders why they should believe his assessment that the economy’s recovery is continuing to gain momentum?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In answer to the second of those two questions, because it’s not just me. It is actually the OECD, it is the International Monetary Fund, it is Moody’s, it is Standard & Poor’s, all of whom have said—for example, with Standard & Poor’s, New Zealand has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic better than most countries in terms of health, fiscal, and economic outcomes. We believe that New Zealand’s relatively better management of the pandemic means that its credit metrics are in a good position to weather potential deteriorations. On this side of the House, we know and understand the pressure that has gone on households. That’s why we’ve targeted our support to those who need it most while the member continues to prefer tax cuts for the most wealthy New Zealanders.

Nicola Willis: Does he agree with the Prime Minister’s assessment that Grant Robertson is one of the factors that has contributed to the state of the New Zealand economy, and if so, does he, with his characteristic modesty, take responsibility for his role in delivering a cost-of-living crisis?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Of course I agree with the Prime Minister, especially if she’s praising me, but on this side of the House we know that this is a difficult balancing act for households. We have, as a country, done well to get through COVID, but we are not immune to what is happening in the rest of the world. New Zealanders know that they’ve got a Government that will support them and look after them, just like we did in COVID. It seems now the member wants to rewrite history and wouldn’t have put the support in that we did. We have to make sure, as a country, that we return to a stable fiscal position, but we aren’t going to do that through the cuts in services that would be required by the member’s policies.

Nicola Willis: Isn’t it correct that the only two things gaining momentum under Labour are the number of New Zealanders going backwards and the Government’s out-of-control spending?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely not. And, with reference to the final comment by the member, I think I’ll just quote Brian Fallow from the weekend: “When Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis peddle this line about out-of-control spending, two explanations are possible. One is that they don’t understand how Budgets are arrived at or the other is that they do but they disingenuously pretend not to in order to pander to the prejudices of their political base.” I agree with Mr Fallow.

Question No. 7—Economic and Regional Development

7. GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth) to the Minister for Economic and Regional Development: What reports has he seen on the evaluation of the Provincial Growth Fund?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister for Economic and Regional Development): I recently released an independent valuation of the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) that showed it has made a huge impact in a very short time frame. By providing investments into regions that have been historically underfunded, the Provincial Growth Fund has helped build a strong, resilient economy. For example, the report noted—and I quote—“Importantly, [in the midst of a] pandemic the PGF has contributed to [increasing] optimism within communities.”, and “As well as economic benefits, the [societal], and environmental benefits of PGF were palpable in the interviews with many tangata whenua.” To date, the PGF has committed $3 billion in funding, with $1.87 billion paid out so far. Of the 1,359 projects approved for funding, over 500 have already been completed, resulting in over 16,000 jobs and improved economic outcomes for our regions.

Tangi Utikere: Has the Provincial Growth Fund invested in Manawatū, and if so, what are the benefits?

Hon STUART NASH: The Provincial Growth Fund has invested over $700 million in the Manawatū-Whanganui region, with 121 projects funded. A great example of the projects funded is the $2 million grant to extend Fitzherbert Avenue, which starts in the member’s electorate, by 600 metres. As well as providing employment and constructing the road, it opens up access to land for housing development and diverts heavy vehicles off suburban streets.

Dr Liz Craig: Has the Provincial Growth Fund invested in Southland, and if so, what are the benefits?

Hon STUART NASH: The Provincial Growth Fund has invested over $70 million in the Southland region, with 121 projects funded. A great example of the type of project funded is the $500,000 grant to COIN South for a three-year pilot programme to develop and foster a regional ecosystem and culture which nurtures and grows innovative, agile, and successful businesses in the Southland region. The original goal was to support 15 start-ups in the first year, but over 100 start-up founders were supported in the first year, with over 250 to date. I would also like to thank members from across the House for their strong support and staunch advocacy for PGF projects in their electorates.

Question No. 8—Prime Minister

8. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Acting Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s statements and policies?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Acting Prime Minister): Yes, especially the Government’s decision to introduce Matariki as a public holiday. This was celebrated across the country on Friday and, as the Prime Minister said at the dawn service, this is a moment in time that New Zealanders should be proud of. The Prime Minister went on to say, “Many of us did not grow up with or learn the traditions of Matariki, but we now have that chance. A chance to see our own children learn more about this period, a chance to learn from them, and a chance to create our own Matariki moments.” I join with New Zealanders in welcoming this new public holiday.

David Seymour: Does he agree with Chris Hipkins’ statement on Q+A this weekend in relation to last year’s Auckland lockdown that “There were probably some areas we could have moved more quickly to step down some restrictions. That lockdown in Auckland at the end of 2021, I think nerves were pretty frayed by the end of that. And we should acknowledge that.”; if so, will he apologise to Aucklanders for locking them down longer than necessary?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That is not what Mr Hipkins said and it is not what Mr Hipkins meant. I’ve sat around the Cabinet table with Mr Hipkins and other Ministers, and every single decision that we made about COVID-19 came with costs. The costs we wanted to avoid were the thousands of New Zealanders who would have died had we not made sure that we looked after them.

David Seymour: Did the Acting Prime Minister just say that Chris Hipkins did not make that exact quote on Q+A this weekend just been?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The characterisation the member gave of that statement in the second part of his question was that the Government should apologise for locking down Aucklanders unnecessarily. That is not what Mr Hipkins said or what Mr Hipkins meant. On this side of the House, we face the difficult and challenging decision, time after time, as to how to best protect New Zealanders from a global pandemic. We worked hard to support Aucklanders and others through that period of time, and I am extremely proud of the way the Government handled that.

SPEAKER: Before I ask the member, I’m just going to ask Mr Court to turn his volume down and also to remember who he’s addressing when he says “you”.

David Seymour: Thank you for that intervention, Mr Speaker. If a Government Minister has accepted they made a mistake—which I could tell the Minister, as an Aucklander, came at enormous cost to us—why can’t he just accept—

Hon Judith Collins: Oh, that member wasn’t even there.

David Seymour: —responsibility and say sorry? Or was Elton John right—

SPEAKER: Whose interjection was that?

Hon Judith Collins: Oh, sorry. That was me.

SPEAKER: Well, the member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Judith Collins: I withdraw and apologise. Thank you.

SPEAKER: Start again, Mr Seymour.

David Seymour: Thank you, Mr Speaker. If a Government Minister has admitted the Government, in hindsight, made a mistake at great cost to us Aucklanders, why can’t his Government own up, fess up, take responsibility and just say sorry? Or was Elton John right—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! The member’s finished his question—

David Seymour: He said “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word.”

Hon Grant Robertson: I know the member has—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat, he’s finished questions for now.

David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’ve got a right to ask questions on behalf of New Zealanders.

SPEAKER: Yes—

David Seymour: Are you seriously saying—

SPEAKER: Yes, and what I’m saying—the Member will resume his seat—is that when he chips me, when I make a ruling, he loses his supplementaries. That is my discretion and I’ll stay with it. He can have them back tomorrow.

David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: David Seymour, supp—point of order.

David Seymour: Supplementary question, yes.

SPEAKER: No, no. Point of order.

David Seymour: Oh, OK. Did you just say that we get all of those supplementaries back tomorrow?

SPEAKER: You will get the ones that you lost today back tomorrow.

David Seymour: Supplementary point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: A supplementary point of order—I don’t know if there is such a thing.

David Seymour: How many did we just lose?

SPEAKER: Every one that you would have taken.

Question No. 9—Education (School Operations)

9. CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Education (School Operations): What milestones, if any, have recently been met in the Government’s barrier-free access to education work programme?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education (School Operations)): We have reached the one-year milestone of free period products being available to all State schools in Aotearoa New Zealand. Seventy-eight percent of eligible schools have signed up to this programme. That means in the past year, over 350,000 female or menstruating students have had access to free period products at school. I’ve spoken to many young students in our schools about how the free period products programme has removed barriers to their attendance at school and stigma around menstrual health.

Camilla Belich: What other achievements have been made to remove barriers to education?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Under this Government, 947 schools and kura have signed up to the Government’s healthy school lunches programme, reaching over 222,000 kids. The programme has been running for two years and is called Ka Ora, Ka Ako, meaning “when you are well, you can learn”, to reflect the importance of healthy food for learning minds. The Government also recognises the importance of mental wellbeing in education, which is why we have funded free counselling in schools programmes for 164 schools and reaching 24,000 students. In addition, we have expanded the Mana Ake mental health and wellbeing programme, which is being delivered in six regions across New Zealand. The removal of financial barriers to education have also been addressed through the Government’s school donation schemes for deciles 1 to 7 and the removal of fees for NCEA since 2019, with more than 145,000 households estimated to have benefited.

Camilla Belich: Why was removing these barriers important for educational outcomes?

Hon JAN TINETTI: We know that for some young people and their families, the financial barriers to attending and engaging in school every day have been a real challenge. The changes this Government has made to address those are based on evidence, but also from conversations we have had with schools and families on what works. Every time I go into a school that has the free healthy lunches programme, I hear from teachers what a positive difference it makes to both the attendance of the students and their engagement in afternoon learning now that these kids have food in their bellies. This Government will face the challenges of attendance and engagement at school head on, and we will turn this ship around. This Government is committed to doing things better for our tamariki, for the future of Aotearoa, because we know our young people deserve the best.

Question No. 10—Health

10. Dr SHANE RETI (National) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement that the health system as a whole is “coping”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education) on behalf of the Minister of Health: Yes. I stand by my full statement: “As the Minister, I look at the system as a whole. I know there are individual hospitals facing very, very serious pressures, but as a whole, the system is coping.”

Dr Shane Reti: Can he confirm that a letter was sent on behalf of all 20 DHB heads and copied to the Ministry of Health on 28 July last year, warning of the potential for “critical workforce issues”; and does the fact we are 4,000 nurses short almost a year later indicate he failed to act on that warning?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Government has been aware for some time that our health system was likely to come under significant pressure this year as the borders reopened as a result of two things: COVID-19 and what we fully expected and fully planned for—a more challenging flu season than we have seen, because over the last two years, we’ve seen very low levels of influenza. The Government has been working alongside the health sector to plan for that. I would, however, note that there is a global shortage of trained healthcare workers, and that is something that New Zealand is experiencing—the same as many other countries are. The Government has been working hard to recruit in order to fill vacancies, and of course to train more people. But you cannot train them overnight.

Dr Shane Reti: Can he confirm DHBs warned the ministry in that letter sent in July last year of “increased presentations in emergency departments”; and isn’t the fact thousands of Kiwis are being forced to wait longer than six hours in ED yet another sign he is failing a core responsibility to ensure access to urgent healthcare?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It is a sign of the fact that we are in a once-in-a-lifetime situation when it comes to healthcare. We are like every other country. The member would struggle to find any emergency department anywhere in the world that hasn’t come under sustained pressure over the last two-and-a-half years. In fact, our health system has not experienced the degree of pressure for the duration that many other health systems have. We’ve been dealing with it for this year; many health systems have been dealing with it for 2½ years now.

Dr Shane Reti: Can he confirm that the letter from DHBs sent last year requested immediate action to ensure “overseas health professionals are facilitated to enter New Zealand as required to avert a crisis in the health sector”; and if so, why are nurses still not on the highest-priority migrant list?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the first part of the question, the Government has been working right the way through the border restrictions period to ensure that health workers can come into the country to fill the vacancies and make sure that we have access to the health workers that we need. In answer to the second part of the question, which I now can’t remember for some reason, there has been ongoing work to ensure—

Hon Member: Why aren’t they on the Green List?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh that’s right: the reason that we still have a requirement in place for nurses to work as nurses if they come into the country is because we don’t want them coming into the country and then not working as nurses. That would somewhat defeat the purpose.

Dr Shane Reti: Isn’t it true that he was warned by all 20 DHBs almost a year ago of exactly the health crisis being reported today; and that Kiwis in need of healthcare are now paying the price for his failure to act?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: What I can say is the Government took seriously the feedback from district health boards. It’s one of the reasons that we still have COVID-19 protection measures in place. I would note that our health system would likely be under significantly more pressure if all of our remaining COVID-19 protections were removed, which some in this House—who sit over on the other side—have been arguing for.

Question No. 11—COVID-19 Response

11. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What recent announcements has she made about boosting the health of New Zealanders throughout winter?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yesterday, I was pleased to announce that this Government is boosting the health of New Zealanders by making available a second COVID-19 booster shot for those groups most at risk. The second booster will be made available to everyone 50 years and older, and health, aged care, and disability care workers over 30. It will also be made available to people over 16 with a medical condition that increases the risk of poor health outcomes from catching COVID-19. We know immunisation plays a vital role in protecting us from the worst effects of the virus. By introducing a second booster dose for those most at risk, we’re helping Kiwis play their part in staying healthy through the winter.

Shanan Halbert: Who should get their second booster dose?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: We know that staying up to date with the recommended COVID-19 vaccinations will continue to protect New Zealanders from the risk of severe illness, hospitalisation, and death. The Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 Vaccine Technical Advisory Group has recommended the second booster dose for anyone over the age of 65, as well as Māori and Pacific peoples over the age of 50, and people who are severely immune comprised. The ministry will be working closely with providers to target vaccination efforts to these populations. Anyone who is eligible for the second booster dose or is still to get their first booster or primary doses can book online at bookmyvaccine.co.nz or call 0800 282 926.

Shanan Halbert: What other Government announcements has she seen to keep New Zealanders safe through winter?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: More good news. Alongside the second booster, the Minister of Health has announced a widening of access to free flu vaccines this Friday, 1 July. This will mean free flu vaccines for another 800,000 New Zealanders in addition to the million who have already protected themselves and their whānau by getting the flu jab. Children aged three to 12 and people with serious mental health or addiction needs will now be eligible. Omicron and the flu are making this winter more challenging than normal. That’s why the best thing all New Zealanders can do is make sure their whānau are up to date with their vaccinations and boosters.

Question No. 12—Social Development and Employment

12. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What is the percentage increase, if any, of people in receipt of jobseeker support for two to three consecutive years in duration in the March 2022 quarter compared to the September 2017 quarter?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): As the member has been made aware last week, there was a minor administrative error in WPQ 12331. The correct number of people who had been receiving a jobseeker benefit for two to three years, as at September 2017, was 11,409. Of those, 5,745 received the health and disability exemption and 5,664 were considered work-ready. As at the end of March 2022, there was a total of 24,192 people receiving jobseeker support for between two to three years. Of those, 11,979 received the health and disability exemption and 12,213 were considered work-ready. While the percentage increase is 112 percent, it represents 12,783 people, of which 6,549 were work-ready. The two- to three-year bracket of those on jobseeker represents those that came on to jobseeker during the height of the pandemic. Due to our targeted investment into work-focused case management, we are seeing record numbers of job seekers moving off a benefit and into work and we’ve not reached the heights predicted by Treasury. Our interventions are working and, while we are not out of the woods yet, we are making good progress.

Hon Louise Upston: When the Minister said, “The last thing that this Government wants is people on benefit for ever and a day.”, how long does this Government believe it is too long for someone to spend on the jobseeker benefit?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: People have varying situations, circumstances, and we need to take that into account. What we do know is that it’s really important to put the investment in early, and what we do know is that when we took over the reins of office, there had been an under-investment in front-line case management work-focused work. As a result of our investments, we are seeing more people exit off benefit into work. We did not reach the heights of 487,000 people on benefit, as had been forecast by Treasury.

Hon Louise Upston: Can she explain why, when industries are desperate for staff, the time spent on the jobseeker benefit has increased in every long-term category under her watch?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: When the numbers of beneficiaries go up, then in every category you do see an increase as well. But, as I said, Treasury had forecast 487,000 people on benefit. We got to 397,000; we are currently at 345,000 people on benefit, more broadly. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates currently in the world, and I would like to add that two years after the GFC, there were 13.1 percent of the working-age population on benefit. Two years after the pandemic started, we are at 11 percent of the working-age population. We are doing what needs to be done as a Government.

Hon Louise Upston: Is Mike Yardley right that “With tens of thousands of jobs currently going begging, it surely remains a fiscal and moral failure that tens of thousands … able working-age Kiwis are sticking with the dole.”, and, if not, why not?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: What I think was a moral failure was that the previous Government put no emphasis on upskilling and training for people that were on benefit. What that has meant is that over the years there are a number of people who may have gone off benefit but not necessarily into employment—may have gone off benefit into work but ended up back on benefit. The previous Government didn’t think about the long term or the need to invest in people that are on benefit. And we are doing absolutely that.

Hon Louise Upston: Why, at a time when industry bodies like DairyNZ are calling for people to fill vacancies where all of the on-job training is provided, has the number of people on the jobseeker benefit longer than one year increased by 62 percent?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The member’s question is a reflection of the previous Government’s oversimplified approach to people that were on benefit. There are a number of things that are happening in this space, including, I will add, that it is sometimes difficult to match up those that are on the unemployment benefit with the jobs where they are; geography comes into account, transport, a range of other things with regards to getting to work. So our broader investments—some of which I’ve mentioned numerous times in this House—are all about responding to the complex nature of this, and I do not apologise for being part of a Government that continues to invest in the upskilling and training of beneficiaries so that they can get into sustainable employment.

Hon Louise Upston: Why, at a time when businesses are crying out for staff, are there 31,000 more children growing up in benefit-dependent homes, under her watch?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I will add, too, that the Ministry of Social Development has been working very effectively with industries across the country, with regards to their workforce needs and shortages—where they are, what they need. We’ve seen some very effective responses, including at critical times being able to support beneficiaries into the jobs where there have been workforce shortages, like in our supermarkets and in other places. It is important that we match New Zealanders up with the right jobs for them, in the places where they live, and that is a little bit more complex than what that member thinks.

Bills

Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill

Introduction

SPEAKER: I understand it is the Government’s intention to introduce an imprest supply bill.

CLERK: Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill, introduction.

First Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move that the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill be now read a second time. I thought it might be helpful for—

SPEAKER: No, we have to have a first reading first.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It’s not on my drill sheet.

SPEAKER: You’re moving the imprest supply bill, the first for—

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Oh, OK—yep.

SPEAKER: All right? It’s on the sheet.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Apologies, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill be now read a first time.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 44

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Bills

Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill

Second Readings

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill be now read a second time.

I thought it might be helpful at the outset to recap for members exactly what these two bills are and the purposes that they serve. They, effectively, are both ends of a standard part—[Interruption] we don’t usually interject when we’re leaving the Chamber, Mr McClay—of the financial system and the way that we go about managing the Government’s accounts.

The Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill seeks appropriation by Parliament of changes to appropriations and new appropriations for the 2021-22 year that the Government agreed to between April 2021, when the 2021-22 Estimates were finalised, and early April 2022. Spending against these appropriations has already been incurred under the authority of imprest supply Acts relating to 2021-22, but unless the spending is appropriated by Parliament before the end of the financial year, it becomes unauthorised expenditure, requiring validation by Parliament in an appropriation, confirmation, and validation bill—

David Seymour: We’ve seen that before.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Seventy-eight times in the Government that the member supported when they were in office, in fact. I thank the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their prompt scrutiny of and report back to the House on the 2021-22 Supplementary Estimates.

The second bill that we address during this particular motion is the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill, and this is needed to provide the sole parliamentary financial authority for Government spending in 2022-23 until the Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill is passed. As the deadline for the third reading debate on the latter bill to be completed is four months after Budget day—that is, 19 September in this particular year—this imprest supply bill provides supply for the first three months of the 2022-23 financial year. In addition, it is standard practice for imprest supply bills to cover the possible materialisation of fiscal risks in the uncertain timing and spread of expenditure. This imprest supply bill seeks to provide sufficient authority for the Government to incur a maximum of $30 billion in expenses, $9 billion of capital expenditure, and $1 billion in capital injections.

Although the total imprest in this bill is higher than what would be sought in a normal year, it is lower than what was provided for in the last two years and reflects the ongoing but reduced economic uncertainty from COVID-19. As New Zealand continues to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic, we will move more close to pre-COVID-19 levels of imprest supply.

It is worth noting that there is a formula that is used by Treasury when it comes to imprest supply, and I thought it would be useful for members to know what that is. Treasury calculates the amount needed in an imprest supply bill by initially taking a quarter of the annual appropriations for each vote as an approximation of three months’ worth of Government expenditure. Treasury then provides for an additional margin for items where expenditure may be unknowingly incurred unevenly over the fiscal year; any risks that may materialise in the first three months of the fiscal year, particularly with respect to but not limited to COVID-19; any in-principle transfers that need confirming in the first three months of the new fiscal year; and an allowance for any multi-year appropriations that first appear in the Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill. Treasury also then builds a contingency in on that.

It is worth noting that this is a very cautious and conservative approach. If we look at the last couple of years, in the 2021 equivalent of this legislation, $51 billion was sought, but only $12 billion was charged against the imprest supply.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: And don’t I know it.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In 2021-22, $41 billion was sought but only $23 billion—Mr Woodhouse—was charged against the supply. So it is a conservative approach but one that avoids unappropriated expenditure from coming through. As all members will understand, from time to time, expenditure does arise that needs to be accounted for, and the Government is doing that in this legislation.

It is instructive in understanding the imprest supply element of the motion today to look at the Supplementary Estimates, because they give a good indication of the kind of expenditure that a Government might require in a given year, and in the Supplementary Estimates that were assessed by the select committee, we can see good examples of the way in which the Government is required from time to time to do things that are either unexpected or unbudgeted for—for example, sometimes these are small elements of much larger appropriations. One example in this year’s Supplementary Estimates is in the corrections area, where there were significant changes required partly because of costs that were being incurred by the Department of Corrections when they were undertaking their capital works and revaluing land and building assets. These are reasonably normal occurrences that occur in each year and are accounted for in this bill.

However, there are also things that are not normal that do have to be dealt with and are not always expected, and within the Supplementary Estimates that we’re dealing with here today, we have, for example, the process the Government had to go through with supporting Air New Zealand. As members in the House will be well aware, Air New Zealand was facing potential insolvency in the face of COVID-19, in the immediate and dramatic reduction in people flying internationally in particular but also here in New Zealand. So the Supplementary Estimates include both what we did to support Air New Zealand through that but also their recapitalisation exercise and the Government’s role in that. It, again, is a good example of the fact that expenditure can be incurred, but then revenue returns to make up for that expenditure from time to time, and as members will know, Air New Zealand has begun paying the Government back the money that it lent it in that early phase of the pandemic.

So that’s the reason why we need legislation like this—to make sure that we deal with those things that are either unexpected or that occur without the necessary appropriation available. An even better example of that, I believe, is in the area of COVID, and it does, obviously, make up a significant amount of what is being dealt with in the Supplementary Estimates and, obviously, what we’re thinking about when we look towards the imprest supply bill. Within the Supplementary Estimates that we’re dealing with today, we have around $2.7 billion of support that was provided through the COVID-19 resurgence support payment and then a further $1.5 billion for the COVID-19 support payment that was provided in the early part of 2022. This is the kind of action that a responsive and responsible Government needs to take in the face of a global pandemic.

Todd Muller: Ha!

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m fascinated by the hindsight approach that is exemplified by the exclamation I just heard from the other side of the House, because I recall that when it came time for the Government to make the tough and difficult decisions about when we had restrictions and how we dealt with them, members on the other side of the House urged us to spend more and more to support businesses across New Zealand. We felt we were taking a responsible approach. Over a million jobs have been saved as a result of what we did through the wage subsidy and, indeed, these resurgence support payments. Businesses around New Zealand, when I travel around New Zealand, say it was these payments that kept them in business. So when the National Party today say the Government is wasting its money in this area, that is a complete reversal of what they have previously said. They might like to think it’s possible to govern in hindsight; it is not.

As a Government, we had to take difficult decisions, none of which were costless, and because we have managed to run New Zealand’s finances in such a way that we could do this—make the payments that are covered in the Supplementary Estimates bill in front of us today and still have one of the lowest levels of net debt in the world—it is a tribute not only to hard-working New Zealanders but to the careful management of the books as well.

Hon Member: Yeah, because they’re paying their taxes.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I would also note for the benefit of the Hon Louise Upston that within the Estimates also are changes where less spending than was appropriated also comes in. I would note that the appropriation for jobseeker support and emergency benefit decreased by $450 million because there was a lower number of people who needed to get support through income support than had been forecast, and I want to pay tribute to the Hon Carmel Sepuloni for the hard work that she did in making sure we had the programmes in place to support people to stay in work—programmes such as Mana in Mahi, He Poutama Rangatahi, and Flexi-wage.

So I commend this legislation to the House. It is an essential part of a financial system that between when we approve the Estimates formally, the Government has the ability to incur expenditure. As I have noted, the amount of money required for imprest supply this year is lower than the last two years, and in those last two years the Government spent only a fraction of what it put aside. This is about being careful and making sure that we obey the rules of the Public Finance Act, and I commend the bill to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I predict that in some years from now when New Zealanders look back on a declining economy, they will look at these two bills as emblems of this Labour Government’s failed approach to economic management, because what these two bills do, essentially, is give Grant Robertson permission to go on the biggest spend-up in New Zealand’s history. And it gives him permission to do that, notwithstanding this Government’s complete failure to deliver better outcomes for their spending—their record of not providing results for the tax they take from New Zealanders. So National will be opposing these bills.

This is a Government that has overseen spending blowouts and has a lack of targets for its expenditure and what they will achieve. It has shown an inability to deliver and get results, and poor prioritisation of the public purse. It has been reactive and panicked when it comes to dealing with substantive issues, and it has put in place short-term thinking where long-term responses are required. The context in which these enormous amounts of money are being spent is a cost of living crisis. Prices in New Zealand today are running laps around wages. Inflation is at a 30-year high. Groceries, petrol, rents, childcare fees are all climbing by the week, and New Zealanders’ wages are simply not keeping up. Every week, New Zealanders are working harder to go backwards. That is the economic context we are in, and yet you would not know it from the speech we just heard from the Minister of Finance, who essentially said, “All is rosy. All is fine. Let’s go on a big spend-up, and can I also have $30 billion in my back pocket in imprest supply in case I need a slush fund later?”

We have interest rates climbing faster than they ever have in the history of the official cash rate in New Zealand, with New Zealanders having to re-fix their mortgages and watch hundreds more dollars walk out of their bank accounts. We have widespread workforce shortages, such that businesses are having to close their doors and say no to offshore orders because they simply don’t have the workers to do the job. We have an economy that shrank in the first quarter of this year and that declined in size. And with all of this going on, we have thousands of New Zealanders voting with their feet, departing our shores for Australia. So this was an opportunity for the Minister of Finance to illustrate and set out a plan for New Zealand’s economic recovery and to demonstrate he understands how tough things are and that he is setting a course to make them better.

But instead, what we have seen in these bills, set out very clearly, is a continuation of a pattern of spending more than he said he would. And this is something that this Minister of Finance has done in every single Budget he has set down. He spends more than he said he would the year before. Now, for this Budget, what he said last year he would be spending this year was $2.4 billion, and what we find in the pages of the documents that the Treasury has put together is that instead, he is spending $9.5 billion more each year—a considerable increase in expenditure at a time when the economy has already overheated, a time when every piece of fiscal pressure puts more pressure on inflation and more pressure on interest rates. And such was his desire to spend more that he raided next year’s Budget—and the year after that—to ensure that he had more funds to allocate.

And I want to note for the House that what the Minister of Finance has taken up the habit of doing is saying, “Oh, no, I’m doing a great job on the economy.”—I think he likes to describe himself as characteristically humble—“Just ask the IMF.” Now, let’s be really clear about what the IMF have said, because the IMF report to which the Minister refers was actually published the week before the Budget, and at that time, what the Minister had said he would do was reduce spending from $128 billion to $120 billion this year. And the IMF noted that and said that they thought that that scheduled tightening was appropriate. Now, what in fact the Minister did was the very opposite of that. He did not commit to the scheduled tightening when he published the Budget documents; instead of spending $120 billion this year as he led the IMF to believe he would, what these documents show is he will be spending $127 billion. Now, these numbers are so big and eye-watering that I think people lose sight of them, but what needs to be understood is he is spending more than he said he would and he is spending more than the IMF thought he would.

He also likes to say, “Well, look, as a percentage of GDP, it’s similar to what New Zealand had to spend following the global financial crisis.” And I think that this is perhaps the piece of analysis that best portrays his lack of understanding about what’s going on in the economy right now, because following the global financial crisis (GFC), what New Zealand had was a significant demand issue. We had not enough demand in the economy, and we had high unemployment. Unemployment got over 6 percent. And what that meant was, rightly and properly, the Government of the day used its expenditure to provide income support to people and to prop up what was an ailing economy. Today, we are in the very opposite situation, where people cannot find workers and where there is record-low unemployment. So the rationale for increased expenditure in this overheated environment just isn’t there. And so for the Minister of Finance to say “Oh, look, it’s just like after the GFC.”, I think, is to betray his ignorance.

