Thursday, 17 November 2022

THURSDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 2022

THURSDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

Visitors

Australia—Federal Parliament, Minister for Home Affairs

SPEAKER: Members, I’m sure that you would wish to welcome the Hon Clare O’Neil MP, Australian Federal Minister for Home Affairs, and her accompanying delegation who are present in the gallery.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Deputy Leader of the House): Thank you, Mr Speaker. On Tuesday, 22 November, legislation to be considered will include the first readings of the Natural and Built Environment Bill, and the Spatial Planning Bill and the second reading of the Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki-nui-a-Rua Claims Settlement Bill.

Last week, we informed the Business Committee of the Government’s intention to move an urgency motion next week. Legislation to be considered under urgency will include bills to pass through remaining stages, such as the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill, and the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill, and first readings, such as the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill, and the Legal Services Amendment Bill. We will confirm the complete list of bills to be considered under urgency next week.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you to the Deputy Leader of the House for that update. Will the Water Services Entities Bill be included in the urgency motion?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Deputy Leader of the House): As stated in the Business Statement, we will confirm the complete list of bills to be considered next week, but I note the member’s interest; I’ll do my best to accommodate it.

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 Hope Cotton requesting that the House put in place a requirement for captioning by all television and media organisations in New Zealand

petition of Mike Styles requesting that the House urge the Government to conduct an inquiry into dyslexia/neurodiversity, including their impact on society and the economy, consider legislation to cover their rights, and ensure best practice in education for dyslexic/neurodiverse learners.

SPEAKER: Those petitions are referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

Mercury NZ Limited, annual report 2022

statements of corporate intent for 2022-23 to 2024-25 for:

Airways Corporation of New Zealand Limited

KiwiRail

Landcorp Farming Limited

MetService

New Zealand Railways Corporation

Quotable Value Limited

statements of corporate intent for the year ending 30 June 2023 for AsureQuality Limited and Electricity Corporation of New Zealand.

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

CLERK:

Reports of the Education and Workforce Committee on:

the briefing on the report on undocumented Tuvaluans in Auckland

petition of Pandora Black, “Repeal Section 19 of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003”

report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand financial stability report November 2022

report of the Justice Committee on the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading. The financial stability report and briefing are set down for consideration. No bills have been introduced.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Health

1. DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement on expanding access to affordable dental care, “It’s an area we need to give attention to at some point”; if so, when will he give it his attention?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Yes. How we provide equitable access to dental care is a longstanding issue in this country. Like most issues in health, most equity problems disproportionately affect Māori. The policy right now is that free dental care should be available to children and adolescents up to the age of 18 years. Notwithstanding this, I’m aware that some families experience difficulty in accessing this entitlement, and more work is required to address this. However, this Government is committed to increasing New Zealanders’ access to dental care. In this year’s Budget, we allocated $125.8 million over four years to increasing dental grants and making them available for more people and in more situations. This means that from 1 December, the grant more than triples from $300 to $1,000 and will also be available for preventative dental care and not just for emergencies, and it will be available to working people on low incomes, as well as beneficiaries. These changes are expected to help some 50,000 people a year get the dental care they need. In November last year, we passed the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Act, giving the Director-General of Health the power to direct local authorities to fluoridate their water supplies to protect people’s teeth against decay. This new power was used in July this year, with notices being issued to 14 local authorities. Finally, the oral health promotion initiative is under way. Since December 2021, it has provided nearly 500,000 toothbrush and toothpaste packs to low-income families.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What is his response to the 83.7 percent of people in the recent Newshub - Reid Research poll who said that Government should subsidise dental care to make it cheaper for adults to go to the dentist?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I indicated in the answer to the primary question, there is an initiative funded in this year’s Budget, about to take effect from 1 December, that will benefit about 50,000 people. But in terms of a claim to fully fund all adult dental healthcare, the cost of that would literally run into billions of dollars, and, at the moment, the health budget, which we’ve added to by about 45 percent in five years, is fully committed, but we will continue to look for ways that we can improve support for dental healthcare.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Is he concerned by findings of the new report Tooth be told that 40 percent of New Zealanders and more than half of Māori and Pasifika people can’t afford dental care, meaning that Aotearoa recorded the highest unmet need for adult dental care amongst 11 comparable countries?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’ve read that report, and obviously those figures are a concern, but I don’t think they take into account the impact of this year’s Budget policy initiative, which I think will make a difference. But that said, I think the member raises an important point—and indeed that discussion document from the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. We do need to stay alert to the unmet need for dental healthcare and continue to do what we can to improve that.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does he accept research from Treasury which found the Government could fund as much as $900 million worth of subsidies each year for universal dental care and still break even, with a $1.60 return on each dollar spent?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m not aware of that work from Treasury. Treasury seldom comes to Ministers with the demand that they spend more money, but, as I said before, we do need to keep abreast of the challenges that go with unmet adult dental health needs. I think this year’s Budget policy will go some way to addressing that, but we will keep a close eye on how that unfolds.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does he agree with the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists and the Auckland City Mission that universal dental care is critical to the good health of everyone in Aotearoa, and, if so, will he commit to funding free dental care for all?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I’ve indicated on that latter point that the member raises, no. I’m not in a position to make that commitment, but that is why we do look for opportunities to improve the level of Government support we provide for access to dental healthcare. I agree with the member in terms of the tenet of the first part of her question: good dental care, good oral healthcare, is very important for a good life.

Question No. 2—Housing

2. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Minister of Housing: Is she confident that Kāinga Ora will meet its deadline of 1 July 2023 for complying with the healthy homes standards, and can she confirm that the Government will not give Kāinga Ora an extension to its deadline?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment) on behalf of the Minister of Housing: We’ve heard from landlords that there have been challenges across the sector in complying with the healthy homes standards. COVID-19 did create delays with labour shortages, issues accessing tenants’ homes, and supply chain problems for products like heat pumps and insulation materials. We want to be pragmatic about our response to this, but that is currently under active Cabinet consideration, and so I cannot pre-empt a Cabinet decision. Kāinga Ora has made good progress, with 84 percent of Kāinga Ora’s tenanted housing stock meeting the standards or being upgraded right now: 43,775 homes—so 68 percent—already meet the standards, and over 10,600 Kāinga Ora homes are currently in progress. Kāinga Ora have also accelerated delivery, from 180 homes being upgraded per week in June 2021, to 600 homes per week in October 2022. We are doing more to improve the quality of rentals and public homes than any Government in decades.

Brooke van Velden: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m not sure that the Minister addressed the question. She talked a lot about landlords, but not necessarily Kāinga Ora and having confidence that they would meet the healthy homes standards, nor confirming that they will not give Kāinga Ora—

SPEAKER: Yeah, I’m happy to rule on that. In terms of the first part of the question, I would rule that it has been addressed. The second part of the question: not completely, although there was information referring to it. What I will do is give you an additional question—

Hon Grant Robertson: Speaking to the point of order.

SPEAKER: Well, I’ve actually made the ruling—

Hon Grant Robertson: She did address it. She talked about Cabinet.

SPEAKER: Yeah, I—and I’ll stand up on my feet this time. Yes, that’s right. I said that the Minister did address—I’ll read the bit that I have a little bit of concern about: “can she confirm that the Government will not give Kāinga Ora an extension”. That wasn’t explicitly addressed, although what I am saying is that there was information that leads me to believe that it was addressed. But I am going to give the member an additional question.

Brooke van Velden: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Has Kāinga Ora asked for an extension to its 2023 deadline to meet the healthy homes standards?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Referring to the answer to my primary question, the issue and the matter that the member is raising is something that’s under active consideration. I certainly can’t refer to details around that.

Brooke van Velden: Will she rule out ever giving Kāinga Ora an extension to the healthy homes standards deadline?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As I mentioned at the beginning, many landlords, including Kāinga Ora, have experienced some challenges over the last couple of years due to COVID. They were unforeseen, and with regards to that matter, it is a matter that is part of something that is under active consideration.

Brooke van Velden: When was the issue of a Kāinga Ora deadline brought to Cabinet?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As I said, this matter is under active consideration. With respect to anything regarding it, it needs to be considered by Cabinet, and, in those instances, anything related to such matter will be released in due course.

Chris Bishop: Point of order. Mr Speaker. I’ve been watching the flow back and forth, and I think two or three, or maybe four times now, the Minister has said that the matter is under active consideration. Now, the fact that something is under active consideration does not obviate the Minister from answering that question in Parliament. It may be grounds, potentially, for withholding information under the Official Information Act, but successive Speakers have ruled that the standards of accountability in Parliament in question time is different to that under the Official Information Act. If the Minister knows what the answer is, she cannot just say that the matter is under consideration, or even if it’s actively or inactively. Many matters across Government are under active consideration on a regular basis. That does not mean Ministers are not accountable to the House for what matters are under active consideration. They have to answer or at least, sir, address the question.

Dr Duncan Webb: Speaking to the point of order. Clearly, Cabinet proceedings are confidential, and the fact that a matter is under consideration by Cabinet—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Points of order should be heard in silence. We don’t need commentary. Can you start again.

Dr Duncan Webb: The fact that the matter is under consideration by Cabinet is clearly a reason for not disclosing what is under consideration, and therefore the Minister has clearly addressed the question.

SPEAKER: Yeah, it really comes under the banner that members might not be satisfied with the answer, but the question has actually been addressed.

Question No. 3—Social Development and Employment

3. ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What announcements has she made about supporting people into employment?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Recently, I announced that the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD) role will expand to support non-beneficiaries into employment, education, or training. As part of this, we are also doubling down on our focus to reduce barriers to work for those at risk of long-term benefit receipt by ensuring they are a priority cohort for determining investment in service provision. These were issues identified by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and the Productivity Commission. They called on us to strengthen and expand these services, and we agreed to this as part of the welfare overhaul. This shift underlines our Government’s efforts to support people into jobs, as well as progress the welfare overhaul.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What work does this announcement build on?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: In response to COVID, we invested funding for MSD to support a wider group of New Zealanders into employment, including supporting those affected by COVID to return to work quickly. If we take Flexi-wage, for example, over 5,000 people who may have gone on to benefit went into a Flexi-wage programme. We’ve also seen success in our targeting so far, particularly for longer-term beneficiaries, with 35,700 people who had been receiving a main benefit for longer than a year moving into work over the previous 12 months. With record numbers of people moving off benefit and into work and a promising pipeline of people participating across all our employment, education, and training services, it’s clear the expansion has proven its worth.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: Why is it important to focus on both cohorts, not one or the other?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: It shouldn’t be a case of one or the other. We need to continue to focus on those on benefit and the support they need to get into employment. What’s been missing up until now has been the focus at the preventative end, where you support people into employment, education, or training before they need to consider coming on to benefit. We believe we need to do both, and our focus remains on those disadvantaged by the labour market.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: How does this announcement prepare New Zealand in the long run?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We have to be ready to tackle whatever comes our way, which is why we’re thinking ahead—this includes making sure we’ve got the systems in place to respond whilst accelerating efforts to supporting people, whether you’re a non-beneficiary or job seeker, into employment, education, or training. The investment now will pay dividends in the long run, and I’m pleased that Frank Koloi of The Fono also agrees with this sentiment. He said, “If we invest two to three years in these young people, they’ll be much better off—not just today but in the future.”

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What feedback has she seen on this announcement?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I was pleased to read that the Western Bay of Plenty’s economic development agency Priority One’s workforce and policy general manager Greg Simmonds welcomed the broadening of scope. He said, “The success of Priority One’s Ara Rau skills and employment hub, which is supported by He Poutama Rangatahi funding, is evidence that a proactive, community-centric approach is required to support the thousands of New Zealanders at risk of longer-term disengagement from our labour market, at a time when industry is crying out for people.”

Question No. 4—Prime Minister

4. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Acting Prime Minister): Yes, in particular the new tools to reduce gun crime that come into force today. Firearms prohibition orders will improve public safety by stopping people whose behaviour and actions represent a high risk of violence from accessing firearms or restricted weapons. The new legislation gives a judge the power to impose an order lasting 10 years and makes it a criminal offence to breach the conditions of the order, with a breach being an imprisonable offence. The delivery of this legislation had been promised by previous Governments but is actually, finally, being delivered.

Simeon Brown: Took five years for this Government to do.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It took Mr Brown nine years to do nothing; we have done it.

Nicola Willis: Why have ram raids increased fivefold under Labour?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As we know, in the current period of time, ram raids have increased, although overall levels of crime have come down. There is, from time to time, spates of different types of crimes. We do know that, in recent times, we’re starting to see that trend downwards, but, clearly, that is now a focus for the police; they’ve been arresting hundreds of people. We’ve been trying to get in behind the causes of that. What we haven’t been doing is reheating old, failed policies like boot camps.

Nicola Willis: Does he think the current approach to youth crime is working, when there is a new ram raid every 15 hours?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I think that the initiatives that the Government is undertaking—including making sure that we get wraparound services around all of those who have been convicted, and making sure that we get in to those families to make sure that they are given the support that they need—are starting to work. What won’t work is a policy that the National Party previously had, where 86 percent of the people in the boot camps reoffended; it’s a failed policy.

Nicola Willis: What evidence does he have that the Government’s soft-on-crime approach is working?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member is completely incorrect in her description, but, if she does want evidence, we can return to the Ministry of Social Development study that said that 86 percent of people reoffended, when this was tried by the last National Government. We could go to the evidence from the then Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, who, on 12 June 2018, said, “Boot camps do not work”. All boot camps do is create faster, fitter criminals who do more crime.

