Tuesday, 4 April 2023

TUESDAY, 4 APRIL 2023

TUESDAY, 4 APRIL 2023

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

Hon JENNY SALESA (Assistant Speaker): E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi mātou ki te Kīngi, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmene.

[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 and humility, for the welfare, peace and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]

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

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

SPEAKER: A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of Ian Young requesting that the House abolish tolls on all New Zealand public highways.

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

CLERK:

Privacy Commissioner annual report for 2021/22

Ministry of Housing and Urban Development Long-term Insights Briefing, March 2023.

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. A select committee report has been delivered for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of Greg Rzesniowiecki requesting that the House undertake a public inquiry into the national COVID-19 response; report of the Petitions Committee.

SPEAKER: No bills have been introduced.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the changes that came into effect on 1 April that mean that 1.4 million New Zealanders are receiving a little bit of extra help with the cost of living.

Christopher Luxon: How does he reconcile his statement from February that “We ended last year with strong economic growth.” with the fact that the economy actually shrank at the end of last year?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Obviously, the numbers have been updated since I made that comment.

Christopher Luxon: Why has New Zealand just recorded its largest current account deficit on record?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Clearly, the current account deficit has been a challenge for New Zealand over a longer period of time—

Hon Grant Robertson: Decades.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Decades, in fact. I recall when we were sitting over there asking questions of the Government of the day over here on a similar issue around the current account deficit. It has been a challenge for New Zealand for some time, but, clearly, global economic conditions are having an impact.

Christopher Luxon: If it’s all global factors, then why have Kiwi exports grown at less than half the rate of Australia’s over the last two years?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There are a range of things that have an impact on New Zealand’s exports. One of the things I’m very proud of about this Government is the work that we’ve done around trade, and, for example, the number of our exports covered by trade agreements that have been entered into by this Government has increased significantly. I think we’ve got a pretty proud track record when it comes to improving the trading conditions for New Zealand exporters.

Christopher Luxon: What steps is he taking to turn the current account deficit around, given warnings Standard & Poor’s is considering a credit rating downgrade if the current account deficit and the economy doesn’t recover?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, I think the member should have listened to my last question. I’m very proud of the track record of this Government when it comes to improving the conditions for our exporters. Unlike members on the other side who talk a big game when it comes to trade, this Government actually delivers.

Christopher Luxon: Why, then, has Australia hit peak inflation later and then retreated faster than New Zealand?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: New Zealand and Australian economies—whilst there are many similarities, there’s also many differences to it. When inflation was lower in Australia, they were decrying the fact that the Australians weren’t going to have the level of inflation that we had, and then their inflation peaked at a higher level than New Zealand’s.

Hon Member: Well, where was the answer in that?

Christopher Luxon: Yeah. How are Kiwis supposed to get ahead when, under his Government, food prices have increased by 26 percent, so a $200 grocery shop now costs more than $250?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I acknowledge that New Zealand families are finding it tough and that inflation is biting into household budgets. That is the reason that we put cost of living front and centre of the Government’s priorities.

Christopher Luxon: Hasn’t his Government’s decision to increase spending by $1 billion a week ensured inflation has remained higher for longer, crushing Kiwis with a prolonged cost of living crisis?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh, there he goes again. He’s saying that teachers don’t deserve a pay rise, nurses don’t deserve a pay rise, and police officers don’t deserve a pay rise and that we shouldn’t expand our health services to keep up with population growth. I note that in almost every policy announcement that he’s made so far, he wants to spend more money on something, but he doesn’t seem to be very clear about exactly how much more he wants to spend.

Christopher Luxon: Does he take any responsibility for rising interest rates that mean a family re-fixing a $400,000 mortgage fixed just two years ago is now on the hook for $300 extra a week in interest?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I do note that rising interest rates bite into household incomes. That is one of the reasons why the Government is very focused on the cost of living. Clearly, high levels of inflation are having an impact on interest rates.

David Seymour: Does he stand by Carmel Sepuloni’s statement made on his behalf last week relating to the email that got Stuart Nash fired in two hours: “Ministers have to sign off Official Information Act requests, and that Minister at the time made the decision that it wasn’t within scope.”, and, if so, what was the purpose of his office being involved in responding to that Official Information Act (OIA) request?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the last part of the question, my office wasn’t involved; my predecessor’s office was involved in that particular request. In answer to the first part of the question, yes, I expect all Ministers, when they are signing off OIA requests, to take responsibility for what they are signing.

David Seymour: Point of order. Surely the Prime Minister’s office is continuous throughout the Government, rather than changed each time there’s a new person in it.

SPEAKER: That had at least two legs to it, and the Prime Minister did address at least one of them.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Speaking to that point.

SPEAKER: In what way?

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, you’re absolutely right, but having addressed the second leg of the question, the answer does have to be within the Standing Orders, and, indeed, consistent with your ruling of a couple of weeks ago.

SPEAKER: My original ruling stands.

David Seymour: How will any new rules for lobbyists work if Ministers just refuse to release official information for two years, even when the Prime Minister’s office knew all about it?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The rules around increased transparency around lobbying are something that I hope we can reach a greater degree of bipartisan consensus about. There has not been support across the House for increased transparency around lobbying in the past. It would appear that there is now, and, therefore, I think we can make a lot of progress on it.

David Seymour: Will the Prime Minister confirm today that he will join other leaders in a cross-party effort to amend the Official Information Act by adding penalties for deliberate breaches of it, like 72 other countries have, as I wrote to him and requested just today?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m happy to read the member’s letter and come back to him in due course.

David Seymour: Will the Prime Minister confirm that he will work with other parties to add penalties for deliberate frustration of the Official Information Act or not?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That’s not something that the Government has made decisions on. In terms of our work around the Official Information Act, our priority has been to increase compliance with the Official Information Act, and the record will show that timeliness of OIA responses has improved under this Government, proactive publishing of Official Information Act requests has improved under this Government, and proactive release of information has improved—in fact, been put in place—under this Government, and continues to improve. The proactive release of ministerial diaries, something the previous Government never did, has been put in place under this Government. I think our track record is a good one.

David Seymour: Is the problem that his Government is guilty of not complying with the OIA, such as when Minister Kiri Allan texted Labour MPs asking them not to email Ministers in case it became discoverable under the OIA, and then ran special sessions to help people get around it; and is that not the reason why he’s talking about lobbying, because the real smoking gun is his own office’s interference with and non-compliance in the Official Information Act?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No.

Question No. 2—Energy and Resources

2. NAISI CHEN (Labour) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What action is the Government taking to decarbonise New Zealand’s economy?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): The Government is working hard to decarbonise New Zealand’s economy, to reduce costs for consumers and businesses, and to meet our climate goals. This requires an integrated policy response from the Government, from partnering with businesses to electrify their operations through the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund (GIDI) to boosting the number of electric vehicles. And we’re making it easier to build the generation needed to power our electrified economy by removing consenting barriers through the reform of the Resource Management Act and the national policy statement (NPS) on renewable electricity generation. The NPS work is all but complete, and I’m pleased to say it will be released within the month. There’s plenty more work to do, but we’ve made good progress and we’ll continue to make the real action to decarbonise New Zealand through electrification.

Naisi Chen: How is the Government supporting the energy sector to deliver more renewable electricity generation?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Today, New Zealand’s electricity is 88 percent renewable, with a peak of 94.7 percent. According to the Electricity Authority, there are 2,609 gigawatt hours of new generation committed to in 2022. Transpower has received a record number of inquiries for connection: a total of 124 for this financial year. That’s double the previous year, and—for comparison—they received just five inquiries in 2018-19. However, we simply cannot just add more intermittent generations, such as wind and solar, without adding firming or baseload. To do so would not only show a complete lack of understanding of the energy sector but also would be a plan without a plan.

Naisi Chen: How is the Government stimulating demand for electricity as part of its plan to decarbonise the economy?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We all know that to electrify New Zealand, there must be both the supply and demand for renewable electricity. With thousands of megawatts of new renewable electricity generation in the pipeline, we need to give the private sector the confidence to progress these projects. That’s why we—this Government—is working with businesses to electrify their operations. From food processors to building product manufacturers, our partnerships through the GIDI fund will accelerate their decarbonisation journey through electrification. Industrial and process heat make up roughly a third of our energy emissions. Over the first three rounds, $63 million of GIDI funding has been allocated across 51 major industrial decarbonisation projects. This has catalysed over $100 million in private funding. These projects will increase demand for electricity while reducing emissions—the equivalent of taking 130,500 cars off the road.

SPEAKER: That answer was far too long. I expect the next one to not be as long.

Naisi Chen: What is the Government’s plan for a dry year?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: In order to electrify New Zealand, you have to have a means of storing energy. If you were not to do so—as the recent Boston Consulting Group report has shown—the cost by 2050 would be $60 billion. That is why our Government is undertaking the New Zealand Battery Project to look at how we can do this.

Chris Bishop: Has the Minister seen the comments of Contact Energy, that the single biggest threat to new renewables is the Government’s Resource Management Act reforms and, quote, “We could kiss goodbye our decarbonisation goals if they proceed”, and will the Minister legislate to make sure that renewable projects are consented within one year?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I did see those comments, and of course, those comments were on an early stage of the bill. Our Government has been working constructively with the electricity and the energy sector to ensure we have been working through what issues need to be addressed in the forthcoming legislation. I suggest the member talks to some of his caucus members who are on the relevant select committee.

Question No. 3—Oceans and Fisheries

3. Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green) to the Acting Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: Does he think that fisheries management is ensuring sustainable fisheries and healthy and abundant marine life in New Zealand waters; if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Acting Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yes, I am confident New Zealand’s fisheries management supports the sustainable use of our fisheries resources and effectively manages the impacts of fishing. Our fish stocks are generally in good shape and we are progressing an extensive work programme to protect the health of our marine environment. However, there is always room for improvement.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Are single stock assessments fit for purpose when fish are part of an ecosystem and Aotearoa New Zealand has agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for the reversal of biodiversity decline?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Single species stock assessments aren’t the be-all and end-all but they are an important part of the system because when—if you do one of those assessments—you find a stock is depleted, you most certainly have to move to restore its abundance. None the less, there are other more ecosystem-wide issues such as maintaining the likes of lobster or crayfish stocks to ensure that you don’t have kina barrens, which have become unfortunately common off the East Coast of the upper North Island.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Is he concerned that the numbers of New Zealand sea lion—the world’s rarest sea lion—are falling, with trawl fishing for squid; if so, does he agree that an ecosystem approach is needed for future decisions on squid catch in New Zealand waters?

Hon DAVID PARKER: In respect of sea lion captures, there have been improved technologies deployed in recent years which have enabled sea lion captures to be largely avoided through exit routes for sea lions that get caught in a trawl. That has significantly reduced the number of sea lions which have been caught as bycatch.

Mark Cameron: Does he believe the Government’s roll-out of cameras on fishing vessels, which has imposed a $10 million cost on the fishing industry and a $68 million cost on taxpayers to install just 35 cameras since 2019, has been a success from the point of view of taxpayers?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The initial cameras on boats that were rolled out were put in the area where there were most likely to be captures of Māui dolphins, and that was appropriate. The Government has let a contract with, amongst others, Spark, to roll out cameras on boats more widely. There have been some delays in the implementation of that, but those issues are being worked through.

Chlöe Swarbrick: What advice, if any, has he received about the continued decline in the health of Tīkapa Moana, the Hauraki Gulf, and its potential contribution to widespread starvation amongst snapper?

Hon DAVID PARKER: In respect of the milky snapper issue that’s currently in the media, the fisheries division of the Ministry for Primary Industries are likely to conduct some research through the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research to try and establish what is the cause of that. In respect of the health of the Hauraki Gulf, it is true that there has been a long-term decline in the health of the Hauraki Gulf, which of course is situated next to New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. The Sea Change or Hauraki Gulf plan is intended to remedy that.

Hon Eugenie Sage: What role does he see for a precautionary approach in helping restore the health of the Hauraki Gulf Tīkapa Moana and its snapper populations, and would such an approach involve phasing out bottom trawling and other bottom contact methods to protect the shellfish beds that are part of what snapper eat?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The member will be aware that when she was the Minister of Conservation in the last Labour - Green - New Zealand First Government, she approved of the Sea Change proposals, which did have the continuation of trawl corridors in parts of the Hauraki Gulf. The consultation that is now taking place is not as to whether or not there should be trawl corridors—that was dealt with in the member’s consultation—it’s where they should be.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Will he consider fast tracking work on proposed new marine protected areas in the Hauraki Gulf as a precautionary response to crayfish being functionally extinct, scallop populations collapsing, and widespread reports of snapper starving; and, if so, will he raise the level of marine protection to 30 percent of the marine park?

Hon DAVID PARKER: In respect of the scallop point, the member will be aware that I actually led the closure of those fisheries around New Zealand, sadly, because the scallop fishery has collapsed. In respect of crayfish issues off the East Coast of the North Island, I’ve already referenced that. But, no, we don’t have a plan to lift the marine protected areas to the percentage the member recommended in the Hauraki Gulf.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: What impact, if any, is the rising cost of living and rising interest rates having on New Zealanders and their families?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The cost of living and associated impacts have been tough on many New Zealand families. These impacts will differ from person to person and family to family. That’s why this Government has taken significant steps to continue helping them out. This includes the changes on 1 April that will assist 880,000 pensioners, who get a boost to their super, including: 5,000 veterans; 52,000 students seeing an increase in their allowance or loan living costs; a quarter of a million workers receiving a wage rise as the minimum wage is increased to $22.70; and 345,000 families better off through Working for Families. The year 2023 is a tough time for many New Zealand families, but all of these are meaningful improvements which will help them, and all of which the Opposition voted against.

Nicola Willis: Has the Minister considered that a New Zealander with an average outstanding mortgage balance of $482,000 who is re-fixing their mortgage this year to an interest rate roughly double what it was will need to find an extra $630 to service their mortgage every fortnight?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Circumstances will differ from case to case, depending on the type of loan that’s been taken out, but absolutely; there are people who are re-fixing their mortgages for whom there is a significant additional cost. That’s the reason why I am both proud of the things that we’ve done to support low and middle income families and also note that the average annual household income from wages and salaries increased by 8.7 percent in the year ending June 2022.

Nicola Willis: Is he concerned that a growing number of New Zealanders are unable to meet their mortgage payments, with those in arrears up 23 percent in the past year alone?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m always concerned about whether or not New Zealanders have got the resources they need to make ends meet. That’s why I’m pleased that wages have been keeping up with inflation and why I’m pleased that the Government has put more resources into supporting New Zealand families.

Nicola Willis: What is his explanation for why Australia’s inflation and interest rates are lower than New Zealand’s?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: This has already been covered in the question—

Hon Member: No, it wasn’t.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —answered by the Prime Minister—well, it was—but, clearly, Australia’s inflation rate actually peaked higher than New Zealand’s. The economic cycle in Australia and New Zealand are in different places, but New Zealand’s economy is very well placed to deal with the situation we’re in. I would note that, as at December 2022, New Zealand had the 11th lowest inflation rate out of 38 OECD countries. That doesn’t make it any easier for people who are facing increased costs, but this is a global phenomenon.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister think the explanation he just gave will satisfy 5,000 nurses signing to work in Australia or the many patients missing them in their hospitals and GP clinics?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: You better ask the Prime Minister that.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I don’t see how it’s addressing a question to say that “You should ask someone else that question.” I mean, if that’s addressing a question, then no one’s going to have to answer anything.

SPEAKER: When you go back and read Hansard, you’ll see why.

Nicola Willis: Is he aware that in addition to Australia’s inflation rate being lower than New Zealand’s today, it was also lower than New Zealand for nine out of 12 months last year; and isn’t it an indictment on his economic management when two-thirds of small and medium sized businesses polled in the most recent business monitor by MYOB say they are “dissatisfied” with his Government’s performance?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, there’s been a history of that particular monitor that the member might like to go over—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Yeah, they don’t like it.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —and have a look at relative performances. But, Mr Goldsmith, the only time I went in front was when you were the finance spokesperson. [Laughter]

SPEAKER: Order! Silence, please.

Nicola Willis: Is he concerned by statements made by Standard & Poor’s recently saying that New Zealand was “catching our attention” because of the “persistently weak and worsening current account position of the New Zealand sovereign, particularly given that it has been quite weak the last year or two…”, and the rating could come under pressure, and what urgent steps is the Minister taking to address this?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would note—yes, I did see those comments—is that New Zealand is one of the few countries that during the COVID period had our credit rating increased. We will always continue to monitor New Zealand’s economy to ensure that we get the balance right. But I think you can see by the ratings that we have earned over recent years that New Zealand’s economy is seen in the world as well managed.

Hon Eugenie Sage: A point of order. Thank you. Mr Speaker. In Minister Parker’s answer to my previous questions, he said that I was part of the Government involved in releasing Revitalising the Gulf—Government action on the Sea Change Plan. That strategy, in response to the Sea Change - Tai Timu Tai Pari Hauraki Gulf Marine Spatial Plan was released in June 2021. It was during the term of the current Government.

SPEAKER: That’s not really a point of order, but however.

David Seymour: Does the Minister accept that after-tax incomes grew by an average of 6.2 percent last year compared with inflation that grew at 7.2 percent, and when will he do the obvious thing and cut taxes on working families so they can keep more of their own hard-earned money?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, as I said in my earlier answer, there’s a number of ways that we can measure where people are at in terms of their income, and the average annual household incomes from wages and salaries actually grew by 8.7 percent. When it comes to the second part of the question around the member’s policy on tax cuts, he’s utterly entitled to those ideas. On this side of the House, we know that it’s important to keep a balance here and make sure we actually look after our low and middle income New Zealanders. I know the member doesn’t think the people who earn the minimum wage count, but we do.

David Seymour: Does he accept that income taxes average 22 percent of all income earned, up from 20 percent when he first became finance Minister, and when will he do the obvious thing and cut taxes so families can keep more of their hard-earned money?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: When it comes to the way we compare taxes, I invite the member to take a look at the OECD’s tax wedge, which actually takes into account overall tax burden—in which situation New Zealand compares very well to the rest of the world. In answer to the second part of the question, what I said before.

Question No. 5—Education

5. CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What reports has she seen on how the Government’s tutoring package is delivering for Māori and Pacific students?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): We know the disruptions caused by COVID-19 have had a huge impact on the education of our young people, and that is why we have funded $20 million towards tutoring programmes to support students whose learning has been disrupted due to the pandemic. This included targeted programmes for Māori and Pacific students, and we are getting results. With hundreds of Māori and Pacific learners supported, each learner has gained an additional 22 to 25 credits on average as a result of these programmes. The programmes are based on research from the past two decades that tells us of the optimum learning environments for Māori and Pacific learners.

Camilla Belich: How were the tutoring programmes run, and what was delivered for Māori and Pacific students specifically?

Hon JAN TINETTI: A range of academic support was provided, including wānanga, noho marae, exam revision, one-on-one mentoring, tutoring, and homework centres. The ākonga support programme consisted of seven iwi-led initiatives focused on year 10 to 13 students and supported 1,143 Māori learners to progress in their NCEA aspirations. The Pacific learners support programme delivery to date has supported 863 Pacific learners through eight intensive support programmes and 20 weekly support programmes across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Camilla Belich: How has the tutoring package helped Māori and Pacific students attain NCEA?

Hon JAN TINETTI: For Māori students, a total of 19,297 credits have been gained by the students participating. For the Pacific learners support programme, 9,138 credits have been gained. And I’d like to note that, on average, Pacific learners had more than doubled their initial credits by the end of the programme—an amazing result.

Camilla Belich: What feedback has been received by participants of the programme?

Hon JAN TINETTI: We have had some wonderful feedback come through from students who have been part of the tutoring programmes. One participant stated, “I am very confident and have learnt more with NCEA, and I’m proud to be coming back.” The parent of another stated, “My daughter put down her success to these aspects of the programme: a relaxed environment, Pacific teachers were around to give her confidence.” Te Pou Oranga o Whakatōhea reported 85 percent of their students achieved NCEA level 1—the best result the college has had in years.

Question No. 6—Health

6. Dr SHANE RETI (National) to the Minister of Health: Does she agree with Rob Campbell, former chair of Health NZ, that the health reforms are “half-baked” and that the Government should declare a “health crisis worthy of a crisis response”; if not, why not?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): No, a new national health system will help more people get better services closer to home, tackle health inequalities by working in partnership with Māori, and help New Zealanders live longer, healthier lives. The need for reform is clear. Turning around under-resourcing and inequities will take years, but we make progress every day. Our health system has been through a crisis—it’s called a pandemic—and has delivered some of the best outcomes in the world. However, I acknowledge it continues to face significant pressures, and that’s why I’ve set priorities for Te Whatu Ora around winter preparedness, workforce, and wait-lists. Our national health system has the power to tackle the complex problems our system faces, and there is urgent work under way to do so.

Dr Shane Reti: Does she agree with the Prime Minister who, when asked, in response to Rob Campbell’s speech, “What part of the health reforms are actually working?”, gave elective surgery as an example, stating that elective surgery was working in a more productive way?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Yes, I do agree with that comment. Elective surgery is working in a more productive way. For example, we are no longer tolerating the way in which Māori would be bumped off waiting lists because of the systemic way in which they were ignored by our health system. We have a number of responses to the reset and restore task force that is under way, that it will deliver improved care.

Dr Shane Reti: What is her response to a Dunedin Hospital radiation oncologist who is reported as saying, “Don’t get cancer in Dunedin.” because the staffing crisis has forced the hospital to suspend services for people with brain tumours and gynaecological cancers?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: I am concerned about the situation for radiation oncology and what I can say is that whereas that DHB might have been left, in the past, to deal with that situation individually, we now have a national health service that is coordinating across specialists around the country to make sure those people get the care they need.

Dr Shane Reti: Isn’t the previous chair of Health New Zealand, Rob Campbell, absolutely right when he says that the health reforms have been excessively focused on Wellington, who turned their backs on the citizens they serve?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Absolutely not, and I look at the Pae Ora legislation and the numerous avenues we are giving to community voice in the health system—for example, through the rural health strategy; for example, through iwi Māori partnership boards and the work of localities. It will be a better system for community and patient voice than we ever had.

Dr Shane Reti: Is it a good outcome for New Zealanders that after spending tens of millions of dollars on consultants to reform a health system that now has the most number of people ever on wait-lists, the previous chair states that the health reforms are half-baked and that the interim health plan is “highly compromised”?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Last week, that member was criticising the reforms for existing at all; this week he is on the side of someone who says they don’t go far enough. He should make up his mind.

Dr Shane Reti: What is her response to Rob Campbell’s statement that Health New Zealand “in its current form cannot deliver the level of radical change which is required” and “Inadequacy and things which are just plain wrong will persist”?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: If we want to go into all of Rob Campbell’s statements, then I think the matter that led to Mr Campbell’s having to leave his role—if I remind the member of that—was because he was taking pot-shots at that party. So, no, I do not believe that is the case at all. There needs to be a clear plan. I have set expectations as Minister that Te Whatu Ora is focused on winter, workforce, and wait-lists—the things that matter to New Zealand.

Question No. 7—Transport

7. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) to the Minister of Transport: What recent announcements has he made about building a futureproofed transport network for Auckland?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Last week, the Prime Minister and I released five scenarios for a second Auckland Harbour crossing, including both bridge and tunnel options. Aucklanders and businesses have made it clear that the biggest barrier to the success of Auckland is persistent congestion after years of inaction. We’re on track to fix that. It’s vital that we have a harbour crossing that works for Aucklanders, reducing congestion and emissions by providing more transport choices for Auckland commuters. Additionally, on Saturday, I turned the first sod—along with the mayor—on the Eastern Busway, which will see massive savings in travel times between Botany and the central city. Together, these projects show that the Government is serious about delivering a linked-up, low-carbon transport network for the people of Auckland.

Shanan Halbert: What are the five scenarios that are being consulted on publicly for the second harbour crossing?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The five scenarios cater for all modes of travel. Each scenario will include a new walking and cycling link across the Waitematā, a new light-rail link that will connect Auckland light rail in the city centre and will build generations of resilience into State Highway 1. Some of the scenarios include new tunnels across the harbour through Northcote, Devonport, or the central motorway junction to Esmonde Road, and others include new bridges; some include a combination of both. The scenarios also include ways to connect growing residential and business hubs on the North Shore. I encourage all Aucklanders who are serious about these issues to look at the scenarios online and have their say.

Shanan Halbert: How will Aucklanders benefit from the Government bringing forward the delivery of a second harbour crossing?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The previous version of the Auckland Transport Alignment Plan that was put in place in 2016 planned for a second crossing in the 2040s. We don’t think that’s good enough for Aucklanders and we’re bringing work forward on the crossing so that construction can begin in 2029. Benefits of the project will include more transport choices for commuters, faster travel times, and increased resilience during extreme weather events. A new rapid transit connection from the city centre to the North Shore will fully integrate with other projects, including Auckland light rail and rapid transit to the north-west, to allow people to travel seamlessly across Auckland. Once we’ve received Aucklanders’ feedback, we’ll be confirming a preferred option by the middle of this year.

Shanan Halbert: What benefits will the Eastern Busway deliver for Aucklanders?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I was very pleased to help dig the first sod on the next stage of the Eastern Busway between Pakuranga and Botany on Sunday of this weekend. The project will deliver five kilometres of a new separated busway, five new bus stations, 20 minutes of commuter savings between Botany, town centre, and Britomart, and 12 kilometres of safe and separated walking and cycling routes. Overall, it will provide faster travel times and more reliable bus services for Auckland’s eastern suburbs. Along with our other investments, like Auckland light rail and the second harbour crossing, our investment in the Eastern Busway shows that our Government is committed to building a linked-up, low-carbon transport system for all Aucklanders, and it’s been very much welcomed by the good people of Pakuranga and Botany.

Question No. 8—Police

8. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister of Police: Does she stand by her statement, “my number one focus is to make sure New Zealanders feel safe”, and what percentage of youths who commit retail crime face court action?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Yes. As Minister of Police, I want to ensure that every New Zealander feels safe. Of the 481 youth or under-18s who’ve had proceedings against them for burglary offences in retail locations between February and October 2022, 234 have faced court action, 112 have had a family group conference, five have been referred to youth aid, 35 have had warnings, two have been referred to Te Pae Oranga, and 94 have not had further action taken against them. This highlights that our youth justice system aims to keep children and young people out of the formal criminal justice system. Steering young people away from a life of crime and ensuring that they don’t get caught up in the justice system increases the chances they will reach their full potential.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Were Police too slow to roll out the retail crime prevention fund?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: The Police have gone a good job in terms of the retail crime prevention fund, and it has been promising to see that the uptake is now over 2,000 of those interventions that have taken place.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question was very clear, short, and concise: were Police too slow to roll out the retail crime prevention fund?

SPEAKER: I’m pretty sure the Minister said no.

Hon Mark Mitchell: If the Minister said no, then does she agree with the Prime Minister, who said in response to a question around the retail crime prevention fund, “police could have been faster [in] rolling that out,”?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: To be clear, what I said was that Police have rolled out 2,352, to be precise. Of the eligible stores across both programmes, which is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment fog cannon scheme, there have been a large number of interventions in that space. As of 30 March 2023, there’s been a whole range of interventions provided, and I am pleased with the speed of the roll-out in both of those schemes.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m just seeking your guidance. Both the police Minister and the Prime Minister have been critical of the Police and their roll-out of the retail crime prevention fund. I have asked a question on notice, and then I’ve asked a very clear, succinct question to the Minister. They said that she answered that—I didn’t hear any answer to either of those questions.

SPEAKER: That was my interpretation of what I heard—I possibly should have said it had been addressed. But, in the way the Minister addressed it, it sounded like “no” to me.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Could Police have been faster?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: The Prime Minister has noted that the initial roll-out was slow, and I tend to agree with that. But, now, as Minister of Police, in the time I have been in place, I am happy with the fact that 2,352 have been rolled out across New Zealand in addition to the fog cannon scheme, which has been rolling out incredibly well.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Is it fair for Labour politicians to blame the Police for the slow roll-out and the knee-jerk political reaction to a tsunami of retail offending, given that Police warned that it would take several months?

SPEAKER: The Minister’s not responsible for addressing what other members of Parliament say.

Question No. 9—Transport

9. SIMON COURT (ACT) to the Minister of Transport: How much money has been spent in total on transport policies that have been cancelled or re-scoped by this Government, and how much of this, if any, has been spent on consultants and contractors?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): I’m advised that across the four transport policies that were cancelled or re-scoped as part of the reprioritisation of the Government’s work programme in March, approximately $4,040,000 was spent, of which approximately $1,807,000 was contractor or consultant spend. This reprioritisation has enabled approximately $600 million of savings to be realised, which have the potential to be invested in other priorities, particularly carbon emission reduction projects.

Simon Court: Can the Minister confirm that as at 28 February 2023, $726,000 had been spent on the cancelled clean car upgrade programme with not a single car upgraded, and that’s $287,000 more than what was reported in Stuff this morning?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I can refer the member back to my primary answer, which gave an overall cost for the programmes that we reprioritised. If the member wants confirmation of individual projects and he wants to approach my office, I’m happy to provide that.

Simon Court: Does the Minister stand by his statement that “Waka Kotahi expects further costs to be incurred over the coming months as the clean car upgrade programme is closed down.” and, if so, what is the total estimated amount to close down this programme which has delivered nothing?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: When programmes and projects are reprioritised there sometimes will be closing-out costs which have to be incurred; that will be worked through in the coming period in respect to this one. Overall, New Zealanders appreciate the fact that our Government took a hard-nosed look at our programme and has made reprioritisations in order to ensure that we get the best benefits for New Zealanders.

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I don’t consider the Minister has addressed the question sufficiently. It was a question about how much will it cost to wind down the programme.

SPEAKER: It was addressed.