What we have in these Budget documents is a series of band-aids, of announcements of more spending, where what is required is more delivery. And a case in point is the band-aid cost of living payment. Now, I’ve spoken to many New Zealanders since the Minister set out this Budget, and so many of them have said to me—and these are New Zealanders from all walks of life and from all incomes—“What an insult that $350 payment is. What an insult to say that you can, as Minister of Finance, buy me off and say it’s all sorted by giving me $350. Well, actually, what I want to see from the Government is a plan for strengthening the economy in the long run.” What New Zealanders want to see is a plan to grow productivity and drive better wages, such that wages are growing faster than incomes. What they want to see is low and stable interest rates. What they want to be able to do is be businesses that can find workers to invest and grow. They don’t simply want band-aids; band-aids, by the way, that as of last week when we spoke to the IRD, 170,000 are going to miss out on because the IRD still doesn’t have their bank accounts, and millions will be spent on hiring 300 staff for the IRD to administer the payment, when what was needed—

Anna Lorck: Jobs. Jobs.

NICOLA WILLIS: Oh, the member Anna Lorck, who is a very nice woman and whose company I enjoy, has said that that’s about creating jobs. Can I just remind her that in the Hawke’s Bay, there are employers crying out for workers, and what they don’t want, Anna Lorck, is the IRD paying them more and taking them down to Wellington to do unproductive work. What those employers want is to be able to get a worker and grow a business and send more production offshore. They don’t want the Government paying them more to run a big bureaucracy, and it would do the members opposite well to understand that pressure that exists in our economy.

And what we see in this appropriations bill—and it is appropriate that the member Anna Lorck is commenting here—are many examples of poor prioritisation. How many people, Anna Lorck, in your electorate have said they want billions spent on a restructuring of three waters? Because my view is that there aren’t New Zealanders saying that they want four mega-entities and council assets being taken and restructured with billions spent on it. My view is that there aren’t New Zealanders saying, “Yeah, look, let inflation tax me more. You know, merge RNZ and TVNZ; that should be priority number one.” There aren’t New Zealanders saying, “What you should do, Government, in the midst of a global pandemic, with dire workforce shortages and a 4,000-nurse deficit, is you should then spend billions on restructuring the back office of the health system.” These are not New Zealanders’ priorities. This Budget does not reflect effective prioritisation.

I say to you this: what New Zealanders judge a Budget by is not how much you say you’re going to spend; they judge it by what you deliver. And this is a Government that has a consistent track record of promising big and delivering little. New Zealanders are going backwards. This Budget sets out a path to more debt, a growing tax burden, faster rising prices, poorly targeted spending, and more New Zealanders moving to Australia.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege, as the chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who reviewed the Supplementary Estimates bill, to be able to take a call in the House. I really wanted to be able to back up the Minister of Finance in his comments around the importance of these particular two bills. They are quite dry, and I accept that—you know, the titles are very dry and they seem like very technical bills, but actually they’re quite important in the respect that, you can’t spend money as a Government unless you have the authority of this Parliament; in the same way you cannot tax without the authority of Parliament, you cannot spend money.

So, effectively, these two bills provide the authority to be able to spend for the next three months until the Appropriation/Estimates bill carries through and also it provides the authority for some of the extra spending through last year in the Supplementary Estimates.

We’d like to thank the officials who came before the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I think there was over 20 of them, all the different chief financial officers from the main Government departments where there were changes to the Estimates—the Supplementary Estimates. We only had them in for about five minutes because what, effectively, the Finance and Expenditure Committee came to in their report was we approve the Supplementary Estimates and our report back was to support what was in them. As the Minister of Finance said, the imprest supply Acts are a regular part of the annual Budget cycle, and the Crown, again, cannot spend expenses or capital without them.

So what I found really interesting coming from across the other side of the House was that the member that sat down, Nicola Willis, said that National opposes these bills. National will, therefore, oppose reducing the cost of living for Kiwis who are finding it really, really tough, because that’s exactly what these bills do: they approve the spending for the package that reduces the cost of living.

And just for the member over there who forgets what it’s like to reduce the cost of living—our package—that includes the fuel excise duty and the road-user charges being cut and extended for two months. It also includes the spending for half-price public transport, which is also extended for a further two months. The National Party opposes that because that’s what these bills allow for. You cannot spend unless you put these bills through the House.

The National Party also do not agree with the temporary cost of living payment for people earning up to $70,000 who are not eligible to receive the winter energy payment. And to be fair, if they even go into coalition with the ACT Party, who don’t want the winter energy payment, I’m not surprised they oppose this particular bill.

But also, if they oppose these bills, they oppose establishing better access to health services. The vast majority of this Budget and of the spending which will be in this quarter, will be establishing the New Zealand health authority and the Māori Health Authority. The other side of the House don’t approve that spending and, you know, I’m not surprised that they don’t approve that spending, because they didn’t mind running down the hospitals. They didn’t mind running down the workforce that came to this—so I’m not surprised.

The other side of the House, by opposing these bills, also oppose the rural connectivity and the innovation in tourism. They’re asking for a plan, so why don’t they agree with innovating the tourism industry? Why do they oppose rural connectivity? We know how hard it is to be able to work remotely in some parts of our country. And these two particular bills provide the spending for to improve that rural connectivity.

By opposing these two bills, they oppose the support for apprenticeships that will help build a skilled workforce. That is the effect of opposing these two bills: you, in effect, oppose the spending that allows for apprenticeship work.

And for Māori and Pacific people, you oppose the ability for them to have to be mana enhanced. They oppose the health, education, housing, and social welfare initiatives that are right throughout Budget 2022. For a person like me, who is the MP for Mana, the opposition to these bills means that you oppose the 300 further homes for Pacific ownership in Porirua East. And that’s unfortunate because Pacific homeownership is one of the lowest—the lowest—in the country. So by opposing these bills, you oppose the initiatives that are needed to support improving Pacific housing.

They also would oppose the implementation of our Government’s commitment to support the Dawn Raids historical accounts. We’ve seen time and time again, since last year, these records of the Dawn Raids, which are so important to our Pasifika communities, to our Tongan communities, to our Pacific Island communities, to our Samoan communities. Being able to record those accounts are so important in order for those communities to move forward and that sort of work, it is unfortunate, the other side of the House oppose.

They also oppose the $49.9 million for the Pacific Provider Development Fund. Again, by opposing these bills, you oppose the investment into those Pacific providers. The reason why we want to provide that money for those Pacific providers, is we want them to adopt their models of care into the new health system.

Now, members, during the weekend, I saw so much social media of people really enjoying Matariki. I was really moved by the dawn festival, the ceremony that happened from Te Papa, that was broadcast across a number of media platforms in New Zealand. And I remember sitting there watching those scenes of that dawn ceremony and thinking, “I’m a mother of eight Ngāpuhi children and this is their time in order for them to be proud of their Ngāpuhi heritage, in order for them to understand Mataliki, Matali’i, Matariki—it is what their ancestors used to be able to navigate into this country and for them to be proud of what they were doing.”

So by opposing these two bills, you also therefore oppose the resilient and sustainable cultural sector that this Government has been trying to help during these COVID times. More than $185 million was used to help build a resilient cultural sector because of the impacts of COVID-19. And so, as part of it, that investment included investment in Matariki celebrations. You oppose these bills, you oppose that investment in those Matariki celebrations that rung out across the country. That is our first public holiday with a te reo Māori focus. So by opposing this bill, you can’t sit there and say, “Mānawatia a Matariki” and then oppose the funding that is needed to be able to support such a celebration.

These bills also support the funding into Te Matatini. Another plan is the cultural sector workforce capability initiative—that is another plan to be able to boost our Māori and Pacific arts. Again, these bills provide the foundations in order for those initiatives to be funded.

But, you know, I want to be able to understand why you would oppose such bills. They are technical bills in nature. They approve the Supplementary Estimates from last year: the additional funding that the Minister of Finance said had to go into Vote Corrections and COVID support. As the Minister of Finance said earlier today, it is far less than what has previously had to be used, and, as the Minister of Finance says, as we move into different and more normal spending, the amount has come down. It’s really unfortunate that we’re having to play that politics of not being able to support New Zealand through that COVID recovery.

The Supplementary Estimates approve—the Parliament approves—the authority of using those expenses in the previous financial year, which were not in the normal Appropriations/Estimates bill. So I’m really saddened that the Opposition don’t want to support such a bill.

And again, by opposing this bill, you oppose the cost of living payments, $350 for those who earn up to $70,000—that’s 2.1 million people. You oppose the support that is provided to 2.1 million people—and the member from ACT over they can come across with as much as she’d like to say, but 2.1 million people, again, is the population of Auckland and the population of Wellington and a little bit of Christchurch.

So you can oppose as much as you want for these two particular bills, but we on this side of the House know that Kiwis are hurting, and we wanted to be able to provide some temporary relief for them as they go through the next few months. We know that, economically, internationally our economy is looked at and seen as sound and stable. But we knew that Kiwis were finding it tough, we knew that Kiwis wanted to be able to celebrate Matariki, we knew that Kiwis wanted to be able to celebrate Matatini, we knew that Pacific Island people wanted to be able to own their own homes, and we knew that the health sector had to be reformed.

So these two particular bills, again, provide the authority for the spending that was spent last year over and above the Appropriation/Estimates bill. They provide the initial funding for the three months going forward for Budget 2022. So by opposing these bills, you oppose the initiatives that are helping Kiwis who are finding it tough at this time. So therefore, I’d like to commend this bill to the House and ask the Opposition—particularly those in ACT—to have a really good think about it.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Why, thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll give Barbara Edmonds credit for this: she tells half a story really, really well, and she’s picked a number of—well, she’s probably got that sort of bug that Grant Robertson’s got. You know, “I’m so good; just ask me how.”

Hon Scott Simpson: Figjam.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, I wasn’t going to say that, Mr Simpson, but I think that’s probably not too far from the truth.

Let’s go through some of the things that she said are so heinous that the National Party are opposing them. I want to start with better access to health services. So apparently if we oppose the Supplementary Estimates and the imprest supply, we oppose better access to health services. If only there were better access to health services. What we have in the health sector right now is better access to bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are rolling in it, thanks to the half a billion dollars that was appropriated for a health restructure that isn’t going to add a single procedure, treatment, X-ray, or immunisation, and the only people that are happy about that are my friends in the consulting firms and a plethora of bureaucrats. Where’s the new Dunedin Hospital, by the way? If they wanted better services and better capital programmes and better emergency department wait times and better rheumatic fever and better immunisations for children, surgeries, set some targets. Set some targets for actually doing something, rather than throwing a whole pile of money at something, a whole pile of restructures at it and then hoping.

Hon Scott Simpson: But Labour don’t agree on targets.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, no, that’s right. I think they say something like they have adverse outcomes. You know, they might have adverse outcomes like treatments being done or cancers being detected or kids’ rheumatic fever being avoided. If that’s an adverse outcome, I’ll take it.

She then went on to talk about innovating in the tourism industry. Here’s a really, really good way to innovate in the tourism industry: let it open up and then let them get the staff that they need to feed it. My friends in Queenstown and Wānaka are absolutely panicking over the ski season. Great to see the snow; there’s more of it this week. The only thing they haven’t got is people to actually man the ski fields—person the ski fields, staff the ski fields—and the hospitality and the entertainment services that need to go along with it.

Rural broadband initiatives was one of the things that Ms Edmonds crowed about. Well, if it wasn’t for the previous National Government, we would not have survived COVID, thanks to the high-speed broadband and rural broadband initiatives of the previous Government that actually got us the internet speeds and capability to be able to go online.

I mean, this is something that I know is very close to her heart, as the Mana MP, but Pacific housing initiatives—crowing about Pacific housing initiatives at the same time as the Government presides over the highest level of house price inflation in New Zealand’s history is, I think, a bit rich, frankly, because the reason that those initiatives are so desperately needed for Māori and Pasifika first-home buyers and other vulnerable people is because houses are now completely out of the range and the reach of those communities.

Then, of course, we had the Minister of Finance kind of normalising what we’re doing here, as if, “Oh, this is what we do every year with both Supplementary Estimates and imprest supply.” On one level he is correct, but we are now two days away from the end of the muddiest, most opaque, most profligate Budget spending period in this country’s history. And it’s not so much the fact that we’re doing the Supplementary Estimates; it’s the sheer scale of the things that have been approved in between Budgets with zero scrutiny by the select committees, zero scrutiny by this House. And the only time we get to see this—which is billions and billions of dollars of spending on top of Budget 2021—is on Budget day 2022.

Now, he’s right. There has been a lot of money spent on COVID—necessarily, unexpectedly. Not all of it, frankly, I think is needed, but that’s an argument we couldn’t have. And also the Air New Zealand recapitalisation, support for the Office of the Auditor-General through a very difficult period—there are a number of things that are necessary and appropriate in a normal Supplementary Estimates process. But in the 54-page bill that we have here there is also a huge list of things that by any measure should not be part of Supplementary Estimates. They are, essentially, business-as-usual Budget appropriations that the Government did not put into Budget 2021 when it should have: things like biosecurity risk management, managing the fisheries resources sustainably—well, as if that’s something new and unexpected. Writing off software as a service intangible asset may have been unexpected, but I bet not, because if you’re going to write off a $120 million asset, one doesn’t do that on a whim. Energy and resources: $20 million for oil field decommissioning, as if the oil field just kind of sprouted up and needed decommissioning. It’s been there for 40 years. Why on earth is that part of a Supplementary Estimates process? I could go on. Radio spectrum management rights—as if they came up unexpectedly. None of this should be in Supplementary Estimates. So if we oppose this bill, it’s not because of the process; it’s because of the quantum.

Let me just talk about imprest supply, because both the Minister and Ms Edmonds did talk about that as well. I say this: yes, imprest supply is a normal part of every Budget cycle. But under the previous National Government, the imprest supply values for the first imprest supply were around $7 billion or $8 billion. In 2021, this Minister gave himself a $56.5 billion slush fund. Last year, it was a $41 billion slush fund, and in 2023, it’s a $30 billion slush fund just to get going. Now, both of them say, “Oh, well, that’s far less than previous years’ imprest supply.” Well, that, frankly, is gilding the lily, because it is still more than three times the greatest amount of imprest supply than the previous National Government gave itself. It’s lazy budgeting, and, frankly, it’s no wonder—

Anna Lorck: Oh, National were lazy.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh, there we go. The Berocca has kicked in. I think we need a bit more magnesium over there. It is lazy budgeting, and it’s actually an insult to drunken sailors to say that that’s what this Government is spending like. I’ll say this about drunken sailors: they spend their own money. This Government is spending taxpayers’ money. It has a responsibility to make sure that for every single dollar—in the good times, but especially in the tough times—of taxpayers’ money that they lift out of the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders and spend on these initiatives, they’ve got to be able to hold hand on heart and say two things: (a) this is good value for money, and (b) we know that because it has been scrutinised by select committees and this House. I don’t think we can say either of those things about the Supplementary Estimates, and certainly I predict that the spending that’s going to go on in a still eye-watering $30 billion imprest supply is going to be exactly the same.

Over the past year, in various roles, I have been quizzing the Reserve Bank Governor and the Minister of Finance about the inevitable place we have found ourselves, and probably are going to, in terms of inflation, and the Government spending is a contribution and a driver of that inflation. All we’ve heard from the Minister of Finance is equivocation and avoidance and “Not my problem.”, and “Isn’t there something going on in the Ukraine?”, and “We’re kind of about the middle of the OECD.” This Government needs to take responsibility for profligate spending in a heated economy driving prices when supply is low. I mean, it’s fourth-form economics. It was predictable 18 months ago. It’s going to take another 18 months to get under control even if the Government takes the steps that it needs to take in order to get the inflation curve going back to within the Reserve Bank range of 1 percent to 3 percent. And not only are they not doing that, they are adding fuel to the inflationary fire by the spending that they continue to do in the name of wellbeing. Well, the legacy we’re going to leave our children and grandchildren is hardly wellbeing for them. It’s kicking the can down the road, but the can is getting heavier and they can’t kick it far enough for them not to be able to take responsibility for their decisions. That reckoning is coming in the next 12 months.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I often sit here on this side of the House and wonder what world those members of the Opposition live in. Mr Woodhouse, the previous speaker, has just given me an idea of what world they do live in, and it’s not one that acknowledges there is a world outside New Zealand. I believe that his last statement was along the lines of “something going on in Ukraine”. It’s almost like you read the newspaper and all those little side issues that you read down, and there it was: Michael Woodhouse was reading the Otago Daily Times on Saturday morning and he saw that “Oh, there’s something going on in Ukraine.”

But we can ignore that because, being a diligent member, he will have been preparing his speech for today and he will have been ensuring, as every other member of the Opposition does, that he doesn’t mention that there is a world outside New Zealand—a world where “something’s happening in Ukraine”. Mr Woodhouse, there is actually a war going on in Ukraine—a war that actually, potentially, is going to impact the world in a way we probably haven’t worked out. In fact, it’s a world that COVID is still taking place in—that I suspect we still haven’t worked out.

So those speakers in the Opposition—and I can see them diligently going through their notes—will all stand up and ensure that whatever else they talk about, the only time they will mention a country or something happening outside New Zealand will be the gleeful encouragement for New Zealanders to leap on the next plane and go to Australia, because from what I’ve heard during question time, from what I have heard through every speech relating to this, every New Zealander who leaps on a plane to go to Australia is a victory for the Opposition—something to be celebrated. Well, actually, those members of the Opposition should be very careful that they’re not actually encouraging those people to head over there, because that’s exactly what they’re doing.

By taking this very myopic view—I’m not sure “myopic” is really a sufficient word, but my vocabulary is limited. There will be a better one—Shakespeare will have thought of one, but it doesn’t come to mind. But we’ll stick with “myopic” for now.

The very myopic view taken by the Opposition—and I’m waiting for David Seymour’s contribution. He’ll take myopia to a new level, because he will ensure, when he does his speech—and he’s either following me, or a couple after, that he doesn’t even acknowledge that there’s a place called overseas. He’ll make sure he doesn’t even acknowledge there is a thing called COVID, because with everything he does, he will point at the Minister of Finance’s seat—MOF, affectionately known as—and say that every ill that we have in this world, everything that’s gone wrong, from the common cold to AIDS, is the fault of the Minister of Finance.

So can I invite those members—and Mr Speaker, I am going to go to the bill. I can see you encouraging me to go there. Can I encourage the next speakers, please, to just accept that even beyond Australia there’s a big wide world out there. Just in case you think somehow this paradise that we live in, this pavlova paradise, is somewhere where the only bad things that happen are happening in New Zealand.

Look at the inflation rates from around the world. Have a look not only at what’s being predicted but have a look at what’s actually happening, and these are not Third World countries. We sit in a pretty good place. I see New Zealand at 6.9 percent, and there are only about 10 countries below us, of countries that we recognise, but, boy, there’s a heck of a lot above us—countries like the United States, 8.3 percent, and that’s just been upgraded; the European Union, 8.1 percent; the United Kingdom, 7.8 percent. I did read over the weekend that that’s predicted to be over 10 percent come the end of the year.

So we are in what you would have to describe as a fluid environment, and fluid environments require a fluid response. Now, once again, the first two speakers on this legislation—and talking about fluidity, when one does discuss bills such as this, an imprest supply bill and a Supplementary Estimates bill, really what we are talking about is the necessity for fluidity.

Just for those who are listening at home and might be confused by some of those previous contributions, I will just say that each year we have a day—this year it was 19 May—that is Budget day. That’s the day that these very well-prepared departments—despite what Mr Woodhouse has said—come here. They’ve been beavering away, and they’ll be beavering away now for next year’s Budget. They go through particular cycles, and under the information they have and the world as they understand it exists today, they know what they will need. They’ll go to their Ministers, and their Ministers will put the case for what they need to keep their departments operating, and that’s what the appropriations are for—that money will be appropriated. But, of course, as we know, we live in a very fluid environment.

Now, there are two ways we could do this. We can say, “Right, OK. Budget day is 19 May. If you didn’t put your money in, too bad. It’s gone, and we’ll have to wait till next year to get that money.”, and that’s the approach that the Opposition took, pretty much, in 2008. That word is “retrenchment”, and that’s basically what happened in 1929, during the recession. The world retrenched; the Americans retrenched. Here, we had a very, very conservative Government who, essentially, retrenched, and countries only ever came out of that when they actually started spending some money. That is where we had the New Deal. That is where we had Michael Joseph Savage—whose photograph, rightfully, is on the walls of many a home in New Zealand, because people understand just what that man and his party did at the time.

So, coming back, to put that back: how does that actually relate to what we’re talking about today? Well, some things just can’t wait a year, and so we’ve got to make sure that the Minister of Finance and this Government has got the ability to make sure that we do get through this, and who knows what’s going to happen next? As I say, this is a very fluid environment. This very chart from April 2022—an inflation chart. If there was an update now, I’m sure that most of those countries will change—we know that Britain has and we know that the United States has—and so we’ve have to make sure we have the ability to change.

Take the police, for example. Since the Budget last year, we’ve seen—and it’s been brought up in this House; it’s been a matter of considerable concern—a rise in gang activity, shootings, etc. Now, it would be a terrible day if we had to say, “Righto, we can’t really do anything about that until next year.”, but this Government and this Minister of Police is going to be doing a considerable amount about that, and he’s going to need some finance to do so. It would be terrible if he had to just wait until next year, because, again, the losers will be those people who rely on the police for their safety and the ability to go about their lives on this—sorry, was that a two-more-minutes call there, was it, Mr Speaker? Thank you. I wasn’t—I was thinking you had your fingers the right way round.

So I just want to reflect—in the time left to me—that sometimes we have options in life, and I’m one of these people who go through life saying that doing nothing is rarely an option. It’s sometimes an option, but certainly in the times we live in, doing nothing is not an option.

I’m proud to be part of this Government. I reflect on, really, the theme underlying a lot of the criticism of this Government—again, whether it be through question time or whether it be through speeches in this House, it’s “Boy, you guys are doing these health reforms. Boy, you guys are doing these water reforms. We’re going to get you next year.” Well, the option with both is to go back to our electorates and see the pipes bursting and see the sewage going into various harbours and waterways. With health, everyone knows the current health system is broken, but “Let’s do nothing because we might get thrown out of Parliament if we do something.”

Certainly, if we look at the last National Government, in particular, essentially, it did nothing, and it was a safe option to take. They squandered their popularity. At the time, they had a very popular Government and a very popular Prime Minister, and even those staunch members across the House will admit that there was a lot of wasted opportunity. Well, I’m proud to be part of a Government that does things, and if we get criticised and if the things we do are unsuccessful next year, by gee, I want to be part of a Government that stands for doing something; not for doing nothing. So, again, this imprest supply bill gives us the opportunity to do things, and not—as is celebrated in the Opposition—do nothing and imagine that New Zealand is just this wonderful little world. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Budget and imprest supply bill that we’re debating today is really about our priorities as a country, and the Government, on behalf of all New Zealanders, makes decisions about what our priorities are, how we can invest together in the things that are going to lift up our people and protect our environment and ensure that we have a habitable climate in the future.

There is much to celebrate in the Budget, which is why the Green Party supported it. Of course, the Green Party is not a party officially of the Government. We have a cooperation agreement with the majority Labour Government which means we’re doing as our voters would have wanted us to, which is to work as constructively as possible to get better outcomes for the climate, for biodiversity, for our people and equality in New Zealand. Our two Ministers, James Shaw and Marama Davidson, are certainly working as hard as they can, and you can see the effort that they have put into this Budget, because we had the largest ever investment in climate initiatives in this Budget. The fact that it came from emissions trading scheme revenue is fantastic, because it means that those who are causing the most damage through climate pollution are therefore paying for a lot of the solutions, which is fair.

We also saw $114 million for the prevention of family violence—something that my colleague Jan Logie started in her work last term as the first ever executive role as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, and now Minister Marama Davidson is the first ever Minister to have that role. So that is fantastic. But, ultimately, we’re not officially in the Government and the Labour Government doesn’t need the Green Party’s votes, and there is a lot more that we believe could have been done and should be done to ensure that we do have a habitable climate and we do have a fair society. While we absolutely supported the response to COVID, unfortunately, the fact is that unintentionally it has led to a massive increase in wealth inequality in New Zealand, and the only way to fix that is to fix the tax system and to make sure that the wealthiest are paying their fair share.

So, ultimately, this is about political choices. Continuing to have child poverty in New Zealand is a political choice. Obviously, the parties to my right are happy to let child poverty get worse and worse and to give tax cuts to those earning the highest incomes and to perpetuate a lack of a fair tax system, and the party to the left, you know, is tinkering around the edges and saying, “We’re doing the best we can.”, but not fundamentally changing the system. The system is rigged in favour of those who have the most. The system is rigged in favour of those colonists who came here and got land—whether through theft or through trade, but a lot of times theft—and who have perpetuated a racist system that has failed those who have roots as tangata whenua. I acknowledge that the Labour Government is doing what they can to try and right these wrongs, but until you fundamentally change the system, nothing is going to change.

That’s what we saw in the response to COVID, because we see the wealthiest New Zealanders almost $1 trillion richer after COVID. Of course, most of that, many of them, would be happy to pay more to have a fairer society. Who wants to live in a country where children are growing up in poverty and don’t have opportunities? No one.

So how could we have addressed the cost of living crisis and inflation? The Green Party supports the measures that the Labour Party brought through on the Budget, but we could have done a lot more if we had transformational income support, a guaranteed minimum income, and we could pay for that. We could end child poverty with a wealth tax on the top 6 percent of those who own wealth, who just got a lot wealthier in the last two or three years through no effort of their own; simply through an economic system that is rigged, that sees the return to capital grow faster than the economy grows. So making the tax system fairer is a choice that the Green Party would make, a choice to really take ambitious action on climate. There are so many opportunities. I’m just going to give one example here, which is, unfortunately, not in the Budget.

The Government needs to commit $350 million now to be able to purchase the hybrid electric trains that could massively increase connectivity between Palmerston North, the capital city, and Masterton. We have a business case that shows a positive return on investment. We have the regions—Horizons Regional Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council have committed the funding. Waka Kotahi has committed funding. We already had track work go through as part of the COVID response and we know that there is a huge benefit to increasing the connectivity. If there are more frequent trains, more people can choose to travel easily between these cities in the lower North Island at lower costs—lower carbon costs, lower safety costs. It’s just a win-win-win right across the board, and, of course, a positive benefit to cost ratio, which I would think the ACT Party would care about, but, you know.

Instead, the National Party did campaign on a massively over-designed extension to State Highway 1 north of Ōtaki to north of Levin, and, unfortunately, this is a bit of road that needs immediate safety improvements—it needs immediate safety improvements. You know what won’t improve the safety immediately on that road? Spending 10 years building a separate highway to the site—that will not improve the safety straight away. So the Government has committed $1.5 billion to this stretch of road that only has 8,000 cars in each direction a day, and a four-lane bypass of Levin—the cost of this project is equivalent to half of the residential property in Levin.

Now, look, let’s solve the problem of the bottleneck in Levin. Let’s solve the problem of the safety of the State highway. You can do that for a couple hundred million dollars. You could get the exact same benefits, the exact same result, at lower cost, faster, if you improve the existing road and did a two-lane bypass of Levin, and you’d have more than the $350 million left over to massively increase train connectivity, not only between Levin and the city, between Palmerston North and Wellington City but also on the Wairarapa line, where you could double the number of peak train services and get services all day, get services on the weekend. That’s how you truly transform the transport system. It makes economic sense. It’s better for the climate. It’s better for the people who have the choice to not drive and not spend two hours stuck in a car. They can do other things. They can be productive. They can work. They can talk on the phone. They can have a glass of wine. They can relax. New Zealanders want effective passenger rail services and the economic case absolutely stacks up.

But it means making choices. If we’re going to make the choice to spend $1.5 billion on a highway that will delay safety improvements, that has a benefit to cost ratio of 0.2 because the cost is so much greater than the economic return of that project—I mean, I think it’s a little bit surprising that only the Green Party stands up and argues for this kind of rational investment in transport solutions that will give people more choice, that will reduce transport costs, that will help us to respond to climate change. I know that there are supporters. The local MP in Ōtaki is absolutely supportive of the rail investment, and I want to acknowledge her and her work campaigning for that. But we need to continue the campaign, because, unfortunately, the Labour Government has not committed the $350 million in this Budget. That is why, my friends, we need a Green Party in Government so that we can actually get—

Hon Scott Simpson: Look what happened last time. What about the letter?