Nicola Willis: Does he think the Government’s policies are working for people like Vape Room owner Savi Arora, who told Newshub that he got a call from neighbours at 3 a.m. to alert him of the ram raid to his shop: “I felt so terrible, it was so stressful, it was very scary. I have a little kid at home and my wife didn’t want me to go and check it out”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Every member of this House would have extreme sympathy for anyone who is affected by a ram raid. The police are actively making sure that they arrest those who are responsible. We have a focus within our approach in the justice system to supporting and protecting victims, and stopping them from being victimised in the first place. The member’s party’s policy of boot camps will create more criminals and therefore more victims. It is a failed policy. The member should be embarrassed by it.

Nicola Willis: Does the Acting Prime Minister understand that victims of crime don’t want his sympathy; they want a stop to reoffending, and how many more retailers have to have their stores destroyed and their customers terrorised before his Government takes some serious action?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We are taking action. We are seeing the police arrest record numbers of people here. We are getting in behind the causes of these crimes—the families, the people who need our help and support to be able to turn their lives around. What those people will be feeling today is that the National Party have no new ideas. They’re reheating Bill English’s leftovers. It failed there, it failed in the UK—we will get fitter, faster criminals doing more crime. It is an embarrassing policy which, actually, I don’t think that member would support.

Nicola Willis: Does he see a connection between soaring truancy rates under Labour and soaring youth crime, and, if so, what’s he doing about it?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Every day, a member of the National Party gets up and says that this is truancy, when, in actual fact, during COVID, people were obeying the rules of keeping their children home because they had to isolate. The member needs to actually get her facts right, instead of scaremongering like that.

Nicola Willis: When will his Government stop making excuses and stop wringing its hands, and, instead, take action to get our kids back to school and off the streets where they are raiding stores and creating carnage?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We are taking action. We have arrested people, those programmes are now being wrapped around those who have been arrested. We are intervening to make sure that families have got the support they need. We have got programmes to make sure that we get young people back into school and back into work. All the National Party has to offer is a failed policy—it failed in the United Kingdom, it failed in New Zealand—and that’s as good as it gets: fitter, faster criminals doing more crime, victimising more people. They are a failure of a policy shop over there.

Question No. 5—Environment

5. LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour) to the Minister for the Environment: How will the repeal and replacement of the RMA reduce costs and consenting times?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Resource consenting has become ever-more costly under the Resource Management Act (RMA). Between 2014-15 and 2018-19, council fees increased by 66 percent for non-notified and 124 percent for notified consents. It’s also taking longer, with median decision-making time frames increasing by 50 percent in the same years. Processes under the new system will be faster, cheaper, and better, delivering substantial cost- and time-savings. More than 100 district regional plans under the RMA will be replaced by 15 plans. More activities will be permitted in Natural and Built Environment Act plans; fewer consents will be needed; clearer notification requirements; independent hearing panels; better designations; narrower appeals will further reduce delays, costs, and re-litigation. The fast track, which has already been shown to reduce consenting times by 15 months on average for infrastructure, will be made permanent for infrastructure and significant housing developments. The repeal and replacement of the RMA will be faster, cheaper, and better for Kiwis.

Lemauga Lydia Sosene: Why is the Government not proposing to replace all resource consenting with the fast-track pathway?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Fast-track consenting has been shown to reduce consent times by an average of 15 months. I’ve seen suggestions that fast track should be used for everything. That, of course, is the wrong track. Including thousands and thousands of extra applications in fast track would cause it to turn into slow track. It would, in fact, delay major infrastructure and housing developments. It is a wrong-headed and confused idea.

Lemauga Lydia Sosene: What reaction has he received about the repeal and the replacement of the RMA?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Reaction to the Government’s planned repeal and replacement of the RMA has been positive from experts in the field, including the Employers and Manufacturers Association, Environmental Defence Society, and Local Government New Zealand. Infrastructure NZ says the repeal and replacement “marks a long-awaited milestone that can be celebrated.”, and the bills “represent a significant shift in focus to prioritise the front end of the planning process, rather than relying on the current individual project consenting battleground, which results in expensive and delay-ridden bespoke solutions.”

Lemauga Lydia Sosene: What other reaction has he received about the repeal and the replacement of the RMA?

Hon DAVID PARKER: One commentator last year said that the number one solution to the housing crisis is to repeal and replace the RMA, but now claims that the reduction of more than 100 RMA plans to just 15 natural and built environment plans, the standardising of consent conditions, the reduced consent costs of at least 19 percent is, in fact, more bureaucracy and won’t improve anything. It seems some people have fallen back in love with the RMA. Another doughnut for the Leader of the Opposition.

Chris Bishop: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Order! Oh, yeah, take the point.

Chris Bishop: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: I was going to make a ruling on the last comment; I thought you were going to ask me to do that. The Government shouldn’t use its own questions to itself to hold itself accountable, to criticise the Government, and certainly not to be bringing the Leader of the Opposition into the answer.

Chris Bishop: How does enshrining into law that the purpose of the new bill will be to recognise and uphold te Oranga o te Taiao—a legal term that does not exist in the statute book already—promote certainty and predictability?

Hon DAVID PARKER: That clause was recommended by the Randerson panel. In effect, it carries forward the intergenerational environmental test from the RMA to the new system. The idea that the old system was somehow perfect is incredible to me, including in respect of environmental protection, where it failed to deal with cumulative effects. The new system will be far better.

Question No. 6—Health

6. Dr SHANE RETI (National) to the Minister of Health: Which are the three hospital emergency departments with the greatest number of nurse vacancies as a proportion of their normal full-time equivalent roster, and what are those proportions in each case?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I’ve been advised that data on nurse vacancies specifically in emergency departments (EDs) is not routinely collected at a national level. This information sits with individual emergency departments and would need to be manually collected and collated from all districts, which hasn’t been possible in the time available. However, information related to this question was collected on 2 November this year in response to the member’s written question No. 39263. At this time, the three hospitals with the highest vacancies in their EDs were Middlemore Hospital, 29.2 vacancies; Hawke’s Bay Hospital and Wairoa Hospital combined, 27.43 vacancies; and Wellington Hospital, 20 vacancies. I can also report that as at 30 June 2022, the total number of employed nurses at Counties Manakau District Health Board was 275, Hawke’s Bay District Health Board was 95, and Capital and Coast District Health Board was 129. Pressures on emergency departments go back many years, and we have many measures under way to address them.

Dr Shane Reti: How does he explain to people in rural places like Te Kuiti and Taumarunui, who may wait hours in their EDs today, that each of their hospitals is short three ED nurses on average, and yet he will not give nurses a day-one pathway to residency?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Firstly, I rely on the incredible front-line health managers that we have to make sure that, particularly for EDs, they do the best they can to get the necessary nursing complement in place. Typically, what happens in hospitals—large and small—is that if there are material gaps in the shift roster for an ED, hospital managers will pull nurses from other areas of the hospital to make sure that they are properly staffed. I take my hat off to not only ED staff and nursing staff generally but to those managers who are dealing with those pressures on a day-to-day basis in very difficult circumstances. On the issue of the straight to residency pathway for nurses, I think we’ve been haggling about this for some time. I think the member and his party routinely overlook the nurses who are arriving from overseas with overseas qualifications; 4,300 have crossed the border in the last year alone, and 634 registered with the Nursing Council of New Zealand just in September. We are attracting nurses from overseas here to New Zealand; we still have a long way to go to fill the vacancies that we’ve got, but I back our health leaders to do the right thing in these very difficult circumstances.

Dr Shane Reti: What does he think will be the impact on ED wait times at Middlemore Hospital today due to the shortage of 29 ED nurses, as advised in his response to written question No. 39219?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I said before, I take my hat off the front-line health managers who, every day, are dealing with these challenges and who redeploy nurses from other parts of the hospital to meet those gaps. What I can also say, too, is that there are people who turn up to ED and who have to wait longer than is desirable—particularly those with less-acute conditions. What they can be sure of, however, is that they will still get care in ED. I met a person the other day whose opening remark to me was “I’m one of those who waited 24 hours at a MidCentral ED.” I said to him, “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. How did it go?” He said the care he had was impeccable, he said he was well looked after, and when he did get admitted to a bed—he needed to be there—he was very pleased with the level of care that he got, even if he had to wait longer than was desirable in that ED.

Dr Shane Reti: What does he say to ED specialists who say that every day in every ED is another Middlemore tragedy waiting to happen, given his answer to written questions showing an average of 4,000 people leave ED each month because of wait times, yet within 24 hours, on average, 400 are so ill that they have to return to ED and are admitted?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: We know that EDs are under pressure and have been for some time. That’s why it was so good to come together last Saturday with health professionals and health leaders all across the country to talk just about how we deal with this problem that has been many years in the making. You know, when you underfund the health system for as long as it was, prior to this Government coming into force, it was important that we actually not only provide the additional funding but actually start to put together the long-term plans that we need. What is really disappointing is that that member, who had the opportunity to be part of that really important discourse—because he’s spent months criticising what’s happened—did not turn up.

Dr Shane Reti: When he just despairingly said in the House that nobody from the Opposition bothered to turn up to his health workforce hui last Saturday, isn’t it more troubling that two of his three associate health Ministers didn’t turn up, and neither did any of Labour’s four Health Committee MPs, and doesn’t this show that Labour MPs want to be as far away as possible from the unfolding health crisis for which he is responsible?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: What’s really disappointing is that, when so many people recognise that our health system has major challenges, and we have a Government that has put record sums of money into fixing those problems, we have a party opposite who has no plan and just wants to play politics with people’s livelihoods and people’s lives. I stand by the measures that this Government has taken to put additional funding into our health system; to rebuild our mental health services that were left neglected for so long; to pay nurses more, whose pay had gone backwards in real terms under the previous Government—a Government that has not frozen Pharmac funding for three years and has not frozen investment in buildings and infrastructure, as the previous Government did. This Government is serious about improving our health system and cleaning up the mess left by the previous Government.

Question No. 7—Education (School Operations)

7. MARJA LUBECK (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Education (School Operations): What recent announcement has she made about better supporting children with the highest learning support needs?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education (School Operations)): This morning, I was pleased to announce the outcomes of the Highest Needs Review, where our Government has committed to substantial changes to build a system that better supports our kids and young people with the highest of learning support needs. The new model will create partnerships between the student, their whānau, and the early learning centre or school. This will give students and whānau greater choice and control over what the best support looks like and tailored delivery of services to the needs of the learner rather than what suits the system.

Marja Lubeck: Why was the review into high-needs learning support needed?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The review has been long called for by the education sector and practitioners, disabled people, and parents. The review has found what these advocates have been telling us: there is clear evidence of inequities within the system. We had over 1,100 submissions that show the current system, which is over 20 years old, is fragmented, and lots of our kids and young people aren’t getting the support they need when they need it. This Government has committed to changing that so every child, regardless of their learning challenges, gets the best education that they deserve.

Marja Lubeck: What investment has been made to improve the delivery of learning support services?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Following years of inadequate funding, this Government has invested in learning support services. This has been evidenced through the roll-out of learning support coordinators, $297 million invested into the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme, 95 extra places in the Intensive Wraparound Service, investment into front-line specialist staff, and funding the School High Health Needs Fund. While we recognise that many are calling for additional funding, we want to ensure the funding that is available is being spent in the most effective way to meet the needs of the learner, which is why we have committed to a comprehensive business case due mid - next year.

Marja Lubeck: What feedback has she seen on the announcement?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Berhampore School principal and NZEI Te Riu Roa vice-president Mark Potter said that the Government’s commitment to a bold overhaul of the current system was strongly welcomed, and I absolutely echo those thoughts. This overhaul is bold, requiring medium- and long-term change, which will require time to develop and implement effectively. There is work to do to address the fact that some students aren’t getting the right support they need when they need it. This Government is committed to barrier-free access to education for all students.

Question No. 8—Immigration

8. RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he consider the current immigration policies to be fair and equitable towards migrant families?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): Yes, I do. Yesterday, I announced that Immigration New Zealand will be prioritising resident visa 2021 applications from applicants who are currently separated from their offshore partners and/or dependent children. Overall, the resident visa 2021 programme will provide a residency pathway for over 200,000 migrants to New Zealand and support their families to settle here. In addition to this, other initiatives our Government has pursued to improve the lives of migrant families and communities include our recent reopening and updating of the settings of the parent visa category, reopening the skilled migrant category, doubling the refugee quota, our support for Afghan nationals to settle in New Zealand following the fall of the Afghanistan Government late last year, and forming a migrant community reference group. Every country needs to ensure that its needs are met through its immigration system, but a key part of that under this Government will be fair, equitable, and respectful policies towards migrants and their families.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does he consider it fair that many migrants, including migrant nurses, will not qualify to be reunited with their parents in Aotearoa because the salary requirements are under the required $86,000 a year for one parent or $115,000 for two parents?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I don’t entirely agree with the member’s assessment. For the benefit of the House, parents and grandparents are able to be reunited and connect with families in New Zealand through the parent and grandparent visa, which is a temporary category. So I don’t accept that it is correct to say that there is no pathway for migrant families to connect with parents and grandparents overseas. It is a somewhat different question when it comes to the longer-term residency category that is the parent visa category that the member is referring to. Our Government does believe that it is a balanced approach that we have taken. We have reopened that category after it was closed by the previous Government, we have increased the overall cap over and above what was previously proposed, and we have reduced the income thresholds below what was previously proposed and provided greater flexibility for migrant families to meet those income requirements. But there is a fair balance to be struck here to ensure that overall costs to the New Zealand system are managed.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does he agree with his Labour Party colleagues who recommended in a recent select committee report that “The review of Immigration instructions relating to health requirements for residency should consider creating exemptions for dependent children.”; if so, will he end discrimination on the basis of this ability for dependent children of migrant parents to stop families from being separated?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: As I’ve indicated in the House previously, the Government will be moving forward with a review of family and partnership settings for a review process that will commence in 2023, and these matters can be considered as a part of that.