Simon Court: Can the Minister confirm that, as at 31 October 2002, he had spent $38 million on the now cancelled speed-limit reduction programme which less than a third of Kiwis supported; and what is the estimated amount to wind down this programme?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Waka Kotahi and local government are the agencies which are responsible for managing speed limits across the State highway and local roading network. They continue to have that role under statute. The Government has confirmed that there will be a focus on the 1 percent of roads where the highest level of harm occurs in Waka Kotahi’s future works. So it is wrong to say that that work is not continuing at all. As I said earlier on, the Government does believe that reprioritising—looking closely at our spending—is a valuable thing to do. Had the previous National-ACT Government done that a bit earlier they might not have spent $30 million building a sheep farm in the Saudi desert.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. There were two legs to the question: can he confirm $38 million spent and what will be the remaining expenditure to be wound up? He didn’t come close to addressing either of those; he just gave generalities about who is responsible for speed limits.

SPEAKER: Yes, I’ll give the member two extra questions.

Simon Court: Why did the Minister think that spending $569 million on a “cash for clunkers” scheme to reduce emissions at a cost of up to $1.138 million a tonne—21,000 times more expensive than the emissions trading scheme—was a good idea in the first place?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The Government has made investments and policy decisions to clean up New Zealand’s dirty vehicle fleet. We have made exceptional progress in that area and we have turned vehicles coming into New Zealand’s fleet from being some of the dirtiest vehicles on average in the world to being some of the cleanest vehicles in the world, on average, through our Clean Car Programme. The clean car upgrade that the member refers to was designed to ensure that lower-income New Zealanders were able to access the benefits of cleaner vehicles, but we’ve decided that there are better ways of achieving that outcome.

Simon Court: Would spending tens of millions of dollars on cancelled speed limit projects, social car leasing schemes, and “cash for clunkers” have been avoided if the Minister had listened to the sensible opposition from ACT to those policies in the first place?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: No. In formulating the Government’s policy to reduce transport emissions, I don’t listen to modern-day climate deniers.

SPEAKER: Question No. 10, Dr Anae Neru Leavasa—Oh, sorry. Point of order, David Seymour.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister has completely failed to address the question. He spoke of “modern-day climate deniers”, but ACT actually has the most sensible climate policy in the whole Parliament.

SPEAKER: Yeah—no, we’ll call that one all, shall we, because the first word the Minister said was “No.”

Question No. 10—Health

10. Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini) to the Minister of Health: What progress is being made in vaccinating New Zealanders against COVID-19 and the flu?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): On Saturday, we launched the latest phase of our COVID-19 and winter influenza vaccination campaign. Since 1 March, 45,269 COVID-19 booster vaccinations have gone ahead, with 24,588 more booked to happen. Since Saturday, 1 April, 11,733 people have already received their influenza vaccination. We know that vaccination is the best protection against the virus, and we can all play our part in staying well this winter.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: Why is it important that New Zealanders get vaccinated?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: We know that influenza can be a particularly serious disease for people with weakened immunity and older people, and around 500 New Zealanders die from flu annually. The flu vaccine reduces the likelihood of ending up in hospital if you get sick this winter, and vaccination against COVID-19 continues to be the best protection against the virus. We can all play a part in staying well this winter.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: How will communities be involved in the vaccination campaign?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Involving our communities in the programme is critical for success. In Northland today, Hauora Hokianga is having an event for tamariki and whānau where flu; measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR); and COVID-19 boosters will be available. Manurewa Marae will be at the ASB Polyfest this week doing checks and offering COVID-19 and MMR vaccinations. And on Saturday, the Prime Minister and I were lucky enough to be at Queen Street Medical Centre in Upper Hutt, where the Prime Minister enjoyed the sausage sizzle, and I learnt that Elvis still lives. Te Whatu Ora is working with communities to scale up the vaccination campaign, including pop-up events, targeted activities to priority groups, and outreach to those who are eligible.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: How are people able to book their vaccinations?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Booking your vaccination is easy, and the COVID19 bivalent remains free. We are running a comprehensive programme to encourage vaccination protection against both influenza and COVID, and targeting those audiences most at risk in the lead-up to winter. You can visit www.bookmyvaccine.nz or call 0800 28 29 26, or talk to your GP.

Question No. 11—Health (Māori Health)

11. DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health): Does he stand by his statement on the Therapeutic Products Bill that “Under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Crown has an obligation to actively protect rongoā Māori”; if not, why not?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): Yes.

SPEAKER: The Minister hasn’t addressed—

Hon PEENI HENARE: Yes, I do stand by my statement.

SPEAKER: Oh, sorry—my mistake.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Oh, point of order. Do I get another question for that?

SPEAKER: No—ha, ha!

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Oh, gosh!

SPEAKER: That was my mistake.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: I tried. Does he agree with submissions made by Māori at the Health Committee that the Therapeutic Products Bill, and particularly clause 29, captures rongoā, and, if so, how will the rights and interests of Māori be protected in the bill?

Hon PEENI HENARE: The bill is under active consideration still by the committee. The Ministry of Health, Te Manatū Hauora, is yet to deliver their departmental report on that particular bill, and it is still under active consideration by this Government.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order, e te Māngai. I don’t think the question was answered. The question was: does the Minister think that the Crown has actively protected rongoā Māori; if not, why not?

SPEAKER: I’ll let the member ask the question again.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Thank you. Does he agree with submissions made by Māori at the Health Committee that the Therapeutic Products Bill, in particular clause 29, captures rongoā, and, if so, how will the rights and interests of Māori be protected in the bill?

Hon PEENI HENARE: We encouraged many to submit on this particular bill, and there were lots of submissions made on this bill. This bill is still being actively considered by the select committee and also by this Government.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Will the Minister, then, in his considering, exclude rongoā from clause 29 until the work stream has been completed and the Crown has actively protected rongoā Māori, and, if not, why not?

Hon PEENI HENARE: That is why we started the work stream on rongoā Māori announced last year in November, and we continue to support that particular work stream. I’ll continue to reiterate to the member and to this House that that particular bill is still under active consideration by this Government.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Why did the Minister say in his statement that the rongoā work stream will “explore the interface of the Therapeutic Products Bill” to “identify any gaps and opportunities to protect rongoā Māori” if he is already guaranteeing to the House that the bill does not capture rongoā through the work streams?

Hon PEENI HENARE: I want to make this very clear to the member and to the House: when we announced the work stream for rongoā Māori, what we did was we wanted to make sure that those who are engaged in the sector, those who work in the sector, are able to create that pathway forward for themselves. I do want to reiterate, though, to this House and to the member that the Therapeutic Products Bill in its entirety is a bill that must pass. It does a number of other things that are making our health sector and the medicines fit for purpose—the legislation fit for purpose, today. So I stand by the commitment to support the rongoā work stream and continue to reiterate that this bill is under active consideration by the Government.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What specific changes will he make to the Therapeutic Products Bill to address the overwhelming concern from rongoā Māori practitioners, tohunga, and tangata w’enua across the board?

Hon PEENI HENARE: Once again, this bill is under active consideration by this Government. The committee will do the process that it’s been assigned to do and then Ministers and the Cabinet will continue to consider this particular bill, and we look forward to reporting back on that when that process is over.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order, e te Māngai. So I just want to be clear of the answer to “what specific changes will you make to the therapeutics bill?” Was the answer, for clarity, nothing?

SPEAKER: You’ll have to check Hansard, but from my memory the question was definitely addressed, so there is no point of order.

Question No. 12—Rural Communities

12. ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki) to the Minister for Rural Communities: What recent reports has he seen on targeted support to rural communities to help them recover from Cyclone Gabrielle?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister for Rural Communities): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Cyclone Gabrielle’s impact on rural communities has been severe. Rural communities bore the brunt of the cyclone and the Government recognises this. There has been an extensive effort to reconnect isolated rural communities; however, there remain 43 farms with restricted access in Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti. The Ministry for Primary Industries are maintaining contact with these farms and households, and work continues to return them to full access. I acknowledge these communities continue to do it tough. It is also important to acknowledge the hard work under way to provide support. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) have reported to me that Government support includes $51 million for recovery grants to help farmers, growers, and Māori land owners. MPI has received more than 5,900 applications for grants, with 3,249 applications having already been paid—a total of $36.5 million.

Anna Lorck: How is the Government helping ensure farmers get the supplies they need?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: I’ve been advised that 105 tonnes of fencing and equipment have been delivered to cut-off rural communities through Operation Reach. Ten thousand bales of feed and more than 3,000 hectares of grazing have been donated through the National Feed Coordination Service since mid-February. This service was established alongside Federated Farmers. Six thousand and two hundred cattle and sheep have been moved off cut-off farms in Patoka and Tūtira in Hawke’s Bay as part of Operation Muster. A further 6,000 are booked in for the meat works and sale yards over the coming week, and three sets of portable cattle yards have been set up in northern Hawke’s Bay to help the cut-off farms reduce livestock numbers ahead of winter.

Anna Lorck: What support has been provided to rural support trusts in affected areas?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: The Government has provided $920,000 for rural support trusts for their work in response to Cyclone Gabrielle. Rural support trusts in Northland, North Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay, the Tararua District and Wairarapa all received funding to provide support to help people access relevant services such as mental health and recovery grants, and co-ordinate local clean-up efforts. The work of rural support trusts is critical to the wellbeing of people in rural communities, and therefore I take this opportunity to thank them for all the work that they do.

Appointments

Independent Police Conduct Authority, Chairperson

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): I move, That under sections 5 and 5A of the Independent Police Conduct Authority Act 1988 and section 32 of the Crown Entities Act 2004, this House recommend to Her Excellency the Governor-General the appointment of Associate High Court Judge Kenneth Johnston KC as Chairperson of the Independent Police Conduct Authority for a term of five years commencing on 1 May 2023.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority’s important function is to investigate complaints alleging any misconduct or neglect of duty by a member of the police or concerning any practice, policy, or procedure of the police affecting the complainant. The authority is also responsible for investigating any incident involving serious bodily harm or death notification to the authority by the Commissioner of Police.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority is the only official New Zealand Police oversight body and, as such, it’s important that its work is led by the people of the highest calibre. The term of the authority’s present chairperson, Judge Colin Doherty, expired on 29 August 2022. However, his appointment remained in force under carry-over provisions. Judge Doherty did not seek reappointment for a further term, but agreed to continue in office to oversee the completion of several high-profile investigations. I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank him for his work over a significant period of time. His contribution was certainly received gratefully by us all.

This brings me to the appointment of Associate Judge Kenneth Johnston KC. Associate Judge Johnston was appointed to the High Court bench in early 2018. He practised as a barrister from 2007 to 2018, and was made King’s Counsel in 2016. The majority of his early career was with MinterEllisonRuddWatts, including seven years as managing partner. He has experience as chair of the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal and deputy chair of the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.

Associate Judge Johnston has experience in criminal work as both a prosecutor and defence counsel in jury and appellate trials and in civil work, including general civil and commercial litigation, trusts and estates, construction, employment, family, and professional disciplinary litigation. His overall experience in governance, investigatory, disciplinary, and criminal work gives him the requisite experience and ability to undertake the work of the chair of the Independent Police Conduct Authority. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I commend to the House Associate Judge Johnston for this very important role.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The National Party does agree to this motion, the appointment of Associate High Court Judge Kenneth Johnston, King’s Counsel, as chairperson of the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) for five years.

This is obviously a very important institution in the wider judicial system of this country. We New Zealanders sometimes take for granted these institutions, but it’s very important in any free and open country to ensure that the police whose job it is to maintain public safety and to look after us and deal with criminals and things that put them in harm’s way—but it’s also very important to know that their conduct is also held to account and monitored. Obviously, any lawbreaking involves the court system, but the IPCA is an important part of the process in order to investigate complaints against any misconduct or neglect of duty by a member of the police or any practice, policy, or procedure of the police affecting the complainant, as the Minister outlined. The authority also is responsible for investigating any incident involving serious bodily harm notified to the authority by the Commissioner of Police. So it’s an important agency.

We support the work that they do. We acknowledge, like the Minister did, the hard work of the retiring chairperson, Judge Colin Doherty, who has worked hard on behalf of the community. He’s had a very busy time, and indeed the IPCA is having a very busy time at the moment, particularly dealing with the multitude of issues raised by the occupation of Parliament last year, which does need thorough investigation. We were quite critical of the Government’s decisions around that—not any criticism directed at the IPCA, but the fact that we believe there should also have been a wider investigation involving not just the actions of the police but the Speaker and many other people. But I just say that in passing to make it absolutely and abundantly clear that the National Party strongly supports the work of the IPCA.

We acknowledge the effort and contribution that Judge Colin Doherty has made, and we wish the new chairperson, and current Associate High Court Judge Kenneth Johnston, King’s Counsel, all the best in the job. We have high hopes and expectations that he will maintain the strong traditions that the authority has in terms of standing strongly in order to maintain the integrity of the broader system.

I also just want to thank the Minister of Justice for the way that she consulted us on this side of the House over this appointment. It is important that these kinds of roles have bipartisan support and we welcomed the opportunity to comment on it, as expected, but it’s important that these practices continue. So without any further ado, the National Party supports this appointment and wishes the new chairperson, Judge Kenneth Johnston, all the very best.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise, too, as others have done, to support the appointment of Judge Kenneth Johnston KC to head the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA). It is an essential function of our democracy that we have independent, transparent mechanisms for accountability, particularly where uses of force are exercised by the State against members of the public. Obviously, the work of the police is important. But also, obviously, in terms of our human rights-based framework: to be free from unjust or unreasonable search and seizure, unlawful and arbitrary detention, and the very serious uses of force that police may also exercise when it comes to gun violence for example, are some of the most essential rights that we have in our system. So I do want to commend the appointment of someone who has acted as both prosecutor and defence counsel, who knows the frameworks within which police exercise these powers, and understands the rights—in particular in the criminal justice arena—and understands and knows very well the significance that we as a society, and in particular our courts and justice system, rightly place on our rights and our liberties being protected against, as we say in the courts, “The mighty force of the State”.

But I do want to also say that while we are commending ourselves and the Government in this appointment and we are underlining and reflecting on the significance of the work of the Independent Police Conduct Authority, that we have to look at the structures within which Ken Johnston KC will be operating. We have to reflect on the fact that just last year it was found in an independent report that police only very rarely refer complaints to the IPCA when they come to police—and that due to a lack of funding only 2 percent of cases, when they are referred by police, are able to be investigated by the IPCA. So to say that it’s a significant institution in upholding our rights and our freedoms, but to only fund 2 percent of cases to be investigated, is really tying the hands of this new appointee that we’re all commending today.

We also know that this is an office that has, throughout time and in its own reports, been found to lack the appropriate powers because it can’t prosecute. And we know that transparency is lacking because the IPCA can’t make public witness testimonies to it within its investigations. We know that most members of the public know very little about the work of the IPCA, and, certainly, because of a lack of legal aid when it comes to accessing investigations and complaints, it can’t in fact report what we might think are quite significant breaches of power by the police. And I only point now because I think it is important for us as a House to ground this debate on the motion in the very real issues that the IPCA grapples with, by saying that it was, again, only last year that our police force was found to use force lethally—that is, take lives of members of the public—at 11 times the rate of police in England or Wales. And I want us to hold that when the IPCA has—somehow, with the tiny resource it has—made recommendations on systemic change, that successive Governments have often ignored those recommendations. And I note that in relation to the use of force, that is incredibly high, that it was seven years ago that a previous IPCA head recommended that the Government introduce law or regulation to say that the Armed Offenders Squad actually can’t send its recruits out without formal qualifications, because it was found that they do.

So these are the types of issues that we’re dealing with: it’s life or death, it’s the most fundamental human rights. And we’re dealing with an office that’s so under-resourced and whose recommendations are so easily ignored, that has so few actual powers—that I’m not sure we can really commend ourselves as a society for holding police accountable. And I want to also hold, because it’s often disputed in this House, that Māori—within that same report—were found to be seven times more likely to suffer uses of force by police. And I will finish by quoting—on gun violence and the important work of the IPCA—the former IPCA head, when he found that police were routinely escalating situations and “put themselves in positions where firearms were the only option.”

So while in this House, as we go forward, we debate crime and punishment, we debate safety of our communities and we debate whether or not our rights are in fact protected, transparency is upheld, and accountability is applied to our State apparatus, I want us to also resolve to take notice of the independent work that these expert agencies do where prejudice is found and where safety issues of the public are highlighted—not by those that we routinely villainise here, but actually by police themselves. I want us to please—and this is imploring upon Governments to come also, because this is a five-year appointment—take more seriously the work of the appointee that we are celebrating today. I want us to respond as a lawmaking body, as the Government should when we are told that our regulations and our safety mechanisms for human rights in New Zealand are not working.

So with that—and a little bit of grim news on gun violence and the police—I do commend this appointment and I do appreciate the work of the IPCA. I only hope that these powers are strengthened and we take note of the recommendations as they come. Thank you.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call to support the appointment of Kenneth Johnston KC as chairperson of the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA).

I’d like to start off by thanking outgoing chairperson Judge Colin Doherty, who’s done a great job over the last five years. He presided over a pretty turbulent period for police, with the number of complaints increasing 61 percent in the last four years, and doubling in the last 10 years. Even taking COVID issues into account, that’s a huge increase.

It can be a thankless task, with one party always being unhappy with the result of any investigation. With so many keyboard warriors out there, and ignorant commentary on specific incidents, making rational and informed decisions can often be a difficult process. Unfortunately, some of that ignorant commentary does come from inside this House. Sifting through frivolous and vexatious complaints is also part of that job.

Policing is a tough job, and it always has been, but circumstances have changed. Examples like the use of cellphones, the huge increase in mental health issues, the demand for accountability, and a renewed sense of entitlement has meant there is a lot more scrutiny given to police behaviour and actions. Most police would tell you that if they had a dollar for every time that they were told “I pay your wages”, they’d be pretty rich.

In my time in the police, I had only had one occasion dealing with the IPCA, and it was as a witness. A young man didn’t think the rules applied to him and he didn’t need to follow instructions because his dad was a lawyer. The IPCA agreed that he actually did need to follow instructions, and trust and accountability in the police was upheld.

New Zealand has the best police service in the world, and we should be very proud. The IPCA ensures that accountability and transparency is maintained.

ACT welcomes the appointment of Kenneth Johnston KC. He’s a vastly experienced practitioner, arbitrator, adjudicator, and mediator, having spent time—as was mentioned—as the chair of the New Zealand Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal and deputy chair of the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal. I’m sure he will continue to uphold the high standards that the IPCA is known for. Thank you.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā tātou. Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise on behalf of Te Paati Māori to speak to this motion nominating Associate High Court Judge Kenneth Johnston KC as chairperson of the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA). We acknowledge the experience and qualifications of Kenneth Johnston KC; however, we believe this appointment represents a missed opportunity from the Government to have appointed a tangata whenua leader to chair the IPCA. And so we will not be supporting this motion.

Throughout history, since the inception of the New Zealand Police and its predecessor, the armed constabulary, tangata whenua have been disproportionately impacted by abuse of police power and inappropriate conduct. From the armed constabulary invading the peaceful settlement of Parihaka, to the police invasions of Tūhoe in 1916 and in 2007 in the valley of Ruātoki, right through to just last year when the police illegally photographed rangatahi Māori without cause, and all painful injustices in between, this reality—our reality, as tangata whenua—is well known and indisputable. Like the Greens MP Golriz Ghahraman talked about, Māori are seven times more likely to have violent force used against them by the police.

The New Zealand Police is undeniably a systemically racist institution. Research is clear that our people are disproportionately stopped, searched, and charged. Follow the signs. Even the current Police Commissioner acknowledges the unconscious bias that they act with while dealing with our people. We need a police watchdog who understands this reality at a deep cultural level and has the unique qualifications that come with surviving as Māori in this country. We now have Māori across all levels of the legal and justice professions, including the Supreme Court. There is no shortage of qualified Māori people to choose from who would bring their considerable skills and experience to the leadership of the IPCA. We wish Kenneth Johnston KC well and challenge him to act with the rights and interests of tangata whenua at the forefront of his work.

David Seymour: Maybe he could change his race. Would that help?

RAWIRI WAITITI: Maybe you should change yours. Tangata whenua must no longer be treated as second-class citizens on our own land. Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou.

A party vote was called for on the question, That under sections 5 and 5A of the Independent Police Conduct Authority Act 1988 and section 32 of the Crown Entities Act 2004, this House recommend to Her Excellency the Governor-General the appointment of Associate High Court Judge Kenneth Johnston KC as Chairperson of the Independent Police Conduct Authority for a term of five years commencing on 1 May 2023.

Ayes 118

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 2

Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Deputy Controller and Auditor-General

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): I move, That, pursuant to section 11(2) and clause 2 of Schedule 3 of the Public Audit Act 2001, the House recommend to the Governor-General that Andrew William McConnell of Wellington be appointed as the Deputy Controller and Auditor-General for a term not exceeding five years.

Motion agreed to.

SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Appropriation (2021/22 Confirmation and Validation) Bill.

Bills

Annual Review Debate

In Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, the House is in committee on the Appropriation (2021/22 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. This is the debate on the financial position of the Government and the annual reviews of departments, Offices of Parliament, Crown entities, public organisations, and State enterprises, as reported on by select committees. The time allocated for this debate is 10 hours.

Standing Orders 356(2) and (3) have been set aside, so there will be no sector-specific debates. Instead, specific Ministers will be available each day to respond to specific portfolios. The Government has indicated that the Minister of Finance will be available for one hour today to respond to members’ questions.

The time for this debate has been allocated to parties on a proportional basis. Each debate will be led off by the chairperson or another member of the committee that considered annual reviews most closely related to the Minister’s portfolios.

The question is that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual financial statements of the Government for the 2021-22 financial year be noted.

Finance

RACHEL BROOKING (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): Thank you, Mr Chair. I was so eager to get up, as the chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, to speak about the annual reviews that we undertook.

Before I start with that, I would very much like to thank the staff who do these report backs to Parliament, which can be found in this volume. They do a great job, and if anybody is spending their Tuesday afternoon watching the House, then I would very much recommend—if you’re ever interested in what any different agency does—that you go and have a look at the select committee’s annual report back on them.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Great read.

RACHEL BROOKING: “Great read”, we’re hearing—they are, they are.

So there were a number of entities that we did a very quick report back on. There were no matters to bring to the attention of the House for Kiwi Group Holdings Ltd, Ōtākaro Ltd, Southern Response Earthquake Services Ltd, and the Government Superannuation Fund Authority. But we did have hearings and reported on the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, Inland Revenue Department, New Zealand Green Investment Finance Ltd, New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, New Zealand Productivity Commission, Office of the Controller and Auditor-General, Pike River Recovery, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and Treasury. And, of course, we did the Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand for the Year Ended 30 June 2022—that is different from the sector reports and found at the front of the volume.

I’m going to focus on the Treasury review and some themes that came through throughout all of our reviews. For me, one of them that was brought to our attention was the issue of improving accountability and transparency of public finances, and particularly with the issue that the Public Finance Act focuses on vertical as opposed to horizontal reporting. I will go briefly to the Treasury, who commented on this when we were asking questions about it. And we were asking particular questions because the Auditor-General has raised this in a number of different reports.

So the current legislative arrangements in the system are focused on reporting at an appropriation level. The Secretary to the Treasury explained that it would be useful to enable reporting initiatives that span multiple appropriations, involving different agencies working together, or initiatives at a sub-appropriation level. We heard that this is a complex challenge because the Treasury is operating in a system where the legislative foundations, IT systems, and capabilities across agencies are not structured consistently. Despite this, we heard that the Treasury is always looking to improve the quality and information within the public finance system to create stronger accountability and transparency.

I’ll pause here to note that the committee remains interested in this topic, and that we’ve also—separately to this annual review process—heard from both the Auditor-General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, which, probably, you wouldn’t necessarily expect the Finance and Expenditure Committee to be talking to.

We also, of course, heard about how this topic of accountability and transparency does relate to the Wellbeing Budget and how that’s worked through, the Living Standards Framework, and He Ara Waiora. Also related to this transparency theme, there was discussion around the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, and we heard that lessons had been learnt from that and that those are now being applied to the Climate Emergency Response Fund.

Treasury also noted that the clusters that we have now in justice and natural resources now have quarterly reporting, and there’s work on how to make those programmes work as well as they can. Some other themes included the liability for entitlements under the Holidays Act 2003, and we heard that both Treasury and the Auditor-General are committed to assisting with this issue. Other issues that were traversed, or themes that reoccurred throughout reports, were the tax revenue increasing, and also issues around workforce—specifically within the different agencies having turnover issues but also for the country as a whole. And some of that, of course, relates to productivity, which was another theme. We also heard about inflation a number of times.

I’ll skip now to cyclone and storm recovery. Of course, this is outside of the period that we were discussing, but we did still have very good interactions with the Minister for Cyclone Recovery, with Treasury, and with other officials about the impacts of those events on both our economy and, of course, those communities involved. Thank you.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): The context in which we reviewed the Government’s finances was a year in which New Zealand is experiencing extremely high levels of inflation, which have now persisted for 21 months. This sustained period of high inflation has led to a cost of living crisis and an extremely rapid rise in interest rates, which is affecting New Zealanders, mortgage holders, and businesses across the economy.

In that context, I think there has been discussion from both sides of politics about the need for spending by the Crown to be disciplined. I note the Minister of Finance has repeatedly committed that the Government would be moving to reduce the volume of Government spending following a very significant level of fiscal stimulus during COVID lockdown years.

However, in reviewing the Government finances, it is really clear that, in fact, Government spending continued to increase in the 2022-23 year, hitting an all-time high of $129 billion a year. So my first question to the Minister of Finance is simply: when will Government spending come down?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for her contribution and also acknowledge the chair of Finance and Expenditure Committee, and other members of the committee for the work that they’ve done.

The member who asked the question will be well aware that in the statements we’ve been looking at and the forecasts going ahead in them, our Government spending as a percentage of GDP trends down over the forecast period and ends up at around about the long-run average of 30 percent.

Clearly the period of time, in particular the financial statements that end on 30 June 2022 that are the focus of this particular hearing, covered a period in which there was significant expenditure on behalf of the Crown. For the record, for one of many, many times that I’ve said it, I stand by the fact that New Zealand needed to move hard and early against COVID-19; I stand by the fact that we made our priorities cash flow and confidence. Many times over the course of the last few years, I have met New Zealanders who were in receipt of the support of the Government through COVID-19, from businesses through to individuals who credit the fact that they got that support for their business still being able to operate or for the fact that their friends and family are still with us today.

I accept that the Government has had to spend more in recent times than we might have otherwise. I would note that is a relatively similar percentage, as a percentage of GDP, to that which previous Governments have spent in the wake of, for example, the Canterbury earthquakes or the global financial crisis. It is a reality that when a rainy day arrives, the Government comes along and puts up the umbrella; that is the purpose of the way in which Governments work, but clearly the Government has a plan to see Government spending reduce. Not only is that reflected in the percentages of GDP but it is also reflected in the commentary within recent work by both the Reserve Bank and the Treasury that indicate that, actually, the Government’s fiscal stance is a contractionary one, and so going forward from here we will be reducing that spending, whilst always keeping a balance to make sure that we do look after people with the spending that we do.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): None the less, the reality is that, in the period under review, Government spending had increased significantly, up from $108 billion in the 2020-21 year, to $126 billion in the 2021-22 year. Now, this comes also in the context of increasing Government expenditure for every year this administration has been in power, such that New Zealand will be spending $1 billion more every week compared to when the Government came to office.

So, against that backdrop, I want to turn now to the concerns of the Controller and Auditor-General, and the Minister of Finance will recall that in this same debate a year ago I put to you the serious concerns that the Auditor-General had raised about the quality of information and reporting about the sheer volume of Government expenditure. He noted, for example, that with the cost of living payment, the significant “impact of prioritising speed and expediency over accuracy and quality.” The Minister will recall that payment ended up seeing that millions of dollars went to well-paid New Zealanders overseas and, again, millions of dollars went to households with very high incomes.

But the Auditor-General has again stated—and I think that these concerns have become more and more elevated—that he is simply “not getting the information that allows us to understand the performance of the Government at multiple levels or that enables Parliament and the public to hold Government to account for that performance.” My concern is simple; it is, when we have such a huge increase in Government spending, such that New Zealanders are being taxed at a higher rate than ever, fuelling very elevated levels of spending relative to the size of our economy, what has the Minister of Finance done to ensure that New Zealanders are getting performance and good outcomes from that spending? We need a little bit more than the wellbeing framework. As a relatively senior public servant raised with me the other day, the wellbeing framework—yes, it relates to which Budget bids might come through the Treasury process, but there is almost nothing done to then report on which of those initiatives actually had medium to long term impact that measured up with what was promised in the first place.

It has been a theme of this Government that there are big promises made—whether it’s about mental health or KiwiBuild—and the spending fires out the door but we don’t see the delivery at the other end.

So two points there for the Minister of Finance to address. First, have you done anything about the Auditor-General’s increasing alarm—and I note in particular the letter written to the Finance and Expenditure Committee in November last year, raising and escalating these concerns yet again. What’s the Government doing about it? And second, how can New Zealanders be confident that we are getting value for every dollar the Government takes from their back pocket?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for raising this matter and, as the committee is aware, and the Auditor-General and Treasury are very well aware, there are ongoing conversations about this. I share many of both the member’s concerns and the Auditor-General’s concerns about the way in which parliamentarians and the general public get the information that they need about programme- and project-level spending within the Government system. I’m conscious of the time so I won’t go too far back into history, but the reforms that were made that created the Public Finance Act did create the appropriation structure, which is, in fact, what’s guiding the very debate that we’re having. That appropriation structure, by design, aggregates up, and the Treasury in particular operates at that aggregated level.

It is clear that over recent times, all of us are frustrated that perhaps we don’t get as much information as we should beneath that aggregated level. The actual exercise of annual reviews and estimates is the opportunity for Parliament—through the select committees, supported by the Auditor-General—to actually go through at a much more granular level what’s happening and undertake that deeper examination. So that would be my first response, and I continue to believe that is an important role for select committees, and one that I know the Auditor-General supports—and one where there could be changes and enhancements, where, in fact, select committees decide rather than looking across the Vote to actually look very specifically at programmes or projects within the Vote as their focus for a particular annual review or estimates process.

I think that would be important. It would require—and I’m not having a go at the Opposition because we certainly did this when we were in Opposition as well—quite a different approach to the actual hearings because they tend to be a bit more political theatre than they do substantive examination. But there could be a way that, you know, both could be created within it. So on that point, I think there is some work to do.