David Seymour: Release the letter.

Hon Scott Simpson: Release the letter.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —the sensible investment in transport solutions that New Zealanders have been begging for for years. I hear that the National Party and ACT Party don’t know that the letters are already public—you morons—and it’s a great letter. Do you know why? Because it’s all about evidence-based transport investment.

Do the members of this House not want an effective investment in transport solutions in Wellington? Can the members for the National Party really stand and talk to their constituents in Northland and Southland who need investment in their roads and say that they back $2.2 billion of investment in the capital, where already it’s like the place in New Zealand where public transport could actually be an alternative? Do you want to spend $2.2 billion on roads here, rather than effective public transport here and fixing the roads in Northland and Southland that move our product to market? OK, well, party vote Green.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I just heard a Green Party member talk about why the Green Party is rational, and it brought me back to a wonderful quote from Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and she said, “Being rational is a bit like being a lady. If you have to say you are, you’re not.” And that’s the problem the Green Party has.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. This is the bill where the Government passes a law to add or subtract money spent in each appropriation from the Budget. These appropriations—the original estimates—are in this book, and if you want to see a thick book, if you want to get a sense of how much money this Government is spending, there it is. This is a Government whose spending is out of control.

To put some numbers around that, you know what, in 2019—before COVID—when this Government said it was investing in the future, and was certainly spending enough money, it spent $87 billion. Now, that was actually up a lot from the $78 billion Budget it inherited, but it was $87 billion. This year, this Government will spend $128 billion, and it has increased expenditure by $41 billion in just a couple of years. That is sensational spending, and it has an effect. It has an effect on the price of everything that New Zealanders buy, because inflation—as another great economist Milton Friedman said—is too much money chasing after too few goods. When this Government increases spending by $41 billion in just a few years, when it runs a deficit of $19 billion—that’s what they call “the fiscal impulse”; $19 billion more money spent than it takes in tax—that means there’s a lot of money sloshing around.

The problem is, it might be OK if we were getting quality for that expenditure, but let me give you an example uncovered by ACT just in the last 24 hours: that is the expenditure on advertising for COVID boosters. You might think this is a minor thing, but we’ve been tracking this expenditure. They’ve been spending about $2.4 million, $2.7 million a month since last year.

Hon Scott Simpson: How much?

DAVID SEYMOUR: $2.7 million—he asks. We asked how many people are actually getting vaccinated after hearing that advertising. Well, back in February, there were so many people that it was $3 of advertising for every person that got a booster. Then, in March, it was $9 of advertising for everybody that got a booster. Then, in April, it was $29 of advertising for everybody that got a booster. And come May, last month, they spent $2,765,000 advertising for COVID-19 boosters. And how many people got boosted? Well, 41,000 got boosted—that’s $67 of advertising for every person that got a booster.

Now, let’s just think about this. If the people over here cared about New Zealanders’ money, if they showed them the basic respect for their taxpayer dollar, when they know that people up and down this country are tightening their belts—you know, they’re making sacrifices. Do you know what people say? They say, “We used to plan out meals for the week. Now we go to the supermarket and we shop the specials and we eat what we can afford.” I get messages—because I’m down with the kids on Snapchat—and they say, “We are sitting around our flat. We can’t go out, because we can’t afford the petrol.” And that’s because petrol consumption has gone down 15 percent year on year. These are the facts: people are tightening their belts everywhere, but not this Government.

Back to our COVID vaccination advertising, they had $2.765 million spent even though only 41,000 people presumably heard the advertising and got vaccinated. Did they think, at any time in the last four months, “Gee, we’re spending the same money and getting less vaccinations? Maybe the advertising is not working. Maybe we need to change strategy. Maybe we need to start saving New Zealanders’ money and show them some respect because they are tightening their belts. Maybe, as the custodian of the public dollar, we in the Labour Government should too”? And did they do it? No, they did not do it. Did anyone on the Labour Party like to say, “Did they do it?”

Hon Poto Williams: Oh shush.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh—oh. They’ve got nothing to say for themselves, because they ploughed on and they spent the money to the point where it cost $67 for every person that got boosted, in advertising alone. And when you ask the Labour Party whether they are accountable for public money—that’s Poto Williams, a Minister of the Crown—she says, “Oh shush.” That’s what their attitude is to the New Zealand taxpayer, and that’s why they’re on their way out. That is the arrogance and the out-of-touch attitude of a Government that wastes taxpayer money, hand over fist—$128 billion.

Well, there is a better way. The ACT Party is the only party that has published a fully costed alternative budget that shows how we could reduce expenditure by $6.8 billion and get back into surplus this coming year—not in 2025, not in 2026—straight away. And we’d do it. For example, this Government has hired 14,000 additional—beg your pardon, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Speaker earlier ruled that slogans were not to be visible from the floor of the House. I think the member has made his point, and I thank him for that, but if he could leave the slogan face down on the table, I’d appreciate it.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, Madam Speaker, I would never dispute your ruling but the “real change” Budget—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Good.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —as written here is not a slogan. Madam Speaker, you may come from a political tradition where, when a Government says, “We are going to deliver a Budget for real change”, it’s just a marketing exercise. But, in ACT’s alternative budget, it’s not a slogan, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’m now going to warn the member that if he continues to question my ruling and show a slogan to the House, which is also against the Standing Orders, I will warn him once. Thank you.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Point of order, Madam Speaker. The clock continued while you were on your feet and I had to reserve my—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Then I would invite the member to get on with it.

DAVID SEYMOUR: The ACT Party is the only party that has set out how we could reduce expenditure, reduce taxes, and get this country back on track. And it also has serious policy proposals that are not slogans, that are not gimmicks. Simple questions like: can we afford to be the only country I can think of, remaining, that pays a pension at 65? Because do you know what? The United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Australia—all of those countries are now raising their age to 67. If we had the courage to do that here in New Zealand, we could raise it by two months a year, for 12 years, to 67. People would barely notice it. In fact, with the increase in life expectancy, it wouldn’t reduce the time they got the pension, but it would save the taxpayer—and especially those younger taxpayers thinking of going overseas—$16 billion in the first 12 years. Now, you just have to ask yourself: “Is New Zealand so wealthy that we can afford to be the outlier from Australia, Britain, America, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, and Italy?” Or do we have to start introducing rational policies?

Do you know what? I won’t hold it up. I’ll cover up what you call a slogan and I call a title. It also says, in our alternative budget, that the ACT Party would have foreign investors from democratic OECD countries allowed to send ideas and money to New Zealand without the normal obstruction of the Overseas Investment Office. Now, we have, per capita, half as much foreign direct investment as Australians, a third of what Estonian citizens have, and Estonians are about to overtake us in productivity or GDP per hour worked. Can we really afford to be one of the hardest countries in the world to send investment and ideas to? Or do we need the kind of ideas that ACT promotes in order to make this a country that can hold on to its First World status, its developed country living standards, that can afford the cancer drugs that people need when they or their loved ones get ill, that is a place that young people want to stay and build their futures?

We’ve got two options. We’ve got the Labour Party, who will spend and spend and spend, and still there are no results. We have an alternative Government in waiting, with the ideas of ACT, that will make sure that this country not only survives but thrives, and that’s why we oppose this Government’s spendthrift Budget. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I’m pleased to rise and speak in this debate on the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill and the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. I’m usually actually at this point in the pecking order—just after ACT—because my name starts with W and it just happens to happen. I usually got a little bit more to riff on because Mr Seymour usually puts up a better fight than that. It was a bit of a snooze, wasn’t it?

So let me just move on and actually focus on this bill and what it actually achieves, because what we really do need to focus on is that these bills do some really hard work for our country. They are actually a stark contrast with what we get from the Opposition, which is a real lack of vision, because what we can see in these bills is a really comprehensive accounting for the spending that’s going on.

I want to talk about that because I think there’s a bit of a myth out there that we need to bust, because what I have found is that over the last few years, we have had a country that is in safe hands in a crisis, and I think that New Zealanders actually will take that on board, because I have been super impressed by our finance Minister and the mixture that he brings to this job of actually being really careful and responsive and very careful about taxpayers’ money and his creativity and vision—always looking for the future.

So I want to talk about those aspects of this bill. I want to talk, first of all, about something that came up actually from the Hon Michael Woodhouse. In that speech he gave in his turn in this debate, he talked about how there was $20 million set aside for oil fields being deconstructed. I just want to talk about that for a minute because that can wash over people and they cannot think about it.

I was here watching and participating in a debate when we were talking about the decommissioning of oil fields, and the National Party opposed this Government in terms of its bill, which was to make those responsible for reaping the profits out of those oil fields responsible for the decommissioning. Now, I see that as a highly cynical act of people with a lot of money; that they would actually take the oil out of this country and cynically pass on the ownership of the companies before the decommissioning came in so that the New Zealand taxpayer has to pick up that bill. It’s not a great amount of money in this Budget, but there’s a lot of money at stake for New Zealanders.

It’s taxpayers’ money; it’s hard-working taxpayers’ money. I see this Government as actually much less cynical—much more savvy—about that kind of wastage. I’d like the Opposition to think about that kind of wastage, because we got all sorts of arguments at that point about how we were destroying the industry by holding people to account by making them actually put things right. That worries me because that is not vision.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! Order! I’d like the member to come back to the bills which are being debated this afternoon and which are before the House. I’ve been listening very carefully and I haven’t heard the member addressing either of those two bills, and I invite her to do so.

HELEN WHITE: Those issues about spending, I can go to more directly in this bill—although that was a comment on a comment made about a spend in the Budget.

So with regard to the broader issues, we are going through a situation at the moment where we have faced a double whammy as a Government. We have faced COVID and we have faced a war in the Ukraine, and that has caused all sorts of issues in terms of the economy. What we’ve had is someone in charge of the appropriations of money who has thought very carefully about the spend.

So the spend that we can see in these bills are things like the winter energy payments; are things like the temporary cost of living payment, which is going to go to people who don’t get that but are on $70,000 or less a year. Those people are the ones that are hurting the most and they’re going to get the most help as a consequence. This covers things like the 25c that we have taken off fuel at this time.

It also covers one of my favourites, which is half-price public transport. Now, yesterday I was standing with my daughter at a bus stop and she was saying to me—she said quite spontaneously—“This is the bit I love.” Like, “I am using this public transport.” It was really nice because this was a young woman who was on a low income and she was able to go on a bus in Wellington for half the price it used to cost her, and she will be devoted to that form of transport as a consequence. It is just a damn good thing for everybody at that bottom line. That’s where you can tell that this Government is grounded.

It is not, by contrast, going by a decision to hold tax rates and depreciate them. It is not going to our wealthiest citizens, and that actually is the contrast. That is a shocking contrast that the Opposition would suggest that at a time of crisis, we don’t push the money into the places where that spend supports our most vulnerable, supports those people without a lot of capital.

But instead, we push all that money—the vast majority of it—to our highest-income earners. That’s ridiculous. It’s also inflationary, because where is that money going to end up?

I want to talk about the article today that was by Fallow. It was in the New Zealand Herald, and he said this: “There is a difference between borrowing to build State houses, because you object to Kiwis living in cars or emergency housing hotels, on the one hand, and selling off State houses and paying down debt on the other.” That is the contrast here.

Yes, there’s spending in this Budget. I make no apology for spending in this Budget as long as it’s supporting people who need supporting; as long as it’s supporting our economy and our people. But when that spending and all that devotion to paying down debt goes to the point of spending the very infrastructure we need to support people, that is a bad move. That is a bad move for New Zealand and it’s based on an ideology that’s completely out of date.

So I want to talk just a little bit before I finish about some of those other things that I think are very important in this Budget in terms of vision. I haven’t got time to pick more than one, so I’m going to pick the one which I saw, which is about income insurance.

I was an employment lawyer and I spent my life watching some people who were lucky enough to have redundancy pay do OK if they lost their job, and I saw the majority of New Zealanders with absolutely nothing: their wages had been driven down and they didn’t have savings when they lost their job.

This is such a sensible idea. This is going to bring a whole lot of people who are working into a situation of security, and they are going to have 80 percent of their income guaranteed. So they’ll be able to pay their mortgage, so they’ll be able to sleep at night, so they’ll be able to go and find a better job. It is such a fundamental that you would think that it’s something that all the parties would agree is important because it’s about good housekeeping too.

It’s about when there is a financial crisis, actually people have security. They’ve paid into a system where they have security and it helps everyone in the economy because we don’t end up with big financial shocks as a consequence.

This is such a fundamental in New Zealand, and yet we were running into a situation where people had very little savings, they had very little security, and apparently that was OK—and it was completely inequitable between people.

So I absolutely am thrilled to see this is a new building block and that’s in this Budget, but it’s also a vision for the future.

That is a Minister of Finance who understands and cares about the future of our economy, not just now. It’s being done at a time when we have had real crises to face, and I absolutely applaud him for the work that he’s done in that space.

I am absolutely pleased to see that work come back before the House soon, and it will be a great complement to ACC, which is one of the other visionary parts of our system that I am very proud of.

So I am pleased to see this and I commend these bills to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I rise on behalf of the National Party as the member of Parliament for North Shore on the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. National oppose this bill. I tell you what: listening to that last speech about a finance Minister that has responsibility, that is in control, I was thinking, “Where have they been?” This is a Minister in a bill that we are going through today that is an open chequebook—an open chequebook for a Government that is addicted to spending and a Government that is addicted to debt. And we’ve got a Minister of Finance at the helm of this ship, going through a massive storm, and basically going to crash-land our economy and hard-working Kiwis are going to pay for those decisions.

The New Zealand economy, and the New Zealand economy more broadly, which is impacted by these Supplementary Estimates, is in a nosedive, and the pilot Prime Minister is across overseas doing clinks and drinking shot glasses of grape juice while the Deputy Prime Minister is in the navigator seat thinking, “You know what? Those dials in front of me are all going red inflation and the machine’s going, ‘Pull up, pull up’ ”. And he’s going: “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. I know better than what the dials are telling me.”

The problem with that attitude from a Minister of Finance is an arrogance that he knows best. But all the warning signs are saying that our economy is in a nosedive and this Government has played a role in terms of where we’re at. What we want from this Government is the ability to recognise that we’re in a freefall and to start to take action around that. But sadly, and sadly for hard-working Kiwis and for Kiwis around this country, we have got a Government that is addicted to spending, addicted to debt, and has an inability to fiscally manage this country and its future.

So what I want to talk about in regards to the bill is the $127 billion that is in the spending for this year. That is just over $57,727 per Kiwi household and that amount is about $1,100 a week of spending. That is the quantum of spend that that side of the House is currently spending and not investing in terms of us. And we’ve talked about how that quantum of spend has increased significantly.

Let’s talk a little bit about three waters, which is included within this appropriation: $2.5 billion of borrowings or spend that has just been spread out in a bribery fund for local councils. One and a half billion of that is going to be borrowed at commercial rates—$100 million of interest costs alone, $50 per household in terms of interest repayments per year before these entities have even started. That is in regards to a piece of legislation that is one small element of a significant appropriation in regards to what we’re talking about.

We talked before about the $350 sugar hit. Let’s be clear: this is going to do nothing on a sustainable basis to help hard-working Kiwis out there dealing with a cost of living crisis. The navigator in charge of this plane, while it’s nosediving, thinks they know best and this $350 payment is like trying to turn over the fuel gauge to the backup engine when fuel is pumping out of the plane as it’s heading for the mountain. This Government are out of control and they have an inability to manage. National have come up with some good ideas in regards to how we’d do that: inflation-adjusted taxation policy, making sure that Kiwis would get sustainable money back into their pockets, and that would benefit middle New Zealand.

Lastly, this appropriation includes a significant amount of money on consultants, contractors, and bureaucrats. There were 14,000 more bureaucrats in the last five years; $34 million on consultants and contractors on an advertising campaign for three waters, which was absolutely wasteful spending. One and a half billion dollars is the cost for those additional bureaucrats and that excludes front-line teachers, front-line nurses. The National Party oppose this bill.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): I rise as the proud member of the Tukituki electorate in the Hawke’s Bay region, which is absolutely booming. The bill today is about approving the investment—the investment—we are going to make into driving New Zealand forward into the future.

I’d like to start by talking about jobs. The investment from this bill is going to go into our Apprenticeship Boost programme. Now, in Hawke’s Bay, in Hastings, we have got an Apprenticeship Boost programme that I am proud to speak on. I went and visited 20 apprentices who were on a housing development programme, learning how to build, learning how to be electricians, learning how to be plumbers—women, young men, old men, you name it, they were on the Apprenticeship Boost programme. And this is part of the bill in investing this money in the first quarter to make sure that the Apprenticeship Boost programme can continue. Now, it was a win-win solution. It was a win-win solution because not only were they learning how to earn a trade, they were also building homes for the future. They were building homes that were going to be used for transitional housing to get more people into homes, and that is a very important part of the Budget.

Now, as the member for Tukituki, I’d like to discuss a part of the Budget around the spending appropriations that we’re doing that came right from the heart of Hawke’s Bay. In doing this, I would like to acknowledge five special people: people that were part of the budgeting service advice, which is part of this bill. We will be ensuring that their funding continues. I’d like to acknowledge Kristal Leach from Budget First in Hastings, Carmel Thompson from Central Hawke’s Bay Budget Advisory Services, Ngaio Bell from Wairoa Financial Literacy Services, Kerry Henderson and Debbie Mackintosh from Napier Family Centre. Now, they are budget advisory people who have had money to invest and to make sure that they were able to provide the service during the COVID lockdown. Now, they advocated really hard to ensure that that money—the $20 million not only for Hawke’s Bay but for the whole country—would continue.

Now, it was a very good example—a great example, which I did talk about locally—about how local work can make a difference; a real difference. A difference because it shows that people on the ground, this Government is listening to and this Government is prepared to invest with them. And those budget services—particularly in this time where people are finding it difficult, they need to be able to tap into budget services to make sure that they can have the support and the knowledge they need to ensure they can budget well.

Now, today we’ve been speaking on three waters as part of the investment that was going into this Budget. And as the local member for Tukituki and Hastings—where of course the water crisis started in Havelock North, which has spurred on the three waters bill—as the local MP, I have publicly come out and talked about the jobs it’s going to create—the jobs for the future. Building infrastructure, the pipes and the drains—that’s the investment that’s going to be going in, and that’s why we need to make sure that Hastings is right at the forefront of that. We’re seven years ahead of the rest of the country, we’ve already invested in our water infrastructure, getting our drinking water back, and now we are going to be showing the country. And that is why it’s so important and I believe that Hastings and Hawke’s Bay should be an absolute capital for three waters, because it’s going to grow hundreds of jobs, and that’s about the future—that’s about the future. And this is what this Budget does: it invests in the future.

Now, I do have to turn at this point to a couple of mentions in the House today, particularly from the ACT Party. Now, the leader of the ACT Party said he was down with the kids. Well, I’m up with the kids. I’m up with the kids because this cost of living payment is going to go to students—hard-working students who need support. And that’s good for those students—those hard-working students who’ve got through COVID, done their part, and we absolutely should be investing in them. And that cost of living payment, students have done it tough, students have done it tough too, so why not invest in them? Because I know that they will absolutely benefit from investing. And those students, they go out too and they need to pay rent and pay for their food too, so good on them. So up with the kids, not down with the kids like the ACT Party.

Another part of these appropriations is about health—a major investment in health. And today, I got to stand beside our former Hawke’s Bay District Health Board CEO Keriana Brooking. And I can think of no one better to stand by when we talked through the rural health that we are doing for this country. And I tell you, it was one of the proudest moments. And I’d like to take this opportunity, as we look to the future of health, to thank Keriana Brooking, to thank her, and also to thank all the DHB board members—and yes, I was an elected DHB board member—and as we look forward to investing in health, to thank them too for the hard work and service that they have done.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’m very confident that the member is going to segue even closer to the bills at hand.

ANNA LORCK: OK, absolutely, Madam Speaker. So, as we go through this, I would like to say that as we invest in the future and we look to make sure that we appropriate the funds for the Budget so that we can absolutely invest in what needs to be done because this Government, the Labour Government, is investing in people, we don’t hear anything like that from the other side—no. We don’t hear about investing in people. No vision—no. But we’ve got a vision in this Budget. We’ve got a vision, because we are making sure that things like the winter energy payment—that’s something that the ACT Party doesn’t agree with and the National Party isn’t very in favour of either, but no, we invest in the winter energy payment. And, of course, we are also looking and investing in making sure for one very important part here: dental grants—dental grants for low-income Kiwis will be more than tripled from $300 to $1,000. And no longer will they have to have emergency work.

Budget 2022 really invests forward. And the thing is, our debt is low. New Zealand’s debt is low. It is lower than the US, it is lower than the UK’s, it is lower than Canada’s, and it is lower than Australia’s. We have low debt in New Zealand, and that is what we need to continually say, because, as I started, Hawke’s Bay and Hastings are booming from the investment that’s coming in: into housing, into jobs, into education, into cleaning up our water. All of these things have an incredible impact on the hard-working people who have to get out there and do the mahi. And that’s the other thing: we need to absolutely make sure that we have jobs for the future. That’s what this Budget and the investment is all about, and it’s a bright future. And Hastings in the heart of Hawke’s Bay, the engine room of the economy, is getting a significant amount of this Budget into growing our jobs, apprentices, building houses, improving our health services—all those things that make sure that people across our region and across New Zealand are touched, because this Budget, of any budget I have ever seen, touches almost every person in one way or another. And that’s a big deal—that’s a big deal—and I’m absolutely thrilled to speak on this and on behalf of Hawke’s Bay. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on—I think it is the right order—the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill. Well, I think that just says it: the first. That means that Mr Robertson’s going to come back for more money—and gee, don’t we know that. He has an insatiable appetite for a bit of deck, a bit of money from people. And guess where he goes and gets it? He gets it from you, all of you—not you, but part of you, Madam Speaker. I’ve got to say, it comes from you as well. It comes from every New Zealander; he just loves spending your money. Wow. I don’t know how many more “First for 2022/23”—I think that that is a superb title! Someone blew that one.

Anyway—anyway—gee. I’m just reflecting. How many crises have we got at the moment?

Hon Member: Fire crisis.

ANDREW BAYLY: Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten that one.

Dr Shane Reti: Health.

ANDREW BAYLY: So we’ve got—Mr Reti—the health crisis. Yeah, we’ve got 18,000 operations that haven’t been dealt with. And, of course, so many thousands of New Zealanders don’t know that they’re in trouble yet, from a health perspective.

Dr Shane Reti: Wait times.

ANDREW BAYLY: Wait times. We’ve got an economic crisis—and I’m going to talk about that because, you know what, our debt’s doubled from $60 billion to $133 billion. And don’t worry, it’s going to continue under Mr Robertson. It’s going to get to $185 billion.

Hon Member: How much?

ANDREW BAYLY: Three times—$185 billion—since two years ago, up to 2025. That is a staggering amount of increase—three times. Mr Robertson will leave this office as one of the biggest spenders, one of the finance Ministers who has spent so much on tick. And this is what? I’ve just done this: the first for 2022/23.

Anyway, we’re talking about crisis. So we’ve got the health crisis, we’ve got the economic crisis, and we’ve got the cost of living crisis—gee. And here is a Labour Government who’s saying that they’re going to look after the vulnerable. They have done the most shocking job for the vulnerable. Guess who gets hurt when the price of groceries—fruit and vege—goes up in the grocery shop, the supermarkets? Who gets hurt when the price of petrol gets up well over three bucks? Who gets hurt when entrance costs go up? You know, the average mortgage—my good colleague Nicola Willis talking about the average mortgage, $600,000 with the increase now. The average increase per week is over a couple hundred bucks.

And then, of course, if you’re not in that situation, you can’t get a house. And gee, you’re not going to be able to get a house for a while unless you got lucky enough to have wealthy parents. If you’re having to rent—guess who rents, mainly? More vulnerable people on fixed incomes. Up by 150 bucks. That is a cost of living crisis, that’s for certain.

Then we’ve got the workforce staffing crisis. Talk to all the small businesses.

Todd Muller: Can’t find anybody.

ANDREW BAYLY: We can’t find it. Every business I have been into over the last two years says to me they cannot find good labour. That’s why National came up with a policy to help businesses invest in good plant and equipment to improve productivity, but also to help businesses retain their staff and put them and help them into better paying jobs in more important parts of their businesses. But, of course, we’ve got so many businesses, like the hospitality and all those other businesses in places like Queenstown, that will never be able to do anything other than look at slowing down their businesses, so—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! Order! The member is giving, in nature, somewhat more of a general debate speech than addressing issues that arise in the two bills before the House. I invite the member to come more closely to the bills that are being debated. Andrew Bayly.

ANDREW BAYLY: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So all this—it leads to more cost. As my good colleague Simon Watts, who just spoke before, said, 14,000 new bureaucrats. Fourteen-thousand more public servants. That is costing New Zealand more than $1.5 billion a year in additional personnel costs. And you can see it in the Budget; you can see it in terms of the three waters, the $2.5 billion that’s been set aside for that; we can see it in health reforms, $0.5 billion that’s been spent so far, which is all going to feed through into the future requirements for funding, which is what the appropriation is all about. These are big, chunky pieces of costs that will lead to a much worse economic and financial situation for New Zealand. I think the most damning part of this has been the drop in productivity that’s come about, which is symptomatic of what has been happening around the financial situation that we are seeing. It’s feeding through into—businesses are less productive now. It is just making it so much harder for people to survive.

I think one of the other aspects that is interesting, that will feed through into the need for more funding and the appropriation, is also the current account deficit. It’s interesting, when you look at the current account deficit, it’s one of those areas that’s had very, very little emphasis. Traditionally, we’ve had a current account deficit of about $10 billion a year, which, in the scheme of things over the $340 billion economy, is OK—it’s not ideal, we’d like to have a positive figure. But what is interesting, looking at the financial projections, is that in 2022 and 2023, we’re going to have an estimated or projected deficit of $24 billion. That is a significant increase—it’s basically over half the increase in the current account deficit. All this is meaning is that the debt of the country is going to increase because that is going to feed through into the financial situations.

And I’ve got to say to you, all of these things are just making it harder for New Zealanders. The way that we’re having to live now, with the wage changes that are taking place—or lack of them—it means that, in effect, all New Zealanders now are poorer off than they were a couple of years ago. That is the most damning thing.

The worst thing about what’s happening is that it’s also making our businesses much more uncompetitive. Because what has happened with the rapid increase in inflation, which is feeding through into what’s happening with the Government accounts, is that we have built into the economy a much higher cost structure, which means that we’re paying more for our labour—if you can get it—we’re paying more for import components going into our businesses.

Even if inflation, which is obviously near 5 percent—it is likely to stay up at those high levels for quite some period of time. Even if they come back within the bounds of the Reserve Bank requirements of 1 to 3 percent, what we have done is that we’ve embedded a much higher cost structure into New Zealand that will not dissipate. We have, therefore, made New Zealand businesses less competitive from an international perspective, and we’ve made it a much more unfavourable, much more disadvantageous situation for, particularly, vulnerable people and people on fixed incomes. That is the travesty of what we are facing.

All that is fed through into a financial situation which I think is—not only are we dealing with all these other crises, and I didn’t talk about the educational crisis, I didn’t talk about the crime crisis, I didn’t talk about the housing crisis. But what it has fed through to is, ultimately, an economic crisis that will take some time to deal with. The question that I’ve got is: how are we going to give the confidence to New Zealanders that they, first of all, should stay in New Zealand and not immigrate to Australia; but secondly, how do we give the confidence to our business community and to individuals to want to stay here, to give New Zealand a fair shot? Because, at the moment, we’ve got this dramatic brain drain that’s leaving for places like Australia and Canada—both countries have been actively recruiting in New Zealand for quite some period of time. The outlook for New Zealand is poor; it’s going to take National to turn this ship around. And gee, we’ve got a big job ahead of us.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Often in the Budget cycle, there’s a poor cousin, and one can imagine that with an international war, with global inflation leading to domestic inflation, with supply chain issues, and with pressure on households, it could be really tempting to skimp and save on things that are perceived not to hit Kiwis directly in the pocket. Certainly, when we live in the most peaceful country in the world, we’re at the bottom of world, we have a very stable environment, it would be very tempting to perhaps skimp and save on defence. But it is great to see in the Schedule to the Supplementary Estimates that there are allocations not only for defence operational things but also for defence capabilities in the order of $213 million.