Teanau Tuiono: Does he consider it to be fair that people from the Pacific Island nations need to apply for a visitor visa, pay visa fees, and face delays to enter the country in order to visit family members; whereas people from the US, UK, and Canada don’t?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Yes, I do believe that our settings are fair. As we have canvassed in the House previously, New Zealand does require visitor visas from a number of countries, not just the Pacific, and, in fact, we have particular and special arrangements that reflect our strong relationship with the Pacific. We reopened our borders to our Pacific neighbours in advance of other countries as a part of our reconnecting strategy this year. In many categories, we have lower fees that are applicable to people from the Pacific coming to New Zealand. And, of course, we have the special residency pathways—the Pacific and Samoan access quota categories. So, yes, I do believe that, overall, our policies in respect of our Pacific neighbours are fair and balanced and are welcomed by them.

Teanau Tuiono: Does he agree with his Labour Party colleagues who recommended in a recent select committee report in relation to Tuvaluans and their families that—and I quote—“the Government consider a regularisation initiative for undocumented migrants”, and, if so, has he asked for advice on exploring a regularisation initiative for undocumented migrants?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: As I’ve commented on publicly over recent months, the Government does not have a closed mind on this matter and it is one that I have asked for further information from officials on.

Golriz Ghahraman: Does he think it fair to say our refugee family reunification programme is a real pathway for refugee whānau, when Immigration New Zealand routinely requires applicants to show they can provide separate housing for their immediate family for a period of two years, including by showing that accommodation fund is already in their bank account before they’re even able to apply?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I note that, in respect of that category, the Government has doubled the overall numbers from 300 to 600 this year to ensure that more refugee families are able to take advantage of that pathway. The member points to one of the inherent tensions that we have across a number of our immigration settings, which is that we do generally want to be facilitative and supportive of people, particularly in difficult situations, to settle in New Zealand, but we do also want to make sure that when they are here they are actually going to be well supported—that they are going to have their core needs, including accommodation needs, taken care of. We try to strike the balance right, in respect of our policies, and we consistently keep that under review.

Question No. 9—Broadcasting and Media

9. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister for Broadcasting and Media: Does he stand by all the Government’s views and actions regarding Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Broadcasting and Media): Yes, absolutely. And, in particular, I stand by the fact that the status quo for TVNZ and RNZ is not sustainable. Commercial revenues are declining and will continue to decline, meaning less money for New Zealand public media. We are futureproofing and we are acting now, before it’s too late.

Melissa Lee: Can the Minister confirm that worst-case figure outlined in table 37 of the business case for the cost of Aotearoa New Zealand public media is substantially more than $6 billion in the new Crown funding over 30 years, as briefed to me by his officials last week in his office?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes, that briefing did occur last week in the office. A number of scenarios were put forward and explained to the member. And I can confirm that we went with the current scenario, but we considered all scenarios.

Melissa Lee: When the Minister confirmed that the business case discussed permanently decreased revenue and increased cost to the Crown for the RNZ and TVNZ merger, did he contemplate, at any stage, any other model than forcing New Zealand taxpayers to spend billions of dollars propping up the new public media entity?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes, all scenarios were considered, and we went with the best scenario.

Melissa Lee: Does the Minister stand by his statement that “We need a public media entity with the flexibility to meet audiences where they are, utilising the platform New Zealanders are choosing.”; if so, does that mean that Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media (ANZPM) will create their own platform or utilise other streaming platforms?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: ANZPM will have their own platforms and work with other entities—that’s the whole point of this. We want to embrace our communities, work with our communities, and there will be opportunities there, and we’re looking forward to it. We are so excited by this. We’ve got the majority of submitters behind us, we see New Zealanders behind us, and we’re on a roll. We want to invest in our New Zealand identity.

Melissa Lee: Will the merged entity, ANZPM, end up producing public media content provided free to digital streaming platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Netflix so those platforms will be able to gain advertising revenue from them, as advised to me by his officials last week in his office?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Obviously, the operational CEO and the management will negotiate with the global giants, and I would—you only have to use a bit of common sense that there could be a good deal in there for our national entity there. They will give away, no doubt, free programmes to community organisations, to Māori Television. That’s the point—that’s the point—of the entity. Please give me something—give me a good question today; I’m looking forward to it.

Question No. 10—Transport

10. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Minister of Transport: What recent reports has he seen about the Clean Car Discount?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): The Government’s Clean Car Discount is going from strength to strength. Since the discount came into effect last year, 117,585 low-emissions vehicles, including electric vehicles and hybrids, have been registered in New Zealand—over 80,000 in 2022 alone. Most months of this year, over 40 percent of the incoming vehicles have been zero- and low-emissions vehicles, making New Zealand one of the leading markets in the world for low-emissions vehicles. I have been pleased to see a range of reports demonstrating support for the Clean Car Discount, including statements from the AA, the Motor Industry Association, Drive Electric, and well-known Tesla owner Christopher Luxon.

SPEAKER: I warned another Minister about this, and now this Minister has done exactly the same thing. He doesn’t have responsibility for the leader of the National Party. He should stop doing it. I award the National Party two extra questions.

Hon David Parker: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I don’t understand how that is out of order. We are responsible for the political consequences of mistakes that we make in this House, and to neuter the House so as not even to be able to make a reference to that which is correct in fact, I don’t think extends to Speakers’ rulings as to what is out of order.

Hon Todd McClay: The Speaker’s not responsible for your understanding.

SPEAKER: Yeah, I can handle this by myself.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Speaking to the point of order—

SPEAKER: Nope. I’ve made my ruling. That’s the end of it.

Arena Williams: What benefits is the Clean Car Discount seeing provided to our country’s greenhouse gas emissions?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: New Zealand is at the end of a very long supply chain and could easily become a dumping ground for the world’s dirtiest vehicles. We know that transport makes up around 40 percent of New Zealand’s total domestic emissions, and the tens of thousands of low-emissions vehicles registered since the discount came into effect are helping to provide the transition of our vehicle fleet. It will prevent up to 9.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and will assist people with the upfront cost of switching over. Together, the Clean Car Discount and the Clean Car Standard are working in tandem to help Kiwis get into low-emissions vehicles, something Mr Bishop was once in favour of.

Arena Williams: How are policies like the Clean Car Discount supporting Kiwis to manage their transport costs?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen fuel prices spike around the world, leading to increased prices paid at the pump. The Government has moved quickly and decisively to provide short-term support for high energy bills and transport costs by introducing discounts on fuel excise duty and road-user charges and half-price public transport. The Clean Car Discount is complementing this work over the medium term by helping Kiwis switch to lower-emission vehicles, which are often safer and cheaper to run than those powered by fossil fuels. And, again, Mr Muller, who had something to say, was once in favour of this policy as well.

Arena Williams: What other work is the Government doing, alongside the Clean Car Discount scheme, to decarbonise the transport sector?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Over winter, New Zealand has experienced the very real impacts of climate change playing out across rural New Zealand in real time, with successive regions being smashed by extreme weather events repeatedly. The transport sector is New Zealand’s biggest carbon dioxide emitter, and if we are serious about limiting the impacts of climate change, we must reduce emissions across transport. On this side of the House, we do have a plan to reduce emissions and to transform and decarbonise our transport system, across the Clean Car Discount, across the Clean Car Standard, across investing in public transport, walking, and cycling. We won’t leave a carbon black hole like that lot would.

Simeon Brown: Why has $41 million been paid to Tesla owners under the discount scheme, and why is the Government taking farmers’ utes to pay millionaires to buy Teslas, with his reverse Robin Hood scheme?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Because getting New Zealanders into cleaner vehicles reduces our emissions. That was a policy position that was supported by his leader yesterday morning, when he said, “We would keep the Clean Car Discount.” However, in the afternoon, he switched his position to say, “We don’t support that, but we want to keep the Clean Car Standard.”—something that was then contradicted by that member in the evening. I back Mr Luxon over Mr Brown.

Simeon Brown: Can he confirm that more than $7 million has been paid for other high-end cars, like Audis, Mercedes-Benz, and even one Jaguar, bringing the total to almost $50 million paid out for luxury cars under his reverse Robin Hood scheme?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: What I can confirm under the Clean Car Discount is that over 117,000 low-emission vehicles have come into our country since that time. What I can confirm under the Clean Car Discount scheme is that electric vehicles have risen from 3 percent of imported vehicles in 2019 to around about 30 percent of imported vehicles month on month since the scheme has come into effect. And what I can also confirm is that there was once a time when some members of the National Party actually supported a transition to a cleaner fleet, before they got taken over by that member and the other climate deniers who are currently running their policy.

Question No. 11—Education

11. PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill) to the Minister of Education: Did he receive the Te Pūkenga Programme Business Case in October 2022?

SPEAKER: The Hon Grant Robertson.

Hon Members: Oh!

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Minister of Education: Thank you for the welcome. On behalf of the Minister, yes.

Penny Simmonds: Did the Te Pūkenga Programme Business Case state an additional almost $1 billion of funding is needed for Te Pūkenga’s operating costs that the Government has not budgeted for, and, if not, how much additional funding did the business case say Te Pūkenga needed?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, in answer to the first part of the question, no.

Penny Simmonds: Does the Minister stand by his Associate Minister’s statement that “No discussion has been had around co-leadership”, or are the leadership roles being advertised on SEEK for all Te Pūkenga regions occurring without the Minister’s knowledge?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, I’m not aware of the document that the member was waving in the House just then.

Penny Simmonds: Does the Minister agree the role description in the advertisements that “The regional director roles are co-leadership, reflecting our Te Pūkenga commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi” make explicit that this is co-leadership, and, if it’s not co-leadership, what is it?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, as I said in response to the previous supplementary question, I don’t have that piece of paper that the member is making reference to. I’m sure what we’re attempting to do here is appoint leadership teams that are able to reflect all of those in our community.

Penny Simmonds: Doesn’t the fact that Te Pūkenga needs almost another $1 billion to operate, and the advertisements for co-leadership roles, show the Minister has set up the vocational education sector to fail, and the Government is endorsing co-leadership?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, no. What this process shows is that the Government is actually committed to vocational education, and not prepared to put up with what the previous Government did, which was to leave close to $100 million worth of bailouts on the books of the incoming Government.

Penny Simmonds: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table the advert for the co-leadership roles.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Is it publicly available?

SPEAKER: Is it publicly available or is it privately available?

Penny Simmonds: Mr Speaker, they were put—

SPEAKER: No, I’m joking. I’m sure it’s publicly available, so no, you can’t.

Penny Simmonds: Sorry, Mr Speaker. Point of order, Mr Speaker. They were put on SEEK, but they seem to have been taken off, perhaps yesterday. They’re not now publicly available.

SPEAKER: If you can describe it again, I will put the leave. So the date—

Penny Simmonds: On 10 November, they were put up on SEEK, and some time over the last day or so, they were taken off SEEK.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection. OK, it will not be tabled. Further supplementary? Have you got a further supplementary—no.

Question No. 12—Local Government

12. ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Local Government: What engagement has he had with the local government sector?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Associate Minister of Local Government): Over the past four months, I’ve met with 54 rural and provincial councils. From the Far North to Invercargill, these councils have been sharing their views on the issues that are important to them. These included civil defence, roading, climate change, water, and housing, amongst other things. I was pleased that on the odd occasion, they even wanted to talk about racing. Mayors and councillors for the likes of Waimate, Waitaki, Waimakariri, Wairoa, Waitomo, Waikato, and Waipā have all had the chance to give their feedback directly to Government. Every meeting was constructive, and I thank every councillor, mayor, and council official for their engagement. We listened, I passed on their feedback, and now we are taking action.

Angela Roberts: What announcements has the Government made in response to feedback from the tour?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: In response to feedback on rural water schemes, the Government has announced a $10 million programme to support rural drinking-water suppliers to meet new standards. Rural water suppliers are not impacted by the proposed reform of water services, so this programme will provide them with treatment systems, training, and maintenance to help them keep their water safe, as well as to meet new regulatory requirements and drinking-water rules. This programme provides direct support to those communities who rely on rural water suppliers for their drinking water.

Angela Roberts: What other announcements has the Government made in response to feedback from the tour?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Councils also told me that they need extra capacity to implement the water services reforms. This led to a $44 million announcement where every council in New Zealand will receive at least $350,000 in additional funding to ensure they have the necessary resourcing. This funding will also allow authorities to draw in expertise to support councils through the water services reforms and continue business as usual.

Angela Roberts: How is the Government strengthening the coordination of the reform programmes affecting local government?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: The rural and provincial councils are clear on the need for reform. Be it in emergency management, resource management, or water services, the sector were consistent in their belief that the status quo is unsustainable, but they also highlighted that there is a lot going on with multiple demands being placed on the council offices who are tasked with responding to these reforms. In response to this feedback, we have set up a ministerial oversight group to strengthen the coordination and monitor the demands that the cross-cutting reform programmes are placing on councils. This is a part of our wider commitment to work closely and productively with the sector to secure the best possible outcomes for local communities.

Angela Roberts: What other themes were raised by rural and provincial councils?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Rural and provincial councils were consistent in their appreciation for the unprecedented investments that this Government has made in their districts, but acknowledged that they were facing challenges. Rural and provincial councils are faced with significant land masses in their jurisdictions but low populations and limited sources of revenue. The independent Future for Local Government review is seen by rural and provincial councils as an opportunity to respond to these issues. It provides an opportunity to ensure local government maintains a crucial role in our communities and is fit for purpose for the next 30 years. Understandably, we also talked about water services reform. The rural and provincial sector shared a variety of positions on the Government’s proposed reforms, but they were absolutely unified in their belief that reform itself is necessary and they can no longer go it alone.

