Tuesday, 18 October 2022

TUESDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2022

TUESDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

karakia/prayers

karakia/prayers

SPEAKER: In celebration of Korean Language Week, I have asked Melissa Lee to say the prayer in Korean.

MELISSA LEE (National): 전지전능하신 하나님, 저희들에게 내려주신 축복을 감사드 리옵니다. 저희들의 모든 사적이익을 뒤로하고, 국왕님을 인지하며, 저희 의원들이 일을 함에 있어 뉴질랜드의 평화와 번영을 위해, 현명하고, 정의롭고, 자비로우며 겸손하게 행할 수 있도록 주님께서 인도하여 주시옵소서. 아멘.

Message from governor-general

Plain Language Bill

SPEAKER: Members, I have received a message from Her Excellency the Governor-General. It reads as follows:

CINDY KIRO, GOVERNOR-GENERAL

The Governor-General, on behalf of His Majesty, consents to the passage of the Plain Language Bill to the extent that it affects the rights and prerogatives of the Crown.

Wellington, 3 October 2022.

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

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

SPEAKER: Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Katrina Scott requesting that the House allow applicants for paid parental leave to combine hours worked as self-employed with employment hours in order to meet the criteria

petition of Make It 16 requesting that the House extend the voting age to 16 for both local and general elections

petition of the Postal Workers Union of Aotearoa requesting that the House inquire into NZ Post’s mail service to review the reliability of delivery and whether the service needs more funding

petition of Jessie Phillips requesting that the House urge the Government to amend the Holidays Act 2003 to introduce at least 7 days of paid menstrual leave per year.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered reports, and I can let the House know that there are 30 of them.

CLERK:

Financial statements of the Government for the year ended 30 June 2022

report in relation to selected non-departmental appropriations for the year ended 30 June 2022 by the Prime Minister; the Minister for Emergency Management; the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation; Vote Business, Science, and Innovation

2022 annual reports of the:

Gambling Commission

AgResearch

Environmental Science and Research

GNS Science

NIWA

Plant and Food Research

Animal Control Products, trading as Orillion

Reserve Bank of New Zealand

Landcare Research – Manaaki Whenua

New Zealand Forest Research Institute

Licensing Authority of Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers

Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority

City Rail Link Ltd

Ministry of Defence

Pike River Recovery Agency

Serious Fraud Office

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

National Emergency Management Agency

Inland Revenue

Land Information New Zealand

Ministry for Women

Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment

Financial Market Authority KiwiSaver Annual Report 2022

Land Information New Zealand Strategic Intentions 2023-27

Ministry of Education 2021 Ngā Ara o te Mātauranga - the pathways of education

New Zealand’s environment reporting series: Our marine environment 2022.

SPEAKER: I present the 2021-22 annual report of the Controller and Auditor-General. I also present the following reports of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment:

annual report for the year ended 30 June 2022

Estimate of environmental expenditure 2019/20: Method and results, and

Environmental reporting, research and investment: Do we know if we’re making a difference?

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 Fair Pay Agreements Bill

report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Natural Hazards Insurance Bill

reports of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the:

briefing on disarmament, and

International treaty examination of the Framework Agreement Between the Government of New Zealand and the Government of the United States of America on Cooperation in Aeronautics and the Exploration and Use of Airspace and Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes, together with the NIA

reports of the Justice Committee on the:

Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill, and

report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on the Arms (Firearms Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill (No 2)

report of the Māori Affairs Committee on the Te Rohe o Rongokako Joint Redress Bill

reports of the Petitions Committee on the:

petition of Bob McCoskrie, and

petition of Sunita Jeram

report of the Primary Production Committee on the petition of Marianne Macdonald

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the examination of COVID-19 orders presented on 15 September 2022, and

reports of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the:

briefing on implications of driver safety from advanced driver-assistance systems,

petition of A. O’Sullivan

petition of Andrew Crisp, and

petition of Christopher MacDonald.

SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading. The briefings, the report of the Regulations Review Committee, and the treaty are all set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK: Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: That bill is set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Government’s targeted measures to support households and businesses during global economic volatility such as boosting the incomes of low-income families, seniors and students; removing fuel excise duty and instituting half-price public transport fares until January 2023; and instituting payments like the winter energy payment, the Best Start payment, and, of course, the cost of living payment. This builds on work to address underlying causes of high prices such as action taken on food prices, regulating the fuel market, and building materials. This sits in stark contrast to some other policies I’ve seen promoted in this House which would make inflation worse.

Christopher Luxon: Does she now accept that, at 7.2 percent, inflation has a firm grip on our economy, and that her Government’s failure to take the cost of living crisis seriously is crushing everyday Kiwis?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: In answer to the first part of the question, no. In answer to the second part of the question, the impact on families is exactly why we have brought in the measures that I outlined in my primary question. We have had our mind to making sure that we are particularly focused on those who are bearing the brunt of the cost of living impacts, of overseas supply chain pressures, and the war in Ukraine—unlike the proposals posed by that party, which we know because we’ve seen a live experiment of what would happen when such proposals are implemented, and the impact on the economy is very, very clear.

Christopher Luxon: Oh my goodness. How can Kiwis possibly get ahead under her Government when the cost of living is continuing to rise more than twice as fast as wages?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I contest what the member has claimed, because the Stats New Zealand quarterly employment survey shows that total gross earnings were up 7.9 percent over the past year. I also contest that on the basis that, since we have been a Government—with the exception of 2022—wages have outpaced inflation. The reason I also reject the premise of the question is because, as a Government, for five years, we have focused on reducing the cost of living for New Zealanders; it has not just been during the war in Ukraine and through the supply chain constraints we’ve seen caused by COVID. We’ve increased the minimum wage. We’ve seen more than 100,000 families, on average, $175 a week better off. This Government finally reversed the impacts of the 1990 benefit cuts. We increased the family tax credit and accommodation supplement. We introduced the winter energy payment and Best Start payment—1,000 more families will receive childcare assistance. We introduced free healthy lunches in schools and deliver more than a million of them a week. We’ve reduced the education costs for parents by removing the school donation policy. We’ve supported parents with house costs by making it free for under-14s to go to the doctor. Ours has been a consistent effort across five years and, in contrast, is not down to one policy—the National policy: tax cuts for the wealthy.

Christopher Luxon: With inflation above target for 18 straight months, and the Government spending $1 billion a week more than when she took office, how can Kiwis have any confidence in this Government’s ability to manage the economy?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because, when you look at the last economic crisis that we faced—the global financial crisis (GFC)—we have not only demonstrated an ability to protect New Zealanders from the worst impacts of a crisis, we have done it whilst keeping debt lower than many other countries have, comparable to during the phase of the GFC. We have kept spending on track to come back to 30 percent, relative to GDP, all at the same time while having fewer children in poverty—145,000 fewer in hardship than during the GFC. That is why New Zealanders can have confidence.

Christopher Luxon: Does she accept that as long as her Government fails to rein in inflation, interest rates on every Kiwi mortgage will continue to rise, crushing families with hundreds of dollars a week in extra interest payments?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, the member across the aisle clearly just takes no account of what is going on globally. New Zealand is one of the few countries in the OECD where we have seen inflation peak and—yes—start to come away. The OECD total is at 10.3 percent, the United Kingdom is at 9.9 percent, the United States is at 8.2 percent, and the euro is at 9.1 percent. But I should probably have already known he doesn’t take into account the international news, given he has taken no reflection on what’s happened in the UK when they implemented a very similar programme of debt-funded tax cuts.

David Seymour: If New Zealanders’ inflation and cost of living crisis is caused by overseas factors, then why is it that over the last three months, tradable inflation from overseas has fallen and non-tradable inflation here at home has just risen?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yet when you factor in, for instance, non-tradable construction, 90 percent of that is made up by imported goods. So that does not take that, for instance, into account.

Christopher Luxon: Why is the Government proposing an agricultural emissions plan that could reduce sheep and beef farming by 20 percent while increasing emissions overseas as production shifts to less efficient countries?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Three parts to that question; I’ll answer all of them. The first reason that we are putting in place a programme to ensure that agricultural emissions are addressed as part of our emissions profile is because it’s the only sector currently excluded and it makes up almost half of our emissions, and we need to make sure that we do our bit to ensure that all sectors in New Zealand are addressing the contribution to climate change. The second point, on the impacts on beef and lamb: the impacts on beef and lamb, by the consultation that we have put out, are the same as what they were by the sector’s proposals, He Waka Eke Noa. We recognise that we need to do some work with the sector, and that’s what we’ve asked that the consultation process is used to do, but it is disingenuous to propose that what the Government has put out in consultation is different to what the sector proposed. Thirdly, on emission leakage—I do want to answer every part because I’m genuine in wanting to see an outcome that everyone in this House can support. The third part, on emissions leakage: the commission itself has said that it’s “highly uncertain but appears [that emission leakage] to be low for agriculture … in the near term”.

Christopher Luxon: What advice has she received on the number of people who’ll be forced to abandon New Zealand’s rural communities as a result of the Government’s plan to send production overseas?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, this is where we have to make sure that we are focused equally, once we cover all sectors that contribute to emissions, that we also look for the opportunity to lift the value of those products as a result. The member cannot go out there and argue that we need to open more export opportunities without acknowledging that consumers are demanding sustainable products. Beef + Lamb themselves undertook a survey which found that large parts of our export market would be willing to pay a 20 percent premium if they knew the products were sustainable. This is the industry’s own research. We have to make sure that we’re walking the talk.

Christopher Luxon: Why should New Zealand farmers trust this Government when for the last five years it’s piled on regulation after regulation while portraying them as villains, instead of backing them as the most carbon-efficient and most productive farmers in the world?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Unlike the member, I’m not going to ignore the fact that our food producers are at the brunt of climate change and severe weather events. The food inflation that we’re just seeing—we know severe weather events have affected crops in New Zealand. It’s affecting our farmers too. We cannot ignore climate change. We cannot sit by and watch our consumers go elsewhere. We can do both, and I am absolutely confident that in working with our primary producers, we will find a solution. I ask the member to consider being part of the solution.

Dr Gaurav Sharma: Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Whare. Will the Prime Minister apologise, just like she did for the Dawn Raids, to the Sikh community in Hamilton and across the country for the recent immigration raid at the Sikh gurudwara in Hamilton, where Immigration New Zealand staff harassed senior citizens as well as young children for over an hour and entered the gurudwara with shoes and without a head covering, and unveiled the sacred book Guru Granth Sahib, despite being specifically told what the tikanga at the gurudwara was?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’d say that I am unable to give a direct answer on that without knowing in more detail what has occurred under these circumstances. I’m happy to go away and look at what has occurred.

Dr Gaurav Sharma: What does the Prime Minister say to the people of New Zealand, and specifically to the people of Hamilton West electorate, where the failed Te Pūkenga tertiary institute is located, regarding which the Tertiary Education Commission’s latest report says that its governance, its operating model, and business case are high risk and low confidence?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I reject the premise of the question.

Hon Michael Wood: Can the Prime Minister confirm that Immigration New Zealand has operational independence to investigate any complaints of serious migrant exploitation and labour abuses?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Absolutely, and we will defend that right vigorously.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mr Speaker. What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Stats New Zealand today reported that the Consumers Price Index was 2.2 percent in the September quarter, taking the annual inflation rate to 7.2 percent, down from 7.3 percent in the previous quarter for an annual rate. This drop is not as much as economists had been predicting. High construction and housing costs and rates drove the annual figure, while quarterly numbers were affected by spikes in food and the cost of international travel. As I’ve said previously in this House, we recognise that this is a tough period for many households and businesses, and that is why we have provided significant targeted support and will continue to provide that to help New Zealanders weather these conditions. Inflation continues to be a global challenge, with the UK’s inflation rate near 10 percent and projected to rise considerably higher, the US at 8.2 percent, and Australia projected to be at 7.75 percent by the end of the year. New Zealand is in fact the 10th lowest in the 38-nation OECD statistics. Supply constraints are easing, including the approval of more than 60,000 positions for overseas recruitment to help address workforce pressures.

Barbara Edmonds: What reports has he seen on the state of the Government’s books?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: For the year to the end of June, the operating balance before gains and losses, the OBEGAL deficit, was $9.7 billion—around half of the $19 billion forecast in the Budget in 2022 in May. Net debt ended the year at 17.2 percent of GDP, in line with Budget forecasts, and this is one of the lowest levels in the OECD and well below the Government’s debt ceiling of 30 percent, ensuring we are well positioned to weather future economic shocks. New Zealand is in a strong fiscal position as we face a number of global challenges.

Barbara Edmonds: What else did the report say on the impact of the economy on the Government’s books?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The economy performed well in the year to June 2022 due to the Government’s strong health response to the Delta and Omicron outbreaks. Core Crown revenue was 4.1 percent ahead of forecast at $117.5 billion as the strong economic recovery boosted business results, led to more people in work, which contributed to that higher tax revenue. Core Crown expenses were 2.2 percent below forecast as our successful COVID response meant allocated pandemic-related spending was not required in full. Some of those expenses, like ongoing investment in protections such as therapeutics and vaccines, will shift into the current fiscal year.

Question No. 3—Finance

3. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Has he seen a report by ASB that “soaring living costs are expected to add roughly $110 per week to household budgets over the next 12 months”; if so, does he expect wages will keep up with that increase in the cost of living?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first part of the question, yes, I have seen that report. In answer to the second part of the question, I note that it is the view of the authors of that report that “households in general should have sufficient funds to pay the bills and potentially increase consumer spending.” While that may turn out to be the case, I’m keenly aware of the situation of many households for whom that has not been the case. That’s why the Government has targeted support to those on lower and middle income earnings, while making sure that spending remains balanced and carefully targeted.

Nicola Willis: How are New Zealanders supposed to get ahead under Labour, when, for 18 months now, inflation has crushed wage growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member will be well aware that we have seen the Quarterly Employment Survey—annual median wages show that it’s close to growth at 8 percent. It is a difficult time for many New Zealanders; that’s why this Government has stood beside them by making sure that we lower fuel excise duty, by halving the cost of public transport, by lifting the family tax credit, by making sure we increased childcare assistance, by lifting benefits, and by lifting the minimum wage. Many of those things, the Opposition has opposed.

Nicola Willis: Who is right, the Minister of Finance, who continues to claim Kiwis’ wages are keeping up with prices, or the Parliamentary Library that confirms real wages fell 3.7 percent in the past year, as calculated in the real wage index?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It was not me that I was using as an example there; it was, in fact, the Quarterly Employment Survey.

Nicola Willis: Can he confirm domestic non-tradable inflation is now the highest since records began?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I can confirm that for non-tradable inflation. What the member consistently does, though, is insert the word “domestic” at the front of that, and I do note that in today’s release by Statistics New Zealand, they included the comment at the end of their description of non-tradables saying, “However, the input materials of these goods and services can be influenced by foreign competition”. As the Prime Minister’s already indicated, if we take construction costs as one example of that, we can see up to 90 percent of that being caused by offshore things.

Nicola Willis: What is his explanation for New Zealand vegetable prices rocketing up 24 percent in the past three months alone, the largest quarterly rise since the series began?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: A number of reasons for that, but if I can quote Sharon Zollner, the ANZ chief economist, “Weather has been a big part of [that], particularly in fruit and vegetables. We had an extremely wet July and August”. This was similarly reinforced by Steve Mills, the Countdown commercial director. That is an exceptionally large quarterly increase; New Zealanders will be feeling that. The member might like to think about her party’s policies with respect to climate change. Actually, on this side of the House, we want to do something about the causes of those price rises.

Nicola Willis: What does he say to Deb, who writes, “I couldn’t afford to buy washing powder today; clothes will be just washed in water.”, and how can the New Zealand public continue to have confidence in his economic management when he has failed to rein in the highest period of inflation in a decade?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would say to that person is what I say to all New Zealanders, that this Government has supported New Zealanders through the toughest times of COVID, and we continue to support low and middle income New Zealanders through lifting main benefits, though lifting the family tax credit, through lifting the minimum wage, through supporting New Zealanders in everyday life, and that member’s policy is to cut taxes for the highest income earners. Liz Truss has dropped it; it’s time for that member to drop it.

Question No. 4—Housing

4. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister of Housing: What actions has the Government taken recently to address the housing infrastructure shortage?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): We have announced the second tranche of our Infrastructure Acceleration Fund (IAF) for housing infrastructure projects: $192 million will fund critical infrastructure projects in our regional towns and cities, unlocking up to 11,500 new homes. These investments provide the critical infrastructure for new housing developments over the next 10 to 15 years, including public, affordable, market, and papa kāinga housing, while also improving our climate resilience.

Ginny Andersen: What infrastructure does this funding enable in the mighty Hutt Valley?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The RiverLink and Valley Floor intensification project will receive $98.9 million for major stormwater upgrades, including approximately 2 kilometres of new stormwater pipeline, pumping stations, and outfalls. As part of a wider network response, Hutt City Council believes the infrastructure will unlock development and provide capacity for around 3,500 new homes.

Angie Warren-Clark: What other areas are set to benefit from the second announcement of the IAF—Infrastructure Acceleration Fund?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Eight projects were approved for funding for infrastructure in the second round of funding, spread across the country: $36 million to support the intensification of Nelson’s central city, $24 million for three waters infrastructure in Lake Hāwea, $18.5 million investment in Hastings will improve road access and resolve capacity constraints in the district’s waste-water network, $5.7 million for transport and three waters projects in Rangiora, $1.2 million in Motueka for stormwater upgrades and a new roundabout that will enable housing, and $1.9 million for an extension of Carson Street in the Whanganui suburb of Castlecliff.

Angie Warren-Clark: What is the average cost per dwelling for this tranche of IAF projects?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The amount of funding per dwelling ranges from $4,385 per dwelling in the Waimakariri district to $35,512 in Nelson city. The average funding per dwelling is $16,744. The lesson here is that a Government-determined cost per dwelling is not the right approach; instead, a more nuanced approach that takes into account the specifics of the location and the project is required.

Angie Warren-Clark: When will this IAF funding have an impact?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The IAF is a medium-term intervention that is funding core infrastructure works across the country that will enable housing. With funding agreements now signed, we will see physical works commence in the very near future. For example, New Plymouth will commence over the coming weeks, and Ōmokoroa by the end of this year.

Angie Warren-Clark: What feedback has she seen on tranche two of the IAF?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Nelson’s outgoing mayor, Rachel Reese, said that this was a game-changer for Nelson: “This grant funding is a massive financial saving to Nelson and will have a positive impact on our City Centre for generations to come.” In Hastings, Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst said the funding will help address the region’s housing shortage: “This investment unlocks further capability to address what is a long-term issue, and we are grateful for the Government’s ongoing commitment and partnership to enable our community to have a place to call home”. In the Hutt Valley, mayor Campbell Barry has said the funding for the RiverLink “is a significant gain for [the] Lower Hutt as it will enable us to undertake desperately needed infrastructure investment to support the building of new homes as part of RiverLink and on our valley floor”.

Question No. 5—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes.

David Seymour: Has she seen reports that KidsCan has had to expand the number of lunches provided to school children by 10,000 every day this year, and, if so, how can she believe her Government has been successful at reducing child poverty?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I don’t have details on where KidsCan have expanded in to, but what I can say is we have recognised the difference that healthy, free lunches can provide our lowest-income families, which is why we are now delivering a million of those lunches per week into low-decile schools across the country.

David Seymour: Does she accept her Government’s policies in the past two years have led to the highest inflation in 30 years, meaning parents are choosing between paying the rent and filling kids’ lunch boxes, with charities like KidsCan filling the gap?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I challenge the member’s assumption that it is the policies of the Government that are creating what we are seeing as a global phenomenon. I’ve already noted in answers previously in this House that we see inflation, for instance, in the OECD at 10.3 percent, the United Kingdom at 9.9 percent, the US at 8.2 percent, the Euro at 9.1 percent, and, interestingly, we’ve seen rates rise across Asia as well. I doubt the member would claim that it’s the New Zealand Government’s policies that are causing that.

David Seymour: How does it help parents choosing between paying rent and feeding their kids to hear from their Prime Minister that other countries’ Governments have made the same mistakes as hers, and so they have a cost of living crisis, too?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That is not my answer to families. My answer to families is the cost of living payment. My answer to families is a reduction in the cost of fuel at the pump. My answer to families is a halving of the public transport costs, an increase in the family tax credit, increases in the minimum wage, the Best Start payment, increases in benefit payments, making it free for under-14s to go to the doctor, and 1 million free lunches across low-decile schools across the country. That is my answer to families, because when we were elected as a Government, we recognised child poverty was a problem, we wanted to address it, and we continue to do so. I note that member would scrap every initiative I just mentioned.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister stand by her statement earlier today that people’s rents are going up due to the cost of building materials, or is a better explanation that her Government increased expenditure from $87 billion to $151 billion in just three years, and the Reserve Bank printed $53 billion, leaving the economy awash with cash and inflation?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member asked me a question about non-tradeables and I gave her an answer around the contribution to the increases in costs in construction, and it’s an answer I stand by. Another point I would make is that, actually, earlier this week we saw that, in some parts of the country, we are actually starting to see the increase in housing supply making a difference. We have seen parts of the country where rents have started to come away. We’ve got to keep building houses. Just this week, we made further investments into the critical infrastructure needed to ensure that that will happen. That includes making sure we have the water infrastructure that will enable another 11,500 houses to be built.

David Seymour: So can the Prime Minister explain which of her statements she stands by: do we have record homebuilding pushing down rents, or are oversees factors such as building supplies pushing up rents, and that’s why we have high non-tradeable inflation—which one is it?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: My answer was that building houses is non-tradeable, but 90 percent of construction products used in New Zealand are imported.

David Seymour: In that case, is the Reserve Bank wrong when it says in its official policy on tradeables and non-tradeables that the non-tradeables component “shows how domestic demand and supply conditions are affecting consumer prices”, and, if so, does her Government have any policy to tell Statistics New Zealand to stop mixing up tradeables and non-tradeables?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, two points that I would make here—again, in the residential housing market, we see that for building, when we’re relying, of course, on predominantly imported products, we are going to see those global factors having an impact. At the same time, we have been concerned about the cost of building supplies in New Zealand. It’s a reason why we saw an intervention from the Minister, and it’s also why the Commerce Commission is looking into this issue. Ultimately, though, we need to keep residential building and construction going, and that’s why we continue to invest in apprentices, to make sure we have the ability to keep that construction going; in infrastructure, to make sure that we’ve got the pipes in place so that they can be built, and you’re seeing that coming to fruition with consents at record numbers.

Question No. 6—Small Business

6. TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) to the Minister for Small Business: Fakaalofa lahi atu. What announcements has he made to support mental health and wellbeing for small businesses?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister for Small Business): Gum sa hum ni da, eui jang nim. Last Friday, I announced that the Government is extending its health and wellness business support package, First Steps, across the country after being launched in Auckland last year. First Steps offers preventative support for business owners, managers, and employees to reduce the number of those in crisis by providing a variety of tools, resources, and perspectives.

Tāmati Coffey: Why is mental health and wellbeing support important to small businesses?

Hon STUART NASH: We’ve heard from small-business owners and employees that operating throughout a pandemic has resulted in increased feelings of stress and isolation, which has had significant negative health impacts on mental wellbeing. Our recovery not only relies on economic performance; equally important is the mental health and wellbeing of all Kiwis.

Tāmati Coffey: How many people will be supported by expanding First Steps?

Hon STUART NASH: There are around 546,000 small businesses here in New Zealand, and up to 1.2 million individuals who are owners or employees. Rolling out our First Steps package across the country will mean that they all get access to Government-funded mental health and wellbeing tools to support them as they recover from the pandemic.

Tāmati Coffey: How many people have used the programme so far?

Hon STUART NASH: Data indicates that over 70,000 users have interacted with the First Steps platform, with Auckland users downloading more than 75,000 resources. Experience shows that people did not necessarily want to have one-on-one consultation, but they did want to access resources that might help them.

Tāmati Coffey: What feedback has he seen from the programme so far?

Hon STUART NASH: One business owner in Auckland who used the programme said, “It has given me more insight into myself, which is supportive of my ability to build my business in these challenging times.” Another said First Steps “gave me the opportunity to destress and learn new skills”. Finally, I leave you with the final words of one of our First Steps users: “It’s good to know that there are Government bodies supporting us through such a tough time.”

Hon Grant Robertson: Can the Minister confirm that the First Steps programme was jointly designed by the Employers and Manufacturers Association, the Auckland chamber of commerce, and the Government; and can he further confirm the role of Michael Barnett in that work?

Hon STUART NASH: I can confirm that, and I would like to thank Michael Barnett, who will continue to have responsibility for rolling out this programme. I think that First Steps should not only be confined to a post-pandemic world to only deal with the pandemic; I think this should be one of the business support programmes that goes on in perpetuity, because the mental health and wellbeing of our small owners and operators is very important to the health and wellbeing of our general community and our economy.

Question No. 7—Workplace Relations and Safety

7. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Has she seen the Human Rights Commission’s Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry findings that in 2021 the pay gap for median hourly earnings of Pacific men compared to Pākehā men was 18.8 percent and for Pacific women compared to Pākehā men was 25.1 percent; if so, what, if anything, is she doing to reduce the Pacific pay gap?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mr Speaker. Yes, I have seen the inquiry findings. I have also met with Saunoamaali’i Dr Karanina Sumeo, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, about those findings. Can I also just thank the Human Rights Commission and those who were involved in the Pacific pay gap inquiry for their work. This is important work. All pay gaps are unacceptable and our Government is committed to closing our gender and ethnic pay gaps, and that’s why, for example, by the end of this year, Government agencies will public gender and ethnic pay gaps for the first time ever. This week also, we are progressing legislation to establish fair pay agreements that are set to improve wages and conditions in sectors where Pacific people are overrepresented. We remain committed to using a range of tools to address gender and ethnic pay gaps because we know that there is no silver bullet.

Jan Logie: Does the Minister acknowledge that when the underpayment is so egregious and the majority of it can only be explained by discrimination and unconscious bias, there needs to be further urgent Government intervention?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Actually, the report and the findings of the inquiry shows that there are a range of issues that feed into gender and ethnic pay gaps. Occupational segregation is one of them; discrimination and the likes of the various issues that the member has raised are also part of them. As I’ve mentioned, there is work under way by the Government to address these pay gaps. I will also include that various employment action plans deal with issues around diversity, inclusion, and discrimination as well, with the view to end those pay gaps.

Jan Logie: Is she aware that pay transparency legislation is the first recommendation of the report and that a petition with over 8,500 signatures was received calling for pay transparency last week, and, if so, why has the Government not yet delivered on the commitment from last term to introduce pay transparency legislation?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I am aware of those, and we have begun work to investigate whether a full pay transparency regime in New Zealand would be beneficial and, if so, what that would look like so as to be effective in Aotearoa New Zealand. That is part of a range of other initiatives, as I’ve mentioned, that we are undertaking to reduce the pay gaps.

Teanau Tuiono: When will the 50-year-old Equal Pay Act be updated to include racial inequities, considering that the Polynesian Panthers have been advocating for equal pay for Pacific workers since the 1970s?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: What I will say is that we have acknowledged the need for intersectionality in this piece of work, we have acknowledged that in our response to the select committee recommendations as well, and, as I mentioned, there are a range of pieces of work under way to that end.

Teanau Tuiono: What does she say to businesswoman Lisa Tai, who has been on the Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry advisory board because she wants better for Pacific people than her intelligent, hard-working, reliable mother got working 20 years on a minimum wage, suffering enduring physical injuries as a result of the work?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Firstly, as I mentioned, I thank everyone who was part of that inquiry for their work. I will also say that the aspirations of this Government in terms of ensuring that Pacific people have better working conditions and better pay is absolutely one that we share with the person that he mentioned, and that’s why we are undertaking a range of work on this side of the House, including raising the minimum wage, to ensure that we meet those aspirations.

Jan Logie: Will the Minister then commit to implementing the six recommendations for Government in the gender pay gap inquiry to ensure Pacific people are paid fairly for their work and are safe and respected in the workplace?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: As I said, the Government is committed to closing the gender and ethnic pay gaps, and we will investigate what the best way to do that is.

Question No. 8—Education (School Operations)

8. MARJA LUBECK (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Education (School Operations): What reports has she seen on the delivery of the free healthy school lunches programme?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education (School Operations)): Nine hundred and ninety five of New Zealand’s schools, with 220,000 students, receive a free healthy lunch each school day, thanks to the Government’s investment in the Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme. Evidence shows that as a result of this programme, kids are experiencing a better quality of life and learning outcomes, as well as physical, social, and emotional functioning.

Marja Lubeck: What other benefits has the programme offered?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Research on the students who have accessed the programme since its inception in 2020 is showing excellent progress in improving the nutrient intake of these kids by providing high-quality, nutritional meals. We know that when kids are fed and healthy, they learn better.

Marja Lubeck: What feedback has she heard from whānau and families?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Globally, times are tough for many families, and New Zealand families are not immune. Knowing that their kids are getting a healthy lunch at school eases financial pressure for many families, especially those with multiple tamariki and many mouths to feed. It means that their kids can go to school regularly and thrive in a learning environment without barriers to education.

Marja Lubeck: What other benefits has this programme brought for New Zealanders?

Hon JAN TINETTI: At the beginning of 2022, 2,361 jobs had been created and retained as a result of the programme. In addition to 153 lunch providers, we’ve engaged 13 iwi and hapū through a social procurement process. These iwi and hapū have partnered with 16 schools and kura from Te Tai Tokerau to Bluff to deliver lunches.

Question No. 9—Health

9. Dr SHANE RETI (National) to the Minister of Health: What is his response to the independent report into the death of a woman who left the Middlemore emergency department, which stated that Middlemore had “the worst-ever compliance with the Shorter Stays in ED health target for CMH during the month of June”, and which other emergency departments, if any, also had their worst ever shorter stays in emergency department in June 2022?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Fakalofa lahi ahu. On behalf of the Government, first of all, can I just offer my condolences again to the family who are at the centre of the events that were reported on in the report released yesterday. At the time of the event that was the subject of the report, Middlemore Hospital was coping with larger than usual numbers of people in their emergency department because of COVID-19, because of the worst flu season in living memory, and because a lot of staff were away because of illness. As the report notes, staff were doing the best they could under the circumstances. I expect Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand to take on board the lessons from the report, such as making sure people waiting in emergency departments have good information about what’s happening and assessing anybody leaving without treatment. To the second part of the member’s question, it’s only been possible, in the time available, for Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand to pull month-by-month data back to July 2017. From that data set, Auckland Hospital achieved 69.3 percent performance and Whakatāne Hospital achieved 84.6 percent. I would caution that June was the start of winter and, while it takes time for data to be processed, I would expect we will see that pressure on emergency departments was sustained throughout the winter months this year.

Dr Shane Reti: What is his response to Dr John Bonning from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, who said that the emergency department (ED) wait-time crisis was the worst he’d seen in his career and that “The graphs and the pictures of the amount of time people wait in emergency departments is quite stark. [In] 2015 we were performing really, really well, and it’s just gone obviously to pot” and it’s not some COVID blip?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I note the comments by Dr John Bonning and I also note the comments in a 2019 International Journal of Health Policy and Management report, a research report published about the targets as they were applied from 2009 under the previous Government. It was an excoriating report about how those targets had been implemented and it made this finding. It said that “National’s policy resulted in gaming behaviour in the form of clock-stopping and decanting patients to short-stay units or observation beds to avoid target breaches.” The way the targets have been applied under this Government and the measures that have been applied have been consistent with what you would expect patient management to be, not being dodgy and manipulative like they were under the previous Government.

Dr Shane Reti: Why, then, did the Labour Government retire National’s public health targets, including the target for shorter wait times in hospital emergency departments, when the New Zealand Medical Journal reported in 2017 that ED targets help reduce ED deaths by 57 percent for an estimated saving of 700 lives in one year alone?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Sadly, the member’s got it wrong yet again. The targets have not been retired.

Dr Shane Reti: What is his response to the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine chair, Dr Kate Allan, who said that in her 15 years of working as an emergency specialist doctor she had never seen it this bad, saying, “Every emergency department doctor is worried that there will be more cases like the one in June because it is a reality of most emergency departments every day.”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I go back to my first answer. The reality is that this winter has been one of the most challenging and one of the hardest for the health profession that we have ever seen. We’ve not only had the ongoing prevalence of COVID-19; we’ve had the worst flu season that every clinician I speak to says they have ever known and we’ve had elevated levels of staff absenteeism for perfectly explicable and justifiable reasons. And the important thing, however, is that we know that we inherited a health system that was underfunded, that was poorly resourced. That’s why we’ve increased resourcing by nearly 45 percent, we’ve funded an additional 5,000 nurse roles in our public health system, and we’re now going through the very challenging process of recruiting into those roles in an international climate where the worldwide health workforce is about 2 million short.