Also tucked away in that Schedule on page 15—I can see that the Minister for Veterans is in the House, Meka Whaitiri—there’s about $38 million in support for veterans of agent orange who haven’t previously been able to access funding for their exposures. Now, one of these two new exposures has got a name that I can’t pronounce; it’s quite niche. But the other one is hypertension, and that is a massive achievement for those veterans of the Vietnam War, of agent orange, who fought so long and hard to be recognised to have their ailments recognised in the former things, like hypertension, which we know leads to so many other debilitating medical conditions, So those veterans will be eligible for an ex gratia payment of $40,000, and it also applies to the spouses—mainly the widows, actually, of those who have passed away from those ailments. So I’d really just like to acknowledge the Minister for that and to acknowledge that that is contained in this Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. If that bill was not voted through, those payments would not be able to be made.

But we are facing, in our little haven at the bottom of the world, more challenge now than we have faced since World War II when it comes to insidious, growing, compounding threats, and they are strategic competition in terms of geopolitics and, also, climate change. The Defence Assessment 2021 recommended that New Zealand’s defence policy should shift from a predominantly reactive risk-management-centred approach to one of a deliberate and proactive strategy, and we have seen that in the communication from our defence Minister, the Hon Peeni Henare, who spoke about climate security and green defence at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore; we’ve seen that with commitment of $1.3 billion over four years in Budget 2022 to a climate-finance initiative focused on the Pacific; and we have also seen that in the appropriations of $662.5 million to maintain existing defence capabilities. Now, that is the largest capability investment ever in defence, and it does include the $4.5 million announced this week, which will be to further support Ukraine to be able to defend itself from the invasion by Russia. And we’ve heard today, in this House, the knock-on effects that that war is having. So not only is the Government contributing to that because it is the right thing to do but it is also recognising that we are in a global situation here and that the inflation that we are seeing currently, domestically, is very much tied to things happening in the Ukraine.

I digress a little bit—still on defence—but at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, I took my 20-year-old son out to the airport in Dunedin. He had given himself a number 2 haircut because he didn’t trust the people who were going to be using the clippers to clip his hair. He had a final cheese roll. He’d been up until 2 o’clock in the morning because he’s not the most organised person, and he is off to the army. I really do hope that they will teach him to be a little more organised and to clean his room, but I’m really proud that he is going there at this time, because one of the things that has happened in the Budget is that there is an appropriation of an extra $90 million—which I understand will be targeted operationally, by those who make those decisions, to the lowest-paid workers, but also to recognise that we are in an environment with a really tight labour market and that we need to be able to recruit and retain people into our forces. Now, if these bills were not to go through, it would not be business as usual, and work that is going along around that space to recruit and retain and to pay people their worth would not be able to happen.

And what we saw in Ōhakea recently—I’m a member of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee—definitely reflects the defence Minister’s focus on people, infrastructure, and our region, the Pacific. It’s a story of regeneration, and it’s a story of strengthening. The Defence Force has certainly been very busy, not only helping manage COVID here with managed isolation facilities, COVID in the Pacific with vaccinations there, and also the incredible goodwill that our Defence Force builds up when they do that kind of people-to-people engagement, supporting countries during difficult times. They’ve been busy with the Tongan eruption and the tsunami, and of course, they have also been busy helping the Ukraine Defence Force to be able to defend itself. It was really heartening to sit in the select committee and hear about the excellent reputation that our Defence Force has, particularly around IT and digital things and communication, and that was reflected also in the conversations that we had up in Ōhakea.

So while that $662.5 million is to maintain existing defence capabilities, the Government continues to deliver on $4.5 billion worth of major defence capability projects. And that has been the largest capability investment ever, and that’s 12 projects that will support our Defence Force to continue to patrol our 15,000 kilometres of coastline, support search and rescue, disaster response, and continue to defend New Zealand. And we have seen some of the progress that’s been made, which is on target. For example, the C-130Js are going to replace the old Hercules—five of those have been ordered—and that is also referenced in the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. I was lucky or unlucky enough to be one of the first journalists on the ground after the Asian tsunami in 2004, getting my transport to and fro from the current Hercules. And at that time, they were feeling very old. So now, some two decades on, it is really timely that we get defence capability that is fit for purpose and that is also interoperable with those of our friends around the world.

We’ve also got capability projects happening with the upgrade of the ANZAC frigates and with the HMNZS Canterbury so that we can continue to have military operations and combined operations and interoperability with key partners because that is something that is going to enable us to play a key role in ensuring that our region remains stable and is not seen as too attractive for others to come in and try and take over. We have got projects continuing in cyber-security in supporting capability and other projects with upgrading computer systems, and so on.

Another thing I’d just like to mention in the House today, actually, is also the decision to establish an Inspector-General of Defence, which will be an independent oversight function for the New Zealand Defence Force. So that means even though the Operation Burnham report pointed out that the Defence Force, in most respects, acted within its remit and within its duties, there was still room for some more independent oversight. And so the Government has acted to do that, and that will be something that will certainly strengthen the ability of our Defence Force to do its job in a transparent way, in a way that is trusted by the New Zealand public.

There’s a lot more I could say about the Defence Force, but I just want to finish by acknowledging my son for choosing a life of service with our world-class Defence Force. We need that capability now; we need young people who find the Defence Force attractive, who have the skills, and who can operate machinery and equipment which is going to serve our region. I’m proud that our Government has ensured that our Defence Force is equipped to deal with the challenge of our time. These two bills before the House will allow us to get on with the business and do that.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Mānawatia a Matariki. Even though, obviously, the long weekend is over, the season of Matariki is still upon us. As this afternoon we’ve listened to this debate, and as we’ve looked at these appropriations, I feel very much like there’s a connection. It’s very much been talking about things that have gone on before us. There have been some conversations about the present, and what has been happening right now today. But also, obviously, this is about looking to the future and looking at the year ahead in terms of our spending. But I’d change that language to “what we’re actually investing in”, and that, as has been said by many on this side of the House, is people; it’s people, it’s infrastructure, it’s into our health system, it’s into our cost of living package, it’s into our climate emergency response, it’s into supporting business growth, and it’s into supporting Māori and Pacific aspirations in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I’m glad that, on this side of the House, we are investing in what is needed at this time. Things have been thrown around this afternoon; there have been lots of things around “insatiable spending”, “addiction to spending”, “addiction to debt”, and alternative budgets, and alternative Governments even, but we know and we bring it back to the fact that we have a plan. We bring it back to the fact that our finance Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson, has developed a balanced Budget for this time, supporting the here and now but also, obviously, looking to our future and to future generations, and I’m grateful to be under the leadership of our Deputy Prime Minister, of our finance Minister, who has worked hard to find that balance in a challenging time that we are in. I’m grateful right now, as we end this debate, to support our Minister of Finance, to support these bills, and to commend them to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time for this debate has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 44

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bills read a second time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Those bills are set down for third reading forthwith.

Bills

Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

Third Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a third time.

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

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2021/22 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 44

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill

Third Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill be now read a third time.

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

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Imprest Supply (First for 2022/23) Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 44

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

COVID-19 PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE ACT 2020

Continuation

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 be continued and that the relevant period under section 3(2)(b) of that Act is the period ending 31 December 2022.

This is probably—well, this absolutely is—my last formal act as Minister for COVID-19 Response, a job that I’ve already given over, in fact, to my colleague the Hon Dr Verrall. But it is a job that I have had the great privilege of holding, at least since the election, and then for a brief period as Minister of Health before that. I have been the Minister responsible for this Act almost since it was passed by the Parliament in 2020, as we came to grips as a country with what the global pandemic would mean for us. Let’s cast our minds back to 2020, when this law was first put in place. We still didn’t quite know what we were dealing with at that point. The world was still grappling with COVID-19. The science was evolving and changing. New Zealand was at a point where we had managed to, by and large, eliminate COVID-19 from our community, and we were certainly, for the foreseeable future, endeavouring to keep it that way. The COVID-19 Public Health Response Act provided the Government with the relevant tools to be able to continue to pursue elimination, as we did for at least the 18 months following that. So I have to say I have some mixed emotions when it comes to continuing this legislation, which will be now administered by my successor in the role, Dr Ayesha Verrall.

I do want to reflect a little bit on what’s happened over that last 2½-year period that we’ve been grappling with the global pandemic. If we want to talk about results, there is one result that stands out above all others, and that is that New Zealand has, within the OECD, depending on which day of the week you look at it—we’re sitting right alongside Japan—the lowest rate of death related to COVID-19 in the OECD. If we want to talk about results, that is a result that all New Zealanders can be incredibly proud of. There are many stories that will be told of our COVID-19 response in the years to come, and those stories will typically be of people who have been in some way disadvantaged by the response, whether it was the impact that it had on their business or their livelihood, and we absolutely acknowledge that our response to COVID-19 has required a great deal of sacrifice by many people. We will also hear the stories of people who found that their plans to enter or leave New Zealand were disrupted by the border restrictions that we had in place. And, again, I don’t think anybody on this side of the House would discount the significant impact that our border restrictions have had on people.

But there are stories that we won’t hear, because we simply don’t know who these people would be. We won’t hear the stories of people who would not otherwise be alive today were it not for the success of our collective efforts as the team of 5 million—a phrase we don’t use very much these days—in keeping COVID-19 out of our community for such a long period of time. We have, in addition to having one of the lowest rates of COVID-19 - related death in the OECD, if not the lowest, one of the highest vaccination rates in the OECD. In fact, we were more vaccinated as a country than almost any other country when we peaked in terms of the number of cases that we were seeing. I think the lower rate of hospitalisation and mortality that we’ve experienced in New Zealand overall, compared to other countries, really does reflect the fact that we got the vaccination campaign right, and we got the timing right when it came to a transition to a different phase of the response.

I must confess, on election night in 2020, while my colleagues up and down the country were celebrating enormously, I wasn’t quite in such a celebratory mood. While I was enjoying the victory, I was nervous for two reasons. One is that, at about 6.50 p.m., Ashley Bloomfield had rung me and ruined my evening by telling me that there was a COVID-19 case that had been detected in the community. The other—and actually more fundamental—thing was that New Zealanders, I think, and clearly evidenced by the election night result, were very invested in an elimination strategy that was never going to be a strategy for ever. How we got from an elimination strategy to where we are now was always going to be a bit of a bumpy road. I have to confess, on election night in 2020 I could not see how we were going to get from point A to point B without there being quite a significant number of bumps in the road, and that has certainly proven to be the case.

But I want to reflect a little bit on the period of time that I’ve been Minister for COVID-19 Response with a few numbers, which I think are useful: 1,058 ministerial briefings have been signed by me during that period of time—many of them on the same day, and many of them signed on the same day in which the decision was made. I’ve responded to 232 Official Information Act requests, taken 136 papers to Cabinet, answered 41 oral questions in the House—and that’s only the Opposition oral questions, not the ones that were posed by Government members. But it is also worth noting that I have responded to 5,038 written parliamentary questions as the Minister for COVID-19 Response, signed 49 different orders made under this Act, 22 exemptions or amendments to exemptions, and done countless media briefings, most of which were in the Beehive theatrette, only two of which I remain embarrassed by. I did learn a few lessons along the way, one of which is, if you’re going to use metaphors, you should make sure you don’t mix them! Because it turns out that stretching your legs and spreading your wings are two entirely different things, and if you accidentally mix those two things together, the entire country will have a good laugh at your expense! But, contrary to popular opinion at the time, there is no evidence that there has been a spike in the birth rate as a result of that press conference.

I want to take a moment to thank everybody who was involved in New Zealand’s COVID-19 response over the last 2½ years, including those unsung heroes who went to work every day during some of the most difficult periods of the response—our essential workers, who kept the supply chains open, kept us all feed, keep the power on, keep the country moving at a time when we were all staying at home. I want to particularly thank our health workers, who continue to experience the pressure of the global pandemic now, even more so now perhaps than they were over the last two years, and acknowledge their commitment and dedication and thank them for their work. I want to thank our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers, who went to work and put themselves between the virus and New Zealanders. It is worth noting that, of the nearly 230,000 returnees who returned, we stopped more than 4,600 cases at the border before they made their way into the community. We also supported, through our MIQ, 5,000 cases in the community so that they had somewhere safe to recuperate and recover from COVID-19. I really want to thank those MIQ workers for their commitment and their dedication. It was not an easy task.

So, turning our minds now to the purpose of this motion that extends the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act for a further period through to the end of the year. I started, as Minister, a programme of work that I know Dr Verrall will be continuing, to look at the provisions of the Act that are still in use now, that relate to measures that may well be ongoing as part of our ongoing response to COVID-19. That’s one strand of work. The other strand of work is to look at our future preparedness for both new variants of COVID-19 but also future pandemics. It’s likely that legislation will emerge from both of those pieces of work, and Dr Verrall, I know, will shepherd those through the House in due course.

This legislation is still required at this point, although many of the restrictions that were put in place under it have already been removed. The pandemic isn’t yet over. Our health system will tell you that. Experience around the world will tell you that. I’ve had my first opportunity to travel internationally since the pandemic began, over the last month, and I can say that the world hasn’t completely gone back to normal. Other countries still do have restrictions in place. Other countries are still grappling with having large proportions of their workforce disrupted by COVID-19. New Zealand is not alone in that. We have actually weathered the global pandemic better than most of the countries that we would compare ourselves to, and we continue to do so, but the pandemic is still having an impact, and we still do need to respond to that.

Finally, I want to thank New Zealanders for the feedback that they have provided me over the last 2½ years in this role. Most of it was positive, quite a lot of it was humorous at various points, and some of it constructive, and some of it perhaps less so. But I want to acknowledge that the results that we’ve achieved as a country were only possible because New Zealanders bought into what we were trying to achieve as a collective team, and I hope that we can continue with that—that spirit of solidarity with one another and consideration of one another—as we approach whatever future challenges COVID-19 might throw at us. Thank you.

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

Dr SHANE RETI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to concur with a fair degree of what the Minister has just said, and thank him for the work that he has done in the portfolio. My own experiences have been that certainly when we had the Northland outbreak, he took my phone calls and we were able to collaborate a constructive pathway forward. I think many of those written questions will be with my colleague, Chris Bishop. I was fortunate to have some myself. Mostly they were answered in a fashion and a time that gave me the information I was looking for.

The Minister mentioned election night. You know, this is something that may well come out in what we hope will be a commission of inquiry at some point in the future. I think the Minister expressed in select committee that further examination of all of this is certainly not at all out of the ballpark. Now, when he says he was notified at around about 7 o’clock on election night, we are interested in the early exchanges at 1.06 a.m. on election day, suggesting that there was some indication that there was a positive test in and around and the pathway from then to that notification. But that’s a body of work that currently sits with the Ombudsman and a number of others.

I think, looking back at the Alpha outbreak, there were certainly things that were done well by this Government, and I and we have said as much. I think it got a bit tatty as Delta came along around about August 17, as I recall, and then things became more challenging with Omicron. So I certainly want to give credit where credit’s due, but of course we’re also here to try and take what may well have been a good response and make it a great response. That’s our responsibility as an Opposition.

The order that we have in front of us today, the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020, was last extended six months ago, and it does a number of things. It is the primary legislation for things like managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), pre-departure testing, the traffic light framework, and vaccination requirements. And under sections 9 and 11 of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act is the ability to create orders, orders such as the public health response protection framework, which has been reported back from the Regulations Review Committee. Two parts that have interested them relate to exemptions under the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 9) 2022, one which talked about mask wearing and entertainers—I won’t go over that, but the social distancing entertainers would need to have. The other was around exemptions from mask wearing.

The report that the very hard-working Regulations Review Committee has sent back to the House raises the question around the punitive actions for breaching the COVID order, more particularly the infringement offences. The concern here is that the much more serious non-infringement offences seem to be part of the order, which are really only kept for very serious offences, when, in fact, just ordinary infringement offences would suffice. So they write here that they’ve written to the Minister on 1 June seeking clarification of this. So we don’t have the answer to that here today, but I’m sure at some time that will be reported back to the Regulations Review Committee as they’re requesting.

The Act itself, National will not be supporting. We will be opposing the Act. It’s not vastly different. In fact, it is much the same from where it was six months ago, and we fundamentally maintain some of the issues we maintained then. The Act is a blunt tool. It’s a blunt tool in an environment that is now, as the Minister has just said, a widely vaccinated environment—quite different to what it was six months ago. If we look at some of the things that have changed—the Act provisions, MIQ. MIQ is no longer required or needed and has been moved away from. Pre-departure testing is gone. The traffic light framework was modified last week to five levels, and the vaccination requirements are quite different. We’re now a relatively highly vaccinated population, as I’ve said, and just last week under the Medicines Amendment Act we authorised the fourth vaccine or the second booster.

So things have changed quite a lot, and yet we’re just repeating and extending the very same Act—we’re extending it. How that reads is that the Act had a life of 90 days unless it was provisioned further. That’s what we’re doing here; we’re provisioning it for a further six months. What we’re not seeing is any work from the Government around provisioning our COVID response into business as usual. That’s the sort of work we’d be looking to see, but it does seem to be missing at this point in time. I guess the question is we could be extending this Act here today, or we could maybe be using legislation that already exists. Maybe legislation around maritime and air borders, for example, might cover the purposes that we’re wanting to achieve tonight.

So, in summary, National will be opposing this motion. We’re opposing it because we see this Act as a blunt tool, not taking at all into account our current environment. We continue to call for the Minister to describe a pathway for mandates, a pathway for when they might complete and what the requirements might be for that to happen. So on that basis, National will be opposing this Act tonight. Thank you.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green) (remote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I also join with others around the House to thank the Minister for his role in shepherding the country through a very, very difficult phase. I mean, I wasn’t a member at the time, but, you know, we were all deeply impacted by it and the years have taken their toll as well.

But I guess, for me, where I land on all of this is that bit where we have moved away from the team of 5 million, and it seems that whenever you go to the news sites, the COVID stuff has dropped down to the bottom, but, actually, we’ve had 16 new deaths reported today as well, and there are still people in hospitals. There are 383 people in hospital with COVID-19, including seven patients in intensive care and high-dependency care units. The average age of those hospitalised with the virus is 63.

So it’s still very much here with us, the seven-day rolling average of community cases up around 602. So I guess my concern is the move away from that focus of all of us as a team of 5 million and that sense of solidarity that we had in the beginning of the pandemic and thinking about what we can do to get back to that. Because rules come and go, and this piece of legislation was there to help us to move fast and dynamically. I accept that, but the focus needs to be on, again, our immunocompromised whānau, on our disabled whānau as well.

I think back to the feedback that we got from Māori health providers and our and our Pasifika health providers who were, at one stage, quite critical about how the roll-out for vaccinations were, for example, because the response hadn’t been taking into account the very specific nature of our demographic. We’re a younger people—better looking, some people would say, as well.

So what we have needed to have learnt and continue to learn is that when we place Māori and Pasifika leadership and we use that as the way to sort of connect with those communities and also make sure that we position our immunocompromised and disabled whānau that we are acting as a team of 5 million. I think that’s really important.

I guess, for me as a parent, like many parents around the House, in the middle of winter with the borders opening up and two years’ worth of winter illnesses flying in on the aeroplanes, I’m really concerned about the impacts on the schools as well. So we have called for, on a number of occasions, to support an expert-led school plan as a part of the COVID response. We would like to sit down with the Minister, Ayesha Verrall, to sort of talk through some of the concerns that we are hearing from school communities, from teachers, from parents, from principals about what we can do to actually get that focus back to that solidarity that we originally had.

I hear what people are saying: back to business as usual, and so on and so forth. Yeah, we need to pay some bills and keep the lights on. That’s all good and well. But experts and health professionals have been calling for an expert-led plan to support children’s access to education, but also to protect children, school staff, and their families as well. I hear what the workers are saying within the health sector as well. They need to be able to go and do their jobs in the safest way possible. That is also true for teachers and school staff as well.

So we support this legislation and the continuation of it. But we need to get back to that focus—a strong focus on indoor air quality, ventilation, monitoring. We’re in the middle of winter. Making sure that that stuff is in place for our schools—free N95 masks for teachers and students, all of that kind of stuff, but also recognising that we’re operating in the context of winter as well. So doing what we can do to protect our families against the flu and all those kinds of things as well, and supporting those teachers, supporting staff that support and teach our schools as well so that if they need to, they can take guaranteed sick leave as well and schools are provisioned to do that.

So on that, we support the ongoing extension of this Act. But we need to have picked up the many lessons over the last couple of years and put them into place. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this motion. ACT has been opposing the continuation of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act since November. It’s interesting to look at the report of the Health Committee which says, “Our response: The majority of us”—that being the Health Committee—“agree with the continuation of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. The ACT Party”—the only party listed here—“opposes the continuation of COVID-19 Public Health Response Act.” The reason for that is very simple: the rest of the world has moved on and the provisions in this bill are no longer useful, and they are no longer helping us avoid the effects of COVID-19.

In fact, this Government’s response has become so incoherent it is not even clear what the objectives are. I asked the former Minister for COVID-19 Response, Chris Hipkins, a month ago in select committee precisely what the objectives of the Government’s COVID-19 response are now. Is it to reduce cases? Can’t be; we’re leading the world in the wrong way for the number of cases. Is it to flatten the curve or reduce pressure on the hospitals? Well, it can’t be—the main issue right now is flu and hospitals missing staff because of unworkable isolation rules. Is it to reduce deaths? Well, actually, the rate of COVID-19 - related deaths per day is currently one of the highest in the world; can’t be that. This Government does not know what the purpose of its COVID-19 response is anymore, but it remains prepared to impose costs upon New Zealanders with nonsensical, unworkable rules that are making it harder for New Zealanders to get by and live their lives.

Let me give you a few examples. If you are a household contact of somebody who tests positive for COVID-19, you have to isolate for seven days. Practically no other country in the world requires this, but the impact of it is that a person who tests positive can be out of action for 14 days. How is that possible? Well, your partner or someone in your household tests positive, you’re out for seven days; around the end of that period, you also test positive—that’s another seven days for your own case. Now, you might only be infectious for a few days of that, but you’re out of the workforce for 14 days.

I talked to principals, I talked to people in the healthcare sector, and I talked to people in a thing the Labour Party may have heard of called business; they are finding that people being taken out of action for up to 14 days for a few days of infectiousness is totally unworkable and unviable.

There are two ways people respond: they actually obey the rules and they’re taken out of action or they ignore them and they spread COVID-19 more. These rules are nuts. They are perpetuated and allowed under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. We should dump it. We would actually be better allowing people to voluntarily isolate than what we have now. Or better still, if we did want to keep an isolation rule, then perhaps—perhaps—we should have something like Singapore where you isolate for 72 hours and you’re out with a negative test. That would be sensible, that would be moving with the times, but this Government can’t do that, so they should not continue to have the power of a COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. They cannot use it responsibly.

This Government imposes unworkable rules, such as allowing people to go to nightclubs with no mask, but if you go to a retail store, you must be masked. Where is the cost-benefit analysis? Where is the sympathy for the retail workers up and down this country who’ve become unwitting enforcers of rules that subject them to abuse when we have enough trouble with social cohesion in this country right now? Now, if masks were making a difference and they were so essential that you couldn’t go to a nightclub without one, you might say it’s worth bearing that cost. But actually, like I say, this Government’s response is so incoherent.

What else does this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act allow? Mandates for medical professionals. Well, we have a crisis in our hospitals, we have a crisis in midwifery, and we have hundreds of nurses and midwives who cannot operate because they are not vaccinated. Now, personally, I think most of them are nuts. There are some who have had a reaction to their earlier doses and didn’t want to get a booster; I sympathise with them. But the facts are, it no longer makes sense to stop people from practising their trade in the middle of a major shortage because they haven’t had their booster. And that’s what we’re doing: contributing to a crisis. That is absolutely crazy, and yet that is what this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act allows. We should just dump it.

There’s one more justification the Government gives for its response: they say something like, “Well, look, there might be another variant. That’s why we need to give people a couple of test kits so they can test themselves on arrival and if they’re positive maybe they’ll go off, we can gene sequence it, we can find out if another variant has come about.”

Well, actually, if you think about it, we’re now at a stage where we’ve got a highly transmissible and, thankfully, much less virulent strain of COVID-19; it is unlikely—very unlikely—that a more virulent and more transmissible version will out-compete Omicron. And actually, if we’re worried about that risk, then what we should do is actually be on guard all the time in case there’s a new virus. In reality, the real probability is that a new variant—like all of the others—will evolve somewhere else in the world and we’ll have months’ head start, as we did throughout this pandemic, in order to respond and consider our response. Once again, the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act is not necessary if you’re going to have months, as we have for every other variant. So why do we have this law in place?

I thought it was telling to listen to the outgoing COVID-19 response Minister, Chris Hipkins—actually, it was really telling to listen to him on the weekend, when he said he thinks, “Probably we could have stepped down some restrictions a bit faster.” Has this guy been to Auckland? Does he know what Aucklanders went through? Does he understand the loss of business, the mental health suffering? And he says, “Actually, we probably didn’t need to do all of that.” Really? This guy is now either trying to clear his own conscience now that he’s not the Minister and not responsible for Government policy and not responsible to the Prime Minister, or the Labour Party is trying to eat their cake and have it too by saying, “Look, if you don’t like the way we responded, look at Chris Hipkins, and if you do like the way we responded, look at Ayesha Verrall, because we’re going to keep on restricting people anyway.”

This Government, at some point, needs to accept that it has made enormous mistakes throughout its COVID-19 response. They say, “Oh, but fewer people died.” Well, you know what? Anyone can quarantine an island. The question was always going to be: could we reconnect? The question was: would New Zealand only take steps that stacked up and made sense and actually saved lives? We now know, thanks to advice from Ashley Bloomfield to the Minister, that they continued with managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for four months after they were told it was making no difference. They kept people like Charlotte Bellis out of the country, having to seek sanctuary with the Taliban, because they continued with MIQ for four months after it made sense.

We know that they kept spending $2.7 million a month advertising boosters when almost nobody is getting them, to the point that it’s costing them $67 of advertising for every person that takes it up. I would wager most of those people didn’t even see the advertising.

We now have a Government that is totally incoherent, that doesn’t know what its objectives are, that none the less continues to impose costs on New Zealanders, and has a history of imposing costs that weren’t well calculated, getting it wrong, and leaving New Zealanders worse off for little to no gain. The only reason that it carries on—the only reason we still have this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act—is because it is embarrassed to admit it’s done wrong. We saw it today in question time: could the Acting Prime Minister say sorry to Aucklanders? No, he could not. He couldn’t admit what Chris Hipkins admitted on TV.

Well, it’s about time that this Government owned its mistakes, fessed up to the impacts that it’s put on New Zealanders, and dumped this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act that is well past its use-by date. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) (remote): Kia ora, tēnā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā tātou e te Whare. Tangihia ō tātou mate. Ki te tumuaki o te Kīngitanga, a Anaru Tamihana e takoto mai rā ki te poho o tōna whare ki runga o Rukumoana, whoatu rā e hoa. Hoki mai rā ki a tātou i tēnei ahiahi, tēnā tātou e hika mā. Ka tū awahau, ka kōrero awahau mō te Pāti Māori ki te kōrero ki te whakakorengia i tēnei mōtini [Hello, greetings, Mr Speaker, as well as to the whole House. To lament our dead. To the head of the King Movement, to Anaru Tamihana, who lies now in the embrace of his meeting house on Rukumoana marae, rest in peace, my friend. Returning to us all this afternoon, greetings everyone. I stand to speak on behalf of the Māori Party to speak to the negation of this motion], the continuation of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020.

Now, the COVID-19 virus spread like colonisation across the world. It was clear from the outset that in Aotearoa it would mostly affect tangata whenua and shut down businesses, forcing people into lockdown in their own whare. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified pre-existing racial disparities, having devastating impacts on the physical, economic, spiritual, cultural, and educational wellbeing of Māori communities, lacking the infrastructure to protect their whānau, remotely educate their tamariki, and remain in mahi during a public health crisis that shattered illusions of Te Tiriti progress.

Over the last two years, we have seen whānau, hapū, iwi, and Māori organisations demonstrate exemplary leadership and step up to provide the Māori response, as the Crown had nothing in place and simply could not reach the places we could. It becomes clearer every day, especially given there is still no public Māori response plan for the Crown, that this will remain the case; that we cannot rely on the system in place at a national level.