Simon Watts: Of the councils he’s visited, how many who opposed the Government’s three waters reform now support them after his meetings, and can he confirm the answer is zero?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: What I can confirm is that every single council of the 54 councils I visited believes that water services is necessary. Everyone believes water service reform is necessary. The only people that refuse to accept that reality is the National Party—the National Party is the only bunch of people that believes the answer to a $180 billion question is the status quo.

Hon Stuart Nash: What response did he have from councils with regard to the concept of co-governance?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Of the 54 councils I visited, one councillor and one council raised concerns over co-governance. And this should be a wake-up call to the National Party, who rally against co-governance, not reading the room, not engaging with councils, and not understanding that councils in New Zealand appreciate the benefits of co-governance. For the National Party, the solution to this issue is to ignore it—is to kick the can down the road for generations to come. They can sit in their corner by themselves; we’ll get on with delivering for local government in New Zealand.

Hon Grant Robertson: Point of order. Mr Speaker, I’m seeking your advice on what avenues are available to the House when documents are tabled with an assurance from a member that they are not publicly available when, in fact, they are publicly available. Several years ago, this House moved from the situation where people simply tabled any old document in the House to one where they weren’t publicly available. That practice, I think, is one welcomed by the House; it somewhat undermines it when we have a circumstance such as I’ve outlined.

SPEAKER: Yes, raising it as a point of order is not the way to do that. There is a very particular way of doing that. And I will make a ruling similar to previous ones regarding a question from the Government to itself on a matter that was then consequently used to attack another party. The Minister was not responsible for that party’s policy and should not do it. That’s the third time today. I’ll go back to a previous question answered by the Hon Michael Wood and the point of order taken by the Hon David Parker. You would have seen that I ruled out of order the answer to a question to the Government itself, but when a question from the Opposition that contained two legs and two assertions and, in that case, the Minister also made a statement about that party, I did not pull him up on that one. That’s the difference. So if the Government is asking a question of itself, it should not do that. If the question is coming from the Opposition that has an assertion in it and the Minister is responding to it, then I’m accepting that, under the regime that all parties in this House told me that they wanted. So that’s another thing. So I will give the last question to Simon Watts if he would like to have it.

Simon Watts: Can the Minister outline one council who opposed the Government’s Water Services Entities Bill but now supports that bill after his meeting?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: There are a range of views on the proposals around water services, but it depends on the question that is asked. Many councils have expressed concerns in a constructive manner to help us improve the bill. All of them understand and recognise that reform of water services is absolutely necessary. If you were to go to any rural and provincial council—take your pick out of 54—and ask them the same questions that I did, “Can you do this by yourselves?”, they will get the same answer that I got: “No, we can’t; reform is necessary.” By all means, they can stand up in this House and try to trick us into saying something they want to hear, or they can go and engage with councils, learn that councils want to do something, and actually, after four years, come up with a policy of their own.

Special Debates

Emissions Budgets Published in 2022, and First Emissions Reduction Plan—Report of Environment Committee

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Chairperson of the Environment Committee): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I move, That the House take note of the Environment Committee’s report on the Emissions budgets published in 2022, and the first emissions reduction plan.

Any debate and discussion on how we best protect the planet and the future of humanity by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to prevent global temperatures rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius is timely, especially this week, with COP27 happening in Egypt, and I’m pleased to speak to and introduce the Environment Committee’s report. The committee was tasked with examining the emissions budgets by the Standing Orders. We also decided to examine the emissions reduction plan (ERP), as it provides a basis for the emissions budgets for the 2022 to 2025, 2026 to 2030, and 2031 to 2035 periods.

We did that examination over five months and, as always, public submissions were important. I acknowledge the 64 individuals and organisations who made submissions and those we heard from in person. Can I also thank, on behalf of the committee, our two independent advisers, Matthew Cowie and Andrew McMillan, and the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) for the advice that they provided. I’d also like to acknowledge the work of officials across the public sector in developing the emissions reduction plan and the contribution which the Productivity Commission and the Climate Change Commission made to that.

I also thank the secretariat for the select committee, who do a lot of work to ensure that our discussions are here in clear and cogent reports, and that 35-page report is, I think, a useful summary of the framework for climate action in Aotearoa New Zealand, the role of emissions budgets as steps towards our two key 2050 targets of getting a 24 to 47 percent reduction in biogenic methane emissions by 2050, and of having net zero emissions for all other greenhouse gases. It also provides a summary of how the emissions trading scheme (ETS) works and some of the issues in sectors such as agriculture, transport, energy, and waste, which are all major sources of emissions.

The committee’s examination is, I think, part of an iterative process. It will contribute to the development, we hope, of the next emissions budgets and the next emissions reduction plan, and we certainly identified areas where there could be more attention by agencies.

Just speaking briefly on a couple of the themes in the report, one was about empowering Māori, because submitters sought more information about the Māori climate platform to support communications to Māori communities so that they are able to better plan and respond to climate change and ensure that there was a Māori lens across Government’s response to reducing emissions, and also to embed that whole Māori-Crown partnership, Te Tiriti principles, and representation of Te Ao Māori across the Government’s climate policy. One of the other key themes was the need for an equitable response and for fully informed public participation in policy development, and the need to ensure that our climate policies benefit disadvantaged communities, whether that’s in urban development or transport—ensuring that people with disability have better access to urban areas and to public transport, for example. MFE said that one of the critical actions here around public information is, potentially, the establishment of a climate information centre as a source of trusted advice to the public.

There was quite a bit of discussion about the role of cost-benefit analysis: the recognition that that happens as part of the Budget process, but it doesn’t always happen on other policies. The committee highlighted the need to ensure, as the emissions reduction plan actions are implemented, how we best assess how effective they are in reducing emissions and how we can help shift people to a low-emissions economy and relative value for money.

We need a well-coordinated, wide range of climate policies alongside the ETS in order to reduce emissions, and there was discussion in the report too of additionality, or what additional effect do policies have in reducing emissions. The committee considered that this was a key part of the future ERPs and the policy debate around those, looking at that issue of additionality.

If I can now speak as a Green MP, rather than as chair of the select committee, there is no doubt that the emissions reduction plan, with its 300 actions, is a landmark document. It builds on the Green Party’s work in Government. It’s a blueprint to cut climate pollution in a way that makes life better for everyone, that protects nature, and that improves our communities, but the pace of change is too slow. As the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, said recently—and I quote—“We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing.” Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that make climate chaos irreversible.

We need more clean energy, we need faster and more substantial cuts to agricultural pollution and transport pollution, and we need more public transport, safer options to get around our cities and towns on bike and by walking, a thriving natural environment, and the creation of thousands of new jobs, and yet at the very moment we need to accelerate efforts to build this better future, the National Party cannot even get its U-turns right on climate policy. When they go from not being able to correctly tell people which climate policy they’re going to rip up today—because, for the first time ever, we have a clear plan to cut climate pollution which is being paid for by polluters, and it’s only happened because we’ve got a Green climate change Minister working alongside Labour colleagues.

With the clock ticking, the worst possible outcome that I can imagine from the election next year is a National-ACT Government, because people want a secure future, they want a habitable planet, they want clean, renewable energy, they want warm, dry homes, and they want healthy nature. People want a Government that will do everything possible to safeguard their and their children’s future and to ensure that we have a fair and equal society, which is exactly why we need more Green voices in Parliament and more Green voices in Government, pushing for more climate action that puts people and planet ahead of tax cuts and ahead of oil company profits. As the United Nations Secretary-General has said—and I quote—“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” We need to accelerate our efforts to cut emissions in order to shift to that zero-carbon world—not obfuscation and delay.

There are often people, including some of the submitters, who seek delay. But, as Dr Rod Carr has so pertinently said, when people seek to delay by claiming that New Zealand’s contribution is too small to make a difference because our emissions contribute 0.17 percent of the world’s total gross emissions—what he says is, and I quote—“Every tonne emitted, whether it is from New Zealand or China, is seen by the planet as the same tonne.” So the action we take here in Aotearoa to reduce our emissions through implementing the emissions reduction plan is absolutely critical.

By taking action to reduce emissions to protect the planet, we can also tackle the cost of living crisis, because if we invest in public transport and if we invest in easier ways to get around our cities—as the emissions reduction plan sets out a road map for—we also reduce the impact of increasing prices of petrol from the war in Ukraine. We also reduce those costs of living pressures on households. If we invest in clean, renewable energy and in insulating homes, we reduce energy poverty and we tackle the cost of living impacts there, as well.

So this report canvasses some of those issues around the energy sector and the agricultural sector, and the efforts the Government is taking in the waste sector to reduce climate pollution. It is a plan for action. Submitters highlighted the need for Government to support action by individuals, and the report is a really good resource for anyone wanting to get a summary overview of action to protect the planet. Kia ora.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Acting Minister of Climate Change): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Minister of Climate Change is in Egypt at the moment, and therefore I’m giving the first contribution from the Government in this debate, and I’m pleased to do so.

Can I begin by thanking members of the Environment Committee from all sides for the work that they put into assessing the emission reductions plan, which is a landmark document, which catalogues the many things that need to be done in New Zealand to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions so that we can make a fair contribution to the world’s greenhouse emission reduction efforts.

I am going to come back to some particulars across the main areas of our emissions. Our emissions in New Zealand broadly split half into agricultural emissions—methane’s two-thirds of that, nitrous oxide is one-third. The other half splits into electricity generation, process emissions, industrial heat, and transport. We’ve made most progress in electricity, but those carbon dioxide emissions roughly split into one-third electricity—a bit less now—one-third process industrial emissions and industrial heat, and a bit more than a third in transport.

But before I go into that, I do want to address the politics of climate change. I was at a meeting recently and someone asked me “How do you take the politics out of climate change?” I, somewhat intemperately, said, “Move to Russia.” I sort of regretted how blunt I was in that answer. But I do get a bit sick of the question as to how we can depoliticise responses to climate change, because, in my experience, politics is part of the answer to addressing climate change, and bad politics lead to bad answers and good politics lead to good answers.

I’ve heard from the Opposition recently that we should be putting all of the emphasis on emission reduction into the emissions trading scheme (ETS). I think we should recount the history of where we’ve got to in the ETS, because it was a Labour Government—and I was the relevant Minister—that brought the ETS into being that was to cover every sector of the economy. When the National Party voted against it, and the ACT Party voted against it, they denied that outcome and, when they took Government shortly thereafter, they neutered the ETS in a number of ways.

They narrowed it by excluding for ever the 50 percent of the emissions that come from agriculture, which reduced the long-term effectiveness of the ETS by 50 percent. They then introduced a one-for-two emission obligation for emitters. So instead of having an obligation for every one tonne of emissions, you halved it. So they further reduced the 50 percent reduction by another half. So they immediately neutered the ETS price signal by 75 percent. They then allowed the price of carbon, which when we left office was about $20 per tonne, to collapse to about $2 a tonne after the Kyoto Protocol collapsed and New Zealand became the home base for all of those Ukrainian and Russian hot air units. There were movies made about it, it was so bad. So rather than the emissions pricing signal acting to reward decreases in emissions and penalise increases in emissions, it didn’t work as it ought to have, and that was because of the National and ACT Party changes to the core economic instrument that is meant to drive reductions.

In electricity, the last Government set a 90 percent renewables target by 2030. We took really positive steps to achieve that. The last Labour Government introduced the 90 percent renewables target. We invested, and there was contribution at the time, in a grid upgrade through the Waikato. We invested in the ring around the Waikato area where the geothermal is, the Wairākei ring. And we introduced a second route for power into Auckland to enable distant renewables to feed the electricity growth demand in Auckland. We replaced the Cook Strait cable. We invested in early wind through projects to reduce emissions. We priced emissions in electricity. And through those measures, we turned the track around for renewable electricity, which was decreasing as a percentage because we were building more and more gas. And we and the private sector together turned that around and had renewables going up.

What did the new Government do under the Minister, the Hon Gerry Brownlee? They said that they would abandon the 90 percent renewables target. Now, fortunately, Gerry got busy in Christchurch and he was replaced by the Hon Hekia Parata and she actually saved the day on that. She maintained the 90 percent renewables target and we are now at 85 percent renewables in New Zealand.

Simon Court: What about the 100 percent target, Minister?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, our target’s still 90 percent by 2030, but, when we get there, we will go ever closer to 100 percent, and we have the ambition to take New Zealand to 100 percent renewables.

Now, the next thing we did when we took Government is we banned new block offers for offshore oil exploration. What’s the National Party’s response to that? They say they’re going to reverse it, that we should be exploring for more oil and gas that we do not need and that we can use without further frying the planet.

And then, in respect of transport, which is our biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions now, for the first time we’re making progress in the decarbonisation of the car fleet—the good work that Michael Wood has led. We heard that in question time today: 40 percent of the new light vehicles coming into the country in the last months were either full electric vehicles or hybrids—40 percent, which is an enormous turnaround. That has been stimulated by the clean car discount. And what did the National Party say? They’ll reverse that. So you can’t take politics out of climate change and expect you’ll reduce climate emissions in New Zealand because you let the Opposition off the hook for all of those appalling policy positions.

Now, where do they stand on pricing the 50 percent of our emissions that come out of agriculture? New Zealand’s emissions from methane decrease by 1 percent per unit of output every year, have done for about 20 years on that trend—a good trend—but all of that has been taken in volume growth. So in the last 20 years, although per unit emissions by agriculture gone down by 20 percent, total emissions have stayed flat and have not gone down. Now, we need those emissions—

Hon Member: Food—food.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh, he says “food”. We still need those emissions to come down. We need to get that reduction down to about 1.5 or 2 percent per annum. It is manageable. The science is coming; we can get there. But the National Party, they won’t do what Dairy NZ and Beef + Lamb were up for, which is He Waka Eke Noa, which is a very gentle price signal to cause that emission reduction to go to the—even there, on that 50 percent emission, again, on the other side of the House, they say “Do nothing.” They say do nothing. Transport, electricity—it is an appalling record from the Opposition and that’s why, come the next election, emissions and climate change should be a big issue. We do have a climate emergency. We had rivers drying up in Europe and China this year, we’ve got wildfires around the world, we’ve still got millions of hectares of deforestation in the Amazon and in the Congo and in Indonesia, and the National Party would do nothing about it.