Dr Shane Reti: Why did he just say that the Government did not retire health targets when in written parliamentary question 14016 he wrote, “The previous health targets were retired in June 2021.”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The targets the member refers to are still measures that are applied, and ED departments around the country are measured against that measure.

Question No. 10—Prime Minister

10. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her statements on women’s rights?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. On this side of the House, we are committed to ensuring that there is every opportunity for women and girls to succeed. We have delivered, and continue to deliver, on this commitment by making sure women and girls get the care they need by, for instance, extending ACC coverage to maternal birth injuries, rolling out free period products in all schools, and decriminalising abortion. We’ve boosted support for parents through extensions to paid parental leave, the launch of the Best Start payment, and the reinstatement of the Training Incentive Allowance, and we’ve taken action to address the gender pay gap by rolling out, of course, equal pay initiatives for female-dominated industries. I would add that internationally, our overseas aid and development programmes have a specific emphasis on women’s and girls’ economic empowerment, reproductive health, and gender-based violence, as well as being strong advocates for the rights of women everywhere, especially in environments that we see right now as pertinent in Afghanistan and Iran.

Brooke van Velden: Why did it take her almost three weeks to make the statement, “I’ve been deeply concerned to see the loss of life and, of course, just generally what we would consider to be human rights issues as they relate to women and girls.”, in response to Kiwi women’s recent concerns about women’s rights in Iran?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The first time I was asked about what was happening on the ground in Iran was on 27 September, and, of course, I gave my very clear view at that time, as did the Deputy Prime Minister and, of course, subsequently, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I believe that possibly one of the reasons I was asked at that time rather than earlier may well have been that in that period, of course, we had the UN General Assembly.

Brooke van Velden: Why did she need to be asked to make a statement before making one when it took her only one day to make a statement, “Watching the removal of a woman’s fundamental right to make decisions over their own body is incredibly upsetting.” in response to Kiwi women’s concerns about women’s rights in the United States of America?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I utterly reject the assertion that I feel any less deeply about what is happening to women in Iran or, indeed, Afghanistan than I do, for instance, around the removal of any woman’s rights, for instance, as has been debated in the United States. We have been raising the issue around women’s rights in Iran, for instance, in the Human Rights Council in 2021. It has not just been in more recent times that we have raised those concerns. We called in specifically—

Chris Bishop: That’ll put pressure on them! I think Russia’s on the Human Rights Council. That’ll help!

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Mr Bishop, if I may. We specifically called in the Iranian ambassador to share directly our deep concerns over what we were seeing happen in regards to the right to protest but also in regards to the rights of women and girls in Iran—directly. Of course, we stand alongside international counterparts in sharing our condemnation and will continue to do so. Unfortunately, the call-in of the ambassador was not widely reported, but I repeat it again in this House.

Brooke van Velden: Does she believe that the statements she’s made to date on the systematic violation of women’s rights in Iran adequately reflect the outrage held by many women in New Zealand regarding the violation of women’s rights in Iran?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It’s my job to reflect that outrage, and, yes, I believe it has, not just by myself but, of course, also the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and, for instance, we’ve also had comments from the likes of the Deputy Prime Minister. We will continue to raise those concerns, be it through international fora or directly with those representatives who are here. And not just the rights of women in Iran: I, again, raise the rights of women in Afghanistan as well, who equally experience, for instance, the view that the inability to express your religious attitudes freely—freely—being a means by which to curtail women’s rights to, for instance, enter into education. No woman in this country, I believe, would want to see a situation where, for instance, the girls are unable to attend education or access basic rights that we would consider fundamental in New Zealand. We will continue to share that view.

Brooke van Velden: When the Iranian ambassador was called in, who did they meet: her, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials, or the Minister of Foreign Affairs?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As is completely in keeping with our practice, it is of course right that the counterpart to the ambassador is within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That is not unusual. It’s always kept at that level, and that is in keeping with international practice.

Brooke van Velden: Will she answer the Iranian Women in NZ’s call to strengthen her statement on women’s rights in Iran by condemning the Iranian Government and recalling the Iranian ambassador.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: One point, I think, it’s worth—I’ve shared that condemnation in this House; I’ve shared it in the media. I would have thought this House would actually be unified in the stance that’s been taken by New Zealand. One important point to make on the recalling of, for instance, the ambassador in Tehran: they are accredited, for instance, to cover Pakistan and Afghanistan. Had we not had that assistance, our ability to bring refugees and women who have needed the support and safe haven of New Zealand out of Afghanistan would have been curtailed. I think it just demonstrates the complexity of these situations; and I would note, for instance, New Zealand has played a role in ensuring that we have had high-level women athletes, we’ve had doctors, we’ve had judges, human rights advocates, and members of the LGBTI community resettled in New Zealand from Afghanistan. We take very seriously our role.

Question No. 11—Agriculture

11. TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Minister of Agriculture: Does he support the Government’s proposed agriculture emissions plan, which reportedly could reduce production from sheep and beef farms by 20 percent, and does he agree with Federated Farmers that the policy will “rip the guts out of small town New Zealand”?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Gum sa hum ni da, eui jang nim. Last week, the Government released our proposal for pricing agricultural emissions. This was, effectively, the recommendations made by He Waka Eke Noa partnership, with some undecided issues to be consulted on. This includes how the levy will be set, governance arrangements, how farmers and growers will report and pay for emissions, and what on-farm actions, including sequestration, will be recognised. The member appears to be operating under the misconception that the Government’s proposed agricultural emissions proposal is drastically different from the partnership’s proposal. In fact, the Government has accepted nearly all of the recommendations made by the partnership, which includes Federated Farmers, and this is reflected in our proposal.

Todd Muller: Does he stand by his statement, when asked if there would be a loss in revenue for sheep and beef farming of 24 percent, which would mean $2.9 billion in lost export earnings—and I quote—“Ah well, that’s a proposition put forward. I’m not OK with that loss, and I don’t think it will happen.”? And, if so, what loss in export revenue is the Minister OK with?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I’m not comfortable with any loss of revenue. But I have to say that modelling is made on a large number of assumptions. In fact, there was a model put up that presumed, and predicted, that we would have 10 percent unemployment. That never eventuated. I’m confident that New Zealand farmers can adapt to the challenges in front of them. Can I put, too, land-use change that we’ve seen over the years: “Between 1990 and 2021, dairy land use increased 67 percent, to 1.7 million hectares, assisted by irrigation and traditional sheep farming in areas of north Otago and Canterbury. Over the same period, other pastoral grassland, predominantly sheep, beef, and deer, declined 36 percent, with large areas converted to forestry, such as in the Gisborne region, as well as urbanisation and reversion to conservation estate. Forestry and horticulture increased 40 percent and 49 percent respectively while arable land reduced 25 percent.” We have seen, through the decades, much land-use change in this country, and it’s a hallmark of, and a credit to, all the farmers in our country that they adapt to the challenges ahead of them. And if I can just quote someone, Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: No, I don’t think so.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: It’s a very valuable quote.

SPEAKER: It might be, but you’ve addressed the question.

Todd Muller: Does he stand behind his own Government’s report, which says net revenue is going to be down 24 percent, or does he not? It’s his report. Do you support it or not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: There were two lots of modelling done in the report. In fact, the modelling put before it was done by He Waka Eke Noa—the partnership group. The partnership group did the modelling that the member is referring to. I’m not going to challenge the system that they used to develop that outcome, but I will say that I believe and I have confidence in the innovation of the farmers of this country. Can I say, though, regarding climate change, because agriculture does form 48 percent of our total emissions, “It is the preeminent issue of our generation without doubt, and it’s the No. 1 issue around the world we have to deal with.” That was said by Christopher Luxon on 5 December 2021.

Todd Muller: Can he confirm that officials advised the Government that the fall in sheep and beef production under his Government’s agricultural emissions plan will increase global emissions, and how does shipping production and jobs to less carbon efficient farms overseas solve the climate change problem?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Can I say, regarding displacement of emissions and transfer to other countries, there is no clear evidence that that will occur. New Zealand produces enough food for about 40 million people. The reality is that many countries don’t want our product. The only place that we will be able to sell our product into will be the high-value, discerning markets of the world where climate change is considered the number one issue that we’re facing. I stand by our Government’s commitment. The National Government, in 1997, committed agriculture to our emissions reduction plan. For 25 years, we’ve been grappling with this issue. Many National Party Ministers and members have come and gone in that 25 years. I stand by our commitment to honour what we committed to in 1997 and to deliver a more sustainable future for the farmers of this country.

Mark Cameron: Is it fair that even at the low price modelled, the tax will raise $220 million but only $70 million is returned to farmers as incentive payments for lower emissions?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: The Government is committed that any revenue raised through this system—and we’ve got to listen to consultation and feedback, and the Government will report back at the end of this year. What we have committed to do is recycle any revenue generated back into the agricultural sector. In fact, this Government committed $380 million of taxpayers’ money for research and development to assist agriculture to discover the techniques that will move us forward in this area. That’s a commitment from the taxpayer. On top of that, any revenue generated will all go back into agriculture.

Hon Stuart Nash: Does the Minister believe in the primary sector’s strategy of a move from volume to values, and does addressing the impacts of climate change represent our values and therefore increase the per unit price of our exports?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I think that anyone who does a market survey of high-value products around the world will realise that the consumers who are purchasing are purchasing for values. They want to know that the product, be it shoes or clothing or food, is good for them and good for the planet. We will move from volume to values because that’s the only place we can be as a nation with a sustainable future in food and fibre production.

Todd Muller: Does he believe the proposed Government response to He Waka Eke Noa complies with the Paris Agreement requirement that emissions reductions occur—and I quote—“in a manner that does not threaten food production” when his own officials estimate it will reduce sheep and beef production by over 20 percent?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I can read out again the land-use change that we’ve seen across this nation for many, many years. I know that we will continue to provide the world with fine quality food and that that land will always be used for productive purposes, in a way that maximises the value for the landowner and, hopefully, for future generations into the future.

Hon Kelvin Davis: Does he believe that floods and drought also threaten food production and reduce the net income of farmers?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Can I say that the member who asked the initial question was at a conference last week where one of the presenters there stated the fact that we have already seen a 20 percent drop in food production from climate change across the globe. If we do not address this issue and do everything we can to reduce global warming, the farmers will be the ones who suffer the most.

Question No. 12—Immigration

12. JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata) to the Minister of Immigration: What recent announcements has he made about the next steps in the Government’s plan to reconnect New Zealanders to the world?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): The Government is focused on an immigration setting that works for New Zealand, which is why we have rebalanced our immigration settings; created streamlined pathways to residency that didn’t previously exist for highly skilled migrants; and reopened our borders, welcoming thousands of skilled migrants to our shores in recent months, in spite of global labour shortages. Last week, I announced the next steps in our plans to reconnect New Zealand to the world and fill workplace shortages. Firstly, we are resuming the skilled migrant category (SMC) with streamlined settings and an interim reopening under the previous settings. We’re also delivering on a 2020 manifesto commitment made by Labour to restart the parent category visa, increasing the number of visas granted each year and reducing income thresholds, which is very important in terms of ensuring that skilled migrants can settle well into New Zealand.

Jo Luxton: Why have these changes been made?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The Government is committed to listening to the voices of businesses, migrants, and workers, and ensuring that their views are reflected in our approach to immigration. We know there is a very challenging global labour shortage at the moment and that businesses are often finding it difficult to recruit internationally in a constrained global labour market. These announcements show that the Government and the immigration system are responsive to domestic and international trends, while continuing to make sure that we deliver on our rebalance and ensure that our immigration system supports a high-wage, high-productivity economy, and treats migrants with dignity and respect.

Jo Luxton: Why is restarting the parent category visa so important?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Well, a key part of attracting migrants to New Zealand and ensuring the wellbeing of those who are here is making sure that they can have access to family and the support that they can offer. The parent visa category was closed in 2016 under the previous National Government; our Government is not only reopening it but modernising the settings by providing 2,500 places per year, and additional options in order to be able to meet income thresholds. Resuming selections from this existing queue is a priority—and I’ve certainly heard that from migrant communities—and I’m pleased to say that those selections will resume from 14 November this year.

Erica Stanford: Can the Minister explain why, under his new streamlined SMC policy, a new graduate with a PhD in, say, existential philosophy will be able to apply for a residence immediately, when a nurse still has to wait two years to even apply for residency?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Our immigration settings operate across a range of different visa categories. The skilled migrant category is about, for the most part, attracting and supporting migrants to settle into New Zealand, who might take between five to six years to obtain the level of qualifications that are required in New Zealand. What is absolutely accurate to say is that under our settings across the skilled migrant category, across the green list category that the member refers to, and across resident visa 2021, this Government is providing more and more streamlined ways for skilled migrants to settle in New Zealand than has ever been the case before.

Erica Stanford: Supplementary question.

SPEAKER: Sorry; National have no more supplementaries.

Jo Luxton: What feedback has he had on the changes?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I’ve had very positive feedback on the changes that we have announced, including from the Restaurant Association of New Zealand. One of their members said, “Because of this change, our business will be able to hire chefs who have been trained in some of the most prestigious kitchens in the world.” Business New Zealand CEO Kirk Hope said, “The resumption of the [SMC] is good news for [business] hoping to fill staff shortages in highly skilled areas.” And Pranav Birla, who was quoted on Newshub, said, of the parent category announcement, when he spoke about his parents hearing the news, “They were like, that’s really good news to wake up to, they were stoked”.

Jo Luxton: How else has the Government delivered on filling skills shortages?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Data on the accredited employer, job checks, and work visa so far shows that Immigration New Zealand is making decisions more quickly than were being made for the previous essential skills visa in 2018 and 2019. Since it was rolled out in July of this year, the mean time frame for job checks and the accredited employer work visa is 17 week days; whereas the median decision time frame for essential skills visas in 2018 and 2019 was 20 workdays in 2018 and 21 workdays in 2019. More than 31,000 working holiday scheme applications have been approved since March, and thousands more working holidaymakers are expected to arrive in the coming months. On this side of the House, making loud statements and waving hands loudly in the air doesn’t cut it; we’re actually getting on with practical measures to deal with these challenging global labour shortages.

Urgent Debates

Health—Death of Patient at Middlemore Hospital

SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Brooke van Velden seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the findings of the independent inquiry into the death of a patient at Middlemore Hospital. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is Ministerial responsibility. Public confidence in the health system and in the Government’s response to any problem with it is an important issue that warrants setting aside the normal business of the House to debate. Before I call Brooke van Velden, I have also received a letter from Jan Logie seeking to debate the report of the Ombudsman on the murder of Malachi Subecz. There can only be one urgent debate on a sitting day. However, I am willing to consider Ms Logie’s application tomorrow if she wishes. I call Brooke van Velden to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

Every day, New Zealanders engage with our healthcare system. Thousands of people actively seek help from other New Zealanders who go to work to help make people better. We, most of the time, hope that other people can solve our problems because of the knowledge that they have and the care that they have for us. On very rare occasions, people go to the emergency departments and they need desperate help. They are really in the time of their most vulnerable point of their life, needing assistance from other people to help them get better.

Now, in the case of this 50-year-old woman who went to Middlemore Hospital, she was turned away from the care that she needed because the hospital was under such pressure. I’m sure there will be many New Zealanders up and down our country who are wondering: could they possibly be put into the same situation as this poor woman who lost her life because she did not receive the care that she needed when she was at her most vulnerable?

People often go to the emergency department not even for themselves but for their children or for their husbands and wives when they know that they are desperately needing somebody else and they have no idea what’s gone wrong. We put our faith in the fact that we pay our taxes so that we have a public healthcare system that will look after us when we desperately need care.

When we have children with broken limbs that need to be set immediately, we hope that the emergency department can be there for us. When we have something desperately wrong with our heads, in the case of haemorrhages going on—or strokes; I know a lot of elderly in particular encounter the emergency departments in times when they’ve had a stroke—it’s so vital that they get really good-quality and very time-sensitive care to make sure that they can extend their lives and live a long, healthy life.

We often encounter the healthcare system in a time of anxiety, when we really do need care from other New Zealanders who get up every day and work hard to keep us safe and keep us healthy. But there is this poor case of a woman desperately needing help, and it wasn’t received.

So, on behalf of New Zealanders who have read this inquiry or have heard about the inquiry into Middlemore Hospital and wonder if this will change anything or things will simply stay as the status quo, it’s important that the Government is held to account and is able to answer questions that New Zealanders will have about our healthcare system. Will this report into Middlemore Hospital actually change anything? Will we see wait times decrease? Will we see the number of beds in our hospitals increase? Will people know that when they need to go hospital, there will be workers who are able to answer their call for help?

The issue here, under this inquiry, says that they found an overcrowded emergency department and a hospital well over the acceptable capacity. They found that only the hard work and dedication of Middlemore staff was keeping it from more serious incidents, and the environment is unsafe for both patients and staff and it’s not sustainable.

There are wonderful New Zealanders who work in our emergency departments. They are often stressed, they are often overworked, and it’s because we have a healthcare crisis. We don’t have enough people working in our emergency departments or across the entire healthcare sector to care for the number of people that are often looking for care.

We need to know from the Government what they are doing to make sure that there are adequate numbers of workers in our emergency departments, that people aren’t overworked when they’re needing to create diagnosis, and that in the future, we can be guaranteed that there will be enough doctors and nurses and triage staff there to make the right decisions in a good amount of time, rather than making decisions based on the fact that they are overworked, overtired, and too stressed to make a good decision.

We also need to know what the Government will do to increase the number of bed capacity in our country. It’s not just contained to Middlemore; we have this issue across our hospitals in the whole country. When we were talking about the COVID response in particular, we had lockdowns because the health Minister and the Prime Minister and everybody involved with the Government told us we don’t have enough beds to care for the number of people who are needing care during the COVID pandemic. Well, most of that is over, but we still don’t have enough beds for the flu season. What is happening to make sure that in ongoing years, we are going to have enough bed capacity for the people who need our emergency departments on any given day? We can’t keep blaming it on COVID; we need to have an adequate response to what the acceptable level of care that a New Zealander can expect in their healthcare system is.

We need to know that when a kid is really hurt and their parents are stressed and worried and they are taking them in a car or in an ambulance to hospital, they can get the care that they need, that they can get a bed in a hospital that they need and they’re not going to have to wait overnight, then over days, or go back home to then come back the next day and be in a constant state of stress. We need to know that they get the care as quick as humanly possible without overworking the staff that we currently have.

We rely on public confidence for our entire democratic institution. Every day, people get up and work and pay their taxes because they know that they’re contributing to the Government taking our money and spending it on things that people know that they can collectively contribute to—things like the police, things like health, and making sure that we have an education system. I don’t think New Zealanders would be happy to know that we are spending, wastefully, millions and millions and millions of dollars on projects that don’t deliver any benefits for people. And yet at the same time, we have a healthcare system that is crippled. We have a healthcare system that can’t give adequate care to people in their time of need. That’s a basic role of this Government—that people put our faith in our institutions. We collectively work together to become a community, and pay our taxes so that we can help each other in our time of need, and that’s not happening in this case. We have to do better.

I think people would also ask the question of what this means for our immigration settings. You know, we have a lot of people internationally who do work in the healthcare profession, and we know that they should and could come to New Zealand to help our overburdened healthcare workers. Why has the Government not responded adequately to allow nurses, for example, on the fast track of the Green List for residency? That is a barrier to helping to reduce the issues within our emergency departments. It’s one simple point that the Government could make and one that we’ve been calling for in the ACT Party.

We also need to know why the Government hasn’t been adequately addressing the need for more productivity and more economic growth so that people can become wealthier and, over time, pay more taxes. Over time, that means we can actually increase the amount that we spend in our healthcare system without overburdening everybody else’s need for funding within the Government departments. We know that we are not as wealthy as some of our OECD comparative countries, and that means that we can’t spend as much on healthcare as other countries. It’s a shame that we don’t put enough emphasis on the need for economic growth and the benefits that this could provide to our entire economy—but importantly, how much we can spend on giving people valuable care in their time of need.

We also need to train more doctors. What is this Government doing to make sure that we’re not just bringing in people from overseas to help with our workforce shortage but that we can train people here in New Zealand who want to be trained? We’ve had a cap on the number of doctors that we train every year for quite a while. Is the Government seeking to increase this so that we can actually have more people in our emergency departments and more people who can help people in their time of need, or does the Minister of Health believe that the number of doctors that we have currently being trained in our country is adequate? Because, looking at this report saying that it’s an overcrowded emergency department, hospitals are well over capacity, and it’s unsafe and unsustainable, surely that means there is need for change. Or is there? I question the Minister about whether or not this Government believes it’s important to train more doctors. Do we need to train more nurses? Same question. Are we training enough people in this country who genuinely want to work in the nursing profession to give people care in their time of need? That’s the same issue. We are just so overburdened and over capacity within our healthcare system that there has to be a better way.

I think that we need to acknowledge the tragedy that’s occurred and make sure that this doesn’t happen to somebody else, and that if it was a preventable death, those deaths remain preventable. It is a tragedy to the family members and the friends of this woman who lost her life because she didn’t get the care that she needed when she was desperately in need of it. It’s important that our healthcare system learns from this incident now, and that we don’t just have a report and it goes into a filing cabinet somewhere and nobody ever reads it—nobody from the Government departments reads it, nobody from the new Te Whatu Ora reads it. It’s important that this loss of life doesn’t go nowhere. There are New Zealanders who will be reading and hearing about this poor woman’s case and wanting to know whether or not this will happen again in the future. Will they get the care that they need, will their children get the care that they need, will their family members and friends get the care that they need, or would a preventable death not occur? Would it happen? It needs to remain preventable if at all possible.

I want to end by acknowledging, once again, this woman who lost her life. We’re very sorry that that happened, we share our condolences with her family and friends, and we hope that our healthcare system and the Government can learn from this report. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Can I begin by once again acknowledging the family who are at the centre of this report and now at the centre of this debate. I acknowledge the grief that they have suffered through the loss of a loved family member.

Can I also pay tribute to our health workforce—those working in Middlemore Hospital, but also those working right across our public health system and who have had one of the most challenging three years, and then on top of that one of the most challenging winters that we have seen, or that our health system has experienced, for many, many years. In fact, every clinician I talk to says of this winter flu season that it is the worst in living memory.

Those were the circumstances in which Middlemore Hospital and the rest of our health system was operating in June this year, when this patient presented herself at about 1 a.m. one morning in June. It’s interesting to note in the report that even the report author acknowledges his—and I think it is a “his”—limitations in preparing the report. He opens the report by saying “I have not received or read any clinical notes. I have not reviewed any policies regarding the triage process or escalation procedures.” So that is a matter for the independent reviewer. The independent reviewer is independent and is entitled to access to information; that’s how the independent review process works. But this independent reviewer decided to write the report not on the basis of that clinical information, but on the basis on whatever information he had.

I say for the benefit of the member who has brought this urgency motion, the report is also very clear in that they thought that even had this patient been triaged in the way that they ought to have been, notwithstanding that the independent reviewer did not have access to triage policies, it may not have prevented the outcome. Indeed, the reviewer goes on to say of this event that it was “unfortunate”, that it was “unpredictable”, and that it was “unavoidable”, and just as the hospital’s own review of the incident concluded, it could not be concluded that, were circumstances different in terms of the numbers of patients in the emergency department and the number of patients in the hospital, the outcome might have been any different.

I think it is important to note, too, that we can look at an isolated event, and this report deals with an isolated event and it would be simplistic to draw conclusions without looking at the context. This is a health system that after two years of dealing with COVID—and its resources are somewhat stretched to deal with COVID because you had nursing and other health staff redeployed to run the amazing vaccination programme that vaccinated such a large proportion of our population; they’re managing those turning up to hospital with COVID and the extra special care that they needed. And then we’re faced with a winter with the borders open and a flu season unlike anything anybody had ever seen before.

Those were the circumstances in which these events happened. They are not the only circumstances, and the reality is that ours is a health system that has been run down; run down for years—underfunded and under-resourced. The National Party, when they were in Government or at least when they’re in Opposition, still will not take responsibility for the appalling and disgraceful under-investment and under-resourcing of the health system. You know, it’s interesting how right now, this is a Government that in five years has committed $7 billion for the upgrading and rebuild of hospital facilities that we desperately need. You compare that to the nearly $1 billion that was put in in the previous nine years. You compare that to two years—2015 and 2016—when no money was allocated to hospital facilities in this country. And so we are in a desperate catch up mode.

In addition to that, this is a Government that has, in its five years, funded an additional 5,000 nurse positions in our hospital system because they desperately needed it. The previous Labour Government committed to a Safe Staffing Accord with the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. That led to the Care Capacity Demand Management programme, and it was left to the previous National Government to implement it, and by the time they ended their term nine years later, it was in disarray. Most hospitals had not fully implemented it, despite having had nine years to do so, and one of the hospitals—from my home town, Taranaki Base Hospital—was one of the early starters, and by 2017 was one of the laggards in terms of implementation, because they were not interested in it.

That’s what happens when you have a party that just neglects health—a party that just neglects health. This is a Government that has funded our health system to an extent that it has never been funded before; increased funding by nearly 45 percent. Now, we know there are challenges in the rest of the health system too: challenges in primary care, challenges in aged residential care, and we’re working on all of those areas. So when the National Party complains about “not enough doctors”, they did nothing to increase the number of medical students.

I’m very proud to have announced, a couple of weeks ago, a programme for more medical graduates to train as GPs and to train in the GP context, and to lift those numbers, and to do that in collaboration with the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners. So these are the initiatives that are needed. And then we also know we’re a system that has always been dependent on immigration, and that’s why we have changed our immigration settings to make it easier for health workers to get here. Even during the time that our borders were closed, 5,000 health workers were able to cross our border to be part of our health system—many of them health care assistants working in aged residential care.

But that’s not the only place where we need to fill the gaps; we have a lot of gaps in the public health system as well. We now have the Accredited Employer Work Visa; we’ve had, in fact, over 500 applications of that, now. That follows on from the critical work visa that had been in place during COVID and ended at the end of July. I’m pleased to report to this House that, since July, 381 nurses, ready to work, have crossed the border to come and work in our public health system—most of them on the critical work visa, because that’s what was available at the time—and a growing number, now, on the Accredited Employer Work Visa. And for those that think that, you know, you change the immigration setting and, the next day, thousands of people turn up—that’s not how it works. These are people who are applying for a visa that guarantees them residency, so they are here for the long term. They are recommitting their lives in coming to New Zealand, and so it takes some time for them to close out their affairs where they are, shut down their lives, and shift it all to New Zealand to start here. And that is what is happening.

We have a lot of trained nurses coming here on visitors’ visas, doing the Competency Assessment Programme, and then converting to one of the other visas—it will now be the Accredited Employer Visa—and we’re seeing that happening as well. Hundreds of nurses—hundreds of nurses—queuing up, getting their visas, getting their approval, and coming to work in our system; that’s what they’re doing, and that’s what they do. Since July, 381 crossed the border—that’s what they are doing.

So I am satisfied that Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand is doing everything they can to recruit and to get nurses and other health workers here. Very shortly, they’ll start up their dedicated immigration desk, have immigration officials, amongst others, working on it, and they will manage the process—right from the recruitment ad that goes out overseas, to dealing with a contact, dealing with the application, dealing with the visa application, and helping them with their airfares and resettling to New Zealand to fill those gaps. But to not make that change quickly when you have nine years of under-investment, nine years of running down the system, and two years where you don’t invest anything at all in the facilities and our health system—it takes a while to turn that around, and we are in major catch-up mode.

But here’s the extra thing: when the ACT Party talks about “We need more productivity”, all they talk about is doctors and nurses. Well, the reality is that health care is changing. We saw during COVID, and we saw with the vaccination programme, the brilliant effort that went in—for a whole bunch of people who know about health care, who know about health work, and with just a little bit of micro-credentialing, a little bit of support, and some good leadership, we’re able to pick up tasks that, previously, we would have relied on nurses to do. The challenge for the health system of the future is not for doctors and specialists to insist that they do everything, not to have nurses doing a whole lot of tasks that other good, skilful, healthcare workers can do, but to actually make sure we have a health system that is about the right health professional doing the right thing, for the patient, at the right time. That’s the magic we have to achieve. So much of the health workforce gets it, and they want it, and we are going to deliver it.

That’s why there is a health workforce programme of development under way at the moment. That’s what has informed the initiatives that we’ve started implementing—ones I announced on 1 August and the ones that I’ve announced since then. Very soon, we will start a dialogue with the health workforce on what else it is that they want to see that’s going to help us fill those vacancies, but, most importantly, make sure that their working lives are as satisfying as they can be, that they are able to work at the top of their scope, and exercise the skills that they’ve got. For those who want more qualifications and more training, we will provide them the opportunities to do that, and have a health workforce that is relevant to the needs of New Zealand, today.

One of the other incredible things is the kaiāwhina workforce that was stood up during COVID-19, many of them so keen to continue to work in our health system. Some interests within the health system don’t want them. I remember the words of Professor Des Gorman, in a presentation he made earlier this year, “There is privilege in our health system”—there is privilege in our health system. Part of the challenge is to break that down and say, “Actually, we’ve got to distribute these important health tasks for skilful and qualified people. But, most importantly, if we’re going to make the difference and have health services that are easily accessible—accessible to people who have not had, or who struggle to get, access to health services—having the right people sitting in front of them, providing them comfort to be there, and the skills, then, to address the health needs that they’ve got. That’s the direction that we’re in. That’s the path that we’re on. And I’m confident that Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand and Te Aka Whai Ora – Māori Health Authority are doing amazing work and will get us there.

But I, again, conclude by paying tribute to the incredible health workforce that we have, a health workforce that is dealing with literally—well, in any one night—7,000-7,500 patients staying overnight in our hospital system, and thousands more turning up to the emergency department (ED). You know, in June, at the peak of the COVID and flu and the staff absenteeism, over 100,000 people—I said 90,000, on the radio this morning—turned up to a New Zealand ED in the month of June. Normally, it’s around 80,000—between, sort of, 70,000 and 80,000. Over 100,000—that’s the pressure that the system was under at a time when we are still trying to fill the vacancies, still trying to fill the gaps, and working very hard to do so. But we were left in that position; our health system has been left in that position because of those long periods of under-investment.

And it is important we rebuild our facilities; there are EDs that are in desperate need of attention. You visit Hawke’s Bay, you visit Hastings hospital, and you see the ED there, and the folks, there, tearing their hair out about the environment they have to work in. We have to change that. But we’ve got hospitals—you know, Whangārei hospital—neglected for years by the previous Government. The MP at the time couldn’t even persuade his colleagues to invest in upgrading the hospital. Fortunately, Whangārei has an MP, Dr Emily Henderson, who cares about people and their healthcare, and has persuaded this Government to make the investment.

Now, I’m confident that Whangārei is going to have an outstanding, world-class hospital, thanks to the advocacy of the member for Whangārei; the member for Northland, Willow-Jean Prime; and the member for Te Tai Tokerau, Kelvin Davis—great advocates for their people, in their part of the country. I pay tribute, also, to the member for Nelson, Rachel Boyack, who has advocated strongly for the long overdue upgrade of the hospital in that region, too—even the former MP for that area, Nick Smith, was unable, and he sat around the Cabinet table, to persuade his colleagues to invest in health services.

This is a Government that takes health seriously. This is a Government that is investing in health to a level and extent that this country has not seen before—not just in services, not just in the workforce, not just in the personnel but in the buildings and the facilities as well. And we will continue to do that. The great thing is that we now have the ability to manage the system as a national system, and to manage it on a regional basis, so hospitals within regions can make sure that, where there is a need in one place and there’s capacity in another place, they can support each other to deliver on that. There’s amazing coordination happening across the hospital network to make sure that that happens and to lift the performance of our health system.