To specifically answer the member’s question about what’s happened, the Treasury’s been working closely with the Office of the Auditor-General around the concerns about transparency and traceability of performance reporting provided to Parliament. A number of initiatives have been undertaken. Firstly, we do produce a wellbeing report; this is to partly answer the second part of the member’s question about how the wellbeing budgeting process can support better examination of the success of our work. Obviously during this period of time we had the COVID Response and Recovery Fund, and specifically in response to that we have now much more regular and more detailed reporting of expenditure within that fund, below the broad appropriation level. That is a big change; it’s required and it’s highlighted the system changes that are required to be able to draw that information out from agencies and put it up so that it can be understood.

Also, with respect to COVID, I highlighted another issue which we have to resolve—and I believe is resolvable—but, for example, some of what we funded in COVID, for example providing devices to schoolchildren when schools were closed during COVID, actually added to an existing appropriation. So disaggregating out the COVID bit of that funding from the rest of that funding was quite challenging. So that’s the kind of thing that we have been continuing to work on.

We are now working with the Office of the Auditor-General on developing options for improving the content of Estimates to make sure that, within the structures that we’ve got, we are getting better information. As I say, that could lead to, I think, far better discussions at select committee. We are looking through key initiatives for Budget 2023 to provide better performance indicators alongside those. That is something, of course, that’s driven by agencies so we have to get alongside the agencies, but we are looking to do that, particularly for key initiatives in Budget 2023. We have started to scope options for approving reporting below appropriation level, including benefits, costs, and implementation requirements of such options. As I said, we’ve already made the changes around the COVID Response and Recovery Fund, and we’re looking to see how we can take that and use that in other similar types of funds. As I say, we’ve already published that reporting on the COVID fund.

I have continued to reinforce with my colleagues the importance of their work in, alongside their agencies, being transparent—providing information about implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and performance reporting, and they are well aware of that. I continue to work on things like the cluster approach and so on, which focuses much more on outcomes than it does on the individual agencies and the work that they’ve done. We will continue to work with the Office of Auditor-General.

I also would note, at this point, the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the work that he has been doing in this space. I would say the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has been doing some excellent work in this space around environmental reporting and understanding the extent to which we know what we’re getting in that space. That very specifically relates to the member’s second question around how we know more about what wellbeing does. Again, I agree with her, it’s a new thing. We’ve brought it in; we are obliged to be able to report on it. We report on that through the wellbeing report, but what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has highlighted is that we can drill down into what were called the Four Capitals, to be able to say a lot more about what we’re investing in there and what we’re getting for that. He’s provided some very constructive suggestions in that regard, which we’re working on.

Then finally, in answer to the second of the member’s questions, I would refer her to the detail of the wellbeing report that Treasury have published. It actually does give some really interesting information and links up across the indicators that we use within the Living Standards Framework for whether the things that we’re doing are contributing to overall wellbeing. We can continue to refine that report—I think we should—but we have made a start on all of the matters that the member’s raised.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d like to take the Minister up on an answer he gave earlier where he said that Government spending as a share of the economy, as a percentage of GDP, is high now—it’s about 35 percent in this forecast period—but it will return to the long-term average of around 30. And I’d like to challenge that because, while it was high after the Canterbury earthquakes, for the five years or so pre-COVID, it was actually 27 or 28 percent of GDP. Now 35, it’s going to be 32 next year and there’s no COVID, and it’s going to be 31 in 2027 when COVID, we hope, is a distant memory.

So I question the Minister’s claim that he is going to return spending to normal levels. He seems to have established it at disaster levels on a permanent basis, several percentage points of GDP higher than what it is in good times normally. And I want to ask where some of that money is going because I’ve drilled down into some of the reports, and this report that we’re talking about. I look at healthcare expenses: pre-COVID, 2019, $18 billion spent on healthcare in 2019. During the height of COVID, $27.8 billion. Next year, 2023, the year after we’re debating, it’s going to be $28.8 billion. Now, at what point do we stop blaming COVID, and how do you increase healthcare expenditure by $10 billion, and yet the waiting lists get longer, the nurses and doctors get more dissatisfied. I wonder if the Minister doesn’t think it may have been a mistake to try and restructure the healthcare system in the middle of a pandemic.

I also want to ask the same question about education. Again, pre-COVID, it was about $14 billion a year. Then we get to 2023, up to $18.7 billion. So, you know, they’ve put up—well, maths is not strong in this country thanks to education, but they put up expenditure by 30 percent in a few years. That can’t all be for buying laptops for kids in COVID. And yet somehow we have teachers on strike, attendance rates dropping, parents noticed that this month, due to the strange kaleidoscope of holidays, kids are barely going to school in April, and yet somehow the Minister has managed to put another $4 billion in.

So I ask the Minister of Finance: you say that you’re returning spending to normal levels—I don’t think that’s true. I think normal levels are 28, 29 percent of GDP, you’re getting it down to 31 in five years if you’re lucky. And I wonder where all that extra money goes, because a percent of GDP is a lot of money, $10 billion extra on healthcare is a lot of money, four billion extra on education is a lot of money. And I don’t think New Zealanders mind paying taxes if they’re getting value for money. But how do you show that you’re getting value for money for these billions of additional taxes that you’re taking from people? How can people be sure that it’s money well spent when they look at health and education today?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Well, obviously the percentage numbers are the percentage numbers. I understand the point that the member’s making that 31 is higher than 27—30 is higher than 27. My point would be that the long-run average for New Zealand is around 30 percent. I happen to believe that when we were down at those levels of 26, 27 percent, which we were at times under the previous National Government, that is the reason why our health system found itself in trouble, because we weren’t putting adequate resources into some of those areas.

So while I absolutely support and commit to reducing the level of Government spending down, two things: firstly, I’m not going to do it on a dime, because that is the kind of austerity approach that has caused significant issues in other countries around the world. We are reducing it down in a responsible manner while still supporting the provision of the public services that New Zealanders need and deserve.

Secondly, I would say to the member that, yeah, if we were to get it down to the levels that I know the member prefers, I believe that ultimately means that we can’t run the kinds of public services that we need. So it’s a fine balance. We’ve always got to be looking for ways in which we can be more effective, more efficient with our spending. But the fact that we’ve increased health spending is a result of the fact that we are coming from way behind when it comes to where our health system was when we came into Government, and, you know, the kinds of expenditure we put in place has allowed us to employ significantly more nurses, has allowed us to employ significantly more doctors. It means that there are significantly more people getting mental health consultations in primary care—

Andrew Bayly: Oh, cut it out.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, they are, Mr Bayly—getting more consultations in primary care. It’s the reason why we can invest in paying teachers more when it comes to the education budget that the Minister has raised. So these things do cost money, making sure that we provide the quality of services that New Zealanders need is important to me, but we will strike a balance. We will continue to see the emergency COVID expenditure come out of our Budget, and we will be closer to that long-run average of 30 percent of GDP. But I’m not going to do it in a way that has the hallmarks of austerity and all of the collateral social damage that causes.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Does the Minister accept what the Reserve Bank Governor has said: “Monetary policy needs friends.”? So, yes, there might be collateral damage if he was to reduce expenditure, but the Reserve Bank having to put up people’s mortgages because he keeps spending is doing exactly the same thing. Does he accept the complementarity between the monetary policy of the Reserve Bank and the policy that he has in place?

On a technical note, the Minister is trying to claim the long-run average of New Zealand’s Government expenditure is 30 percent. That may be true if he counts the bad times—if he counts the global financial crisis, if he counts the Canterbury earthquakes, if he counts the COVID period. However, what is the long-run average in good times, and when do we get back to that? I don’t think it’s 30 percent. He’s being cute with an average. We don’t want to get back to the average; we want to get back to the level of Government spending that we have when there’s not a crisis on, and that is closer to 27 or 28 percent, not 30 percent and certainly not 31, 32, or 35. This Government is spending too much, and he can’t say what we’re getting back in return. He said we’re getting more mental health sessions—is he for real? He said teachers are happy they’re being paid more. Really? Nurses? I mean, if I was in Government, I don’t think I’d bring up those things right now.

But I want to bring up something the Minister said about COVID. He said it was the cost of COVID and everybody is happy that they got given money by the Government—of course they are. Does the Minister know anyone who’s not happy to be given money for free? The question is: was it necessary to spend that money? Yes, it was. Why? Because the Government shut them down. My question is: does he believe, as the Minister of Finance, that New Zealand made the right choices? For example, there was a long period through the end of 2021, the start of 2022, when the borders were shut, people had to go on the misery of human lottery and try and get a managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) space, and yet if a person actually had COVID, they were allowed to isolate at home. So if you had a negative test overseas and flew to New Zealand, you had to go into MIQ—if you could get a space—but people that were testing positive and actually had it, they could isolate at home; just not people returning home. There was a period where people could use rapid antigen tests but the Government actively banned them and then it confiscated them off the people that had imported them. All of this is in the period that the select committee is reporting on, from the 2021-22 financial statements.

I just wonder if the Minister doesn’t think if only we had ordered the vaccines a little earlier and got the roll-out done, if we’d asked GPs and pharmacies to be part of it earlier, if we’d been able to not lock Auckland down for three months at the end of 2021, then perhaps not so much expenditure would’ve been necessary.

So we accept what the Minister says, given the Government shut the country down, shut the border, made Aucklanders stay home, banned us from going to Whangārei—at one point, the Prime Minister of New Zealand even said, “You can go round to your neighbour’s house and sit in the garden, but you’re not allowed to use their toilet.” I mean, it’s difficult to take yourself back there, but that’s where we were. Does the Minister think that perhaps, maybe, if it wasn’t for the Government’s overly stringent and ineffective management of COVID, which had very little health benefit, then maybe he wouldn’t have had to borrow and spend so much money and maybe there wouldn’t be so much inflation, there wouldn’t be so much debt—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Maybe more people would be dead.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —and maybe New Zealanders would be in a much better space. Chlöe Swarbrick says, “Maybe more people would be dead.” Well, Chlöe Swarbrick, answer this—

Hon Julie Anne Genter: It’s not “maybe”; it’s a fact.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh, I’m very sorry, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. So Julie Anne Genter is heckling here—Julie Anne Genter, tell me: how would it have helped to make people stay out—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Seymour, could you direct your questions towards the Minister, please.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah, no, fair enough—fair enough.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): It’s good to have a conversation down the back, but we’d like to be part of it.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah, no, that’s OK, Mr Chair. I was bluffing—she doesn’t know the answer anyway.

But I leave the question to the Minister: does he believe that the Government’s COVID response—its lockdowns, its slow vaccine roll-out, its ban on rapid antigen tests, its insistence on MIQ when people with COVID could isolate at home, its Auckland lockdown. Does he really think that all of those things were justified as the reason why he’s had to borrow so much money and people now face so much inflation? Because all those people seeing their interest rates going up because he’s spending so much, all those people seeing their prices go up, all those people watching job losses starting to mount, they might be forgiven for asking themselves, “Maybe the Minister’s right that he had to borrow so much money because the Government policies locked down businesses, but was it right that the Government policy locked down those businesses, or are there possibly ways that we could’ve kept safe in a much smarter way and not be so indebted and inflated now?”

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first of the questions that the member put to me around the question of monetary and fiscal policy needing to be friends, absolutely agree with that. I point the member to statements both within the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update and statements made in Monetary Policy Statements by the Reserve Bank that they see the Government’s stance as supportive of them. We have a contractionary fiscal stance outlined in the financial statements that are the subject of this debate; that has been recognised. I can’t recall verbatim, but bits of the Reserve Bank Governor’s evidence that he gave in front of the Finance and Expenditure Committee where he was asked this direct question—he said that fiscal and monetary policy were working together, as they did during COVID, I might say, but also as they are doing now. So I do believe, by actions that we have taken, the results that are in front of us, and statements that others have made, that we continue to understand both the differences between monetary and fiscal policy and the fact that they are and should be friends.

In answer to the second set of comments, questions, that the member put to me around COVID, can I say once again I am extremely proud of the record of this Government through the COVID-19 pandemic. Around the world, we saw countries where thousands and thousands of people were dying, where they were needing to put up emergency morgues all around. I can recall talking to friends and relatives in the United States, one of whom was staring out their window at the temporary morgue set up in the car park where thousands of people were going because they were dying. Mr Seymour, what we did saved tens of thousands of lives. You might not think that’s important, Mr Seymour; I do.

Alongside that, we know that the actions that we took also saved thousands of businesses, Mr Seymour, and I’m interested to see now that the National Party has joined with the ACT Party in deciding that it’s all, in hindsight, wrong, that we shouldn’t have put the money and the resources. Mr Bayly used to ask me to put more money in to make sure that we did more for businesses in the COVID period. I am proud of what we did. It saved lives; it saved livelihoods.

It was also a pandemic where every Government in the world was operating without a playbook, where we went into this not knowing what was going to happen. So was every single decision that we took at every moment perfect? No, it wasn’t, Mr Seymour, but, in total, did it save thousands of lives? Yes, it did. And did it save businesses? Yes, it did, Mr Seymour.

Mr Seymour, I think it’s interesting today that you’ve taken the stance that you have here, and I’m going to offer you something, Mr Seymour, because it was extremely hard governing through COVID. I think if you talk to any leader in the world, the kinds of life and death decisions that needed to be made, the kind of support that needed to be provided, the kind of understanding to predict the future when we didn’t have the modelling, all of that was extremely challenging work. I wonder whether Mr Seymour might want to reflect on the comments that he has made today, or have been reported today, where he described Jacinda Ardern as being too dumb to be the Prime Minister. That’s the kind of man you are, Mr Seymour, and I don’t want to give you any more airtime.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): A point of order, Mr Chairperson. I’d just like to first of all point out that Grant Robertson’s imputation that we don’t care if people die is not found anywhere in anything I said; in fact, the opposite. Second of all, while—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Well, Mr Seymour, that will be a matter for those listening to make up their minds. Secondly?

DAVID SEYMOUR: Second of all, I actually said that she was too dumb to participate in a global conspiracy, and it’s wrong for the finance Minister to mislead people about my comments.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): That’s not a point of order.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): Mr Chair, if I may bring this debate back to the annual reviews. So we, of course, are looking at matters of monetary and fiscal policy here. For those who are following along at home, what we are talking about when we talk about monetary policy is, of course, of the refrain of the Reserve Bank, our central bank which, primarily, has the ability to use the leverage of the official cash rate (OCR). But, as we saw, and as has been discussed plentifully throughout this debate this afternoon, there has also been substantive utilisation of what is called unconventional monetary policy, particularly large-scale asset purchases and funding for lending. As the Minister himself was just outlining, he believes that this worked kind of hand in glove, or at the very least collaboratively, with what is called fiscal policy—that is, what the Government does: that is, taxing and spending, something that Governments of all stripes, by the way, undertake.

So as we’ve heard from members of the Opposition, obviously what we’re facing at present is inflation—quite high inflation. And we’re hearing from members of the Opposition that that inflation is apparently hitting everybody equally. They are characterising this as a cost of living crisis. However, if we dig in to these annual reviews—and members of the public, if they would like to, can go on to Parliament’s website and look it up themselves—what we see is that inflation is not in fact hitting everybody equally. And that’s because, of course, the baseline fact, Mr Bayly, is that those who are on lower incomes have to spend more of that income on essentials and therefore are paying those higher costs disproportionately. We also see, as reflected here, that in fact throughout the 2021 to 2022 period, the corporate tax revenue increased by 26.2 percent—that is, to a tune of $4.1 billion. That means that economic activity as benefiting those companies was of course in a fortuitous direction. However, as we also see reflected in that same annual review, household debt levels are trending upwards.

And here I would like to reflect on the sentiments that the Minister himself stated at committee, but also as reflected in the annual review, that of course there is an inherent relationship here with Government spending and Government debt levels. To that effect, he himself drew attention to the fact that there are three groups who are facing particular financial pressure at the moment. Those, firstly, who purchased homes in 2021, 2022; secondly, those who are refixing their mortgages at higher interest rates; and, thirdly, those on low incomes.

I just really want to go to that point of those on low incomes in that third group, because, as also is reflected in this annual review, we can see that debt levels for beneficiaries are in excess of $2 billion—at historic levels. The Minister said at that review hearing that he would need to do more analysis on the matter by examining beneficiary debt within the 2021-2022 financial year. That’s at page 6 of these annual reviews. So a question for the Minister in a minute, when he responds to this call—because the Greens only have five minutes in this debate—is whether he has done that analysis on beneficiary debt and the impact of Government fiscal policy decisions particularly, and not potentially supporting lower-income New Zealanders as much as they perhaps should have been.

The second part that I’d really like to highlight here is that while not necessarily inherently contained within the annual reviews debate, it was of course raised at the Monetary Policy Statement hearing with the Reserve Bank, where the Governor said in response to my questions that the Reserve Bank was undertaking or in fact seeking to engineer a recession. Now, while we’ve been talking about how the impacts of, particularly, the disproportionate overreliance on unconventional monetary policy has resulted in deepening inequality in this country—which is not a natural phenomena; it is a political decision because of the way that it works hand-in-glove with fiscal policy—what we are also seeing here is the Reserve Bank, in utilising monetary policy, particularly the OCR, go about manufacturing this recession. We know that recessions disproportionately also impact lowest-income New Zealanders. So to that question, I really would like the Minister to answer how he seeks to support lowest-income New Zealanders who are hit hardest and worst by that COVID economic response, which, notably, we tried for over a year to try and get a Finance and Expenditure Committee inquiry into—it was blocked by Labour majority. But now, none the less, the Government is progressing with it.

But also, secondly, how is it that he will go about supporting and preventing lowest-income New Zealanders from disproportionately bearing the brunt of the harm that comes with those recessionary headwinds?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for using her time well during that question. In answer to the very specific question of debt, there is a Government programme of work on that. We haven’t completed it, but there is a programme of work around, particularly, the debt held by beneficiaries to the Government so that we can understand that more. I’m not leading that work, but it is under way but not completed—to the member’s specific question.

In terms, more broadly—it’s material we have covered a few times, but there is a reason why the Government has invested significantly in lifting the incomes of those on main benefits, those receiving Working for Families, those who receive superannuation, students, and so on. It is because we do recognise that there’s been a very significant impact there. That’s why we increased benefits in 2020, 2021, and 2022. I respect the fact that the member has a view around the scale of that, but it is a recognition from us that actually, yes, during a time of crisis like this, it is certainly true that fiscal policy should be used to support those on the lowest incomes.

With respect to the member’s second question, I’m not responsible for the comments of the Reserve Bank Governor. The perspective I have on that is it is the Reserve Bank’s job to reduce inflation back down to the target band of 1 to 3 percent. They have a tool which they use to do that, the official cash rate, and that is the tool that they have and that they have utilised. So it is their job in that sense, when they see what they determine to be an overheated economy, that they act in the way that they do.

My perspective is that fiscal policy, as I’ve noted before to Mr Seymour, needs to be friends with monetary policy, but also acts sometimes to be able to target our support to those people who need it the most. And so while I understand the member was there in the exchange that occurred, I’m clear on what I believe to be the Reserve Bank’s job. They are doing that job to return inflation to 1 to 3 percent. Fiscal policy will work alongside that, but we will always seek to look after the lowest income New Zealanders.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Well, there’s a bit that’s come up in the debate already, but I am very impressed with the Minister of Finance’s ability to bluff it out brazenly. Some of his comments—particularly, I just want to return to the comment about how the quality of spend has been so fantastic and delivered so much. I just think to myself—you know, I’m sitting here listening to him: “$5 billion extra in education”, and what have we got out of that? Well, half our kids are not going to school, and, of course, the exam results that they’re delivering—well, let’s not go there. I’m sure that the standard of education wasn’t as good as when the Minister was at school.

Then I think about the health spending, and, of course, billions have gone into that. And, of course, we’ve got 80,000 extra people on the waiting lists. We’ve got the ticking time bomb of many people who do not know that they’ve got illnesses—particularly women—and all those sort of things, and yet the Minister just said before how much more was being delivered for New Zealanders. I’d think that is a long-running dispute, because many New Zealanders are not seeing that.

The second thing: I just want to get back to the earlier debate, and the Minister is very good at using monetary values and percentages when he’s ready to use them. Of course, in terms of spending, which is, of course, what we’re talking about here, core Crown expenses are projected to increase in monetary value. They will go from $126 billion to about $150 billion over the next five, six years. Of course, from a percentage term, it looks like there’s a decrease. And, of course, we all know what that’s about, and that’s not because Government expenditure is decreasing; it is increasing in monetary value. If I said to Mr Robertson, “Would you like $125 billion to spend or would you like $150 billion to spend?”, I know what the answer would be for Mr Robertson.

But what is happening, partly through inflation, of course—because that’s what’s driving a lot of this issue—is that the economy grows and the GDP is growing—some of it counter to all the efforts of the Government to try and stilt that with small businesses, because they’ve thrust so much additional costs on them. So I just want to make that point. But the Government spend is still increasing in monetary terms.

The exact quote, or one of the quotes, from Adrian Orr, the Reserve Bank Governor, which is, actually, just slightly different from what the Minister said before, is “Reprioritisation of current spending and revenue arising through other alternatives makes the job of monetary policy easier”—i.e., for the Reserve Bank—“because it is redirecting current income rather than creating new cash in the economy.” Read into that last bit: creating inflation. And, of course, Mr Adrian Orr was quite clear in at least two of the hearings before the Finance and Expenditure Committee that fiscal policy—i.e., the policy run by the Minister of Finance—was contributing significantly to his job of taming inflation; that is why we’ve got such rapid rises on inflation.

Need I remind you that only in 2021 the official cash rate was at 0.25 percent and here we are at 4.75 percent and highly likely to be at 5 percent tomorrow. For every percent increase in debt—and the average value of New Zealand debt is about $487,000 per house—that equates to $5,000, or over that period roughly $20,000 of additional spending—so that’s $30,000 pre-tax—that households have got to find to pay their debt, pay their interest on their mortgages.

Of course, I now turn to the Mind Your Own Business summary that came out yesterday. What we’re seeing now is the dangerous impact on both households and on small businesses. And just for Chlöe Swarbrick’s benefit, financial hardship is now up 60 percent for people making house loan repayments—that’s part of it—but for small businesses we have now got 30 percent of businesses who have got less than six months, if current interest rates stay where they are. And, actually, one in five—19 percent—businesses are saying if the interest rates continue to go up, they will need to close their business. That is a result of that Minister, the Minister of Finance.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): It would be remiss of me, given that the Minister raised the topic of students, to not put this to him. So does the Minister then agree with this quote from former Otago University Students’ Association president, who then went on to become president of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) in 1996—of course, named Grant Robertson—who said, and I quote, “Only 37 percent of full-time students get any kind of allowance. The main culprit here is the National Government’s absurd means-testing programme.”? And, if he does, then is he not blown away by the fact that while he—or, the president of NZUSA—back in 1996 was frustrated at only 37 percent of students getting access to the student allowance, it’s now even fewer at just 27 percent, and, in fact, his majority Government keeps in place that exact same means-testing rule that he was frustrated about over 10, 20 years ago?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): It’s a lot more than 20 years ago, I can tell the member! Look, that idealistic, better-looking man back in 1996 certainly was making some interesting and quite good points. Look, in all seriousness, I do think that over the course of the time that we’ve been in Government, we have attempted to improve significantly the lot of tertiary students. In particular, if I even go back a little further to the time between when those comments were made and now, we have got significant resources invested in things like the interest-free student loan programme and making sure that we do support students through a number of different means. But, in the end, when it came to this particular term of Government, we prioritised not only keeping our fees-free programme—which, of course, also didn’t exist in those days—but actually re-orientating some of the expenditure that would have been spent more in that area, around apprenticeships.

I stand by that decision, because I think what the 1996 version of me perhaps didn’t have in my head was the importance of us investing across the whole trade training space, as well as within universities and other degree programme providers—we’ve got to get that balance right. We’ve put a significant amount of resources into supporting apprenticeships: we’ve got over 200,000 people who have benefitted from either free trade training or free apprenticeships, so we have redirected some of that money. We continue to look for ways that we can support students, most recently with the increases on 1 April to loan and living cost requirements, and we will keep continuing to do that as resources allow.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. I just had a few questions for the Minister, particularly focused on infrastructure spending priorities. Now that a much greater share of transport infrastructure is being funded by Crown funding and not the National Land Transport Fund, I would expect the Minister of Finance to have even more an interest in the economic case for infrastructure investments.

We’ve seen a number of projects that have been announced or are being worked on by the Government, like projects in the New Zealand Upgrade Programme, totally Crown funded; the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme options and preferred options; and now Auckland harbour crossing and Auckland Light Rail.

In many of these cases, where there are public benefit-cost ratios, which represent the ratio between the overall expected wider socio-economic benefits of the project and the costs, many of them fall to well below 1. At the same time, we’ve seen the Government has received a business case for the Lower North Island regional trains, which has a benefit-cost ratio of over 1. They’re requesting, most recently, $350 million—I accept that might have increased a bit—but it’s a very small amount of money compared to what’s being spent on projects in the New Zealand Upgrade Programme or that is proposed for some of these larger programmes in Auckland and Wellington.

I’m just wondering, is the Government committed to investing in projects that have a good return on investment, and will the Government be resourcing the Infrastructure Commission to do the work on an infrastructure priorities list that could help improve the business case process, the optioneering process, and maybe improve the overall public debate on where we should be spending money in order to make it easier for people and goods to move around the country at lower cost but also at lower carbon cost?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member very much for her question and acknowledge the work that she’s done in this area, both before coming into Parliament and in Parliament.

It is an area where I think—the phrase you used around “business case” has triggered me, because it is one of the areas where I think we can do much better. I think that’s probably acknowledged across the infrastructure system as well that in an effort to make sure that we are considering options, we are considering all costs, lifetime costs, and that we are making sure that we are driving value for money. I suspect we’ve overburdened the system when it comes to business cases. So that is an issue that I share with the member as something that I think we can do a bit better on. We still need to make sure that we go through the proper analysis, we consider the options, but I think that there are ways that we could do that better. I know that Te Waihanga, the Infrastructure Commission, does also consider those matters as well.

In answer to the question she raised about the priority list, yes. The Infrastructure Commission, having produced what I regard as a very good document, the infrastructure strategy, they have a Government response to that. Part of that then flows on to how we get a priorities list. It will be extremely hard, but something that I would like to think we could do, and that that could have a level support across Parliament and across our society so that we all understand where we’re going.

What I can say to the member is that the infrastructure strategy highlights very much the issues that she raises around carbon emissions and around the importance of the infrastructure projects that we now do, understanding their impact on emissions and being able to do them in a way that helps reduce emissions for us.

The member raised the specific issue about benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) and the harbour crossing. When I was answering on behalf of the Minister of Transport to her the other day, one thing I didn’t quite get to say was the fact that obviously, when we’re looking at BCRs for the options there, we’re working on ones that were from last year rather than ones from this year. I guess that points to the fact that BCRs can change as a process goes forward and goes through.

In terms of the broader comments that the member is making, I support the fact that our infrastructure needs to be efficient and effective, but also, at the same time, support our emissions reductions goals. We’ve invested significantly as a Government in public transport and in rail, and we will continue to do so.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): I was particularly struck by the comment from the Minister of Finance in which he held up the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund as an example of the transparency in the way the Government spends. The Minister of Finance will acknowledge that he raided that fund for the purpose of consultants to work on three waters reform. The gap between spending money to help people through a health crisis and paying people from consultancy firms to tell the Government how to reform the governance of three waters assets could not be wider. So if that’s the Minister of Finance’s example of transparent reporting, I suggest he find a better one, because the facts are stark.

Government spending in the year we are reviewing was the highest as a proportion of GDP as it has been in at least 17 years; more in the last year than during the other COVID19 lockdown years. The question that we have asked on this side of the House is: where is the value for that spending? Because let’s think back to 2017, when Crown spending was 27.7 percent of GDP. It’s now 35 percent. In that year, the State house waiting list was at least a quarter of what it is today. There were not thousands of children sleeping in motel rooms. In fact, the health waiting lists were shorter. Here in Wellington today, if you want to go to the emergency department, well, good luck, because around two out of five times, you’ll be waiting more than six hours for care.

So my question to the Minister of Finance is this: what good is the wellbeing framework and the pages and pages of faff about how nice the intentions are, and how hard everyone’s trying, and how we’ve all wrung our hands and said we cared about it, if the result is that you’re spending so much money that we have a higher inflation rate than Australia, the US, other countries around the world that we like to compare ourselves to; that our cost of living is completely out of control; interest rates have spiked higher faster than at any point in the history of the official cash rate; and we’re not seeing the social results for it. The Minister has poured billions into Kāinga Ora, yet the State house waiting list is the longest it’s ever been in New Zealand’s history. We have literally thousands of kids in motel rooms. The hospital system is, in the words of the man who used to be in charge of it until very recently, “in crisis”. Our educational achievement has declined in real terms. Yet the Minister of Finance says, “Trust me. Look how transparent the COVID fund was. Look how well we did with all of those billions. And I’ve got a wellbeing report. So, look, it’s all going to be fine.”

Well, my question to the Minister of Finance is pretty simple: why should New Zealanders trust you to spend more of their hard-earned money, with the tax you take from them, when you have failed to date to provide the results they have a right to expect for it?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Madam Chair, thank you. Perhaps a history lesson might be helpful at this moment—in response to the member’s question—covering the period which we are assessing through these statements, and trying to answer the member’s question around the influence of Government spending on inflation. On 6 October 2021—in the period in which we are covering here—the Reserve Bank raised the official cash rate (OCR). On 21 October that year, the National Party called for a multibillion-dollar stimulus package of tax cuts and more spending, including increasing the wage subsidy, which would have cost $70-80 million a week; continuing the wage subsidy further, which would have cost another $70-80 million a week; implementing rental support for small businesses, which would have cost $100-180 million a week; and extending the loss carry back by $100 million per year.