I’m going to say one further thing. We all want a low-cost transition to decarbonise industrial heat process emissions and transport, and electricity is the key. We must look at Project Onslow and I want to explain why. If we build Project Onslow, which is the cost of one or two motorways, we will double New Zealand’s dry-year reserve, but, more importantly, we will have a reliable hedge against intermittency for new investments in intermittent wind and solar, which are our cheapest new implements to supply. We will mobilise international capital into our decarbonisation at lower cost of capital and we will guarantee a low-price path for New Zealand electricity for decades to come as we decarbonise the economy. That will reduce New Zealanders’ living costs as we decarbonise the economy. That’s a plan.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): What a disgraceful, partisan rant. I’m not going to be lectured by this lot, particularly that Minister, on behalf of a Government that has seen emissions go up for the last five years and imported three times more coal than five years ago. And he’s got the temerity to sit over there and give us heat; well, that’s coming back to him big time, I can tell you that.

This entire debate was established because I sat alongside Minister Shaw when we negotiated the zero carbon bill to have exactly this: a robust debate on the how. We can all agree on the fact that our emissions have to come down over the next 10, 15, 20, 30 years. But we should have a robust debate over how, and if one side of this Parliament wants to bankrupt the country on the way to doing it, we have the right as the Opposition to call it out—and we are. Because your plan, that you waved to us, is nothing more than a long-term drive to economic suicide in this country. And it is our expectation as an Opposition party to be able to call it out.

Now, let’s look firstly at carbon dioxide. As the Minister said, it’s part of our emissions portfolio. We will be a technology taker in the carbon dioxide space, and anyone who doesn’t sort of see it like that is missing the point. So what does that mean? That means we have to be very focused on how we enable that technology that exists in the other side of the world to be deployed in a New Zealand context. We have to focus on innovation investment, on enabling infrastructure, and we must bring commercial acuity to the discussion.

So let’s go to transport emissions and transport that has so dominated the debate over the last two or three days—17 percent of our emissions. We have made it clear that the standards that have been brought in to ensure that cars have to meet a lower and lower emissions profile over time is the right direction. But we totally reject this Government’s view that the way you then incentivise the uptake is to throw cash around, because there is no economic discipline in that. In fact, it’s worse than that, because what this Government does is say, “Righty ho, if you want a Tesla, we’re going to discount it and we’ll spend $45 million enabling that, and if you’re a farmer who has no choice but to actually need a four-wheel drive to get around your property.”

By the way, why don’t you some time go and visit a farmer and actually see for yourself what’s going on out there? Sometimes I think you live in the own little world. Go and visit a farm and actually see what it’s like. They don’t have electric four-by-fours everywhere that they can use; they have to use a decent four-by-four. They have been taxed and that is your approach—that is the Government’s approach—that we will make it easier for Tesla owners and we will tax farmers.

We say: the standard’s right, the taxing is wrong, and what we would do is we would ensure that there was actually a network—an infrastructure network—so you could actually charge the electric vehicles. That’s called commercial acuity. That side wouldn’t even know what it was if they looked it up in a dictionary.

Now, let’s go to energy. The Minister said before, “Our target’s 90 percent.” No, it’s not. Read your own policy, Minister. It’s 100 percent, it’s in the committee’s report back. And guess what the marginal cost per carbon dioxide to get that 100 percent: $1,200 a tonne—does that come from me? No; that comes from the Interim Climate Change Committee. So this Government stands up and says, “Renewable energy’s important.” We agree it’s important. “Oh, no, we need to get to 100 percent. Even if the marginal cost of the additional 1 percent to go from 95 to 100 is $1,200 a ton.” These guys have no idea around the commercial impact on New Zealand of a policy like that.

Let’s take industrial heat. And this is fantastic.

Rachel Brooking: So what would you do?

TODD MULLER: It’s called an emissions trading scheme (ETS)—I’ll tell you if you listen—but it’s really interesting. It’s really interesting when you look at industrial heat, because what you’ve got there is businesses who can see that their manufacturing process is actually creating an emissions impact, there is technology available to mitigate it, they can offset their current emissions by planting a tree. Only in New Zealand can 100 percent of those businesses have that option—no other country—and they can go and do it. And guess what the cost of planting a tree over the course of its life is! It’s $15 a tonne—add the land to it: $75, $80 a tonne.

What you are seeing is gross emissions are not going down because of this Government’s ETS settings. What happens is as that price rises, they’ll go and buy another sheep and beef farm in the Wairarapa to ensure that they can fulfil their obligations in terms of reporting, but their gross emissions don’t go down.

Our view is the technology exists and the incentive is there for those businesses to deploy that technology in their business. But why would they, if they know that over there is a Government that will just spray the money around and say, “Oh, look, we’ll pay for it for you.” Well, of course they’re going to support it, because not only do they get ETS subsidy on the one side—offset on the one side—they’ll get a Government subsidy in terms of any capital they need to deploy. But it is not an effective use of taxpayer money.

We of course support the revenue that comes in from the ETS to be deployed in a way that is enabling innovation, infrastructure. But be commercial about it, please. This is the thing. Our criticism of what you are doing is not because we don’t believe something shouldn’t be done; it’s not because we don’t think climate is important. It’s because you are hard-wired to spray and walk away. You don’t understand about investing at a marginal price above the current ETS; you don’t understand it. So from your perspective, as long as it’s hundreds of millions of dollars, as long as it looks good in the UN, as long as the Prime Minister can appear to be first, fast, and famous, you don’t care what the cost of it is. That’s the point: you actually have to bring some commercial discipline to this.

So now let’s move to agriculture and I’ll conclude on some of those comments—half the emissions profile. For a start, what an appalling speech from the Minister before. Essentially, 10 minutes of criticism, particularly of the agriculture sector. No wonder you guys are looking at the floor, because the agriculture sector looks back at this Government with despair, because there is never a view which says, “By the way, well done for what you’ve done; by the way, well done for your adaptation; by the way, well done for your innovation over the last 20, 30 years.” Oh no, it’s just crickets. You couldn’t get that word out of your mouth if you tried—“well done.” So you’ve got a sector that is sitting there who have been working in terms of their freshwater improvement, their nutrient improvement.

Ruminant animals create this pressure. We are the most carbon-efficient animal protein producers in the world, and they are lining up and saying, “We accept we need to improve.” So what you need to be doing, what the Government needs to be doing, is partnering with them. The Minister says, “Tax is good.” We say, “Why don’t you work with the sector? Why don’t, actually, you build a model which is a levy base on the one hand to support innovation and the establishment of technology to be able to identify what goes on on the farm, and then let the farmers count the sequestration in their land.” But this Government says, “No, we don’t want to do that. No, we don’t want a levy; we want it to be a tax,” and then have the audacity to stand over there and lecture us on not having a plan. You have a plan: it’s called hopeless and if you take this up, it’s electorate suicide, I tell you.

So we will work with the sector and we will make sure that there is—and we have made it clear that there will be a price on agriculture, but it’s a price that is balanced with the capacity for the sector to adapt and to build on their world-best position. And the Government will continually shout back denials that our approach to this is wrong.

I can assure you that this is hard work, and the way you actually make a difference in terms of investment in a business—investment on farm—is partnering with them, not regulating, taxing, throwing money away as if it grows on trees. Start being commercial, start partnering in a long-term manner, and you’ll find that, actually, we can do this as a country. At the moment, the progress is despite you, not because of you.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Look, the ACT Party knows that New Zealand’s agreed that, under the Paris Agreement, we need to play our part to limit global temperature rise to around 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Now, I’m a civil and environmental engineer, and I came to Parliament to solve problems just like this. But, sadly, the emissions reduction plan proposed by Minister James Shaw, and supported by the Labour Government, does not reduce our emissions. It does not reduce our emissions any more than what would occur under the capped emissions trading scheme. Because the emissions trading scheme sets a cap on New Zealand’s emissions every year and all of the carbon you reduce with your ute tax, your car scrappage, and all of the other schemes paying big business like Fonterra, paying big business like breweries, to replace a coal boiler with something else they would have replaced anyway, it doesn’t reduce our emissions by a single tonne more than allowed under the cap under the emissions trading scheme.

Now, Kiwis pay for their fossil fuel emissions right now: about 20c a litre on petrol and diesel—that’s about $20 a month on an average power bill. That’s a huge incentive to reduce fuel usage and save energy. The emissions reduction plan is actually a combination of bad policy, virtue signalling, and wishful thinking—those are three things that this Government’s actually really, really good at. Their track record in climate policy is that coal imports have doubled in the past three years. Now, the Government wants to tax farm emissions. Today, Groundswell delivered a petition to ACT MPs at Parliament with a 102,000 signatures, signed by Kiwis rejecting the Government’s plan. Kiwi farmers are amongst the most efficient in the world. Taxing Kiwi farmers will only push emissions offshore, production offshore, and lead to higher global emissions.

Look at the emissions trading scheme plan for “cash for clunkers”. The Government proposes handing out $8,000 to $12,000 to people who hand in a used car in exchange for cash to take people’s petrol and diesel vehicles off the road. Imagine handing out $12,000 of taxpayer funds for a used car that a wrecker told me they’d give you a hundred bucks for. Only under Labour. Well, it gets worse. This scheme is expected to cost $569 million—half a billion dollars. The emissions reduction would only be 4,500 tonnes a year, according to a reply to a written question from Minister Michael Wood. That’s 4,500 out of New Zealand’s 80 million tonnes a year, for half a billion dollars. That’s $126,000 per tonne of carbon reduced, compared to 85 bucks a tonne—you could buy a credit on an emissions trading scheme today right now and shred it.

Now, the ACT Party also wants to raise a warning. The emissions reduction plan contains actions such as income insurance, which are entirely irrelevant to emissions reduction. By including highly political, but completely irrelevant, policies in the emissions reduction plan, a future Government including ACT will have no choice but to bin this emissions reduction plan and get rid of the zero carbon Act that enables the central planning nightmare.

Now, this is what ACT would do instead: we’d set a cap on emissions equivalent to the average of our top-five trading partners. New Zealand does need to play its part to reduce our emissions, but not at the expense of food production in sending high-paid manufacturing jobs offshore. ACT would also return the billions collected under the emissions trading scheme to Kiwis—Kiwis who pay for their emissions at the pump and in their power bills. We’d return $250 per person, per year—around $750 per household—through the emissions trading scheme revenues, instead of wasting it on “cash for clunkers” and all these other madcap schemes.

We’d also allow New Zealand businesses to mitigate their emissions offshore at lowest cost, using certified carbon mitigation schemes. That’s proposed in my member’s bill; it’s also allowed under the Paris Agreement, but it’s currently banned under the zero carbon Act. Countries like Switzerland are doing this in Fiji: they’re replanting mangroves, they’re carrying out climate diplomacy in the Pacific, and cutting New Zealand’s carbon climate reduction lunch. I’ve written to James Shaw today to seek his support for my member’s bill. That’s ACT’s practical solution to help New Zealand meet its emissions reduction targets, and actually do things in the Pacific and with our neighbours that help them. And I’ll also ask members in this House to support my bill, so that together we can create enduring climate policy, not this absolute farce that this Government—and the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw, who we haven’t heard from from his resort in Egypt since he left—have delivered to this country.

ACT wants New Zealand to play its part in climate change. We want it to be enduring, but we also want New Zealanders to get the reward—the carbon dividend that they deserve for saving on emissions. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Kia ora. We agree that urgent action on climate change is an issue, and probably should be an issue that unites us all in the House. We may have different versions of that unity! We are living in a world and acknowledge the extreme natural disasters, the rising displacement, the extreme poverty that we’re seeing not only here in Aotearoa but disproportionately impacting on indigenous peoples around the world. The global climate and inequality crisis is something that is of huge concern to us, and we acknowledge what our Green Party colleagues said—that climate change is here, and climate change now.

We’re not surprised with the reluctance across the House on how we should be looking after our planet. We’ve heard that commercialisation, profits, should come before planet and people. Te Paati Māori, however, does not support the 2022 emissions budget, and I don’t think that’s a surprise to the Government. We’ve had a strong view that it needed to be more ambitious and meet more international commitments and our obligations to future generations. However, despite the denials on my right, agriculture is causing 50 percent of this country’s greenhouse gas emissions, and this means that dealing with farm emissions is one of the most important decisions that the Government should be making around the climate crisis. So we don’t agree that He Waka Eke Noa does that. In fact, it fails, and we’ve consistently called for the Government, and particularly the Minister, to provide more transformative action on the highest climate polluting sector, which is intensifying dairy.

We believe that Aotearoa has the highest per capita—actually, facts tell us that Aotearoa has the highest per capita—methane emissions in the world, and six times the global average is unacceptable. We’d immediately price methane emissions under the emissions trading scheme (ETS), set limits on stocking levels, and phase out synthetic nitrogen fertilisers while also requiring manufacturers and importers of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser to pay for emissions under the ETS. So, rather than advantaging intensified dairy and disadvantaging less polluting and less profitable Māori-owned beef and sheep farms, as we’ve seen that a lot of this plan has done, we would definitely look at transitioning and subsidising our landowners into regenerative and value-added farming. I think we can all agree that’s the best way forward. Just as we saw with forestry, the Government’s relentless focus on engaging with wealthy dairy lobbyists has meant they have often ignored groups and sectors who have needed the most support to transition and remain economically viable.