The independent reviewer’s report tells us we have more to do and that we have change to make. I’m confident that with the system that we have in place, with the leaders we now have in place, and coming in place, with the dedication of the workforce that we’ve got, with the initiatives that we have under way, and, principally, those workforce initiatives, we will have that world-class health system that every New Zealander will be very proud of. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr SHANE RETI (National): On June 15, at 1 a.m., be in no doubt, Minister Little, that Middlemore emergency department (ED) was in crisis. The health sector is in crisis. I have said for some time that there are two parts of the sector that particularly worry me—aged residential care and emergency departments—and here it is. The chickens have come home to roost. This independent report is a damning indictment of Andrew Little’s failure to address health workforce shortages, to heed ED warning signs, and to maintain health targets.

What happened here? Well, the first thing that happened was there was overcapacity in ED. On the night involved, there were 46 patients for a room that sits 30 people. There were 94 people waiting for bed placement—a whole ward, presumably in corridors, waiting to get up to a hospital that was 98.2 percent full at capacity. The report tells us there was understaffing. There were three nursing vacancies, including the critical waiting room nurse: the nurse who triages patients, the nurse who says what the waiting time is, the nurse who coordinates those who are the most urgent—that was a vacancy. A critical vacancy, and do you think the reviewer had the privilege of a job description for that nurse? Not at all. Look at the report—not at all. There were warning signs. The weekly census report the week before, the independent reviewer said, showed the worst ED wait times to target—a week before June 15.

The fourth point I’ll make is the outcomes. I will come and contest the point that the Minister has made that it was unavoidable, and raise some challenges to that conclusion. How did we get here? We got here because the Minister refused to address the health workforce shortage that has been blazingly obvious for years. We got here because the Minister ignored warning signs. He was warned there was a health workforce crisis. Keriana Brooking, on behalf of all of the DHBs, when she was chief executive, wrote a letter in July last year saying, “Minister, we have a health workforce shortage and if we do not address immigration settings, several things will happen”, and in the appendix she even put graphs. She said, “First of all, ED wait times are ballooning out. They will get worse.” She said, “Planned care, our elective surgical lists, are ballooning out and they will affect New Zealanders for generations to come.”, and then almost her final sentence in that letter was that if immigration settings are not attended to, we will not avert a health crisis.

Keriana Brooking, on behalf of every single DHB, warned the Minister in July last year there was a health crisis, that we needed to attend to the health workforce, and that we needed to use immigration settings to do that, and the Minister pretends he didn’t even receive the letter. I don’t think so. Ashley Bloomfield did, senior people and deputy director-generals did—of course the Minister did. I asked him parliamentary questions on it, and he replied—of course he saw it. No one believes that.

The Minister today disputed the fact that he had retired ED targets. That is not tenable. As I quoted in the written question, where he states that he has retired the ED targets—in fact, I’ll go on for the whole sentence. What he says is, and this is written question No. 14016: “The previous Health Targets were retired in June 2021”—and here’s the next part that I didn’t say in my supplementary—“and public reporting of results was discontinued”. He took down the public reporting of ED wait times. It wasn’t until May or June, with consistent pestering by myself and colleagues on the health team, that he decided to put them back in public domain. He removed them from visibility because they were so bad he wanted no one to see them. In his own words, “The previous Health Targets were retired in June 2021 and public reporting of results was discontinued”.

He makes the claim that health indicators have taken them over, the 12 health indicators named in December last year. Do you see ED wait times in those health indicators? No. Most other sophisticated health systems recognise that ED wait times are a good snapshot of how the system is doing. It represents a primary care that is struggling, so they make ED their home. It represents a hospital system where the wards are full and you can’t move them out of ED. It’s an important measure, and the Minister refused to make it a health indicator, or, indeed, to support the health targets that National set.

To everyone in the health sector and at the ED interface, here is what the Minister told me in oral questions in the week of June when this tragedy happened. To John Bonning from the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, who said the wait time crisis was the worst in his career, this is what Minister Little said; to Dr Kate Allan, the chair of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, here is what Minister Little said; and to every single person working in the ED sector, here is what Minister Little said the week that this tragedy happened at Middlemore. What he said in parliamentary questions was—and the primary was around emergency department wait times—“but as a whole, the system is coping”.

At the same time, in the same week that this independent report is making statements like “ED overcapacity and an incredible 94 patients in ED awaiting bed placement”, the Minister says the system was coping. An overcrowded ED, a hospital well over acceptable capacity, and subsequent system dysfunction, and the Minister says the system was coping. The reviewer says it was a desperate situation; that same week, the Minister said the system was coping. The independent reviewer said this is an unsafe environment for both patients and staff and is not sustainable, and that very same week, the Minister said to this House the system is coping. No, it has not been coping, Minister Little. No one believes that.

Let’s look at the time frames. If we look at ED wait times, let’s see what we’ve got. The target is to wait less than six hours—95 percent of people to wait less than six hours in an ED. Six hours is a long time with a child with a burst eardrum, with an inflamed knee that may be septic, or with a spinal disc that’s protruding on your sciatic nerve. Six hours is a long time, but it was an international target that we all accepted. What we know is that when we handed over target times in October 2017, that figure was around 91 percent. Today, it’s around 78 percent, which is what the Minister is telling us. It has got worse every single year that the Labour Government has had responsibility.

If you think six hours is worse, what about 24 hours? Surely people can’t be waiting 24 hours! Yes, they can. Minister Little wrote in parliamentary questions that hundreds of people are waiting 24 hours, but surely that’s not the worst! Oh yes, if you ask Minister Little how many people are waiting in emergency departments for more than 48 hours—two days—would you believe there are dozens who wait more than 48 hours? You had the 12 ED specialists from MidCentral, and I commend their bravery for putting this out in an open letter to the Minister a few months ago, saying that we have people with urgent critical conditions waiting in wheelchairs for more than eight hours. That was a brave statement from those 12 ED doctors.

What we also know is that, just like this unfortunate woman, people leave when the waiting time is too great, and what we know is every single month in New Zealand—and I know this because the Minister has written it to me, and I can tell you exactly which hospitals are involved—5,000 people leave. They leave before they’re seen, and they don’t sign the indemnity form because they cannot wait any longer.

The Minister said, “Oh well, the report came up saying it was unavoidable.” There are things we need to think about there, Minister, actually. What happened was that this person was hypertensive, and they hadn’t been taking their Losartan for about two years. When you have a brain bleed, maybe if you check blood pressure, maybe if it’s high, you would restart their hypertensive medication, and maybe the outcome could have been different. The neurologist raised this point as well.

The Minister blames COVID; we’ve just heard a respected ED person saying this is no COVID blip. Oh, and, by the way, I’m tired of that being a sad excuse for every bad behaviour from this Government. Go back before COVID even arrived. Look at the ED wait times from October 2017 when we handed over to before COVID even arrived, and they were getting worse.

The Minister’s new excuse is flu. That does not stand up, and he’s had to change his tone from it being the worst ever in memory, because it turns out the Institute of Environmental Science and Research can’t back that statement. This has not been the worse season ever, actually, when you look at the data, and when I inquire of him in ministerial questions how does he substantiate that fact, he says, “Oh, of the people I’ve spoken to, they tell me it’s the worst flu season in memory.” Unbelievable. How can that be statistically significant, or any sort of science whatsoever?

Come up with another excuse, Minister, because they’re tired and worn. New Zealanders don’t believe you. You are responsible for this crisis. You are responsible for the health workforce shortage. You are responsible for removing targets. It’s a sad indictment—it’s a sad indictment. Be very clear, Minister: this is a crisis. Call it what it is, and show the sector you understand them.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora, fakaalofa lahi atu e te Māngai me te Whare. Anā te mea tuatahi e mihi aroha ki te whānau pani i tēnei wā pōuri.

[Thank you, and warm greetings to the Speaker and the House. Firstly, I would like to extend my condolences to the bereaved family at this sad time.]

I mihi to the whānau, friends, and workmates of someone who’s been lost in really, really awful circumstances—being told that something is a preventable death, that if they’d been seen in time, things might have been different, but we can never know. Assurances that things might not have made a difference do not help. I just acknowledge the anger and the frustration, and, of course, the grief of the whānau who are left to deal with this.

Secondly, I acknowledge the staff at Middlemore Hospital. No one wanted this. We know that our emergency department (ED) staff especially, and our healthcare workforce is so, so under pressure, and they are just really, really tired, really exhausted. Our health system wasn’t doing great before COVID—it has exacerbated everything, and even though we don’t have to wear masks all the time everywhere and mandates have been reduced, the impact of COVID will stay with us for a very, very long time.

The fact that the report seems to suggest that they did their best because the patient was not declined care or asked to leave seems to me to be a very, very low bar. I have been the auntie inside a waiting room, trying to keep a young person and a child quiet while we’re waiting to be seen. I’ve been a patient myself not that long ago, sitting in a queue of hospital beds, waiting to be seen while people are crying, hurt, and clearly suffering around me.

The Green Party has spoken out consistently through the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill, through any of the health initiatives that are coming around, and we know that our health system is under massive, massive stress. Pae Ora itself we supported—it’s still a vision of what we would like our health system to be, and we are not anywhere near that.

We would like to see that hospitals are resourced to provide the minimum care that they would expect of themselves, that there are enough staff to go around to meet the minimum requirements, but we also understand from the review and the situation that’s happening across the country that, actually, a lot more has to be done to meet patient demand. We know that during COVID we relied so heavily on our local communities, our iwi, our community Māori and Pasifika providers to connect into communities with people who weren’t necessarily using the health system except in that final emergency.

We support that more resourcing and more effort goes into making sure that people can be seen when something first happens, that they can go to their local GP without barriers of cost, transport access, and that they can go to their local community providers because they’re resourced to see them and that connections that have been made through marae and all those places can easily refer someone to a local place, so that the first time that something major happens, they’re not turning up to an emergency department.

This is a short call, but we just want to see that no matter what your health condition is, no matter the symptoms that you’re presenting with, when you go into any part of our health system you’re treated with dignity and what is going on for you is respected and investigated in a timely manner. No one goes to ED expecting to be seen immediately, but six hours is not an acceptable time—five or four is still not acceptable. We want people to be treated with the care and dignity they deserve and with the appropriate level of urgency. We cannot tell by looking at someone what is going on for them—that is why we do all the tests.

Finally, to those whānau, to those healthcare workers, we acknowledge the huge stress that everybody is under in our healthcare system. We need to see some urgent relief for you. There is no doubt that this will happen again if we don’t. Kia ora.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to make a contribution to this urgent debate this afternoon. Following on from colleagues, can I firstly acknowledge the whānau, the loved ones, of the person whose experience at Middlemore was far from ideal and certainly meant that they are no longer with us. Anyone in this House, I think, would reflect on opportunities and occasions like that and it’s appropriate to acknowledge the loss of life that’s been sustained on this occasion.

I want to also follow in the footsteps of colleagues in acknowledging the workers; certainly the workers at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, but also those within our healthcare system generally for the outstanding work, the outstanding service, that they provide on a daily basis, 24/7—individuals who, I’m sure, we all have in our own families, members of our community who we know who have, over the last few years, shown enormous strength when they get up in the morning or in the evening, depending on shift work, and make their way to work, in order to serve and help others, within the health system.

Earlier, my colleague Minister Little talked about context, and I want to spend a little bit of time on that this afternoon, because context is important in any situation. And, in the context of this incident in June, at 1 in the morning, it’s clear that we all expect that when we front up to a hospital—certainly to an emergency department (ED)—there will be policies in place; that there will be support that is given. It is the role of a reviewer—in the words of the Minister, the independent reviewer, which I agree with—to make some decisions, to form some judgments, to have fulsome access to evidence and information, whether they be policies or other forms of record, to inform the report that they may write.

I agree that there is a basic expectation in this country—and, indeed, in our community—that people should be able to access healthcare on a 24/7 basis, and particularly when it is of an urgent nature that the individual or their family thinks that they need to go to the ED, to hospital, or whatever service is provided in local communities, whether they be urban, provincial, or rural, to get the support that they need. But it’s also worth noting that isolated events do occur from time to time, and so, with that backdrop of context, that’s particularly important.

For the folk at Middlemore and elsewhere around the country, I don’t think we need to look too far to see or to understand that we have experienced, for quite some time, a global pandemic; that we are in spring but for many it still feels like winter, and there are staff members in any workplace who are away sick. If we reflect on our own workplaces in our own communities, or here at Parliament, we know the toll that COVID, that winter illnesses, do take. And the sense of protection that people have in a workplace as well is also something that is quite important.

But, in terms of a hospital, I think there are often—and I reflect on my own hospital in Palmerston North and the fantastic work that the folk there do—additional layers of protection, particularly in circumstances where health is a significant issue, where there is additional resource at the front door, where there are limitations on the numbers of people that perhaps can be accompanying someone who is fronting up to a hospital. All of these things, all of these factors, do point and paint a picture of context that I think is really, really important.

After many years of underfunding—and Minister Little touched on this, much to the chagrin of those opposite—for the first time in decades there has been a significant increase and uplift in the funding that Government have put within the health sector. I can tell members of this House, and I will tell others who wish to listen or ask, that that also filters down into my own community of Palmerston North. When I think about the investment in Palmerston North Hospital, when I think about the medical assessment and planning unit suite that’s been invested in—those that drive down Ruahine Street on a regular basis will see the work that is being undertaken; the first bit of kit and infrastructure that has been delivered in Palmerston North Hospital for many, many years. I’m proud to be part of a Labour Government that is investing in health, investing in infrastructure, investing in making a difference for people for whom it really makes a huge difference in their lives.

I want to acknowledge the COVID workforce, the individuals who tirelessly, over many years, have got up and gone about supporting our community. They don’t ask for much, actually, because they want to support their loved ones, their own communities, whether it’s in the face of COVID, through vaccination of workforces and loved ones—and I think of the efforts of those who either have retrained in order to deliver that service in our community or are wanting to start out in that particular space. I think of those community organisations—our Māori and Pacific community organisations who are connected on the ground; also, with new migrants, certainly in Palmerston North and other places as well, who are connected to be able to deliver those services. They have worked extremely hard in terms of painting a picture of context in Aotearoa New Zealand over the last 2½ to three years.

We have made no secret around the fact that these changes are good and great, but they are not going to deliver wholesale changes overnight. Anyone who thought that come 1 July and the clock ticked over and suddenly it was no longer June and we were 1 July, that suddenly healthcare in New Zealand would be much, much better is dreaming. We are on a journey. We are on a pathway to deliver an increase in improved healthcare for New Zealanders, and that is something that I am extremely proud of.

Just last week, I know many of us were out on recess and had an opportunity to spend some time with St John Ambulance, and this, to me, indicated the pressures that our healthcare system has been under for quite some time. I was thankful that they were able to show me around their particular site, and, in the process of that, the pager went off and the first responder and the emergency paramedic or technician were dispatched to a job, and then about three minutes later a loud audible siren started and then the emergency care paramedic jumped in his vehicle and off he went, and then about two minutes later another siren went off and a visiting paramedic who, I think, was actually from the Horowhenua, from Ōtaki, was visiting, and they were dispatched. Then I said to the person who was showing me around, “What happens next?” He said, “Well, next it will be me, and after that it’s the manager.” I said to the manager, “Well, what sort of training do you have?”, and he said to me, “I’ve got a basic level of medical training that will allow me basically to hold the fort until the paramedics arrive.”

So it’s clear to me that even in Palmerston North—a provincial city that is in desperate need of the increased funding that this Government has delivered to meet the needs of my community—even in my city, there are pressures that are apparent. They tell me that a lot of the calls are from people because they can’t access a GP service, and I know that is something that has been an issue for quite some time. But context is so important—context is so important. Minister Little touched on the immigration changes that have been made and, yes, the 381 nurses that have been ready since July, and the changes in terms of the specialised unit that will, effectively, have a real focus on the way in which those applications are processed and considered, will no doubt make a difference. But when Minister Little talks about the month of June here in New Zealand and over 100,000 people turning up to an ED here in New Zealand, that indicates a huge level of pressure. Actually, 80,000 just in a general month on its own indicates a huge sense of pressure as well.

So these wholesale changes are coming, but they’re also a result of professionals within the sector who are working extremely hard to support patients, to support whānau, to support others in their time of need. I agree with Brooke van Velden when she says that we pay taxes for a public healthcare system and it’s about the best use of resource. Well, I reflect again on the largest investment of a Government in recent times, and it’s come from a Labour Government because we have acknowledged that the system is broke and it needs to be fixed. Now, that’s not going to be a small comfort for the woman and her experience at Middlemore, but it is some comfort for others. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. That last member who has resumed his seat should hang his head in shame as the chair of the Health Committee. Here we are in an urgent debate, debating a report of a New Zealander who died because they could not get access to timely healthcare, and all he was intent on was trotting out the Labour Party talking points—the Labour Party lines.

Let’s go to the report—let’s go directly to it—which says, “It is important to note that at no stage was the patient at fault here. The overloaded and under pressure health system failed her.” This is every New Zealander’s worst nightmare: that one of their loved ones is going to go to the emergency department in a time of need and not find the access to the care that they need. The report says an overloaded and under pressure health system failed her, but listen to all the Labour callers today and all you hear is the good things they’re doing in the health system. Well, that might be true. I suppose that is the role of the Government to do some good things, but don’t gloss over the huge cracks that are in the health system today.

I challenge the many New Zealanders listening to this urgent debate today to go back and listen and watch the call of Andrew Little, the Minister of Health, and then compare it to Dr Shane Reti, the Opposition health spokesperson. I say to New Zealanders, who do you want as your next Health Minister: a doctor or an angry trade unionist? He was warned that his reforms that he pushed through in the middle of a pandemic would undermine the health system, and that’s what they’ve done. Their own Heather Simpson report said to reduce 20 district health boards down to eight to 12, and what do they do? Twenty to zero, in the middle of a pandemic, and they’ve got the gall to call into question the last National Government.

Well, under the last National Government, when you look at the six-hour waiting time target, 91 percent of New Zealanders were getting through the emergency department (ED) in six hours. That was in 2017. Five years later, it is only 78 percent of New Zealanders—78 percent. That’s what we’re seeing under this Government that will come to their five-year anniversary in the next few weeks: five years of failure. What they did is they repealed those health targets that incentivised and drove the right behaviour. How can you defend a reduction from 91 percent of New Zealanders who pitched up to ED and were getting seen in six hours, and now we only have 78 percent? On top of that, as Dr Shane Reti has revealed today, 5,000 New Zealanders a month are just walking away from the ED and not even being seen, and do you know what? When you look at the evidence and the research behind that health target, the evidence showed that that target saved 700 lives a year—700 lives—and this Government came in and scrapped that target.

Let’s remember Ms A, which is the name they’ve given in the report to this lady who, sadly, passed away when she didn’t get access to the timely care she needed. She turned up to the emergency department. The report says there were only 30 seats in that ED. There were 46 people already in there—a huge over-occupancy. There were three nurses down that morning—a 10 percent vacancy—and, basically, what they were saying to New Zealanders who were turning up in that emergency department that morning was that the wait time was some hours. That’s what it was—some hours. As Dr Shane Reti has rightly pointed out in the report, this was highlighted a week before, as the pressure grew on this emergency department. What we know about emergency departments is that they are a barometer for that health system. That is the access point that people need for that acute care.

What we know in New Zealand today is, sadly, thanks to this Government—because I tell you what, what’s propping up the health system at the moment is hard-working Kiwis in the health workforce. But slowly, under this Labour Government, we are seeing our health system turn into a second-world health system, because of five years of mismanagement from this Government. We desperately need more health workforce in New Zealand. We can’t sustain this level of vacancies and the reduced access to vital healthcare. We need to retain our health workforce. We need to ensure we’re working with them, because of course, if we’ve got our health workforce having to cover vacant roles, and they’re already stretched, we’re just burning them out. We need to train more of our health professionals.

I’m sure that the callers from Labour will get up and say what they’re going to do in the future. Well, that’s fine, but you’ve had five years and what have you done? Why have we got skyrocketing vacancies in our health workforce?

What’s galling is just the ideological position this Government’s taken around skilled migrants. New Zealand is a popular destination for an international health workforce, but you’ve got to be more than popular. You’ve got to be competitive, and we’re not competitive. Canada, Australia—they’re all cutting our lunch at the moment, and that workforce who would like to come and live in New Zealand are getting attracted with better entitlements in other countries. We’re just not there because this Labour Government ideologically refuses to accept that part of the solution—yes, let’s retain our workforce and let’s re-train our locals, but we need to attract skilled migrants, and that’s what we’re not doing at the moment.

It’s hugely concerning when we look at our health system that is under so much pressure, and we see that in our reports. The report we’re debating today says, “Research has repeatedly shown that ED overcrowding leads to increased morbidity … and increased mortality. Of note, ED overcrowding leads to an increase in patients not waiting for assessment and/or treatment.” That’s exactly what happened in this case when you read the report. A person turned up to an overstretched ED, where the warnings had been there the week before in their reports, but they had no ability to respond. A New Zealander turned up in the early hours of the morning and left because she couldn’t get the care she needed.

The person who wrote the report goes on to say, “The evidence provided to me strongly reflects an overcrowded ED, a hospital well over acceptable capacity and subsequent system dysfunction. I strongly suspect that it is only through the exceptional hard work and dedication from staff that there are not many more serious incidents occurring that affects patient safety. This is an unsafe environment for both patients and staff and is not sustainable.”

So what New Zealanders want is a health Minister who is going to take some responsibility and is going to take some accountability, show some leadership, and accept the crisis that we are in today. There is an ability to respond quickly if this Government accepts the position we’re in, but when you listen to the Government callers today in this urgent debate, there’s denial. There are heads in the sand. There’s great hyperbole about what they’ve done. Well, if it’s that good, why are the numbers of New Zealanders who get seen in six hours dramatically reduced under this Labour Government?

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I start my contribution to this urgent debate, as many of my colleagues have already done, by sincerely acknowledging the life lost—the person whose death has been the impetus of the report that we are now debating in this House this afternoon. I extend my condolences to the family and to all the loved ones involved.

As several colleagues have also mentioned, I think it’s important, in times like this, when the health workforce will be the ones most acutely feeling this incident, in terms of their response, to acknowledge that we do have a world-class health workforce, and it’s incredibly, incredibly—potentially—easy to lose sight of that at the moment, whilst we talk about all of the stresses that the health system undoubtedly is under. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we have an amazing, world-class health workforce, and as a Government it is up to us to support them and to fund them and to ensure that they’re able to work the way that they do.

Before entering this House, I did a variety of things, but the role that I performed most recently before being elected to this House was that I worked for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO). As someone who worked for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, I had, I believe, a relatively broad view of what our health system looked like—certainly across the main sectors of the primary healthcare, the district health board healthcare, the aged-care sector, and our private hospitals and hospices. I do agree somewhat with the member who’s resumed his seat, Matt Doocey, in so far as acknowledging that we do need more people working in our health workforce, and we have done for a number of years. We certainly needed more people several years ago, when I was working in this sector.

I also want to acknowledge that, every day, I was privileged to work with amazing nurses and healthcare assistants, who were incredibly dedicated. And I acknowledge all of the delegates in particular, who took on those extra roles to advocate on behalf of their colleagues, many of whom, back in 2013, ’14, ’15, were already tired of having to advocate for shortages in the healthcare sector. As others have acknowledged, you can’t magic up a nurse overnight. These people are highly trained, and it takes time to address those shortages, let alone the shortages with positions and various other medical people in the healthcare sector.

Two things come to mind when I think back about that time at NZNO. The first one, in relation to comments that were made earlier by members of the Opposition, was about CCDM—the Care Capacity Demand Management system—that has been funded quite some time; conceived of by the Opposition, but never funded appropriately. Personally, I worked on the implementation of that in one small hospital for five years, and do you think we could get to the bottom of it? No, because it was never funded enough. Just as perfect policy may exist—and there are plenty of really good examples of that—they will always fail if they’re not funded appropriately. I am still rueful of the opportunities that the previous Government overlooked in terms of getting this system off the ground properly and what a difference that would have made to our current workforce today.

The other thing that strikes me is that I also worked on aspects of High Performance High Engagement, and the thing that I will always think about our workforce is just how incredibly clever they are. There are some amazing skills out there, and if we were to resource them properly and to afford them the clinical freedoms to do things differently, again, we can build a better health system. But what I am particularly proud of is the fact that this Government has been the one to acknowledge that things do need to be done differently. We have made record investments in building a new system. It won’t happen overnight, but we are absolutely moving in the right direction—a nearly 45-percent increase in funding, which has equated to 5,000 new registered nurses, and that’s just one aspect of the workforce. The independent review has undoubtedly brought up some useful recommendations, and we thank all those people involved with that as well.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well this, today, is a call that I’d rather not have to be taking. This shouldn’t be happening in New Zealand today. A woman with severe headaches told she would have to wait eight hours at Middlemore Hospital’s emergency department (ED) left because of that wait time, in extreme pain, and, tragically, passed away from a brain bleed.

What we do know is that on that day, Middlemore was short-staffed. They were three nurses down, and—importantly—one emergency department nurse. What is important to note, though, is it wasn’t only on this day and it wasn’t only at this hospital. This was happening around New Zealand, and we know that because around the same time—in fact, I think in the same month—Wellington Regional Hospital issued a provisional improvement notice because they were so dangerously short-staffed and had closed down three wards.

This is happening across New Zealand and continues to happen. A report stated that is was only the hard work and the dedication of their staff at Middlemore that was keeping it from experiencing more severe incidents. What we do know is that these exceptional health professionals—these heroic nurses—are doing everything they can. They’re working long hours, they’re working double shifts, but they are burnt out. They’re stressed out, they’re overworked, they’re up against it, and we know that they’re leaving. They don’t want to, but they have to, and we are not attracting enough nurses in New Zealand to cover the ones that are leaving.

They’re leaving because they’re stressed out, and they left this year, last year, and the year before because of the appalling way they were treated by this Government, despite what those members have said today. Let’s not forget the split migrant family nurses who left because they were split from their families, and it wasn’t until we kicked up a stink that they actually, only in May last year, allowed them to be reunited with their families.

The 2021 Resident Visa programme last year missed out a bunch of nurses because they were on the wrong visa type or because they were students. They left. Nurses with offshore partners were sent back to their home countries to sit there for three months—and this was happening in June this year—being sent back overseas to ridiculously spend three months with their partner before they could come back into New Zealand with that partner. That’s how his Government treated nurses and that’s why they left, and now we have the Green List debacle, where we are not able to compete with Australia.

So when we know that Middlemore was three nurses short-staffed and one ED nurse short-staffed that night, we should look into the dismal treatment of nurses by this Government who made them choose to leave and have chosen to leave over the last three years. Until we have better immigration settings, this will continue to happen. The Nurses Organisation says that it is the number one concern of their members about staff shortages.

We should be doing everything we possibly can to get more nurses fast-tracked into this country. No one agrees with a two-year work to residence for nurses—not Health New Zealand, not the Aged Care Association, not the Nurses Organisation, and not the care in the community sector. The only people that believe in this policy is the Government. No one backs them.

On the back of this damning report, what we would have expected today is immigration policy settings to immediately change to get more nurses in—that’s what we expected. But what did we hear today? What did we hear?

Dr Shane Reti: Excuses.

ERICA STANFORD: We heard excuses—that’s right, Dr Shane Reti. We heard “COVID.”, “Oh, it’s a really bad flu situation.”, “It takes time for change to bed in.”, and—the most egregious excuse we heard today from Minister Little—“Well, the likelihood is she may have died anyway.” That’s what we heard today from this Minister when we should have been hearing “What I am going to do today”, from this health Minister and the immigration Minister, “is get more nurses into New Zealand by fast-tracking them, by being competitive with Australia.” We do not need more excuses; we need solutions. That’s what the public of New Zealand expects.

What we want to see to avoid this happening again is nurses on the Green List. Now, despite what they say about the hundreds of nurses coming in, only 97 have applied in three months. That’s worse than when the borders were closed.

The Competency Assessment Programme course nurses—they still can’t bring their families when they come in. Let them do that. Why are we so hung up with a nurse having to have a job offer, for goodness’ sake? Let us compete with Australia. Let us have the same settings for nurses so that they choose to come here, or are Labour too arrogant to admit that they got these immigration settings wrong?

In the face of this tragic death, will they finally listen, will they set aside their pride, and will they make us a more attractive destination for nurses? Will they stop the excuses and, finally, give us workable solutions?

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d just like to start my contribution with passing on my sincere condolences to the family of the woman who’s led to the report that we’re debating today. I’d also like to acknowledge the incredible work that those working in the emergency department do: the doctors and nurses who get up every day, who turn up day after day to that make that difference in other people’s lives.

I spent a few years, back early in my career, working in emergency departments. I think it’s really important that, as health professionals, you go there, you sit down, you spend a lot of time trying to sit down and understand where they’re at and how you can provide the best care. Each patient you are speaking with or looking after is different. It’s a really important role that our doctors, nurses, and other health professionals do, and also for whānau. I spent a lot of time, when my mum had leukaemia, sitting in emergency departments, and just the care and respect that they gave with mum, and also, later, with dad when he had his stroke—it’s a wonderful career, it’s very rewarding, but it also can be incredibly demanding, particularly at very busy times of the year.

I think, when events like what we’re debating today happen within the health system, it’s important that we sit down and we undertake a review to try and understand what happened and what those circumstances were that led to this event.

I think, when I first started out in medicine, there was a real framing—and we were, as junior doctors, quite anxious, because often the framing back then was that it was an individual doctor’s fault. But then as things have progressed, there’s a much better understanding that, actually, many things that happen have got underpinning circumstances, and trying to understand the context in which these events occur. I’d like to just acknowledge those that undertook this review and the report that we’re debating today. Basically, I expect that Te Whatu Ora will be considering the findings in detail and also taking on board the lessons from the report.

I also just want to talk a little bit about that broader context, and thinking about the context in which our emergency departments have been operating over the last two years but also during the period when this event occurred. I think, having worked, again, in child health during winter peaks, every year we do see winter peaks and acute respiratory infections, and emergency departments are very busy.

But, I think, this year was particularly exceptional. We had the opening of the borders after two years of closure and very, very low rates of influenza in the community up until that point. So what we were grappling with this winter was one of the largest outbreaks of influenza and the impact that that had on our emergency departments and also on our hospitals in terms of in-patient care. But, simultaneously, we were grappling with COVID. The Omicron surge we experienced not only meant that we got extra demand—people coming into hospital—but it also meant that our health workforce, many of them, were off sick. We were dealing with staff absences at the same time as incredible peaks. I just want to acknowledge, again, the staff and the role they played. When we were doing our annual reviews in the Health Committee, a number of the district health boards (DHBs) were talking about how they realigned their teams and, basically, managed through those peak times, and I just acknowledge the efforts that went in there.

But, I think, while we’re talking about the exceptional circumstances, we’ve got to acknowledge that this situation didn’t arise overnight; it also comes on the back of many, many years, if not decades of under-investment in our health sector.

Again, just thinking through my previous role of monitoring child health, before I came into Parliament, one of the things that we used to monitor was called “ambulatory sensitive hospital admissions”—that was hospital admissions which could be prevented by better access to primary care. Every winter, we see huge winter peaks in these conditions, and I think a lot of the things about how we manage our emergency departments is not just making sure that they’re staffed well but it’s making sure that primary care, our GP services are available, because many, many of the people that are presenting to emergency departments could have been managed in primary care.

So when we first came into Government, one of the issues and one of the big barriers that we were seeing was that people couldn’t afford to go to the doctor. That’s where we put in place the low-cost visits to doctors for community service card holders. So now, instead of people having to pay $40, $60, they’re paying a low fee—back then, I think it was under $20 for a visit. I think that has meant that many more people can access primary care.

I think one of the other things, working in emergency departments—often where there are patients who need the most time from us, as health professionals, it is those presenting with mental health issues. So, again, what we’ve been doing, more recently, is putting aside things like the Access and Choice Programme in primary care. So, basically, people can turn up and see a health practitioner, a health coach, and start to grapple with some of those issues around mental health and addictions. So, again, thinking through how we can see people in primary care, make sure they get the best care they need to without having to go to the emergency department.

But, looking ahead, since coming into Government, what we have got is the largest number of nurses and doctors working in the health sector that we have had. But, basically, we think that there’s more work to be done. We’re in a situation where internationally there are huge workforce shortages but we’ve got to make sure that, as a country, we can provide the workforce that we need. I think that’s where there’s been a lot of focus more recently. So, basically, Government looking at the number of GPs and working with the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners to increase the number of GPs trained from 200 to 300 each year.