Māori have made huge sacrifices to ensure the team of 5 million are protected. We changed our tangihanga protocols, changed tikanga, closed marae, set up iwi checkpoints and border control in some areas to ensure our vulnerable communities were protected. Despite all of this, the Government has continued to exclude Māori from pandemic decision-making and coordination. Not releasing Māori data at a crucial time of the vaccination roll-out was outright cruel. Starting the vaccination at those who were 65-plus and those who had pre-existing health issues meant that Māori mortality rates were not considered, as Māori die seven to 10 years earlier than non-Māori. This also meant we missed the opportunity to develop a truly whānau-centred approach. The Government’s COVID response plan meant we left over half of Māori behind, because 70 percent of our people are 40 years and younger.

As a result, we have a response that is entirely out of touch with the needs of our people. A response that singles out marae—the cultural, economic, spiritual, and political centre of Māori life—by allowing warrantless entry by an officer of the State. This is something that could have easily been fixed, but instead provides further reasons for us not to support this motion. We will not support the continuation of an Act that gives the Crown extraordinary powers to enter private properties without warrant, including our marae, our papakāinga, our homes. There are no good reasons to justify the invasion of tangata whenua and constantly ignore our rights to be undisturbed, as promised in article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi.

This Government said they had removed it but hadn’t. Section 20: “Powers of entry: (1) An enforcement officer may enter, without a warrant, any land, building, craft, vehicle, place, or thing if they have reasonable grounds to believe that a person is failing to comply with any aspect of a [section 11] order. (2) However, subsection (1) does not apply to a private dwellinghouse [or marae]. (3) A constable may enter a private dwellinghouse [or marae] without warrant only if they have reasonable grounds to believe that people have gathered there in contravention of a [section 11] order and entry is necessary for the purpose of giving a direction under section 21.” And then, subsection (4) states: “A constable exercising a power of entry under this section may use reasonable force in order to effect entry into or onto the land, building, craft, vehicle, place, or thing if, following a request, a person present refuses entry or does not allow entry within a reasonable time.”

This Act represents a failure of inclusive leadership and a missed opportunity. It is a failure of inclusive leadership because it fails to provide a pandemic response that works for all peoples, of all cultures and socio-economic circumstances. It entrenches rather than eliminates inequities and disparities.

We are dealing with a once-in-a-generation crisis, and we need to use all the tools at our disposal to keep each other accountable to the people we are here to represent. Tangata whenua know what happens when pandemics are not managed properly. It is our people who bear the brunt of the virus. Throughout this pandemic, our people have been leading their own responses. We exercised our mana motuhake to lead our own solutions, to protect our whakapapa for the generations to come. We oppose this bill as we have done in the past. Kia ora tātou katoa.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a very brief call this evening in support of this, as chair of the Health Committee, which considered issues related to the extension of this legislation. This was the third time in the life of the Act that the notice of motion had been considered by the Health Committee. I want to acknowledge the former responsible Minister, the Hon Chris Hipkins—and that’s something, I think, that, regardless of the contributions that have been made this evening, was reflected in the committee in terms of the tiresome effort that the Minister had put into workload around this.

Can I acknowledge the incoming Minister. I know the Health Committee looks forward to working alongside her.

The position of the Health Committee is to, effectively, recommend by majority that the Act be continued and that the period be extended through to 31 December. The reason for that is because the framework and the legislative basis up to this point has served the country well. There was much confidence from the committee’s perspective in the responses that Minister Hipkins had given to questions that were posed from members from all around the House. One point in particular—and it’s reflected in the report—is that he indicated that many of the orders that had been made under this piece of legislation had progressively been dismantled, but it was not a situation where the orders could just be carte blanche all dismantled at once. A very brief contribution from me, but just one that is in support of this bill.

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

Ayes 75

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

Noes 44

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

COVID-19 Orders

Approval

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I move, That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020:

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 8) 2022 (SL 2022/143) and

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 9) 2022 (SL 2022/165).

It’s a pleasure to speak in this House as the new Minister for COVID-19 Response and, in particular, to follow that contribution from the previous Minister. I also want to take the time to thank him for the work he did over the course of his time in his roles, first, as Minister of Health and then as Minister for COVID-19 Response, to keep our country safe, to balance a strong health response with the rights of people in our population, as well as the need for us to maintain social and economic activity. The success of New Zealand’s COVID-19 response has been, in large part, due to his tireless effort.

As the House is now well accustomed to, Parliament is required to approve orders I or the former Minister have signed, within 90 days of them being signed. Today’s motion covers two different orders.

First, the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 8) 2022 amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Order 2021. This order amends the face-covering requirements in relation to voting and ensures that a person cannot be denied entry into a voting place on vaccination grounds. It also clarifies several technical matters, including excluding all sports from the definition of a “close-proximity business”, and clarifies the meaning of “gathering” to people who are a group in a defined space. I thank the Regulations Review Committee for its consideration of this order, and I note they raised no concerns.

The second order we are confirming today is the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 9) 2022. This order amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Order 2021. It clarifies that the 2-metre distancing rule applies between entertainers and their audience and creates an exemption process for a person with a physical or mental illness, condition, or disability to apply for an exemption pass, to be issued by the director-general, making them exempt from the face-covering requirements under the principal order.

I understand that the Regulations Review Committee wrote to the former Minister, who clarified some of the questions they raised, and I can briefly cover those responses. I am informed, in relation to the proposed enforcement of certain clauses, the former Minister confirmed that breaches of the clauses are intended to be enforced under section 26 of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 and are not the subject of infringement notice offences. This is consistent with the approach taken to the enforcement of the rules against the misuse of COVID-19 vaccine certificates. I further understand it was reinforced that enforcement action is likely to be exercised only when exemption cards are misused in organised, systemic, or serious cases.

The committee also considered it was unclear whether a breach of clause 106A(7) results in liability under the Act, the Crimes Act, or both. I am informed the former Minister explained that a declaration required by an appellant for a face mask exemption and referred to in clause 106A(4)(a) is not a declaration in the form provided for in section 9 of the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957. Therefore, section 111 of the Crimes Act is not available to enforce false declarations.

I don’t want to take up too much of the House’s time today. As the new Minister, I am very much aware there is much more work to do in this portfolio to ensure our ongoing response, as well as being prepared for whatever the future may bring. Our response will continue to be based on public health advice and will continue to adapt to any new challenges or changes that we may face. I look forward to working with you all and continuing the legacy of New Zealand’s successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this motion to ratify these orders. I think it’s worth looking at what they actually say, in order to see why that is. You know, the first, the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 8) 2022—it says, “Primarily, this order relaxes some of the restrictions that usually apply to a person when that person is accessing premises in order to vote in an election of a member of Parliament”. I think it shows what a conflict there is between the continuation of a COVID-19 response that makes little sense, that does not have coherent goals atop it, and does not have good cost-benefit analysis or really logical common sense behind it, and trying to get on with ordinary life, including doing things such as voting in elections that are essential to New Zealand’s way of life. The fact that the Government, enabled by the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, was required to pass a special exemption in order to ensure that people could vote in an election, I think shows what a conflict there is. And that’s why, while in theory this order is a good thing, actually the whole regime needs to go.

The second order being considered here—and let’s just call it No. 9—says that this order has made “two general changes”. The first was “to clarify the exemption from the face-covering rules for entertainers, provided that entertainers comply with the two-metre physical distancing rule. Previously, entertainers were required to maintain physical distancing from all other persons who are not fellow entertainers in the same performance. Clauses 23 and 23A have been amended so the two-metre physical distancing is only required from the audience.” This is New Zealand in 2022: the Government is making rules so that when you are in a band or perhaps at a dance—I wonder if a certain TV show might have benefited from this rule—you could not wear a mask and be within 2 metres of another person—

Damien Smith: Eden Park.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —because previously that wasn’t allowed. I’m not sure—I’ve just heard the member say, “Eden Park.” I’m not sure if rugby players or netball players, or any other sportspeople, for that matter, count as entertainers. But, nevertheless, we’ve got a Government making orders to clarify that you have to wear a mask, but not if you’re an entertainer; if you’re an entertainer, you cannot wear a mask, but you’ve got to be 2 metres from the audience, but you can be less than two metres from other performers. I mean, that’s what this is actually about.

That’s what this Government has been focused on—a level of micro-management behind which there is no cost-benefit analysis; simply ordering people around for the sheer sake of it, with no coherent policy objectives being pursued by this particular law. This just has to stop. New Zealand needs to move on. New Zealanders need to stop being micro-managed in so many different ways by a Government that doesn’t even know what its true objectives with these policies are.

“The second change is the creation of a scheme to provide passes which exempt a person from both the face-covering rule and the medical-grade face-covering rule. Clause 7 inserts three new provisions into Part 4 of the principal order, which deals with exemptions. Exemption passes may be sought on the basis” of, first, as a physical or mental illness or condition or disability that makes face-coverings unsuitable. So, just to be clear, the Government said if you are a person who has other health concerns, perhaps a physical or mental health concern, then maybe in the interests of balancing all aspects of New Zealanders’ welfare—that’s not a bad idea—you can get an exemption from the mask-wearing requirement in certain circumstances.

And then they forgot that they hadn’t exempted all types of masks, so the Government had to make another order, to make it clear that, actually, we are making the exemptions for people that have those needs, for people who have all types of masks—medical and non-medical. Again, I know—I don’t want to labour it, but I think the point needs to be made: this is New Zealand in 2022. This is the level of micro-management with which the Government has indulged itself.

And yet, when it comes to the really big stuff—like, did we get the timing right of dropping managed isolation and quarantine, and reconnecting with the world? No; missed that one by four months. Did we get the ad spend for getting people to have COVID boosters right? No; carried on doing that even when it wasn’t working, wasted millions of dollars. Did we, for example, manage to order the vaccines on time? Or did we have a whole year of the Prime Minister saying there’s greatness in our lateness and saying it’s really a good thing we’re letting the rest of the world get vaccinated first, only to have Auckland locked down for months as a result of not having those vaccines on time, and then have the former COVID-19 Minister go on the TV over the weekend and say, “Oh, sorry Auckland; I think I might have locked you down a bit longer than really necessary, and, in hindsight, we could have let you out earlier.”, totally insulated from the pain and suffering and frustration and anguish that people in my city have felt? And, boy, that shows up when you’re there. But, of course, the Prime Minister didn’t visit Auckland for three months, while it was locked down, and I think that’s partly why the reality that people experienced still is not real to this Government and they can make such flippant statements.

These orders tell us a lot about the Government’s response. They are micro-managing the little stuff. They’ve become obsessed with it. But on the really big calls, the questions that actually matter for the welfare of New Zealanders, they’ve got it wrong.

And, just while I’ve got the opportunity, I’d say to the COVID-19 Minister: I think it would be very helpful if the Minister investigated, using the recently passed Medicines Amendment Act 2022, to enable children between six months and five years to have a dose of Comirnaty. Now, I’m no lawyer, but my reading of it is that that is possible, and I know that there are people in the Epsom electorate and beyond who would like to have that ability. And my appeal to the Minister: if she does want to do something useful with the various laws that have been given to her by this Parliament, then she should use that section of the Medicines Act that we amended recently to help those parents and those young New Zealanders who wish to get immunity from vaccination. She should stop focusing on the micro-management of whether or not you have to wear a mask if you’re an entertainer—can you be within 2 metres of the audience or other performers, or what the deal is there. We should actually start focusing on the bigger issues that make a difference to people’s welfare, and ditch this parody of lawmaking where we are constantly trying to micro-manage increasingly Lilliputian matters in New Zealanders’ lives.

With that, the ACT Party opposes these orders as a matter of principle. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

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

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7 p.m.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green) (remote): Kia ora and thank you, Mr Speaker. I hope you had a good dinner break. Before we had our dinner break, the Leader of the ACT Party was talking about how he was lost in the minutiae and failed to see the bigger picture. I, for one, was not surprised at all. But these COVID orders come to the House every now and then, and I’d like to acknowledge the work of the Regulations Review Committee; they get into the detail of these things to make sure that it makes sense.

Previous speakers have covered what this particular set of COVID orders will entail; some of them around the lifting of protections around entertainers, some of them around mask exemptions, and so on and so forth. But if we’re going to make sense of the minutiae, we’ve really got to take a step back and actually look at the bigger picture and give that line of sight. What does the plan look like? I mean, what are we doing within the certain set of circumstances that we have? I guess, with the last couple of years, it has been a bumpy ride. We’ve had ups and downs, the borders have opened and closed and now they’re open again as well. But the minutiae and the detail, it makes sense when you have plans in place.

The Green Party supports access to democracy as well as the need to protect those with valid reasons to be exempt from mask requirements, including people with disabilities. However, this needs to be done safely in the context of a robust system of protections to reduce the spread of the virus through our communities, especially those already facing considerable inequalities as we come into the winter period—this includes, for example, ventilation standards for all buildings to improve indoor air quality, and particularly within our schools as well. There are a number of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, mums and dads all around the House as well, and I’ve certainly noticed—and I’m sure other people have as well—how we’ll put that extra pressure on our schools, and on our teachers and principals and school staff as well, to not only handle that workload of being teachers but also be, by circumstance, de facto healthcare workers as well. I think it’s really important when we do this stuff that we always have those things in mind.

While the orders being discussed today may not in themselves be of significant concern, they contribute to a health response that we feel is no longer being backed by Government regulation that meets the challenges at hand. Unfortunately, this is not a position that the Green Party can support. We have supported these in the past, but without that vision, without that clear plan about what we’re going to do to support in particular our schools, we need to get that into place.

So what the Green Party wants is: to see the needs of Māori and Pasifika peoples and disabled communities put at the heart of the ongoing pandemic process. I say that in the context of the recent work from the Ministry of Health on the Delta response—lessons that I hope that we have all learnt and have continued to learn and then put in place, in terms of the implementation. We need to empower Māori leadership. We need to empower Pasifika leadership. We need to listen to our disabled communities and our immunocompromised whānau. I reflect on how at the beginning of the year we had incredibly loud voices from certain sections of the community where it made it very difficult to hear those voices that we needed to listen to. People were banging on the business drum. We had all that business happening on the Parliament lawn, and it was incredibly distracting when we should have been focusing on our most vulnerable whānau. The current response falls short of this, and the further loosening of these protections, restrictions in some ways—some of the changes that are being discussed today could be harmful, particularly in the face of a potential winter spike of respiratory illnesses and future variant risks.

I am mindful that we now have a new Minister for COVID-19 Response as well, and the Greens would like the opportunity to sit down with the Minister to discuss all the things that we’re hearing from our different communities about making sure that we move back to this notion of solidarity between the team of 5 million. I’ve seen the shift, and I don’t know if you have, Mr Speaker, where previously we talked about the team of 5 million—it wasn’t just about ourselves as individuals; it was about us as communities and taking care of all of those, particularly our most vulnerable—now we’ve gone to the team of business as usual. And so I think we do need to take a step back and to actually get that in place as well. I’ve seen it in a number of spaces, including in the media.

We also urge the Minister to implement a COVID-19 action plan for schools. Now, our tamariki are growing and learning alongside severe threats to their wellbeing and to that of their families as well. The communities need to have that expert-led plan to support our children’s access to education, protect our tamariki, school staff, and their families from COVID-19 and other winter respiratory infections. So I’m looking forward to the opportunity to be able to sit down and discuss the things that we’ve heard, as the Greens, with the Minister to see if we can get a bit more clarity—well, not a bit more clarity; a lot more clarity—around what the next steps are and to then get us back to focusing on the team of 5 million, focusing on Māori and Pasifika leadership, supporting our immunocompromised whānau and disabled whānau as well. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020: COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 8) 2022 (SL 2022/143) and COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 9) 2022 (SL 2022/165).

Ayes 97

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 32.

Noes 22

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

Motion agreed to.

Orders agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 87, Noes 22.

Bills

Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (remote): I present a legislative statement on the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I move, That the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill is the first of many reforms to improve the state of competition in the grocery retail sector. Grocery is an essential purchase and a major expense for most households in New Zealand. Competition is a key driver of the price, quality, range, and services offered by grocers in New Zealand. More workable competition ultimately benefits New Zealand consumers. The Commerce Commission’s final report on the market study revealed that competition has not been working well for New Zealanders for many years.

This bill gives effect to one of the commission’s recommendations. I intend to introduce a second bill giving effect to the commission’s other recommendations later this year. Specifically, the bill amends the Commerce Act 1986 to directly prohibit covenants and other arrangements supermarkets have been using to restrict the availability of suitable sites to those who might compete with them. It’d also apply to existing covenants and arrangements, making them unenforceable.

Although this bill is, effectively, a response to harmful conduct by the major grocery retailers, it should be noted that all three of those companies have accepted the Commerce Commission’s findings—that’s Foodstuffs North Island, Foodstuffs (South Island), and also Progressive Enterprises. They’ve accepted the Commerce Commission’s findings and have worked to distance themselves from the covenants in question.

However, ultimately, legislative change is necessary to deliver effective and uniform results. The bill provides competitors with the confidence that they can acquire suitable sites for development or enter into leases without the legal impediment these covenants and other arrangements were designed to create.

The bill will apply to covenants that exist for the benefit of the major grocery retailers—Foodstuffs North Island, Foodstuffs (South Island), and Woolworths New Zealand. It will also include any successors, franchisees, or transacting shareholders of these companies, and it also provides flexibility to include other grocery retailers in the future by Order in Council.

Instead of requiring an assessment of whether the covenant substantially lessens competition in the relevant market, the test in the new section 28A is intended to be relatively straightforward. Is the covenant or other provision one in which a designated grocery retailer has an interest; if so, does it have the purpose, effect, or likely effect of impeding someone else from operating a store in competition with that designated grocery retailer? The hope is that parties interested in acquiring or operating on a site will be able to answer those questions without the assistance of the courts. If legal disputes arise, they ought, at least, to be more factually straightforward than a case under section 27 or 28 of the Act.

I’d like to thank, again, members of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation (EDSI) Committee for considering this bill within the time frame. On 16 June, the select committee unanimously reported this bill back to the House. The select committee identified some worthwhile ways to broaden the new section 28A of the bill so that it captures the full range of agreements that supermarkets may use to limit the availability of land for competing retailers—for example, the bill now prohibits covenants that impede the operation of other non-grocery retail stores which may compete with a designated grocery retailer. The bill also contains a provision to make it easier for designated grocery retailers to voluntarily remove covenants affected by the bill from land titles.

I’d also like to talk briefly about the role of the Commerce Commission in supporting the implementation of this bill. Later this year, I will be introducing legislation that confers a range of new functions and powers on a grocery regulator. That will include scrutiny of the major grocery retailers’ interests in land.

However, the close oversight of a regulator will be needed immediately. That is why the bill now includes section 28C, which will enable the Commerce Commission to require information from grocery retailers about whatever covenants or other arrangements may be affected by the bill and negotiations entered into as a result of the bill. The commission would do this for the purpose of assessing compliance with provisions in the Commerce Act and the Fair Trading Act.

I’d like to offer the House my assurance once again that the Commerce Commission is fully aware of our expectation that it makes proactive use of this new power. The Commerce Commission traditionally looks into matters only when someone draws their attention to a potential contravention of the Commerce Act. More proactive monitoring of arrangements affected by this bill is necessary to ensure it’s effective.

The process of renegotiating arrangements affected by the bill may also justify scrutiny by the Commerce Commission. This will help to identify any instances where major grocery retailers use their greater resources or purchasing power to obtain other benefits that were not intended by the bill. The information-gathering power is intended to provide landlords with some additional comfort that they will be protected against any improper pressure supermarkets may exert if they are seeking to renegotiate terms of the lease. There are general provisions in the Commerce Act and the Fair Trading Act which prevent the sorts of behaviours that the committee was concerned about.

So, in conclusion, I would like to acknowledge the pace at which the bill has been moving and the people who have made this possible. The members of the EDSI Committee, who met well outside their usual hours to identify improvements to the bill; the staff supporting the EDSI Committee; those who made submissions on the bill; my officials and the Parliamentary Counsel Office staff who put in long hours to get changes to the bill drafted during and after select committee.

The need to remove these barriers to the availability of land for grocery retail is an important one and an urgent one. It demonstrates the Government’s commitment to securing the benefits of greater competition in the retail grocery sector, including better prices, quality, and range—as well as services—when it comes to groceries. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.

Voting

Correction—Approval of COVID-19 Orders

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Members, before I call the next speaker, we need to correct the result of the previous vote on Government notice of motion No 2. The result was announced as ayes 87, noes 22—I clearly couldn’t add. The correct result was ayes 97, noes 22.

Bills

Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m glad we clarified that piece of arithmetic. It’s a pleasure to be talking on the third reading of the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill. This has been an interesting process to be involved in, and I just want to acknowledge, first of all, the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee and the Minister during this process.

It’s just worthwhile reflecting a little bit on the process. This legislation was introduced to the House under urgency at Budget time, and, basically, the select committee had just on a week to look at the bill in that current draft, and make changes, which we subsequently did. Unfortunately, I only had the opportunity to listen to five submissions. Some were particularly good, but all of them were useful. But it was a very limited period for people to make submissions, and, unfortunately, we didn’t hear from the grocery retailers themselves, but none the less we have arrived at a point with this bill in that very shortened period which I think gets to a position where most parties are pretty comfortable with its outcome.

I think when the bill was first introduced, we had a number of quite significant issues with it. One is that the first bit was whether, in fact, the bill actually dealt substantively with the issue of restrictive covenants. And we went on to define two types of those, which I’ll talk about shortly. This is part of what the Commerce Commission’s recommendations were. How do you improve access to wholesale trade? And, of course, there was a bit of focus with what supermarkets have been doing with wholesale access and wholesale arrangements, but how do you actually achieve wholesale supply?

The third thing was—and the Commerce Commission recommended that there should be a mandatory code of conduct that is imposed on the industry, particularly with the major retailers—there was a requirement that major grocery should be very clear about their promotional and pricing arrangements and terms and be transparent about what those arrangements were. And the last thing that the Commerce Commission talked about was the need to monitor the conduct of the major grocery retailers.

So that was all in the original document that the Commerce Commission presented, and, of course, the bill leveraged off. But the bill only deals with one of all those issues, and that is namely just about what sort of property arrangements were grocery retailers putting in place and had put in place and the need to make sure that they weren’t restrictive in the way that they were operating.

So the first thing is—and we heard this from a very good submission from Katherine Rich and her team at the Food and Grocery Council—in terms of the covenants, the big issue was, in the lease arrangements, whether, and to what extent, the grocery trade was restricting other competitors unnecessarily. One of the interesting things was that the examples that were provided to the committee that, in many cases, the major grocery retailers, in their lease agreements, would be saying, “Look, you cannot allow a person or company or an entity, whatever, to sell, for instance, jewellery, luggage, electronics gear, as three examples of many, without first of all getting our approval.” That in itself was deemed to be a very, very extensive and probably overburdensome constraint on competition of all sorts. And, of course, the other one, from competitors, most likely, the way that supermarkets perceived it and actioned it, was against cafes and restaurants and people like that.

The second element was what was described as first right of refusal clauses. This is a situation where the grocery retailers, in the lease agreement, required the option to be able to take up any space and have a first right of refusal.

The third one was requiring the grocery retailers in their lease agreements, and also, on some occasions, required landlords, to oppose planning-law changes if, indeed, they may compromise the operation of a supermarket or retailer. And that was an obligation placed on the landlord through the lease agreement.

And the last one was the linking of rent to turnover, which, particularly as some people have a view that that was inducing the landlords to make sure that the grocery trade in the situation where they had an incentive, if the turnover increased, the rent went up accordingly, to make sure they protected the business of the grocery retailer.

So those are the four bits around the covenants that were particularly of interest to the committee. Now, our particular concerns were around the covenants, that we didn’t actually adequately cover the covenants in the initial draft of the legislation. The covenants have been defined in the legislation to two areas. One is the “restrictive covenant”, which is around product, such as the electronic sales or the language, and one is around the “exclusivity covenant”, which is the one around stopping people getting access to land.

Now, the big issue was when you define “covenant”, how is that actioned? Could it be actually just through a lease agreement or could it be through the deed of lease that’s actually reached on the title, or could it be done via a side letter, which is probably the norm if you’re doing a first right of refusal. So our first issue was that we wanted to make sure that we adequately covered all the different covenant arrangements and how they were executed and enforced by the grocery retail.

The issue around the land banking: the bill was actually silent on the land banking issue, but we came to a view that with the Resource Management Act (RMA) changes, that wasn’t something that needed to be addressed. But the next big issue was: who is going to be monitoring these supermarkets and the ability to make sure that it was getting adequate information? So that’s been dealt with through a Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister referred to, which updates clause 4 to insert new clause 28C, which means that the Commerce Commission will now have the right to go and seek information from retailers. It is an interim step, because as the Minister just said now and has confirmed on previous occasions, the intent is to establish a grocery retailer, and we think it’s absolutely important that the grocery retailer actually has teeth to be able to go and enforce and be able to monitor the situation on a proactive basis, not on a reactive basis, which is the current mode of operation for the Commerce Commission. We’re yet to see the arrangement for the grocery retailer, and we’re looking forward to seeing what that is, but that is why the committee sought the requirement, and I’m glad that the Minister responded in terms of being much clearer about making sure that the Commerce Commission could act proactively, could seek necessary information, and that was an interim step until we got through to the next stage.

So, in the end, we’ve ended up addressing the first right of refusal—that’s been covered in the covenant arrangements, the way it’s been now defined—confirmation of the grocery regulator, and the ability for the Commerce Commission to proactively go and get information. What we set aside was the planning law requirements under the RMA and also the issue of compensation. We were concerned that grocery retailers may take a view that they may unnecessarily seek compensation, but we’ve come to a view that that cannot occur, and it’s under the Fair Trading Act.

So, look, I think it’s a pretty good outcome we’ve ended up with. There are some other minor changes around the fuel exemption that’s only related to environmental outcomes. The most heartening thing is the supermarkets are now moving to removing some of the covenants proactively. There is no longer a requirement that they have to seek the landlord’s permission to remove these restrictive covenants and, indeed, Foodstuffs, in particular, I should highlight, who have been very keen to move proactively and get through this situation.

I want to finish off by thanking the members of the select committee; Jamie Strange, the chair; my colleagues on our side, in particular Melissa Lee; and the officials and the Minister; and all we now wait for is ALDI and Costco, hopefully, to come in time, if they find New Zealand an attractive enough destination.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call. I will make a very brief call, for the sake of time. As the chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, I would also like to acknowledge the members who worked very collaboratively on this bill, particularly Andrew Bayly, the member who has just resumed his seat. I really enjoyed working very closely with Andrew, and Andrew’s expertise has certainly strengthened this bill. So I acknowledge that member.

This bill has support right across the House, which is fantastic, and I just want to touch on one quick point here in the brief time I have available, which is the Commerce Commission and the importance of them being proactive, which is what we saw in terms of the Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister. I’d like to highlight that very strongly, and I look forward to the Commerce Commission taking a proactive approach in this area. It’s an excellent piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Mr Speaker, thank you. I have a question for members of this Government: when this legislation is passed, what actual effects is it going to have upon the cost of living and the cost of food in New Zealand in the short or medium term? Sadly, the answer is: next to nothing. Jamie Strange, the last speaker in the debate, said he didn’t want to take too much time and that we had to pass it into law—we needed to quickly pass it into law so that virtually nothing will happen. Now, that’s not to say that we’re not supporting it—there are anomalies in the law that make it difficult for competitors to enter the market—but if you go and have a look at actually why food is so expensive in New Zealand at the moment, the supermarkets will be a part of that, but they will only be a part of it. Actually, the role that the Government plays in creating regulation and, therefore, cost as quickly as they can is the larger part of why food is expensive—and too expensive in this country.

I don’t want to take away the importance of this by suggesting it’s unimportant, but for mum and dad at home in a Kiwi household that’s finding it hard to pay the bills and is faced with the extremely tough choice of paying bills or feeding the kids—if they are listening to this debate and they’ve listened to the Minister’s speech at the beginning, I’m sorry for them: there is no relief. There is no help coming as a result of this legislation, and there will be members of Government who say that that’s not true, that they’re a caring Government and that they’re a listening Government. If it is solely the responsibility of the supermarkets for the sharp escalation of the cost of food in New Zealand over the last few years, why is it that the fish and chip shop is more expensive than it was, that the food at the market is more expensive than it was, and that food at the gate of the producer is more expensive today than it was? The supermarkets have nothing at all to do with that degree of production or retail.