The Productivity Commission’s report Low-emissions economy highlighted that Māori were particularly vulnerable to the downstream effects of the imposed cost of emissions and a high representation in low-income households. Nuances of collective ownership and governance models create lots of challenges and limit options for Māori. So, despite the glaringly obvious gaps, our belief is that more must be done to specifically focus on Māori communities and just transitioning and ensuring equality and equity are given priority, to have access to rights and interests, actually, which many have yet to be resolved on. We agree that we must invest in new sustainable economies—actually, we can give you a tip for that—however, we think that that needs to be a blue economy which is about renewable energy strategies, wind turbine opportunities, and developing a sustainable future that isn’t ruining our mokopuna’s future. A just transition will never be just if it prioritises and follows commercialisation and multi-monopolies at the expense of tangata whenua.

We believe more must be done to involve and assist Māori in leading renewable energy strategies, and I’m really pleased to see what’s going on with our Taranaki iwi-led strategy. As Taranaki uri, we live the commercial clean-up of the decommissioning oil and mineral sector and continue to fight to stop 30 years of seabed mining and years of polluting discharge, which no Government over the last eight years has stopped. As Taranaki uri, we also live with polluted waters from agricultural sectors, and our rivers are dammed to give us the worst electricity prices ever. So I agree we must have a more green focus, with a blue economy in our prospects, but it must be tangata whenua, Tiriti-centric in an Aotearoa that means whānau, hapū, and iwi must lead. The solutions must be our own. Nothing less will achieve the reductions in emissions needed to keep our mokopuna safe and well. Kia ora tātou katoa.

RACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. After what’s been a rather energised start to this debate, and then we’ve had some assertions of too much lobbying from dairy farmers—an interesting, interesting afternoon in the House.

But I am quite keen to talk about this report of the Environment Committee. I’m very proud to be the deputy chair on the Environment Committee. Of course, the report is about this document, and I am—for anyone reading in Hansard—waving about the first emissions reduction plan: Te hau mārohi ki anamata—Towards a productive, sustainable and inclusive economy. Of course, the emissions reduction plan is a requirement of the Climate Change Response Act, and that Act requires us to be at zero carbon by 2050—and I acknowledge the previous National speaker, Todd Muller, and his involvement in that legislation—and, of course, we want to reduce biogenic methane by 24 to 47 percent.

There’s some terms that come up in this report that are used quite often, we’ve heard ERP—emissions reduction plan—and that is in implementing the budgets. The legislation requires the Environment Committee to examine those budgets, and we decided as a committee to the budgets—that’s just a couple of numbers—that we actually want to look at the plan, and that is what we did. This plan is different from the NDC—which is the nationally determined contribution—it’s a different measure and does involve offshore mitigation, which this plan does not. Other terms that come up are: the CERF—the Climate Emergency Response Fund—so that was $2.9 billion in this budget; and then there’s GHG—greenhouse gases emissions. In New Zealand, we’ve got carbon, that’s about 44 percent; nitrous oxide, 11 percent; then we’ve got both methane from gas and biogenic methane, and they’re quite different things, that’s another about 44 percent; and then there’s fluoridated gas as well at around 2 percent.

So we’re trying to reduce all of that. It’s important also to think about what is net and what is gross. Again, I acknowledge and was very happy to hear Todd Muller speak about the importance of reducing gross emissions and that, of course, we can’t just rely on the emissions trading scheme (ETS). Because the ETS is all about offsetting the pollution that you are doing when it comes to carbon, not biogenic methane—that is not in the ETS—we really want to focus on these gross emissions and how do we reduce our carbon emissions. Those are through a whole lot of complementary provisions. That is really the focus of both the ERP and the committee’s report back, although both the ERP and the committee’s report back do have sections on that pricing.

I do, very quickly, want to thank the help that we had from Matthew Cowie and Andrew McMillian, also our officials, and the clerks, as well as our advisers.

In the ERP, there’s 300 actions and these are all at different stages. Some of them are to investigate different things, like a circular economy, and some of them are projects which have already had budget bids. So there’s a whole lot of different information sitting behind them. There is 16 different agencies involved in producing it, and now we have a new Climate Change Chief Executives Board, which covers six ministries.

So why do we have the ERP? It’s because we need to reduce our emissions desperately, and, as I said, the ETS is important but we can’t have it alone. And because that ETS is about new trees, the sequestration that do—and we heard recently, from the Leader of the Opposition, that we can just count what oceans have.

Todd Muller: No—seaweed and oceans.

RACHEL BROOKING: Of course, the oceans already exist, so it’s important, when are talking about this, we’re talking about new things. I hear the member opposite say that would be seaweeds and oceans. That is right that this—those new ways to sequester—is important for us to learn about and to put into our policies, but we can’t just say that something that’s already existing, that’s out there, that’s the way to deal with our emissions.

So what are all these emissions—and I’ve spent too much time. I do have pages, here, of things to talk about in terms of energy, transport, waste—my colleague Angie Warren-Clark hears a lot about that—building, and lessons that we can learn. So I’ll just, very quickly, say that it’s important, when we’re thinking about energy, that we remember that electricity is not all of our energy. We have electricity, most of which is renewable, but we’ve got a whole lot of other energy as well, in terms of fossil fuel and gas, and we want to make as much of that as possible renewable from electricity. So that’s a target of 50 percent total final energy renewable by 2035. Mr Speaker, thank you.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I’d like to start by thanking all those submitters that took their time to come to the Environment Committee and help us with that process. We had a wide range of submitters who really helped inform our decision making.

There is a close relationship between emissions reductions and the increasing life expectancy—they actually correlate perfectly. The graphs, those curves, they match exactly. So it behoves us to be very careful when we lower emissions, because that will have an impact on life expectancy—a direct impact, there’s no doubt about that. So that doesn’t mean we can’t do it; we can, but we have to be careful. And the National Party supports net zero by 2050 and we support the emissions budgets.

However, we have some serious issues with the emissions reduction plan. Now, while the Government talks a big game on carbon emissions and climate change, actually emissions are up under this Government. Even despite a lockdown—two serious lockdowns—emissions are up under this Government. There’s a lot more to this than talking a big game. This is a really important issue that we are grappling with.

I fear there’s too much focus, actually, on gross emissions. I think that’s a really important thing to focus on, but it is net zero, not gross zero, and, unfortunately, I think a number of the policies seem to be more gross-focused than net. We have heard a little bit about the emissions trading scheme today and, actually, I became quite convinced throughout the process on the select committee that the Government members do not understand the emissions trading scheme. They certainly don’t understand the waterbed effect, which I think the ACT member Simon Court alluded to. As emissions are taken down by things like those pet projects that they have, it simply makes it cheaper for emitters elsewhere in the economy because the number of certificates are fixed. If they want to lower emissions more quickly, they reduce the number of emissions certificates—it’s a very simple marker and it works really well.

The reason I think we have to be careful about how we approach this is the technologies that will allow us to get to net zero more easily are still being developed as we speak. I’m a Tesla owner, and I’ll tell you now, I have to drive that Tesla for 100,000 kilometres before the lifetime emissions of that are less than a diesel equivalent, so buying a Tesla doesn’t save the planet. I think it’s great technology—that’s why I bought it. Incidentally, for your information, I did not get a discount.

Rachel Brooking: Why not?

STUART SMITH: Because it didn’t qualify. Our biggest issue is industrial heat, as was alluded to earlier, and that is point-source emissions of carbon dioxide. And yet, you would think this Government would have a whole lot of regulatory and legal framework for carbon capture and storage. However, they don’t—they do not. However, there is one bill in the members’ ballot that is addressing it; it should be the Government doing it, but I’ve got a bill in the ballot that actually addresses carbon capture and storage regulatory gaps. It should be done by the Government—that’s a great way to lower emissions.

The Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund is a $600 million—it’s more than that, actually—vanity project by the Minister of Energy and Resources. And what we found when we looked at additionality, we uncovered—well, actually, the New Zealand Initiative uncovered—a report that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority had commissioned from Concept Consulting which found out, actually, there was no additionality. The companies that received the funding would have spent the money anyway, but they took it for free—and why wouldn’t they? I’ve got nothing against the Heineken family. They’ve got plenty of money; they could have paid for their own electrode boiler. They didn’t need the taxpayer to fund it.

We can get there in much better ways. The “reverse Robin Hood tax”, as my colleague referred to it earlier in the day, is absolutely something that we should be getting rid of. We don’t need that. People will buy cars that are more efficient for the right reasons, rather than taking money off people that have no choice, that can’t have an electric alternative. And now, of course, to beat it all, we had the biofuels mandate, which is another vanity project that we simply don’t think is necessary. If people want to use biofuels, by all means, do, but Governments shouldn’t be mandating it. Unfortunately, this is a very disappointing emissions reduction plan.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m proud, on behalf of the Government members of the Environment Committee, to be standing and taking a call on this. Can I just first of all start my contribution by noting some of the debate that’s gone on in this House. I’ve got to say I’m feeling a little bit despondent—despondent because, actually, to be able to tackle the ravages of climate change, what New Zealanders want us to do as a House is to actually work together on this. And it was something that we did work together on. When we put the zero carbon Act through this House, we said that we’d work together on it. And the second that it comes to actually implementing one of the first stages of that, which is this emissions reduction plan and the associated budget that goes with it, we all seem to be reverting to tribalism politics—the tribalism politics that has the Opposition opposing for opposition’s sake, and the Opposition criticising everything that the Government’s doing because that’s their job as the Opposition.

It makes me despondent. It makes me a little bit disappointed, because there are people around this country—our future generation of New Zealanders—that expect more from us in this House. They expect that we’re going to be able to work together to be able to solve—as our chair of the Environment Committee said earlier—one of the biggest challenges that we’ll ever face in our time. But it’s not us—the ones that are sitting in this House—that will actually be responsible for it; it’ll actually be the future generations. It’s our children. It’s our children’s children. Back home, we’ve got a saying that with everything that we do in our iwi, we should make more mokopuna decisions, decisions on behalf of our grandchildren, not just for us—that’s not the long-term approach that we should be taking. We should be making more mokopuna decisions, and it’s disappointing to hear that, in the House, we’ve reverted back to political tribalism.

That said, I want to talk to the submitters that came to our committee and submitted—especially to our Māori submitters, because there weren’t actually that many, and there’s something to be said in that, too. There’s something to be said in the fact that maybe there’s a big part of the Māori community out there that feels as though the problem’s too big. They feel as though climate change is way too big for our small little hapū and marae communities to be able to deal with. So I want to take the time to acknowledge the Māori submitters—the land trusts, the incorporations, and the whānau trust—that came forward and submitted into this bill. And I want to note that, in chapter 2 of the emissions reduction plan, there’s a real focus on empowering Māori to be able to cope with, and respond to, the effects of climate change, because it’s our Māori communities that really feel it.

Back home in Rotorua, we’ve got a Te Arawa climate change action group. It’s a bunch of people that are really passionate about making sure that we have Māori responses to this as well, and that it’s not just the big corporations and Government actions that sit up the top but, actually, small Māori communities that are impacted by climate change. If you drive around the lakes between Rotoiti and Whakatāne, you’ll see that it’s a very thin piece of road and there’s road slips all the time. With the increase in rainfall that we’re having—that we’re seeing—what they’re noticing is that they’re becoming more and more disconnected from their communities, and they understand inherently that it’s an environmental problem and it’s climate change. So they’re calling for more transparency on what the Māori climate platform looks like.

I want to thank the Minister for Climate Change for setting up the ministerial advisory committee with Māori members so that we can really amplify the voices of our Māori communities around the country. I want to congratulate, from Te Arawa, Lani Kereopa, who’s been put on to that committee to be able to help solve some of these problems. We need a Māori climate change platform to be able to hear those voices, to be able to get Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles embedded into this as we step forward. We need to be able to make sure that Te Ao Māori is represented in the emissions reduction plans and the budgets and that, actually, we do take a step back from the tribal politics here by listening to the voices of those communities by funding by Māori, for Māori solutions as well.

We know that some of our land trusts and incorporations are big on sheep and beef farming. That has an effect too. So I look forward to hearing those voices continually, not just through this plan and this report that we’ve gone and published but ongoing. We need to keep hearing those voices. Otherwise, we may just be listening to the tribally political voices that dominate in this House. And I think that we owe it more to our grandchildren to not do that.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): To a degree, I do agree with Tāmati Coffey, in that I think a lot of the essence of what we’re debating here today has been lost. In actual fact, we are here today to debate the Environment Committee’s report on the emissions budgets that were published in this year and, of course, the emissions reduction plan. All of that has had a genesis in the signing, that the National Party did, of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius; that is where this has begun in more modern memory.

We do acknowledge and thank the members of the Environment Committee, and, of course, all the officials for the time and effort that they’ve put into producing this report. It is a very good report, and I will get to that shortly. It should be noted that the Environment Committee often works very closely and hears inquiries with the Primary Production Committee, on which I sit. The reason we do that is because, I think, both committees recognise the very deep, interlinked, and interwoven body of work that the two committees have together, and we do appreciate and acknowledge that and those submitters that do come before us.

I think it would be fair to say that, in this report, it does identify some themes that are at the very core of the National Party position, and that is that we do support these targets; we signed up to them, and so I don’t like to hear accusations of being tribal in politics when, actually, this is the result of work that the National Government started. We support the targets, but it’s the plan that we question. Todd Muller very eloquently suggested before that we will not see this country bankrupted in pursuit of those plans. I’d go a step further and say, we’re not going to see this country bankrupted in pursuit of one of the Prime Minister’s nuclear-free moments.

The fundamental problem—and we do agree that the emissions trading scheme is the tool that will do the heavy lifting for emissions reductions in this country, but within the emissions reduction plan, we feel that it’s going to threaten enormous cost for little or no emissions reduction. That is what we can and must see: the emissions reduction.