Nicola Willis: What’s this got to do with your financial accounts?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What this has got to do with it is that the question that the member asked me was about the role of one of them—her question was about the role of Government spending in increasing inflation. The point I’m making to the member is that had we followed her prescription in the period that was being covered—

Nicola Willis: It wasn’t my prescription.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member says it wasn’t her prescription. Well, it was certainly the National Party’s prescription. In the period that the member is concerned about, they were looking for a multibillion-dollar stimulus package of tax cuts and spending.

So if the member thinks that it’s Government spending that increases inflation, imagine what would have happened if we had followed on from the member. I might say that the National Party carried that on—after the November OCR increase, Christopher Luxon called for more stimulus. After the February 2022 OCR increase—also covered in this period that we’re looking at here—the Reserve Bank raised the OCR for the third time. And National’s response? An $11 billion tax cut policy that would have exacerbated inflation even more.

Nicola Willis: Point of order, Madam Chair. Look, the Minister of Finance has used his floor in the House to misrepresent National’s position in tax policy. The number he has used to characterise our tax policy is, I think, false. I don’t want to accuse him of misleading the committee wilfully, but I do want to give him the opportunity to withdraw that characterisation.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Madam Chair, am I back on? No, it was an $11 billion tax cut policy announced on 6 March 2022. It included increasing tax thresholds by 11.5 percent; removing the 39 percent tax rate—the top tax rate; restoring the property investor interest deductions; repealing loss ring-fencing and returning the brightline test to two years: $11 billion estimated at the time.

Nicola Willis: Ring-fencing is not even in our policy.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: But it was; it was in the policy that you announced on 6 March 2022. Anyway, regardless of whether we want to debate whether it was $11 billion or $10 billion or $9 billion, the point is that the kinds of things the member has been proposing would have exacerbated inflation even more than the necessary spending that we had to do when it came to COVID.

I am proud of the Government’s record in this regard. I think that the Government has done as good a job as almost any other Government around the world in the face of COVID. The member might like to join Mr Seymour in the pursuit of a PhD in “Hindsight Economics”. That is not actually what it means when you have to govern. When you have to govern, you have to govern in the here and now.

Sometimes, we don’t get every decision right. But overall, what the Government did during that period, I believe, was invest to support New Zealanders to stay in jobs, to support New Zealanders to say well and healthy. When I look at that, and compare that to the rest of the world, I believe that we have a record that we can be proud of.

CAMILLA BELICH (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the committee report progress on this bill.

Hon Members: Madam Chair? Madam Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): If I could just explain, the Business Committee has already made a ruling that the time for this debate is only one hour. That one hour is now over at 4.23.

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

Ayes 74

New Zealand Labour 64; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Noes 46

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I will report progress on this bill, but if I can also say that the decision to have just one hour was made in the Business Committee, which all parties agreed to, so it was a bit unnecessary to take a vote on this.

Progress to be reported.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Appropriation (2021/22 Confirmation and Validation) Bill, and reports progress. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Bills

Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill

First Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister for Sport and Recreation): I present a legislative statement on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill.

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I move, That the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill, and at the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 10 August 2023.

It is a great honour to be able to bring this bill to the House. It is the end result of a significant amount of work in the sport and recreation sector over the last few years, and I want to pay a special acknowledgment to all of those who have been involved in that work—in particular, the Play, Active Recreation and Sport Integrity Working Group. That working group has spent a lot of time over the last couple of years consulting widely across New Zealand to be able to come up with the recommendations that are what fills up this piece of legislation today, and I want to thank them for their work, and the transition group that has also been working most recently and those who will continue to support us in this important endeavour.

Participating and competing in sport and recreation is fundamental to the wellbeing of New Zealanders. From grassroots to the elite level, sport and recreation positively impacts health and wellbeing, it strengthens our social connections in our communities, and it is an expression of cultural and personal identity. For children and young people in particular, physical activity is essential to wellbeing and development, and as we all watch our elite athletes compete on the world stage, it’s also an immense source of pride for New Zealanders and also one that draws our communities together.

But the benefits of sport and recreation are only truly realised if those activities are safe, inclusive, and fair. Both here in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world, reviews of sport and recreation environments have shown that more needs to be done to protect athletes and participants at all levels from harm and to ensure a level playing field. Athletes at all levels have spoken up about how difficult and isolating it can be to raise integrity issues. This can be exacerbated by complex processes which lack transparency and independence.

In New Zealand in recent times, we have seen, sadly, a number of sports where reviews have needed to be undertaken into areas such as athlete welfare, bullying, abuse, and inappropriate behaviour. All of these are regrettable, but it has been across a number of sports and also, sadly, not just at the elite level. We have also seen inquiries undertaken where there have been concerns about bullying and abuse at grassroots sports level as well. We need to do better to ensure that our people can participate but also, in doing so, ensure that they are treated fairly and they are kept safe.

The bill in front of us today will help protect the wellbeing of participants and the fairness of competition by establishing a new independent Crown entity, the Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission, to lead a strengthened and more participant-focused integrity system for the sport and recreation sector. The commission’s independence is important. This was raised with us numerous times over the consultation period. While I applaud the work that Sport New Zealand, High Performance Sport New Zealand, and other sporting organisations do to support athlete wellbeing, it is clear that for athletes and participants to be able to raise integrity issues without fear that their funding selection or participation will be impacted, we need an independent body. Integrity in the context of this Act refers to how we keep sport safe and recreation safe, fair, and inclusive for all New Zealanders.

To that end, the bill empowers the commission to target behaviours and practices that threaten integrity, including competition manipulation and match fixing, the use of prohibited substances and doping methods, bullying, abuse, harassment, sexual misconduct, violence, intimidation, racism and other discrimination, and the failure to safeguard children. The use of prohibited substances and doping methods in sports will be addressed through the current sports anti-doping regime, which gives effect to New Zealand’s obligations under the World Anti-Doping Code. All other threats to integrity will be addressed through a new integrity framework introduced in this bill. The commission will have a comprehensive role to provide education, advice, and independent dispute resolution processes to set integrity standards for the sector, and to investigate and resolve integrity issues.

The commission will also become New Zealand’s national anti-doping organisation, taking on the functions of Drug Free Sport New Zealand, and will be responsible for ensuring we continue to meet our obligations under the World Anti-Doping Code. The bill disestablishes Drug Free Sport New Zealand and transfers its powers and functions to the new commission. I want to ensure that the anti-doping regime can continue uninterrupted during this transition and that the commission retains the expertise and knowledge that currently sits within Drug Free Sport New Zealand.

I want to make a special point of noting the excellent work done by Drug Free Sport New Zealand, and the approach being taken in this bill in no way speaks to any concerns that we have with the operations of Drug Free Sport New Zealand. We are disestablishing it because we want it to be part of a wider integrity body, but the skills and knowledge and expertise that have been built up will be utilised and I thank Drug Free Sport New Zealand for their cooperation in the work that we have done to put this bill together.

The bill requires that the commission will have a strong Te Ao Māori capability and Māori representation on the board. This will help ensure that Māori perspectives are understood and represented at a governance level and that the commission can provide culturally appropriate services. Its processes will also need to respect human rights, promote the best interests of children, and be responsive to the needs and participation of participants, including disability needs and the needs of rainbow communities.

Currently, the quality of response participants receive varies tremendously depending on the resources and capability in their sport or activity. Grassroots organisations and administrators, who are mostly volunteers, often lack the time and expertise to prevent and resolve complex integrity matters. Organisations will still have the primary responsibility for resolving integrity issues. However, the commission will provide expert advice and support to raise the capability of the sector to deal with integrity matters. It will also provide independent pathways for resolving issues when they cannot be dealt with by the relevant organisation.

While sports doping is governed by an international framework, there is no similar approach for other broader integrity issues. Standards vary considerably across the sector, as does awareness of those standards. To address this, the bill establishes a new integrity framework. The commission will issue integrity codes that set minimum standards for conduct for participants and organisations and will prescribe the policies and processes that organisations must have to protect participants.

Like the anti-doping regime, the integrity framework will be based on sport and recreation organisations adopting an integrity code. We will take a collaborative approach to both the adoption of integrity codes and building capability. Careful consideration has been given to what protections are required for people that make a complaint or provide information to the commission. This is particularly important as athletes and other participants have told us they have been reluctant to raise issues for fear of retaliation. The bill requires the commission to keep the identity of complainants confidential, with some exceptions, including where disclosure is required to enable the investigation to proceed. Additionally, if an organisational person retaliates against a participant for making a complaint or providing information to the commission, then this will constitute a breach of an integrity code that could be sanctioned.

Importantly, the bill gives the commission powers to investigate integrity issues either in response to a complaint or on its own initiative. The commission can also investigate integrity issues involving New Zealand organisations that occur outside New Zealand, and this reflects the international nature of sport and recreation, particularly at the high-performance level. Consent and cooperation will be the preferred means of information gathering for investigations, and where information cannot be obtained by consent from the organisation the bill provides reasonable and proportionate information-gathering powers.

The bill provides that the commission can establish an independent disciplinary panel to determine and apply sanctions for the breach of an integrity code. The commission will also be able to hold organisations accountable, including through making public its findings and recommendations and requiring an organisation to take remedial action, such as making an apology or improving its processes and policies.

I expect the new integrity framework and the commission’s function and powers will be of significant interest to submitters, and I am particularly interested in hearing from submitters whether or not we are targeting the right behaviour and conduct through the definition of threats to integrity, and whether we have struck the right balance in terms of investigative and disciplinary powers for the protection of participants. Overall, I believe that this bill does respond to what we have heard time and time again from athletes: that they want their wellbeing to be upheld, that they need to be comfortable, that they are safe when they are involved in sport and recreation, and that they are involved in a fair sport and recreation system. I believe that this bill takes significant steps forwards to ensuring we achieve all of those goals, and I look forward to its passage through the House and to hearing the submissions that we get. I commend the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill to the House.

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

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Like the Minister and a vast number of New Zealanders, I am a sports nut. I absolutely love my sport, and Sunday afternoon was spent channel surfing between Melbourne’s Formula One racing event and that spectacular come-from-behind victory by the Warriors over the Sharks, and we really—

Hon David Bennett: You missed the Chiefs, mate.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, you see, we won’t get into the Chiefs. I was trying not to be too parochial by picking a sport that the House knew I wasn’t particularly enamoured with, but now that you’ve mentioned it, the Highlanders did have a cracking good win, despite their injury list.

But we also know sport is actually really big business. You know, if you think about those sports—rugby union, rugby league, and certainly Formula One—there’s a significant amount of money involved by the athletes, by the sponsors, by the organisers, and at the elite level, at least, and certainly at pre-elite and elite level. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on all of the stakeholders in sport.

In their introduction to the report of the Play, Active Recreation, and Sport Integrity Working Group, which was released nearly a year ago, there was a disturbing list of anecdotes about how that kind of pressure manifests in terms of bullying, athletes quitting, the mental health struggles of certain athletes, abuse being normalised, players being offended, humiliated, or intimidated, sexual abuse, allegations of homophobia, and sexism. Now, I think they are quite minor in their incidence, but they’re incredibly serious when they occur and they risk reputational risk for those sports and our country. But also there is a tremendous burden and pressure on those who are victims of that sort of behaviour.

Now, of course, things came to a head with the tragedy that was the death of Olivia Podmore, and the subsequent second—sadly—inquiry by Mike Heron KC into Cycling New Zealand, and I’m pleased to note that things are improving significantly and the results bear that out. But it shouldn’t come to a tragedy for us to collectively respond to the risks, to the integrity, of those sports events. So we strongly support the principle of an independent body being established to, firstly, set standards so that these things are reduced and prevented but also, if they do occur, that there is a safe, appropriate, and timely mechanism for people to have complaints investigated and to be resolved.

I personally think it’s a good idea to keep that entity separate from Sport NZ and High Performance Sport NZ. We’re a relatively small ecosystem in this country, and the perceptions of independence could be undermined if this new entity isn’t going to be wholly independent from the ecosystem that we have. I also want to associate myself with the comments of the Minister in the confidence that Drug Free Sport New Zealand has had a very, very good track record in keeping New Zealand athletes overwhelmingly clean, and preventing and detecting—sadly, we had one quite recently where there was an eight-year ban handed down to an athlete, but that’s a very rare thing in a world where competitive pressures may tempt athletes to take performance enhancing substances. They’ve done a terrific job, and it does make sense to fold Drug Free Sport New Zealand into the new entity.

There are some questions, though, that I look forward to—I hope—participating in, but certainly I have confidence that members of the Social Services and Community Committee will explore these in detail. The cost of the body is not identified in the regulatory impact statement. It talks about the overall cost—well, I’m not even sure if it’s the overall cost—of about $9.6 million, of which $5.1 million is the existing cost of running Drug Free Sport New Zealand, but it does go on to talk about additional costs which are then redacted from the regulatory impact statement. I think we do need to know what the costs of the new entity are. I’m sure that—well, I’m confident that—value for money can be established, but we are in straitened times and it’s important to make sure that those costs are fair and reasonable.

One of the unusual aspects of the bill, which was actually set out in paragraph 4.9 of the departmental disclosure statement, was on the voluntary nature of the integrity codes. They’re not going to be mandatory, and organisations then get to opt-in to these integrity codes for them to apply. I do worry about that. I think that if this is important, then there needs to be some expectation that codes, particularly at the pre-elite and elite level, do comply with them. So I think that’s something that the committee can interrogate; officials and submitters will have a view on that as well.

The third thing is that there has been some anecdotes provided to me about the draft codes and integrity body perhaps not being sufficiently robust to cover very young athletes. There are a couple of sports organisations that have highlighted to me that the integrity body may not have the nimbleness that it needs to deal with not only pre-elite but pre-adolescent athletes, and we have certainly seen some quite disturbing anecdotes from around the world of both parental pressure and sexual abuse in a couple of those sports. So I want to hear from those sports organisations as well.

But, broadly speaking, I agree with the Minister. I think the process has been a thorough one, the outcome looks promising, and National is pleased to support it at first reading.

There was one other thing that I think the select committee could have a look at, and that is at clause 51: the commission’s power to require information to be provided. That gives it some kind of quasi-investigative powers, and I want to make sure that the commission is, firstly, armed but that there are the usual controls, I think, around reasonable cause if a commission has the power to require information or documents to be released, because if they are too onerous, then the likelihood that a sports body may opt out of the integrity codes is increased. I think this will work only when, well, frankly, all of the national sports organisations subject themselves and abide by integrity codes for their sports.

But we’re starting from a pretty good place. I think it’s gone through a thorough process and the bill looks in pretty good shape at first reading. I look forward to hearing from as many of the sports organisations as we can, even if they agree with it and they don’t have too many suggestions for improvement. That’s an endorsement too of the fact that we’re on the right track.

We have a shortened report-back date. I don’t like them generally, but I think we are seeing a Government that wants to get a lot of business done before it gets thrown out in October. I don’t think this is one of those ones that would be put aside or put down the list of priorities should a National-led Government be in place, and I look forward, actually, to moving the second and subsequent readings as the Minister for Sport and Recreation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d just like to acknowledge the previous speaker, Michael Woodhouse, who just about did a brilliant speech, except for that last little bit—didn’t agree with that. However, it was a very reasonable conversation that you had with us. Your speech hit some notes that I think were really appropriate, and, as the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee, I think we will have a robust and useful discussion about this bill.

I’m really delighted that this bill has come to this House, and I have to acknowledge the Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson, for bringing it to the House. I want to just acknowledge him for a couple of other things about this particular bill. Despite a lot of other headwinds in his other ministerial duties, our Minister has continued to champion this work across two terms, and it is important work. I know in 2018 we had a year of reckoning, really—we had a year of reckoning with our cycling, our football, our hockey, and our rowing, and we had a number of reviews and it wasn’t good. It wasn’t good, and we can all admit to that. There seemed to be a lack of a genuine focus on athletes’ rights and welfare, and there seemed to be a bullying culture, and the Minister has taken the ball and run with it—

Marja Lubeck: Ha, ha! Nice analogy.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: —in order to get us here today. So—OK, OK, that was a bad joke, I know.

I was going to talk about some of my previous sporting prowess as a rep for hockey and a whole pile of things like that, but let’s talk to the bill. I think it’s much more important than me telling you about how good I was at hockey back in the day—or surfing, or diving, or any of the other things, just saying.

Marja Lubeck: And modest.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: And modest. So in 2018, the Integrity Working Group was set up, and they’ve worked consistently for a long time to bring us to this bill today. They came up with 22 recommendations and those recommendations have been folded into this bill. And what’s important about this bill, I think, is that everyone in this country wants to know that our grassroots sports—right through to our little nippers, right through to our elite athletes—are safe and are taken care of and they’re included. So, safe, inclusive, and fair sports is what we’re about, and this piece of legislation creates this wonderful independent body which sits there quite clearly in order to do a whole series of things.

I recommend you look at clause 5, the “Meaning of the threat to integrity”—the bill speaks to that. I’m not going to read it off, but it is a very useful interpretation. One of the things is around looking at competition, manipulation, and match-fixing. We all know some of the cricket stories back in the pre-2000s about match-fixing. That was a worldwide scandal, and something that we want to make sure doesn’t happen here in New Zealand. The use of prohibited substances and doping methods—nobody wants to see someone who is a cheat achieving and then losing. We want to know that our athletes are clean. We want to know that they are using all of their skills in order to achieve greatness. We don’t want them to be cheats. We as a country need to know and be satisfied with their status, and that talks as well to the World Anti-Doping strategy. So we, as well, need to make sure that we abide by that, and this Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission will do that.

It also talks about bullying, abuse, harassment, sexual misconduct, violence, intimidation, racism, and other discrimination, and the failure to safeguard children. We all know that children in sports clubs who go away, who do things with their sports clubs, can be held to be vulnerable. This bill creates integrity. It creates a system to support our children, our grassroots right through. There is so much more I want to say, but I just think it’s important to say that I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the first reading of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. I was looking around the House and trying to see if we had any elite athletes in the House here today that I could refer to. There is one: there’s Meka Whaitiri, who is sitting on the front bench, not because she plays in the parliamentary netball team with Barbara Edmonds but because she actually played at national level in softball and, of course, was selected for the Silver Ferns as well.

I also want to just mention—and the reason why I’m mentioning this is because my own daughter was selected to represent New Zealand, which I was extremely proud of as a father, in surf boat rowing in the New Zealand surf boat team. I went with the team to Australia, where she was competing. But it highlighted for me—and we often hear the stories about it in this country—the fact that there is a big disparity in terms of what we can afford to invest into our elite athletes here in New Zealand and what these bigger countries do in terms of the money that they have available, the facilities that they’ve got, and the resources that they can put into their elite and top athletes.

So I want to acknowledge us as a country and the outstanding results that we deliver. We punch above our weight without that same funding, whether the class of our coaches and sports administration is world-class. But—there is a “but”—I actually held the portfolio, the sport and recreation portfolio, in Opposition for a year. I have to say that on taking up the portfolio, very quickly—literally within weeks—I was being approached by some of our elite athletes and they were highlighting a lot of the concerns and issues that are being raised in this bill. I was working very closely with the Minister for Sport and Recreation—Grant Robertson, at the time—in his role, and I have to say that he was very, very good in terms of trying to get bipartisan agreement and some sort of focus on what we needed to do to make sure that we protected the integrity of our sports and our sportspeople, coaches, and administrators in this country.

So it’s very easy to support this bill. If I hadn’t been in that role, then my natural, default setting would have been to say “This is just more cost. It’s more taxpayers’ money to form another agency and have another commissioner.” But I think that, actually, the investment in this is the right investment. I think that one of the things that we really need to do, and I can see this bill creating that, is try and unlock the tension that comes when there’s a dispute between an athlete and either Sport New Zealand or High Performance Sport New Zealand. It’s only natural; we’re all human. When you’re dealing with elite sportspeople, they are giving it everything that they have got; they are training as hard as they can, often on a semi-professional basis. Of course, then you’ve got coaching and administration that are trying to support and extract the best from that athlete as well, and not always is there agreement on how to get that done and how to make that happen. Like the previous speaker, Angie Warren-Clark, highlighted, sadly, we have seen very public examples within sports of bullying and poor behaviour, which leads, of course, to serious mental health issues.

So I think that the spirit of the bill is absolutely correct in terms of what it’s trying to achieve. Like the Hon Michael Woodhouse, who is now the portfolio holder, said, I would like to see our sporting bodies and our codes actually making submissions and coming in front of the Social Services and Community Committee and highlighting if there needs to be any fine tuning, if there are any issues, if there’s anything that they’re concerned or worried about. I have the feeling that the committee will work in a bipartisan way on this bill to try and identify those in a genuine manner. Any changes that need to be made to the bill can be made through that process and brought back into the House. I can’t see why we wouldn’t continue to support this bill. I do think that it’s a good one, and I wish the committee—I don’t sit on the committee myself—all the best in working through this bill in a positive way. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

RACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you for this opportunity to speak on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill that establishes a new Crown entity, being the independent Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission. This is a board that will have seven to nine members and we’ve heard some of the different roles that they’ll play. I am aware that I’m standing after, and right next to, a former high-performance athlete—I don’t know if just former, probably current as well. And this is something that’s certainly not been a part of my life. But I have heard, as we all have, in the news, of those high-performance athletes in the past number of years—Angie Warren-Clark said particularly in 2018—where there have been distressing situations and there has been bullying, and it’s very good to hear the bipartisan support today for this bill and the rejection of those negative situations.

So we’ve heard, as well, that there’s been a number of reviews undertaken and that there’s been work going on internationally, as well, that demonstrate that there is a need to better protect our athletes—and others who participate—from harm. I think this is interesting—that the bill isn’t just about sporting bodies; that it’s also about wider recreation. Of course, it’s not just about high-performance sport, where we’re talking about sport; we’re focusing as well on grassroots organisations. Talking of grass, I do spend a lot of my winter Saturday mornings on the grass watching one of my children play football and it is amazing and always never ceases to amaze me how many volunteers give their time for those children’s sports, and, of course, adult sport as well. He’s coached by somebody who doesn’t have any children in that age range and he gives up his Saturday mornings and Wednesday nights to coach the team, and it’s amazing.

So a lot of these grassroots organisations don’t have a whole lot of time and money to implement codes. So the commission will be helping with expert advice and also—we heard from the Minister—pathways for resolution. It’s optional to sign up to the codes, and the optional nature of that is found in clause 21 where the word “may” is used. Clause 21 is headed up: “Who is bound by integrity code”.

I think it’s also interesting to look at the functions of the commission and these are at clause 13. If we are looking at the code parts of that, it includes “to provide mechanisms for complaints” and “to provide accessible and culturally responsive mechanisms for resolution of disputes relating to integrity between persons or organisations involved in sport and organised physical recreation”, also to “investigate matters relating to integrity” and to provide a disciplinary process for breaches of the integrity code.

There are some other pieces of this bill that I thought was interesting, as somebody who, I think—I don’t watch as much sport as other members of the House—

Marja Lubeck: You’ve got no time; you work too hard.

RACHEL BROOKING: I do. So some other interesting provisions are at clause 54, where there’s a compulsory review within five years, by the Minister, of “how widely and effectively integrity codes have been implemented”. The Minister must report that review to this House. Also interesting, at clause 14 there are the requirements for the commission’s procedures, and in 14(1)(d) one of them is to “promote the best interests of children and young people”. I’m very pleased to see that because, of course, it is a lot of children and young people who grow up in sports often in this wonderful—these amazing volunteers that I was talking about before, but also it’s those younger people that go on to become elite athletes. This really matters for them; we don’t want our young people being bullied.

So I want to acknowledge the work of the Minister and his real commitment to this issue. It’s clearly very important to him, and I commend it to the House.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m rising on behalf of the Greens to speak to the first reading of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. We support this bill and we’ve appreciated the collaborative contributions that have come into this debate so far.

The bill will establish a new Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission, which will have different duties such as investigating threats to integrity such as competition manipulation, corruption, or fraud; use of prohibited substances, abuse, including the abuse of children, bullying, harassment, intimidation, and racism; creating integrity codes for the sports and recreation sector as well as carrying out current Government functions including the implementation, compliance, mediation etc. that relates to anti-doping.

I want to particularly, in terms of the comments, in terms of the threats to integrity in relationship to the racism, give a shout-out to Manukau United, who actually recently released a report on racism in football. They themselves identified that racism in football was a major issue that our communities were experiencing and they called on Government to take this into account and to put in place different policy interventions—some of them focused around, say, equitable funding. I reckon this bill has the potential to address some of the concerns that have been raised by Manukau United.

Like others, I want to acknowledge that the journey of coming into this place with this bill comes after several athletes at a community and a high performance level have highlighted the abuse that they have experienced, the toxic culture that they experienced, and so I hope that we honour those voices and contributions that have created the space for this bill to come into place.

As this bill goes through select committee, there are some specific clauses we want to pay some close attention to. So while we welcome that—for example, clause 16 establishes that the commission must have effective means of seeking views of the rainbow communities, which we really welcome, and in clause 20 it also states that rainbow communities can be included in consultation when it comes to the creation of the integrity code—we do find it odd that in clause 11, when it talks about the appointment of board members to the commission, there’s sort of a range of expertise that is kind of being required or expected. And while human rights is included, it then goes and specifies particularly the rights of children and young people—it does feel odd to then, for example, exclude the rights of our rainbow community there, in terms of the competencies that we would like of those board members, as well as some competencies around anti-racism. I think, particularly when we see the vitriol that members of the rainbow communities experience, whether they’re the trans community or homophobia in sports, it’s important that we proactively seek that level of competency on the board.

Other stuff that we hope to pay attention to is feedback we received around the minimum number required of Māori members of the board and whether that number is correct. So we’ll be paying close attention to that. But, overall, we do think this is a step in the right direction to improving the wellbeing of our athletes, whether it’s a high performance or community level. So we commend this bill to the House.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to talk about the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill, and it falls to ACT once again to challenge this piece of legislation. It seems to be, across the House, that people haven’t really looked at what’s happening in the UK or Australia with regards to this type of legislation. It doesn’t matter whether there’s several Ministers of sport and recreation in the National Party or one in the Labour Party; this bill demonstrates that, in terms of a stand-alone integrity sport solution, there’s a lot to be desired. It’s not a step in the right direction, and to retain the skills of these independent bodies while supporting their capacity, the transition committee that is contemplated in this bill requires a commission, and this will involve tens of millions of dollars, of people running around in black suits with blazers pretending to monitor sport.

ACT believes that this will take away valuable resources from the anti-doping and match-fixing legislation that is required at the core of this bill. Everybody wants to play hard and win hard but I can’t see what this does for the high performance sports athletes in New Zealand. In terms of the bill itself, there is another way to look at this, where people can get their day in court with a QC-based commission which thoroughly investigates a body like Racing New Zealand, which this bill will never be able to grasp or do.

The bill contemplates a new Crown entity called the Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission, and Sir Don McKinnon has said he wants to look at what’s happening around the world and to fit it to what works for New Zealand. Now, that has clearly not been defined here, and so that would flag up early concerns for the ACT Party over the independence of the new agency and how it would actually investigate Sport New Zealand.

There’s a couple of points that need to be raised about the bill; why the status quo has not been considered. This seems to be like a massive leap into the unknown where, if you look at the information pack that’s been supplied, there is actually a body that exists that, if it was enhanced, would allow us to actually deal with this, and that would be by extending the powers of the Sport and Recreation Complaints and Mediation Service to actually deal with options that are independent, based on sports integrity with pure focus, and it’s not a status quo arrangement. It could be enhanced with some legal mechanisms to involve QCs in very serious misconduct, or local authorities and local representative sports organisations in communities.

The other aspect is, just on the cost of this bill, there is no clear mechanism for defining that in terms of the values and benefits that it produces. Now, it’s easy to say on face value that it all looks great but, actually, what does it do for New Zealand sport? What does it actually do for the recreational sportsperson? What does it do for the high-performance sportsperson, and—

Angie Warren-Clark: It keeps them safe.

DAMIEN SMITH: Keeping them safe—well, that is obviously part of a code of conduct that exists at the moment. That’s one of the other worries we have about the bill—it’s all optional in terms of codes of conduct, and everybody else will have the ability to write their own codes of conduct, which means there’s a plethora of scenarios that could emerge. Now, that, to me, doesn’t make sense. It’s not binding. It doesn’t actually commit sports authorities to administer any set of rules that are actually universal and across the board. So keeping people safe is important but it isn’t the total requisite for a bill of this nature.

If you look at the Australian system, they have clearly been down the road further than us and they’re getting hammered by athlete welfare complaints, especially in the first couple of years of operations, but then they run out of resources for anti-doping and the match-fixing investigations. So you can see that there are unintended consequences of this. So they changed a model earlier this year and the Dutch people have changed the model to place sports management investigations outside and away from Government control.

Why is the Government actually doing this when it should be independent bodies that actually get them truly accountable in the courts and the administration of those sports? So why do we need a commission? Why do we need a sports commission as contemplated by the bill? What is the function of it? The same people are going to be running this. The two sports organisations are going to be welded into one, and it’s still going to be the same people with a wider mandate to do things that are actually getting done at the moment.

So, to me, we should look overseas to what is a sensible approach, where sport and the legal aspects of funding, the legal aspects of behaviour, are actually carved out and very well understood. You’d need a matrix here of about eight boxes to actually get what is going on, and I hope, with the select committee process, we will get to the bottom of that. I’d like to see Sir Don McKinnon’s views sooner rather than later, given the truncated version of the select committee process. So, for that purpose, we cannot support the bill at this stage.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): After five and a half years in this House, I finally have the opportunity to speak on my favourite subject: sport. I’d like to thank the Hon Grant Robertson for that opportunity to do so. Like many in this House, I’m a big sports fan. In fact, many New Zealanders are—it is very much intrinsically part of our culture as New Zealanders, the aspect around playing sports.

It’s been exciting over the years seeing the development of sport in New Zealand. I remember when I grew up in rural New Zealand, in the winter it was rugby and netball, and in the summer it was cricket.

Angie Warren-Clark: There might have been hockey, though, come on.

JAMIE STRANGE: That was it—nah, nah. In rural New Zealand, where I grew up, the options were very limited.

Hon David Bennett: Pirongia.