But also it’s quite apparent that nurse practitioners, again, in primary care, can manage a significant amount of the health demand that’s coming in the door, and so, again, basically doubling the number of trained nurse practitioners from 50 to 100 each year. So we’ve got our own workforce that’s coming through the system, but also nurses who may have left the workforce for whatever reason and thinking of those barriers for them coming back in—so, again, providing support and extra funding, up to $5,000, to nurses coming back into the system, with their registration costs.

We also are, though, competing in an international market. And I think this is where, with the health reforms, it actually potentially will make a significant difference, because, up until now, thinking through each DHB trying to recruit their own health workers, but now within Te Whatu Ora creating that one-stop shop where we can not only recruit health workforce, bring people into New Zealand, but also assist with a lot of the issues around getting registration for those who are qualified overseas.

So the competency assessment programmes and things for nurses coming in to make sure that their qualifications are recognised here, but also some of the time that’s taken when you’ve got somebody that’s got a medical qualification that then has to spend time here in New Zealand, getting that registration acknowledged. So, again, financial resource and other support so that our health workers, as we recruit them from overseas, not only can come and a find a job, be assisted with the processes of immigration, but, actually, will make sure that their qualifications apply here.

So there are a lot of things that we are doing to improve the health system, and I’m optimistic that as we move forward with the health reforms that we’ve put in place, we can be making a real difference, not only in the development of our workforce but also thinking about how we can manage so that people can, basically, get to primary care and actually receive the care that they want. Because, I think, a lot of the rationale for the health reforms was about the inequities that we were seeing, was about the fact that we had the postcode lottery. It’s about the fact that if you turn up to an emergency department or try and a get GP, it’s very, very different in one part of the country to the other. So I think what we’re doing now is grappling with many issues that have been going on for several decades, and it will take time to do that. But, as a Government, we’re absolutely committed to reducing those health inequities and to making sure that people, when they turn up, whether it be to the GP to get the care they need, whether they’re got some concerns with their mental health, they can turn up to a health improvement practitioner and have that conversation, whether it be to turn up to A & E, again, that they’ll get the care that they need.

This is an important issue, and just coming back to acknowledging the family and the woman that led to the report that we’re debating today. Our Government is committed to improving our health system, our workforce, and making sure people can access the care they need when they need it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Fair Pay Agreements Bill

Second Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I present a legislative statement on the Fair Pay Agreements Bill.

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

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move, That the Fair Pay Agreements Bill be now read a second time.

It is most appropriate that this piece of legislation is continuing its passage through the House this week, because tomorrow is Thank Your Cleaner Day, a day on which we are called upon to recognise and remember the essential work of cleaners right across our society, here in Aotearoa New Zealand and right around the world. Cleaners are actually often not seen. I’m very conscious of the fact that in office blocks and factories and, indeed, in these halls of Parliament, it is often after we have finished work, left for the night, and gone home that cleaners come into our workplaces and ensure that they are clean, safe, and hygienic for all of us to be able to work in.

Can anyone argue with the value that cleaners bring to our society, particularly when we reflect upon the one-in-100-year pandemic that we have just gotten through? How could our workplaces, how could our hospitals, how could our other environments—our aged-care homes—continue to have functioned without the essential work of our cleaners? Yet, as is the fact that often their work is done at night, sometimes they have been invisible, and certainly that has been the case within our employment relations system. Often, these people are the worst paid with the worst conditions and the least secure work in our country.

The Fair Pay Agreements Bill is about changing that. It is about making sure that workers like cleaners and many others once again have a voice, that we stop the race to the bottom that for over 30 years has brought down pay, conditions, and security for many workers doing this critical work in our society. It’s our cleaners, our bus drivers, our security guards, our retail workers, our orderlies, our aged-care workers, our early childhood education teachers. Our society relies on the work of so many of these workers, but the race to the bottom that they have experienced has meant that their work has not been valued as it should, and, at its core, that is what fair pay agreements (FPAs) are about. They are about valuing work.

Consistently, the message goes out from this Chamber about the value of work, and sometimes people who do not participate in work are derided for not doing so. Well, if we put that value on work, as I believe and the Labour Party and the labour movement believes we should, then it is utterly inconsistent to not ensure that that work is paid for in a fair and a just way.

Fair pay agreements are also fundamentally about recognising that every good and every service that we consume in our society comes about because of the contribution of both the employer and the employee, of both capital and labour working together. So it is not unreasonable—in fact, I would propose that it is entirely appropriate—that both of those parties have a seat at the table when it comes to fundamental conversations and discussions and bargaining about how the fruits of economic growth are shared in our country.

Finally, fair pay agreements are about recognising that a basic minimum floor—because that is what fair pay agreements are—is good for workers in terms of protecting their pay and conditions, but it is also good for good businesses, because the good businesses, the overwhelming number of good businesses, who want to pay fair pay and conditions and want to do the right thing and want to take the high road, they’re the ones who are undermined by the race to the bottom, because the bad guys get the competitive advantage by coming in underneath that. Fair pay agreements, by putting that minimum floor in place, ensure a level playing field for the worker and also for the good employer.

Fair pay agreements will not affect all workers in New Zealand, and I doubt even that they will end up affecting most workers in New Zealand. But for those workers who need it, who have lost their voice and who have suffered from that race to the bottom, fair pay agreements will bring some justice and some dignity.

The method they will use for doing that is not even a particularly novel or new or unique one in our world. It is the core mechanism of collective bargaining that consistently has been the way in which the inherent imbalance of power in the employment relationship has been dealt with here in New Zealand and internationally for 150 years. It is the proven mechanism for ensuring that there is a degree of fairness and equality across the labour market. It is these groups of workers who have missed out on that mechanism for 30 years, since the Employment Contracts Act.

As I said before, ending the race to the bottom is good for workers and it is good for good employers, but it is also one of the keys to getting on the high road with a high-growth, high-productivity economy in which we shift away from an economic model which is based on competition around low cost and low wages to an economic model that is based on competition about the things that actually drive value and prosperity. Competition that is based on the quality of goods and services is good. Competition that is based on innovation and R & D is good. Competition that is based on increased rates of productivity is good. We support those things, but we undermine that direction when we set up an employment and labour market that is based on competition that is based on low wages. In bringing forward the fair pay agreements legislation, this Labour Government fundamentally sends the message that competition based on low wages is not where our country should be.

I want to thank the Education and Workforce Committee for their consideration of this legislation. They received 1,800 submissions and went through 29 hours of oral submissions.

In my first reading speech, I was very clear that this is a complex piece of legislation. It is a new framework for employers and employees to work with. I expected that the legislation that came back, having heard submissions, would look different, and, indeed, the select committee have done their job well. They have come back and they have suggested a range of practical changes to the legislation in response to submissions that they heard to ensure that it works as effectively as possible for everyone who will be part of the system. They have incorporated changes around the backstop mechanism, they have made changes to the purpose statement to be much clearer about the intent of the legislation, and they’ve put in place practical changes around how coverage will be defined to ensure that there is as much clarity as possible about how and when FPAs will apply to employees. They’ve made changes to ensure that skills and training and leave provisions are mandatory to agree within fair pay agreements, in response to submissions, and for the public interest test they have provided clarity that pay and another factor will need to be met before the public interest test to initiate bargaining is proceeded with.

The select committee process has also been a great time to bust myths about FPAs, and there have been so many of these as part of a calculated campaign of disinformation against FPAs. So let’s be clear about this in the House. The lines that have been put about that people will have to join unions—untrue. The lines that have been put about that there will be strikes and lockouts—untrue; not allowed under this legislation. The lines that have been put about that employers will not be able to bargain with the employees—untrue. The line that was put about, laughably, that somehow this piece of legislation would breach international labour law—well, when that argument was put at the International Labour Organisation, you could’ve heard the tumbleweed blow through the halls in Geneva, such was the weakness and the implausibility of that argument.

When you take away the disinformation that has been put about in opposition to FPAs, all that we are left with is a primal and inflexive hatred of unions and collective bargaining from the parties opposite, and that will come through in spades in their speeches in this debate, I am sure, this afternoon. Well, they will be proven wrong. FPAs, as they have been around the world, will be proven to be good for our economy and good for good businesses. Many countries around the world with better levels of productivity have sector-based bargaining agreements of this kind that we are proposing here in New Zealand. FPAs will support us on to that high road, and many of the things that have been claimed will simply not come to pass. A race to the bottom is no way to drive a highly productive and fair economy, and that is why we must make this change at this time.

FPAs will make a difference to those cleaners and those other workers who keep our country going, who kept our country going during COVID when we needed them the most and have been undervalued for so long. My colleague opposite this morning claimed very blithely that those people are not underpaid. Well, that is an argument that he can seek to sustain. The reality is that much of the opposition to FPAs comes from some of the people and organisations in this country who are paid the very most telling those who are paid the very least that they should be grateful for what they’ve got and not dream or not hope for anything a little bit better than what they’ve had for 30 years.

As I said at the beginning, tomorrow is international Thank Your Cleaner Day. Saying thank you is a good start—it’s a decent thing to do—but it’s not enough. On this side of the House, we are backing those workers and we are backing that thankyou and those words with real change through this legislation that will make work fair again. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party will not be supporting this bill, the misnamed Fair Pay Agreements Bill. Indeed, if we are lucky enough to win the next election this time next year we will repeal it forthwith, because this is not about fair pay; it’s about imposing mandatory union deals on New Zealand workforces and making them less agile, less flexible, at a time when they need to be both of those. It’s bringing back nationwide agreements across occupations and across industries, making it more difficult for New Zealand businesses to have the agility and flexibility that they need.

When we’re talking about the context—and the Minister talked about the context—this is the day where we’ve announced that inflation has hit 7.2 percent. Inflation and the cost of living facing New Zealanders is out of control—over 3 percent for the sixth quarter in a row. National’s plan to eliminate or to fight back against that inflation is about getting the Reserve Bank focused on its single mandate.

One of the issues is about reducing costs in the system, because this is a Government that point blank refuses to accept the basic proposition that if you add costs into the economy, eventually many of those costs end up with the consumers. Secondly, as well as dealing out of a context of a cost of living crisis, where New Zealanders are struggling to pay for the things that they need in the supermarket, to pay for the rent, to get by—including the cleaners of this country—many New Zealanders are struggling to get by and facing real pressure at the checkout, as well as that we’ve got an issue in terms of New Zealand’s growth and investment. We live in a dangerous world. We live in a world where globalisation has been retreating, where protectionism is rising. New Zealand, as an economy, is going through a difficult phase and we need to be focused on how we grow, how we become more productive—that is how we deliver the higher living standards and the higher wages to which we all aspire.

When we look at this legislation we don’t see much hope on any of those fronts. What we saw introduced by this Minister—first up, he rocked up here, in Parliament, with the fair pay bill, and on day one had to introduce a massive change to the bill that he was just introducing. He was introducing a whole new backstop system because he thought he had the support of Business New Zealand, but in terms of dealing with this, he didn’t.

So what are our main concerns about this legislation? First and foremost, that it makes our workforces less agile and less flexible at a time when they most need to be. Because, ultimately, what it means is that the same set of terms and conditions have to apply to large businesses and small businesses. Think of supermarkets or checkout operators, which might be one group that we might hear from. So what’s got to work for the very large Countdowns and New Worlds and Pak’nSaves also has to work for the little place in Hokianga with two people. It doesn’t take too much imagination to think that there might be different requirements for both those circumstances. And if you’re in a small little business trying to operate and make a living, get by, struggling, you’ve gone through COVID, you’re struggling with all sorts of additional costs that have been thrown at you by this Government—another week’s sick pay, no trouble, let’s have it. Another public holiday, yeah, no trouble, let’s have it. A whole bunch of other things: higher minimum wage, yes, throw it all out there. Don’t worry, all these extra costs will magically just be absorbed by everybody and there won’t be any impact on the prices that New Zealanders pay at the checkout.

So this is the second thing: it will add to the costs that New Zealanders face. Interestingly enough, Retail New Zealand did some surveys of New Zealanders on this legislation and found that only 29 percent of New Zealanders thought that this was good legislation—29 percent. But 75 percent were concerned about price increases that will come through because of this legislation, because there is no magic in this world, Minister Michael Wood—there is no magic. If you add extra costs on to businesses, eventually they flow through to consumers. New Zealand consumers, when they’re trying to buy their broccoli, when they’re trying to buy their cauliflower, when they’re at the supermarket, see the prices going up like that, and they’re rightly worried that this legislation will add to those costs and add to that pressure. So his timing, in terms of bringing this out on a day when inflation is at 7.2 percent in New Zealand and mortgage rates are going up, couldn’t be worse.

Another 63 percent of New Zealanders are worried about the fair pay surcharges that they can expect to be seen. Because if you think of the hospitality sector, what will they be doing? They’ll have a fair pay agreement right across the hospitality sector, bringing in a whole bunch of penal rates for the weekends and for the evenings and for unsociable hours, and, of course, what will that mean? Well, it will mean more surcharges on the weekends, or it may well be that places close. So 49 percent are worried about reduced retail hours, that the shops won’t be open anymore because they won’t be able to afford to open because of the extra costs being imposed by this legislation. So as well as making our workplaces less flexible—giving workers less flexibility to have arrangements that suit them—this legislation adds costs to the New Zealand economy, which will be paid by New Zealand consumers, and those New Zealand consumers are particularly worried.

Now, there’s two particular groups that are most affected, those where what they’re selling is, ultimately, discretionary—people don’t have to buy it. Hospitality is one such sector, and retail. Ultimately, you don’t have to buy a cup of coffee if it’s going to be seven or eight bucks; you can stay home. Those businesses are increasingly under pressure under this Government. The other area, of course, is the internationally competitive business, because the cost structure does matter. They might dream it away and think it doesn’t, but it does. People around the rest of the world want our products. If they are really good, they’ll pay a premium for them, but they are still fundamentally interested in the price, and so cost structure matters.

There are lots of specific issues that we have with this bill. We are stridently opposed to the obnoxious triggering regime to start this process. So what happens is if you took, for example, retail workers—and there might be 100,000 of them across the country; there might be 200,000 of them across the country—all it takes is 1,000 to sign up to start the fair pay agreement process; 1,000. So, it could be fewer than half of 1 percent if you’re in a large industry. A tiny little minority can decide to start this process, and once it’s started there will be a fair pay agreement—there’s no stopping it; there is nothing to stop it. So it starts, and then everybody is drawn into this debate, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about it; you don’t have any say in it. You’re not interested; it’ll still affect you and tell you what you and your business and your employers have to do. That’s outrageous, it’s wrong, and we oppose it.

The second thing with this is it reduces competition. So half the time the Government comes into Parliament and says, “We’re tough. We’re going to take on the duopolies in the supermarket regimes. We’re going to toughen up competition.”, and then the other half of the time they bring in legislation that helps the very same big players in any market. So, I mean, think for a moment about how this impacts them. If you’re talking about supermarket workers or checkout operators as a fair pay agreement, who do you think’s going to be organising it; who’s going to be designing it? It’s not going to be the little shop in Hokianga with two employees. No, it’s going to be the two big players that organise it. And do you think they’ll do it in such a way that suits the Hokianga person with two people working for them? No, they’ll be doing it to suit them. This regulation, like most regulation in the economic space, helps the big players. Half the time they come into Parliament saying we’re going to get tough on the duopoly in supermarkets; the other half the time they bring in legislation like this, which makes it easier for them and harder for the small players. Because, just think for a moment, if you’re talking about meal-time breaks and double pay and things that you can cope with if you’ve got 10,000 employees but are impossible to deal with if you’ve got one employee working in a shop and it doesn’t have the flexibility to—you just have to think for a moment of how unhelpful this will be for the small operators. It makes it difficult.

This legislation includes a whole bunch of mandatory things that need to be considered as part of the misnamed fair pay agreement, including base rates, payment for overtime, penalty rates. All these things have to be included in the fair pay agreement. Nowhere would you find any reference to the productivity of the other company. That’s an irrelevant factor as far as this Government is concerned. If we’re thinking about how you design higher incomes, productivity is the key, nowhere to be found. The National Party sees this legislation for what it is. It’s about imposing mandatory union deals on New Zealand workforces. We don’t want it, it’s not going to help, and if we get a chance, we will repeal this legislation as quickly as we can.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real privilege to take a call on the Fair Pay Agreements Bill.

I’d like to start with a quote from the report of the Fair Pay Agreement Working Group, because this is a group that made independent recommendations to the Government on the scope and design of a fair pay agreement system. I can see some members on the opposite side of the House starting to smile because they knew very well that the work was chaired by the Rt Hon Jim Bolger, and that is a person who is probably well-known to the other side of the House. He opened the report as follows: “We believe we have designed a Fair Pay Agreements system which will be most useful in sectors or occupations where competition is driving a ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of wages and conditions.” At the same time as the Fair Pay Agreement Working Group report, there was independent research undertaken by Business and Economic Research Ltd. They stated, on sector bargaining, that it had, in fact, “zero economic risk”. They called it a “fairer distribution of wealth”.

So what will fair pay agreements actually do? They will help turn around those decades of Government policies designed to increase flexibility of labour as a way to increase productivity. But what the policies actually did—and, Mr Goldsmith, you should be listening to this—is they absolutely failed New Zealand’s workers. This productivity meant that the workers saw their share in the growth of the economy actually decline over those years, and that was the pattern that was developed after the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) came in in 1991. Within a few years of the ECA coming in, wages and conditions across many professions and industries actually reduced significantly.

Now, Mr Goldsmith mentioned the supermarket sector, and I think we should specifically look at the supermarkets, because if you compare, for example, 1997, which was after the Employment Contracts Act came in, the wages were 11 percent higher in 1989. By 1997, part-time checkout operators earned 30 percent lower than before the Employment Contracts Act came in, because what the law change did was it pushed the cost of operating on to the workforce through lower pay. Helen Kelly described this really well in the biography that’s been written about her. It said, “The breakdown of standard wages and conditions across the industry fuelled a race to the bottom. Supermarkets paying higher wages would point to their competitors paying less and argue they too had to cut labour costs.”, and that’s what happened.

So another good example that many will relate to—especially here—is, of course, the buses in Wellington. Bus companies had to compete against each other and they could only win the tender if they were the lowest cost, and the tenders were really specific. They stipulated where the buses had to be and at what time and how many seats and what fuel and even what fabric had to be on the seat—as I learnt—but the only thing they didn’t stipulate was the labour cost. The tender process was solely based on the lowest price, and the company with the lowest wages won the tender. So the company with good union agreements and with good, fair, and decent working conditions couldn’t win the tender, and that happened in Wellington. The company with those fair conditions and good wages had to crush the wages and conditions of the workers just to stay in business. They could not win the tender and they could not stay in business unless they crushed and participated in what is called the race to the bottom—and that is the race to the bottom.

So that is what fair pay agreements will do. They will stop this unfair competition on labour cost that will bring a line in the sand; an industry floor, like many other countries have—and we heard that from Minister Michael Wood in his opening speech. If you look at productive economies, successful economies, they actually have sector-wide agreements. It’s not a novel system; it’s nothing new. It happens in those countries.

For example, think about the Scandinavian countries but also Australia. Now, we know that the Opposition quite frequently would like to say that Australia’s wages continue to outstrip New Zealand’s and Kiwis’ wages. Well, they have sector-wide agreements. Fair-pay agreements have been in Australia for as long as I can remember. So now is the time to do something about it rather than spouting about other countries’ wages being higher than here. Let’s do something about it. It is very clear that any party that votes against these fair-pay agreements is essentially voting against our workers getting fair and good remuneration.

It was a privilege to chair the select committee. We had a huge number of submissions—1,796, to be precise—and they spanned across numerous sectors. The majority were individual employers, but also we had many employees. We heard evidence of almost 30 hours from 120 submitters, and we went all over the country to hear those. Three-quarters of all submitters were in support of the bill—this is very significant; 1,340 submitters were in support of the bill—and 20 percent of submitters did not support the bill, but many of those stated they did believe there needed to be some kind of concept of fair pay; they just didn’t like this system. Really important: only 5 percent—5 percent—said that they didn’t believe there needed to be a change, and they said there was no problem. That’s only 5 percent, so my argument is that the Opposition MPs are part of that 5 percent that don’t believe there needs to be a change.

I’d like to end my contribution now the way I started in the words of the Rt Hon Jim Bolger, chair of the Fair Pay Working Agreement Group, who said, “What we wanted to do in the report is in fact to stop us having some employers totally undercut others who are trying to be fair and decent.”

One quote from a submitter has stuck with me. They said, “Growth isn’t dependent on squeezing more and more out of the New Zealand worker.” It’s a privilege to commend this bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): It’s very much a pleasure to stand, and rise, on the bill referred to as the Fair Pay Agreements Bill on its second reading. As the member of Parliament for North Shore and a member of the National Party, we are obviously strongly opposed to this bill. It should really be called the “so-called fair pay agreement”, because in reality the only thing fair about this is the spelling of the word on the first part of this legislation.

I want to use my time this afternoon to provide a little bit of an overview in terms of why we think this is a piece of legislation that is absolutely ripping the heart out of the business community, a hard-working community across this country. I think sometimes some members of this House—particularly those opposite me—forget who pays the bills, those that are actually funding this Government’s addiction to spending, and that is our business community. Obviously, about 98 percent, if not higher, of our businesses are small businesses—those that are employing less than 20 individuals.

But this type of legislation—which is coming at a time where Kiwis across this country are suffering from not only a cost-of-living crisis, but, I think, as I refer to as a “social crisis” that’s developing—is going to only make it harder for businesses, workers, and employers to do what they should be doing and what they want to be doing, I’m sure, which is contributing to make this country better.

But, at the heart of this bill, this is a bill that is unfair for workers and employers. It is completely unfair, because it is going to increase the amount of bureaucracy and regulation on our business community in regards to imposition of what are these mandatory conditions on New Zealanders. That is actually going to reduce the flexibility of the workforce when, actually, we are at a time when we need significantly more flexibility and we need legislation by this Government which is completely out of touch with what our business communities across this country are faring at the moment—completely out of touch. We need legislation that doesn’t undermine what they’re doing but actually supports our businesses and employers in regards to the way in which they are supporting their workers.

So, at its heart, these so-called fair pay agreements (FPAs) is just another action by this Labour Government to pour more fuel on the fire of the challenges that we have in the midst of this cost of living crisis through adding additional regulation and compliance which is going to lead to an increase in costs.

We know from the feedback across the sector that this legislation has gone down like a cup of cold sick. The only ones that seem to be strongly supporting this are those on the other side of the House. But, in effect, this bill should be called “mandatory union deals”—or “MUD” is what it could be referred to in terms of the acronym, because this is a piece of legislation that is mud, and that is being probably a little bit generous in terms of that.

I want to just talk about some of the components of this bill, because we are at the second reading and it’s important to go through some of that element which, really, at its heart, is reducing the amount of choice that our businesses and our business communities and employers have as a result of this legislation being rammed down their throat, which is going to bring, in effect, agreements which are compulsory for workers and businesses regardless of whether they choose to join a union or not. That is, obviously, at its heart. You know, I don’t know—we are a party of limited Government. This legislation in its heart is going to mean that there is no choice involved in terms of opting in either for workers or for business operators. These mandatory employment conditions are just going to be passed on to those, and that’s why, at the heart, as I said, this legislation is actually unfair, that is because they’re going to be passed on to people without any choice. As we know, when you don’t have a choice, that’s generally not considered fair in life, and that is very much what is going to be the case here.

The other aspect here is that Kiwi workers are obviously going to be subject to these mandatory deals, which, in our view and other commentators in the market have said, will actually harm the employment and reduce productivity and I think, as a result of that reducing productivity, actually make it harder in order to actually increase and lift wages, which, as we know, the inflation numbers came out today at 7.2, wage inflation at 3.4, every single Kiwi is going backwards every single day, and this type of legislation is just going to add to that dynamo of Kiwis going backwards at the moment.

The other aspect I wanted to refer to was the officials’ comments in regards to this legislation. We’ve grown to become quite accustomed to this Government who seem to ram through legislation irrespective of all stakeholders saying it’s a bit of a dumb idea. Their ability to listen to hard-working Kiwis across this country is very much tokenistic. They undertake consultation which is not consultation, and I quote here, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) have said “There is a risk that the FPAs may weaken the wage-productivity link and/or lock in inefficient business models or increase barriers to entry into the market. This would ultimately lead to poorer dynamic efficiency of the economy and reduced ability to adapt, shift resources to more productive uses over time.”

Well, I tell you what, you would have thought that was quote from a member of the National Party. But, no, that is a quote from MBIE, the Government’s own Government department who is providing advice to these guys in terms of how to try and put in place legislation, and even they are saying in words that I have simply quoted. They’re saying that this is an absolutely ridiculous and dumb idea, but what would you expect a good Government to do around a bit of feedback like that? I’m looking at my colleague and you’d think, well, maybe they might take that on board and say that maybe we should listen to them because they might know a little bit more than what we do—but, “No, no. What we’ll do is we’ll ram it through and we won’t make any changes.” So another reinforcement of a Government who are not listening to Kiwis out there on the ground.

I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a few more quotes like that coming up so—geez, if only we had another 10 or 15 more minutes, but, anyway, we’ve got two minutes, so we’ll try and cut it to the chase.

But I wanted to get back, as well, before I cover off a few more of these quotes, around the impact of this legislation on the small-business community: 630,000 people is how many people small businesses employ in this country—630,000 people are employed by small businesses across this country. These are the people and the employers who are going to pay and feel the brunt of this legislation. It is getting harder and harder and harder for not only our business community but also those workers with all that cost-pressure that’s driven by this Government to try and navigate in all this thing, and these FPAs are going to come in and they’re going to introduce another layer of bureaucracy. I tell you what, have we heard that before? Have we heard that word before? I’ll tell you what, we seem to hear that word every single day, because these guys are absolutely pro! I’ll tell you want, I don’t often compliment them, but I’m going to compliment them today! If you want to find a Government who are absolutely A-class experts at implementing bureaucracy, there they are. They are the guns at that, but this legislation is going to cost Kiwis and cost Kiwi employers and that is because it is completely unnecessary.

The other aspect around this is that, actually, these FPAs are going to create a scenario where, in effect, New Zealanders will have these terms and conditions imposed on them which is actually going to suit someone else’s circumstances, needs, or preferences—i.e., this Government’s ideological position around what they believe is right and what they believe is fair.

So I come back to my point right at the start: this legislation is unfair for workers and employers. It is completely unfair, and it goes right to the heart of a Government that is not willing to listen to the real challenges that Kiwis across this country are facing right now, dealing with a cost of living crisis, dealing with a social crisis, and from that basis, we oppose this legislation.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this the second reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. I said in the first reading debate on this bill that this is a significant change and that I considered it would bring in decent working conditions and fair pay for workers in industries throughout New Zealand. I still believe that this is the case. This is also the most significant change that we have seen in industrial relations since the repeal of the Employment Contracts Act, and it addresses some of the devastation that was brought in as a result of that Act. Even though I was a child, I remember living through that, and let me tell you it was very, very difficult for people who were affected by those significant changes, in terms of conditions.

But from listening to the other side, you would think that we were under some misapprehension and that we’re ushering in some kind of revolution. We hear statements that we’re “ripping out the heart” and “we’re taking away choice”. We are categorically not. All we are doing with fair pay agreements is implementing the ability for businesses and employers, workers and unions, in an occupation or industry to negotiate basic industry standards—basic industry or occupation standards. That’s all it is—that’s what this entire bill is about. It’s about minimum standards, the floor, conditions which no one would want to work under. Let’s say what they are. Hang on—let’s get the employers and the workers within that industry to tell us what they are and agree them. That sounds like a good idea to me. Let me tell you—it might even make it easier for people.

I’m a small-business owner and I have spoken to small-business owners. Specifically I’m thinking about the owner of a cleaning company in Auckland I spoke to. He told me, “I’m sick of being undercut by people who want to lower the wages of their employees and get contracts ahead of me.” He said, “I want to be a good employer. I want to have standards for my employees. I want them to want to come to work and want to do this work and be happy in their job, but I can’t do it at the moment because I’m constantly being undercut.” I said, “Well, we’re introducing fair pay agreements—good news for you. Hopefully, one day in the cleaning industry there will be an agreement that will set minimum standards that mean you don’t have to worry about losing your workforce.” That’s what this is about—basic dignity, security, and rights for New Zealand workers.

We hear from the other side that we don’t know who pays the bills. Well, I’ll tell you. In households across New Zealand it is working people who pay their bills, and they need security to know where that money is coming from, not just tomorrow, not just next week when they get their roster, but throughout their career when they choose to work in the industry, and this is how we get a productive economy—it’s through implementing changes that allow people to make these kinds of decisions that allow them to choose a career and have confidence that that career will provide for them and their families for the rest of their working life. That is what this Fair Pay Agreements Bill is about.

Now, we had a very interesting select committee process. It was very long. We did listen to a number of submitters for, I think, around about 30 hours. I think I was there for almost all of those. Three quarters of submitters supported this bill, so when we hear the other side say that we’re not listening and that we don’t know what New Zealanders want, I say that the evidence points to the opposite. We are listening to New Zealanders, we’ve heard what they’ve said, and they have said in the majority that they support the direction we’re going in with the Fair Pay Agreements Bill.

I also want to specifically thank the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) officials and Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) for their work on this bill. This is a very complex piece of legislation. It must be this way because of the nature of how it works and all the different scenarios it has to cover. It’s designed in a way that is user-friendly and it’s well-thought-out. It’s had a significant amount of work from those public servants, and we are really lucky to have the high calibre of public servants who work in MBIE and PCO and have worked on this bill, and I thank them for their work.

I don’t have much longer to go over this, but I could probably speak on this bill for an incredibly long time. I think the main thing I want to end on is just looking at the point that has been raised about competition. Competition in business, as we know, is important, but what are we competing on? Today I heard Richard Wagstaff, who is the president of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, speak about the Fair Pay Agreements Bill at a rally. He said that he thinks that competition in New Zealand should be on the basis of innovation and quality and not on the basis of low wages, and that if we bring in the Fair Pay Agreements Bill, we will be able to complete on this level. We will have the kind of country that allows competition that respects New Zealand workers and allows our businesses to thrive, and that is why I commend this bill to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise and speak at the second reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. I share the view of Labour colleagues around the significance of this for us as a country. It really is the most significant piece of legislation that I remember in my time in this place and before that goes towards undoing structural inequality in our country. We know that the level of inequality and struggle experienced by so many working people in this country is unjust and unfair and caused by the way we have set up our labour market to provide flexibility for the employer not the employee, and that values employers at the expense of employees.

I remember Helen Kelly talking about this, about the way that so much of the narrative that we hear from the right is that working people should be grateful to their employers for their job, as if their work is not and cannot speak for itself, as if their contribution is nothing. This bill is about changing that.

It’s not this Parliament deciding what should be done. There are other jurisdictions that do that—right?—where the Parliaments set those baseline conditions. But this approach is actually one that brings communities together. That is a result in its essence of a tripartite working group that involved business and unions and Government, who sat down together and looked at the degree of how our labour market was working and the inequality in it. And Jim Bolger recognised, and has clearly articulated, that the flexibility promoted by the National Party that he was part of introducing had gone too far, that our communities and our families have suffered and are still suffering because of those laws introduced at that time and that are being defended staunchly by that side of the House—I’m going to pretend that I’m not on that side of the House right at this moment.

I do just need to bring in, too, the recent report from the Human Rights Commission around the Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry that’s shown Pacific people are experiencing just appalling unconscionable levels of structural discrimination every single day, that Pacific men are being paid almost 20 percent less than Pākehā men in their workplaces and Pacific women are being paid about 25 percent less. And when the analysis is done about why—is it because they’re less educated, that actually their age distribution is different; any of those factors that might be explainable—the majority of the reason is not that. It is discrimination and unconscious bias in the way our labour market is set up.

So fair pay agreements weren’t one of the recommendations of that report. They were more specific, but it is, in my view, part of the solution, because we know that the numbers of Pacific people on minimum wage is the majority. And what we hear again and again from particularly marginalised communities is that they’re spending their life on the minimum wage despite years of experience in the job. We’ve heard these submissions to the committee. It was a really compelling submission I think from E tū members talking about working for, like, 20-plus years for one employer. The loyalty: turning up to work every day, back-breaking physical work, and to still be on the minimum wage. That’s just disrespectful. But it is a result of the existing current system that we need to change. That’s why this legislation is part of that change, because—I will speak for myself—I am not willing to accept that status quo anymore. I believe everybody in this House should be angry about what that status quo is doing to our people and our families and our communities, and should be looking for solutions to that. This is a solution. I am yet to hear one from the National Party at all. I’ve heard from them that this bill had no one support it; yet, the analysis of the submissions on the bill showed that almost 80 percent—75 percent—of people supported this bill. It came out of that tripartite working group that had the support of business, unions, and Government. There is a small group—and, so often, we see this with inequality, right? That it’s upheld by that small group who benefits from it. That’s who we’re hearing represented in this House from the National Party this afternoon. I am pleased not to be sharing that role. I am pleased to be in the Green Party, supporting a commitment to eliminating inequality.