I was on the committee, before this legislation was introduced, when the Government instructed the Commerce Commission to do an investigation into the supermarkets and the structure of retail for wholesale food in New Zealand. The Commerce Commission came before the committee, and I had the opportunity to question them about all the things that they were looking at to come up with a clear overview—information that the consumer could rely upon—as to why food was escalating in price in New Zealand. Sadly, they said that they only had the ability to look into the supermarkets and nothing else: not the effect of a fast increase in the rate of the minimum wage year on year on year, and whether that’s had an impact or not; whether or not more regulation from the Government that imposes standards around, say, health and safety that actually don’t drive any greater outcomes in safety, and whether or not that’s a cost that is borne by a producer that gets passed on; or whether or not at the time—and we have a small respite at the moment—extra increases in the cost of fuel or in road-user charges for diesel have had an impact, and are they being passed on.

The Commerce Commission said that they didn’t have the ability to look into any of these sorts of things because the Government and Cabinet, in instructing them to do an investigation, asked them to solely look at the structure of those supermarkets. Sadly, what that means is that only a part of the job is done. Now, the Commerce Commission came out with a number of reforms or suggestions in its finding. Let’s say the Government took on board all of them and did them in urgency. Let’s say we were doing every single thing that they’d said today in this House and were passing them into law—well, that would be a positive thing.

There could well be more competition, but a lack of competition in itself isn’t the only reason that costs have gone up; largely, it’s the role that this Government has played. If there is no consequence at all to fast increases in the minimum wage and all that it does is provide people with more so that they are better off, then that’s no consequence—put it up to $50 per hour. But we know that’s not the case. There is a consequence, because every time the Government imposes a cost upon business, it has to be passed on or absorbed, and, in the case of most producers in New Zealand, they can no longer absorb that cost increase imposed by the Government and so they are having to pass it on.

So the Government, in applauding or congratulating themselves here today, have made a very, very small step in the direction of focusing on why food has become so prohibitively expensive to so many households in New Zealand. What they haven’t done is looked at the role that they play themselves, and I dare say, unfortunately, as we debate other things in this House, that, actually, as more and more rules come, more regulations come, and more changes come—as well-meaning as they may seem—they will impose burden and cost upon businesses that gets passed on in everything that we do, and, in this case, in food.

Think about the producer of fresh fruit and vegetables in New Zealand that are sold in supermarkets. The price has gone up hugely, and why is that? Actually, because of the costs that are imposed upon the grower through everything that they do, from regulation to the cost of freight, and so on. When those fresh fruit and veges are picked and put on a truck, the cost goes up because of extra tax and the increase in the minimum wage, which is passed on or is inherited by even those who earn more than the minimum wage, because, actually, you see cost go up throughout that pay scale until the produce arrives at the supermarket and is unpacked, and then those costs actually are upon the supermarket business, and they have inherited or had to assume the costs previously.

That’s the reason that things have become so very expensive in this country. I’ve got to say that whilst this is an important move in as far as at least it may level the playing field for those that might want to enter the market and that have found that they couldn’t find the land that they wanted to build a supermarket or create a new outlet somewhere where consumers could take advantage of that, when we do have a new entrant to the market and they build their supermarket and they move into that supermarket, already the cost imposed upon them to build, to get the consents, and to meet all of the standards the Government has put in place means that on their very first day of more competition for supermarkets in New Zealand, their goods will be more expensive than they should be if the Government hadn’t believed that every single issue they find can be solved by new regulation that imposes cost.

The final thing here is that in the end, it’s not the supermarket, the owner of the building, or the employer that is worse off as a result; it is the consumer—the very people that this Government says that they want to help through their kindness. Ultimately, the Government bears more responsibility for the sharp increases in ongoing costs to the consumer in almost everything that we see than the supermarket does, albeit this is a small step in the right direction.

I will echo the words of the last speaker, who is the chair of the select committee that has done a very good job in as far as what he’s allowed to do: let’s be in a rush to pass this legislation so that tomorrow, not a single thing happens for the consumer in New Zealand, except the costs will continue to go up. If it was merely about competition, it would be an easy issue to solve. The Government could wash its hands of the responsibility, but in everything this Government has done, it has imposed cost upon businesses and households, and it is the consumer that bears the brunt of that. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. We took Mr McClay’s contribution just at that—that obviously this is not enough. But, look, wait; there’s more. This bill is just the beginning of everything that we as a progressive Government are doing to help New Zealanders through, right now, all of the pressures that we’re facing, not only from overseas but within as well.

Can I just commend the Minister for taking this bill to the House and all the series of announcements he’s made since. On June 21, he announced more powers to the Commerce Commission—to ComCom—to investigate the conduct of all of our supermarkets.

We’ve also committed to a mandatory code of conduct on top of the banning of land covenants, a unit pricing scheme, and also an industry watchdog. It isn’t just about supermarkets; it’s also about our dairy shops, it’s also about our mum and pop shops across the road in the corner. This bill not only gets us started in terms of making a fairer playing field for everyone but also it will make sure that all our consumers will benefit from it. So this is a good bill and I commend it to the House.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker—pleased to take a short call on the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill. Everyone needs access to nutritious and affordable food. The Green Party is certainly supporting the moves that the Government is making to reduce the duopoly that we have with the dominance of Foodstuffs and Woolworths in Aotearoa, because the current situation is deeply, deeply unbalanced and leads to really poor outcomes for everyone, particularly those who aren’t able to afford healthy food and for growers and suppliers, who are increasingly having to pay for fees like putting their goods on the shelves and issues with the prices that they are getting. In the meantime, if you’ve got the ownership of a supermarket, you’re probably likely to be on the wealthy list in Aotearoa.

So prohibiting these covenants—which I think the Commerce Commission found more than 90 of these restrictive land covenants where supermarkets were using them to prevent their rivals opening stores on that land, and some 60 of these had a term of more than 20 years. Most of them, obviously, were in the main metros—Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch—and there are also these exclusivity covenants which are able to prevent related businesses, butcheries, bakeries, even hairdressers in some instances, opening in those premises; so all designed to reduce competition. So this bill is a significant step because it will have effect from the day it becomes law in ensuring that these covenants can no longer operate. It has been encouraging to see the voluntary efforts of Foodstuffs and Woolworths in recognising that the law is going to make them and are actually moving to disengage from some of these covenants.

Giving the Commerce Commission more powers, particularly to request and get information from the supermarkets, will assist in monitoring and enforcement. And that’s been a really useful addition that the select committee has made to the bill. The Resource Management Act (RMA) has sought to prevent trade competition being used as an argument by supermarkets against their rivals seeking a land use consent to establish a new store. There’ve been changes to the Act to try and strengthen these provisions because of the frustration at how rival operators would attempt to tie up the establishment of a new supermarket by objecting to the resource consent, but they haven’t been totally effective in ensuring that the other member of the duopoly couldn’t make submissions because the courts did look at the indirect effects in terms of the retail distribution effects. So the RMA hasn’t been the answer, and that’s why we have needed this bill.

It is only part of the way there. We need much more comprehensive work to raise incomes, to make changes to the tax system, to increase benefit payments. We need to make it easier for local grocery shops to establish in residential areas so that households can walk and buy bakery, butchery, and greengrocer products as we used to do when I was growing up. When you had those services in the neighbourhood, you weren’t forced to drive a car to a big car park and a big supermarket. But this bill, in the changes that it makes to ensure that these covenants are regarded as anti-competitive measures and can immediately be acted against under the Fair Trading Act, is a very useful step.

I commend the Minister for the other initiatives that are being taken, but we do need to make those much-wider changes to increase people’s incomes in recognition that grocery prices here in Aotearoa are the fifth most expensive in the OECD and we spend per capita quite a lot on groceries compared to other countries in the OECD.

So it’s certainly a step, it is a useful step, it is one that the Green Party supports, but we need those much-wider changes around incomes to ensure that everyone has access to affordable food. Kia ora.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The duopoly, as it’s called, has had its rewards from the Government’s COVID-19 response, because you couldn’t go anywhere else, and—[Hon Eugenie Sage trips]—the super-profits that are proposed—

Stuart Smith: The Greens are slipping!

DAMIEN SMITH: Sorry?

Stuart Smith: The Greens are slipping—fell out of the poll!

DAMIEN SMITH: Yeah, the Greens are slipping in the poll, or on the floor, sorry.

The super-profit that Mr Clark talks about is 20c per person, per head of population, and that has been the main rationale for driving this change. Now, in the ACT Party, we believe in freeing up covenants that are believed to have been reducing competitive behaviour, but this has been a long-held practice. People do their demographics.

I worked, as an example, for a time in the multiplex industry. You do your numbers, and you look at where people will drive to your cinema chain, and then you take the commercial risk of investing in that site, going through the planning process. Then you open it and you hope they will come. What we found in that industry was that if you had one multiplex in an area, you had a certain amount of business. If you put two in that area, the business grew three times. The supermarkets know that it’s a highly competitive market place that they operate in, and they have themselves, at a margin level, been totally shocked by the rise of inflation in this country. Inflation in this country is what’s driving this behavioural change.

ACT would repeal the Resource Management Act to fast track any supermarket chain that wants to come here. We believe that this bill should have had a clause in it that said the Overseas Investment Office would make national grocery retailing a strategic and significant area of national interest. That would allow people to fast track coming here, and it would have given them the certainty that they need. I’m not sure by the time the next election comes that there will be many more supermarkets built. It’s a question that no one has answered. It’s a question that the journalists haven’t asked the Ministers. Tonight, we sit here and we have a building block here, but we don’t have the full solution.

Getting access to the wholesale market here is absolutely essential for a new entrant coming here. They can’t bring all their products on ships. They have to operate within the environment here. They may have points of differences in terms of what they sell, but, effectively, it’s not a “me too” situation. If you’re trying to build a point of difference as an ALDI or as a Costco or a Warehouse, as an example, versus the incumbents, you need to have some point of difference. Is that price? Is that value? Is that competition on the types of products that you supply? What is happening is down the line at the farm gate and at the grower gate and at the wine gate. That leads me on to the fact that if you come here to make a supermarket successful, you need to have a grocery strategy that includes alcoholic beverages as well.

I do commend the bill, and the ACT Party will be supporting the bill. But this should have been captured in something that was more holistic, and, with the legal ramifications of unwinding some of these covenants, the lawyers will have a field day. Then the lawyers will have a field day when a new entrant comes in, so it’s good money for them.

If you look at the provisions that the Commerce Commission have under new section 28C in clause 4, the understanding of these is not clear. The reference to the Fair Trading Act is not clear in how this all meshes together.

We will be supporting the bill tonight, but looking closely at the ramifications of how this actually works in the market place. We still reinforce the fact that the most important thing for the supermarkets and the people in New Zealand in a pandemic or in a normal situation, as we know, is to have the right products on the right shelves at the right time so people aren’t living in fear. They’re living in fear for two reasons: inflation and, not the fact that the supermarket isn’t there, just that when they go there, they know there’s no alternative choices, or not the same choices that used to be.

We would actually recommend to the Government that this isn’t a quick fix. There needs to be another bill very quickly to level the playing field in terms of those other areas. This alone will not solve the problem, but it goes a short step towards doing that.

We would like people to finally understand that if supermarkets do set up in Pukekohe or in Wellington here, they do take commercial risk. It’s not an insignificant investment. The shareholders of those businesses do act in the best interest of the customers. It’s not super-profits, like the Government has said, for the sake of it. I believe—doing my numbers—that that has been driven by the COVID lockdown, and that was the only place you could go. So let’s take a sensible and pragmatic approach to planning this out, let’s invite new entrants in, and let’s get the Overseas Investment Office activated to actually allow this facilitation. Thank you.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. The Commerce Commission stated that competition is not working for everyday New Zealanders. As the Labour Party, we committed at the last election, and we continue to be committed, to addressing the rising cost of groceries. We want to make sure that shoppers are paying a fair price at the checkout, and this is not the silver bullet—we know that—but this is a part of a suite of activities that are going on. To Dr David Clark, our Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, thank you for bringing this to the House, and I know you are doing a lot of work behind the scenes in terms of what is to come.

Groceries are an essential purchase for every day and everybody within Aotearoa. As I’ve gone around the electorate of New Plymouth, and as I’ve spoken with dairy owners and with superette owners, I know that they gave me the thumbs up because they know that, currently, it is not working. Currently, supermarkets have the duopoly, and I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I call Simon Watts for five minutes.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill in its third reading. National will be supporting this bill, but I want to echo some comments made before by the Hon Todd McClay, because I absolutely agree that this bill, in substance, is only—if we’re at all lucky—going to have a minor and miniscule impact in terms of the key issues that this country faces.

The bill, obviously, is a result of a market study undertaken around competition and is looking to implement one single recommendation that was identified, and that will be an amendment to the Commerce Act 1986. I think that what’s interesting is the politics that are at play here, in behind, by this Government. They need to blame something or someone for the state in which our economy and our country is in, with a soaring cost of living crisis and soaring inflation.

Basically, as we’ve seen, there’s a good amount of blame in terms of who is responsible, except for the Government at the moment, whether it’s Ukraine or, in this case, the grocery sector—in particular, the duopoly of supermarkets are to blame for the fact that food prices have increased 7.6 percent in the last year and fruit and vegetables have increased 18 percent. Well, that’s absolutely ridiculous—that is absolutely ridiculous. They are, basically, trying to identify one group or one organisation to put blame on to deflect the fact that it’s through their actions and their decisions that we are where we are today, in part, and that is the reality of what’s going on there. I think Kiwis are pretty sensible and can see through that.

That’s the reason why the Minister has decided to spread this over a period of time—probably, I would guess, over the period over which inflation is going to be significantly high across this country—just so there’s an insight. It’s like the old saying that if you walk around with a clipboard or a notebook under your arm, you look like you’re busy. Well, what the Minister’s doing here is just spreading out this bill to make it look like this Government is actually doing something, and the reality is they’re doing absolutely damn not much at all. That is a great shame.

But I think, as I said, Kiwis can see through that—they’re not silly. They’re going to say, “Look, these guys are just looking for someone to blame, and this is the tool with which they’re going to do it.”

Shanan Halbert: National do nothing.

SIMON WATTS: I think the point made before in regards—and I can hear the colleagues over there. They probably know it—they know it deep down: “Oh, how did he work out our strategy?” Yeah, but they know.

The fact that the COVID-19 period—and it was raised by a member from ACT before in regards to the fact that through Government decision-making, they made the rules and regulations that a number of our food providers, fruit and vege shops—remember the butchers that couldn’t open during lockdown? Remember all of our small businesses in our community? Who made that decision? Well, the Government made that decision, didn’t they? Then—surprise, surprise—we’ve come out of that lockdown period, and then they’ve recognised and said, “Well, those supermarkets that we drove all of that demand into have made super-profits.” Do you think we were born yesterday? No. Kiwis can see right through what you are doing, and you are trying to use the grocery sector as the big bad business that is to blame for the cost of living crisis and inflation. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t wash and that doesn’t stick.

So what we’re going to see is an incremental process of regulation and reform. All of that adds costs to businesses and other layers of bureaucracy. We’ve talked about the minimum wage, we’ve talked about another public holiday—that all correlates through into increase of prices, and that will continue on under this Government. These types of regulatory aspects will deal with the rats and mice in regards to some of the underlying contractual aspects. It will make absolutely—

Shanan Halbert: You’ve got so grumpy since you moved from Northcote.

SIMON WATTS: —very limited significant impact, and I can hear the member from Northcote calling out from the other side. You know, he’s got Countdown in his electorate, but he’s also got a number of fruit and vege small businesses and butcheries, and I don’t think he spent much time during Auckland’s lockdown going into those businesses on the North Shore and explaining to them why his Government—

Shanan Halbert: Compare what you did and compare what I did, buddy. You know it—you know the answer.

SIMON WATTS: —has said they cannot open up and trade. He continues to go on—you can hear him in the background—but the reality is Kiwis can see it. They all know it. But at the end of the day, while National will be supporting this bill, I think I’ve articulated that this is not going to make any material impact in regards to the problems we face as this country.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I call Helen White—five minutes.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for letting me take this call, because this is something that I’m really passionate about. When I was an employment lawyer, I had a few cases which involved supermarkets, and, a very long time ago, there was an issue with the amount of profit that these supermarkets were making and some of the sharp practices they were engaged in.

I was very, very pleased to see this bill come in. I was extremely pleased to see the addition of the Supplementary Order Paper with regard to the proactive role that our Commerce Commission will play and, actually, the transparency that will be required, because, under the hood of private contracts, we often have these kinds of practices that hurt people—and these have hurt people for a long time. I am absolutely proud to be part of a Government that has put an end to this behaviour, and I hope to see more to come.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Hon Todd McClay and Damien O’Connor: what sad sacks. I honestly thought that you were going to be speaking against this bill, but it transpired that, actually, all parties support it.

Hon Todd McClay: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just want to help the member, I don’t think she meant to say that Damien O’Connor’s a sad sack.

INGRID LEARY: Sorry; you’re absolutely right.

Hon Todd McClay: Although we agree with it!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Order!

INGRID LEARY: The Hon Todd McClay referred to mum and dad scenarios of affordability, which is exactly why we’re passing this legislation.

And without wanting to give a lesson, this is about competition law. We have a duopoly, we have a lack of competition, and we have market failure, so of course there are going to be higher prices. There is going to be the ability for private covenants, which the Commerce Commission has reported on: 190 agreements, including covenants and exclusively clauses—150 of those restricting sales and sites for more than 20 years. Now, that is not something to do with the current inflation, which is around international pressure, as we know; this has been decades in the making, and this Government is doing something about it.

So let’s not blame the Government; let’s remember that the supermarkets are making an excess profit of $1 million per day. I’m really proud of this bill. Let’s remember that all parties in this House are supporting it.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): The member who’s resumed her seat—Ms Leary—has said inflation’s caused by international problems—I think that’s right. So I give you a couple of numbers: 2.9 percent.

Hon Member: What’s that?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: That’s the current inflation rate of Switzerland. Apparently that’s not an international country! I give you 1.9 percent; that’s Japan. So there are a few countries that do not have rampant and raging inflation and those countries are ones that were very careful during the COVID lockdowns and were very careful with the money that they were borrowing. As we all know, or we should know, there was profligate wastage and excess from this Government.

What has happened is, of course, that now inflation is at a level that we have not seen since the last time that the National Party had to take over from Labour. In fact, I remember in 2008, when we took over, actually, the mortgage rates were 11 percent and I suggest that it is probably going to get that way by the time we have to take over in 2023.

This bill does have some good points in it. I think it is important to note that we have, essentially, a duopoly around groceries, and that is never a good thing. It is not good to see in shopping centres just one supermarket, or one supermarket and no one else being allowed to sell anything that is also sold in those supermarkets. That is a very bad thing. It is anti-competitive and if the Commerce Commission had been awake to this, they could have actually looked at it a very long time ago.

It is also important to note, as some of my colleagues on this side of the House have noted, that, actually, during the first lockdown our local butchers, our bakers, actually, the fruit and vege sellers—everybody who competed or competes with one of these big supermarkets got to close down, except for dairies. Dairies were allowed, for some particular reason. Now, on that decision alone, many of us, as MPs, took up these issues with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the ministry that was in charge of giving exemptions or not, and we were told, “No; you can’t have an exemption.” We saw people—and I think of my own butcher who lost around $40,000 worth of stock; people who, knowing that there was going to be some form of lockdown, were preparing for it to have the meat there.

Dr Duncan Webb: Talk about the bill at any time!

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: So the member on the other side doesn’t want to talk about the people who lost their businesses, does he? No. But these are the very people that we’re told that this bill is going to help, that it’s going to suddenly have some sense in the marketplace. But we know, and we’ve known for a long time, that supermarkets have been in a very privileged position, but they’ve been more so since the first of the lockdowns. That’s because they were given special privileges that other providers of food couldn’t have, or, actually, just didn’t have. They could have had it, but they didn’t have it because this big Government is more comfortable dealing with big business rather than small businesses, owner occupied, people who had to pay their rent, whether they had money or not. What help they got was very little and they could have done with being able to open their doors rather than having their stock in landfill, which is what actually happened.

So when we look at this bill, yes, we will support this bill, because it’s better than nothing. But let’s not kid ourselves that inflation is all being caused by international events, otherwise, Putin. It’s not just that, is it? It’s also the spending that went on. It’s not just because the Government has been borrowing and borrowing and wasting money. It’s not just that the Government has put enormous costs on to businesses, and particularly small businesses, and made it really hard for people to even employ staff, because staff aren’t allowed into the country or haven’t been able to, for some time. It’s nothing of that, according to the Labour Party. It’s all to do with Putin or international events. Well, no, it’s not. It’s actually a lot to do with their behaviour and their absolute paranoia around business.

When I look at some of the supermarkets, we’re very aware that some supermarkets are said to use quite sharp dealing around some of their suppliers, particularly Kiwi suppliers. Of course, businesses make those decisions as to whether or not they’ll supply to them, because they want to be able to get the volume coming through. What we should also remember is that people in business and those who use them need choice. I see that Costco is starting up pretty soon, and I’m told, from my friends who go to Costco in Hawaii and other places, that they will be travelling to—I think your electorate, isn’t it, Mr Penk?—your electorate. I’m possibly not going to be doing that. I’ll go, wherever possible, and support the smaller businesses, because I know what it’s like to be in business and I know how hard it is to have people saying, “I’m just going to go to the cheapest.” Sometimes it’s best to go to people who really care about the produce that they’re presenting to you and they do their very best. I think about the people who have fish shops, those people—people who had their own boats for fish shops and they couldn’t open. I mean, these are the sorts of decisions that actually are going to have years and years of implications for families.

So do we support this bill? Yes. Is it the be all and end all? No. But I saw just the other day that somebody in Southland had used Amazon to get groceries from Australia. Is that right? I think I remember that. If that is so, and I’m sure it is right, it just shows us all the cost of actually going to the supermarket. I do the grocery shopping at home and I find that the grocery shopping is a good way of remembering the price of everything. So I do try and use the smaller places like the butchers and the fish shop and the fruit and vege shop. But I also have to go to the supermarket for certain things and I have noticed the extreme increase in price in just the last six months.

What they tell me, the people who own them and run them, is that a lot of it has to do with the extra costs put on by the Government, yes, and the fuel costs—the fuel costs in particular—because transport costs have gone through the roof. People are finding it very difficult to be able to keep their costs down if they’re having to truck produce across town in Auckland, they’re stuck in traffic—it all adds to the cost. There is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to groceries. Someone is paying and that someone is always the consumer.

So when the Government is happily giving away days here or adding costs here or giving somebody else an increase—

Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The member’s just ranged far and wide. Speakers’ rulings—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): No; with due respect, if you read the bill, the member is referring to quite a number of items in the bill quite frequently.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Of course, when we look at the grocery sector that this is all about regulating, and the Commerce Act, I say to the member who’s resumed his seat: if he doesn’t want to listen, then leave, because I am very happy to give him rendition for the next 10 minutes if the Speaker would only give me permission, which I will not actually ask for, because it’s not all about me, unlike the member who was so objectionable.

I think it is really important when we look at the Commerce Act to realise we’ve had it since 1986. I think the last time I spoke on the Commerce Act, I pointed out that I did one of my dissertations on the Commerce Act, and the Minister in charge of the bill said, “Well, that was 1986.” And I said, yes, it was, and I did. So it’s been around for a while. I think the ComCom, as it’s called now—the Commerce Commission—has often been seen as not having enough teeth or enough funding or enough something or rather or a will to live. I think it is important that we look at it and think—you know, in the anti-trust legislation that we see in some parts of the United States and others, sometimes some of us look at it and think, well, that might be useful. I mean, this was the New Zealand answer to it, the 1986 Act. But the problem is it doesn’t solve the problems that a Government can visit upon people and it doesn’t solve the fact that fuel costs are higher. It doesn’t solve any of that.

Yes, this will go some way, but it is only a little way. It is the right thing to do, but it is certainly not the whole thing that could be done. For a start, the Government could start being upfront about where’s the inflation coming from and what part they’ve had in it, because I think Switzerland and Japan are still part of our world. Thank you.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): In the last speaker’s wide-ranging tour of her grocery shopping habits, amongst other matters, she mentioned a couple of times that it’s no surprise that we have a duopoly and that that is driving prices high.

She also mentioned in her closing moments that she wondered whether the Commerce Commission lacks bite. Well, I guess what it takes to give the Commerce Commission bite is a Minister with bite, a Government with determination to do it; we’ve done it—very proud to support this bill.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Financial Markets (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 23 June.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Members, when the debate was interrupted, Stuart Smith had the call, and he had three minutes and 35 seconds exactly remaining.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and it was actually a great pleasure to give way to the Hon Kris Faafoi for his valedictory speech when I was so quickly cut down—

Hon Todd McClay: See if there’s anybody else who wants you to give way over there.

STUART SMITH: Well, that’s right. There’s a few potential valedictories over there, if they get the opportunity to give them. So it is a great pleasure to speak on this particular bill, because, actually, I don’t like the bill. I think the bill’s terrible.

There’s a bit of a theme here across a lot of these bills that this particular Minister brings to the House: he has a lot of solutions looking for problems. I don’t begrudge the Minister and his enthusiasm, but, actually, what he’s doing with his misguided attempts to bring some legislative rigour to the commercial world—all he is doing is adding costs needlessly and a lot of red tape. Now, I know Labour love red tape—they do that—but, actually, it’s really slowing down the economy. It takes all the confidence out of the business sector and makes everything more expensive for Kiwis, as we know, who are living in the midst of a cost of living crisis.

The Credit Contract and Consumer Finance Act legislation is a good example, which is very similar to this particular bill. I think, at that time, they said it was only really going to go after the unscrupulous operators, and yet it ended up impacting on all the mums and dads trying to get a mortgage, who had to go in there and then they had all of their financial transactions in the last little while looked into, and it became absolutely ridiculous. It was intrusive and it was completely unfair, and it completely missed the whole purpose of the bill. I wonder what went on in the policy development of this particular bill, because I do note that the Reserve Bank and the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) said they did not find major systemic misconduct like in Australia, which is where this bill had its genesis. They’re trying to copy what was going on in Australia.

So the Minister is well-meaning. I think he’s trying very hard, but, actually, we’d be all a lot better off if he didn’t try so hard, and what he should be doing is looking right into every policy that comes his way. Whether he suggests them or whether they are from officials, I don’t know, but given what the Reserve Bank and the FMA have said, I doubt very much that the officials were the source of this policy’s birth; I think it was probably the Minister. He’s actually going to only bring in a lot more red tape and slow things down for the financial markets. He actually gave an example, in his opening speech in this reading, of an insurance salesman—how dare they actually try to sell something for a bonus? He thought that was a bad thing, and he’s going to stop that.

He doesn’t understand that, actually, sales are about selling things. They don’t hire salespeople to not go out and sell. What is wrong with giving someone an incentive to sell something? If they’re acting inappropriately or if they are committing fraud, there are laws to deal with that. Those things don’t need this stupid bill, which I condemn to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I want to address the point made by the last speaker, Stuart Smith, because I couldn’t more strongly disagree. What we have here is a culture which has actually caused, again, great harm to people.

I’d like to take the example that Mr Smith took of a scheme where you pay your employees—you incentivise them to sell a product. In something like banking, there is a power imbalance. People go along and they trust the person who is giving them that advice. There is a conflict of interest here, because the person giving them the advice may actually need the money that comes from the incentive, especially if it’s a sales target where they are actually being required to sell a certain number before it clicks over. On that last sale, how much pressure do you think is on that worker? How much likelihood is there that, in fact, it really hurts the person; it doesn’t help them?

So banking is in a very important position: it actually holds a position of trust—and that’s good, long term. This bill helps to actually change the culture to a good one. This is a problem, this has been a problem, and it was recognised as a problem by the institutions of the Reserve Bank and the Financial Markets Authority. We’re plugging that gap and we’re doing it for the consumers of New Zealand and that, yes, will help with the cost of living.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Oh, Mr Speaker, I hate to be a Negative Nelly on this, but this is a stupid bill. There’s no reason to have it. I mean, the speaker who’s just resumed her seat, Ms White—a really nice person. Pleasant. Travelled on a trip with us recently in Europe—

Dr Duncan Webb: That’s what her colleagues say about her.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —as did the current chief whip. Yeah, lovely—lovely. Very nice person. Anyway, it’s not the point.

I’m here to talk about this bill. What a dumb bill. Really dumb. OK, so she gave an example of a bank person, a bank manager, a bank’s, you know, manager of some form, saying that you might like to buy this insurance. OK, all right, imbalance of power—maybe. How about this: you also have to disclose that you’re getting paid a commission. And that’s the thing: the bank manager still has to say that, because we’ve had an Act part of our laws since, I think, from memory, just around about the time of the First World War. I mean, even longer than Winston Peters has been alive. It’s called the Secret Commissions Act, and I would have thought that she, as a lawyer, would have known that. So that’s already there, so you’re not actually allowed to take commissions without disclosing it to the person who’s paying the bills. So I think it’s pretty much covered.