JAMIE STRANGE: It was Pirongia. The Hon David Bennett mentioned that—he knows my history well. So I ended up playing rugby for Pirongia and playing cricket for Pirongia. I went to Hamilton Boys’ High School: I tried to make rugby teams; couldn’t make it. In the seventh form, I finally switched to football and made the first XI. So since then I’ve loved football, and I know we’ve all got stories about the sports that we love.

But, look, it’s great to have a bill on sport and it’s a very important bill, and I will get into that. Most of my early memories in terms of watching sport have been just trying to see us beat Australia. It didn’t matter what the sport was—it was as long as we beat Australia. And if we didn’t beat Australia, as long as someone else beat Australia. Now, I hope that doesn’t cause any offence to our Australian friends, who we love dearly, but we do have that rivalry there with Australia. And I’ll give a brief shout-out: the women’s world cup is coming this year and all the best to our Football Ferns in the women’s world cup here in New Zealand.

Sport is important for connection, belonging, and health. If I could touch on those three points, the first one is in terms of connection: sport brings people together. Now, there’s plenty of other things in society that do that—you know, music, the arts, etc.—but sport is one example of bringing people together. It’s so important as a society that we have a strong community. If we don’t have community, really we have nothing. We’re not, as Margaret Thatcher once said, an isolated group of individual individuals—

Nicola Grigg: Are you quoting Margaret Thatcher? Excellent!

JAMIE STRANGE: Ha, ha! We’re not an isolated group of individuals each with their own purposes. We are connected; we’re are a community—that’s who we are, and sport very much brings people together. I remember my grandfather was president of the New Zealand Rugby Union back in 1984, from the small town of Collingwood. My grandma—before she passed away, I remember interviewing her and asking her about community. She was on a dairy farm and she spoke about the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, before refrigeration, people relied on community for their survival. With technology, we don’t need community for survival; we can survive on our own, but we need community to thrive, and sport is one of the key aspects that facilitates community and a thriving society.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the sidelines of sport—of football, basketball, and other pitches while my children have been growing up. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve seen a variety of interactions—some positive; some not so positive. Often, at times, unfortunately, parents are trying to achieve their dreams through their children and, you know, often the children become pawns in a bigger game, and it’s not helpful for those children. So it’s important that we do have some strong guidelines. The aspect around education is as important here, in terms of educating not just our own children, and then moving into adults who are playing, but also those who are supporting. I think that parents play an absolutely key role in terms of instilling those values, working alongside coaches.

I see I’m sort of running out of time here, but in the last sort of 30 seconds: the bill promotes, advises, and educates on integrity issues.

Tim van de Molen: You’ve got another 5 minutes.

JAMIE STRANGE: I like to be succinct—I like to be succinct. Short and sweet. I’m sure the members opposite will as well. So we did hear from the Minister, particularly around what the bill does. I endorse the bill and I encourage people to make a submission. And keep playing sport, New Zealanders.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Hon David Bennett, five minutes.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, I’ll just have to follow up that speech. Jamie Strange is a good sportsman and he’s co-captain of the parliamentary football team—

Nicola Grigg: Is there one?

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes, and we are supporting women’s football in the World Cup, and a big shout-out to our women’s footballers who are one of the best teams in the world and are going to do brilliantly. Jamie actually plays for the red team in Hamilton called Melville, and I’m a supporter of the blue team in Hamilton called Wanderers, and they’re on either side of the river. But in, I guess, the nature of sport, we’ve actually come together and we’re working very well together to get some artificial turf in the city, so it’s working well. It’s good to see sport can bring two different political parties and adversaries together for the betterment of our communities, and that’s what it’s all about.

In this place here, we talk a lot about social welfare, how we help people, Government investment, and those kind of things—mental health and all those issues—but we never really talk about sport, one of the most practical things that people engage in. If we’re talking about youth and getting them on to the right path, sport’s a crucial part of that. It takes up time after school, it enables young men and women to pursue some energetic pursuits, it’s good for physical fitness, it’s good for mental health, and it’s good in so many ways, and yet we don’t actually fund it in this Parliament.

Jamie’s right, and it’s his first time that he’s spoken on a bill in this area, and yet sport actually would achieve a lot more social goals than what we spend a lot of money on in this country, to be honest, and we just think it’s something up to the community to do. How many community groups struggle day by day trying to raise money, trying to have the people that run the facilities, to actually get sport off the ground? You compare it with countries like Australia, which do put a lot of Government money into sport, and they get the results at a national level but also those underlying results in their community as well.

So bills like this are important—that we actually support the network of sport—but it’s only a really small part of what we could do. If we actually had a programme that enabled some Government money to go into some artificial turf in Hamilton, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. It would probably do more to keep some of the young kids out of the gangs than anything else you could do at the moment in that city. It actually would probably be one of the best things you could do at dealing with that. It’d keep kids in school, it’d keep kids associated with their friends, and people of different communities coming together and playing on the same field. We’ve lost that in our country a lot. We’ve lost that ability to come together—town and country—in sport, and to be able to acknowledge our differences but also come together in that.

Our sport’s also getting divided, I think, along the lines of capability and communities. Some communities in Hamilton are great at rugby league—Ngāruawāhia, for example—and yet we don’t have, actually, that ability for other communities to come together and play that same sport and understand each other, and, yet, some other communities are really focused on rowing and rugby and those kids could be great rugby league players. People like Sport Waikato have done a great job at just making sure kids play something and enjoy something and learn the fundamentals of it. I think it’s one of those things that gives a balance to our youth in sport, and this bill is a starting point, but it really just highlights how deficient we are as a Parliament in actually supporting this part of our community.

The people that go out there, the grassroots people that run those organisations, get nothing from this place. The kids that are going to benefit from it get nothing from this place. We all enjoyed sport because we’re all successful people that have had a balanced life. Many kids don’t have that chance, and this is their opportunity to get a chance to have a bit of a start. I think that Jamie should be speaking two or three times on sport before the end of his—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Jamie Strange.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: —political career, and we should have some bills in there supporting infrastructure in our sports in our communities, and it would probably do a lot better than some of the other social spending that this place passed—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time—he was going so well, so well.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): I’m pleased to take call on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill, and I want to commend all those that have spoken on this bill for their love and passion for sport, and also those who may not have the love and passion for sport. It does not matter, because we are all New Zealanders, and we descend from a long line of navigators and of explorers—it’s in our DNA.

I want to commend the Hon Grant Robertson for bringing this Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. Obviously, we’ve traversed that it will enable the establishment of an independent integrity commission. It will then identify a lot of the concepts and codes that the commission should do.

But I want to commend those who referenced their own upbringing with sports. I want to add that as a young child, many, many years ago, I remember actually being chased back into the home by our parents when it was dark, because we were out playing. You know, those were the days where it was safe to stay out in your communities and play. This was after six hours at school. When you weren’t in the classroom, you were out on the playground playing, whether it was bullrush or tag or whatever.

Nicola Grigg: Bullrush—bring back bullrush.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: Bullrush—yes, bullrush. There you go—there you go. But the point being is that as New Zealanders, the importance of physical activity is really in how we’ve been shaped as we are today.

This bill is not just about the faults in the sport sector, but how we can get back to the days where we’re attracting young people into the sector and, when they are coming into the sector, how we nurture and manaaki them in their journey in that sector.

Of course, in my observation, elite and professional sport has only come to New Zealand in very recent times. I’m only talking about decades ago when many of our top athletes would actually travel overseas, fully paid, with a stipend. But now, as we’ve morphed and we’ve evolved into elite and very highly professional sports, there is a lot at stake here for many of those athletes or teams that choose to participate in elite, professional sport—the enormous sacrifice they make and the hours and hours of training that these top athletes do. Then they’re subjected to the selection and they either get in or they don’t get in, and the heartbreak, and we’ve seen many of those stories in our recent time.

This commission and this bill is trying to address that, as you make those decisions as young people, or not so young people, because, you’ve got to remember, we’ve got bowls. We’ve got very, very good bowlers in New Zealand that represent us well at the Olympics. So it’s not an ageism thing; it’s a recognition that when we enter into a sporting sector, we look after them so that people feel that their energies and their commitment to their sport is well considered when decisions are made, and when things don’t go right, we will then have an agreed set of codes that holds everybody to account. Goodness helps the commission and those that are appointed to this board, because its focus is on integrity, and so those members are going to have to demonstrate a higher level of integrity themselves if they are then going to proceed over all the sporting bodies.

I want to make a distinction between elite and professional sports and then our amateur grassroots sports, because I really back our amateur and grassroots sports. They are the bread and butter of many of our communities. They do a fantastic job, and they are based on volunteers and all the aunties and uncles that turn up at the clubrooms and do the meal after the rugby game or the netball game, and do the speeches or put down the hāngī, because they are doing an amazing job to keep that particular sport, but, more importantly, the mana of their community is at the heart of what they do.

So this piece of legislation that we’re reading for the first time is to ensure that our sporting sector, the one that we know as proud New Zealanders—we respect the opportunity for those that go into elite and professional sport. But we will also be a beacon of hope for our grassroots amateur sports, and we recognise that enormous voluntary support that they give in ensuring that we’ve got strong communities throughout the country, so that when you enter the sport, you’re looked after, you’re manaaki-ed, and your time in that sport enables you to then turn around and go back and give back to the very community that looked after you. Therefore, I support this bill to the House.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yeah, I’m also really excited to be able to talk about sport in the House, just like Jamie Strange talked about—really excited to see this piece of legislation that will support what Meka Whaitiri was talking about in terms of our grassroots sports. But I can’t believe I almost entirely agree with David Bennett and his speech—probably a first, eh, especially when I think that—[Interruption] Absolutely, absolutely. Sports—absolutely, sports is—[Interruption] Well, absolutely, sports is, as we know, something that does bring people together. It is about looking after—

Jamie Strange: David, come across!

TERISA NGOBI: Yeah, come over this side, because I heard you talking about wellbeing and social inclusion, and I was like, “Are you all right today, David Bennett?” No, great to hear it—great to hear it. But that speaks to the point, right? Sports bring people together regardless of your code or regardless of your colour.

Hon David Bennett: You’re going to get me embarrassed now.

TERISA NGOBI: It brings people together. Oh, I don’t mean to embarrass you; I just think it’s good to bring out that social part of you, David Bennett.

So, really good to be able to speak on this bill. That is what it’s about, as well: it is about making sure that—like many others have talked about, I also played sports; loved it. I remember I played union, I played volleyball, netball, all the really cool things, and one of the things that we did do was we were able to travel for reps and whatever it was. As a rural, regional community, we were able to meet with other regional communities, and after the game, you know, whakawhanaungatanga—come together. It is that social inclusion, like Meka Whaitiri talked about. It was the nannies that were there with the cups of tea and the waters and whatever else we were able to have.

I played rugby as an older person, so I am a Wanderers old-timer—shout-out to all my Wandies people—and we might not have had the cups of tea, but we were still able to have, you know, after your game, that family time where you are able to bring your children along and there’s that encouragement of getting our youth and our young people to look at sports. My children, I have three of them, and they all play league, basketball, union, and they swim. It is good because every single day they’re spending time socially with their friends. It is that grassroots where they’re aspiring, especially my big boys, to become, hopefully, an elite or a professional sportsperson.

That is why this bill is important. It supports people in that space as well, makes sure that there is somewhere that people can go to if they do have any complaints, whether it is the elite or professional sports player or whether it is that grassroots rugby team that needs both guidance and standards. So that’s why it is important to have a piece of legislation like this.

I think, just going back to my children, they play many sports. Right throughout the week, they’re training; their weekend they’re actually playing the sports. Going back to talking about my big boy, his dream one day is to—he’s already planned it out that he’s going to hopefully make the under-15 Warriors, and he’s already asked all my family—

Hon David Bennett: Oh, South Sydney Rabbitohs!

TERISA NGOBI: Oh, I don’t know; I like Moana Pasifika, so I don’t know how I can get him to switch, but that’s his dream, and he’s already asked all my family in Auckland, “Who am I going to stay with when I make the under-15s?” He’s got that dream. He looks at those professional and elite athletes and he’s like, “This is my dream.” But he also sees some of the athletes that might not be fully supported, and what does that look like for him? So, again, a bill like this, where we are looking at making sure that we’re establishing a commission that is independent, that can hear the concerns from not just, like I said before, the elite and the professionals but from our grassroots people as well. It’ll show people like my son that a sports career can be a safe space, that there are those standards in place to be able to support him—hopefully, that he gets those dreams for himself and others. But that’s what this is about.

So we had that consultation. We went out and we spoke to a wide range of organisations and people in this space; they all wanted, and the key—and I think Minister Grant Robertson talked about how the key was having an independent commission for this. So we talked to all those people in 2018. The recommendation came back last year that this would be a great idea to establish this commission, make sure that it’s independent, make sure it’s accessible for not just the elite and the professionals but for our grassroots, have those standards in place for everyone to make sure that they feel supported and safe in their sports.

But, again, great piece of legislation, and just like everyone else in the last few speeches, I encourage people to uptake sport. It’s a great thing for New Zealand. And, also, my wishes also go to our women footies as well—go the girls!

Tama Potaka: Kia ora tātou. Kia ora e te kaiārahi, te Kaikōrero o te Whare—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Tama Potaka needs to seek the call.

Tama Potaka: Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Tama Potaka.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to comment—in a healthy manner—on the first reading of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. I’m pretty mindful that this bill is in the name of the Hon Grant Robertson, and willingly admit that he and I were involved in a lot of recreation—but not recreational matters—for several years in New York City. It was there that I heard one of the biggest patsy questions, asked by an Australian to Nelson Mandela: “How does sport unify people?” It was a very interesting question, given that the great man Nelson Mandela had just emerged from prison in South Africa and was doing a tour of the world, talking about unifying people. And in rural New Zealand—it was inspiring to hear my colleague and fellow Hamiltonian, Jamie Strange; and almost for the first time, three Hamiltonians in a row, with David Bennett nearly imitating the Chiefs rugby team, which at this stage is six for six. And I wanted to acknowledge the recent Aupiki women’s rugby final: absolutely fantastic—sadly, Manawa lost to Matatū, but the fact is, women, rugby, and sports were the winners on the day.

Unlike my urban friends—some of which are here today—I grew up playing some genuine rural sports, like spotlight, long ball, tee ball, go home, stay home—and the occasional game of chains, which only people from Taihape like my whanaunga Shanan Halbert and I actually know about. Kī-o-rahi and triathlon—they actually didn’t exist in Hunterville at the time, but rugby really dominated my life. I spent many a moment at the Hunterville Rugby Club waiting for my father and driving him home, and, subsequently, the Te Aute College first XV, which Minister Whaitiri will recall with fondness, her brothers’ faces adorning the walls of the Te Aute wharekai—all three of them, actually. There were three sports available at Te Aute: rugby, rugby, and rugby—and I was lucky enough to be on the 1990 Te Aute College softball team when we toured Australia; I was the scorer. Then I was lucky enough to participate in events like the national touch championships in Auckland—and, actually, 1998, when I was the Wellington team’s masseuse. Later in life, I tried to be the next Cameron Brown by training over in Iron Māori half Ironman, and I wanted to pay a special acknowledgment to my whanaunga Heather and Wayne Skipworth for the magnificent work that they’ve been doing in Te Matau-a-Māui and throughout Aotearoa.

But participating in Ironman and Ironwoman New Zealand—I always say Ironman and Ironwoman New Zealand—was somewhat challenging, perhaps embarrassing, actually, to me, because often I’d be coming in on the bike, and Cameron Brown at the age of 42 would be finishing the run. And it was a bit daunting to me to know that I still had a marathon to go after the folks at the end had finished their race, but the lakefront in Taupō is just about as beautiful as the Rangitīkei river valley.

So organising TriMāori with my wife, with the kaupapa, “For the Whānau”, was an inspiring and motivating part of my life. To engage with people, to invite them to participate in health and wellbeing, and to bring them to the mighty Waikato river at Karapiro and the whenua, to reconnect them in sport—actually enables that, and enables people not only to connect with one another but also to connect with our taiao and with our rivers, with our lakes—with our iced-up lakes; curling in the South Island—and the hills and the mountains of our tīpuna. But what an absolutely inspiring moment for me to see during those TriMāori events that we used to run, my peers coming together—three of them good friends of mine, each being over 250 kilograms, to be swimming, cycling and run-walk-running their way to good health. Since then, I’ve had the great fortune of having children with my wife and seeing them participate in various sporting activities, whether or not it’s rugby down at the Grammar TEC clubrooms or the Hamilton Boys’ High clubrooms; my daughter playing rugby for the Waikato Diocesan School and hockey, basketball, judo, karate, and all the other activities that I’ve become a professional Uber driver in participating in. But at the outset, I affirm National’s support for this bill and forward to discussions on how to better strengthen and protect the integrity of the sport and recreation sector by establishing the independent Crown entity known as the Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission.

Over the years, our nightly intake of nutritious and sometimes gluten-light meals in the evenings have been interrupted by various news reports alleging breaches of integrity and breaches of mana tangata across professional sports organisations, with cycling being particularly topical. Now, these stories were sometimes very gutting and wrenching to hear about, particularly given the incursion of mana tangata amongst these athletes who have dedicated their lives—and sometimes their whānau members’ lives—to achieving at the apex of their chosen sports. Now, National gives tautoko to the proposal to set up a commission to handle integrity issues in the sports sector, and particularly helpful that the commission is independent from Sport New Zealand and High Performance Sport New Zealand. I’m mindful about the reports that Mike Heron KC and others undertook and delivered into high performance cycling, which noted some distressing matters around aggressive texting, coach-athlete relationships, the bullying and belittling of athletes by coaches for the athletes raising concerns, shaming on various matters, and other related toxic behaviour. But that lack of accountability, effective leadership, human resources, culture—and for want of a better term—rangatiratanga, leadership, worried Heron and others, and led to what I would describe as real, genuine mana tangata issues. So this bill is something that we would commend for further discussion. Heron’s and others recommendations to address those issues and athlete safeguarding and to reconsider the funding model were insightful.

There are a couple of issues that we would like to see addressed: the high level of power proposed for the commission to require organisations to supply documents or information during an investigation—that might need a bit better balancing, a bit better checking, and to be a bit better justified—and the optionality that the commission may publish reports upon its investigations. That’s something that we want to see a bit more action, a bit more inquisition, and a bit more debate around.

So, sport: it’s a platform for success, a platform for health and wellbeing, and a platform for kotahitanga across our country. How does sport unify people? It unites through mana tangata; it unites the country; and I hope, and I pray, and I recommend that all of us in this House today unite behind the Chiefs for the Super Rugby finals. Kia ora tātou.

ANAHILA KANONGATA‘A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It’s an absolute honour and a privilege to speak on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill.

I know we’ve heard members in the House talk about sport, but I remember when the last time Tonga played the All Blacks, and Tonga, the ‘Ikale Tahi, actually, they lost, but they scored the last try. I then said to the Speaker—then Speaker Trevor Mallard—that the last score wins. So that’s what I’m just saying about this speech here.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Grant Robertson for bringing this into the House. But before I get on to the bill, I’m not sure whether anyone really knows there’s a game called futsal, which plays five-a-side. FIFA is that sport’s governing body. So I want to congratulate the Papakura City futsal women’s team. Yesterday, they beat the Bay of Plenty - Waikato team, so Papakura City retain their national women’s futsal title. So congratulations to the women.

I want to talk about two areas of this bill because I think it’s important. If people are listening in who are involved in sports, it’s important that the public understands what it is. In clause 4, under interpretation, it talks about the interpretation of national recreational organisation. So it defines it as meaning organisations that represent members in a particular type of organised physical event or activity in New Zealand, but does not include a local, regional, or other recreational organisations not operating at a national level. So this talks about operating at the national level, but also it has to have all those levels that I spoke about. Also, it defines what a “national sporting organisation” means. It means members involved in a particular type of sporting event or activity in New Zealand and, if a national organisation does not exist for sport, includes local, regional, and or other sporting organisations.

I want to bring that to the debate because I’d like to ask people, as the Minister for Sport and Recreation said before, to please put in a submission at select committee. Put in a submission because the Minister would like to hear and, of course, the Social Services and Community Committee, which I’m part of, would also love to hear that.

The title of the bill talks about integrity in sport and recreation. In clause 5, it talks about the meaning of threat to integrity, so it defines it there. One of the things that I want to really speak about is about manipulation of the result of sport competition—that’s about sport betting. People in the House have spoken about their children being involved in sports, and future athletes. Paragraph (c) talks about bullying. It defines threats to integrity as “bullying, violence, abuse, sexual misconduct, intimidation, harassment, or racism or other discrimination in sport or organised physical recreation:”. If you’re listening in and you’d like to contribute, if the members of the public think there is something else that we should include in that, then this is an opportunity to put in a submission.

I also want to acknowledge the people who manage the sport. Most people have talked about their sports prowess as players, but, as a manager, I managed the four Tonga touch teams that went and competed in Australia in 1999. We went there 20th rating; we came back seventh, so I think that’s a success on the tour manager’s behalf, and that’s myself. These rules—actually putting this independent body—are about looking after those athletes, and not just that but also supporters within the game as well, so that if they have a complaint, if it’s not resolved at the level that they’re at, actually, this new body would provide that support.

I also want to acknowledge my other management title. I also managed the first Tonga rugby team. I do have a metal plate in my right foot—I was a player-manager. I want to say kia ora to all the props out there. So that’s why I walk with a limp—because of that. I want to acknowledge that it is the passion that people put into sports. This bill will definitely protect every person who is involved in the area of sports. On that note, I commend the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill to the House. Mālō.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 110

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

Instruction to Social Services and Community Committee

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Minister of Internal Affairs) on behalf of the Minister for Sport and Recreation: I move, That the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill be reported to the House by 10 August 2023.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 30 March.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a bill that addresses, I think we all agree, a very significant issue, which is the way that our nation responds to the very present threat, and now we have learnt since March 15th, 2019 of the present threat of very real violence on our soil posed by extremism and terrorism globally and domestically.

The Green Party of Aotearoa initially supported this bill to select committee because we were interested in the way that the Justice Committee’s engagement would inform and benefit the drafting. It was important to us to say that, actually, if a Government does realise that counter-terrorism law is not working to both uphold people’s rights but also to respond effectively to new and changing threats of counter-terrorism, we do, in fact, bring changes to the House.

This bill and our approach to counter-terrorism comes to us in the context of the decades-long war on terror—the so-called war on terror—where we saw New Zealand follow our so-called allies and security partners into more and more opaque and far-reaching amorphous counter-terrorism policy and law that wasn’t necessarily effective, and, as we learnt on March 15th, had, in fact, such gaping holes in both operation and policy as to be impotent in the face of very real threat that was, in fact, foreseeable.

So we were interested to see what the select committee would do, and there have been some changes. What has happened is the provision defining “imprisonment” in this bill seeks to change the control orders regime to include application to those in prison to include home detention. So that’s an expansion, but it also excludes youth in Oranga Tamariki residencies, and it amends the security proceedings Act to provide the same right to a designated person to request a summary of the information that’s been used in the designation.

Some of the types of concerns that the Green Party has had throughout time, and in particular around the application of the control orders regime, have been about that ability to challenge effectively and fairly when these quite restrictive orders are being applied to an individual. And we know that throughout that kind of era of the war on terror, we’ve had security agencies withholding information to such a degree as to result in people being held in criminal detention without charge or trial or even access to the information upon which their detention was based.

I note, prominently, the asylum seeker Ahmed Zaoui, who was then freed through court proceedings that had to initiate totally new, novel rights and pierce that veil of the security agencies within the safe context of judges and lawyers who could handle that material that was held against him and find that, in fact, there was no threat. So that’s a real concern for us when we talk about control orders. I note that the expansion of application didn’t come with an alleviation of what we saw as a potential problem.

I just want to focus on some of the civil society and human rights - based submitters and some of the issues that they raised that we share. So, for example, Amnesty International New Zealand had a real problem—as do we—with the retrospective application of the provisions here. We know that as a House and a legislative body, we have an obligation to uphold the principle of legality, which says that the law has to be knowable and transparent if it is to sanction conduct of anyone that it applies to. So to retrospectively sanction breaches that principle.

There was a lack of Crown-Māori consultation, which the Law Society raised, and that is always important as a Te Tiriti issue. But in the forum of counter-terrorism, it becomes galling to say that we’re changing counter-terrorism laws again without that partnership consultation, because we know—and because the royal commission into the Christchurch terror attack told us—very clearly, as communities had been telling us and as courts had been telling us, that, actually, our security agencies, when it comes to counter-terrorism, do focus on and unduly prejudice certain communities who are not, in fact, engaged in terror activities or pose a threat in that way.

In applying restrictive burdens to those communities, in fact, our security agencies become less effective and less able to respond to see the real threat in our systems, and in terms of the royal commission’s report, of course, that was the threat of white nationalism that they had missed. Māori have been—and we know through the history of the application of our surveillance laws, both by police and our national security agencies—the target of that unfair application. So that consultation would have been, in fact, both very timely and would have contributed to the efficacy of what this bill seeks to do.

The other issue that doesn’t seem to be addressed properly here by the Minister or in the context of this bill is that, in fact—and this was something that the Green Party actually negotiated last term in the initial control orders regime—next year, there is to be a proper review of the regime, with recommendations of what legislative and policy changes it may need. So this was really important to us, as I said at the start of my contribution, because we want Governments to be ready to review and respond appropriately to the different and evolving threat of terrorism and be willing to say, “Actually, we didn’t do it quite right. Maybe we breached some very fundamental rights.”, or “Maybe we weren’t looking carefully enough at the pervasive threats of our time.” That was really important for us, but that needs to be done in the context of a proper review so that when changes come to this House, they are comprehensive and they are reflective of what, in fact, needs to be done in the counter-terrorism space.

So to have a piecemeal approach to that review process in legislative terms seems odd, and, of course, given, in this year, our precious legislative time that this House has left, it seems odd to bring this bill, especially not addressing some of the really significant civil society concerns ahead of that proper comprehensive review. Again, things like recommendations around having an independent body that would make those recommendations—as the United Kingdom has—and how to better actually approach counter-terrorism and modern extremism as a threat is kind of undermined by the bringing of this bill in an untimely and rushed way, because it proceeds that proper review that the Government has promised and has built into the control orders regime.

So we have concerns about the designation framework. We have concerns that the provisions around those in prison, and now on home detention, are not subject to a judicial process within the secure confines of a court or, with appointment of a judicial officer, the person can effectively challenge control orders that are, again, very restrictive in nature, in some cases. We are concerned that there wasn’t proper consultation with communities that are most impacted by counter-terrorism, and, in particular, the application of restrictive measures, surveillance, and other measures that Governments say are to do with counter-terrorism but often are prejudice based.

We are concerned that this piece of legislation falls outside of a comprehensive process that would better inform our work as a Parliament passing counter-terrorism legislation. I don’t commend it to the House.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise today to take a call on the counter-terrorism bill and I do so as a member of the Justice Committee that actually heard the inquiry into this bill.

I first want to acknowledge the legitimate concerns that have been raised by my friend across the House Ms Ghahraman, because this is a weighty bill and it is right that we should think carefully about the things that we are doing. It is therefore really relevant that Ms Ghahraman mentioned the fact that we are coming up on a thorough review of this regime as set out in the legislation. But while we have that care to take—and we must take it because we are dealing with people’s fundamental rights and it is their liberties and those are not things to be trespassed lightly. While it is hugely important that we take that care, while I am sure that all of us look toward the review process that will happen in due course to ensure that we are tightening and getting the regime right for both sides of the spectrum—both the affected people or entities, and also for the safety of the ordinary Kiwi citizen—it is also important sometimes that we move fast to adapt to changing circumstances and to gaps we find in our legislation that emerge as events transpire. One of these has brought us the need for this bill.

We all are aware of the appalling LynnMall attacks and we all are aware that when we looked at that particular person, the regime as it stood was simply not sufficient. So it was necessary to bring something to this House which will ensure that until we have that chance to do the longer review, we are covering those gaps in the system that we know about. That is our basic responsibility to Kiwi citizens: to not leave citizens at risk where we know that there is a risk to them, theoretically, in existence and we know that we have not got the powers to deal with that situation should it arise.

I do, however, want to speak to the 210 submitters who we had write in on this bill, many of whom were concerned that the bill is in some way an arbitrary power of the Prime Minister to designate entities and people as terrorists and then to slap restrictive control orders upon them. There was a lot of concern that somehow this was an authoritarian and arbitrary power given to the Prime Minister personally. That is not so. When you actually understand the bill and you go through the bill here, there is a careful, considered, and quite difficult series of stages that must be gone through before anyone can either be designated or can be the subject of a control order. So I would just caution anyone who is concerned and sees this bill as a major step towards the sort of State that we would never wish to see New Zealand become: it is not. This is quite targeted, it is quite careful, and, hopefully, will rarely be applied because it will rarely be necessary.

But I do now just want to step very briefly through what it will do. So it covers two things: the first bit is that we have tightened up the designation scheme, which is the scheme that allows us to talk to what is a terrorist entity. It’s pointed out that if one of those people is in jail so that they are no longer a present threat, we’re still going to be able to keep their designation there because they will become a risk when they come out. The other one is to make the control order regime more workable and to enable it to cover those who are not in prison but who are sentenced to a broader range of sentences such as home detention or electronic bail monitoring. It also enables judges to have more discretion to tailor control regimes so that they are effective and not too onerous, and it also involves a wider range of objectionable publications in the test for eligibility. It has gone from merely objectionable publications that are terrorist events to also extreme violent events, because, as we will explain, there is a link. On that basis. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the time has come for me to leave to the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.

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

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise this evening to speak on the second reading of the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have been on the Justice Committee that considered this, but I have taken a look at the report and I see there’s some good members on that committee who I’m sure would have considered this carefully, and I thank them for the work they have done on it. I note that they received written submissions from 210 interested groups and individuals, and heard oral evidence from four submitters via video conference, also receiving advice from the Ministry of Justice, and the Office of the Clerk provided advice on the bill’s legislative quality, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office assisted with legal drafting. So thank you to all of them for the work that has gone into trying to ensure this is a good bill that will stand the test of time.