There has been so much hyperbole around various sectors within New Zealand. There has been such a blame game that has been going on and on and on for a number of years and, I would say, particularly targeting the agricultural sector. It was explained to me many years ago by a former National Minister for the Environment that the reason the agriculture emissions profile appears as high as it does is because, thankfully, we have an incredibly high amount of renewable energy generated. Were we to be generating energy heavily reliant on coal, then that would skew the two different profiles. So I do contest the blame game that’s been going on towards the agricultural industry.

I note that there has actually been some irony in the Prime Minister going to New York to launch carbon-zero beef and, within 10 days, she’s back in New Zealand with the Government announcing its counterproposal to the He Waka Eke Noa emissions reduction plan. So, in one breath, she’s saying, “We can produce carbon-zero beef”; in the next, she’s saying, “Well, we’re going to tax you, guys, because you’re not doing a good enough job.”

When we talk about contradictions of statement, I refer back to David Parker’s comment about “a very gentle price signal”—I quote, “a very gentle price signal.” By the Government’s own numbers, that “very gentle price signal” is going to put 20 percent of sheep and beef farms out of business—5 percent of dairy farms. I don’t know in what world we would call that a “very gentle price signal.”

It is not just the emissions reduction and mitigations that we need to focus on; it’s investment into technology. Technology and science will find our solutions to our climate change commitments.

Motion agreed to.

Report noted.

Bills

Security Information in Proceedings Bill

Security Information in Proceedings (Repeals and Amendments) Bill

Third Readings

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Security Information in Proceedings Bill and the Security Information in Proceedings (Repeals and Amendments) 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 KIRITAPU ALLAN: I move, That the Security Information in Proceedings Bill and the Security Information in Proceedings (Repeals and Amendments) Bill be now read a third time. I will refer to both bills as one throughout.

I am pleased to speak to the third reading of this bill, which will create a more workable and coherent approach to the use of national security information in court proceedings and administrative decisions. The issues covered by this bill touch on important constitutional matters, such as the fundamental rights of people to open justice and a fair trial, the respective roles of the judiciary and the executive, protecting national security, and principles of open government and democratic accountability.

The bill implements the majority of the recommendations made by the Law Commission in 2015, regarding how national security information is treated in the courts and in administrative decision-making. The question at the heart of the Law Commission’s review was what should happen when information is relevant to legal proceedings but disclosing it may prejudice national security. The Law Commission found a number of inconsistencies and gaps in the current law; the current law does not provide enough assurance that national security information can be adequately protected if it needs to be used in court proceedings. This creates domestic and international risks for New Zealand in terms of safety, security, and international relations. The lack of a clear process for protecting security information in court could lead to the Crown deciding not to bring proceedings, or to settle a claim against it.

The current law can also disadvantage affected people who may not know the reason for a decision against them. The lack of full disclosure puts the affected individual at a considerable disadvantage if they want to challenge the executive’s actions or decisions. The Law Commission recommended legislation to clear up inconsistency in the law and give all parties a clear process that protects national security information while maintaining fairness and natural justice.

I note that the bill is consistent with existing legislation in comparable jurisdictions overseas, including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. I’d like to briefly highlight some of the key aspects of the bill. Firstly, the bill will enable the court to order a closed court preliminary hearing when dealing with national security information in civil cases. It will be for the courts to decide how to manage national security information and, importantly, whether the risks of disclosing the information are sufficiently serious to justify withholding it. The bill will enable closed court substantive hearings, but only where the risks of disclosing the national security information justify this departure from ordinary, open processes. A closed preliminary hearing would take place in a secure court facility, and with only security-cleared personnel and the judge present—the court would be closed to the public, and, of course, to the media.

The non-Crown Party will not be present, but safeguards in the bill will mitigate this disadvantage. One of the safeguards is that the non-Crown party’s interest will be represented in the closed court by a special advocate. Special advocates are highly experienced, security-cleared lawyers who will act in the interests of the person who is not allowed to see the national security information that is alleged to be relevant in their case. Other safeguards are that the special advocate and the judge would have access to the national security information. The judge would also be able to direct that a summary of the information is prepared for the affected person, so that they can instruct the special advocate.

I should stress, though, that the closed court processes will not be available in a substantive criminal trial. The bill retains the fundamental position that a defendant would always be present during a criminal trial; however, the bill does enable a new pre-trial process to enable national security information to be used and protected at the criminal trial.

The bill will also introduce consistent procedural requirements into a number of Acts that currently allow classified security information to be taken into account by decision makers. These Acts include the Passports Act, the Overseas Investment Act, the Terrorism Suppression Act, and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013. The bill provides that if an individual would usually be entitled to receive information taken into account in a decision that affects their rights but is not provided with the information due to security concerns, the individual should be entitled to receive, instead, a summary of the information. The summary serves the purpose of providing the affected person with straightforward and prompt access to the information about why the decision was made. The bill also better integrates the existing oversight powers of the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security into the framework for administrative decision-making.

This bill will help to maintain the public’s confidence in the operation and integrity of the justice system by providing a clear approach to protecting national security information, while maintaining principles of fairness and natural justice. I would like to acknowledge Ginny Andersen—the chair of the Justice Committee—and the Justice Committee members for their consideration of the bill. I also want to acknowledge the officials that provided diligent advice, to both the Justice Committee and, indeed, to myself. I acknowledge and thank all parties across this House for their constructive participation in the consideration of the bill.

I am confident that this bill strikes the right balance between the need to protect security information and the need to ensure that the fundamental principles of justice are not unjustifiably limited. I commend this bill to the House.

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

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I thank the Minister of Justice as well. I pick up where she left off by acknowledging the constructive spirit in which the legislation has proceeded at various stages through the House, including at the select committee stage. If there are two areas of public policy that shouldn’t be the subject unnecessarily of partisan debate or interest because enduring solutions are needed, certainty is needed, and to give confidence to those affected by the decisions, I would say it would be national security and it would be the operation of courts and other mechanisms of justice.

This bill sits at the intersection of those, and so there was no question on National’s side that when we saw this legislation was being introduced that if we agreed with the way it fulfilled its aims, then we would be happy to support it. Indeed I can confirm that is still the case. Nothing has changed in that regard. We will continue to support this bill, and, of course, along the way, as one would expect, we have been careful to consider the way that it will seek to achieve its aims. There’s a couple of comments that I may or may not have a chance to make about particular aspects that we were interested in, both at select committee and also a little bit in the committee of the whole House stage. We had a good discussion with the Minister, she and I, and a couple of others too besides, who were able to just really tease out some of the aspects of how this system will work, focusing particularly on the importance of that role of special advocate.

Without getting back into those weeds too much then, I’m quite keen just to acknowledge some of the basis of our discussion and conclusions that we’ve come to together across the parties, genuinely, in discussing the bill. I’m not ordinarily a member of the Justice Committee but I made sure to attend as much as possible of its consideration of the bill. We had good discussions. I see Vanushi Walters is in the House. I know that she was part of those discussions with her characteristic diligence and application of intelligence and a particular interest in the human rights realm to these questions. So it was heartening, I think I can say genuinely, that the people of New Zealand can gain as much comfort as is possible to hear from a politician saying “trust me”—“trust us” would probably be a better characterisation. I think, genuinely, we’ve made an effort to balance these things. I will say, though, because I think it’s always fair to acknowledge this is not a perfect institution, we are not perfect beings. If it is that the balance has not been struck correctly—or rightly, fairly—in any of these particular parts of how the system works, then we should commit to have a look at those.

So I think it’s probably worth making that acknowledgment because these are really serious and important questions—important questions because they touch on very fundamental rights; rights of individuals, yes, but rights of other individuals and rights of the society as a whole, overall. And it was balancing various tensions, such as the rights of the individual versus those of the greater number—perhaps one could even say the greater good, the common good—and one should always be nervous in throwing individual rights to the wolves when it comes to ensuring community safety as a whole. But, nevertheless, these are legitimate questions to ask how these things can be resolved to the maximum extent possible.

So we also considered the relative weight of international obligations and our own interests as New Zealanders in the context of our international partnerships versus the way that we would conduct our own affairs in this country—ordinarily within courtrooms, for example—and how those things should interact. The Minister was right to note in her remarks that this legislation has an underlying theme of consistency with the equivalent regimes of our Five Eyes partners, and, actually, that’s perfectly appropriate. We need to give comfort to those who want to help us, even as they seek our help, that they can do so with assurance that people who provide information to them in insecure settings aren’t unduly going to be jeopardised by a cavalier approach to how that information is handled and its origin to be known and so forth. So these, again, are the tensions that we navigated in considering the particular provisions of the bill.

We thought about two rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Minister has noted in passing the right to be present at one’s own trial, and that, of course, is a very specific aspect of the “Minimum standards of criminal procedure” section within the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So the balance that was struck, the compromise, if you will, was that a person would have the ability to participate in the trial fully, but, of course, allowing a system whereby a pre-trial hearing to determine the appropriateness of certain information and evidence being brought forward fully could also take place. So, again, a compromise but in the name of ensuring, as much as possible, that a person who has been affected by defending themselves in charges on court versus the desire to keep information closely held as much as possible.

So another way that the tension was navigated was by allowing some information in the form of a summary, albeit not the complete suite of information that is held about a person in their activities, or alleged activities, and so, again, we can see the desire to avoid disadvantaging a person as much as possible. This is the flavour of the legislative statement that has been brought forward, and it’s right to acknowledge those different ways of looking at the world and the different kinds of things that we should be taking into account as responsible legislators.

A couple of other comments on the general themes and then briefly on special advocates—the civil and criminal jurisdictions are both covered within this bill. They are covered separately, and that’s appropriate because we have criminal courts and we have civil courts and different sets of procedure apply to each. But, of course, it’s possible that someone will be facing a civil matter where their conduct is relevant in the context of something that is being said that they have done of a nature that might have a security dimension. I’m trying to use reasonably sort of neutral language, which is possibly not as helpful as using specific examples, but I’m really trying to avoid getting down a rabbit hole of that. But, of course, there are also matters that are, by their nature, very much of a criminal kind of characteristic, as alleged, of course—and until such time as is proven, everyone is innocent until proven guilty—but, nevertheless, where alleged criminal offending would have a direct connection with alleged or, indeed, any proven terrorist activities or espionage or the like.

So, with my remaining time, just to touch a bit on that role of special advocate. We talked at the committee of the whole House stage about how that person would be called on to do their job. Lawyers get a pretty bad rap from time to time, and I’m not here to defend former colleagues of that profession, except to say that there is a great reliance that people who are in a vulnerable situation, who have been charged with an offence—they have that vulnerability and they rely to a huge extent on their legal representative to represent their best interests. That’s why the ethical obligations on lawyers, contrary to popular belief, are so important. So it’s important that—all the more so in this regime, whereby a person might not have access to all the information themselves, but their special advocate, effectively, acting in the way of an ordinary lawyer but with even greater powers and an even greater disparity of knowledge and information. That’s such an important choice. Now, the person who would be chosen to be a special advocate would be from a panel. So there’s not free range for a person to engage any lawyer that they would wish, but they would have at least some choice. And that was a point, again, that was brought out in the committee of the whole House stage. So I think that’s helpful as far as it goes.

Of course, there’s a challenge of ensuring we have enough well-qualified, expert, experienced lawyers practising in this field to make themselves available. But, of course, that’s a challenge across the whole legal profession at the moment, the whole justice system, and it’s not unique to this bill. So we don’t raise that as a serious objection to the operation of the regime, certainly not to the extent that we would consider not supporting that bill on that basis.

So with all those thoughts, and reiterating the points we’ve made previously, we support the aim of the bill to have a systematic, coherent approach to enabling matters to be heard as fairly and openly as possible in the circumstances. So we join the Government in commending this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I call the next speaker, may I just remind members to put their phones into silent mode. Thank you.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Look, another sterling piece of legislation from the Minister of Justice. It’s great to see so many good pieces of legislation coming from her watch and, also, being able to be a part of that on the Justice Committee. These bills had the difficult task of balancing the protection of our national security interests against the fundamental principles of justice, and I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge that there were a number of sharp minds from both sides of this House on the committee, who worked really well to ask the right questions of those officials. Vanushi Walters was fantastic in being able to really look at those details. Chris Penk, who has just spoken, was also really engaged, and I do remember Joseph Mooney subbing on to that committee as well and making some really good contributions. It’s nice that, at times like these, when we are discussing critical issues like national security and the fundamental principles of justice, we can have a really good discussion from right across the House.

These bills implement the majority of the Law Commission’s recommendations from back in 2015, when they took a look at how security information is treated in our courts and in administrative decision-making. The question at the heart of that inquiry was what should happen when information is relevant to legal proceedings but disclosing it might also prejudice national security. The Law Commission made a number of observations about current inconsistencies or gaps in the current law. First, the current law does not provide enough assurance that national security information can be adequately protected if it needs to be used in court proceedings. This creates a security risk for New Zealand. Also, New Zealand’s law can have a disadvantage to those people who may not know the reasons for the decision against them. So, at that point, there are principles of natural justice at stake. The Law Commission recommended legislation to clear up inconsistency in the law and to give all parties a clear process that protects national security information while also maintaining fairness and natural justice. We believe that the bills achieve these objectives, and it is good to see these bills reach their third and final reading after the Law Commission first undertook that work seven years ago. They also form part of a suite of measures designed to strengthen the end-to-end justice system to prevent and respond appropriately to terrorism and the supports of the Government’s response to the royal commission of inquiry into the March 15 mosque attacks.