The other thing is: it’s just more regulation, isn’t it? We’ve got people here: “You have to act like this, you have to act like that.” Right at the moment, this country is full of Kiwis who are wondering how they’re going to pay their mortgage, but it’s great to know that they’re going to be protected by this Government! Well, it’s not going to protect them. The costs of actually being a financial institution have gone through the roof. They’re increasing. We’ve seen it, as Mr Stuart Smith alluded to—we’ve seen it with ill-thought-through—actually, not thought through, but well-intentioned legislation that actually meant that a whole lot of New Zealanders missed out on getting loans when they could for their first home.

So we have a situation where, yet again, this Government thinks it knows best. It thinks it knows best about financial markets. It knows best about what institutions should be doing. These are actually the institutions who are currently taking in money, lending money, helping people through their business situations, helping them to buy a house, helping them to retain their home as they’re stretched and trying to pay for their increased mortgages. And this Government wants to add more cost to them and to say to them, “We don’t trust you; you’re bad. You lend money. You lend money for profit.” Well, I can’t think of anybody except volunteers who go to work except for profit. It’s called a salary, a wage, or else it’s a profit. And the member who resumed her seat, she was an employment lawyer, she says. I presume she went to work and she made some profit. What, made profit off the unions or the poor people who paid the union fees? The fact is, is that profit means taxes as well. It means there’s a reason to go to work other than the joy and the bliss that we get from it. There is some point. It means that there is some profit to buy the groceries, there’s some profit to pay the mortgage, there’s some profit to do so. Banks are not just evil because they make a profit.

Without banks, what is there? What do we go back to? Bartering? Are we going to barter a parsnip for a carrot? I mean, is this where we’re going to end up in this Government, if it gets its way? It already seems to be focused on banning tobacco but allowing cannabis. So the whole country must be looking at this, wondering.

Right at the moment, there’s a whole lot of New Zealanders in a financial bind. There’s a whole lot of Kiwis who finally got their first home, and now they’ve got a mortgage rate that they can’t afford. And the value of their home has gone down, not up, around 80 percent of what it was, 88 percent of what it was, when they bought their home earlier this year. And this Government’s answer is to put more cost on to their mortgage lender. So they’re going to end up with higher interest rates, more chances of mortgagee sales, and more earning New Zealanders moving to Australia.

The last time we saw the exodus, the brain drain, from New Zealand to this extent was under the Clark Labour Government, when we had exactly the same, 2008. We had interest rates at 11 percent higher than they are now—and I think my prediction is they’ll probably end up there, if this keeps going down this way—and we ended up with a brain drain. And we will have it again. It’s already happening. One of the reasons it’s so hard to even get a flight out of New Zealand is because so many people are going one way.

When I was recently leaving New Zealand, on the Speaker’s tour, I was standing by a young couple who seemed to have almost all their worldly goods with them at the check-in. And they told me—because I said, “Oh, where are you going?” And the chap said to me they were going to the US. They were going to some place in one of those states like Arkansas or something. And I thought, how can Arkansas be more attractive than New Zealand? I mean, seriously. I’m sure in Arkansas—I don’t want to upset anyone in Arkansas; I don’t know if they are “Arkansasians”, or what. I don’t want to upset them, but I can’t think that that would be more attractive than New Zealand. But they told me it was, because, they said, they could buy a house; they can’t buy a house in New Zealand.

The costs of more regulation on top of more regulation for banks is going to mean not one extra New Zealander is going to be able to borrow money for a house, because of this legislation. Not one extra. It is not going to bring down the cost of borrowing. It will put up the cost of borrowing. It will end up with more bank staff being more nervous about approving people’s loans, in case they’ve got something wrong. You know the stories that we’ve all heard of, of people having to explain their coffee purchases to a bank manager, to show that they can afford a mortgage—well, what sort of strange world is that? That is the world wrought by Dr David Clark and his Government. It’s the nanny State writ large. It’s the people who cannot trust adults—adults, who can have their own children, who can, apparently, buy a property, have a car, have a driver’s licence, and even have a gun licence. We cannot trust them to do a deal with the evil bank!

Well, I actually think we’ve got to move past this. Best way to bring about best behaviours in banking is to have more competition. There’s nothing like competition to get everybody to sharpen their pencils and be better at what they’re doing. But all this legislation against banks and financial institutions, all it ever seems to do is put up the costs that young New Zealanders, older New Zealanders, any New Zealander gets to pay for the privilege of borrowing money and paying it back. And that all comes down to this Government’s lack of trust in adult New Zealanders to make their own decisions. And that is, I think, a real indictment on this Government—that everything that Dr David Clark, despite him being a very pleasant person, has tried to do in a well-meaning way, has led to a complete turnaround and a total mess. And we’ll all have to come back to Parliament to talk about it and try and fix things for him. And this is going to be another one.

So we’ve got the Financial Markets Authority—that was set up under a National Government; from memory, I think one of my predecessors did that. But we’ve also—they say there’s no particular problem, they’re not the ones pushing for this. So where is it coming from? Is it that most of the banks in New Zealand are Australian? Is that it? Do you think it’s that?

Stuart Smith: Could be—could be.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I think it could be that. I think it could be. Mr Smith, you agree it’s possibly that.

Stuart Smith: Yes.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Well, thank goodness that they were strong enough to help get us through the global financial crisis. Thank goodness that they were strong enough to help get us through the COVID period. The last thing that as a country we should wish is for our banking to be so small, so tiny, so incapable of withstanding world shocks or economic shocks—the last thing we want to see is our mum and dad Kiwis, and even those who are not mums and dads, losing their homes or losing their businesses because their bank has just lost their business.

And so I’d say this is not going to cause that, but what it will do is it will simply add more cost—more cost with worse outcomes, and nobody’s going to benefit except those who are paid to regulate and those who are paid to advise on regulation. That’s who’ll benefit from it. My legal colleagues who are in private practice will no doubt find this very interesting and they will no doubt be able to make some money off it, but they’re pretty much the only ones. It is one of those silly pieces of legislation that we should be saving the million dollars it apparently costs every hour for this Parliament to sit and actually just kick it to touch.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very surprised at the attitude of the Opposition to this bill. This is a good bill. The idea that incentives are in some way always all right just beggars belief. We’ve seen that incentives in the finance sector—particularly around complex products, such as those in life insurance and mortgage products—lead to pressured selling and selling products which aren’t needed and aren’t appropriate. We’ve got to be absolutely alert to the concept of conflicts of interest in sales frameworks, such as incentives. That’s just one small part of this bill. It’s a good bill. It makes a much more robust, honest, and transparent banking sector. I absolutely commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Financial Markets (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

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.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Associate Minister of Local Government) on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: I move, That the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This year is local election year. This October, New Zealanders will be voting on who they want to represent them in local government, making decisions on behalf of them and their local communities.

This bill makes a small but important change to ensure the safety of local election candidates around the country by replacing the requirement to include a physical address in an authorisation statement with other options. Those options are a physical address, an email address, a telephone number, a PO Box number, or a website address. This bill creates a safer playing field for all candidates so that no one is needlessly subjected to harm or discouraged from standing.

I’d like to thank the Justice Committee and its chair, Ginny Andersen. The committee had an ambitious time frame to hear submissions and to report back. They met in their recess to give as many submitters as possible an opportunity to have their say.

There were just 30 submissions on this bill. I think that what this shows is that New Zealanders just want to get on with this. All of the submissions received by the committee were unique and I would like to thank everyone who took the time over the last two weeks to present their views to the committee. All but three submissions strongly supported the bill. This includes local government sector organisations including Local Government New Zealand and Taituarā—Local Government Professionals Aotearoa—11 submissions from current or former candidates in local or general elections, two submissions representing local authorities, and three submissions from current mayors. I’m pleased to hear such unanimous support from the local government sector. Some submitters believe that urgency and the select committee process are not warranted. I disagree. In the words of Local Government New Zealand: “Without these changes, we’re concerned that a number of potential candidates may be deterred from standing due to fears for their personal safety and the safety of those they live with.”

So that it can take effect before campaigning for this year’s local elections gets properly under way in less than a month, the amendment bill needs to be enacted under urgency. The urgency is justified to remedy the risk of harm at the next local elections, and I wish to take the opportunity to acknowledge the support of other parties for allowing this to go through all stages this evening.

I want to acknowledge the role that local government has in making positive change. Local government is an incredibly important part of our democratic landscape. The contribution that each local authority makes to the wellbeing of its communities cannot be understated. Local government decisions affect each and every New Zealander every day. Sometimes these are obvious—when we turn on the tap, catch the bus, or take the dog to the park. Then there are the big-picture items that councillors are responsible for—planning and development, infrastructure, community facilities, climate change, and many areas in between. Those diverse functions require cohesive political institutions that reflect the unique character of our nation, and we are a diverse nation. For there to continue to be effective local government in Aotearoa, we need New Zealanders to continue putting themselves forward in elections. It is the responsibility of this House to make sure that they can do so safely. As the Hon Nanaia Mahuta said when she announced this legislation: “Local democracy thrives when a broad range of individuals who bring different perspectives and experiences stand for public office in the contest of ideas.”

The committee heard that standing for election is not a decision that affects men, women, and people with marginalised identities equally. This bill is for those who stand for election to local government, but it is also for those who don’t; for those who had to put themselves and their whānau first because the risk associated with publishing their home address on a billboard was too much. I hope those people will think about standing again this year because local Government and democracy is for everyone. This bill keeps it that way. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I wish to also acknowledge the Hon Kieran McAnulty, the Associate Minister of Local Government, and recognise his new role, and thank him for introducing this bill. We’re talking about the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. This is a bill that National is supporting and, as the Minister has articulated, this is a bill that is addressing a number of aspects in regards to the process, or some of the barriers, that candidates potentially face when they are seeking election at local government level.

I also want to acknowledge the wide range of individuals across our country, across the 67 or so district councils and regional council entities, and in local government more broadly, for their contributions to local government across this country. They do a very important role in terms of supporting their local communities and dealing with a number of aspects that are very much local. As we’ve seen over the past couple of months in particular, the local community responses to natural disasters and other aspects like that reinforces, I think, the important role that our local government entities play in terms of supporting our communities. I was fortunate, actually, to be in Hokitika—

Maureen Pugh: You were fortunate.

SIMON WATTS: Maureen Pugh is just reminding me how fortunate I was. Once again, I was fortunate. I spent some time there on Sunday. It’s not a short trip from Auckland, but we got down there and met with a number of that community in the local government community, and it reinforced to me the important role, particularly in rural and provincial New Zealand, that local government plays in terms of supporting those communities. These individuals are individuals that carry multiple roles within their communities, and in the case that I had, I met with a number of the individuals that were business owners, were members of the volunteer fire brigade; they were coaches and parent help at the local school, one chap involved in driving the bus or acting as the part-time security guard at the local RSA, and all of that type of aspect that’s so critically important and is the fabric, I think, of New Zealand rural and provincial communities.

Our members of local government are very much at the heart of that, and in instances such as flooding or the impact of other aspects, and that occurs more regularly, those elements or those individuals within local government really step up. The reality is that on top of dealing with the impacts of COVID and workforce crises and shortages—particularly amplified in our smaller communities—their ability and their efforts in regards to keeping our communities safe cannot be understated.

This bill, obviously, is going to provide some optionality in terms of the disclosure requirements in regards to authorisation statements. For many, they may not think that this is necessarily significant—or those here within this House—in that when we campaign as central government, as members of Parliament, we obviously have the ability to use disclaimers and addresses that aren’t necessarily our own home or personal addresses. I think many members in this House, and me included, would have already, in our short amount of time, been open to some of the issues around where we live and aspects around that, and security considerations. So I understand and National understands the importance, and the barrier, particularly as has been raised to me by a number of constituents that are thinking about local government, who have concerns about sharing their residential home address—and rightly so. This bill will allow them a mechanism to still put their hand up to participate in local government democracy, which is so critically important for this country, but to do it in a way in which their privacy is protected, and I think that is something that is really important and, again, is supported by National.

In regards to the time line for this bill, obviously, it will come into force pretty much once we’ve pushed this through. I think the reality of the shortened select committee process—there were a few elements in terms of submissions there. I think we have highlighted the fact that, actually, this isn’t a new issue. It’s not something that’s just come up in the last month or so, and we’ve gone, “Oh crikey, maybe we should do something about that.” I think the reality is that this is an issue that has been around for a long time. Obviously, this Government has been in Government for five years and the reality—

Maureen Pugh: And it feels like it.

SIMON WATTS: —Maureen Pugh is just reminding me of the five long years—is that they should have had the proactive planning to be able to say, “Look, we’ve got local government elections coming up.”, because, funnily enough, they do occur reasonably regularly in terms of the time lines, surprisingly, and so it is no surprise that they are in October of this year. So maybe we should have done this a little bit earlier and allowed good, due democracy in terms of a full select committee process, which hasn’t been the case in this instance.

But I think, in the main, while there were a few submissions, there was some opportunity, and I just wanted to at least acknowledge that element of the process. I think it is also important to note that the Justice Committee, which reviewed this—and I do want to acknowledge the chair of the Justice Committee, here watching in regards to that, and I had a very short and brief appearance at that committee when this went through. It went through unanimously, and it was passed without amendment, and that recognised the process that this went through.

I think that’s pretty much all that I want to cover. I do want to, lastly, just encourage members of the public who believe that they have the capability, competence, experience, or life experience and background to be able to contribute at a local government level or in their local communities. We absolutely need, as a country, as many people participating in our local government democracy. It is an essential part of the way in which our local communities operate, and the reality is that we don’t live nationally; we live locally. We all live as part of our community, and having individuals that we are able to democratically elect and represent our views is very important in terms of ensuring clear accountability in terms of delivery of important aspects within our local communities. That, of course, includes aspects from our roading networks, which are essential—again, more essential and often overlooked, I think, in rural and provincial New Zealand in terms of the role they play in terms of supporting our regional economies.

The other aspect is in regards to the civil defence role that local government plays, and I’ve talked about the importance of that role and the reality of what they are asked to do and have been asked to do over the last year in particular. The other aspect is in regards to the significant reform that’s currently under way within the local government sector, and, obviously, one aspect of that that I have a pretty good overview and understanding of is in regards to the three waters reform process that this Government is currently ramming through the House, and one in which, as I’ve said, I think in some part absolutely rips the heart out of local government in terms of the impact on our smaller communities. I think that’s why you’re seeing such significant opposition across the country, particularly from local government, in regards to these reforms that simply will not deliver the outcomes that have been spoken about.

But that’s one element. You’ve also got the Resource Management Act composition or implications that are going to be impacting on local government, and the future of local government as well, which is a reform process that’s currently under way. The members on the other side are getting excited, so I’ll give them an opportunity to have a little bit of a chat, but we will be supporting this bill. Thank you.

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

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Well, you wouldn’t believe it from hearing the last speech, but this is actually a very simple bill; it’s short and it’s sweet. The bill removes the requirement to list a physical address on campaign advertising for the upcoming local government elections. The current legislation—the Local Electoral Act 2001—provides that candidates must include a physical address on the authorisation statement of advertising materials, such as on billboards and flyers; often, this is the candidate’s home address. Instead, this bill changes that requirement by saying that it can be a residential or business address, an email, a post office box number, a phone number, or a link to an internet site.

Why do we need the bill? We need this bill because there have been growing concerns within our community that candidates who publicise their home address may face undue risk to their physical safety and, also, it may prevent them wanting to stand for office in the very first place. So while the requirements for publicising a physical address were intended to increase transparency and promote democracy, in fact they are doing the antithesis of this by discouraging those people who don’t want to make their home address public.

Of the 30 submissions we received at select committee, 27 of those were in strong support of the bill. I’m going to briefly run through the points raised, because I think it’s important we do so. They clearly stated that the current address requirements put candidates at real risk and also give them a sense of perceived harm. The bill removes barriers for putting people forward for candidacy by removing that requirement, and the bill supports an equitable electoral environment and appropriately balances accountability alongside of safety.

I’d like to conclude by thanking those members of the Justice Committee that met out of session in recess, both Opposition and Government, who heard those submissions, who deliberated, and who were able to report this bill back to the House in good time in order for those local body candidates standing in the next local elections to have this bill enforced, to have this law passed, and to have that additional protection. Anyone who wants to stand for office in local elections should be able to do so without feeling that their personal safety is put at risk. This is a good bill, I commend it to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and thanks to colleagues who have already spoken on this. I’ve been enjoying the debate so far—I suppose we can call it a debate, notwithstanding that everyone seems, broadly speaking, in agreement. Obviously, we’ve got colleagues from other parties yet to speak, and we look forward to their contributions as well.

At this, the second reading, I will focus my remarks on the report of the Justice Committee—as is traditional, of course. I do want to pay tribute to them. I note that the chair of the select committee has made a contribution herself, and other colleagues who were on that committee, no doubt, will do so as well.

I myself am not a regular member of that committee, but I do substitute myself on from time to time for items of particular interest, and this was one that I happened to be involved in some of the consideration, I think—although now I’m wondering if I’m recorded as such; I’m not, so perhaps I didn’t in fact play any kind of role whatsoever; maybe in my own mind. I’m sort of the most lame version of Walter Mitty ever—that I’m falsely claiming to have been involved in the consideration on the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill.

Dr Emily Henderson: You were there.

CHRIS PENK: There we go. We’ve got a doughty member of the committee—Dr Emily Henderson, no less—claiming for that committee that it is the best committee. I’ll admit perhaps as much as that it might be the second-best committee; of course, the Regulations Review Committee being the best. But I should probably turn, at some point, to the bill itself and, more particularly, the select committee’s report thereon.

The point is made in the report—and I think, actually, quite helpfully—that with a number of submitters, two-thirds of the submitters, having stated that the bill would be helpful to reduce the risk of harm to candidates, this is particularly important in the case of local government elections. Of course, we’re talking about local government elections, as opposed to central government elections. There are a couple of reasons that are given for that.

I think it’s probably fair to say that we don’t want candidates for any kind of election to feel threatened. But in the case of local candidates, the point was made that these people are living in a community that’s very local. By its nature, it tends to be a smaller geographical area than in the central government environment. So for people to put themselves forward for office and to feel threatened by actions in response to the publication of their home or business address is acutely felt for those people, and that’s something to which I think we should all feel very sympathetic.

The other point is that local election candidates—and, actually, members too: those who have been duly elected—have less access to support and security than parliamentary candidates. I think, again, that’s a worthwhile point that the select committee is right to have emphasised, and I thank the submitters who gave their time and energy to submit as part of the process to share this kind of sentiment with us.

The point was made too about the vulnerability of those who have until now been required to publish their address online, and people who are living alone will feel this particularly keenly. Again, I think that’s a fair point. We don’t want inadvertent discrimination against those who live alone or might have living arrangements that they consider to be less secure than others who might put themselves forward. We want to have an equalising effect, not a discriminatory one. So we think that for people who want to put themselves forward for candidacy, if we can remove the possibility of risk associated with publishing their address, that’s a good thing.

Of course, that’s the whole point of the bill, and I think it’s worth emphasising that it’s a straightforward bill, it’s pretty narrow in its scope, but it’s important none the less for all these reasons that we’re bringing out by looking at the points that were made in the select committee process.

Verbal abuse, intimidation, and physical assaults, sadly, are examples of the kind of behaviour to which some local government election candidates have been subject. Negative comments on social media—that’s a problem in itself, but that’s not one I think that the bill seeks to address, really, because what we’re doing is removing the physical address aspect. It will still be the case that local government candidates will be available to be contacted. The alternative means in the bill provided—whether that’s email address or the other ones—doesn’t stop the possibility of abuse and threats online and so on. Of course, abuse and threats in an online environment are also problematic but in a slightly different way from those that relate to physical safety. So that’s another story for another day.

But, suffice to say, while the bill doesn’t attempt, really, to solve that problem, I think it’s always worth putting on record that MPs and policy makers don’t regard that kind of thing lightly. We should all continue to work as best we can to avoid or reduce that possibility as well, balancing, of course, against the need for free speech. To the extent that free speech is made in good faith and isn’t physically threatening or otherwise threatening—that’s something that we always must hold dear in our hearts as policy makers—that balance must be maintained.

Other points that were made in the select committee report I thought were helpful in relation to removing the discrimination if a person doesn’t have a home address or has an unstable home. I presume that means in the sense of moving around a lot, not necessarily that the house itself is unstable in a geological kind of way.

Simon Watts: Well, that could be the case.

CHRIS PENK: Well, my colleague and friend Simon Watts, who’s led the charge for us admirably on this side of the House, points out that could actually be the case, I suppose, actually—and this is the point at which I realise I shouldn’t be too light about the subject—for those who have a home address that might change due to the vagaries of the situation of movement—physical movement in the case of earthquakes; floods, fires, and famines, etc., and other “f” words that come to mind. You’ve got to be careful, of course, with “f” words that come to mind during a parliamentary debate, but I think I’m on safe ground with this one, so to speak.

And also, some candidates don’t have the option of providing a business address. There’s a degree of separation, I suppose, if a person’s home is their castle. We feel strongly that they shouldn’t have to put their home address for fear of intimidation and lack of privacy too. Then perhaps it’s a little bit better to be able to provide a business address. That’s probably fair enough as far as it goes, but, then again, if a person can be stalked or harassed at their business address rather than their home address, well, that’s not that great an improvement.

So I think, for that reason, it’s right that the select committee report has highlighted the fact that there is an inherent discrimination in the law currently whereby we might require the same thing of all candidates but with an unequal effect in terms of the effect that that has for people in the way that they might feel safe or otherwise.

I did think it was useful and actually really helpful that the report talks about the fact that candidates do need to be accountable. I think it’s entirely possible to make that point without saying “and therefore they should be subject to abuse.” Of course—well, hopefully—it’s obvious to state that no one thinks that they should be, but, nevertheless, there needs to be at least some measure of accountability, and that’s the reason, presumably, that the law has already and will remain in a position whereby some kind of contact address must be needed.

It did occur to me, actually, that requiring candidates to be accountable—excuse me: contactable; same thing, I guess, at a certain level—is in the interest of the candidate themselves. An example might be that if a candidates sign appears to breach local bylaws and they could be challenged on that, they might be given the opportunity, if they can be contacted, to make it compliant in some way—perhaps move it a bit down the road—rather than having it knocked down or removed by the council, let alone people who think that it’s a good idea to damage and deface signs. I don’t think we should have any sympathy with that kind of lawlessness, vigilante action, etc. I don’t have much patience with the idea that electors need the information about where a person lives because an accountable candidate is one who has nothing to hide. I think we’ve got to be careful about equating accountability with the idea that that means that some person’s got to somehow be out there and be available for abuse of a physical or other nature.

Again, just to be clear, we support the policy intent of the bill. It seems that the intent is matched in a way by removing those home and business addresses from the requirement, and something useful is happening in that space. As my colleague and friend Simon Watts has said, we do support the bill. There’s much more detail in it—believe it or not—than I’ve managed to get to in this time. The good news is of course that there will be other opportunities for contribution on the bill later tonight.

Simon Court: That’s right, Mr Penk.

CHRIS PENK: So with the enthusiastic acclaim and the encouragement that I’m receiving across the House, I will leave my contribution for now at that point. Thank you very much.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. First, may I begin by assuring the previous speaker—Chris Penk—that he did, in fact, appear at the Justice Committee; the finest select committee in the House.

The real issue here is that members of local and central government are facing increasing pressure and abuse from the public, standards of civility are declining, but, at the same time, in order to increase civility, increase democratic discussion, we need greater diversity. A lot of the abuse focuses pre-eminently upon those who we have least of and need most. This bill is a small but pertinent step towards protecting people at local government and giving them the anonymity as to their home addresses that we in this House already enjoy. I commend it to this House.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill and take a short call, because it is a bill that is urgently needed, and, hopefully, will pass quickly, and unanimously, it sounds like, in this House. I do want to, as others have done, congratulate the new Minister—Kieran McAnulty—and the Justice Committee on their diligent work. It is a bill that will make our democracy more accessible, more equal, more safe, as others have said, and as the Justice Committee report reflects, it’s one that people have called for, for safety reasons in particular, and I can relate.

I want us to remember—and I don’t know if everyone in the House would even know this, but Amnesty International, the year after I ran for the first time, which was in 2017, Amnesty International New Zealand actually named the online abuse of women in New Zealand as a key human rights issue in terms of impacting women’s right to freedom of speech and assembly and engagement in public life. In particular, their study finding women who engage in political life to be targets—and, in particular, women of colour and other marginalised backgrounds, trans women, and other women in the rainbow community to be targets—and to notice the connection between that online abuse and this bill. It was not the case that that only ever happened online, but that a proliferation of that type of attack against certain women, in particular cases, did then spill over into real life and made women physically and psychologically unsafe through real life interactions, threats.

So it is a bill that’s overdue. I wrote to the Prime Minister about this, calling for this change in April this year, and it is a change that’s proposed in my Electoral (Strengthening Democracy) Amendment Bill for both national level politics and local politics, but it’s a nice step to say that at least in local elections, which is the election that’s coming up this year, that we will, in fact, make some of those most vulnerable safer.

It’s the kind of law change that will mean that more [Audio issue] people are more likely to run. More communities will see their lived experiences represented without those types of barriers that are so ad hoc that we don’t even notice them, which this is. So to require a residential address or a business address means that somebody in their place of work or home will have to be exposed, not only to abuse but to that kind of interaction that they can’t control and we can. So that kind of benefit of incumbency, the benefit of being a member of an established parliamentary political party shouldn’t mean that we or people, candidates like us, have an advantage in putting our names forward. That’s not good for democracy; it never has been. And to say that the communities who don’t have a secure or stable residential or business address will kind of automatically, in fact, not even just for safety reasons, but automatically be excluded, seems antithetical to democracy.

I don’t think it’s only floods and earthquakes that mean that someone doesn’t have a stable address, as my colleague from the National Party Chris Penk just said. I think that sometimes it’s because they’re students, they’re renters—we still don’t have security of tenure in our rentals here—and they could, in fact, be homeless. We are living through an unprecedented housing crisis. So, in fact, we urgently need the voices of those who are in less stable living situations in local elections and in national elections. So actually removing those barriers is going to mean that we get some lived expertise that we urgently need.

So this is a good bill. I do commend it to the House and, hopefully, the change will be extended to protect and include more candidates at national level elections as well.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. So the problem this bill seems to solve is one that ACT supports the resolution of—that is, how to attract more high-quality candidates to stand in local government. This bill proposes to reduce one of the barriers to that by making people feel more confident that if they put up their hands to stand for a role as an elected member, that their home address—their residential address—will not have to be published on their campaign material. And ACT think that’s just fine because we’ve had the internet for a few years, we’ve had email for a few years, we’ve had social media not for quite as long, but there are many, many ways that candidates can communicate with voters about where they see their community of interest, the place that they live, the place that they have a business, the place that they employ people, the place they call home, and they can do that through digital means without having to publish it on every piece of campaign collateral. So that’s good.

Now, ACT supports this bill. What we’d also support is a better set of objectives for local government that meant that people would want to stand in their communities knowing they can make a difference in the lives of the people that they propose to represent. I’ll give you an example: currently, local government has an astonishing number of conflicting objectives, and you could take climate change, for example, a policy that central government have said we must reduce emissions in order to achieve targets that we’ve committed to in international treaties. And so you have local councils like Auckland Council committing to reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

Now, if you did any reasonable analysis, if you knew how to use a spreadsheet and you put the number of cars in, times the number of trips, times the number of people, times whether they use petrol or diesel or catch the bus or some of them might decide to ride a bike on a sunny day—there is no way Auckland Council can achieve its climate target of reducing emissions by 50 percent by 2030, which is handed down by central government. No way.

So every elected member who puts their hand up to stand for Auckland Council has bought into this nonsense. What they don’t realise is, while they might support reducing emissions, while they might believe that managing and mitigating our effects on the climate is important, they have been gifted an absolute shambles. It doesn’t matter what decision they take, it doesn’t matter what they do, they can never achieve that goal; it’s just not technically possible.

So the challenge for local government is actually that the policies and objectives handed down by central government are so conflicting with what communities want people in local government to do. What do I want for my elected members in West Auckland? Well, I would like to know that they will support local business districts and local businesses who employ people, who provide fantastic hospitality in town centres like Henderson and Te Atatū, that when I go to Henderson or Te Atatū or Te Atatū Peninsula to enjoy a night out or to visit a shop, there’ll be somewhere to park my car and that local councils and elected members won’t have voted to take out all the parking—because that’s what some well-intentioned but foolish council officer has recommended they do in order to conform to central government policy.