This bill clarifies and strengthens New Zealand’s counter-terrorism legislation to better prevent and respond to terrorism and associated activities. The amendments in the bill implement a single broad policy by amending the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 and the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act 2019. National will be supporting this bill continuing through the second reading and onwards—after being consulted by the Government—and does acknowledge that the Government consulted the National Party on this important national security matter. It’s important that there’s cross-party consensus on matters of national security and we do thank the Government for taking on board our feedback.

The bill tightens a gap in the law that does not explicitly outline the circumstances of a designated person imprisoned in New Zealand and makes clear what they are. It also broadens the definition of offence and eligibility to be subject to a control order, and that is a sensible change. It is important that the State uses the tools at its disposal to respond to known terrorist threats with appropriate oversight that protects our civil liberties, and we believe that this bill does strike the right balance. It is important the State is able to proactively mitigate and manage terrorist risks before they occur, which this bill endeavours to help with that objective.

Unfortunately, New Zealand is no longer immune to threats of terrorism, as we may have once considered that we were; unfortunately, the New Lynn attack and the Christchurch attack have made that clear. Therefore, it is important that the framework that we have to respond to terrorism responds proportionately to that level of risk.

I see that the select committee recommended that there is a clarification of the meaning of “imprisonment”, with the replacement section 35G(1), inserted by clause 8, defining the term “imprisoned” for an individual designated as a terrorist entity. That would include young people aged 14 to 17 serving a sentence of imprisonment in an Oranga Tamariki residence or in a prison. And the select committee believe that the definition of “imprisonment” in the bill should apply only to young people in the custody of the Department of Corrections or the police. The select committee noted that the provisions of the bill were intended to apply to individuals whose actions are sufficiently limited by imprisonment, that it would be difficult for the Prime Minister to gauge whether their designation remained necessary to prevent further terrorist acts, and noted that youth in Oranga Tamariki residences have greater access to unmonitored phone calls, letters, and visits, and greater scope to visit whānau outside than those in a prison. So, therefore, the select committee was of the view that the Oranga Tamariki youth justice residences were not so restricted as to pose challenges for the Prime Minister in considering whether an individual’s designation remained necessary to prevent further terrorist acts, and, therefore, made some recommendations on amendments that would make it clear that young people are only covered by the provisions of this bill if they are detained by the Department of Corrections or the police.

There was some clarification, as well, around the electronic monitoring requirements. Schedule 2 of the bill would insert a new Schedule 3 into the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act and Schedule 3 would establish provisions relating to the electronic monitoring of an individual who has had a requirement for electronic monitoring imposed as a condition of a control order. That is certainly a sensible piece of this bill, as I certainly have seen in my previous career the value of electronic monitoring. It, unfortunately, doesn’t always work, it is subject to the individual complying with those provisions, but it certainly alerts the authorities very quickly when that person doesn’t comply. So, with that, I recommend this bill to the House.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to take a brief call on the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill this evening. In doing so, I want to acknowledge the work that the Justice Committee has undertaken in getting this bill to this point in the House this evening. I’m not a member of the Justice Committee, but I have had an opportunity from time to time to sub in on that committee and I know they’re very diligent. In their report they note that they received 210 submissions on this. They heard from a handful of oral submitters and have taken on board, it seems, the feedback that they garnered as part of that process.

This bill is the next step in the Government’s journey around ensuring that we have in this country counter-terrorism legislation that is appropriate, is able to suit the context, and is fit for purpose, and the strengthening of those particular laws in the counter-terrorism space is exactly what this bill seeks to deliver. In fact, it seeks to make it more difficult or harder for individuals—who are known as individuals who are threats—to undertake acts of terrorism. The strengthening of this designation scheme that would exist seems to make it more explicit to cover individuals who are incarcerated, who are imprisoned, here in this country.

The monitoring functions that are currently undertaken by Corrections staff in New Zealand is something that I have, prior to Parliament, had an opportunity to be a part of, as a visiting justice in prisons here in New Zealand. So I know that the staff in Corrections and others who would be involved as part of that monitoring process will appreciate, as Mr Mooney has already indicated in his contribution this evening, the additional tools that the State has at its disposal to seek to deliver on what the intention of this legislation is.

When we look at some of the amendments that have been suggested by the select committee, one actually seeks to strengthen the control orders regime within the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act of 2019 by expanding the eligibility criteria, or the criteria within which eligibility would be considered, by giving courts more discretion. Those who are members of this House who have had some involvement with the justice system here in New Zealand, who’ve had involvement in courts, will appreciate that from time to time it is extremely important that courts do have available to them discretion. And so this is a piece of legislation that will allow for that to exist in courtrooms and for courts here in this country.

I was interested to see that one of the considerations around where that discretion exists is in the imposition of conditions. It would seem to me in my assessment that when a court is looking to impose conditions, the context is extremely important. When we look at the context of the origin of this change around New Lynn, but also the events of Christchurch, courts need to have at their disposal flexibility and discretion when it comes to imposing conditions, but also when it relates to the various settings that exist for name suppression. Again, in the bail court jurisdiction I’ve had experience prior to Parliament of making decisions around where the name suppression should be—well, not just considered but imposed. So there are very clear guidelines around that in courts and this is a piece of legislation that will assist that.

I’ve talked a wee bit around context, and context continues to be important. What this bill does is it provides an ability for the scheme around designating terrorist entities within the Act to be one that is responsive, one that is to be well considered, but also, actually, fundamentally, one that aligns itself with considerations of natural justice. This is something that those who are making those decisions, whether they be in courtrooms or whether they be decisions that are to be taken by the Prime Minister around considering particular aspects—that elements of natural justice and elements of fairness will be considered as part of that.

So, again, I congratulate and thank the hard-working members of the Justice Committee for their diligence around this, and I commend this bill to the House.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill. It is very clear from the speeches that we’ve heard through the House—this debate started off last week already—that there has been a very collaborative approach to getting this bill back to the House. So I would like to start where the previous speaker left off by thanking my colleagues on the Justice Committee for their mahi on the control order regime and how it could be strengthened. The select committee received 210 submissions, and a previous speaker, Emily Henderson, already spoke about some of the issues that were raised during that particular process.

So responding to the threats that we are seeing, the Government is strengthening the counter-terrorism laws to make it harder for people who are known threats to actually undertake terrorist acts. It was in a previous speech by the awesome chair of the Justice Committee, Vanushi Walters—it outlined in great detail how those amendments very carefully balance the rights and freedoms of those individuals that they may apply to. And we’ve heard that it is very important that we take care in that balancing because, of course, we are dealing with people’s rights and liberties. Prior to the dinner break, my awesome colleague, Emily Henderson, already spoke about that particular issue. It’s also important to note that we are coming up—as she actually mentioned—to a thorough review of this regime as it is set out in legislation.

So this bill amends the current designation scheme to clarify matters relating to the expiry, renewal, and revocation of designations. That is because the current designation scheme doesn’t specifically address the circumstance of a designated person being imprisoned in New Zealand. And so, as a result, there is ambiguity in how the designation scheme applies to such persons. And ambiguity, of course, in legislation is never a good thing. But particularly in this instance, given the devastating consequences of a terrorist attack, it is crucial that the Prime Minister’s powers to prevent and suppress terrorism in the evolved global terrorism landscape are entirely clear.

Now, the previous speaker, Tangi Utikere, already spoke on the expansion of the eligibility criteria. I was going to run through those, but he very eloquently spoke on those—the greater judicial discretion and the importance for courts to have this discretion—so I will leave it at that. But the bill makes several of those targeted changes to improve the current control orders regime, and it does so by incorporating some of the lessons that we’ve learnt from the granting of New Zealand’s first and only control order.

So several speakers have discussed those targeted changes in detail. The changes will improve the effectiveness of the control orders Act and expand the criteria for high-risk individuals who can be covered by the restrictions. That, as I said previously, will limit their ability to undertake any attack. So our goal, obviously, must always be to ensure we can effectively manage and respond to the specific threats that we are seeing in Aotearoa New Zealand, and, therefore, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I’m happy to take a call here in the second reading of the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill. Look, I think it’s been reasonably well covered by previous speakers in terms of the content of the bill, but I do want to make a few points, specifically, as we pass this through its next stage—and I’m confident it will; we will be supporting it, as we have so far. I think it’s important, on a piece of legislation such as this, that there is bipartisan support, acknowledging the seriousness of the legislation we’re putting in place to try and prevent or reduce that risk, and, indeed, the fact that that threat environment can evolve quite rapidly and increase or decrease over time and do so on any number of occasions.

Indeed, I think we’ve got to the point now where we’re realising that we need this sort of legislation. It’s not something we’ve had to have through our history, and that’s something we should be proud of. But, unfortunately, the sad reality now is that we need to be more cognisant of these sorts of threats, from a terrorism perspective, in particular, and responding appropriately to that is critical.

I do want to just pick up on the comments made by a couple of members now—Emily Henderson, as the previous speaker alluded to, but also the Green Party member Golriz Ghahraman, who touched on the upcoming review. That is an important step, but, actually, I don’t think it’s appropriate, unlike the Green member, to wait for that review to happen. There is a level of risk right now, and we need to make sure that we’re able to respond effectively to that.

This piece of legislation helps to tighten up some of the criteria around the control orders and designations that can be put in place, and, indeed, more appropriately reflects the fact that someone, whilst they may be imprisoned, may or may not continue to hold a certain set of beliefs. So pausing that designation whilst they are incarcerated is appropriate, and, of course, having the Prime Minister review that on a three-yearly basis as well, I think, is an appropriate counter to leaving it in place or, effectively, pausing the designation, as it were, whilst they’re incarcerated. Indeed, it can be difficult to understand, from that context, whether or not they are still firmly of the belief that may have led to them being there or to the designation being put in place, as the case may be.

So, on that basis, those particular aspects, I think, are an appropriate, practical closing of a loophole there that potentially could have caused some issues. That also is why I think it’s appropriate to have the retrospective element in the legislation, which normally is not good practice in lawmaking, to have retrospective elements, but, in this case, again, it’s appropriate because of the nature of what we’re trying to do here, to fix some loopholes that were in place in the existing legislation. So, therefore, this applies to anyone currently subject to one of those designations who may be in prison and then subject to the pause being put in place on their designation, and, indeed, the subsequent review by the Prime Minister as well. So those are practical changes to be made there.

On the control orders as well, again, it’s important to be able to adapt to the lessons that we have taken through this journey. Having only put one control order in place so far, there have been some lessons learnt from what is or isn’t fit for purpose in that context. So being able to tighten that up through this legislation as well is an appropriate response to ensure that we have that flexibility and, indeed, the ability to, have, I guess, some discretion, as Mr Utikere mentioned as well, to better reflect individual circumstances. Those individual circumstances can be extremely varied and it can be difficult to capture that appropriately, and so having a level of discretion is a good measure to help support the right outcome, ultimately, with this piece of legislation.

So, look, we’re comfortable that this has landed in the right place, acknowledging some of the concerns raised through the Justice Committee by the 210-odd submitters, I believe it was, who took the time to share their views. Again, it just highlights that even though we think we have a great piece of legislation, there’s always opportunity to refine that, which speaks to the benefit of the select committee process, which has far too often been truncated under this Government. But we have got to a good outcome here on this piece of legislation, and so we are happy to continue supporting it at the second reading. Thank you.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): This time, Madam Speaker. Thank very much for the opportunity to speak tonight. The Government is strengthening counter-terrorism laws to make it harder for people who are known threats to undertake terrorist acts. This bill is an important part of the wider work programme that the Government has undertaken to make sure our laws are fit for purpose. That is why I was very enthusiastic and tried to jump the speaking order, and I do apologise for that.

I have spoken in this House about the Government’s changes to our counter-terrorism framework many times and have outlined for the House my views on striking the balance correctly between the rights of individuals and the need for community safety. I think that this bill does that and so I’m not going to spend a long time on that tonight. What I do want to focus on is just a clarification. Now, many speakers in this House, in this debate, have spoken about the changes that the select committee made about young offenders, and I want to just clarify what the iterative changes were at the select committee level before we close off this debate at second reading, because it is important that the House is aware of the changes that were proposed and the advice that the Justice Committee took on that.

So if we look to the first departmental report which has been released along with these documents, we find that the Justice Committee considered the ministry’s advice that it had identified that the current definition of “imprisonment” in replacement section 35G(1), inserted by clause 8—which the earlier speaker Joseph Mooney spoke about—covered adults held on remand, awaiting trial or sentence, and young people and adults serving a sentence of imprisonment, no matter where they are held. But it did not cover young people held on remand, pending trial or sentence, or other young people held in an Oranga Tamariki youth justice residence.

The reason I read that part of the departmental report is because it gave the committee an opportunity to discuss amongst ourselves and with our advisers what the nature of a control order was in this context—what sort of behaviour we were trying to control and what sort of behaviour would need to be demonstrated by somebody who was subject to one of these orders—and then whether a young person in the situation, where they were detained at a youth justice residence or a youth justice facility, would be able to demonstrate through their behaviour whether they would meet the criteria for that.

So to give you a little bit of context in this, a youth justice residence might be an Oranga Tamariki facility like Whakatakapokai in the Manurewa electorate, where young people are under Oranga Tamariki care. There may not be another place for them to go. They may be facing charges; they may have been sentenced. There’s a range of reasons why they will be in a facility like that. A youth justice and a corrections facility is like Korowai Manaaki, which is also in the Manurewa electorate, which is, by all intents and purposes, a prison for young offenders. They have quite different standards of how young people are held in those facilities, and young people within those facilities are able to do quite different things. The committee had to consider whether a young person who is held in an Oranga Tamariki residence had the sort of freedoms where a decision maker like the Prime Minister would be able to gauge whether they were a significant risk to the community and whether they needed to have a control order in place to monitor their behaviour.

So, at first, where the ministry was providing advice that there was a discrepancy there, the committee was able to test with officials whether that was a change that we needed to make, given that in Oranga Tamariki facilities, young people are able to do more; they’re able to communicate with their families, they’re able to have different sorts of visits. In the end, the Justice Committee tested that quite strongly, and we were able to come to a position which was then supported by the officials where they were able to come back to us and say, actually, there are freedoms that exist for young people in those kinds of facilities, so the Prime Minister would be able to gauge whether they were someone who needed a control order in place.

It gave the committee a good reason to also test what kinds of conditions would be imposed by these control orders. We have taken good advice on other examples, particularly in the UK where control orders have been challenged and where excessive control orders have not stood up in the courts, and the committee arrived at what is a sensible balance with sensible controls in place to ensure that these meet our expectations of the rights and freedoms that individuals would expect—but where the community can have confidence that they are safe because of this legislation. That’s why I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 64; New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 12

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill

Second Reading

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): I present a legislative statement on the Local Government Electoral Legislation 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 KIERAN McANULTY: I move, That the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

I wish to start today by acknowledging the previous Minister of Local Government, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, who oversaw the initial work of this bill and whose vision for a stronger local government system and a fairer local electoral system takes another step forward today. To put it plainly, the local electoral system is the tool we use to find people who will make important decisions on behalf of their local communities. Like any tool, it needs the occasional tune-up. This bill makes changes to several Acts that will improve the way that individuals and communities are represented by, and can participate in, local government actions.

The bill does this by establishing a fit for purpose process for councils to consider Māori representation, providing for more flexibility for different representation arrangements at Auckland Council, and updating the recount rules for local elections.

Let’s start with Māori wards. This Government took a first step to change this in 2021, when we amended the poll provisions in relation to the creation of Māori wards. The polls against Māori wards were discriminatory. No other type of ward was subject to the same poll. Even the possibility of a poll was a bigger barrier to Māori representation than most people had thought. The first stage of changes was necessary to help councils get ready for the 2022 elections. Almost overnight, Aotearoa went from having just three councils with Māori wards to 34. Last October, 66 councillors were elected to represent Māori communities. The perspectives they bring will make a real impact on local governments.

Now we are looking towards the future. This bill sets out an enduring process for councils to consider Māori representation. New Zealanders will be able to have their say on the issues in a new engagement process that will be run by councils. This process will ask, “What value can Māori representation add in your area?” Representation decisions cannot happen in a vacuum or be swept under the rug. There must be a conversation, and this bill ensures that will happen.

What this bill does not do is require councils to have Māori wards. These are important, local decisions. Māori wards might not work everywhere, and that’s OK. There are lots of other ways to improve Māori representation, and I saw different approaches to Māori representation around the country when I visited the 55 rural and provincial councils last year.

Councils and the Local Government Commission will be pleased to hear that this bill changes some of the time frames of the representation review process. Officials in the Governance and Administration Committee heard that representation review time frames have been too tight, and I appreciate that feedback. We have made a change so that everyone gets a bit more time going forward. This means that we will have a fairer representation review process that works for everyone.

As we all know, the North Island severe weather events have caused extensive damage to many communities and councils’ assets and infrastructure. Recovery from these events will require a substantial amount of councils’ resources, and will continue to be the councils’ focus for some years to come. At the committee of the whole House stage, I will be introducing a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to delay the commencement of provisions relating to the requirement for councils to consider Māori representation.

As mentioned, the bill puts in place a new requirement for councils to consider Māori representation. Councils who are required to do a representation review this year would be required to consider Māori representation if they don’t already have Māori wards. Councils would have to familiarise themselves with this process and put it into practice from April 2023. However, several councils who are required to undertake a representation review this year have also been severely impacted by recent weather events. Several other councils are also under the pump on many other fronts, as councils told me last year when I visited them.

I think it is important to reduce the impact of new regulatory requirements on the sector at the current time, especially those councils affected by the extreme weather events who need to focus on recovery. Considering Māori representation remains important, and we encourage all councils to have these conversations with their communities. However, in the context of the massive impact of the extreme weather events, we need to offer affected councils some regulatory relief and some flexibility to determine what is manageable. Councils who are required to do a representation review this year can still optionally decide to consider Māori representation. The new requirements for councils to consider Māori representation will not come into force until the day after the 2025 local election. This is when councils start thinking about their representation process, and the type of representation they want.

I stand by these changes which will strengthen council governance in the future, but we need to be reasonable when implementing new requirements on councils during an emergency response and recovery phase. Announcing this SOP now provides clarity and certainty for councils on when the new requirement will take effect from, and what it means for them.

Next, I want to talk about Auckland. Unlike all other councils, who have the right to set their own membership size, Auckland Council has been constrained. In 2010, when Auckland Council was set up, it was limited to only 20 councillors. Auckland’s growth means that each councillor now represents almost 86,000 residents. For reference, that’s about the same population as the New Plymouth district. The bill gives Auckland Council the flexibility to determine its own representation arrangements, just like anywhere else in the country. The bill also establishes a streamlined process for Auckland Council to review its local board boundaries. To be clear, this bill doesn’t change anything overnight for Auckland. What it does do is give Auckland Council more leeway when it comes to considering whether it fairly and effectively represents its local communities.

Finally, I want to talk about recounts. In 2009, we had some very tight elections, where council seats were decided through a coin toss. Sometimes a coin toss is the best and fairest way to settle a tie. But I think it pays to make sure you’ve got the right result by doing a judicial recount before you toss the coin. Unfortunately, the current legislation says that the coin toss comes before the recount. That seems a bit backwards to me. So in 2019, it meant that people who had been told they were elected, either by a close margin or by a coin toss, were then told they were out of a job after a recount. We’re changing the law to make sure that election outcomes are fair, understandable, and mana-enhancing.

The bill makes three changes to put the system right, including an automatic judicial recount for tight election results—this aligns local government elections with parliamentary elections—a new ability for candidates to withdraw from the election after a judicial recount if there is still a tie—this is for candidates who don’t want to seal their fate by a coin toss—and, finally, the bill requires councils to wait to have their first meeting until any recounts are complete, the exception being for urgent business that can be conducted without the involvement of any candidate affected by a recount.

This is a highly technical piece of legislation, and I would like to thank the Governance and Administration Committee for its work on the bill. I want to acknowledge all the submissions on the bill from local authorities, organisations, and individuals. The committee received 49 written submissions, with the majority supporting the intent of the bill. I would also like to acknowledge the 19 local boards in Auckland who provided feedback. Many submitters provided helpful suggestions that have been incorporated into this bill.

The committee has recommended several simple changes to the bill that help clarify its intended effect. These include clarifying the rules of engagement for councils to follow when they consider Māori representation. For the record, there is not a requirement for councils to use the special consultative procedure. Councils know their communities best, and they should engage with them however they think is right. The committee also recommended some changes to the timing of the review process, which I hope councils will be pleased with.

New Zealand is a representative democracy. Local government is an important part of the democratic system. This bill strengthens our local democracy, and I commend it to the House.

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

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of National, as the member of Parliament for North Shore, to talk on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill, second reading. I acknowledge the comments made by the Minister of Local Government in regards to this bill; it’s just a shame that I, basically, don’t agree with the large majority of them, and, on that basis, National are opposing this bill. We’re opposing this bill for no surprise, really. When you think about the work of local government across this country, and particularly in the way in which they’ve dealt with the disaster relief that we’ve faced, do you think they’re sitting around at the moment going, “Well, great, we’ve now got a bit of legislation that’s going to introduce more regulation into what is already a hugely busy space for local government.”? It really epitomises a Minister that is very much out of touch with the local government community across this country. While he may have visited 55 of those councils, this bill reflects that he has not done much listening in terms of the key issues that local government face.

Let’s walk through a few of those, because I don’t see any of them in this legislation that’s on the Table tonight, and that’s a great shame, because it’s another example of Government legislation that is a wasted opportunity—a wasted opportunity in terms of actually dealing with some of the core issues that Kiwis are facing at the moment. But oh, no, no, let’s put in place some regulation which feels good but which isn’t going to deal with the underlying matter!

Let’s start with Auckland Council and we’ll work backwards for reasons that—why not? Auckland Council’s got, currently, 20 councillors. I’m not sure how many ratepayers that members on this side of the House—how many emails they’ve had from ratepayers saying, “Can you please, please, please pass legislation to increase the number of councillors in Auckland?” Right? I don’t think—well, I can be clear on that: I have not received one email in regards to requests to increase the number of councillors in Auckland. Actually, to the contrary, I think most ratepayers are happy that we’ve got 20 and that is enough, thank you very much, Minister. But this desire to increase that by nearly an additional third, to take it up to around 29 just so that it’s in line with everywhere else in the country, is idiotic at first principle, and it’s not driven by a desire by those that pay our rates across this country; it is driven by a desire of others to have some form of consistency to solve a problem. It is a solution looking for a problem; it is not necessary or required, and all it is going to do is increase the bureaucratic burden on ratepayers across this country. Nine more councillors—that’s probably going to result in about 100-plus-plus more bureaucrats in the background supporting those roles. The Minister references representation—well, I’m sorry, I think it is fair to say that there is an adequate number of those councillors in place, doing an already challenging role, but this isn’t going to bring much to the party.

Let’s talk a little bit about the other key aspect of this bill, which is in regards to Māori wards. The key element of this bill is that it actually places the requirement on councils to require councils to decide not to implement Māori wards, right? It’s a regulatory requirement by central government. So this is, again, a Government where Wellington knows best, Wellington knows what our local communities need and should do, and in their wisdom they have decided that, actually, what we’re going to do—and, you know, they probably thought, “Well, this sounds quite smart.”, but it’s not really. It’s not smart. It’s “Let’s actually make them pass a motion and do a whole lot of consultation around actually considering that we’re not going to implement Māori wards.” Well, for what purpose is that?

This side of the House has not opposed the concept of Māori wards, but what we do oppose is more forcing by central government upon our democratically elected individuals across our councils, who are democratically elected by their ratepayers to undertake the work that they do—and they undertake very good work, in the main, across this country for their communities. But now central government comes in over the top and says, “Well, no, no, we don’t, sort of, trust what you’re doing.”, because that side of the House do not trust local government. They do not trust what those individuals across the country do. They pay lip service to the good work which local government undertake, and the reform and regulation that they are pumping through this House day in, day out—and I won’t talk about three waters, but it is a good example of where they believe that big government and centralisation trumps local communities and local decision-making. The clear contrast between that side of the House and this side of the House is that we trust local government. We will work with local government, not against them. We believe and understand and respect democratically elected individuals in local government. We don’t need regulation like this that comes in and places requirements on our councils around their community table to make decisions around things that they’re not going to do.

It is a shame that, in the contrast of all of the challenges that we face as a country, this is as good as it gets from a Government that is obviously under a lot of—and my colleague Maureen Pugh made a comment, and I agree with you: this is a joke, but it’s a shame that this isn’t a joke. This is real, and this is a Government that believes the best piece of legislation that they can put through to empower our communities, to empower local government, to improve the way in which local government impacts Kiwi households across this country is to implement more regulation to make them ensure that when they’re making a decision around Māori wards, they need to consider when they’re not going to do it. And that is as good as it gets.

So, look, we’ve summarised, I think, the two key components of this piece of legislation. I don’t see anything around providing the support to local government, around funding and financing. I don’t see anything in here about infrastructure and dealing with the infrastructure deficits. I don’t see anything in here around actually helping councils around capability and competence. I don’t see anything in here, actually, around workforce. I mean, workforce, I hear, is quite a significant issue in local government, is it not? Well, maybe on this side of the House we just haven’t caught up with what is in vogue, but what I can tell you is what is in this bill is not in vogue. This is not going to make any material impact or benefit on our communities, and that is a great shame.

The one and only element of this bill—and we said in our minority view, and I think we were quite generous, actually, when I read the statement that says while there are positive elements of this bill; I think we probably could’ve said, well, there is one positive element. It is in regards to the coin toss. You go back and you think, “Crikey, is that the biggest issue that New Zealand is facing, around legislation around how we do a coin toss when an election is tight?” Well, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you at home watching this at 7.44—of course, daylight saving is now in play, so it’s 7.44, for those who haven’t changed their clocks—yeah, this is the biggest factor that this Government believe is a priority in this country for local government, a little bit of legislation on how we do a coin toss when the vote is tight.

That is a disgrace—that is an absolute disgrace, because it shows that this Government are out of ideas. This is as good as it gets, ladies and gentlemen, in regards to legislation to improve this country’s issues, of which there are many. An opportunity is forgone this evening in which tangible and positive change could’ve been put through that would deal with the core issues facing our communities: unblocking the pipe, reducing the regulation, reducing the bureaucracy, getting our local governments focused on core services, and getting them away from the distraction of non-core services. All of those elements—a forgone and missed opportunity. On that basis, we’ll be opposing this bill.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. Can I first just acknowledge those who submitted on the bill, the other members of the Governance and Administration Committee, and the officials who worked tirelessly on the bill. As the Minister said earlier, I also want to acknowledge the former Minister of Local Government who introduced this bill into the House, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta.

I’d like to just correct some of the odd comments from the speaker prior to me, Simon Watts, particularly regarding Māori wards, and the comments that this bill would somehow force councils to have to reject Māori wards. It’s quite wrong. What we’re doing is ensuring some consistency with other matters that come up every time there is a representation review at a council. When we introduced legislation in 2021 around Māori wards at the time, the then Minister, Nanaia Mahuta, said we would be bringing enduring legislation back to the House, and this is what this bill does.

Our councils, every few years, have to undertake a representation review, and in that they consider other decisions, such as whether they have wards, how many wards they have, the boundaries of those wards, the number of councillors they have, which voting system they use—whether they use first past the post or STV. They have to consider those matters every time as part of their representation review, and that includes consultation with their communities, so it’s entirely consistent for us to be adding into our legislation that Māori wards also need to be considered. That is all this bill is doing. I note that around half or so of the councils that had the opportunity prior to the last local election chose to add Māori wards to their councils. We’ve have had very good feedback on how that is running. On one of the councils in my electorate of Nelson, we have an excellent Māori ward councillor, Kahu Paki Paki, who’s doing an excellent job, and I want to mihi to him tonight for the work that he is doing in our community to ensure that, for the first time, we actually have a Māori councillor on our council representing an important part of our community.

As previous speakers have also mentioned, there are other things that this bill does, such as increasing the number of potential councillors at Auckland Council, to be, again, consistent with other councils that can also have up to 29 councillors. So from a consistency point of view, it doesn’t make sense for a small council to be able to have up to 29, and then for a large council like Auckland, with its larger population base, not to have the same opportunity to have that level of representation.

So before I finish, I do just want to acknowledge my good friend Tasman Mayor Tim King in the gallery today. And just to acknowledge that, yes, Madam Speaker, I do trust my councils and mayors like Tim King. This Government backs the local government; it’s why we’ve been putting so much energy into ensuring they have the right systems in place to deliver for our communities. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I love the “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth” irony of the previous speaker Rachel Boyack, who said this Government backs local government, when they’re passing legislation after legislation, taking roles away from local government and centralising it against their will such as in the Water Services Act, and under the Resource Management Act they’ll be setting up these new agencies. Unfortunately, words might be fine; it’s what you do that actually matters. And this Government unfortunately has made a track record of great theatrics, great talking, great announcements, great ambitions, and extremely poor follow-through and confusion on what they’re actually doing on the ground.

Now, we’ve heard from the Prime Minister that this is a Government that’s going to focus on the bread and butter. We hear the “bread and butter” on many occasions. They’re going to focus on bread and butter and drop distractions and get to priorities. And then, lo and behold, we get a chance to speak on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill, second reading, which is all about the real important issues of local government, which is ensuring that people do not get a chance to have a referendum on whether they should introduce Māori wards into their electorate, which is fundamentally what this is about. It strikes me as a strange priority and indicative of a Government that has got muddled and confused about what is important to New Zealanders.

When they look at local government generally in New Zealand—and we all are under the bailiwick of some council somewhere—I think most New Zealanders look and see real pressure on local governments. They see pressure to deliver good quality services, and to actually make sure—well, I get emails from constituents today, for people in the Epsom electorate, complaining about the fact that nobody ever sweeps the leaves out of the gutters any more and that contributes to flooding. It is all the basic stuff about local government. There’s a lot of pressure—a lot of pressure about getting the roads open and moving and not having cones everywhere. A lot of pressure around water services, getting the sewerage stuff—all the basics of local government—and a huge amount of work that needs to be done.