I also do just want to bring up that point made by the previous speaker, Camilla Belich, around the benefit to employers who are wanting to do the right thing, or are doing the right thing at the moment—that this evens up the playing field and prevents them from being undercut by dodgy employers. I would also say that it’s quite well researched and evidenced that we have a management crisis in this country, in many of our businesses, and that is a key part of the productivity challenge we’ve got. A dynamic of that management deficit is an undervaluing of people—an under-investment in people and their ability to grow and help develop a business. So this is a solution to help those businesses change their culture. It’s to provide some leadership for those businesses to get up to speed. The evidence that we see in other countries—where this is the norm, can I just say. This is not some radical initiative. It just embarrasses me to hear it suggested, as if it is, when it really is just us catching up with most other countries that we like to compare ourselves to. It helps business as well as helping workers and communities and families. You know, it is possible to have win, win, win, but possibly not if you’re the 1 percent that we’re hearing represented by the National Party yet again.

In the time I’ve got left, I did just want to touch on a couple of changes in the bill and a couple of things that we might like to see progress further in the committee stage. I was really pleased to see that the “mandatory to decide” aspects of the bill have been extended from wages and hours, to include training and development and leave. If I think of the Kristine Bartlett settlement as our first exemplar of a fair pay agreement, the training was absolutely essential to achieving equity for those workers. I’m not sure we’ve fully implemented it as intended on the ground, and that will require, I think, a strengthening of our industrial relations system beyond this, to ensure that these are enforced as well as agreed on. The Greens would like to see default union membership as well as more labour inspectors to help us realise the potential of these agreements. We know; we heard examples from submitters around the struggle in terms of hours of work and leave, particularly in non-unionised workplaces, where more and more was expected for just the same amount. So that was really good to see that extended. We would also love to see the right to strike—I keep on saying that. The Greens would like to see that back in there, but we are happy to support this bill today.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT for the second reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. ACT opposed this bill at the first reading, and after listening to the many submitters, we oppose it stronger now than we did before.

I must congratulate or say thank you to the great work done by the Parliamentary Counsel Office and officials to put together a really complicated—but unnecessary—piece of legislation. Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials even said at the Education and Workforce Committee that it was “difficult trying to make this very complex system understandable”.

I spent quite a bit of time studying the Crimes Act 1961 in a past life and I’m really in awe of the way it was written, so it showed that we have some really talented people working in this place. But be assured—for the sake of employers and especially employees—this will gone after the next election.

The naming of this bill is an extremely cynical use of words, because like other Labour Party phrases—misnomers like “money tree” and “gravy train”—it doesn’t mean what it says. “Fair”: it’s not fair, especially in this case it’s subjective and quite meaningless. “Pay”: it’s not only about pay; it covers all aspects of an industry’s employment. And “Agreement”: it’s certainly not an agreement; if there’s no agreement they will be set by the Employment Relations Authority, but they are industrial awards.

To oppose this bill doesn’t mean opposing fair pay—quite the opposite. Thankfully, most people aren’t fooled by this wording. The bill seeks to take New Zealand back to the national awards systems of the 1970s and 1980s, risks a return to the industrial chaos of that era, as individual businesses find themselves dragged into disputes that they have nothing to do with. The current employment agreement contracts legislation has provided the necessary safeguards and flexibility for employees that have proven to be successful over the last 30 years.

The fact is that after declining through the 1980s, employees’ pay and conditions have improved substantially since the introduction of the Employment Contract Act in 1991. There are issues in some industries that obviously needed addressing, and they came out quite obviously during the select committee process. Drivers have an issue; cleaners, and a number of other professions obviously have inherent issues that need to be sorted. But most workplaces are going well—even Minister Wood acknowledged this—and this silly piece of legislation is quite unnecessary.

Once again, the most divisive Government in New Zealand’s history—proud history—has excelled in pitting one section of society against another: employers against employees. Labour fails to understand that all business owners—those New Zealanders who strive to get ahead through their own effort, and who are prepared to take risks to provide work for those who want it—those employers were once hard-working employees who had a great work ethic and a vision.

I realised how out of touch Labour were a couple of weeks ago when, during question time, Minister Sepuloni proudly quoted Costco’s managing director, who said, “We pay over the award rate and the living wage. We want to give people really, really good jobs; good training.” In response to the notion that other businesses were struggling with a national skills shortage, he said, “If you pay the right wages and have the right working conditions, you [can] get the right people.” He also added that he had little problem “finding staff himself”.

Costco: a multinational corporation, third largest retailer in the world, making billions of dollars in net profit each year, being compared with struggling New Zealand businesses that are fighting for survival because of this Government’s policies. Insinuating that there wouldn’t be a worker shortage if New Zealand businesses just paid their employees more is just so offensive.

I’d like to thank many of the submitters as well for contributing to this really important debate. They were divided into two camps: not just for and against the bill, but emotive and factual. Some employees are doing it tough, and their stories were often heartbreaking to hear and I thank them for sharing them. But fair pay agreements are not going to help; they will make it worse. A number of submitters stated that they would like to have more say in the running of their business to feel like they belong more, and I’m sure a lot of businesses would actually like that, if the employee was also prepared to mortgage their house or get a loan to pay, just in case the business got stuck—like the business owner has to. One submitter represented the hospitality industry, a union with a membership of 3 percent of the 100,000 workers in the industry, quite adamant that if extra conditions placed by a fair pay agreement (FPA) caused a business to go bankrupt or fail, well, that’s just tough luck. Totally out of touch with their own workforce. The popular Labour rhetoric that if you can’t pay their bills, they shouldn’t own a business is straight out of the trade union manual.

The other group of submitters were against the bill proceeding: business owners who are experiencing the current Government policies and some highly experienced and qualified people who came to the committee with the facts. The fact that FPAs will affect employment relations negatively. The fact that most employees were happy with their current pay and conditions. The fact that most businesses are already providing training and pathways for employees to get ahead. The fact that health and safety and welfare of employees was hugely important to business owners. They haven’t needed a Big Brother Government to tell them. The development of workplace relations has improved hugely since the introduction of the employment contracts in 1991.

Retail New Zealand did the survey that you heard about before: 71 percent of New Zealanders didn’t want FPAs. They also said that 0.5 percent—half a percent—of their workforce could initiate an FPA. That’s just not fair.

This bill does amount to unionism by stealth and will simply make it tougher for businesses who have struggled to keep trading during the last two years and who continue to struggle with the never-ending costs imposed on them by this Government.

I had my first experience with unions when I was 17. I left school to work as a cleaner in a psychopaedic hospital in Nelson. I met the union rep on my second day there when she pulled me aside, told me it was an expectation to join the union if I wanted that morning tea with everyone else and if I wanted to get free cheese on toast. So I did join. I met her again about two weeks later, when she again pulled me aside and told me I had to slow down. They had a way of doing things and I had to follow it. She was telling me not to work too hard, and there is little evidence to show that that attitude has changed within the union movement.

New Zealanders are free to join a union if they want to. They shouldn’t be forced upon them because of Labour’s ideology. The constant comparison with Australia by Minister Wood and these guys sitting here now about how fantastic these agreements are has become tiresome. It’s just not factually correct. Their agreements are very different. Union membership in Australia—and throughout the world—is declining as workers prefer to be treated like adults more than capable of working out their own conditions for employment. Maybe if we started mining like they do in Australia, we could reach some of their rewards.

Timing of this bill is another kick in the teeth for business owners, and the Government knows FPAs won’t help. Over the last two-and-a-half years, we’ve had an environment where employers and employees worked things out for themselves to cater for the current unprecedented situation. Businesses help workers, workers help businesses—struggling employers. It has worked and COVID showed us—and continues to show us—that we need a flexible workforce.

But from the start of this pandemic, we’ve been kept on having a tax on businesses. Two weeks into it, the minimum wage went up and I won’t bother with listing all the rest.

The Government must realise that businesses have survived in spite of them, not because of them. And when Business New Zealand refuses any part in this bill, you’d think there was cause for some concern. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has warned against FPAs, saying they will reduce productivity and make it harder for employers to grow. This is a solution looking for a problem; it’s not good governance.

New Zealand’s workforce has improved from the 1991 introduction of the employment contracts agreement. FPAs are a backwards step and they will affect good, hard-working employees. ACT believes that New Zealanders are more than capable of talking to employers and working out pay and conditions that suit both parties and, most importantly, are affordable—something that’s lacking in everything Labour says. It’s called an employment contract, and they work great.

Unions can play a part if the employee wants them to. But this bill overrides basic freedom of association by allowing the union to represent a worker, even when the worker does not want that to happen, and to set conditions that may be against the wishes of the employee. That’s not democratic, and we oppose this bill. Thank you.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. Before I begin, I wish to acknowledge the passing of Gloria Ruru, wife of my friend, and Nelson Whakatū Archdeacon Emeritus Harvey Ruru, who passed away last week after a long health battle. My love and thoughts are with you, Harvey and whānau. Moe mai rā, Gloria.

Today, we take another step forward in ensuring we have decent employment law that will lift the wages of the lowest-paid workers in New Zealand. Fair pay agreements will improve wages and conditions for employees, as well as level the playing field so that good employers don’t get undercut and disadvantaged.

In my maiden speech to this House, I said that during my time in Parliament I wish to see a fair pay agreement for all retailer workers in New Zealand. It is 10 years since I began working for New Zealand’s retail union, FIRST Union, that oversees bargaining for retail workers. FIRST Union has collective employment agreements in place with most of New Zealand’s large retailers, including Countdown supermarkets, The Warehouse, Bunnings, Farmers, and Kmart. These are large, profitable companies that can afford to pay their workers fairly. The collective agreements in place at these retailers have led to higher wages and better conditions for workers, like extra annual leave and sick leave, and the transferring of public holidays so that workers who work a Tuesday to Saturday roster don’t miss out on precious public holidays. These are the kinds of terms and conditions that would make sense to be part of a retail fair pay agreement.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve worked alongside my friend, Pak’nSave Richmond delegate, Jenny Wells, and other workers at Pak’nSave, to bargain for a collective agreement for the workers at the supermarket, which is the largest supermarket in my electorate of Nelson. That fight has not been successful because our employment law is not designed to support sector-wide bargaining.

In New Zealand, we have a supermarket duopoly. Countdown supermarkets have a nationwide collective agreement that provides decent wages and conditions to thousands of workers. Pak’nSave and New World supermarkets, who are part of the Foodstuffs chain, do not have a nationwide collective agreement. Their checkout operators, night-fill workers, and deli and bakery workers are generally paid around $2 per hour less than Countdown workers. It’s not fair and it needs to change.

The Commerce Commission’s inquiry into supermarkets found that supermarkets make $430 million a year in excess profits. As well as having fairer prices at the checkout for consumers, that profit needs to go to the workers who do the hard work every day, making profit for the owners of the supermarkets.

During the COVID lockdowns, New Zealand retail workers, especially our supermarket workers, were finally recognised for the skilled and essential workers that they are. They showed incredible tenacity during one of the most difficult times in our nation’s history. They turned up every day, risking their health and wellbeing to deliver essential services to our community. They deserve fair wages and conditions at work, and fair pay agreements will help deliver that.

My thanks to the Education and Workforce committee officials, submitters, and the Minister for their work in bringing together this significant piece of legislation that will change the working lives of many of New Zealand’s lowest-paid workers.

Today, our Parliament, under the leadership of the Labour Government, takes another step forward in putting in place the most progressive and fair piece of employment law that New Zealand has seen since the early 1990s. My generation—a generation that grew up under the Employment Contracts Act, a devastating piece of employment law that led to reductions in real wages—and the generations to come will finally have a sector-based bargaining framework that is modern, fair, and ensures that a fair day’s work does equal a fair day’s pay.

The introduction of the Employment Contracts Act in 1991 has been one of the key drivers behind inequality in Aotearoa. This legislation helps to correct that wrong from over 30 years ago. As we face the cost of living and inflation pressures that we see in New Zealand and globally, this Labour Government is making a transformational change to our employment law so that our lowest-paid workers can be paid the income they deserve. Every day, I’m proud to be part of a Labour Government that is making a difference in the lives of working people. Today, on this side of the House, we’re standing up for hard working people who deserve the dignity that fair pay agreements will bring to their working lives. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call. I call on Erica Stanford—five minutes.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Fair Pay Agreements Bill, a bill that National opposes and, eventually, an Act that we will repeal.

Can I start by also giving my thanks to the submitters, and also the officials, on this bill. It was a long and complex and difficult bill, with many changes because of all of the different scenarios and the unexpected and unintended problems with the bill. As my colleague across the way, Chris Baillie, pointed out, there were many changes because of these unexpected problems.

At a time of skyrocketing and stubbornly high inflation—and I don’t think anyone expected today the number 7.2 to come out—despite the predictions that this would drop, we still see it stubbornly high, and yet we get this bill. At a time when we should be focused on driving down inflation, on making our workforce more flexible, on making our employers have more agility, and on improving compliance, all that this bill does is the opposite of all of this. The bill allows a very small minority of workers to force a whole sector into negotiations.

Now, I think it’s worth pointing out, at this stage, the numbers that will force negotiations—and eventually a fair pay agreement, because there is no turning back: 10 percent of the workforce, 1,000 employees, or a public interest test, which, technically, would require no employees. Now, I want to put this to the other side of the House, because all we’ve heard today is how much people want this, how important it is for workers, how desperately they need this, and how it’s going to be so important for them and they were overwhelmingly supportive of it: if that was the case, what is wrong with making it 50 percent of the workforce—if they so desperately want it and they’re so desperately supporting this? Why make it 10 percent or only 1,000 workers or even have a public interest test? Why do we have a need for a public interest test if the workers are so desperately calling for this? Well, they can’t answer that, and they won’t, and they haven’t.

Helen White: I just did.

ERICA STANFORD: Well, get up and take a call.

Helen White: I will.

ERICA STANFORD: Excellent. Can’t wait for it. The member for Auckland Central, Helen White, is going to get up and take a call. We can’t wait for those bits of information.

As I mentioned, this will force the sector into bargaining, and there is no coming back from it—10 percent of the workforce or, in fact, none of the workforce if indeed it meets the public interest test. So this will set a base pay rate for a company in Auckland, a company in Gore, and a company in Invercargill regardless of the costs that that business faces in that particular town.

As always, in this bill, the Government confuses wage rates and increasing wage rates with an increase in productivity. They’ve done exactly the same with immigration settings, pushing up wages, believing that it will push up productivity, and yet how has that worked out so far for immigration? All we’ve seen is businesses closing their doors because they don’t have workers. Interestingly, despite their constant claims of productivity improvement, nowhere, as my colleague Paul Goldsmith pointed out, is productivity mentioned as something that must be discussed when putting together an agreement—and yet we have this productivity disease. Nowhere is it mentioned. And, as my colleague Paul Goldsmith mentioned, this favours those large employers. It was interesting with Rachel Boyack before making those claims about the supermarkets and how this was going to make it fair for everyone, but as we’ve already pointed out, in this bill this will favour large employers, who can set wages and conditions to suit them, and not their smaller competitors. We made that point at the Education and Workforce Committee, and we’ve made it again today.

One of the problems that have not been ironed out that I mentioned at the select committee—and the Minister couldn’t answer—is how will the wage floor for migrant workers affect this bargaining? Because, effectively, the floor for a migrant is the median wage, which, next year, in February, will be almost $30 an hour. Now, no one at the select committee—not the Minister or the officials or anyone—was able to say, well, how will that affect the bargaining when setting a price floor, because, effectively, you’ve got two price floors and surely that will raise the floor to whatever the floor is for the migrant worker. No one in the select committee was able to explain how that potentially would work.

As I’ve mentioned, when we need flexibility, we’re getting the opposite. We will repeal the bill as soon as we have the opportunity to do so.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): If there’s one reason for workers in New Zealand not to vote for the National Party or ACT next year, it is around this bill. They don’t like workers and they have said they will scrap the bill. Not only will they scrap this bill, they will give tax breaks to the richest people in New Zealand, which will involve an $18,000 rebate to their leader should he become the Prime Minister. Workers need to remember that, and the Opposition needs to remember that workers are not widgets.

Employers have nothing to fear from this bill if they are doing business well; if they are looking after their workers. Workers are not widgets. I went to a memorial earlier this year—workers’ memorial—that commemorated the lives of 63 workers in New Zealand who died in 2022. Up to 900 died from work-related illness.

Now, what these agreements will do is enable workers more input into the safety at their workplace. That is a conversation that needs to happen, because, quite frankly, what happens in workplaces currently is not acceptable. Employers and workers need to work together to understand what works best, and that is workplace safety, it is dignity, and it is also productivity.

Not only is tomorrow the cleaners day, but this Thursday is actually 50 years since the Equal Pay Act 1972. The reason I raise this is because, at the time, it was considered outrageous. That piece of legislation came through largely thanks to the actions of a Dunedin woman and the Public Service Association, who took union action against Inland Revenue in 1956. That woman, Jean Parker, dared to question why a male worker was being paid more than her. Not only did she not receive that amount of pay, her pay went down as a result. She challenged that in a court. Go forward 12 years, the Equal Pay Act was put through, and in 2017 the Service and Food Workers Union took a court case to balance a pay gap for workers in sectors predominately known as “women’s work”. All of those cases and all of those scenarios involved outrage and controversy at the time. How dare people suggest that women get equal pay!

Well, it’s the same thing that’s happening now. We have a small minority of people on the opposite benches. About 5 percent of submitters are saying that, in the name of flexibility, they don’t want to see fair pay happening. It is the usual suspects: it is women, it is Māori, it is Pasifika, and it is ethnic people who stand to gain the most from this change in the law. They are the ones who experience the most inequality in this country, and the yawning inequality gap that has got bigger and bigger over the last 30 years is a direct result of what the Opposition did to bring in the employment relations work.

Let’s avoid the race to the bottom. That is exactly what is going on. We need to change things up. We need to reward those employers who are treating those workers well, they are already getting the benefit of productivity, but they cannot compete where there is a race to the bottom.

It is best practice; it is international best practice. It’s been mentioned by Jan Logie—Germany, France, Italy, Australia are all doing this; we know that it makes workers more productive. It is not something that can be transacted, as mentioned by the previous speaker, which against goes to the attitude of the Opposition about people in supply chain as widgets, just like every other thing, like material and so on. People are not inside the supply chain as widgets. They need to have minimum standards.

It’s not just about productivity. The overriding reason to do this is because it is the right thing to do. Workers need to remember that. Workers need to remember that this will be the biggest change in 30 years, and if they vote the other lot back in, not only will those tax cuts go to the rich but they will scrap this legislation and we will be back to square one. We cannot afford to let that happen. I am so proud of this bill. I am so proud that our Minister has got this piece of legislation to where it is. I am very proud to recommend it to the House.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): For too long, cleaners, bus drivers, supermarket workers, and other people who are on the front line working day to day have lacked that bargaining power to seek better wages and better working conditions. We want to turn that around with this bill. We want to undo the damage that was done by the Employment Contracts Act 31 years ago.

I sit here with sadness, listening to the National Party scrounge around for ideas and reasons to pay Kiwis less. It makes me sad to think that you run lines and try and convince us that you mean it when you talk about concern for the cost of living when you can’t even pay people a decent living wage. I have struggled to listen to the arguments of why New Zealand’s wages struggle to keep with those in Australia when you can’t agree to the same fair pay agreements that our brothers and sisters in Australia have implemented for years and years. So those cries I find are hollow cries. The cost of living as well as those, to pay all they want to do, in that sense, is what I see is to pay working Kiwis less to fund tax cuts to the wealthy. I find that disgusting.

Thirty-one years since the Employment Contracts Act was passed and I was one of those supermarket workers who sat with the 37 percent of part-time workers who took a pay cut in the first three years of that employment legislation coming into action. It removed sector-wide bargaining, it drove down wages, and it paved the way for a race to the bottom to who could pay workers the least and be more competitive with people’s livelihoods and wages.

I would like to say that I look forward to this legislation coming into force. I look forward to it improving the conditions for bus drivers in the Wellington region so that we can pay people a fair wage, and we have a floor, a bottom standard, for conditions alongside wages that give good, hard-working Kiwis enough money in their pockets each day that they can go home and feed their families.

This is a critical piece of work that I know has had huge organisation from all of those that submitted, from unions, to organisations, to workers. The large amount of submissions that came forward and said that New Zealand needs to move forward and be part of the future and pay people a fair wage is only the right thing to do for New Zealand.

I look forward, also, for us having a good working relationship between workers and employers. It is only when we have that good working relationship that it works both ways and people want to stick around and do the extra work because it’s fair and they want to do that. I’m proud of Michael Wood to be bringing forward such a great piece of legislation that I know will make a real difference in the lives of working families, and I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The sitting will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Fakaalofa lahi atu, members of Parliament. When we broke for the dinner break, we were debating the second reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. The next call is a National Party call.

SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Madam Speaker, thank you. It’s great to be able to rise and speak on this bill. We’ve heard quite a lot of passion, I think, from both sides on this. I mean, it’s something that the Labour Party is very keen to put through, and it’s something that on this side of the House, National and ACT are a lot less keen to put through, and something we have already noted that we will get rid of when we come into Government.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Got it in one.

SAM UFFINDELL: Very good. Now, the attempt here is to impose industry- or occupation-wide collective bargaining agreements. What we believe this will do is reduce flexibility in the workplace.

Angela Roberts: What’s the next line?

SAM UFFINDELL: OK, the next line on this is that we think this will make it a lot less competitive for people. This is a bit of a throwback to the days of the 1970s when you had these big industries and the way they liked to do it was roll out industry agreements across the way, but we’ve moved on a fair bit from that now. You know, we’re 50 years down the track, and we’re in quite a dynamic, nimble economy, and people now like to be able to make their own decisions about how they’re going to engage in employment agreements.

We’ve noticed that it doesn’t take a lot for people to be forced into this, and it does make it mandatory across workplaces where there are a huge number of workers. You don’t need a big test to pass—1,000 employees or 10 percent of the workforce. If you’ve got a significant workforce, like you do in some—you know, take hospo or retail, for instance; 1,000 workers isn’t actually that much. You’re, effectively, then forcing everyone else, whether they like it or not, to come into this arrangement.

This isn’t about fair pay; this is about the imposition of mandatory conditions on New Zealanders that reduce work flexibility. Flexible labour markets are the foundation of what we want to see here in the 21st century. This undermines that flexibility. Small businesses in New Zealand and in other—I would like to say advanced, but I’m not sure we are meeting that test under this current Government—economies around the world, they thrive because they can be agile. We live in an agile workplace. We live in a place where people can move between businesses and across borders. Now, we know these fair pay agreements (FPAs) are going to be particularly costly and complex for small businesses. Here in New Zealand, small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy—they really are. They employ over 600,000 people. I can see how in a big, big company, it might make a bit more sense to have everyone on the same level, but to apply it across the board is a massive overreach, especially when you bring small businesses into it.

My colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith gave the example of supermarkets earlier. You’ve got your big ones there: you’ve got Countdown; you’ve got New World. If they’re made to come into these negotiations and you’ve got someone else, you’re just a small company in rural New Zealand that employs a couple of people, how are those negotiations going to run? Do you think your small business owner is really going to get a say at that table? Because they won’t. They won’t get it. Small businesses will be left behind, and small businesses can’t always absorb those additional costs that are going to be placed on them. We know it is going to place additional costs on them. Treasury’s own advice to the Government was that there has been minimal identification of empirical evidence for the problem or policy response, and from our perspective, they are an ideological overreach by Labour.

I’ve got some other good quotes here, so I’d like to move on to those too. Some can get angry; others can grin. You take it either way. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has warned there may be some cost to some employees if employers reduce hours of work, reduce the size of the workforce, or do not hire as many workers in order to remain competitive. Treasury has also warned the proposed system could make structural changes to the labour market and have negative effects on worker conditions, employment, and productivity. It’s very important that when you get given advice that you listen to it. I know that that side of the House, and, in particular, that Minister, Michael Wood, really wants to drive in an ideological agenda about taking New Zealand back to compulsory workplace unionism, but when you’ve got Treasury and you’ve got MBIE—and I’ve got some other good quotes here from Business New Zealand that I’ll move on to shortly—you need to listen to them. This rigidity to put a one-size-fits-all approach on our workplaces will reduce our ability to adapt and to innovate. It will weaken our economy at a time it’s already incredibly vulnerable.

Maureen Pugh: It’s going backwards.

SAM UFFINDELL: It is going backwards; you’re right. Thank you. It’s not acceptable that you can keep heaping costs on to businesses. We’ve already seen we’ve got inflation running at 7.2 percent—that is six quarters in a row. We’ve had consistent minimum wage increases. We’ve had a big bunch of sick days put on. We’ve got the job tax around the corner. We’ve now got fair pay agreements around the corner as well, and to think that businesses are just these incredibly profitable beasts, especially small businesses, and it’s the small businesses that hire over 600,000 workers in New Zealand. You think they can keep absorbing all of these costs? It is a total misconception. We need to understand—and Treasury and MBIE have already identified this—that if we keep pushing along these costs, they will get passed on to the customer, or the business, in order to remain competitive, will have to lose staff. That’s a dreadful situation to be in. It’s not this idyllic utopia you all think it is, where businesses are big fat cats and can just keep paying and meeting conditions.

We’ve got some other good pieces here, and I’d like to refer to what Business New Zealand has said. They quote that “The Government has failed to listen to business concerns and has doubled down on the worst aspects of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill, and while under select committee consideration, the bill has been made even worse.” That’s coming from the Business New Zealand chief executive. When you read comments like that and you see the Mood of the Boardroom that came out a couple of weeks ago, one can hardly be surprised that this Government is no longer considered competent by the boardroom. Your time is coming, because you’re not talking to people, and when you are, it is just a box-ticking exercise. You need to listen when people give you feedback like this.

Let me go on. Let’s look at what the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) had to say about it: “The Government’s report back on the misnamed Fair Pay Agreements”—we particularly like that comment—“demonstrates a failure to listen”—as I’ve already commented on—“that was also highlighted in the recent Mood of the Boardroom survey, says the EMA.” This is a direct quote: “What has come back from the select committee process makes things even worse for employers and employees, the vast majority of whom will have no say in FPAs if they are introduced”. It’s more bad news, more bad quotes. Here’s another one: “Employers must hand over employee details to the negotiating union, a potential breach of privacy.”, so they can collect their info, collect their fees. Here’s another quote: “Coincidentally those are all examples of collective agreements locking in lowest common denominator pay increases over longer fixed terms and failing to respond to the market and demand. That’s what FPAs do for three years.” Meanwhile, we’ve seen in the current environment, the private sector has been able to respond, because they are agile, and they are offering increased wage increases.

FPAs are a return to a failed collective, centralised thinking, at a time when we as a small, agile New Zealand economy need to be able to be agile and respond to ever-changing, ever-demanding global economic instability. This doesn’t do that. This is not good for workers. This is not good for businesses. When we come into Government, we will get rid of this bill. Therefore, as I have stated before, the National Party opposes this bill. Thank you.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I worked as an employment lawyer for about 25 years and I watched the deterioration of people’s wages over that time. If you want to google, for those at home, please google the wage that most people in New Zealand get. You’ll find it’s actually incredibly low, and you’ll see a chart that goes from low to an incredibly small group of people at the top. They’re such a small group. Most people are earning under $70,000. Most people—and by far the majority—are earning those lower amounts of money.

When I was working as a lawyer, there were some cases that haunted me. I remember one woman who was a caregiver. She was in her 60s. She was still on just over the minimum wage. She had been working where she had to lift patients, and as a consequence, she’d actually worn herself out. So the response to that was to frustrate her employment, which meant that she lost her job without compensation. That woman fits a group of people who are incredibly vulnerable. They are often not in a union, they have got no protections around them, and they have all the hallmarks that are in this legislation of a group that would be covered by one of these minimum standards. So, for example, they are on low pay, they have little bargaining power, and they lack any kind of pay progression. They have inadequate pay; they are not able to move; and they have very, very flexible work hours. They used to be on zero contracts; they used to be on flexible contracts. They had very little security.

Those people we cannot afford to keep like that in this society. It’s an international phenomenon. People like Joseph Stiglitz have talked about the damage it has done. And do you know what actually happens? Actually what happens is the taxpayer ends up forking out because those people cannot make ends meet. The taxpayer ends up paying out in some other form instead of us building a society that’s based on an affordable, good economy—an economy where people get enough to eat, enough to pay the rent. That’s what we have to build. So it is incredibly important that we have a floor. In an industry, they’re all different, so this will provide a floor. It will say, “OK, so you’re a seamstress. OK, so you’re a bus driver. Well, you have to be able to work as a bus driver, and you’re living in Auckland, and it’s actually a really expensive place to live.” Actually, what we’ve done to those people is absolutely appalling.

I can tell you another case that haunts me. It was the bus drivers in Auckland. I wrote the strike notice for the bus drivers. Do you know what it said? It said, “They would go and take their toilet breaks.” That’s what the strike notice said. They were locked out. They didn’t even object to the split shifts that they were working where they sit in the middle of the day for hours without pay. That’s how downtrodden that system was. As a consequence of it being that downtrodden, we end up with a system where—even when things are improving a bit—we cannot get enough bus drivers in Auckland, and we have had major issues this year with bus drivers and ferry drivers et cetera because those are low-paid industries. It is causing us real grief as a country that we have not built into our system the maintenance of the workers that we have who are on those lower incomes. I’m not just talking low; I’m talking lower-middle.

When I hear people talk about the cost of living and say this will rise because consumers will pay the price, I’d ask the Opposition to consider who those consumers are. Who are the consumers who are having the hardest time actually buying fresh fruit and vegetables at the moment? Because it’s these workers that this will protect. We have to get the wages of people in this country up. It’s why I came here. It’s what I want to focus on. I don’t want it all to be about benefits and handouts and bits and pieces and grace and favour; I want it to be about people earning a decent living in this country, and this legislation will do it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Education and Workforce Committee by majority be agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

New Zealand Labour 64; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2; Sharma.

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Fair Pay Agreements Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 77

New Zealand Labour 64; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2; Sharma.

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Urgency

Urgency

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Deputy Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the first reading and referral to select committee of the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill.

This bill was introduced on Tuesday, 4 October and has therefore been available to members and the public for two weeks. However, the Standing Orders that regulate the availability of bills for the first reading following introduction remain those of the pre-digital era, and without the help of an urgency motion it would be delayed in going to select committee. I hope that the Standing Orders Committee remedies this anomaly as part of its tri-annual review.

It is a short, straightforward bill with four clauses. It extends deferral arrangements that would otherwise come into effect on 1 January 2023, so it is essential that it is enacted by the end of the year. Nevertheless, the Government wishes it to go through the select committee process and the use of urgency enables that to occur.

A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.

Ayes 110

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2; Sharma.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon JAMES SHAW: I move, That the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Having made it through the title, I don’t have a lot of time left so I’ll crack on with it! I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 11 November 2022 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, during any evening on a day upon which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, the ETS, is the Government’s primary tool for meeting our domestic and international climate change targets. It operates on a simple premise: businesses that are responsible for the greenhouse gases that cause climate change face a price for those emissions, and those that remove emissions get a financial reward.

Aotearoa New Zealand is the only country to have forestry included in an emissions trading scheme, where forest owners can earn units for the carbon absorbed by their forests. There are currently almost 390,000 hectares of post-1989 forest land in the ETS which have been voluntarily registered by around 2,900 participants to earn units. In addition, the ETS puts a price on emissions for removing forests that existed before 1990, which were counted towards New Zealand’s baseline emissions when the ETS was first established. This means that those who cut down pre-1990 forest land become mandatory participants and must pay units to account for their emissions.

The ETS is underpinned by a strong compliance system to safeguard its integrity. This was strengthened in 2020 following a review of the ETS. Among a range of changes, this saw the introduction of a stricter penalty that applies when participants fail to meet their unit obligations on time. It usually arises when forests are harvested, deforested, or deregistered from the scheme.