The reason why we have put these bills forward and why we support them so strongly is that they put in place a coherent and consistent regime for dealing with national security information and proceedings, giving clarity and certainty to the use of such information, so that we have a clear map going forward for current situations that may arise. Currently, there is a lack of assurance that national security information can be adequately protected if it needs to be used in court proceedings. Also, the current law may disadvantage, as I’ve already mentioned, those non-Crown parties who may not have that information available to them, for a decision against them, and they may not, in fact, be in a position to challenge the actions or decisions of the Crown, and that’s not fair. These bills provide a clear framework for dealing with national security information in both criminal and civil proceedings. The bills will do three main things: provide greater assurance to the Crown that national security information can be used in court proceedings whilst still remaining protected if it needs to be so; secondly, it will standardise and clarify protections for non-Crown parties; and, thirdly, it will ensure clear, consistent processes are followed in a way that addresses natural justice requirements as far as possible.

These are good bills. We’ve worked hard to make sure they’re returned in good shape. I’d like to acknowledge the work of the Minister of Justice, all the committee members, and also those officials that worked on these bills. I commend them to the House.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Madam Speaker, thank you. I think it is worth stating again, as many others have, that when it comes to matters of national security a bipartisan position is the most desirable place for this House to end up. And while this legislation, as others have explained, is kind of at the junction between those matters that are strictly of national security and natural justice, then I think that the work that’s been done by the select committee is particularly useful and helpful.

The Law Commission’s report in 2015 of course is seven years ago, so a lot has happened in that time. Seven years ago I don’t think the country was quite as aware of the need for there to be strong national security provisions in our law as they would be now. So if we think of the things that have happened, there is of course the obvious tragedy that occurred with the violent terrorist activity at the mosque in Christchurch. You would have seen the stabbing that occurred by someone who was on a watch-list in Auckland. These are matters that have come in to the public realm. There are other matters that as yet have not, but it would be naive for anyone to think that New Zealand is immune from some of the nefarious activity that does threaten national security.

National security is also a matter of making sure that we are in line with other democracies who share the values that we do. So there is a range of things that we need to be on guard for, where there could be court activity at a future time, not the least of which would be the issues around radicalisation of people to particular awful causes or, in fact, cyber-attack, which New Zealand is certainly not immune to. And if there were to be prosecutions coming from that, those prosecutions levelled at individuals, then there is that tension between the rights of someone who is coming before the court to have a fair hearing—even though they might be engaged in activities on behalf of people who would have absolutely no regard for that particular concept of justice—and, of course, the desire to protect national security. So the test becomes quite a simple one, and that is, can the disclosure of information that may be necessary in a prosecution be provided in a way that ensures that national security is not compromised? And it’s a difficult thing to achieve.

I think the Minister expressed very well the closed court provisions and processes that would allow someone to have a representative in a closed court situation without being present themselves. The position was, I think, further elucidated by the two following speeches from Mr Penk and Ms Andersen.

I’ll just make a reference here, if I could, to the royal commission on the response to the terrorist attack in Christchurch and the establishment of a group called Kāpuia who are to advise the Government on matters that relate to the some 40-odd recommendations that have come out of that royal commission. Many of those recommendations relate to national security provisions, relate to the organisations who are charged by this House and by the country to look after those particular aspects of our life. I think when it comes to the proposals that are there, having a group of people who have a representative role across the community to look at it is a good thing, but I think that the compromise has to be that there will always be a judgment necessary about what people in peaceful times might decide is reasonable and what people would expect at times of heightened activity or action to be the case.

So I don’t want to mention the terrorist’s name, but we have the perpetrator of that Christchurch tragedy currently considering whether or not he should appeal the sentence that has been put in front of him. Quite clearly in that case, there would be matters of national security that would come up in a case like this, and so having a provision in the law that means that the greater protection for the widest community in the consideration of the appeal is extremely important. So the appeal will probably not be denied, even though it seems ridiculous to most of us, but the protection of any information that might mitigate against any lightening of sentence through that appeal clearly would go through a process similar to that being outlined here today and provided in these bills.

So I don’t think it’s necessary to say too much more beyond saying that bringing this provision in New Zealand in line with our like-minded partners in other countries is extremely useful in a world that we have seen, even in the last few days, is extremely volatile, where no one is particularly isolated from some of the evil intentions of other countries—then having cooperations and basis for cooperation among those like-minded countries is extremely important. So with those comments, I commend the bills to their third readings.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I might start, just in the spirit of the cross-party collegiality that we’re seeing here in the House today—occasionally, on a Thursday, I’ll review Hansard committee stage readings, especially when I need to consider the contribution I’d like to make at third reading. As I read through the Hansard committee stages this week, not just on this bill but on others as well, the same name kept popping up, so I’m returning the compliment here to Chris Penk, who was on his feet, literally, for much of this week during committee stage and posed many thoughtful questions in relation to this bill as well, to the Minister of Justice, which she responded to in full.

I do think that that level of scrutiny that happened through committee stage was also something that featured at select committee stage, and I do see colleagues Joseph Mooney and Nicole McKee, as well, in the House, both of whom contributed, along with my Labour colleagues, in really robustly examining where we ought to sit. This isn’t an easy area to make law in, but I do think the collegiality made a difference, to the point at which we engaged in discussion over breaks, as well, about the balance.

The focus for me, in terms of the discussion at the Justice Committee, was around clause 12(3)—so clause 12(1) and 12(2) of the Security Information in Proceedings Bill provide that the Crown must give the authorised court and special adviser access to security information. The question the select committee grappled with around clause 12(3) was whether it created a new power to withhold information, or a new threshold whereby information could be withheld. The committee decided unanimously between us that we didn’t want a new power or threshold to be created, and we were very clear in proposing language to clarify that in the amended bill that’s now before us.

So, again, I don’t think that this is an easy area of law to grapple with. I think the security and intelligence space is somewhat of a perennial issue, where Governments must frequently assess what the security threats are and whether we have the balance right.

So, lastly, I would just like to acknowledge the Green Party position at second reading on this bill, and perhaps pre-empting where you might sit next. But I do think you have raised important issues; my sense is that we did land at the appropriate balance for the time we’re in now, and we need to continue assessing whether we have that balance correct. So, with that all being said, I commend the Minister, again, for bringing this piece of legislation to the House, the select committee across party lines for their robust work, and these bills to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens. I don’t sit on the Justice Committee, and I am speaking on behalf of our justice spokesperson, Golriz Ghahraman, who is unable to be with us at this particular time. I have been dipping in and out of this one. I realise, I think, when this was first read in the House was during one of the lockdown periods, so I was one of the MPs that was trying to follow it at that particular time while our Auckland-based MPs were in Auckland.

I do want to acknowledge the contributions around the House. We are in really difficult times, really new times, really turbulent times, particularly within the global sphere as well. And I was just reflecting on when this report came out in 2015—the Law Commission report—and I don’t think I actually really understood what misinformation and disinformation were as well. And the way that the world is operating in terms of attacks moving towards cyber-attacks and so forth, this is indeed becoming a particular field where it is very, very difficult to figure out where the balance lies—where the balance lies in terms of the protection of national security and what that means for the individual, particularly when those individuals are being influenced by nefarious outside sources, and in some cases being pushed because of amplification from algorithms and so on and so forth.

I do want to support what other colleagues have said around the House around centring our Muslim whānau down in Christchurch. It’s important to keep those families who’ve been deeply impacted by terrorist attacks at the forefront of what we do as well, but also being mindful in the history in the lead up to that that a lot of what happened in terms of security surveillance that was done on those actual communities. So agree totally with what the previous speaker, Vanushi Walters, said around making sure that we get the balance right. It’s not easy and it’s a very difficult thing to do.

The background of this legislation is that it regulates how national security information is used as evidence in court, and these rules will come into effect when the Government needs to prosecute someone for alleged criminal wrongdoing based on highly secure national security information or NSI that the Government cannot share within the public sphere. For example, the Government may receive information through the Five Eyes alliance which they are sworn to protect. And members around the House have talked about that and what that means. And I again would like to support what’s been said about the Justice Committee about getting into the detail and the discussions that happened at the committee of the whole House.

When this came back to caucus, we did have some concerns. However, while most of the submissions raised concerns about the bill, they were supportive of the general need for legislative reform in this area—that’s true, that needs to happen. We’re living in turbulent, volatile times, so making sure that we move with those times is incredibly, incredibly important.

The Law Society and the office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security both made substantive recommendations that the bill be pulled back in several areas, citing concerns that the bill did not offer enough protections for the non-Crown party to ensure a fair and just trial, even with special advocates and closed courts. In particular, that the definition of NSI was too wide, leaving those safeguards against the common problem of over-classification of information that is not actually sensitive; that there is no restriction protocol or test on when the executive can use an NSI certificate; that special advocates acting for the non-Crown party in closed courts are not mandatory; that the Crown has a general exemption providing access to NSI for the court or the special advocate, even though these persons will have full security clearance; the special advocate is only needed in closed court proceedings and there is no requirement for the advocate to attend open proceedings, though going between both is standard practice in comparable jurisdictions; that the Crown is to be notified of general communications between the special advocate and the non-Crown party and their lawyer. The Law Commission characterised this type of restriction as a tactical disadvantage for special advocates who are unable to communicate with the party they represent without disclosing the communication to the Crown party. And there was some conversation around the costs as well. Costs of this special advocate may fall on the non-Crown party, though this person is necessitated by the Crown’s decision to issue an NSI certificate.

So for the Greens, there is still more to go on this journey. The devil is in the details and the details have not landed adequately for us at this time. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to continue to support what is now two bills, the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill and the Security Information in Proceedings (Repeals and Amendments) Bill.

I would like to start off by doing what every colleague across this House has done so far, which is to thank those on the Justice Committee for working so well together. For me, this was an area that I was not that familiar with and it was an area that I had to learn a lot in.

And I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank not only the officials but also our chair, Ginny Andersen, Vanushi Walters, Chris Penk as well, Simon O’Connor when he came in, because they helped me to learn and understand the severity of what has been happening and what we can do together to try and fix it. I believe that this is a really good start, partly because this legislation is about restoring liberties to people and we are all about doing that in the ACT Party.

So protecting our national security interests is imperative. And how we do that, while we’re still allowing for the flow of information, is really quite important. How we do that, while we ensure that there is still natural justice for a defendant, is also extremely important.

These bills have gone quite a long way towards addressing that. It will actually maintain integrity of the system that we have, and it allows open justice by using special advocates. This is a new thing that we have here—is the special advocates, which allows a defendant to be able to have somebody who has been given security clearance to be able to access information that may be being used against that defendant. It means that that defendant will have all of that information.

This is important because right now, they’re unable—under present law—to challenge the outcomes and they find it hard to challenge the outcomes because they don’t know all of the information. So having a special advocate that can tell them what is relevant and what isn’t is going to be important to ensure that we do have natural justice.

The courts being allowed to close through civil proceedings is also a new clause that we have, and it’s important so that information on security can be addressed in the civil jurisdiction as well as the criminal. So having the ability to actually close the courts and civil proceedings so that information can be shared securely is important again for open and natural justice.

This also means that participants will not be excluded and that they do get to know the information that’s being used against them. It addresses how the information will be handled so that we can get consistency in how it is disclosed, how it is discussed, and how it is used in proceedings. Because at the moment, the regime that is in place is not only ambiguous but it’s uncertain and it certainly is inconsistent.

In a free and truly democratic society, we are in support of the bills that extend civil liberties for all. We believe that these bills allow fairness in that access to information that is used against a person. It can still be used, it can be known, and it can be heard, while still securing our national security information and interests. And in that regard, we do commend these bills to the House.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to stand and take a call on the Security Information in Proceedings Bill and the Security Information in Proceedings (Repeals and Amendments) Bill.

As someone who is not a lawyer, as someone who doesn’t have any experience in the justice system, I’m really pleased to hear in the House today how much effort went into getting this right. It’s really, really important because those of us who aren’t familiar with the system, we have to trust what’s going on. It was great to hear that there was due diligence, due process, and that there was thoughtful and thorough work that went on in into getting this right. And it is wonderful to be in the House when we’re hearing about members who are able to put what is best for our citizens at the heart of their work. It sounds like, from the experts across the House, that they have found the balance between security and justice.

I want to thank all of those who were involved: the officials, the Minister Hon Kiritapu Allan, and all of those on the Justice Committee who kept what was critically important at the heart of their work. It is heartening to be ending the week in such a manner, and it is because of this that I am happy to commend these bills to the House.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get a call, but here I am. So, look, it’s a pleasure, actually, to rise and take a call—and it’s going to be, probably, a short call, given the time of day, and that it’s the last day of the week in the House—on the Security Information in Proceedings Bill. I did, actually, as it happened, and just by chance, in some respects, actually end up being on the Justice Committee for a short period of time in respect of this bill. And it was actually quite a useful experience, because there were quite a few challenging issues to address in this. This bill has been grappling with an issue that was identified by the Law Commission some years ago: that there needed to be a review and a reshaping of the law around this area.

The bills are aiming to protect the rights of non-Crown parties in proceedings involving security information while also allowing the Crown to have recourse to security information while defending itself in proceedings and ensuring a clear process for courts to follow. So there’s a tension here between the Crown needing to ensure that it doesn’t prejudice the entrusting of information of the Government of New Zealand on a basis of confidence by the Government of another country or any agency of such a Government or any international organisation, but also that it doesn’t prejudice the maintenance of law, including the prevention, investigation, and detection of offences. It needs to balance that against the right of someone affected by either civil proceedings or criminal proceedings to be able to have access to the information being used against them in a proceeding.

So there’s a tension there that’s very difficult to draw—one that the members of the select committee took very, very seriously. They examined in some detail the provisions in this piece of law—as did the officials who were advising on this piece of law. On balance, I am confident that we have got it right, certainly for now; and if issues arise in the future, I’m confident that this Parliament will look at those again. But I think, looking at the time available to me, I will say that I’m in a position to be able to commend these bills to the House. With that, I think that will be the end of proceedings today.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 22 November.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 4.56 p.m.