And what is this Government focused on? It’s only ever focused on the electoral sort of stuff. So what did they do? I remember it was only a couple of years ago that they rammed through, under urgency, urgent legislation to change the way that local government operated in terms of Māori wards. And just a reprise on that, because this legislation confirms all that and sets it in stone for the short time that this Government will remain in office, at least—where in the past if a local council wanted to introduce Māori wards into the council, they had to ask the people. When they did, in most cases—overwhelmingly—when they asked that question, people said, “No, we don’t want it.” Why don’t they want it? Well, there’d be a host of reasons why they didn’t want it. But primarily I think most people just don’t want to divide New Zealanders into different groups; we all regard ourselves as equal New Zealanders and we don’t want to focus on difference so much as what unites us. There’ll be a whole host of reasons why people opposed it.

But when they did, that wasn’t good enough for this Government. So the people, when they were asked, said no, and so the Government said, “Well, we’re not going to ask you any more and we’ll just get local councils to just introduce these wards and not ask the people.” So that’s what happened last year. Lo and behold, a whole lot of councils did introduce these wards and we’ve just heard from the previous speaker saying that it’s been a great outcome. I haven’t seen great evidence of that. But, you know, time will tell. Time will tell whether, as a country, we’re better off for it or not. But we think, on this side of the House, that people should have a say on these matters. And the logical thing, if you’re going to change the way that we organise our electoral arrangements, is you should ask the people, not just do it on the basis of a bare majority under a Government.

Why do we worry about these things? We’ve got good reason to worry about it, because this is also the Government that has fundamentally changed the way that local democracy works in New Zealand by passing the Canterbury regional council bill, which moved away from two basic democratic principles: one, equal voting rights for all New Zealanders—and I hear sort of moans and groans from the other side as if this doesn’t matter. Equal voting rights for all New Zealanders—a pretty important basic constitutional principle that this Government moved away from in the Canterbury bill. Because what happens in Canterbury under that legislation is that everybody gets a vote—one person, one vote—for 14 councillors, and then after that, everybody having had a vote, including Māori, Ngāi Tahu get to appoint two more. So it is unequal voting rights depending on ethnicity.

But the second principle that it offended against was the idea that councillors should be accountable to the electorate. The one thing that keeps Kiri Allan on the straight and narrow as an MP is she knows that if she does a good job she will remain in office. If she does a bad job, people will throw her out. That’s the same principle that applies to all of us: we face the ballot box and if we’re no good, we get chucked out. Governments have come and gone over the years. But under the Canterbury legislation, the Ngāi Tahu appointments can never be thrown out, because they’re appointments as of right. So two fundamental constitutional principles thrown out the door by this Government on a bare majority with no consultation with the people and with no consultation across the House. So we’re pretty concerned about that.

So when it comes to the approach that the Government has taken in terms of local government democracy, we’re not impressed one iota and we certainly won’t be supporting this bill, which is not as heinous as the Canterbury regional council bill, but it is still one that offends that basic principle. When we’re going to make changes at how we organise our electoral arrangements at local government, we should ask the people through a referendum, and this bill doesn’t allow for that. In fact, it moves away from that. It does a few other minor things which may be of interest to some people, probably not to most people. But on that score I think it’s more a missed opportunity bill than a constructive bill, given all the challenges that we face at local government.

This is a bill that we won’t be supporting and we don’t support, and we don’t hope that it passes. We call upon the Government to reconsider and maybe at the last moment change their mind and go back to a principle where if a local council decides it wants to change and set up Māori wards, which they’re perfectly entitled to do, they should first ask the people and, if the people want it, then it will go ahead. If they don’t want it, then it won’t go ahead. That’s a fairly simple thing, it’s not hard to understand, and it’s where we were for most of our history and where we should return to. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I, too, echo the words of my colleague and thank our Governance and Administration Committee for a really good time going through this bill. We thank all the submitters, especially all of the city councils who came in and made their views heard during the select committee process. We did a bit of a split between me and my colleague Rachel Boyack in terms of—I’m just going to take the Auckland part in my speech today and explain some of the intricacies there.

Now, Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city. It is now up to 33 percent of the population in New Zealand. Right now, currently in Auckland, one councillor has to represent 86,000 constituents or residents. Let me repeat that again: one councillor has to represent 86,000 constituents, whereas members in the House probably represent around 60,000, I think is how the Electoral Commission divides up electorates in this House.

I know, for instance, in my home area of East Auckland, we have one councillor in the Howick ward that actually cuts across three different electorates. Their job is to liaise with the MPs in Pakuranga, the MPs in Botany, and the MPs in Takanini as well. Therefore, that also echoes the local board boundaries as well. That job is very immense, and it doesn’t naturally actually fall into communities of interest. You can imagine, just by the three electorates I’ve just described to you, whether it’s from Pakuranga—we’ve got the Howick community there. In Takanini, and even in Flat Bush and Botany, it is a very diverse Asian community, whereas in Howick and Pakuranga it’s a long-settled predominantly European community, and then you’ve got in Takanini a really large Indian but also Pacific community as well.

So having a ward councillor that has to cross that whole entire boundary is actually a really demanding job. What this bill will actually do is streamline the process to review how these boundaries are set in the local boards and also in the wards within Auckland Council as well, to be able to increase the numbers of councillors to the Auckland Council according to the growth rate of our population and the demands of our population.

A fact that has been often talked about in this House is that from 3 million to 4 million, it took this nation 30 years to get there, in terms of population growth. But from 4 million to 5 million—so the last million of growth that we’ve had in our population—only took us 16 years, which is about half the time it took for the previous 1 million of population growth. So with a changing demographic in New Zealand, with a changing landscape of Auckland, we need to have a political and a local democracy that actually reflects the way that that city is now shaping up to be and changing. So, therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Thank you. I’m pleased to take a short call on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. The Greens are not represented on the Governance and Administration Committee, so we weren’t involved in the hearings on the bill, but we strongly support the bill and its purpose to improve the processes by which individuals and communities are represented through, and can participate in, local government elections.

This bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. The Greens would like to see much more sweeping electoral reform to ensure that 16- and 17-year-olds have the vote in local authority elections so they can help chart their future and so that we improve representation in councils across the country through using a proportional voting system, in the same way that this Parliament has become much more representative and much more diverse through MMP. The Greens think that STV should be enabled at local authorities throughout the country. That’s why there are two Supplementary Order Papers in the name of Golriz Ghahraman which the House will consider in the committee stages, to put in place voting for 16- and 17-year-olds, and to ensure that the electoral system does cover that single transferable vote system so that voting is proportional.

So this bill is much more modest in its ambitions in terms of providing a revised process for councils to decide their representation arrangements and to make sure that they consider Māori representation as a fundamental step in that process, and to also simplify the process that unitary councils, such as Auckland Council, can go through to adjust local board boundaries, as well as the coin-toss issue and making a fairer decision when an election result is tied.

But I really must take issue with National’s comments on this bill. They are really forgetting history. We heard from Mr Goldsmith that it offends the fundamental principles of democracy. When he started talking about the Canterbury regional council legislation—it was, of course, the National Government which completely removed the ability of Canterbury electors to vote for a regional council for a whole nine years. It totally threw out the ability to use the ballot box. So it is very rich for the National Party to be opposing this bill. It simply ensures that when councils are considering Māori representation, there is not that extra barrier that they have at the moment of having to have a poll of electors. If councils want to establish an additional general ward, there is no requirement that there is a poll of electors. So why would we have a differential rule in relation to the establishment of Māori wards? So this bill makes it fairer by removing that requirement for a referendum. I hope that Mr Goldsmith looks at National’s initiatives in the local electoral law—getting rid of a whole regional council for nine years is getting rid of the fundamental principles of democracy. This bill is actually seeking to improve them.

In terms of what happens in Auckland, as the previous speaker, Naisi Chen, noted, there is the ability to increase the number of councillors to up to 29 councillors to ensure better representation in Tāmaki-makau-rau, and the ability, through the bill, for the council to amend the boundaries of local boards without having to go through that multi-step process with the Local Government Commission in terms of doing a whole restructuring of local government—the process for amending board boundaries at the moment is far too complicated. I really acknowledge the values of the Auckland boards. In virtually every bill concerning the Resource Management Act, the local boards in Auckland have individually provided submissions to the Environment Committee, for example, and brought the perspectives about their local area into focus. So it’s a very good initiative to ensure that their boundaries better fit their communities of interest.

One concern the Green Party has about the proposals around Auckland is that the regulatory impact statement says that the Remuneration Authority has advised that it’s unlikely that they will increase the size of the governance pool that council uses to fund councillor salaries, which, effectively, means that if Auckland Council decides to increase the number of councillors, the salaries will reduce because they’ll be having to spread the same pool over more people. That problem isn’t unique to Auckland, but to ensure that we have transparent local government and we avoid the risk of corruption, we need adequate salaries for councillors to encourage a wide variety of people to stand so that it’s not just those who can afford it and so that there’s no risk of people taking bribes, essentially, because their income is very low. So that issue of the governance pool is something I think that does need to be addressed.

The Green Party strongly supports the bill and think that the National Party doth protest rather too much and that it has obstructed Māori wards virtually every step of the way. That makes no sense at all because we want local government to be representative of everyone in Aotearoa, and that ensures increasing the amount of Māori representation at councils around the motu. Kia ora.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It will be no surprise to people watching at home or listening to Parliament that ACT will not support this bill. But I just want to lay out some of our concerns. Firstly, this bill was introduced by a Minister who is no longer in the portfolio and, in fact, became so unpopular for her co-governance agenda that she appears to have been exiled to a small country in northern Europe. It’s still winter there—it’s still winter there.

As the Minister, the Hon Kieran McAnulty, stated, “Like any tool, this bill needs much more than a tune-up.” The Minister has stated he will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper to delay the time for commencement of this bill, and you’d have to ask why it was so urgent and so imperative that the allowance for councils to introduce Māori wards without consulting their communities prior to the last general election was so urgent—according to the former Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta—that it must happen straight away. And yet this legislation is going to be delayed out for a year or more—which is quite convenient, because it will take the issue off the agenda, as far as this Government believes, during an election year.

But the reason that the Minister Kieran McAnulty gave for delay is that he couldn’t possibly impose such a bill—all of the administration, all of the regulatory shenanigans and paperwork—on local government affected by the severe weather in the first few months of this year. It’s the most remarkable admission. Because imagine that the Minister didn’t want to impose electoral regulatory red tape on councils but he’s more than happy to continue with the three waters reform that is incredibly disruptive to local government, particularly those who are trying to repair their assets damaged by cyclones and floods.

Now, the Minister mentioned that this bill is highly technical. Well, I’ve got to tell the Minister this is a teeny-weeny baby little bill compared to some of the other bills this Government’s dropped on this House, such as the 800-plus Resource Management Act or the 700-odd page three waters legislation currently before the Finance and Expenditure Committee. This is a teeny, teeny-weeny bill. It doesn’t make it any better. Rather than highly technical, I think the ACT Party would categorise this bill as slightly sneaky, and I want to describe why.

What are the problems with this bill? Well, instead of addressing the problems that local government has brought to the attention of select committees of this House that three waters reform are going to cause them—having their assets stripped of them and centralised in four new entities, having all of the staff who they rely on planning, engineering, all of those community engagement staff taken off them, taken off them, patched over, put into a water service entity—what they’ve asked for is to be allowed to continue managing their water assets and also managing the effects of land use in stormwater in a coherent and integrated way. That is at odds with what this Government’s local government agenda is seeking.

Local councils have also come to select committee—the Environment Committee—more recently and asked that the resource management reforms be amended or dropped because they’re going to take local decision-making by elected members on planning and land use away from councils and hand it over to an unelected centralised body called a regional planning committee, that local people and their elected representatives will have no control over. And, of course, the future of local government review: that interim report suggests that councils focusing on wellbeing and co-governance should be the objective of local government in the future. That is certainly not what the select committees hearing about the three waters resource management reforms have heard. And when we look at the submissions on this piece of legislation, it’s quite clear that there were very, very few submitters. I’m assuming if I was to ask the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, Mr Ian McKelvie, why that was, I would assume that’s because of the extremely limited time submitters were given to make submissions on the bill.

In fact, my parliamentary colleague Ian McKelvie was so disappointed at the time with the process that he was offered, he stated on the first reading—and I just want to acknowledge this. I mean, if he can honestly say he was looking forward to this bill coming to select committee because they could make some constructive changes, he would, but he can’t because he’s never seen the select committees change anything that a Minister has sent us yet. And apparently the member’s been here a little while. Well, look, I just want to offer this perspective. I’ve had the benefit of working alongside Ian McKelvie in the Governance and Administration Committee on another bill dealing with severe weather recently, and I know he tried hard—I know he tried hard. But what we have here today, this bill presented here at second reading, does little to assuage the fears of submitters. As one of them put it, and I’m going to read it out because it’s a very short submission, from a Karen Manson: “I oppose this bill.” According to Karen, the purpose of the bill appeared to “continue with Labour’s hidden agenda of co-governance a divisive agenda allocating different rights to different groups in New Zealand by virtue of their ethnicity”—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: It’s sad. What a sad excuse for an argument.

SIMON COURT: —“with vague reference to Treaty principles … that are not written down anywhere in this Bill.” Dr Duncan Webb, that’s from a submitter who can see clearly through the agenda of Labour and the former Minister who brought this bill to the House. Labour clearly are going to press on with their co-governance agenda; it’s right here in this bill. Submitters aren’t silly, New Zealanders aren’t silly; they saw right through this attempt, Dr Duncan Webb. Then there’s the submission, actually, from a community group, the Newmarket and Parnell Business Associations, which submitted that what they’d like to do is to be able to get more alignment between their local boards and the areas that they operate in. And that seems perfectly reasonable.

So I just want to come to some comments that another parliamentary colleague—Naisi Chen—made about representation. Well, look, Auckland has around 1.65 million people, 20 councillors on the full council. According to Naisi Chen’s calculation, that means we’ve only got one councillor for every 82,000 people in Auckland. But what that member omitted to point out was we also have 21 local boards with 149 local board members. That adds up to 169 representatives, which means for Auckland’s population that gives us a representation of just under one elected member per 10,000 people. That sounds pretty reasonable. For that reason, there’s no need to increase the level of representation. What it would be helpful to do for councils for local government, instead of messing around with co-governance and trying to sneak in more of that Government’s divisive agenda through the back door and under urgency and all the different ways this Government’s found to do it, what ACT would propose is, in fact, you give local government more power, more control over how they use their assets, how their communities develop.

Imagine, instead of central government taking all of the revenue that it collects from residential building, the GST on residential building, all of those invoices which add up to over $2 billion a year—instead of taking it all for itself, imagine if central government shared half the revenue from all of that GST with local government. Auckland Council, for example, would get $400 million a year to build infrastructure, develop community services and community assets and community facilities. That’s what ACT would do. If the Government really cared about increasing representation and getting more people enthusiastic about their local government, why not give them more power and control? Why not devolve to local elected members the ability to set their social and their economic direction for their community and to choose their own representation arrangements, not have them forced down their throat by this Labour Government. ACT will oppose this bill.

SORAYA PEKE-MASON (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. Tēnā koutou ngā iwi o te motu, e mihi ana ki a koutou.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. Greetings to the people of the nation. I acknowledge you.]

Good evening, everyone. I stand to speak on the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. Firstly, I stand in awe of the former local government Minister Nanaia Mahuta for her courage, for her perseverance, her boldness, and her humility and grace she has shown as a former Minister of Local Government, and in particular over the last recent years.

Māori Wards: as a former district councillor—over 12 years—what I can say is I wholeheartedly support this bill. Māori representation is a change I have longed for, not knowing I would be here today to speak to it myself. I reflect—I reflect, back in the days, what a lonely place local government would be if you were Māori. Even more shameful was having to endure six-yearly representation reviews, and Māori ward considerations could be vetoed just like that.

But you know what? My council, the Rangitīkei District Council, one of the most conservative at the time, broke the mould of conservatism and supported Māori wards, whilst, at the same time, an opposition group would be sitting in the gallery waiting to pounce with their polls. Guess what! Iwi at the time did not want them, to the disappointment of that opposing group. The Government took a first step to change this in 2021, amending the polls provisions to help councils to get ready for 2022 elections, removing discrimination. Hallelujah!

This bill sets out an enduring process—an enduring process for councils to consider Māori representation through a fit for purpose process. It gives the mana motuhake to the council. Whilst the new requirements will not come into force till 2025, it’s OK—it’s OK. We must consider those councils severely impacted by recent weather events along with others. Our Minister has heard the calling: good things take time. I wish to commend him, our Hon Minister McAnulty, for taking the time to visit 55 rural provincial councils last year and giving consideration to their feedback.

Auckland Council: Auckland Council has been hamstrung with a limitation of 20 councillors. It has grown and will continue—it will continue. Each councillor representing 86,000 residents—it doesn’t cut it. In my ward days, I thought that 1,500 was too much and onerous. Auckland needs to determine its own representation arrangements. Who knows better than themselves?

The recount and coin tosses: Well, I remember a time when the deputy mayor was appointed by the councillors. This particular year, there were two nominations. There was a tie. The mayor pulls out his coin and says, “Heads or tails?” and I thought, “What?”—that it was a joke. No, it wasn’t a joke. A very strange action in such an official capacity, mandated by the highest level of legislation: our Parliament. In this instance, it makes absolute sense to have a judicial recount before, at least, a toss of a coin. That is why I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call. I call on the Hon David Bennett for five minutes.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the Waikato, the event of Māori representation on council has been probably quite late compared with what you probably expect in an area that is so dominated by Tainui in many ways, and it has actually proven to be quite an effective role that has been taken by Māori on boards and on councils. For many people that may have had a lot of apprehension prior to that, it has been proven that there was no need for such apprehension. In fact, some of the Māori members of our councils show a lot more economic nous than some of the greener members of our councils that take quite a different philosophy on growth. The long-term ambitions of our Māori communities is something that councils, as the Government, need to take as well—however, we don’t need to dictate that to councils, and that’s what this bill does. Councils are quite willing to get to that point themselves.

The actual point we should be going for is that we don’t actually need to dictate anything. A true partnership or relationship under the Treaty wouldn’t need dictation from this House. It would evolve, and it will evolve to that point in our lifetime—I’m pretty sure of that. We don’t need legislation like this to actually get to that point. That’s the fundamental issue I guess many of us have. You know, we don’t actually have any opposition to Māori council positions; we actually see that they’re quite valuable and quite effective in many cases, like in our local communities. However, we don’t need that community to be dictated to by this House on how it should determine its representation.

You know, in the Waikato, it may be that more than two seats might be actually appropriate, but in the end, that’s up to the council, the community, to decide; it’s not up for this House to decide. I can see the day when in the Waikato we won’t need any seats—and that day isn’t far away—because the representation is organic. We’re getting to a stage now where councils are getting into that long-term vision. You have to look at the Waikato Regional Council—we were there yesterday. What you see there about their long-term vision around water and other issues is very consistent with Māori views of the world and where we want to go, and it’s consistent with the wider community’s views of the world and where we want to go. I don’t think that is an inconsistency that this Parliament needs to then, you know, dictate how that will be.

In the end, the end goal of local government should be to represent and do the best for their community and to work with central government—and central government’s role is to work with local government as well. To achieve that does not require dictation from here. What it requires is an understanding of the long-term goals that we all want to achieve.

So we oppose this bill, but we see value in much Māori representation in our area, for example. But it’s the necessary representation that has come through things like Treaty settlements and that; it doesn’t need to be dictated through legislation. It’s been organic, it has happened, and the next stage of that will actually be to take that away. The next stage of organic growth will be to remove that and actually have councils that have long-term visions that represent everybody in their community. That is the long-term view that Government and council should have. It’s probably something that’s beyond this bill, but, you know, the reality is we take a very three-year cycle, or, as the last speaker said, a six-year cycle, she felt she was under—and that is part of the problem. You know, we need to take a longer-term vision in this House and in local government to achieve the goals the communities want.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to speak on this bill this evening because, for someone who has had a background in local government for a number of years—

Glen Bennett: Deputy mayor.

TANGI UTIKERE: Deputy mayor, previously, yes. I know that local government is vital for our community, and what this piece of legislation does—as much as the Opposition would like to belittle it—is empower local decision-makers to continue to provide democracy for their local communities. Because this is a bill that gives local councils choice. Much has been said about the situation for Auckland, and if we look at Auckland, current legislation caps the number of councillors for Auckland Council at 20. That means if that council wishes to engage in a conversation around their council table about whether or not it should or could introduce Māori representation in the form of Māori wards, it currently is prevented or limited from doing so. This legislative change will align Auckland Council with the same approach that other councils have around New Zealand. If they choose to have 20 elected members, including the mayor, that is a matter for them. The choice is theirs.

What I like about this piece of legislation is that it would be mandatory for councils to consider how Māori would be included in local decision-making and local elections. When I reflect on the fact that in Palmerston North we had at the last local body election the introduction of a Māori ward that delivered us two representatives for Rangitāne: Councillor Roly Fitzgerald and the new deputy mayor, Debi Marshall-Lobb—they have added so much value to that decision-making process already. It is a wonderful thing that Palmerston North and its community has been able to benefit from.

I’ve had the opportunity to be a six-time candidate in local body elections, and so I would just hate to think that a process of flipping a coin to determine whether someone is successful or not, and then actually going through a judicial recount and finding out, actually, the original decision was inaccurate—that is just a complete waste of time, let alone the mental anguish that you would put both of those individuals in that particular position through.

This is a fantastic piece of legislation. It is about delivering for local democracy. I commend this bill to the House.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a brief call on this bill, the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, with an excellent chair—who I see opposite—and other members in the House, it was an honour to shepherd this bill through. I’d like to thank all of the submitters. We had around 40 submitters who made very thoughtful submissions on this bill. We had a number of councils who submitted. We always appreciate that process, and us and the officials genuinely listen to the submitters as they make their submissions.

I’d like to pick up on something the previous speaker just mentioned around the coin toss. I’m very pleased that we have tidied up this area because members may not know that the example that the member cited happened in Whakatāne—2019 elections—where there were two candidates who, basically, landed on the same amount of votes. There was a coin toss undertaken, and one of those went into council—they actually got sworn in to council; unfortunately, they were actually on council. Then there was a judicial recount and they found out that it was wrong and they had to get taken off council—I mean, that’s just outrageous; it really is on many, many levels. So it’s certainly very good that we’ve tidied that up.

It is disappointing that the Opposition parties are not supporting this bill. At the Hamilton City Council—I’m the member for Hamilton East—we have two Māori councillors on the Māori wards. We voted for that, as a city, and brought them in and it’s working very well. The previous member said that it’ll happen organically, and it may do, but, look, there is no harm in giving the opportunity, which is, basically, what we’re doing, for councils to be proactive in this space. It is an excellent piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I learnt something from Simon Watts when he spoke earlier, and that’s to point out to the House that I come from Rangitīkei, in case they didn’t know. He made that point, I thought I’d just remind you. Interestingly, the Rangitīkei electorate has bits, parts, or part of, seven different councils, and so consequently we have quite a few differences of opinion amongst those councils, and some very different ways of doing things.

One of the objectives of this piece of legislation, and I’ll read it out, is: “The broad single policy and purpose of this bill is to improve processes by which individuals and communities are represented through, and can participate in, local government elections.” And we’ve got, frankly, a pretty dismal record of getting people to participate in local government elections. There are a number of reasons for that. One, in my view, has been the very divisive nature in which Māori wards have been established, or not established, since 2002. So, in other words, the process has always been flawed, and I guess this Government’s had a bit of a crack at tidying that up. I don’t know whether they have tidied it up, but we do have at least some consistency around the introduction of Māori wards now, because running a referendum to establish a Māori ward was complete nonsense when you think about it. That was brought in, of course, by the 2002 Act, which was instigated by a Labour Government.

I think the issue of Māori representation has been well canvassed in the House tonight, and the issue of how those are established and the rules around them are also well discussed in the House tonight. So I won’t go into that any further other than to say I don’t think we’ve got on top of this issue yet, and I think there’s some work to do on it. I do support Tangi Utikere and his comments about the Palmerston North City Council, because having observed that in action over many years, I’d have to say it’s in the best state I’ve seen it in, perhaps, forever, as a result of where they’ve got to with this last election. And they do have an outstanding deputy mayor who was appointed through this system.

A bit has been said about the Auckland Council tonight, and the truth of the matter is that unless alterations were made to this piece of legislation, the Auckland Council wasn’t on the same footing as every other council when it came to appointing Māori wards, for instance. But also their number of councillors didn’t enable them to do what other councils can do in that respect. We were assured, actually, during the select committee stage process, by the Auckland Council that it was highly unlikely they’d get to 29 councillors. I hope it is, because imagine a council meeting starting on a Monday and getting through to about Friday afternoon and they haven’t all spoken. Wouldn’t be much good to Auckland I don’t think. I think that was the point made by one or two of the earlier speakers. So there is a risk that you end up with an Auckland Council of 29 councillors and, frankly, it would be very hard to manage, I would have thought. But, none the less, I think the reasons behind the Auckland Council—other than the fact it takes it out too far—were relatively logical.

The issue of recounts is quite an interesting one. Again, tonight, many people have talked about the fact that the toss of a coin decides who ends up on a council and who doesn’t. I think there was some logic in trying to ameliorate that situation, because it certainly isn’t practical and wasn’t a constructive way or a tidy way of getting through what could be a difficult situation in the event of a tie. Of course, those ties, under the old legislation, went to a toss of the coin, and then you could get a recount if you needed to, if you wished to, or if you were going to pay for it, actually. That’s no way to do something. So this is a better method of doing it than that.

I guess I’ll just touch quickly on the flexible electronic nominations, which I think is also a pretty sensible move, particularly in rural parts of New Zealand, because it’s not always so easy to get into the council to do what you need to do. One of my mayors, in fact, did attempt to put an electronic nomination in, only to be told it’s not legal. So it just shows that there were some grey areas in that piece of the legislation which, frankly, are pretty untidy. So that’s been tidied up.

The National Party can’t support this piece of legislation. I think the reason we can’t support it, aside from the issues raised by both Paul Goldsmith and Simon Watts earlier on, is the fact that local government in New Zealand has some massively challenging problems; these weren’t among them. I think the real problems that we’re going to have to assist Local Government New Zealand in addressing are issues around funding, the infrastructure deficit that we face in some parts of New Zealand—not all of them—and that relates to the history of how those councils are being run. So you get vast differences in the way councils are run in different parts of New Zealand. In fact, if you looked, as I said earlier, at the Rangitīkei, I have seven different mayors in one form or another—by one form or another, I mean either large bits or little bits, all of those council areas—and vastly different performance around their three waters infrastructure, for example, where some of them are completely established and in good order, some are not. So that’s one of the big challenges local government faces, and this bill does nothing to address that sort of a challenge.

As I said earlier, the other challenge that local government faces, and in fact we might well face it in central government too, in the future, is the lethargy—there’s probably a better word for it than that—of the voting population. The fact that we have several different methods of voting, different systems of counting the votes is very confusing. So whether it’s single transferable voting, or first past the post, or MMP, or whatever else we might want to invent, it’s very confusing for the average punter when they go to vote.

I think the other thing that needs to be tied up with respect to voting is—I think if people know they’ve got to go to a polling booth, they’re going to vote. Anyone who’s spent time, like most politicians have, delivering mail around mailboxes in town will know about a third of those mailboxes never get opened, and if they do, they’re set on fire, or the stuff in them’s burnt. So, frankly, about two-thirds of people get their ballot, the other third don’t, and that’ll be a fact. And actually there’s quite a chance that the third that don’t, a third of them are nicked as well and then filled in by someone else. So the whole system is fraught—

Simon O’Connor: Wouldn’t happen in New Plymouth—

IAN McKELVIE: Wouldn’t happen in New Plymouth; it absolutely, definitely wouldn’t. But the whole system is fraught. I think that these are issues that we should be addressing in this Parliament around local government; not so much some of the issues that are addressed in the course of this bill.

When you think of the time we spent in the Governance and Administration Committee on this bill, which fiddles around the edges of some things, and then think of the time we spent on the bill that’s about to come back to the House on Thursday—which is immensely important to a large part of New Zealand—we spent something like 24 hours on it, and we’re rushing it back through the House. So this thing has taken about a month or two months to get through the select committee stage and does very little. So you have to wonder whether we’ve got our priorities right in a lot of these areas.

As I said, the National Party can’t support this bill for reasons that at least two of my previous speakers have talked about—

Glen Bennett: Cross the floor. Cross the floor.

IAN McKELVIE: I can’t—to be fair, I can’t walk that far. You’ll get to that stage too. For various reasons that the two previous speakers have spoken about, we can’t support this bill, and, obviously, I support that or I wouldn’t be standing here speaking. Bad luck. But I do think that that there’s some serious challenges in local government, and as a Parliament they’re going to have to be addressed in the next year or so, and if they’re not, then I think we’re going to see the malaise around local government and the participation of our communities in it decrease as we go along.

So that’s my little contribution to this bill, and, finally, I’ll just thank the Governance and Administration Committee and all those people who helped us to get the bill to this point, and I wish for good luck. Thank you.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I do agree on one point of the previous speaker, Ian McKelvie, and that is that there is a lot of work to be done in local government to get it right, and I’m glad that we are doing things.

I reflect back, about a decade ago, and I never imagined that I’d be standing in this place speaking on legislation that impacts local government in the way it does, particularly around Māori wards. Because a decade ago, I was deeply involved in New Plymouth, in terms of our challenge and our push to ensure inclusion, to ensure that we had Māori wards—and we won and we succeeded and we fought. Then we lost and it was taken away. And then we won and we fought, and, thankfully, this Government—and I was very proud, in 2021, to sit in the council chamber in New Plymouth as the Hon Nanaia Mahuta announced the work that was being done around Māori wards, that it was going to be something that was far easier and far more inclusive, in terms of the equality which fitted in other systems when it came to representation on our councils.

So I’m sad that we’re not getting full support this evening across the floor, in terms of this Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill. I hope that we can draw more people in—people like Ian McKelvie who could maybe hobble across the floor with his Zimmer frame or whatever he has, what he needs. I’m sure he could do that.