I will refer to this penalty as the “three to one penalty” because it is set up at three times the price of carbon as set in regulations for each unpaid unit. There is no ability for the regulator to waive or to reduce the penalty in size.

A key reason for its introduction was to ensure consistency with international practice. However, it’s important to note that, unlike New Zealand, most international schemes do not include forestry and can often exclude participants that emit less than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

The three to one penalty came into force for most participants on 1 January 2021. I say “most participants” because its application was deferred for small forestry participants, being those with annual unit liabilities of less than 25,000 units, until the end of this year. This was due to concerns that the three to one penalty could cause serious hardship for small forestry participants if they were to incur it.

Instead, a transitional arrangement was put in place. Under this arrangement, the previous penalty set at $30 per unpaid unit, with discretion to be reduced by up to 100 percent, has continued to apply when small forestry participants fail to pay by the due date and incur a penalty.

With the year end soon approaching, so is the expiry date of the transitional arrangement. I do not believe that allowing expiry on 31 December this year would be in the best interests of small forestry participants or the wider scheme itself. I say this due to the scale of the penalty, meaning that if a small forester were to incur the three to one penalty and be unable to pay it, their assets—such as their home or their farm—could be at risk if they default.

To put this into perspective, if a small forestry participant with 10 hectares of forestry land was required to pay units valued at $500,000 under the ETS, they would be subject to an additional penalty of around $1.5 million if they did not pay those units on time. These penalties will continue to increase if the price of carbon rises.

The transitional arrangement, which I have discussed today, has enabled officials to develop and consult on options for a new penalty to apply to small forestry participants which is proportionate and fit for purpose. That work is well progressed and I’m pleased to say that advice has been provided to Ministers to make final policy decisions on a new penalty very soon.

This bill will extend the transitional arrangement until the new penalty takes effect on 1 January 2025 by making a small amendment to current provisions in the Climate Change Response Act 2002. This will ensure that there is enough time to educate participants on the new penalty before it takes effect, whilst safeguarding small forestry participants from the risks posed by the three to one penalty in the meantime.

The orderly passage of the bill ahead of the expiry date of the transitional arrangement is crucial to avoid serious hardship to small forestry participants if they were to incur the three to one penalty. I therefore commend this bill to the House.

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

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, the very title of this bill emphasises the biggest challenge we face with our emissions trading scheme (ETS): the immense and extraordinary complication of it. To have a title of a bill as long as this, as the Minister for Climate Change just admitted to, that does as little as this is pretty significant. But I think, just to get back on to the ETS and the issues that this bill raises, it does emphasise how extraordinarily complicated this whole process is in its entirety, not just related to this bill. I think this bill in itself emphasises how complicated that is.

I imagine there would be a number of MPs in this House who have had people come to their electorate offices who have inadvertently removed trees that were pre-1990 trees and suddenly faced a massive great bill which is quite intimidating for them. The reason that happens is because those trees have never been registered on a title, and so often it will happen that someone might well have bought a farm quite innocently where the trees had been removed pre them buying the farm and suddenly they’re confronted with this very issue that this bill discusses. So it’s a very real issue for foresters, and, of course, the Minister talked about this being specific to small foresters, but there are many issues related to what we might term a small forest, because it’s pretty easy for a big forester to turn a big forest into a little forest if they want to. So you’d need to have some controls around that as well.

We support this bill; I think it certainly needs supporting, but I just want to talk for a minute about the issues that it raises. I think it’s all very well to go back in history, but because this is such an immensely complicated topic for the average person—not just this bill but the whole issue of the ETS and the way we’ve arranged our climate change response—one can only but think that if we’d got our heads together some 15 years ago and agreed on stuff, rather than poking our heads out, I guess, and setting off on a path that was then reversed, we might’ve been in a much better position now. Unfortunately, when you look at the response to He Waka Eke Noa, it could well happen again, and I think that’s tragic for New Zealand , because I think if there’s one area we need some certainty in—it’s probably the most important issue in my lifetime, and consequently all of yours, and if that’s the case, we should really be getting some collective thinking on how we deal with these issues and manage them in a manner that I think is sustainable for the future and gives investors and other people in New Zealand certainty as to what is going to happen in the future. Every time we bring one of these bills to the House, make alterations to it, it then changes some of the rules that have been set initially, and I think it’s very unfortunate that that should happen.

So I think that whilst I said we support this—and the reason that we support it is because, if you look at these penalties, they were attached to the price of carbon, I think three times the price of carbon. That’s all very well when the carbon price is $14 a ton; not so flash when it’s at $80. So, as the Minister himself said, the challenge of those fines and penalties becomes very significant.

The changes to this bill arose out of submissions to earlier discussion on this issue, and it always amuses me when we say submissions by Māori landowners and organisations noting that the penalty regime is not equitable and would affect them. It actually affects all sorts of people, because not just Māoris have collective ownership of land in New Zealand; there’s many people that have collective ownership in New Zealand. I think that we need to be very aware that there are all sorts of organisations that have this very same challenge that Māori landowners have. So I think it’s particularly important that we consider all types of land ownership when we look at these types of penalties and the complexities and the issues that complicated land ownership arises. It’s not till you go to register yourself in the ETS that you realise how extraordinarily complicated just that process can be, and, of course, there’s a massive great waiting list right now as people rush to register forests and forestry land in the emissions trading scheme. Some of them are going to be significantly penalised by the fact they could wait up to two years, and so that delay in getting registered then delays their ability to claim those carbon credits.

So there are quite a lot of issues facing us at the moment, and I suppose my plea to the Parliament is that in the future we get our heads together on some of this stuff and don’t put ourselves in a position where we create, I guess, divisive issues that then lead us to stall what undoubtedly we should be progressing as a Parliament and as a Government. I think it’s most important that we get to a point where we can collectively agree on these things.

If you go right back to the early discussions on this in—I guess it was well-known as the “fart tax”. In fact, one of our esteemed members of Parliament drove his tractor up the steps of Parliament to protest against it. If we hadn’t gone to that extreme at that time, I’m sure we’d have been in a much stronger position now. So every time we take an extreme view of something, we go way up there, it gets pulled back, and that consequently slows the progress down and we don’t make the progress that we should make with respect to some of the very important issues that face us. This bill is just an epitome of that, because it was put in place with good intentions, the environment’s changed significantly, and so we have to change the rules. I think if we’d thought this whole issue through at the very beginning of this discussion, probably some 20 years ago, we might’ve got to a much better position today. History will be what it is, and we’ve just got to put up with that.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Yeah, well, there’s the reminder there—the reminder there. Just remember that—remember that.

IAN McKELVIE: And it’s all very well to criticise people on each side of the House, but, of course, every part of this House is equally as guilty as the other, Mr O’Connor, and so I think that we should be really careful that we progress these things in an orderly fashion and don’t go to extreme lengths to try and, I guess, insert our will on other people or on other industries.

The interesting thing about this whole challenge for New Zealand is that we’re a very small country. I had the privilege of spending—you can tell by my voice; too much red wine in South America—a couple of weeks in South America, and they have a very different attitude to this than we do. It’s very interesting, because if we start to shift our costs offshore, then they’re just going to lap that up, and that was pretty blatantly obvious in our trip through South America. So everywhere’s different, but I think we need to make sure that we play our part in the world, that we play it well, and that we ensure that our country is sustainable for the future.

That’s probably about all I can put into this bill, but we certainly support it, and I think it’s a fact that it’s resurrecting a challenge that will arise in many more places than this before we get through this whole climate change discussion and the emissions trading scheme discussion in the next few years. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I actually agree with the previous speaker, Ian McKelvie. There needs to be a lot more collective effort in this House to be able to work together on the big, gnarly issues. Climate change is something that is affecting us all, no matter where you live in the country, and we can all be quite parochial about the places that we come from. But, actually, climate change is real, it is an emergency—we have had our councils, our Government, declare climate emergencies; we have our children striking out in the street about it. The more that we can work together on these big issues, the better off we’re going to be.

This is a very long title of a bill, the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill. Whilst it is a long title, it actually says what it is on the tin—it’s one of those bills. One thing that I’ve learnt, having been here now—this is my fifth year—is that there’s plenty of legislation that’s gone through this House where it’s intended to do one thing, then stuff happens, and then there needs to be another revision, another amendment. Maybe it had an unintended consequence, or maybe something wasn’t captured, or maybe there was a delay in the timing. This is one of those bills, and I’m sure that it will be great relief for those many small forestry owners that may indeed get caught up in an unintended consequence of the primary legislation and the primary goals that we’ve been trying to achieve.

So I’m glad that the opposite side of the House supports it. On this side of the House, we support it. I thank the Minister for bringing it forward. I support this bill to the House.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Oh, thank you, Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on this bill, and, as my colleague Ian McKelvie said, if you read the title of the bill up, it’ll be half your speech gone—I think that is right. He made a very good point about the complexity of the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and the response to climate change. Actually, the emissions trading scheme is very simple in theory. But, in practice, it is very complex, as Ian McKelvie pointed out earlier.

The previous speaker, Tāmati Coffey, mentioned the School Strike 4 Climate, so I feel justified in bringing this up, seeing as it has been brought up. It demonstrates, in fact, how complex it is; it seems like a very simple issue until you get into the detail. And poor Izzy Cook, who led the School Strike 4 Climate here in Parliament grounds, was interviewed by Heather du Plessis-Allan on her show, and virtually said—in response to a question from Heather du Plessis-Allan about “Should I take a flight to Fiji”—“Well, given we’re in a climate emergency, you shouldn’t fly.” Heather said, “Well when, Izzy, did you last take a flight?” “Oh, a couple of months ago.” “Where was that?” “Oh, Fiji.”

Jan Logie: Shame on you! Shame on you for retelling that kid’s story in this House for your benefit!

Hon Member: Oh, come on.

STUART SMITH: The poor girl—all right, now listen to this [Interruption]—listen to this—listen to this, this is outrageous. If it wasn’t for people like that—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! Go ahead, Stuart Smith.

STUART SMITH: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Poor Izzy would not have been taken advantage of. They put her out at the front, as a spokesperson, not equipped to argue the case. She didn’t realise that her actions and calling for everyone else not to take a flight were hypocritical when she’d already taken one, and, in fact, does that as part of her life. I don’t blame her for doing that—I think it’s good; I’ll take flights as well. But I’m not calling it a climate emergency, and I’m not trying to tell other people not to take flights. And the poor girl was taken advantage of. I think I blame the education system for this: they’re ramming this down people’s throats, and, unfortunately, without taking an evidence-based approach. If only they did that, we would be in a much better position than that. And I think that’s one of the big issues with it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I’ll ask—order! I’ll ask the member to come back to this bill.

STUART SMITH: Well, this is all related to it, Madam Speaker, but I’m coming right back to that now, because this bill is an attempt to tidy up what is a complex issue. So, as I said, it’s really quite simple: you account for the emissions that are emitted, and you account for the carbon dioxide on the other side that is sequestered. Pretty simple, right—until you get down to the difficulty of measuring that. And what we’ve seen lately, with the He Waka Eke Noa, is how badly that can go wrong.

Hon Member: Not this bill.

STUART SMITH: And this bill’s quite tied to that, and, unfortunately, it’s so complex that it’s not understood by many—judging, quite clearly, by those comments from the other side of the House.

Foresters have been and are being caught by this anomaly in the bill, in an attempt to try and create a market. Unfortunately, this market is not just influenced by buying and selling; it’s influenced by policy decisions and announcements which wildly move the market. For example, the Climate Change Commission and the Government are trying to control the number of emissions trading units for sale, and are also trying to control the price. It’s Economics 101: you either control one or the other; you can’t control both.

Unfortunately, with this bill, it tidies up this transitional—well, it gives it a time to tidy up this transitional arrangement, which is a $30 penalty per unit, if people haven’t paid their units. As Ian McKelvie said, most of us—us rural members of Parliament, anyway—will have people, and I have, who’ve come into my office saying, “I’ve cut down some trees I didn’t know I was liable for—I didn’t know they were included in the ETS, and now I’ve got this liability. What am I going to do?” Well, you know, unless they report it, it’s probably not known, because it’s not on the title. But most people are honest; when they find out what’s going on, they get really worried about—and quite rightly so.

So it will give them time to try and do something about it, but I think this will also be a band-aid on it. We support it; we’ve got to do this. But I think, in the end, it’s going to be a very difficult thing to finish, to get tidied up properly, and I think we’ll have problems with this for quite some time. As we’ve seen with He Waka Eke Noa, where there are lots of other opportunities for sequestration, that’s been taken away from the Government. They say, “OK, we can’t measure methane, but we’ll estimate that. We can’t measure sequestration from small riparian plantings and shelter belts, so it’s too hard, we’re not going to do it.” So, on the one hand, they are saying “It’s too hard; we can’t do it.” On the other hand, “It’s too hard, but we’re going to do it anyway.” And that is why this market is such a mess.

But I’m looking forward to hearing from the Hon Damien O’Connor—I hope he gets to speak on this bill. I understand he had a fantastic day at AgFest on the West Coast, and I want to hear his report on it because the bruises have healed—you must have a wee bit of make-up on to cover those up—but I understand it was a fantastic day. I wish I was there to see it; I would have paid double the price to see it.

That’s about all I’ve got to say on this bill, but I just want to finish by saying it would be far better if people stuck to what the ETS is all about and actually do it properly—allow people to count all of their sequestration as well as all of the emissions. So I commend the bill to the House.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Look, this House grants privileges to members to say whatever they want, really. I’m just saddened that Stuart Smith chose to use his privileges of this House to attack a 16-year-old girl. I think that’s shameful, and he should be thoroughly and heartily ashamed of himself.

In respect of this bill, it is a good bill. The emissions trading scheme (ETS) is a complex scheme, and one of its challenges is that people with smaller holdings don’t put the resources into necessarily knowing and understanding exactly what trees and forests are in the ETS and what aren’t. As has been noted on the other side, it is possible that they could cut down a forest without realising that, in fact, they are in the ETS scheme, and the penalties are rightly significant if that isn’t paid. So this bill does allow some breathing space whilst that particular problem is addressed in a more thorough-going way.

It’s good to see that it seems to be supported around the House. I absolutely commend it to the House as an extra step down our zero-carbon journey. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Thank you. I think the speech by the previous National speaker, Stuart Smith, really highlighted why National needs to lose the next election, because if National was in charge of climate policy we would be going backwards. We heard from that speaker about how “We have had problems with this for quite some time. We want to stick to what’s in the ETS.”, but no commitment by the National Party to fixing the emissions trading scheme (ETS). We have heard from National that they completely support what farmers want with He Waka Eke Noa. They were quite happy for the agricultural sector to set its own levy rather than have that done independently, and I think that speaker just highlighted how deficient National is in its thinking about climate, particularly when he was gaslighting a young woman who was standing up for the future, for her generation, and for more action on climate protection.

So the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill is certainly a long title, but it reflects what has been part of this Government: to fix the ETS so that it actually works, so that it is a critical tool in helping reduce emissions. It’s been part of the major work programme that James Shaw has led as Minister over the last two terms, from passing the zero carbon Act and establishing the Climate Change Commission to provide independent advice, to changing the ETS so that we’ve seen that price on pollution double and then double again, to establishing the Climate Emergency Response Fund; having $4.5 billion—the revenue from the ETS—ring-fenced so that it’s invested in reducing emissions and protecting the climate, being the first country in the world to have mandatory climate-risk reporting, banning new fossil fuel exploration off the Taranaki Coast, having a whole programme of change across the State sector to replace coal-fired boilers in our prisons and in our schools, and making sure that we have clean vehicles in this country through the clean car discount, which, once again, National opposed.

So it’s good that they are supporting this bill, because the whole monitoring, enforcement, and compliance regime for the ETS needs to be robust so that the ETS has that integrity. As the Minister explained in his speech, the transitional regime needs to be extended so that the policy can be worked on so that the penalties that apply to, particularly, those small foresters that have a liability of less than 25,000 units annually, aren’t unduly penalising.

It’s a very small bill, it’s a very sensible bill, and it does allow that time to make yet another action that will ensure that our ETS is robust and that it really does help drive down climate pollution and protect the climate for present and future generations, including for people like Izzy and all the other School Strike 4 Climate activists who are concerned about their future and are providing us with the mandate to do much more. Kia ora.

SIMON COURT (ACT): So, firstly, I want to confirm that ACT will support this bill at first reading because it’s important that people who are subject to very, very bad law that imposes an outrageous cost burden on them have an opportunity to come to Parliament and make a submission about things that affect them. But I also want to make it clear: when the primary legislation was passed, ACT opposed it, because we do not believe that imposing excessive costs on the New Zealand economy, landowners, and primary producers if it does not reduce emissions globally—that there’s any point to it whatsoever.

So the purpose of this bill—the problem definition, according to the regulatory impact statement, is that the emissions trading scheme for forestry is complex. There’s a small number of forestry participants who have become non-compliant with requirements because they simply don’t understand it. That’s one of the problems with having a climate Minister who makes rules about what you can do with private property in your business, who simply doesn’t understand the effects that has on people who farm, who do farm forestry, who produce things, who manufacture things.

That’s why ACT alone opposed the zero carbon Act, because it gives the climate Minister unbridled power to decide which industries, which farms, which means of production are allowed to survive and which ones must be squashed. That’s why ACT opposed the zero carbon Act. But we want to give people who are affected by this terrible legislation, this Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill—we want to give people who may have cut down some trees on their land and only just worked out they’re liable for penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars, for something either they did or a previous landowner did since 1990, the chance to come to select committee.

Now, when we think about the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris climate accord—those agreements that politicians from New Zealand political parties, either Labour or National or the Greens, went and signed New Zealand up to; climate targets that they had no idea how New Zealand primary producers or manufacturers or just people trying to get to work could meet, but they signed us up anyway. They didn’t care about the cost, and then, when they worked out that actually Kiwis aren’t buying it, they tried to terrify the children and the young people by declaring a climate emergency—ACT opposed that. And so here we are, the Minister for Climate Change, a representative of the Green Party, is coming to the House to explain that “Actually, we got it so wrong that potentially we are going to bankrupt some landowners who didn’t realise that, if they cut down some pine trees on their farm that were planted before 1990, they could be liable for penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

I note that the Minister isn’t going to be listening to this, which is disappointing. Maybe he’ll review the tape later. But I want to paint a little picture: imagine a world where you’re a young farming couple, a husband and wife, and you’ve bought a farm in the back country, somewhere that you could afford. It’s steep; it used to be subject to erosion—say it’s beef and lamb country, somewhere in the King Country. On that property, there’s mānuka scrub, there’s regenerating bush, and there are big trees that were small trees when the big land clearances happened over a hundred years ago. Over a hundred years ago, in places like Raurimu and Te Kūiti, big rimu, big totara were harvested—essentially, clear-felled—to produce timber for homes in Wellington and Auckland and Melbourne and Sydney and even further afield.

But what was left behind is now regenerating, and, actually, on a lot of those steeper slopes in farms in places like the King Country, pine trees were planted both to stabilise the soil and as an investment for the future, because those farmers weren’t sure what the price of lamb and beef would be 20 or 25 years down the track, but they knew there would be value in those trees. Now, for the people who planted those pine plantations in the 1980s, they had no idea there’d be an emissions trading scheme. They had no idea there’d be a Minister for Climate Change from the Green Party who would pass a law essentially telling people what they’re allowed to do with their own land and what they’d have to pay if they dared to cut down some pine trees. These young couples who have bought farms in places like the King Country, in the central North Island, now find themselves subject to enormous penalties.

So what would ACT do? What would we do differently? Well, look, New Zealand needs to play its part on the world stage when it comes to climate change—we do—because we’re being constantly threatened by bullies like the European Union that, if we don’t do our part for climate change, they will exclude our products and our primary production from their markets. Now, even though the Prime Minister’s announced a free-trade deal with the EU, actually we haven’t seen the document yet. So maybe there is still a bit of stand over going on there. Maybe that’s what this is—maybe that’s what this is.

So what would ACT do? We’ve got to play our part. We actually think that the price of carbon emissions in New Zealand needs to be about the same as our top-five trading partners. I’ve just come back from the US; I’ve been looking at infrastructure, three waters, and how they do climate resilience and adaptation. When I told them that we’ve got an $86 a tonne carbon price on our manufacturers, and that if you cut down trees and you don’t plant more you’ll pay 85 bucks a tonne for that carbon, they said, “You’re going to send yourself broke. What country in the world would do that?” Well, the virtue-signalling climate warriors who declared a climate emergency in the New Zealand Labour Party and Green Party—these people who sit here in the House lecturing us. ACT says no to that. We’ve got to play our part, but our carbon price needs to be around the same as our top-five trading partners so we don’t send ourselves bankrupt.

The other thing we need to do is reform the emissions trading scheme so that New Zealand businesses which emit carbon and want to do their part to mitigate that can plant trees not just in New Zealand—captured under the emissions trading cap, where you’re not allowed to offset your emissions outside the country—but say, for example, they wanted to replant forests in Borneo that had been cut down, say to produce palm oil, to make biofuel, to satisfy some other climate change low-carbon mandate; that, in fact, New Zealand businesses or people who manufacture here, who could be multinationals, could go to somewhere like Borneo or South America, to the Amazon jungles, and they could replant forests there and get the carbon credits for it.

I have a member’s bill in the tin which provides for just that: for New Zealand businesses to go and contract to mitigate their emissions by doing planting or carbon sequestration in other countries. I mean, Australia’s worked out how to do carbon sequestration: their Gorgon natural gas project in northwest Australia has sequestered between six and seven million tonnes of carbon while they’ve got the natural gas out of the ground to use. Now, in New Zealand, if we wanted to do that, you can’t even get credits for sequestration. So, for all of the virtue signalling, for all that we’ve heard from the climate warriors about how they want to save us from ourselves, they’ve come back to the House—the Minister with this bill, this bill to reform a bill that he only passed in 2020—and assured the House that, actually, this was a fair scheme to make people pay for their emissions. And yet here he is coming back to explain that, actually, the penalties are so extreme and the outcomes are so perverse that he’s asking the House under urgency to review this bill and send it back to select committee because the due date for payment for people—most of whom didn’t even know they had an obligation—is 1 January 2023.

That’s an example of the appalling, rushed legislative approach by these people who have no practical experience, who sit in a Labour Government, and who lecture us on how we should live. ACT rejects that. We’ve said we will repeal the zero carbon Act in our first hundred days if we were part of a new Government, and that all of this cost in the economy, slowing down business, slowing down people trying to drive places and do things—we’ll put an end to that. ACT is New Zealand’s hope for the future.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour): Madam Speaker, Fakaalofa lahi atu. I rise to make a contribution to the first reading of this bill, in my short call, the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill. The Government is taking action on climate change and has a goal of getting to net-zero emissions by 2050. However, we recognise that there is much to do. The purpose of this bill focuses on being the vehicle for implementing the new surrender and repayment penalty framework for small foresters. As stated by many of my colleagues who have already spoken, we cannot ignore the effects of climate change. I do want to acknowledge our communities and the participants who continue the work for low-volume emissions.

The other purpose of the bill is to extend the transition period provided for New Zealand emissions trading scheme (ETS) participants with low-volume emissions liabilities. The bill is a climate change response in the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Act 2020, introduced in conjunction with the zero carbon Act in 2019, and the legislation put in place is the architecture tool and framework to support our transition to a low-emissions economy. What we do know is that businesses that are responsible for greenhouse gases that cause climate change face a price for those emissions. And so to promote the reduction of the emissions, they are to plant trees to take that carbon out of the atmosphere, and those businesses will receive a financial reward.

In my previous working life on the Auckland Council, we voted in 2019, unanimously recognising the climate emergency and, in the following year, passed the Auckland climate plan in line with the Government’s key priorities in the big budget of over $2 billion. In order for the Government to achieve its targets of cutting climate pollution, it is about listening to the concerns of our communities and the sectors involved. The Government is also considering independent expert advice provided by the Climate Change Commission. The Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Act also introduced a revised penalties and compliance regime that came into force for most New Zealand ETS participants on 1 January 2021. This bill will allow an extension of time for small forestry participants to be educated and informed of the changes before the implementation of a new penalty that is intended to be effective on 1 January 2025.

There are also other initiatives that Government is working on in the forestry and agriculture sectors on managing exotic-forest incentives, so work needs to be progressed to make this bill effective. I commend this bill to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m just going to make a short contribution to the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill.

Ian McKelvie: That’s a minute gone!

NICOLA GRIGG: That took up 15 seconds—I’m well on the way. This bill, realistically, shouldn’t have come up. As usual, we find ourselves in this House fixing bad bills that the Labour Government seem to have passed into law, but it does seek to rectify what should have been reconsidered and resolved back in 2020. We think this deferral is a quite necessary band-aid or a cover-up to try and compensate for the severe limitations of the original Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Act 2020. I would have thought anyone sitting in the climate change portfolio seat might start to work on some snappier titles for bills that they do bring to this House, because they’re all long and meandering.

The reason we are going to support this bill is because it does start to reduce or mitigate a real risk of hardship for small-forestry owners—which we know do tend to either be mum and dad owners—or for farm owners, Māori land owners, or Māori forestry owners. We do think that they are at risk of some fairly onerous penalty regimes. The deferral, of course, will allow forest owners a bit more of a chance—12 months, I think—to prepare themselves for the necessary steps that they’re going to need to take to ensure compliance with this piece of law. I think a lot of other people have commented this evening that it is a very complex and complicated piece of law, so I would imagine many will need to take external advice on that just to understand and just to ensure that they are complying.

We do support these much-needed time extensions. They will come just in time, given the original date was due to roll around on 1 January next year, which I think is just over about 2½ months away.

As I’ve already noted, this is to impact and try to cover and try to protect some of those really small owners. I understand that about two-thirds of the post-1989 forestry participants own less than 50 hectares of registered forests in that emissions trading scheme, and, as I’ve said, they are usually small players. So this rigid penalty regime that is in existence will have quite a real possibility of disproportionately impacting these particular owners, particularly, I understand, given the linkages between the penalties and the carbon prices, which, as we all know, are heading to the zenith at a great rate of knots and are likely to increase in the coming years.

We do think that meeting these obligations is going to be seriously onerous on these owners. I’m drawing a lot of parallels and similarities here between the pressures and requirements being put on the forestry sector along with the agricultural sector. Funnily enough, they are one and the same at times, and it’s just another layer of complexity and compliance that these businesses, which are often small to medium sized enterprises, are having to deal with—

Hon Member: Oh, save it.

NICOLA GRIGG: —and it’s really interesting when you hear the bellows of derision from across the House, because it just goes to show how very, very out of touch the Labour Party and the Green Party, particularly, are with business. They just don’t seem to realise that these things cost money and they cost time, and they cause stress and they cause anxiety. The “Government of kindness” seems to forget, at times, the anxiety-inducing terror that compliance and regulation often causes people. We do also note that in a cost of living crisis—that this Government’s still refusing any responsibility for—adding more complexity and more paperwork just adds to the cost of doing business, which we all know is passed on to consumers.

So, look, I’ll just wrap up now. We’ve said that we would support this bill, primarily because it does seek to resolve some issues. It allows the Government and small industry a bit of a reprieve to try and establish a more equitable regulatory system, and there will be a new extension to that surrender period. We will support it to select committee, but there’s certainly some questions we have that we look forward to that committee thrashing out on our behalf.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a short call on this bill—not going to repeat the name.

A couple of things that I feel haven’t been mentioned tonight that I’ll just cover. So, as we know, the penalty came in place—three times the price of carbon per unit is the penalty—and one of the difficulties was that the regulator had no discretion to waiver or reduce those penalties that apply on top of the original liability. This is the crux of it really; it has affected our small forestry holders.

A small forestry holder, for this House and for those around, is defined as having a net liability of less than 25,000 units per year, which roughly equates to around 60 hectares of post-1989 Pinus radiata being deforested. So it’s likely to result in the unit surrender of an obligation of around 25,000 units.

When I checked today’s carbon price, it sat at $81. Deforesting 60 hectares at 25,000 units would create a surrender cost of over just about $2 million. If the forester failed to surrender those units by 1 January 2023 currently, they would be required to pay three times the cost of those penalties, so that’s $6 million, plus repay the original $2 million. So, unless you’re Ian McKelvie, that’s a lot of money.

The reality is that this piece of legislation, very small, very sharp—it extends the differential arrangements until the end of 2024 to avoid this. It creates more time to enable a new surrender or repayment penalty regime and is to be finalised for small forestry owners or participants and it mitigates that risk to them. I think it’s an important little bill. It gives us some time. I commend it to the House.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill in the first reading—quite the mouthful.

This bill will amend the Climate Change Response Act 2002 to extend the transition period it provided for New Zealand emissions trading scheme (ETS) participants with low-volume emissions liabilities related to forest activity within which they must comply with the penalties and compliance regime introduced by the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Act 2020. The extension until 1 January 2025 will mitigate the risk of serious hardship to small forestry participants who would fail to surrender or repay units by the previous date, which is 1 January 2023.

The complexity of the New Zealand emissions trading scheme for forestry means that small forestry participants are more likely to make unintentional errors that result in unexpected unit-surrender obligations. Small forestry participants may find it difficult to meet unexpected unit surrender or repayment obligations, particularly at high carbon prices. I note the spot price now is $81, so it’s gone up very, very rapidly. Meeting these obligations could create serious hardship for these participants, potentially putting key assets such as their home or farm at risk. Extending the current deferral arrangement until the end of 2024 will mitigate risks of such serious hardship for small forestry participants. It will allow time for a new surrender or repayment penalty for small forestry participants to be finalised, and it will allow time for participants to be educated and informed of changes before implementation of the new penalty, which is effective from 1 January 2025.

This deferral will also give officials a window of time to consider the impact of the penalty on participants with small-volume liabilities, including whether further amendments to the penalty provision may be required. For those listening in who do not know what the penalties are about, the penalty applies when a person fails to surrender or repay carbon units to the Crown by the due date, the so called surrender repayment penalty. In their revised penalty regime, the regulator’s discretion to reduce the penalty was also removed and the size of the penalty was increased to three times the price of carbon as set in regulations. Therefore, one of the implications of the new payment regime is the risk of serious hardship to small forestry participants resulting from the significant size of the penalty and the personal nature of the assets they hold. To mitigate that risk, legislative change is required to ensure that those small forestry participants are not subject to the three-to-one penalty and avoiding the resulting impacts on them.

New Zealand has a total of 10.1 million hectares of forest, covering 38 percent of New Zealand’s land area. Of this, 8 million hectares are native forest, 2.1 million hectares are plantation forest. Of that plantation forest, 1.7 million hectares are productive, and the remainder is in reserves and unplanted areas near bodies of water and infrastructure. Based on reported emissions in 2021, the largest participants in the New Zealand ETS were forestry participants: 2,205 were voluntary post-1989 forest participants, 42 were mandatory pre-1990 forest participants who deforested more than two hectares, 141 were mandatory non-forestry participants with surrender obligations, and there are also 211 mandatory non-forestry participants, including in the agricultural sector, who do not currently have surrender or repayment obligations, only an obligation to report emissions. But the complexity of the New Zealand ETS for forestry means that small forestry participants are more likely to make unintentional errors that result in unexpected unit-surrender obligations. Initially, the deferral was developed in response to submissions during a previous select committee stage, and feedback from forestry stakeholders reflected two main issues: the size of the penalty was viewed as excessive and posed a risk to participants who may be having trouble meeting their surrender obligations due to no fault of their own; and, secondly, they reviewed that the absolute liability approach to the regime allows no flexibility to regulators to mitigate the penalty in certain limited circumstances, for example, when a force majeure event means participants cannot meet their surrender obligations on the due date.

Two-thirds of post-1989 forestry participants have less than 50 hectares of registered forest in the scheme. Participants are usually natural persons or small businesses, including farmers with small forestry blocks, Māori landowners, forestry syndicates, and conservation groups. Landowners with pre-1990 exotic forests may be unaware that their land is subject to deforestation liabilities. It is difficult for landowners to determine if their land is pre-1990—it is not recorded on the land title. Mandatory participation is on a regular familiar obligation, but arises in circumstances where they have mistakenly or unintentionally deforested their property.