They won’t have Auckland Transport, for example, paint all the roads blue in our town centre of Henderson and put planter boxes there so that people who might be aged or vulnerable—women who are travelling to a shop to pick up some food, some takeaways at night—find they can’t park outside the store because some well-intentioned woke idiot at Auckland Council or Auckland Transport has put a planter box outside the shop. So if you want to attract better candidates to local government to stand in their communities and say, “I have policies that if I get elected are going to make a difference in your lives.”, whether it’s fostering local business, whether it’s enhancing water quality, whatever the policy is, then voters should be confident that the people they vote for can actually put this into effect.

But, of course, they’ve lost confidence. In Auckland, voter turnout is in the 30 percent. What that means is that the people who are elected to run our major city, which spends over $3 billion a year, most of which it takes in property taxes, only a small amount which it takes in fees from parking and so on—the people elected to run this organisation in a governance role, spending $3 billion to $3.5 billion a year, only 30 percent of people turn out to vote for them.

Now, if this Government seriously thinks that they’re going to get better outcomes from local government by passing this piece of legislation—well, ACT won’t object to it. We think people have the right to privacy and if you want to stand as a candidate, then you should have that right to privacy. But that’s not going to deliver better local government or better outcomes for communities.

What ACT says is that, actually, if we want better outcomes for local government, we need to set them objectives. How about to deliver more service land for housing? That seems like a laudable objective. The Resource Management Act makes it difficult. The Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act adds another handbrake. This is what ACT would do: we would say, look, if councils are going to be consenting all of this land for development, then they should share in the GST revenue—50 percent of the GST revenue—on every new home built. That’s ACT Party policy. We think that would incentivise local councils to say yes to housing development and to actually invest in the pipes and the networks that connect this land back to the networks, and allow new subdivisions, new homes to be built at affordable rates. That’s just one of ACT’s suggestions around how we get better local government.

If we set targets and we create incentives for local government like that, then that will encourage people who could say, “Look, I might run a small or a medium business,” or “I might be close to retirement and I might think I can add my governance experience running major corporations, or public sector entities, or I’ve been principal of a school, I think I’ve got something to contribute”—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! It is time for the member to come a little more closely to the bill. Simon Court.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So I just want to reflect on the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill report-back from the Justice Committee. Let’s talk about removing barriers to electoral participation and supporting equity. Let’s talk about the 20 percent of submitters who suggested that conversations about politics are becoming too toxic in some quarters.

Now, my first experience as a candidate for ACT New Zealand seeking a place in this Parliament, I sat on a podium debating two former members of Parliament and another candidate like me, new to the game of politics. In that debate, I was called a baby killer. In another debate, I was called a racist. In another debate, on the 2020 election campaign, I was told that if I didn’t stop climate change, I deserved to die. I was told by another person supporting a candidate at a debate, over a cup of tea and a scone afterwards, that they would do whatever it takes to stop people like me from being elected. So I have personally experienced the vitriol and the abuse as a candidate seeking public office.

Maureen Pugh: Who got the last laugh?

SIMON COURT: So I understand—and thank you, Maureen Pugh, I was elected and I haven’t seen that person since. But I’m sure if they do see me, we can have a polite discussion about public policy, because that’s what we’re for—that’s what we’re here for.

So, look, I think it’s important that we acknowledge some people feel that by putting themselves forward to be elected, they are putting themselves out in public and, while they might be prepared to do it, they’re exposing their families or the people who live with them to the risk of being targeted for abuse. That makes it more challenging. That’s a barrier that these people feel would be easier to overcome if they didn’t have to put their home address on it.

That’s why ACT supports the bill. But, let’s be honest, if we want more people to have confidence and to come out and vote in local elections, then we’re going to need to set better incentives. But ACT would encourage people to come out and vote this time around, and vote against candidates who stand for the three waters reform that this Government’s trying to push through. You should definitely get out and vote for those candidates who oppose three waters.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland) (remote): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you very much for this opportunity to make a brief contribution. It was an honour to be a member on the select committee listening to—or receiving—the 30 submissions in relation to this bill.

As a member who was previously a councillor for the Far North District Council, I remember my first campaign back in 2013. I was anxious about putting my face on a billboard and the possibility of it being defaced or tagged, but also when I found out that I had to put my home address on it, I was anxious about identifying my private residence, my home, my kāinga and exposing my whānau to that.

So as somebody who has experienced that nervousness, back in 2013, I am really pleased that we are able to make that change. I hope that nobody else has to have that feeling and that it might encourage more people to stand for the local body elections this year and do so more comfortably and more confidently. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Hon Michael Woodhouse—five-minute call.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, Willow-Jean Prime is one of a good number of members of this House that have had local government experience before they came to Parliament that I think will empathise with that reflection. I was asked earlier in the year whether I would be standing for Mayor of Dunedin, and my response to that was rather—

Anna Lorck: Oh, that’ll be a good idea!

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, it was rather uncomplimentary, potentially, to those who did. I think it involved a needle, hot, and my eye. And I didn’t intend it to be a criticism of the role; I think it’s an incredibly noble thing to do. And I’ve said many times that it’s my belief that local council work is actually harder than this place in some respects; not the least of which is because there’s the lack of that sort of collective caucus responsibility. And mayors often have to sort of manage 10 or 12 islands in an archipelago, rather than sort of the more coloured sides that we have.

But the other reason, I think, is because of the sort of level of opprobrium and occasional hostility that’s directed at councillors in things like planning hearings and so on. I think that’s highly inappropriate and I have a great deal of admiration for anyone who wants to stand for public office, but, in particular, those local councillors.

And so anything that we can do as a Parliament to remove barriers to people doing so, we should, and this is one such barrier. We’ve had some reflections from Simon Court. My first campaign in 2008, I actually chose a friend and campaign manager who lived a thousand kilometres away so that his address went on my billboards in Dunedin, and that was the response even then, when the risk was lower 14 years ago than it is now. I think we’ve seen even more attention paid to where local and central representatives live. I think that’s highly inappropriate and we should encourage people to stand by removing that barrier.

I thank those who submitted to what was a very short process, but the Justice Committee did a good job. The fact that there are no amendments to the bill doesn’t mean that that process wasn’t a necessary one. Others have said that it perhaps should have come to the House earlier and had a longer go. I’m sympathetic to that view, but we are here, we need to get it through, and I commend it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Ibrahim Omer—five-minute call, I’m assuming.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): It’s a pleasure to take a call—a short call—on the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. All the speakers have said it all. This bill removes all the requirements, the physical address on the campaign advertising, for the coming local government elections. The Local Electoral Act 2001 currently requires the candidates to include a physical address on the authorisation statement in advertising materials, such as billboards and fliers. This is problematic because it discourages a lot of good people to stand for local government. Instead, what can be done is people can use a physical or a residential or a business address or an email address or a post office or a phone number, even, when they stand.

There have been growing concerns that good candidates who publicise their home addresses could face physical harm or danger or risk, particularly women and minorities. So this means that we won’t have a lot of good people from our diverse minorities standing for local government office. We know that’s not going to be good for wherever our country is heading, because we’re increasingly becoming a multicultural nation and that needs to be elected in the people standing for office. This change will provide for a richer and more inclusive Aotearoa New Zealand that we all just love to see.

Finally, I applaud the Minister, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for bringing this bill to this House. It’s a good bill. It’s encouraged a lot of good people and honest people to stand for local government elections. I commend it to the House.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Very happy to rise in support of this bill. I think it will make a real difference to local democracy. I know Mr Woodhouse identified that many members of this House have a background previously in local government.

I tallied up: I’ve been a candidate in six local government election campaigns. So I know that, for many, this will make a huge difference because it’s something that we generally don’t have to do in this House. Most of the identifier is a business, a party headquarters, something like that; that’s not the case for local government. I commend the bill to the House.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I stand tonight to speak in support of the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill in its second reading. I was not part of the Justice Committee that considered this bill, but I have in the past—as has the member who’s just sat down, Tangi Utikere—had lived experience of campaigning, and I went to add them up. I think it’s been 10 or 11 public election campaigns—either local government, local trusts, or central government. So I do come with a little bit of experience in having to use those statements on the hoardings and advertising material. And, I think, as I looked through some of the information that came out of the select committee, it became obvious that this is quite a redundant requirement to have the physical home address of candidates, or a physical address where they can be contacted.

So the bill is, as we’ve heard tonight, pretty simple. It basically amends section 13 of the Act and requires that the authorisation statement that goes on the advertising material can be met now by any of the following: a residential or business address, an email address, a post office box, a phone number, or a link to a page on a website—provided it contains one of those other forms of contact. And I think the main reason that we have those authorisation statements is so that you can qualify as someone that is a person who can be contacted, that there is some way of reaching that person and justifying their authenticity as a candidate.

But I was impressed with some of the suggestions that came from the submitters, and they were pretty practical things, too, around those addresses, etc., and provided some alternatives to proving the home address for those candidates that did feel particularly vulnerable to some form of abuse or feedback that wasn’t particularly welcome. And one of those I thought probably deserves some consideration was how the local councils could facilitate those candidates a bit better by perhaps providing a generic email address that could be hosted by those councils. And there were some suggestions around that that were reported by the select committee and did look into how that could be managed by local councils and by the legislation. There were some challenges around that regarding the LGOIMA—the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act—requirement and whether they would be subject to that Act. There were some privacy situations that could be challenging, but it was also suggested that a council-hosted email address for candidates during the campaign period would also enjoy probably better cyber-security than many candidates may enjoy at home. So I think there are some suggestions that were well worth considering.

There were also potential changes that were highlighted in there around the report back into the inquiry from the 2019 local elections, where the committee, or the report back, agreed that there would be consideration of changes to the local government framework following two reviews that were to be undertaken—they were the Review into the Future for Local Government and an independent review of the parliamentary electoral law. And it was understood at that stage that the advertising framework would be considered as part of that. So, I guess, with the passing of this piece of legislation, that will now be a redundant aspect of that independent review.

But my eyes were drawn to a clause in there where they also included a desire for the Government and councils to support candidates with diverse backgrounds to stand in local elections. I guess this is where I think we start to get ourselves into some dangerous territory, because I don’t believe it’s the role of Government or councils to support candidates. I think the independence of candidates to stand is between them and any particular grouping that they may belong to, whether it be a political party or an interest group of any sort. Diverse backgrounds—you know, it’s entirely up to those groups, those special interest groups, to put forward their diverse backgrounds to stand in local elections. That is part of the democracy that I think we’re very blessed with in this country—that we don’t have Government or councils supporting particular candidates to stand.

I think there’s some generic, as I said, about the email addresses that can be provided, which is logistics support. But I think we venture into dangerous territory by suggesting that it goes any further than that.

I understand from submitters—and from the initial story, actually, that was publicised in multimedia circles around the country—with the vulnerability that some people felt by having to put their home address on to their advertising material, and understand the safety aspect of that, because we do want to encourage people to stand. Especially for local councils, people with a huge amount of community interest—often a lot of community involvement, over time, and they’re very valuable members of our community—to then move into that governance role.

But I think that we don’t want to lull people into a false sense of security by the passing of this legislation, because even though your physical address might not be public on the advertising material, when you’re standing for local body elections—and once you are successful—then you do become public property. So your protection, then, is entirely up to you. So the fact that your home address is not publicised on the advertising material, if you are an active member of your community, it is known anyway.

But I do draw the line where we have family members who become innocent, vulnerable bystanders in the process. But I’ve found—and it’s been my experience—that it’s not the campaigning where you find yourself most at risk; it’s the winning. Afterwards, you do become a target and vulnerable. So if you are unable to handle the campaign and the confrontation that you will often experience, then you are probably not going to handle winning the seat or the position that you so enthusiastically desire.

A small example is myself, being in this role and coming into Government at the time. The worst experience I had was being elected to a role here. Thankfully—and I pay a huge amount of credit to the security team that we have here, because they have amazing networks and they rose to the challenge of finding the senders of death threats that I received not so much to me but to my children and grandchildren—which is where I drew the line. I had the security team do an investigation, and it turns out that I was randomly chosen because of my surname because it matched the perp’s surname. Having a sleepover with his mate, as a couple of young teenagers, they decided that they would play a game. As their messages got more and more detailed, I got more and more concerned until a policeman in the UK visited their school and their parents—and from the letters of apology I got, I have no doubt that they will never play that game again.

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

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. I just want to acknowledge the previous speaker, Maureen Pugh, and that rather horrendous example; there are many like them across the country. I just want to acknowledge all political parties who are supporting this bill; it’s always good to have peace break out in Parliament late on a Tuesday night. Thanks to all members who have participated in such a constructive way to get this legislation through.

As previous speakers have said, this bill does a very simple thing: it allows candidates in local elections to use alternative addresses, like a PO Box or an email address, on their advertising material.

I just want to note a couple of examples in my electorate of Nelson, not so much for candidates but for people in elected local government roles who have had their physical addresses published and sometimes also cellphone numbers, which may not seem like a big deal but has led to them receiving abuse through their personal cellphones. These are the kinds of things that I’m pleased that this Parliament is coming together tonight to change so that particularly women, people from migrant and ethnically diverse backgrounds, other diverse backgrounds will feel safer to participate in local government campaigns.

On that note, this is an excellent bill, and I commend it to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): In accordance with the determination of the Business Committee, this bill is set down for committee stage forthwith.

In Committee

Clauses 1 to 4

TANGI UTIKERE (Junior Whip—Labour): Point of order.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Half a second, please, Tangi. Members, the House is in committee on the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. I remind members that they’re able to participate remotely. If you’re on Zoom and want to take a call, please type “call” into the chat. You should also use the chat if you wish to raise a point of order. If we receive any new tabled amendments, I’ll advise the members so they can refresh the House papers page to see the amendment. Finally, it would be helpful for members to ask multiple questions, if they have them, of the member in charge of the bill. Members, we come first to clause 1.

TANGI UTIKERE (Junior Whip—Labour): Point of order. I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Members, leave has been sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none. The question is that clauses 1 to 4 stand part.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Of course I’m going to give it a go. I mentioned it in my speech around some of the alternatives to how we could help support people to feel safe in their role as a candidate in the local body elections. One of the suggestions actually came from a submitter and that was around councils, perhaps, providing those generic temporary email addresses as a point of contact.

I just wondered, did the committee seriously consider that or is the Associate Minister the Hon Kieran McAnulty aware of any work that may be done in that regard? Because if it is a real problem for people who don’t have access to a physical address or that are challenged by having cybersecurity issues or email addresses etc.—even for people who live in places like I do that have dodgy cellphone reception and internet connections—a generic email address might be the solution that local bodies could provide for candidates.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Associate Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for her question. This is actually something that officials advised the select committee on. There’s actually nothing preventing councils deciding to provide a generic email address to candidates if they so choose in regards to those who may not have access to emails. Of course, the legislation considers a number of options that may suit them.

Clauses 1 to 4 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The committee has considered the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

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

Third Reading

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Associate Minister of Local Government) on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The bill amends the Local Electoral Act 2001 to address concerns around candidate safety. It does this by loosening the requirement that candidates attach either their residential or business address to electoral advertising, allowing email addresses, PO boxes, phone numbers, or links to an internet page to be used instead.

We now come to the end of the legislative process for this short but sensible bill. It is the end of the work for us here in the House today, but it is just the beginning of the work that this bill is going to do. In a few short weeks, on 15 July, nominations for the local elections will officially open. Across the country, thousands of candidates will put their names forward to stand for their local council. Why do they do this? Candidates will have all sorts of reasons for standing for council, but I believe there are some common threads that connect them. They know that local government is at the heart of serving Aotearoa’s communities. And in order to best serve Aotearoa’s communities, they know we need voices on council that reflect the diversity of our communities. Local democracy thrives when a broad range of individuals who bring different perspectives and experiences stand for public office in a contest of ideas. Candidates want to make a difference in their community, and they believe that they have the skills to make that difference.

These are noble goals, but not all of politics is noble. I think I can be fairly sure when I say that opening themselves and their families up for opportunistic abuse and harassment is not one of the reasons they put their names forward for council. Being the subject of stalking or having anonymous hate mail hand delivered to their house, these are not the reasons that people stand for council. Those activities serve no good purpose in our free and democratic society. Some people will say that this is, unfortunately, one of the consequences of standing for public office. “You are a public figure.”, they may say, and with that comes a need for transparency. And that may be true, but we’re dealing with more than a theoretical concept. We know that too much transparency can be harmful to people’s privacy, it can be harmful to people’s safety. This bill is about balancing privacy and transparency.

I thank the other parties in this House for agreeing to move this bill through all stages this evening, and I thank them for the support. I imagine that those candidates that are due to announce their candidacies for the local body elections will thank this House for supporting this move that will ensure or at least improve their safety. I commend this bill to the House.

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

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to rise on the third reading of the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. As the Minister has just articulated, the National Party will be supporting this bill. That is for three key reasons, and I want to just reinforce those points, because they are important.

The bill addresses a key aspect in regards to privacy of candidates putting themselves forward for the local government electoral process, a process which is absolutely critical and fundamental in terms of our local democracy and very much important in terms of the functioning of our local communities. And I think removing the barriers which candidates may perceive, or actually face, in reality, as we’ve heard from other members in other speeches leading up to this, is very important, and it’s a principle that National support. We support it because we absolutely want to see the increased participation, at a local government level, increasing of the capability and competence of individuals with life experience and background that will bring value to this role, a role which National absolutely see as essential in terms of the functioning of our broader country.

The other aspect in regards to the bill is around protection, and, in particular, it has been highlighted in terms of the ability of not providing or sharing one’s residential or business address. A number of stakeholders—or actually, a number of people can be impacted by this, but in particular, women are a key group that have noted concerns. I’ve had a number of emails in regards to this, in terms of candidates that have been complementary in terms of the fact that we are progressing this bill through the House, because those barriers are real, and they shouldn’t be a consideration when anyone puts their name forward for this role.

The last aspect is in regards to the local government elections, which will obviously occur in October, and that process will kick off in July. I want to wish all those candidates who are participating in this process the very best. There is going to be, and there normally is, a churn of about one third of our mayors across the country that retire. I want to acknowledge those mayors across the country who have made significant contributions in public service to their communities. Your efforts and your contribution is appreciated. We acknowledge how challenging and difficult those roles are at many times, and the consequences and impacts that has on both your family and whānau, and that is acknowledged and appreciated by those in this House.

So that’s pretty much all I’m going to cover this evening. National will be supporting this bill and we’ll be looking forward to seeing it passing through the House this evening.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): It’s a privilege to take a call on the third and final reading of the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. It’s great to see increasing transparency, greater access to democracy, and promoting a far more diverse representation at our local government level by giving people that security in not having their private or their home address. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I must say, I have to give the Minister who moved the third reading credit for being able to speak at all, actually, given that he broke a world record for doing just that over the weekend. So clearly that voice box of Minister McAnulty is certainly a robust one.

This is an important issue, as both the Minister and my friend and colleague Simon Watts has said. It’s hard to know whether or not anybody would be completely put off by the need to disclose a home address on advertising, but for those who might be wavering, it could be one of those sort of negative aspects. I join with the Minister in encouraging those people who are considering putting their hands up to do so when registrations open on 15 July. It is a tremendously rewarding experience despite the rollercoaster and the slings and arrows that occasionally come the way of elected representatives. But this will remove a barrier. It’ll likely keep people a bit safer than they otherwise are on the campaign trail. I certainly condemn anybody that would seek to abuse or threaten in the way that Maureen Pugh described. I think that was a very sobering story. This will be just one small way in which we can make sure that our robust democracy is also safe. I commend the bill.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): It’s a pleasure to take a call on the third and final reading of the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. I think we’re all hoping to hear a campaign announcement from the honourable member opposite, Mr Woodhouse, but unfortunately we seem to have missed a trick tonight, so—it would have been a great opportunity.

This is an excellent bill. As many speakers tonight have said, it’s a very straightforward, simple bill that will, hopefully, make it much easier for members of the public to put their names forward for local government. As others have said, we really do encourage people to put themselves forward. It’s critical we have good people leading our local councils and territorial authorities for the next three years. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be speaking for the second time on the electoral law that we need urgently. It is reflected in Green Party policy, and it’s reflected in my strengthening democracy member’s bill, so we’re very proud and relieved to have the Government adopt this change. We hope that it will be extended to general elections, to national level politics, because of all the safety issues that others have touched upon: the issues that impact women, marginalised community members like members of the rainbow community, disabled candidates, and candidates of colour.

We know that online abuse is a major and named and silencing human rights issue in New Zealand, and we know that it leads, so to speak, into people’s real lives if their addresses, their places of work, their homes are able to be identified. We know that this discourages, in particular, members of the most targeted communities from running and participating in democracy. And something that the committee noted is that it also means that those without a stable home or work address can’t run and we need those lived experiences in our politics. This is a good change. It will make democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand more inclusive, more equal, and more diverse, so I do commend the bill to the House.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, look, in the House tonight, we’ve canvassed most of the problems that this bill’s trying to solve.

ACT supports this bill. We think it’s good idea to give people who want to stand for elected office the ability to campaign without having to put particularly their family under stress or give them any sense of anxiety that they’ve had to publish the address of their family home on a piece of campaign advertising material like a billboard or a DLE flyer or a piece of mail, for example.

But I just want to draw attention to the comments from the last speaker, the member Golriz Ghahraman, who suggested that the protection afforded by this piece of legislation—which means that people standing as candidates don’t need to share their home address—should be afforded to candidates in the general election.

Now, some of those people who’ve been members of Parliament for longer than I, and stood as candidates for longer than I, might have thought, actually, that problem was already solved and that political parties are required—and their candidates are required—to identify the authorising statement being from their party, and that’s most likely party head office or, for some, a candidate’s electoral office. So I just wanted to put any concern that people standing in the general election might have as a result of that member Golriz Ghahraman’s comments, which were factually incorrect.

Now, let’s get back to the bill. The ACT Party supports the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill because it gives people standing for local government the opportunity to campaign without the concern that their home address might be published. But of course, it’s not just whether your address is published or not that’s going to concern candidates in the upcoming local government elections. There are far more pressing issues than about whether someone can see your address on a piece of paper.

How about New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA), through the Government’s Vote Transport, has reduced the amount of money that it’s allocating to local roads? Maybe candidates want to campaign on that. Maybe they’ll have an opinion on that, and maybe people in their local communities will say, “That’s terrible. How would a Government that professes to care so much, reduce the budgets for local roads?”

Like they have for Porirua City Council, for example, with their mayor, Anita Baker—who was on the record just a couple of weeks ago saying, “Crikey, you look at NZTA.” You could have basically given her a heart attack when she found out they’d spent $337,000 opening Transmission Gully and reduced the spend on Porirua’s local roads by 7 percent the same year. But that’s this kind, caring Labour Government for you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! It’s time for the member to come back to the bill.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So if I was a candidate standing in the local elections this year, I would be seeking to find out what were the concerns of my community and then reflect on those and offer policy solutions that solve real problems. Because that’s how you get people to support you.

It turns out that a lot of people will support public policy and candidates that offer to solve real problems, like how to fix three waters. Well, you spend more money on pipes; you spend more money on fixing three waters. How to reduce congestion? You build more roads and you add capacity. Who knew? How to foster central and local business districts? Don’t take out their parking and put planter boxes where cars need to park. So those are all things for people standing in the local government elections to think about when they’re putting their hand up to be candidates.

But I just want to reflect on this sense that we live in an era of heightened anxiety; of people concerned about expressing their political views, and when they do, they might get it a bit wrong and maybe their leader will tell them to take down the tweet or remove the post—or maybe someone else will comment on it and tell them where to jump or that they really feel so strongly about a position that a candidate’s taken that they threaten harm and so on.

Well, look, when it comes to threats—when it comes to incitement—there are already rules around that. That’s one of the great things about living in New Zealand; that we have a police force who will respond to the threats against people, real crimes, to the best of their ability, given the constraints this Government’s put upon them.

But back to the bill, the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. The ACT Party supports it because we think it will be very helpful for people who want to stand as candidates in local government elections coming up soon—in just a few months’ time—that they want to have the confidence that when they put their name down and when they put up their hoardings and when they put a flyer in the letterbox, their home address isn’t on it.

So the ACT Party supports that and we’ll be voting for this bill when it comes time. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland) (remote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a very short contribution. I want to congratulate and thank the Associate Minister of Local Government, the Hon Kieran McAnulty, for ushering this bill, the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill, through these final stages. I want to thank all of the parties, who worked collectively and in an urgent way to get this processed in time for the local body elections. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Chris Penk—five-minute call.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Like a couple of others in the House, I’ve already had the opportunity to speak on this bill tonight at a previous reading, so I’ll do so somewhat briefly. I understand that we might have the opportunity to pass it into law this very evening, so that’s very exciting, isn’t it? You can tell the level of excitement that I certainly have about it all.

I think it’s worth just summarising where we’ve got to with the debate at this, the third reading. A couple of different trade-offs and balancing acts have been made. I think it’s possible on the one hand to say that we want to protect the privacy and the safety and the security of the candidate with the idea that the candidate should be able to be contacted. There’s an element of accountability for that, but I think more so it’s contactability. I think it’s possible to balance those, and certainly that’s the effort that the bill is making.

Another balancing act, I suppose we could say, is in relation to the way the bill’s being passed. On the one hand, it would have been good in many ways if we’d had longer to consider the bill and for a longer select committee process, but then again, on the other, it is important that these laws are passed into effect this week, actually, for the reasons that have been outlined I think by others in terms of the opening of nominations for the local government election period. So notwithstanding that, all things being equal, it’s better to have a longer process than a short.

It is a short bill itself. The bill itself is quite narrow in its scope. We’ve talked about the fact that it’s necessary to pass it if it’s to be meaningful for this round of local government elections. So, for those reasons, we’ve supported the process in that sense as well.

Others have spoken about the need for an equitable approach whereby we don’t have some candidates feeling able to put themselves forward and some not, according to their personal circumstances of where they live, or whether or not they live alone. Of course, it might be that living alone is a basis on which a person will feel vulnerable, but, of course, equally, others might not wish to put themselves forward because they are living with family members or others who wouldn’t appreciate being made a target, or a potential target, by the operation of the law as it currently stands requiring that.

So whether or not we’ve got the balance exactly right in terms of a PO Box or an email or a website address—and those various options are all available—I suppose this is, potentially, a piece of ongoing work. It’s is something that we should maybe consider into the future, along with the point that was made by the select committee, actually, in their diligent consideration—of which I may or may not have been a part—which is the question of whether to remove an authorisation statement completely. They do exist for a reason, but we’ve reduced it almost to the point of meaninglessness, I suppose, where we allow someone simply to have a PO Box and, therefore, to not necessarily be accountable in the sense of being truly contactable, should that be needed. Anyway, that’s a story for another day.

So I’ve joined with others already and confirm now at the conclusion of my speech that in this, the third reading, we do commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Shanan Halbert—five minutes.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would like to commend this bill to the House.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Madam Speaker, I too commend this bill to the House.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Crikey! I didn’t even have time to write all that down, it happened so quickly! Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Third reading of this bill and, as you can see, everyone is enthusiastic to make sure that it does pass tonight.

The reason for that is because we do want it to be in time for the local body elections this year, which open on 15 July—so this is being timed so that we can ensure that this one barrier may be removed in time for this year’s elections and that that may encourage more participation in the local body elections. It has been through a shortened select committee process for that very reason.

One of the reasons that people do like to see an authorisation statement with an address on it is because a lot of people find it important to make sure that their local body representatives actually do live in the area in which they’re standing. So that is something that I think may be dealt with during their own individual campaigns.

Standing for local government and serving your community in that way—it’s an absolute honour and a huge learning curve. It’s something that I had 15 years of absolute enjoyment in doing, it’s the coalface of your community, and it’s a very responsive place to be, especially in small, rural communities. I’m not so sure that the same applies in some of the big metro councils.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those that have served in that role over the year and thank those that will be standing down at these local body elections. I pay particular tribute to one of the mayors on the West Coast: Bruce Smith, who is standing down this year. He’s enjoyed a trial over the last few months in his challenge with personal health issues. Bruce, you’ve been an absolute champion for your community. Every mayor in the country, I’m sure, knows your name. He has held a huge role in raising awareness of issues through his social media fetish. He’s been an absolute champion for his community, he’s been a champion for the West Coast, and I wish you well, sir, in your retirement.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As referenced in my previous contribution, I think this will make a huge difference to communities as we head into the next set of local government elections. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.