I heard a bit of criticism from the Green Party in an earlier submission. I just want to respond to that very briefly. The Green Party was claiming the National Party didn’t care about climate change and the response to it, and I would absolutely refute that. The National Party very much cares about it and we’ve worked hard on this for many years. However, we need to have a system that will actually balance our climate change mitigation responsibilities and ensure we don’t have what’s called emissions leakage, which means sending emissions offshore, which will increase the planetary emissions profile, which, unfortunately, is what we’re looking at at the moment, which the Green Party was criticising.

We need to be very careful. I would just say, again, very briefly, how we do this, because if we reduce food production in this country and we shift that overseas with the resultant emissions leakage, shifting that emissions profile overseas to less-efficient farmers than we have here in New Zealand; we have the example, unfortunately, of Sri Lanka, which ended nitrogen fertiliser use last year, as the Green Party is calling for in New Zealand. The result is that over a quarter of their population now is reliant on food aid—2.4 million children. That was a country that, pre-pandemic, had reached upper middle class status. So they brought on a complete stop to nitrogen fertiliser last year that meant they went from being self-reliant in food production—they were self-reliant on rice production—to not having enough rice to feed their population, and also reduced their tea plantation, which was their primary foreign exchange earner, and, therefore, they didn’t have the foreign exchange to buy food. So, as a result, they now have more than a quarter of the population in extreme food poverty and reliant on food assistance. So I would just suggest to the Green Party that they carefully consider policy settings that they propose around this space.

So, just back to completing my submission on this bill, I’d say, given all the considerations and potential issues that the current deferral arrangements would pose, National supports the bill’s aims to extend the current deferral arrangement until the end of 2024 because this is a practical solution that’s being proposed. Doing so will mitigate the risk of such serious hardship for small forestry participants, it will allow time for a new surrender or repayment penalty for small forestry participants to be finalised, and it will allow time for participants to be educated and informed of changes before implementation of the new penalty, which is effective from 1 January 2025. This deferral will also give officials a window of time to consider the impacts of the penalty on participants with small-volume liabilities, including whether further amendments to the penalty provision may be required.

So it is a practical change, taking into account the complexity of this climate change response which is very, very complex, and this is something we are seeing right across this. As we see with this bill, don’t get it right the first time and have to be very responsive to the impacts on our communities. For that reason, the National Party is supporting this bill.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Happy to take a brief call for a bill that has an extremely long title, so I won’t refer to it. But what I will say is that this bill seeks to simply extend the time frame within which those forestry participants who have a low volume of emissions must transition for the purposes of penalty in line with New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme.

I have full confidence that the good folk on the Environment Committee will be able to deal with this bill. It is a discreet bill, it is a short bill, but nonetheless I know that the members on the Environment Committee will give it its full attention—

Hon Member: Hard-working.

TANGI UTIKERE: —hard-working indeed, and I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is, That the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill be considered by the Environment Committee.

Bill referred to the Environment Committee.

Instruction to Environment Committee

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister for Emergency Management) on behalf of the Minister of Climate Change: I move, That the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 11 November 2022 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

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

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Sharma.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill

First Reading

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I present a legislative statement on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

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

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I move, That the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.

Today marks a significant milestone in this Government’s work to stamp out temporary migrant worker exploitation here in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill will significantly strengthen our immigration and employment systems by introducing a fit-for-purpose offence and penalty regime. The research is clear: we need legislation like this in order to deter exploitation from happening in the first place and to hold those who exploit their migrant workers to account more effectively. It complements a suite of measures we have taken to prevent the occurrence of exploitation, protect those who have been exploited, support them to leave such employment situations, and enforce immigration and employment law to deter employer non-compliance more effectively. This is not an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff; instead, it’s an extra line of defence at the top.

Exploitation has serious negative outcomes for migrants, businesses, New Zealanders, our communities, and our international reputation. Migrants who experience exploitation can suffer financial hardship and both serious physical and psychological harm that often also affects their families. Exploitative work practices also negatively impact businesses and the economy. Exploitative employers using illegal practices to get ahead undercut and disadvantage good employers, and migrant exploitation can contribute to wage suppression and job displacement in lower-paid industries. In September 2018, Cabinet agreed to take serious action on stamping out migrant exploitation in Aotearoa. A temporary migrant worker exploitation review was then undertaken by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, with the goal of reducing the exploitation of temporary migrant workers, including international students in New Zealand.

In August 2020, the Government announced a coordinated end-to-end package of legislative policy and operational changes to stamp out this sort of exploitation. The changes were accompanied by a $50 million commitment by the Government to help ensure that Employment New Zealand and Immigration New Zealand were better resourced to respond to reports of exploitation and to take action. The first initiatives came into force on 1 July 2021. These were new dedicated reporting tools to make it easier to report migrant worker exploitation as well as the migrant exploitation protection visa that supports migrants to leave exploitative situations quickly and to be able to remain lawfully in New Zealand. These initiatives have seen a significant uptake since being launched and are supporting migrants to report and to leave exploitative workplace situations. Last month, I also announced a new community-led education pilot.

Research has shown that migrants most at risk of exploitation often lack basic knowledge about their employment rights. We are making this information more accessible to migrant workers and to those who employ them. Working with community and industry networks that already support migrant workers and employers of migrants was an obvious step that we could take to bridge that education and awareness gap. This Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill will implement the remaining changes from the temporary migrant worker exploitation review. Once passed, this legislation will amend the Immigration Act, the Employment Relations Act, and the Companies Act to introduce a fit-for-purpose offence and penalty regime to deter employers of temporary migrant workers from non-compliance with their obligations under both immigration and employment law.

Currently, there are gaps in the enforcement regime that exists to ensure that employers of migrant workers are complying with their obligations. This bill fills those gaps, to establish a more proportionate and efficient enforcement tool kit for immigration officers and labour inspectors to deal with lower-level offending before it becomes more serious. The bill also helps align the powers of the labour inspectorate and Immigration New Zealand to support greater collaboration between the two regulators to undertake compliance and enforcement activity. Once this bill is passed, immigration officers will be able to compel employers who have supported a visa to produce documents that are relevant to a migrant worker’s employment and remuneration, to verify that those employers are actually complying with their obligations. These records would allow immigration officers to assess, for example, whether a migrant worker is being paid the salary stated in their employer-supported visa application. This will also help ensure that the new accredited employer work visa system is working as intended.

At the moment, there is no required time frame for employers to comply with requests for information from the labour inspectorate or from immigration officers. We know that employers may take advantage of delays to create records to satisfy their legal obligations. To give this requirement teeth, employers who fail to provide information within the new 10-working-day time frame will be issued with an infringement notice. Currently, Immigration New Zealand doesn’t have mechanisms outside of criminal prosecution before a court to be able to address low-level non-compliant employer behaviour. This is time consuming, it’s expensive, and it’s an inefficient response that undermines the effectiveness of immigration and employment law and places migrant workers at risk of more serious exploitation. This bill will also establish a new infringement regime that will address this gap by creating enforcement tools for Immigration New Zealand that don’t rely on court proceedings. Immigration New Zealand has estimated that it would issue between 500 and 1,000 infringement notices to non-compliant employers per year under this new infringement regime. This will be significant in our efforts to stamp out exploitation in this country, and it will send a clear message that this behaviour will not be tolerated.

Currently, employers who breach their obligations under the Employment Relations Act are published on the stand-down list, but this isn’t currently the case for employers who breach their obligations under the Immigration Act. The stand-down list is a crucial tool to ensure that employers who breach their obligations cannot access migrant labour, and allows both prospective and current migrant workers to know whether an employer is compliant with our employment law. The current situation means that employers who have breached the Immigration Act can still support visa applications and access migrant labour despite the risks that they pose. This bill will expand the stand-down list to include offending under the Immigration Act, giving greater transparency and consistency across the system. This means that employers who are found in breach of their obligations under the Immigration Act will no longer be able to avoid the consequences of being stood down.

Migrant exploitation is a particularly appalling form of offending from which the public should be protected. Therefore, the final component of the worker protection bill is to amend the Companies Act to allow the courts to disqualify people who are convicted of migrant exploitation or people trafficking from managing or directing a company. This change will prevent individuals from leveraging corporate structures to avoid personal liability and detection while exploiting their migrant workers. Exploitation and people trafficking are serious criminal offences that migrant workers are acutely vulnerable to. It is only right that we don’t allow people who commit these offences to continue to manage companies and employ potentially vulnerable people.

Stamping out migrant worker exploitation was a commitment made by this Government in our 2020 manifesto, and I am proud of the work that we have done and that we continue to do to improve the lives of our migrant workers. No one, stand-alone action will address migrant worker exploitation entirely, but, with the more rounded-out approach of education, awareness raising, reporting tools, and the deterrent effect that these new powers and offences will create, we can tackle migrant worker exploitation in Aotearoa New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

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

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am happy to rise and speak to this bill. I’d like to start by saying that National are tentatively supporting this bill, with great trepidation and many concerns which I’ll outline in my contribution today.

Can I just start by saying that we get this bill on the back of a story today by Radio New Zealand in which they state most migrant exploitation complaints have been uninvestigated in the past year. Only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints received by the labour inspectorate were investigated in the past year: 1,018 reports received in the 2021/22 financial year, 28 investigations complete, 80 ongoing, enforcement actions against 10, and none have reached a hearing. Since 2017, investigations have fallen by 70 percent. That is the background to this.

In this, we get stories of migrants owed tens of thousands of dollars or charged thousands and thousands in illegal fees—all uninvestigated. So the question we have to ask today when we get this bill is: how does this bill address these serious breaches? How are problems with resourcing of Immigration New Zealand and compliance officers going to be solved? How is a lack of staff at Immigration New Zealand compliance going to be solved? How is a lack of resource of the labour inspectorate going to be solved by this bill? In fact, none of those things will be solved.

So what does this bill actually do? Well, it goes after the very, very minor breaches—none of the things that were mentioned in the story today. Basically, it allows—as Priyanca has mentioned today; the Minister, I should say—warranted desk-based officers to request wage and employment documents.

It then gives employers 10 working days to supply these documents and allows a new fine regime to give those officers the power to implement fines basically in three areas: for not producing those documents in 10 days, for hiring a migrant who does not have the ability to work for that employer, or hiring a migrant who does have the ability to work there but breaches the conditions of their visa. For which an employer can be slapped with a $1,000 fine.

So, overall, what this bill does is it goes after the very low-level offending when the Government knows from their own Kantar research that was outlined in the Minister’s press release that the majority of employers—97 percent—want to do the right thing but 91 percent of them just don’t understand the myriad changes to immigration instructions and immigration law that’s been thrown at them in the last couple of years.

The third point is that these same employers are working under extreme labour shortages—the worst in 50 years—and they need flexibility of workers to keep the doors open. So that’s the backdrop to what we are receiving this bill into.

What this bill does is ignore the real problems with the under-resourcing and enforcement at the higher end, and targets the good employers—mostly small businesses—trying to do the right thing, unsure of all of the changes of immigration law and instructions that have been thrown at them in the last couple of years, who are up against it in terms of staffing.

So when a really good education campaign would have sufficed, we get this bill and employers stung with fines. Let’s take the example of an employer who, under extreme workforce shortages—let’s take a restaurant, and we all know in what desperate need the hospitality sector is with the inability to find staff—asks his cook to cover a front-of-house shift. That would be in breach of the visa conditions; they would be pinged with a fine by a desk officer sitting at his desk requiring wage and employment documents. Make no mistake: that is what this bill will target.

Instead of focusing on getting workers into the country more quickly—which is what we need to relieve the severe shortages—this Government is obsessed with making it more difficult, more costly, taking longer, having a much more bureaucratic process to get workers into New Zealand, putting these businesses under massive stress. And then they have the audacity to come out today and say, “Well, we’re going to fine you for a minor breach of visa conditions when you don’t have any workers.” So the real problems are not being solved; instead, we get this bill.

When we look more closely at the bill, one of the areas that we will be arguing against at select committee that I believe needs to be changed—and our support will hinge on this—is the fact that there is no reasonable cause for those desk-based officers to make those requests.

Now section 2, I think it’s 277, of the Immigration Act: when a compliance officer walks into a business and requires documents to be produced, they have to have reasonable grounds to do so. Reasonable grounds to believe that those documents are there and that there is a breach of the visa conditions or something else going on. They must have reasonable grounds.

What this bill does is allow a desk-based officer at Immigration New Zealand to go on a fishing expedition, to require documents—

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: No, it doesn’t.

ERICA STANFORD: Well, there’s no reasonable grounds written into the bill. So unless you’re willing to put that into the bill, Priyanca, then, unfortunately, it is going to be fishing expeditions where a desk-based officer can decide, “Well, I’m going to go against every single Subway in the whole country and require all of their employment documents.” That’s what could possibly happen under this bill because there is no reasonable clause added into this bill. Now, our support of this bill will hinge on that being in the bill. As I said, the law as it stands at the moment is for immigration officers to make sure that they have reasonable grounds when they walk into a premises.

The National Party is also concerned that Immigration New Zealand lacks resource of field compliance officers who physically go into premises and get records. We know this from the story today about the lack of prosecutions and the lack of follow-up, and from just talking to compliance officers in the field. This is really important because we know that when a compliance officer walks into a business, they’re able to eyeball the employers, they’re able to eyeball the migrants, they’re able to eyeball the documents and say, “I want that and that and that, and what’s that book up there? I want to see that as well.”

Now, a desk-based officer can’t do any of that. A desk-based officer can only say in email, “I would like these documents, please.”, giving the employer 10 days—and if they are a poor employer, 10 days to send them, potentially, some documents that have been jimmied up and fixed up.

A compliance officer with boots on the ground can walk in, demand it right there and then, and say, “Hey, what’s that, that, and that? I want those as well.” What I am worried about from this bill is that because we have such a lack of resource in Immigration New Zealand for those boots-on-the-ground compliance officers, we are potentially replacing them with some desk-based officers who will not have the same ability to seek out those who are really doing some serious offending. This will further allow these businesses—some of them who are doing some serious spending to hide that serious offending.

Potentially there’s an oversight in the bill as well. The Minister should take this into account. The stated aim of the bill is to align the Employment Relations Act with the Immigration Act. Now, the bill amends the Employment Relations Act to require an employer to comply with the document request in 10 working days if not practicable to provide those documents immediately. This is in section 229 of the Employment Relations Act, where the labour inspector is physically on the premises requesting those wage documents.

So he walks in, he eyeballs them, and says, “Do you have those documents?” They say, “No.” He can now say, “Well, you need to get them to me.”—he or she—“You can get them to me in 10 days’ time.” Yet in section 277 of the Immigration Act, which is the equal and opposing piece of legislation that they’re trying to make the same, allows an immigration compliance officer to enter the premises, ask for the documentation, and there’s no 10-day clause in there.

I don’t know if this is an oversight by the Minister in drafting, but it needs to be looked at because it doesn’t align the two. It aligns a desk-based officer asking for documents with a labour inspectorate going in and physically asking for documents, but what it doesn’t align is the immigration officer—compliance officer—physically going into the building. There’s no 10-day clause in that, and that may need to be looked at by the Minister.

The other issue is that there is no right of appeal for those fines. If a business feels they’ve been unfairly targeted, there’s no way at all in this bill for them to argue that or to put their case.

There’s also, concerningly, the removal of the defence—and this is not for the fines; in section 350(3)(a) and (b) of the Immigration Act, currently it stands that if you didn’t know that the worker wasn’t able to work and you took all reasonable steps to check, that was a defence. That has been stripped out now, so completely gone from the offences. Not this new part, which introduces the fines but the actual offences, that has been stripped out. So now you have absolutely no way at all to oppose that.

So as I said, we will be supporting the bill through to select committee.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to take a call in the first reading debate of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. Listening to Erica Stanford, the previous speaker, you could be forgiven for thinking that National are the great defender of workers’ rights, and never mind that the changes they brought in during their nine years in Government eroded workers’ rights severely. When they talk about things like flexibility, they talk about taking away workers’ meal and rest breaks. But, anyway, we have already put that right and we are putting more things right like we are with this bill.

This is a very important piece of legislation that aims to improve compliance and enforcement legislation to deter employers from exploiting migrant workers. There are gaps, obviously, in the enforcement regime that exist to ensure employers of migrant workers are complying with their obligations, and we are putting that right.

The previous speaker also had quite a few of the facts wrong. I know that my colleagues will speak about that a little bit more in depth, but, for example, the resource that the previous speaker mentioned is not all desk-based, so that is wrong. Also, what we all know is that the labour inspectorate at this stage is still severely under-resourced thanks to the previous Government’s stopping of investment in things. We have been working on increasing that resource ever since we have been in Government, and thanks to that investment of our Government, that labour inspectorate resource will be doubled by the end of the year.

So thank you to the Hon Minister Priyanca Radhakrishnan—I can say her name properly, with “Minister” in front of it. We have this bill in front of us, which will be dealing with a system that has been operating with a proper lack of oversight, which has allowed exploitation to flourish.

So this bill, again, addresses a very important Labour 2020 manifesto commitment, which is that Labour will continue our work to stamp out migrant exploitation with a focus on exploring the implementation of modern slavery legislation in New Zealand to eliminate exploitation in supply chains. I look forward to chairing the Education and Workforce Committee, which will be considering this bill, and we will then report it back to the House and have another kōrero. I commend it to the House. Thank you.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is rather disappointing that the Labour Party, who, apparently, support the rights of the workers, are taking only very short calls, and I’d like to compliment my colleague Erica Stanford, who has actually spelt out our concerns. I think it is very legitimate that when members of Parliament have concerns about a particular piece of legislation that we can debate it in the House, and stating those very clearly I think helps the process in this House.

One of the things that I’d like to say to that member who just sat down—Marja Lubeck—is that when she wants to attack the former National Government or the current members on this side of the House, then perhaps she should actually get her facts right. I’d like to find out what her thoughts are in relation to how satisfied workers are under this current Government, considering the fact that we have more strikes under this Government than we have ever had under the National Government. I think that actually goes to show how unhappy those workers are under this Government.

One of the things that the Minister spoke about, which got my ears pricked up, was when she said that the reason why this bill was brought to this House was to deal with the smaller offending of employers who are actually employing migrant workers, to make sure that they do not breach the conditions or they’re not exploiting those employees. She said that is because the small offending graduates into a bigger, more serious criminal activity by those offenders. I say this Labour Government and the Prime Minister should appoint Minister Radhakrishnan as the Minister of Police, because perhaps then she could deal with the smaller offending that is being committed by younger people who will, effectively, graduate to serious crime, like the ram-raiding that’s being done by the younger people.

It is a real concern. Nobody in this House wants exploitation of migrant workers or, actually, exploitation of any workers. Nobody wants that, but this current bill that has been produced in this House basically shows how out of touch this Government is with employers and people who create jobs, with the reason being that especially now under the circumstances where a lot of businesses are struggling to find staff members, and sometimes people have to jump from one activity to the next because there aren’t enough of them in the shop.

Let me give you an example. My parents used to run restaurants, and I remember as a younger person dreading the idea of having to go and work in Mum and Dad’s shop. I would be in front of the counter, as a cashier, I would actually work, and then I would be told that I had to go to the kitchen and bring out the food and serve customers. Then sometimes I’d have to work as a security guard to make sure that Mum was actually safe so that we could actually go home late at night. So if I was properly employed and if I happened to be a migrant worker at the time, I’ve literally gone from one job to the next to the next in the same place, and my mother would have breached the employment contract. She might have to pay fines. [Interruption] Yeah, that’s ridiculous.

Sometimes when you’re really busy—particularly in hospitality, as Erica Stanford has basically explained—you have to jump from one job to the next, and sometimes it is not always stipulated very clearly in an employment contract. If it was, they would be breaching it and they would be pinged by this Government, which makes it more difficult for employers, who are already struggling to find staff members to run their businesses, grow the economy, and create more jobs. I think that is a real shame. Hopefully, this is something that the select committee could explore and expand and actually fix, because I think that is what the select committee should do.

The other thing that made great sense to me and really impacted the way that I was thinking was when Erica Stanford mentioned the fact that only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints are ever investigated. How does this bill increase that number? So a desk officer who has no reasonable clause written into the bill to actually say that this particular shop is breaching the rules—how are they supposed to know? So if somebody says, “OK, well, I’m the desk officer. I’m going to pick A, B, C, D.”, how are they going to choose those supposedly potential breaches in the employment contract and how are they going to figure it out? Apparently, they’re going to call in documentation like wage payment data, holiday records—

Joseph Mooney: A fishing expedition.

MELISSA LEE: So it’s a real fishing exercise and an expedition to ping those employers who are trying to do their very best.

If they are owner-operators of a small business, sometimes paperwork gets left until a little bit later. Sometimes they’re doing the paperwork late at night, especially if they’re open from 6 o’clock in the morning until 11 o’clock at night and all they are doing is having enough time for sleep. They have to catch up on paperwork, and it could take weeks before they actually record those things. They might have recorded it wrong, and, if that’s the case, they could be pinged.

They could be paying fines or whatever else that they’re going to do to these employers, and I think it is rather on the nose that when the inspectorates without any reasonable reasons why they might investigate it—it’s almost like saying, “OK, so which particular groups in the business sector are they going to target?” Is it going to be the ethnic restaurants that they’re going to target or is it the flash European restaurants that they’re going to target? OK, maybe it is going to be the ethnic community - run businesses—obviously. You know, maybe they actually think that they abuse their own people—I mean, there are some stats that say that. But I think every business in this country—employers as well as employees—actually works really, really hard to grow their businesses so they can employ more people; work really, really hard; and actually earn a living for their families; and I think this bill could potentially make it very, very difficult for people, especially after having had such a horrendous time during COVID-19, where businesses ended up folding.

These are people who have poured their hearts and life savings into a business, and they eventually had to close because of COVID-19 and because they could not find staff members. Even in the digital sector, lots of people have closed their businesses because they cannot find staff. I’m not so sure if this bill will actually help our businesses to continue to grow and expand.

I’m really, really quite concerned that, yeah, as Erica clearly stated out, only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints are ever investigated. That is a really tiny percentage, and you wonder how many more people this Government will employ within immigration and grow the public sector—more bureaucrats to investigate this—so that we can increase the investigation rate from 10 percent to, potentially, 20 percent to 30 percent. How many more immigration officers are in fact needed to do this? I mean, they couldn’t even deliver cost of living payments to people after having how many people employed in IRD?

My goodness, I actually encourage all of my colleagues in the select committee—although I’m not actually part of that select committee, best of luck in your deliberations because I think you have a big, huge job in front of you. As Erica said, on this side of the House we support it with a bit of caution and with a lot of concerns about this particular bill, and I wish the select committee the best of luck.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this excellent bill, the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill, and I wanted to start with, perhaps, a little bit more of a conciliatory note. It’s great to hear that the National Party will be supporting this bill to the select committee. It’s great to hear that on both sides of the House we condemn exploitation, and I think we can be confident to say that the House in its entirety is opposed to these practices that we know can be so corrosive and so damaging when new migrants come into New Zealand. So I think that’s a good place to start.

Just in terms of a few of the other comments made by members on the other side of the House, there are a few concerns around the reasonableness—or whether there is a basis, I think—for putting requests to employers for information together. I think that’s a fair point to raise. One point that I would offer as a counter, perhaps, to that proposal, is the changes that are made to the Employment Relations Act—as this is an omnibus bill—obviously will go into the existing Act, and the existing Act has very robust and well-understood duties of good faith, meaning that all of the actions undertaken by any of the parties that are taking action under that piece of legislation would have to do so under good faith, and that’s in section 4. So—

Erica Stanford: But not in the Immigration Act.

CAMILLA BELICH: —that would apply, yes, for the Employment Relations Act, as I said. But I think that is a good point for us to look at, specifically in select committee and so I thank members from the other side for raising that point, and it is something that I look forward to examining more closely at select committee.

Some other things that were brought up were the right to strike—this is a fundamental human right. Obviously we want to be able to protect that no matter what Government is in power, so I don’t think criticisms of that nature help the debate go forward.

On the whole, I think this bill is a brave bill. It addresses an issue that we raised as part of our Labour Party Manifesto to address the exploitation of temporary migrants in New Zealand, and I think this bill does an excellent job of providing additional powers to allow those types of investigations to go ahead. I look forward to considering it at select committee, and I commend it to the House.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise, on behalf of the Green Party, to speak on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

Just echoing the sentiment from the previous speaker, Camilla Belich, it is good to see the House, in its entirety, condemn migrant exploitation, because we know that migrant exploitation has been rife and that successive Governments have failed to take substantive action to tackle it. Whether it has been Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) workers living in overcrowded conditions; people on employer-bound visas being, effectively, paid less than the minimum wage because of, frankly, practices of modern-day slavery; bullying and harassment that goes unreported because, again, of employer-bound visas, and because of the lack of confidence that our community has that, once they report exploitation, it will actually get followed through on—I know that one of the speakers previously talked about those really low rates of reports of exploitation being followed through with an investigation, and that does create the conditions where our migrant communities do not feel like they can have faith in the systems that are supposed to be there to protect them.

So when we know that we’ve got a raft of issues, the response requires action, both on the prevention side of things as well as addressing exploitation once it has happened. I acknowledge that this Government has brought in changes such as the migrant exploitation protection work visa, which supports migrants once they have been exploited. With this bill, there are, predominantly, measures to address exploitation, once it has happened, in the forms of infringement offences and the publication of names of employers that are convicted of immigration offences or issued with infringement notices. And, yes, that may help future workers to know which employers have bad practices, but it doesn’t necessarily protect those workers that have experienced exploitation in the first place.

Having just come, as a Parliament, from the inquiry on migrant exploitation, where we had a cross-party group examine the issue of exploitation a little bit in-depth, I do find it somewhat disappointing that we could have had an opportunity here to address some of the policy settings that enable exploitation to happen in the first place. The fact that employer-bound visas remain in place here, despite unions, despite the Productivity Commission, despite migrants themselves raising them as something that is deeply problematic, is really concerning.

I also note that in the research that was used to get this bill together it was identified that groups such as international students, essential skills visa holders, and working holidaymakers are some of the most vulnerable to exploitation. When are we going to have the conversation, as a country, about the fact that, despite the doubling of the working holiday visa numbers, we continue having countries that can only work for the same employer for three months, creating the conditions for that transient nature of employment and the ability for people to, basically, be shifted around jobs that are not paying enough and for those people to not feel confident, again, with raising exploitation.

So while this bill does have some really good components, and I do think, particularly, the publication of exploitative employers will result in better awareness by the community, there are also some concerns that we have around the increased search powers for immigration officers. Without evidence that the restrictions imposed on their current powers unduly affect their ability to perform their role, in this instance, the concern that we have is that the powers being granted for immigration officers to request documents from employers in relationship to their obligation, rather than from employees themselves—but this is, basically, what is provided for in the Immigration Act, but only where the officer enters the premises first—could result in some really perverse outcomes for, say, overstayers.

So while there may be increased powers and that may result in cracking down on exploitative employers, the reality is that overstayers could be facing increased rates, and without the support mechanisms to actually support overstayers who have been exploited, what we’re going to be seeing are some of the situations that I myself as an MP have been working on with constituents, which are overstayers who face exploitation, their workplace gets raided, and those overstayers just get told, “Well, see ya later.”, or you may be invited to participate in the judicial process to hold those employers to account and, once you finish, you’re just treated as expendable evidence.

I think this bill could have addressed some of those safeguards to ensure that overstayers, for example, feel like they will be supported as we increase those punitive measures towards employers. There is nothing here around that, and that is something that the Greens will be looking closely at, in terms of the feedback that we receive at the select committee stage, because, otherwise, what we’ll be creating is, once again, an environment of fear, where overstayers will feel like these measures are not there to protect them. They may be there to hold exploitative employers to account, but the wellbeing over those overstayers isn’t taken into account or factored in. Actually, all that that creates is further pushing the exploitation underground.

I did want to comment on some of the contributions from one of the National Party members, and I wanted to, sort of, address those because we don’t have that many people in this House who come from migrant backgrounds, let alone who have experienced being on a temporary visa. I was quite disappointed, actually, to see the member talk about, I guess, normalising exploitation and talking about exploitation as though it is just the migrant experience in, say, sectors like hospitality. I think we’ve got to be really careful about normalising exploitation in our migrant communities like it’s just a thing that we experience as a, sort of, rite of passage in migrant families, because it is not the case. We should not tolerate exploitation. But, equally, to my friends on the other side of the Government side, I also want them to take some responsibility on how policy settings and visa settings can create supportive environments or can create environments where exploitation is allowed to happen.

So this bill could have been more holistic. It is not just about holding employers to account; it is also about reflecting that if we’re all committed on ending exploitation, we would have decoupled work visas from single employers, we would have explored an amnesty for overstayers, we would have done far more than what is here. And it is an omnibus bill, right. It was recognised, in the bill, that we needed to take just more than a single amendment and one piece of legislation and, rather, to look at a raft of issues. So I do see this as a missed opportunity.

Equally, it was raised, in the research that informed this bill, that migrants do know little about their rights. And I would say, as somebody who was—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: So Mr Menéndez-March, you’ve talked about what’s not in the bill; let’s have three minutes of talking about what’s in the bill, shall we?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Yeah. I’m talking about the research that informed this bill and that it is in this paper—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good. Well, I’ll be looking for that.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Yeah. I assume the Speaker has read the paper as well. So I’m talking about this. [Holds up the paper.] So in this paper, in the cover sheet, it talked about the research that helped us build this bill—it was identified, actually, by the first speaker, the Minister, Priyanca Radhakrishnan—that part of what informed this bill was that migrants did not know enough about their working rights. Again, one of the things that I do see missing here, while the Minister talked about—and I’m addressing the previous contributions by the Minister—some other initiatives that are in place—but what we can do to strengthen this bill in the select committee stage, and I do hope that I hear from submitters on this issue, is ask whether those same questions are true, that migrants are better aware of their rights.

So, once again, just to talk about the, I guess, more punitive side of the bill, punitive measures do not prevent crime from happening. Punitive measures have very little evidence of actually discouraging exploitation from happening in the first place, and we know this. When we put tougher penalties on certain crimes, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that crime will go down. We do know that by addressing the factors that lead to people committing those crimes in the first place, that is how we can reduce crimes, once and for all. So just simply putting in those punitive measures won’t be enough.

I just want to say that, you know, in the same way that some members are able to reflect on their experience growing up in the restaurants of their families, I do want to reflect on the lived experience of those of us who have been on temporary visas. The reality is that it takes more than just punishing employers; it takes a raft of support measures, and throughout the passage of this bill in the select committee stage, we’ll be ensuring that those measures are strengthened. Kia ora.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to make a few comments on this bill. I’ll start off by saying that ACT, too, is tentatively supporting this omnibus bill at first reading, as it does contain some provisions that can be used to strengthen existing laws, in particular, in New Zealand that combat migrant exploitation. The issue of migrant exploitation is, obviously, very real, and migrants deserve a voice and an opportunity to help craft a law that does directly affect them. The select committee is an opportunity for this to take place, which is enough for us to support the bill at this stage.

We do, however, call on the select committee to give a great deal of consideration to the new infringement regime, in particular, and particularly the likely outcomes, or, as some might say, the unintended consequences versus the overall purpose of this bill. The powers that will be granted to immigration officials and the labour inspectors to be able to go around, carte blanche, to whichever businesses they like, on pretty marginal grounds and require documentation to be produced within 10 working days is, on the face of it, a bit problematic.

I note from the bill’s explanatory note, “The kind of records and documents that immigration officers could request from employers”—I’m quoting here—“include wages and time records, leave records, employment agreements, bank statements, and financial statements.” This power does have the potential to be abused, in the sense that it could create fishing expeditions to identify and deport migrant workers, which I hope is not the point of this bill. With regards to the timing of documentation being produced that I noted, I would like the select committee to just consider whether 10 working days is fair and reasonable in the context of natural justice. I mean, it would be absolutely incredible to get written questions back in 10 working days.

There is a further risk that these powers could result in officials busying themselves by targeting good employers—the easy targets, those ones that’ll actually comply with the law—and, basically, just being a general nuisance without actually solving anything. This bill is, arguably, a significant expansion of Government power, and if Immigration New Zealand (INZ) and the labour inspectorate just assume everybody is bad from the outset, it’s going to be an incredibly disruptive and ineffective law.

As an aside, I should also note that the explanatory note of the bill may need a bit of proofreading as well. One example is: “persons convicted of exploitation under section 351 of the Immigration Act 2009 or people trafficking under section 98D of the Crimes Act 1961 cannot not be directors, promoters, or managers of any company”. I’ll repeat that: they cannot not be directors. I’m fairly sure that’s the opposite of what is intended, so they may want to fix that. It’s sort of assuming that if you’re convicted, the Government’s going to force you to be a director of a company, so maybe the plain language police will be all over that one.

I’ll move to the potential consequences for employees, and this is the particular part of the bill where, fundamentally, we’ve got a big problem, and it’s a balance issue. In its current state, it appears to simply be a tool for the enforcement of the accredited employer work visa scheme in that it seeks to ensure that migrant employees have the right visa and aren’t breaching their conditions—fine. But my question is: where’s the focused targeting of exploitation? This bill, if left unamended, could disproportionately affect migrant workers. Specifically, the infringements include (1) an employer that allows a person who is not entitled, under the Immigration Act 2009, to work in the employer’s service—so that’s ensuring that the employee is indeed tied to that employer—and (2) an employer that employs a migrant in a way that breaches their visa conditions. So, once again, the second infringement focuses on the employee. The scope of these new infringements is fairly narrow, and its focus may just be in the wrong place. That’s quite important for the select committee to consider.

If the objective of this bill is to go after dodgy employers and slap them with a $1,000 fine for every employee that they hire unlawfully, that may indeed be an outcome and it may work just fine, but what about the flow-on effects for those workers? Further, how does this new infringement regime, which is aimed at the lower end of the migrant exploitation spectrum—specifically that part of the bill—feed into the migrant exploitation protection visa, or otherwise encourage whistleblowing? The point is, what migrant employee is going to dob in their employer at this level of offending? The risk to the employee is significant. If they speak up, they will be admitting to Immigration New Zealand that they are in breach of their visa conditions, and that leads to one thing: they’ll get a DLN—they’ll get a deportation liability notice. In such a scenario, a DLN is a totally disproportionate response, and a huge disincentive for whistleblowing.

Building on that, I would ask: will migrants get some sort of grace period once an investigation kicks off, or an interim visa of some type, or perhaps an invitation for some sort of fast-track version of the migrant exploitation protection visa? It doesn’t actually talk about it. Or will they just be booted from the country? What is this bill actually designed to do? The explanatory note of the bill even alludes to this—we’re talking about the power to obtain documents, specifically “documents that relates to non-compliance with the Immigration Act 2009 or the deportation liability of the worker.” On the other side of the equation, I’d also just note that the Government needs to ensure that there’s natural justice here; that an employer can appeal if there has been a misunderstanding, because it does happen.

So what about the protection for migrant workers, how’s that going? Others have alluded to this, but I’ll just add a slightly different take on it. In terms of INZ’s dedicated phone line, the migrant exploitation reporting phone line, in the year to August 2022, there were over 1,700 calls to that number. From the year to June 2022—so it’s pretty much the same time period—the Government reported that there were 956 formal reports of migrant exploitation, and, in that same time, 119 migrant exploitation protection work visas were granted. So if we look at it as a bit of a funnel—I know it’s a slightly informal way of doing it, but if it’s kind of a funnel with people ringing in at the beginning and visas being issued at the end of it, it’s about 7 percent. So there’s a fair bit of work to do, and it does take about eight weeks to get that visa. So, really, how does this all fit in with this bill? Where’s the bridging here? Is it a sufficient safety net? I would argue that, in its current form with this bill, it probably isn’t.

On a somewhat related note, I’ll just ask: can migrants have confidence in the decision-making skills over at Immigration New Zealand? I ask this because almost half of the appeals to the IPT, the Immigration Protection Tribunal, get overturned, right? The immigration officer has made an error, usually, in examining the case, and an IPT appeal is done, and they get it. So it’s half of them—that’s not a good look for INZ.

In terms of the other aspects of this bill, particularly around ensuring that the notices have in fact been received, I think we possibly need to look at that. It’s a little bit blasé to say “Oh, we posted it in the mail, therefore they must have received it.” I think some sort of follow-up—given the documentation supposedly had to be done in 10 days, some more follow-up would be a bit better there. Regarding the Companies Act 1993 changes where their information will be published if they’re found to be breaching, and that’s on the more serious end for those that have been prosecuted—look, we’re fine with that. We think that’s fairly reasonable.

So, to finish, I will just reaffirm that there is a gap here between the lower-level infringements that this introduces and the higher-level offending that is prosecuted under existing law. At what point do these new infringements escalate to the point where, for instance, the Companies Act comes in and the provisions kick in? Our issues predominantly rest with the infringement regime, who it’s targeting, and why. What’s the purpose here, because, on the face of it, it’s going after the employees, the migrants, and the end result is going to be bad. There are all manner of reasons—and I’m not encouraging it—that an employee may be in breach of their visa conditions, and in some cases, it’s just because Immigration New Zealand is taking far too long to process their visa or their employer’s accreditation, or maybe it’s just a variation of conditions. Maybe there’s a mistake been made—it happens, that’s why immigration lawyers exist and why licensed immigration advisers exist, to help people through that process. Problems do arise, and I think issuing this process, which will be an infringement one, and the DLNs, probably, for the migrant at the end of it is just not a good thing. Some migrants are just in a state of desperation, and they might be getting a good pay cheque until they sort things out, so we do need to be careful.

To help reduce exploitation, as ACT has been calling for, the Government should stop tying migrants to employers, give them the freedom to easily change jobs if things don’t work out with that employer, and, at the very least with this bill, provide more protections for migrants so that it’s clear that this bill isn’t just about punishing them. Give them a bridge to a safety net so that they can actually be encouraged to whistle-blow.

So, as I said, ACT will be supporting this bill to select committee so that migrants and employers can participate in the process together with the Government, and hopefully that will result in better law. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. We’ve heard a lot tonight about this very complex issue. As my colleague Camilla Belich pointed out, it is great to hear that everybody is in agreement that we need to better protect our migrant workers—all workers. It’s great to hear on the other side of the House that they support investing in our Public Service so they can do a better job at serving those vulnerable workers.

We heard in select committee, in the Education and Workforce Committee, many submissions in our inquiry into migrant exploitation. It was clear, the message was clear; the stories were distressing and graphic. This piece of legislation sits alongside a whole pile of tools that we are working to improve to ensure that workers and their employers are best able to make the most of having these fine people in their workplaces.

So alongside the immigration rebalance with our improvements to Accredited Employer Work Visa and the Migrant Exploitation Protection Work Visa, we are hearing about these other tools. We will be exploring these and making sure that they are as good as they can be when it comes to select committee.

We heard tonight from the Minister talking about education. The Opposition did acknowledge that we have employers who don’t know what their obligations are and that we need to support them to be the best employers that they can be. It is about protecting our migrant workers. It was great to hear ACT supporting legislation, and, again, making it as good as it can be to protect them. It is also about having the best deterrents to make sure that everybody is doing the right thing.

Employers have rights and responsibilities, and so does all of New Zealand: to look after our migrants; to look after all of our workers. They contribute to their communities and our economy. We need to work together to make sure that they and all of New Zealand can reach their potential as we grow and prosper. I really look forward to this bill coming to select committee. I commend it to the House.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill in this its first reading. As has been pointed out, National is very tentatively supporting this bill at its first reading because we do, of course, agree, like everyone else, that migrant exploitation has no place at all in this country.

It’s a concern that with all the major issues occurring in the immigration area that this pretty marginal bill is what we’re discussing when we’re talking about immigration. This Government has caused so many problems in the immigration space: immigrants separated from families; uncertainty of pathways to residency—we could have had workers like nurses—industries crying out for workers, unable to get workers to harvest fruit. The list goes on and on. I look to my colleague Joseph Mooney’s area, the Southland electorate where the tourism businesses in Te Ānau are just screaming out for immigration settings to be improved so that they can keep their tourism businesses open. We’ve seen horticulturalists and orchardists who have left fruit on the vines and trees because they couldn’t get workers, hospitality businesses closing their cafes and restaurants early because they can’t get workers to staff them, the health sector overrun because of the nursing shortages, aged-care facilities at serious risk because of the care worker shortages, the primary sector screaming out for vets and dairy workers. So then what are we doing? We’re discussing this very marginal bill. This is the Government’s response to everything that is going wrong in the immigration space. It has all the hallmarks of fiddling while Rome burns.

One of the Government speakers on this was in fact the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, which will be looking at this bill, Marja Lubeck. I hope that she has a good read of the bill before it comes there, because in her short three-minute speech that she could manage on this, she spent most of her time telling my colleague Erica Stanford that she had got her facts wrong. Well, in fact, the chair of the select committee had her facts very much wrong, and I will read from the explanatory note where the chair of the select committee said that the desk-based immigration officer was completely wrong for us to be referring to that. Here, directly from the note: “The new document production power will differ from this entry and inspection power by allowing a desk-based immigration officer to require the production of documents and records”, etc. Sounds like a cost-cutting exercise, or, at the very least, a cost-shifting exercise—shifting the cost on to business, which this Government does so superbly well, because we all know they don’t like businesses.

So having a bit further of a look at this bill, it’s going after those low-level breaches of the law and our poor businesses that are trying to get migrants in to staff their businesses. Often the change has happened, they aren’t aware of changes, there are misunderstandings of how the changes are being applied, so instead of going after the very big offenders in terms of exploitation of migrants, they’re going to be going after our businesses, who are working hard to keep their heads above water to keep their businesses afloat. They make some minor transgression against the changes that have occurred and so they will be the ones pinged for it.

Most employers want to do the right thing, but they struggle to keep up with all the immigration law changes, because, actually, they are running businesses. They are keeping this country going by creating and making and selling things to pay taxes for this Government to keep up their addiction to spending, and so they do occasionally make mistakes. Now, as my colleague Erica Stanford said, only about 10 percent of the complaints against exploitation are ever looked into, and this desk-based investigation that’s going to take place is not going to improve that.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Rachel Boyack—five minutes.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

I just wanted to make a point around what members on the other side of the House have talked about as low-level breaches. In my experience, having worked with migrants who’ve been exploited, I’ve got a few examples that I will just talk to briefly that would probably qualify as low-level breaches but that actually speak to a much greater amount of exploitation.

Recently, I had a local chef come into my office who had been duped into signing a sale and purchase agreement for the business that he was working for. He’s a migrant. One of the challenges in that particular situation was that the documents that showed how much money he had earned during that time were not available, so it is was very difficult for us to then work up a case because there weren’t actually good employment records in place.

I just note that keeping those types of employment records are required by law in terms of hours of work and how much is paid. We’re not asking employers to go above and beyond what’s currently required by law; what we’re saying is that there’s actually an expectation now that you can no longer stall that, but you need to provide that within 10 working days. It’s a very reasonable request, in my view.

Another example was around a worker who had complained, again, about hours of work and had gone to the labour inspectorate, and he was subsequently assaulted. So sometimes what we see is that things that the Opposition may call low-level breaches actually lead to much more serious types of migrant exploitation.

The most recent type of example that’s come to my attention is in Marlborough in the viticulture sector, where we’re seeing a number of workers being exploited in terms of being required to pay for their own transport and their own equipment, and, again, actually having records of that type of information will be important for the inspectorate. So it’ll be good to have a discussion at select committee about improvements to the bill, and I commend it to the House.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Mr Speaker, thank you very much. National will be supporting this but, again, with hesitance until the select committee does its job. I have to say we’re starting to see a pattern from the Government as we move towards election year. It feels to me like they’ve realised they actually haven’t done the work as Ministers of a Government that they should’ve and so they’re rushing things out of departments before they’re ready, bringing them to the House, and Government member after Government member after Government member is told to get up and read from the note that says, “We’re looking forward to getting this to committee to hear from the public to try and fix it and make it better.” Look, if they’d been working, as every single New Zealander had to, from home when they were doing whatever they were doing on their pushbikes around the country when we were locked away, then, actually, committees wouldn’t have to fix pieces of legislation. They may well be looking to improve them, but when we hear members say we’ll have to fix some of these things, it tells us it’s a Government that’s really lost its way.

I’ll tell you what’s even more disappointing: we didn’t hear from the Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety nor a single member of the Government stand up and talk about what else they have to do around the immigration system, which is getting it to work properly so good employers get the employees they need—skilled workers from overseas—into the country quickly and be able to look after them, pay them well, and run their businesses well. That’s what’s most disappointing in what the Government has brought to this House today. They’re not talking about solving the problems that good employers have to help them get back on their feet, pay off the debt, run their businesses well. What they’re doing is talking about people sitting behind a desk somewhere in Wellington—which is what most Government members do and they think that’s the role, the job of an MP—as they wave their papers at us from the other side with silly grins on their faces. Actually, what they’re saying is “We want officials to be sitting there, not going out into the real world, not helping businesses but burdening good businesses, in the search for the few that are not good employers, with extra bureaucracy, extra paperwork, and asking them to provide information without cause.” It’s such a scattergun effect.

We heard from our spokesperson Erica Stanford earlier that when it comes to businesses who have migrant workers there who are bad employers, the success rate of this Government in prosecutions is appallingly low. In fact, the number of prosecutions that have been taken is about 10 percent of all of the cases that have been identified of employers of migrant workers who are breaking the rules and are not good employers. But rather than going out and saying, “Well, here’s more resource.” or, actually, to the department, “Please get on and do your job properly.”, what they’ve done is come to this House and say, “We need more rules.” or “We need to make it easier for ourselves.” Actually, what the businesses in New Zealand want, what the public wants, and, I’m sure, what the migrant workers want is just a Government that will do its job, not thinking that more and more rules, placing burden upon companies that are good employers, that are not doing anything wrong, that actually can be left alone because they are responsible New Zealanders—you know, that bringing more rules to attach to them is actually doing your job, and, sadly, it’s not.

Anywhere in New Zealand where an employer is not a good employer—that’s abusing workers, whether they are migrants or they are residents—is wrong. The laws already deal with that. In most cases, what’s in this bill is already dealt with under the existing law. What we actually need is enforcement, but that’s not what this bill is doing. What this bill is doing is creating more burden upon good businesses and actually not altering the playing field at all for those businesses that are not good employers.

There are two bits in particular that give me concern: this “without cause” part of this bill, which really means that the Government can go on a fishing expedition at its will to look for those who may be doing wrong. Well, even the police are not allowed to do that, and the police are there to look after the most serious crimes. If the police believe that, actually, a worker is being abused in a workplace, they have to have cause to go in there. So, on the one hand, the police force that are there to uphold the law have to have cause if they actually want to go and look into an issue, but what this Government is doing is saying, “No, no, we know best. We have bureaucrats in Wellington sitting there in their offices without windows, and they can go out and ask anybody for information with any reason at all”—reasonably or unreasonably—“and they must comply, and if they don’t, they’re breaking the law and there’s a fine.” Well, here’s something novel for the Government: if there is a problem and you’ve identified it, target that problem, actually. Put in this piece of legislation that they must have cause—nobody would have issue with that. The police don’t have an issue with that. But, actually, members of this House, every Government member, have stood up and said, “When it comes to enforcing the law, actually, you have to have a reason to decide that you want to go and look into something, but not in this case, because of immigration.”

I hope what we’re not seeing here is a Government that realises that the immigration system is not working because they have taken their eye off the ball. It’s been underfunded, but, worse than that, during their first three years in Government they actually were saying, “We have too many people here in New Zealand. We don’t like migration. We don’t want people moving here. We don’t want workers to come in.” They virtually closed the system down; now they realise that, actually, there is a consequence to that decision: we don’t have the skilled workers we need; we don’t have the truck drivers. Actually, in Rotorua yesterday there was a protest of hard-working owners of bars and restaurants that just want to open and run their restaurants properly and well. They pay well, they are good employers, but they don’t have the workers that they need and they see no help from the Government. They were forced to actually—to be noticed—go out and protest and hold up signs. They didn’t want to do that, but they felt that they had to.

So, an immigration system that’s not delivering for hard-working business people—you know, that’s still not letting in anywhere near the number of students that we should be attracting to study in New Zealand, to better their lives, to get the skills that perhaps allow them to be in the workforce. But, actually, because the Government fears that that’s not working well—I hope this isn’t what they call a “squirrel”, that, actually, out here on the side we’re doing a whole lot because there are bad employers and migrants can be taken advantage of. If that’s the case, they should come back to what our spokesperson Erica Stanford said, that of all the cases that have been identified where there is exploitation of migrant workers, about 10 percent are followed up on and prosecuted. Well, that’s just appalling. So let’s say, on this fishing expedition with this piece of possession where members of Immigration can go without cause to start getting information, they find 10 businesses that actually are not doing what they should and are exploiting migrants. Well, based on the Government’s current record, they’re only going to prosecute one of those; the other nine will carry on with it.

National stands opposed to the exploitation of workers, and particularly the exploitation of migrant workers. It’s not a good thing; that’s why we’re supporting this to select committee to help the Government members who are having to stand up in this House and read out the note that says we’re going to have to fix this because it wasn’t brought to us in the shape that it should have been. But unless that and many other issues are fixed, unless the Government starts focusing on what the real problem is in New Zealand—an immigration system that’s ground to a halt so good employers, the vast majority of companies that employ in New Zealand, can’t get the workers that they need and they deserve, and the other issues found in this bill—it would be very hard for us to support it, because, in the end, whilst the Government’s intention may be well-meaning, if it doesn’t deliver solutions, all they’re doing is giving false hope and wasting the time not only of this House but of the businesses that are actually hoping for something better. We will be supporting it, but we’re going to look for a lot of the changes in the committee. I feel sorry for the next member from the Government who’s going to have to stand up and say, once again, “It’s a good piece of legislation; I commend it to the House, but we’re going to have to fix it at committee.”

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mr Speaker. It’s always great to be back in the Whare after recess. As always, it’s an honour and a privilege to take a short call in the Whare as the member of Parliament for the beautiful Ōtaki electorate on this, the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

This bill is about ensuring that our migrant workers are protected, have good working conditions, are offered competitive wages, and are treated with dignity and respect. This bill is about doing the right thing. As we have heard, there have been reports of modern day slavery, where migrant workers have been forced into labour and treated really badly. These are crimes, and it violates migrants’ human rights. It traumatises these migrants, who are already vulnerable. They’ve come over here knowing that Aotearoa is the place that will support them, and then they get treated like that—not good.

The actions that we’re taking to tackle the exploitation of migrant workers—under the three pillars of prevention, protection, and enforcement action plan—look to raise awareness and provide training, eliminate modern day slavery from supply chains, provide effective and efficient support services to these victims, strengthen policy and legislation to enhance enforcement and prosecution, and work with others internationally to support effective prevention and enforcement.

Part of the Immigration Rebalance and the accredited employer work visa—the work that we’re doing on this side of the House—is to ensure that New Zealand can attract those high-skilled migrants, offer competitive wages, and have a process that ensures employers who do sign up to this are compliant and are looking after their workers. With regular and tight checks, this process will reduce the chance of worker exploitation, which, we all agree in this House, we don’t want to see here in Aotearoa.

New Zealanders want to know that the goods and services that they purchase in Aotearoa, in New Zealand, are ethical and do not contribute to the exploitation of migrant workers. That is what this bill ensures, and for that reason it’s a great piece of legislation and I commend this bill to the House.

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Bills

Fisheries Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: I present a legislative statement on the Fisheries Amendment Bill.

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

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Fisheries Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

It is a great pleasure to present the Fisheries Amendment Bill in this very important third reading—the last step before these new rules become law; to which I have paid very close attention throughout its passage through the House, I might add. It will bring about some of the most significant changes to New Zealand’s fisheries management system in 30 years. The bill will strengthen and modernise the system to provide economic opportunities and ensure sustainability of fisheries resources for future generations.

I want to thank those who have helped to progress the bill to this stage—I hope that includes members opposite. This includes the submitters on the bill, including the fishing industry, and I appreciate the time and effort that the Primary Production Committee members have spent to understand the bill and the complexities of the fisheries management system—

Todd Muller: Could you just step us through those?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: —as well as to hear from submitters. Ordinarily, at this point I would give a detailed account of that system, but I am denied sufficient time to do that—but I will continue to give my summary of the bill.

I want to also, finally, thank the officials who worked very hard over several years to develop the policy in this bill and who will continue to ensure its effective implementation. It is good that we have good public servants doing work on difficult policy issues like this and assisting all members of the House to achieve good legislation as a result.

The committee of the whole House removed pre-set decision rules from the bill, because it remains clear that there is concern over the use of those tools as proposed in the original bill. Those clauses would have enabled more streamlined decisions on sustainability measures, including catch limits. Submitters stressed the need to rebuild trust in the fisheries management system first.

Previous reports that Minister Parker—the Minister responsible for the bill—referred to, such as the Heron report commissioned under the previous National Government, showed that discarding and high grading was a longstanding problem in New Zealand. That is what has led to putting cameras on boats and changing rules around discarding fish. While I believe industry practice has improved and is improving, there remains a level of distrust, in part borne of the fact that outcomes from operations Hippocamp and Achilles were not made public, despite the problems shown.

We’re making progress to rebuild this trust through key changes in this bill alongside increasingly transparent processes and an approach—an open approach—to sustainability rounds. But suspicion remains amongst some people that allowing the Minister to change the total allowable catch and total allowable commercial catch based on a rule agreed by stakeholders but without a requirement to consult the public, is, from their point of view, a backwards step. It is unwise to proceed with that at this stage, and it’s not the main component of the reform package.

There was also some concern raised with the graduated offences and the penalty regime, and new rules relating to landing and disposals. Concern was the regime would be too focused on numbers, rather than value of fish. Offences would therefore not be proportionate to the consequence of offending. I acknowledge that 50 fish is somewhat arbitrary, but we had to draw the line somewhere. It’s a vast improvement to the current system, which prescribes a maximum penalty of $250,000 for any level of offence. So members will see that this is a bill that truly pursues justice.

Value is an important consideration. It’s not about whether this factor should be considered, but how. Primary legislation is not the place to put matters that will need to be changed frequently to ensure they remain effective. Ministry for Primary Industries enforcement officers will have discretion. They will, as with other prosecutors, consider all factors of the offence. This includes whether the act was intentional or accidental; the nature of the offending, including the species and quantities involved; and previous behaviour of the fisher. More specifically, the consultation on the infringement regulations is the appropriate place for value to be considered in detail.

I want to highlight some of the key features of the bill, which have been well traversed. This bill tightens rules around landing and disposal. This means that all fish that are caught whether they are quota management system (QMS) species or not must be reported. And QMS species must be landed, except if there is an exemption provided for in the regulation.

Mark Cameron: What are those exemptions?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The tightening of—well, I would like to assist the member but time prevents me from giving a full account.

Hon Member: We’ll seek an extension.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: If members wish to move an extension of speaking time, I’m sure I can consider it! The tightening of landing and disposal rules are supported by the roll-out of on-board cameras. Cameras provide more accurate information about fishing activity and better evidence for a responsive management system.

Through these changes, we are tackling the issue of discarding of unwanted fish and improving incentives for better commercial fishing practices. Fishers will be incentivised to target fish more selectively so they can maximise the value of their catch. Cameras also support measures to reduce the bycatch of birds and sea mammals. The broader use of on-board cameras has been tested with industry, who broadly support the initiative.

The bill also introduces a more graduated offences and penalties regime that can now be implemented because we have cameras on boats. A graduated regime will allow commercial fishers to be penalised more proportionally and appropriately relative to their level of offending.

Issues of discarding is a global fisheries problem. Minister Parker was recently in Iceland, where they are dealing with similar issues around illegal discarding—exposed using drones. New Zealand is not unique in trying to address these concerns. Fisheries management systems around the world are all looking for innovative ways to address similar issues.

We have a solid fisheries system and, most importantly, a balancing regime which puts us in a better position than some. There will be challenges for some in the industry, but they have shown time and time again how innovative they are. There are a range of new technologies available or being developed, including the new types of nets, alternative methods such as potting or longlining, and the use of cameras on nets which will help improve the selectivity of fishing.

The bill’s four-year implementation period will ensure that fishers have the time to adjust their operations as needed. The bill also enables us to meet the increasing demands of consumers to know where their food comes from and to utilise these technologies in a way that provides consumers in all parts of the supply chain with greater assurances that our fisheries are managed sustainably.

Last year, the Government established a vision for the ocean, which is something along the lines of ensuring the long-term health and resilience of ocean and coastal ecosystems, including the role of fisheries. To help us realise this vision, the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, along with our colleague the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who was then the Minister of Conservation, crafted a work programme that included fisheries system reform. This bill represents a significant step forward for this reform, a significant step toward realising this vision, and will support a strong and modern fisheries management system. And on that note, I commend the bill to the House.

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

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, if ever there was a legislative denouement to what has been quite a remarkable process around the Fisheries Amendment Bill, then that 10 minutes would have to take the cake, because we have just listened to a highly passionate Minister of Health, handed the job to sell the Government’s vision with respect to fisheries, and he laboured through each word as if he was trying to haul up a whale from the bottom of the ocean. It didn’t work, but it was great to see the list MP who valiantly represented the great city of New Plymouth with all its burgeoning fishing industry. I’m sure they would have loved to see that, sitting at home watching the Minister mangle an attempt to try and summarise the Government’s approach with respect to fisheries.

So let’s just unwind this process and reflect on where we find ourselves here tonight on the third reading of the Fisheries Amendment Bill. The Minister is right when he tightly referenced, on page 2, that this is a process which started many years ago. The genesis of its process was the fact that there was concern that the current Fisheries Act was not precise enough with respect to incentivising the right fishing behaviour—that when you land fish, you should ensure that you discard only the fish that is appropriate, with a relatively narrow sense of criteria, and that you should return the remainder back to land.

Now, this has been a very fraught process, because as the Government began this process of the last few years sitting with fisheries industry representatives, it became clear that there was significant distrust, significant concern, across many of the players about the behaviour of the other player. As someone who is the oceans and fisheries spokesperson for the National Party, when you actually sit and listen to the perspectives of those who are involved in this sector, the level of distrust is quite extraordinary—

Hon Member: Palpable.

TODD MULLER: “Palpable” is the word, and actually it’s a good word, because you have the commercial fishers who say that this framework has been developed to unnecessarily constrain their business, that they are simply trying to make a living, and that they do not deliberately chuck over the side of their boat fish that they want to discard. The reality of when you are using a trawl net is that you will catch fish that you don’t particularly want to catch and it is a difficult process to minimise that catch.

On the other side of the equation, you have the recreational fishers, who hold the view—across many of them—that the commercial fishers themselves are the main driver of fish stock pressures in New Zealand. Then you have those who are involved in customary fishing, who feel that their long-held right to fish for kai moana is being constrained by this Act, and then you’ve got the non-governmental organisations that suggest that, actually, there should be no take in significant parts of New Zealand, and New Zealand is at its best when we watch the oceans from afar as opposed to participating in it from a fishing perspective.

All these strands of dissonance this Government has been trying to bring together into some coherence in terms of this Fisheries Amendment Bill, and it got brought to this House as a first reading, which we supported. It then got sent to the select committee, and we listened to the various perspectives, again, of those highly dissonant groups, who all saw the challenge of fisheries lying, predominantly, at the feet of other players.

We navigated through the two key components of this bill: a new discards regime, which would be tougher for the fishers of New Zealand; but the counter, or the complementary measure, if you like, was the establishment of a pre-set decision framework where, armed with evidence, armed with data, and after a significant consultation process with all stakeholders, you could agree the parameters within which you could apply fishing rules and quantities with respect to quota management. We discussed it; we agreed it. It was very difficult because the participants in the select committee who submitted to us, like I said, had pretty divergent views.

We debated it as the Primary Production Committee, and we landed a recommendation, notwithstanding a minority view on some elements by the Green Party and the same by the ACT Party and the same, of course, by us in the National Party. Overall, we supported the intention of the bill.

We had a second reading in which we talked to the detail of what sat under the Fisheries Amendment Bill, the bringing together of those two components—the discards regime and the pre-set decision rules. On the second reading, we had the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries talking about the challenge that the select committee had worked through in bringing those competing objectives together and endorsed the fact that we’d landed in a place that worked, and, four hours later in this House, he stood up and said, “I now withdraw the entire pre-set decision rules framework because we are not happy with where it has landed”.

So what has happened? How is it that after years of effort this Government decides that at the eleventh hour it is not going to hold true to the process but instead change its view and suggest that one of those stakeholders’ perspectives should trounce all the others, and now has the audacity to stand up in this House, acknowledged, read, by the Minister of Health, saying that, actually, they’ve landed something that they feel proud of as a Government. How can they possible say that they feel proud of this delivery when they have looked the commercial fishers in the face and said “We support this component; it’s a critical part of the Fisheries Amendment Bill. We’re going to see it through, we’re making amendments, and we’ve listened to your concerns.” You get right to the last hurdle and then you say, “Actually, this component we are taking off the table because some in the other parts of the fishery industry have decided that we shouldn’t proceed with it.”

In particular, I look across to somebody who I respect—Rino Tirikatene—and he’s going to talk shortly, no doubt, in his position as an undersecretary in this context. I’d be interested for him to tell us what his Māori stakeholders, and particularly those involved in Māori fishing, thought of the fact that at the eleventh hour, the pre-set decision rules got pulled, because the night before it happened, I was at the 30th anniversary of the Sealord deal, and table after table were endorsing that bill. Table after table were saying it was heading in the right direction.

So what about the iwi fishing interests who absolutely supported that balance of objectives between discards on the one hand and the pre-set decision rules on the other? We will get silence tonight. We will get told, “Oh look, on balance, we decided that we couldn’t proceed with that chunk of the bill”. That is not good enough. It doesn’t have the appropriate integrity that a process would demand, and it has added to the distrust.

Now we pass a bill here tonight that sets up a new framework for fisheries management, and the entire commercial, inshore, and deep-sea fisheries participants look at this Government and where they have landed with this bill with scorn and—apart from that—with immense distrust because they were told to participate in a process, that their views would be considered, that they would be balanced with the recreational fishers, that they would be balanced with the NGOs, and that they would be balanced with the Māori custodial interests. But when push came to shove, the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, for some reason, at two minutes to midnight on this process said, “Actually, we don’t provide that balance, and the trust that you have invested in this process and in us as being a dispassionate, evidence-based, competent Government is smashed.”

Yes, this bill will pass, and the component of it in terms of discards makes sense. So, of course, because that component makes sense, we will support it reluctantly, but, my goodness, what a disgrace that the other component got removed, and that disgrace sits on your side of the House.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very much delighted to speak at the third reading of the Fisheries Amendment Bill. This bill is a win for New Zealand, and I know Mr Muller spent about nine minutes of his 10-minute speech talking about a pre-set decision rule which isn’t even in this bill. It’s not at this bill at the third reading. I know they did a lot of work at the Primary Production Committee going through all the various aspects in it, but that’s not in the bill. It was taken out of the bill, as the Minister David Parker has said. Yes, there was a lot of policy work that has gone on over many years, over many Ministers, all the way back to Minister Guy. So there has been a lot of work, a lot of policy work, but at the end of the day, there are so many other good aspects in this bill. In regards to the pre-set decision rule, as Minister Parker has mentioned, and has also been reiterated by Minister Little in his speech, it is time to rebuild trust, and, at the moment, the pre-set decision rule just wasn’t really a priority to ensure that we can rebuild that trust among the sectors.

It’s not to say that it won’t be revisited in future, but I think we need to concentrate on the really positive provisions of this bill, because there are so many good things—so much so that I do want to acknowledge the other side for their support. There are so many good things. We are streamlining, we are tightening the rules around discards, we are supporting the roll-out of cameras on boats—all of this good work is about ensuring that we can incentivise good behaviour and good practice from the commercial sector. I’m seeing that happen to this day. As I go around the countryside, there are wonderful innovations taking place in catch methods, precision harvesting, trapping, and equipment and gear that’s being developed, which is all about ensuring that we not only have better returns to our fishers but that we can look after our fisheries as well.

This bill is all about modernising our fisheries management system. It is well over 30 years old, and there are provisions that definitely needed updating, particularly around the penalties. We are now implementing a graduated system, and it will be well consulted with the industry, and implemented through regulations like a demerit point system, whereby with all of these assurances that we have in place, and the drive for better practices, we can actually ensure that we have a more balanced approach to the penalties regime as well. So there are a host of really, really good, positive measures, which have the broad support of this House—from the National Party especially—and I do welcome that.

I do want to commend Minister Parker and his work, and also the officials at Fisheries New Zealand, and all the work of the select committee that they have done on this bill. This is a good bill. It is a win for New Zealand. It is a win for our fisheries, our oceans ecosystems, and I commend it to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m