I want to finish because we’ve talked and, I guess, traversed most of this this evening, so I don’t need to say a lot. But I have in my hot little hand—I raided my wallet—a $1 New Zealand coin. It does seem really unfair that, at the toss of this coin, which I’m going to demonstrate now and hopefully not muck up, that would signal a decision that would be made for an elected member, whereas, actually, if we went back and did the count properly, we might have got it right, as mentioned earlier.

So I won’t bore the House with any more amazing stories or analogies, because this is good legislation, and I commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Local Government Electoral Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 76

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

Noes 44

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 9 March.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to speak on this legislation, the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill. I just acknowledge that the National Party supports this legislation, which is designed to improve outcomes for people participating in Family Court proceedings—particularly children—by creating the new role of the Family Court Associate, who will be empowered to take on some of the Family Court judges’ workload in order to try and reduce delays. So this particular role, as a recognised judicial officer, will have the additional powers above that of a registrar but less than a Family Court judge, but will be able to take on some of the duties currently undertaken by judges, including some of the decisions in the early stage of proceedings.

Now, if we were to step back and think about the justice sector generally in the country, what are the real challenges that we face? Where should the Government be prioritising its efforts? I would suggest in three areas: one, the growth in violent crime and how we’re going to deal with that; secondly, real issues around youth crime and the ram raids and the sense of imperviousness in that space; and the third area is definitely in this broad area of access to justice and the slow court processes and the delays in the court processes which are putting people’s lives on hold for a long time. And we’ve been, frankly, a bit critical of the Government’s priorities in justice—generally not being focused on the big issues. This bill does, in a small way, address that third area around the delays in the court processes that are putting people’s lives on hold and dragging things out. And I think all MPs will be aware of many stories from many constituents and local people who have horror stories about the delays and the slowness and the cost and the aggravation and the general dysfunction, frankly, on elements of the Family Court, as well as many other court processes, which, in the hands of a determined party on either side, can be dragged out a very long time.

Now, as we’ve seen in this House, the House has come together on many occasions to try and streamline processes and improve it, and sometimes that hasn’t worked as well as we would have hoped, because it’s a very complex area dealing with human behaviour, which is not always, frankly, rational or seeing straight. It’s times of great emotion, so it’s a very delicate and difficult area. So this is, I suppose, a modest step in the sense of saying, “Well, what’s one bottleneck in the system?” Well, one of the bottlenecks in the system is the time of judges, and there are a whole lot of stages along the way through the process of cases, not all of which need a full Family Court judge. Are there some tasks that we can pass on to another category, I suppose, of judicial officers? That’s where the Family Court Associate comes in. Time will tell whether this is a more successful intervention than some of the others, but we fundamentally think it is worth a go.

The select committee process was interesting. We heard quite a few submissions from a number of groups, generally supportive but not entirely so. There have been some changes that have been made, such as giving these Family Court Associates the ability to direct a registrar, to appoint a lawyer, for example, to allow them to convene a settlement conference, and to direct a registrar to convene one, and to reduce the powers to declare paternity to cases where paternity is undefended only—various tweaks that were made during the process, which may or may not help. And I hope they will.

So, look, the main point I would make is when you’re looking at the big challenges that we face in justice, there’s no doubt that the slowness of the court proceedings and the time delays to getting an outcome is a massive challenge. The Family Court is one example. Everywhere you look, unfortunately—whether it goes through to the tribunals, whether it’s to the employment tribunal, as well as the criminal, as well as civil cases in terms of commercial cases—people’s lives are on hold, waiting for outcomes. And so the Government should be focused on this area. I wish they were more focused on this area in the broader justice space. I mean, there’s a lot of workshops and a lot of committees and a lot of programmes under way to try and do it, but workshops and committees and plans are all well and good, but it’s the outcomes that we want to see, and at the moment the delays are still unsatisfactory. But this legislation will make some difference. In so far as it does, we support it and will be looking forward to the next stage, the committee of the whole House. In the meantime, I think that is all I need to say on the topic. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to make some brief remarks in relation to this significant bill that really does go to addressing access to justice needs. This is an area that this Government is extremely focused on. This is not the first bill in this space. Last week, we saw the Coroners Amendment Bill go through its third reading, which will also give significant capacity to the coronial space as well.

I would just like to thank the Justice Committee for their work in this space. We received 31 submissions and listened to 14 oral submissions, and I think committee members would agree with me that we owe a real thanks to Dr Emily Henderson, who was very much the expert in the room and lent her expertise to us as we grappled with many of the issues in front of us.

I’ll speak to a set of issues that the select committee recommended some changes on, and I would call them alignment amendments, because they were all about ensuring that with these new associate powers they are aligned with either some of the duties or some of the protections that sit for judges who are exercising powers in this space.

One of them is the grounds for removal. So the select committee recommended a narrowing of the criteria here to inability and misbehaviour, which aligns with the ability to remove judges in the Family Court space. The second was the provisions around immunity for decisions made specific to their jurisdiction, and the third was the ability for these associates to appoint specialist lawyers to provide advice as they hear evidence as well.

So there were some of those more technical alignment amendments that we recommended, but we did also grapple with trickier areas, which were areas about whether associates should be granted power to make decisions in relation to and fairly key access-to-justice matters. One of those was determining whether an individual was a vexatious litigant, and the committee ended up recommending that the associates shouldn’t hold that power. So, again, this is another example of a bill that was complex, that required careful balance. I do believe we got that balance correct, and I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I want to prefix my comments to say that we are supporting this bill, as we actually have done pretty much most of the justice bills in the most recent sitting of the House, and I’ll come back to that a little bit, within the scope, of course, of this debate. But to acknowledge the member Vanushi Walters, who has just resumed her seat and who chairs the Justice Committee, it was an important piece of work, and it’s one of those moments when we’re actually working with colleagues across the House—also acknowledging Dr Emily Henderson and her view and expertise—really teasing out some of the difficult issues and, I think, coming to a good conclusion in and of itself.

So, again, I want to say quite clearly that we support this bill, but the caveat is, like it was last week, that we feel on this side of the House that it’s a little bit of window dressing. If you wanted to use a very poor analogy of running a half marathon, this is like a 100-metre dash at the moment. It doesn’t go far enough. We have a fundamental set of problems within the court system, and I’m not referring to judicial activism; I’m just referring to the structure of the courts and the delays that we see. At the moment there are fundamental and systemic problems which need to be addressed. Yes, this bill goes a little way to assist. It’s certainly not going to make things worse, but I would argue it’s not going to make them exceptionally better either.

What this, in effect, does, this Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill, is it creates a new role of Family Court Associate (FCA). They sit with a little bit more powers than the registrar, but not the same powers as a Family Court judge. Now, I’m not going to disambiguate that, but you do have to ask the question: the fact that it’s just sort of blending roles, you go, “Well, why not just appoint more judges?” What is the problem that we have here? Or do we need more registrars? Why are we just sort of going down the middle now? I’m not arguing against these again. I think they will hold a particularly good role. As I said, the previous speakers touched on some of the elements which are a debate about what this associate could or could not do. But there’s just a hint to me of just that little bit of bureaucracy, just that little bit—I’m sort of not so much struggling as trying to find the right words, just to articulate that we aren’t quite nailing this. Because, fundamentally it’s sidestepping some of the key issues within our court and certainly in the Family Court system.

I don’t want to play one court off the other, but as a constituent MP—and it doesn’t actually matter if we’re a constituent or a list MP, as most of us know what it’s like, having to deal with people who are struggling with the Family Court and the huge delays there and that emotional pressure it’s putting on families and children. So, again, it’s positive—it’s positive to a degree that there is this piece of legislation, but as we continue to say, it really isn’t the solution required. And the encouragement from this side of the House is for the Government to do more.

An example of that is utilise technology more often and better. Yep, let’s create this Family Court Associate, which sort of is not quite a judge, but a little bit more powerful than a court registrar. Well, why not actually look at ways that we can speed up the process? We’re not really sure that even with these new associates in play, we’re going to see much change in the timing. So we’ll wait and see and I’ll be very happy to be proven wrong if these FCAs, these associates, see a real increase in speed in the Family Court. Well, you know, figuratively speaking, I’ll eat my hat, and gladly.

But I just want to repeat, particularly for those at home, that we support the bill, but it’s a little bit like the bills we had last week around criminal proceeds and around some targeting gangs. Again, they in themselves were not bad pieces of legislation and I and the National Party were happy to support them. They just really aren’t going far enough when we have a whole series of situations that we do. I don’t wish to take up more time in the House than is necessary and I end, therefore, where I started: National is pleased to support this bill.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): As I set down my knitting, I am pleased to take up what one might call my other knitting. I think it is understood that the Family Court is a forum where it is so complex, it is so difficult—the human issues that are involved are so intense—and it is an area that we really ought to pay greater attention to, in my personal opinion. In my role as the deputy chair of the Justice Committee, it was a real passion project for me to watch the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill work through its stages.

So what this bill will do, as previous speakers have said, is put in some associate judges who are, essentially, going to deputise for the senior judges when it comes to administrative tasks, and they are going to take these administrative tasks off the hands of the main judges, who will then be able to get through the workload. The workload is extreme. At the moment, if I were to take a case in Whangārei court where I used to work, if I were to take on a serious case—a child custody matter with some violence thrown in there—I would not anticipate being able to get to a proper full hearing and a decision in under two years.

That is an appalling indictment of our system and it is why we need to bring this role in, so that we can cut some of that administrative backlog—administrative backlog, I might add, which was hugely worsened by the Judith Collins reforms of 2012 which are, I have to say, pretty much universally reviled by Family Court practitioners throughout the land. It was those reforms which were aimed at cost cutting, which thought that the way to do it was to strip back legal representation from people and force them to self-represent, which, instead, have added hugely to the backlog because people cannot self-represent effectively in the Family Court. So all sorts of delays and misunderstandings have eventuated.

On top of that, where lawyers were so anxious that a client would really do themselves a damage self-representing, they then have exploited the loophole which was to make an emergency or an ex parte application, and ex parte applications became 70 percent—they became the norm as opposed to the 30 percent of applications previously—because if you do an emergency order, then you can get a lawyer automatically. That completely skewed the system.

So we are bringing in system busters for a system that was strained and, essentially, broken by a previous National Party policy. I am pleased to see us repealing all of those policies, and I am thrilled to see us bringing in Family Court Associates. I commend this bill to the House.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to commend this bill to the House. I come at this from a previous life working in part for Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa (ACYA), which was—it continues to be, without me—the organisation that submits the shadow report, or the non-governmental report, to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. So the Government gets to submit its report, and we also get a non-governmental report, which means that that umbrella organisation—with member organisations as far-reaching as nurses unions and the Post Primary Teachers’ Association as well as Unicef—gets to present a detailed research report that we used to put together over three years with consultation and with a human rights - based lens, to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. And I can say this: throughout the last two terms of the National Party Government when I was the policy consultant for ACYA, youth justice and the Family Court system were the main breach areas that we would raise again and again, based on sector consultation with the United Nations body, so that they could put that to successive Ministers. And our focus was the rights and wellbeing of children.

So I commend this bill with a mind to the kind of work that the Family Court does, which very intimately—and, in some cases, in very desperate situations—impacts the rights and wellbeing of New Zealand children and young people. So we’re dealing with custody and access, we’re dealing with abuse, we’re dealing with serious, serious issues. I can say that the bill does go some way to solving those problems and that I am shocked and surprised by the last National Party speaker, Simon O’Connor, who said that this doesn’t go far enough—because all it does is really kind of fix the damage that was done back then: the things that slowed down the Family Court system, the things that took away the child rights expertise, the youth advocacy, and, essentially, the access to justice that we want to see in all of our courts and justice system institutions. So, yes, it goes some way to upgrade the efficacy and the efficiency and the timeliness of decisions and processes in the Family Court. That’s good; we need to do that. We need to better resource all institutions, all processes that touch upon New Zealanders’ rights and ability to access decisions that impact on their wellbeing and their rights.

We have a saying in the rights-based system that “Justice delayed is justice denied”, and certainly for very young people who are in large part accessing the Family Court system, that’s redoubled, because we know that time means a lot more when you are a wee young person. If you have a decision delayed in terms of access to a primary caregiver—or any caregiver—if you have a decision that’s wrongfully made without your input, perspective, or wellbeing taken into account and you’re waiting for an appeal or hearing, and you are a small person of four years old and you have to wait two years, then you’re six; that’s actually quite a long time in developmental time, and it’s quite a long time for those whānau to wait. So efficiency is a big, big deal. And it’s a big, big deal in terms of our ability as a nation to say that we actually serve the rights of the child, but also that we serve families.

I do want to say that far, far more needs to be done. And I do want to say that, actually, the Opposition needs to come to the table with not just a little bit supporting this but acknowledging the absolute wrong that was done. So this is a good bill, but we need this House of Representatives to come to the table and talk about resourcing the Family Court, resourcing youth advocates, and to acknowledge that we need an expert body with the training and the focus on the rights and wellbeing of children and young people but also on processes that serve our families, society, and communities.

We need it to acknowledge that, much as we don’t want to acknowledge it, we live in a society in Aotearoa New Zealand that deals with a disproportionate rate of family and domestic and gender-based violence, for example. And so delay is not OK. A lack of partnership with community-based organisations that speak to those issues is not OK, and that takes resource; that takes a willingness to listen to the sector, and it takes a willingness to prioritise the work of our very first Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, the Hon Marama Davidson. So when those really difficult truths come to light, we need to have courage, as a society, to shine the light into the little dark corners of our culture and our society that we don’t want to look at but do exist and say we’re going to solve this problem. We’re going to do that with resource, we’re going to do that with legislation, and we’re going to do that by acknowledging the truth that it’s been delayed for too long and that we need to partner with organisations that have been telling us what we need to do for a long time.

And we need to acknowledge, whether we are in the National Party or in the Government party—which is Labour right now—that sometimes mistakes have been made. That’s what this bill does, which I commend, but I do want us to do far more, and that takes a moment of listening, acknowledging, and in fact prioritising the work of the Family Court, which, in some cases, is some of the most essential work that will be done in a child’s or a young person’s life. So I commend the bill, but I implore us, as a lawmaking body, to do far more and to have the courage it takes to make systems change.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill. There were 31 submissions received on this bill, and 14 of those submitters had an oral hearing. I’d like to acknowledge and thank the Ministry of Justice for their support and help in understanding this piece of legislation as it worked its way through the Justice Committee. We know that the delays in the entire justice system are so bad now that we have families caught within the system who are at breaking point. None of this is good for any child or children that are caught within it.

The purpose of this bill is to reduce those delays by creating a new role within the Family Court—that of a Family Court Associate. Their job is to take on some of the minor and administrative tasks of a Family Court judge so that proceedings can start to move at a faster yet reliable pace. The Family Court Associates will be judicial officers, and they will have some but not all of the powers of a Family Court judge, and extra powers additional to that of a registrar of the Family Court. More importantly, they will have the ability to use some of the functions that a Family Court judge uses that allow some minor determinations to occur, hence getting the Family Court process moving and actually considering some cases. It means that the Family Court Associates can assist with decision-making needs as each case works its way through the Family Court system. This will benefit those that are caught in a waiting game within this system, and those that are about to enter it. It is unfortunate to note that it isn’t unusual for Family Court proceedings to increase after the summer holidays, so the timing of this bill, unfortunately, is good.

Having the Commissioner of Police telling us that domestic violence is on the rise by as much as 60 percent in areas like the East Coast and Hawke’s Bay is not actually surprising after the sort of natural disaster that these communities have experienced. Sadly, we will see an increase in Family Court proceedings just because of that. The timing of this bill will, therefore, be beneficial for families wishing to sort out their issues, and those that are seeking help in a timely manner for those issues.

Once implemented, the role of the Family Court Associate will be mainly administrative, and this should free up a Family Court judge’s time to work on the more substantive matters that he faces within the cases that come before him. A Family Court Associate will be appointed for seven years, and can be reappointed only once more after that term. On the flip side, though, they can resign at any time as well.

The bill inserts new section 7B(2), in clause 4, which provides that the Governor-General can remove a Family Court Associate, on advice from the Attorney-General, if the Family Court Associate becomes bankrupt, is found guilty of misconduct, is neglectful, or simply just can’t do the job. We had to think about this role and how to effect removal. This is new—the creation of this role. There is no other role that directly compares to it. The Family Court Associate is not a judge, so doesn’t have their full responsibility, but does have more responsibility than that of a court registrar. So we considered that, really, the removal of a Family Court Associate should align with the same reasoning behind the removal of a Family Court judge. This means that they need to come under the same removal regime, which is actually prescribed and for which there is a commissioner, the Judicial Conduct Commissioner. So we’ve inserted a clause that means the Judicial Conduct Commissioner would need to get involved, and the Family Court Associate could come under the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Act 2004. The commissioner’s report would then go to the Attorney-General to remove the Family Court Associate.

We also carefully considered what immunity we should give a Family Court Associate. Originally, we said that no proceeding could be commenced against a Family Court Associate unless that associate had exceeded their jurisdiction or acted outside of it. In light of the changes we made to how a Family Court Associate can be removed, we decided to ensure that the Family Court Associate actually has the same immunities as the Family Court judge. To keep that balance and that fairness, that had to be there for this new role.

The committee also recommended a review clause be added to this bill. So we have instructed the Parliamentary Counsel Office to include replacement section 7K, set out in clause 4, stating that a review must be held within five years of the commencement of the Act and reported to the Ministry of Justice. The review is to determine whether or not the establishment of the Family Court Associate has reduced the delays that we are seeing in the Family Court and also whether or not any changes need to be made to the Act as to the Family Court Associate appointment process. We need to question whether the functions, the duties, and the powers of the associate are adequate enough, and what else the associate can do.

Clause 6 of this bill introduces a new Schedule 2 into the Act, which sets out the powers that they have. The Family Court Associate can appoint a lawyer to assist them under eight different Acts. These are listed on page 4 of the commentary on the bill, in the footnote. The committee could see that under seven of those eight Acts, a Family Court judge can direct a registrar to appoint a lawyer to assist the court. The Family Violence Act is an exception to that. So we’ve asked for the same conditions to be available to the Family Court Associate, and, as a result, clause 1(ga) has been added to Schedule 2 of the bill.

We are making changes to other Acts as well, including making amendments to the Care of Children Act 2004, where, currently, a judge can direct a registrar to convene a settlement conference before a proceeding is heard. The committee concluded that a Family Court Associate should be able to do the same, and they have asked for that to be added to the bill in clause 18, which inserts section 46Q(1).

Section 141 of the Care of Children Act is about vexatious proceedings. If the court is satisfied that a person is persistently bringing vexatious proceedings before them, then they can order that any proceedings can commence only with the leave of a Family Court judge. The bill as drafted would have given a Family Court Associate the same power, but the committee were worried about this because denying someone the ability to bring a case before the Family Court has the potential for the court to be accused of denying access to justice, and this is quite serious. We were not confident that we should be putting a Family Court Associate into that position where they deny a case to be heard. So we asked for that to be removed from the bill. The flip side of that is that we do want the Family Court Associate to be able to commence proceedings for a person who’s deemed to be vexatious if they feel this is a relevant case to be heard without taking up a Family Court judge’s time. So we’ve asked for section 141(2) to be amended to reflect that.

There are changes to the Status of Children Act 1969, where there is a question over paternity. The bill as drafted initially gave a Family Court Associate the same power as the judge to make declarations of paternity or non-paternity. As drafted, it would allow the associate to make these declarations on both defended and non-defended applications. The committee agreed that a defended application would be more complex, and because of that we did not want an associate to preside over such complexities. So we’ve asked for an amendment so that the associate can make needed declarations as to paternity only in undefended cases.

There’s also a piece, near the end of the commentary on the bill, about the Family Court panels that three submitters discussed and said were urgently needed. However, it was outside of the scope of the bill.

I’d like to thank those particular submitters for bringing fresh ideas. The bill has a review scheduled, and we believe it’s good that the select committee report has mentioned the proposals from submitters, as there may be a case to include this at that time. This initiative, along with similar initiatives for the coroner’s courts, will help to immediately address the backlog that these courts are facing, backlogs that are essentially denying—by delaying—justice to the people. We on this side of the House support this bill.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker; a pleasure to take a call on the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill in its second reading.

As we’ve heard from the previous speakers, the bill is about improving outcomes for people who participate in Family Court proceedings, and especially the children, by reducing the delays involved. We’ve heard many examples of how the delays have wide-ranging effects, especially on children. Someone mentioned that justice delayed is justice denied, and I think that is a very clear maxim to go on.

So I would also like to put my acknowledgment to everybody who submitted on this bill. We heard there were 31 submitters, and the Justice Committee heard 14 of those in oral submissions. They included the judiciary, professional organisations, iwi and their representatives, and interested groups and individuals.

So what the bill does is respond to specific issues that were identified by the independent panel which was established in 2018 by our Government. Among the findings was that there was a high administrative burden that was placed on judges, which then in turn contributed to some of those delays. The panel subsequently recommended that a new position be established in the Family Court. So we’ve heard people talk about this new position being the Family Court Associate, which would be a judicial officer enabled to take some of that work away from the judges—for example, making decisions in the early stages of proceedings. That means that judges can make more effective use of their time, and in return it will reduce delays and assist in improving the process and experience of people who participate in Family Court proceedings.

Now, it was really a pleasure to hear our expert in this field on our select committee, Emily Henderson, speak on particular experiences that she’s had when she was working in this field. She’s always very generous in sharing those experiences, and I find that very helpful. So, again, she spoke about the reforms in 2014 that resulted in significant delays. In fact, without notice applications saw a rise from 30 percent in 2014 to what became—what she referred to as—a new norm: 70 percent. That is why, as I mentioned before, an independent panel was put in place to examine those changes, and make recommendations on how we could further improve the system.

The select committee has recommended some refinements to the bill to assist in reducing delays in the Family Court. I won’t go over those again. I think the previous speaker, in particular, Nicole McKee, gave a really good, detailed overview of what those particular recommendations are.

She also spoke about the review that is going to be put in place—in five years after the commencement of the bill—to make sure that the Family Court Associate role would actually have assisted in reducing delays in the Family Court. So as the Minister said previously, introducing this new Family Court Associate role is just one part of the long-term programme of change in the family justice system, and one more step towards a system that is ensuring timely access to justice, as well as being responsive to the needs of whānau. I would recommend and commend it to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Tama Potaka—a five-minute call.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Tēnā koe e te Māngai e te Whare taukumekume nei. He rangi whakamiharo tēnei. Maringa nui au ki te kōrero mō tēnei pire, arā te Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill. Te tuahine, Minita Kiritapu, tuki roa o te māipi ture me te māngai mō te tangata, kia ora.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is an amazing day. I am fortunate to speak on this bill, the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill. To my sister, Minister Kiritapu, mouthpiece of the legislative taiaha and spokesperson for humanity, hello there.]

Improving outcomes for people participating in the Family Court proceedings—children, whānau, and, of course, the judges—is critical. The judges, in particular, are often overwhelmed by many challenges, sheer workload, multiple expectations—particularly to keep criminals out of prison—and demands to attend various invitations to well-provisioned hui and speaking engagements throughout the country and offshore. Establishing a new type of judicial officer to take on some of this mahi, carried out by the judges, should make it easier to efficiently progress diverse lower-level matters. We hope to see this legislation better enable core values of our party: strong whānau, strong families, strong communities, and personal security. As a result, e tautoko ana te Pāti Nāhinara haki kahurangi nei i tō te pire anga whakamua i tēnei wā [the blue flag National Party supports the progress of the bill at this stage.] We will support the bill at this stage.

Now, amending various pieces of family law legislation reminds me of spending quality time, about 500 metres from here, sitting quietly under the careful and often monotone instruction of our family law lecturer Bill Atkin. The Minister of Justice herself and also the Hon Duncan Webb would both recall the dulcet vibes of Bill Atkin and the entire teaching cohort of our alma mater and the significant munificence given for freedom of expression therein.

Sure, this bill is a mechanism to combat unacceptable court delays and wait-lists, which have increased significantly over the past few years. But establishing more roles, like establishing more bureaucracy, will not necessarily address the root causes of the issues: an inefficient court system that’s sometimes focused on unusual priorities, as my colleague Mark Mitchell understands. The bill seeks to reduce waiting times. We would implore, for various reasons—or take, as I’d like to describe them—that there are systemic issues within the courts—e.g., technology utilisation, and I won’t go into how inefficient Māori Land Online has been over the many years that it’s been in force—the lack of evidence regarding the expected or intended effect on courts’ processing times, and the time it will take to recruit, train, induct, and take on board Family Court Associates.

Recruiting these associate candidates with suitable experience will also be difficult due to the limited pool of qualified candidates. Everyone seems to be getting into judicial positions these days. I actually acknowledge the new judges Tahana and Williams at this time, and also there is limited space at the courts for Family Court Associates and judges to do work at the same time. So there will be some capital expenditure costs associated with these great, bright ideas.

However, my late-night murmurings and rumblings are exhausted, and I’d boldly recommend to cautiously proceed so we can see some light through the select committee process, and members therein can paddle this waka forward so it doesn’t come foul in choppy oral seas or the whirlpool of verbal posturing that sometimes takes place in this Whare and also in select committees. So I hark back to the kōrero of one of our most well-known leaders and Business Hall of Fame admittees, Te Puea Hērangi, “Mahia te mahi hei painga mō te iwi.”—if it’s good for the people, get on with it. Kia ora tātou.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Mahia te mahi, said Tama Potaka, the previous speaker, and I’m into that as well. I’m here to support this bill and to also acknowledge the submitters that came before the Justice Committee and put their thoughts forward to try and make this the most robust piece of legislation that we can as we look to reform small parts of the Family Court.

Can I acknowledge the contribution from Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa: Stormie Waapu, Luke Fitzmaurice, who put together their submission on behalf of the association, really looking for that aspirational, transformational change. They, in their submission, told the committee that they didn’t think that this was transformational enough. They were looking for more joined-up systems and processes across the Family Court system, and I want to acknowledge them for that. This is a small piece of legislative change that will help the overall picture, help to deal with those delays, but I want to acknowledge the effort that they put into their submission. These are people that practise inside the system and represent people that are working inside the system day in, day out.

Whilst they didn’t think that this bill went far enough, there is a general consensus around the House today that, actually, we are moving in the right direction. There’s still a lot more work that needs to be done to ensure that our Family Court system adheres to the principle in article 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi to ensure that our Māori people get to have the tino rangatiratanga over our taonga, of which our tamariki and our whānau are absolutely central to that. So I commend this to the House.

ANAHILA KANONGATA‘A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Kia ora, e te Mana Whakawā. It’s an honour to speak on the second reading of the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill. This bill is based on the recommendation from the 2019 report Te Korowai Ture ā-Whānau, which found that judges had a high admin workload as a contributor to the delays in the Family Court. I myself have navigated through the Family Court system, going through custodial disputes, and I know what it’s like to have a delay in the Family Court as someone who has actually been a client through the Family Court.

I’m not going to spend more time to talk about my experiences as a social worker or as a supervisor writing reports to the courts on my professional recommendations for Family Court cases, but what I like about this report is that it does have a review date. Without further delay, I commend this bill, the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill, to the House. Mālō.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I take a call at the second reading of the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill. I addressed the House at the first reading of this bill. During that first reading debate, I reiterate again this evening, I said that this bill, despite its good intentions and the purpose to reduce delays in Family Court proceedings so the court process works better for participants, particularly children—this is just somewhat a bit of a patch it, hatchet, band-aid job, with respect. I say that because the appointment of a Family Court Associate will help alleviate those delays only in part. The alleviation will be to do with the administrative workload of Family Court judges.

At the first reading speech I gave in this House, I talked about the solution as one that would need to be multi-layered and multi-tiered. The appointment of Family Court Associates is just band-aiding, or assisting the burden of the paperwork in the administration of the court process and system. That is not going to remedy the overall efficiency that’s required for the Family Court, and with the review that has been recommended by the select committee for this to come back in a couple of years’ time to see the efficacy and the impact of this legislation—time will tell. But the whole essence of the Family Court proceedings with our children who are, in the main, the subject of those proceedings—the time frames of proceedings have impacts on children. Those of us who have children and those of us who have worked in the area with children know that the concept of a child’s time sense is very different to that of the adult world. So time is so critical and important, particularly with children who are the subject of Family Court proceedings.

At this second reading, it’s a case where the Justice Committee has, with a keen ear, hopefully, applied what they have listened to from these submitters. There were submissions from 31 interest groups and individuals, with oral evidence heard from 14 submitters. The committee, with a keen ear from listening to those submissions from people who know better than most of the politicians in this House because they work in the sector, and then applying through the eye in detail of the written proposed legislation—hopefully, this bill before the House may be improved as a result of those submissions. It’s noted in the Justice Committee report returned back to this House that there have been a number of recommendations to amend the bill, and that will be addressed at the third reading with those amendments factored in and taken into account. There have been a number of amendments as a result of listening with a keen ear and applying that with a keen eye to the amendments at the committee of the whole House—it would be considered to be done with prudence.

So the amendments have been detailed in the Justice Committee. I wasn’t a member of that committee. My colleagues the Hon Paul Goldsmith, the Hon Mark Mitchell, and Simon O’Connor, with my colleague Chris Penk taking part in consideration because he is our spokesperson for courts—the bill will be improved as a result of submissions that have been made. But, as I say, and I again reiterate from my first reading contribution, this bill does nothing to address the root cause of the issues, which is an inefficient court system. The appointment of Family Court Associates is only going to in part address some of the workload of judges.

I have also iterated in this House before that there are more proceedings coming before the court because we are living in a society that is becoming, regrettably, more dysfunctional with the complexity of issues that are weighted and burdened, and to be borne and carried by families. In this time of crises—a cost of living crisis—the flow-on effect will be to the family units. The flow-on effect will be bearing out with the impact, as it is, on our children and childcare and protection issues. Again, that will all wait and come back to the Family Court—domestic violence, family violence. That’s been proven with what the fallout of COVID has been, and now we’re going to just await the hit and the fallout of the cost of living crisis, which comes back to our families, and then it will come back to be borne evidence with proceedings in the Family Court.

The other concern is that, essentially, this role of a Family Court Associate is one of a junior role. I’ve talked before and reiterated the importance of the appointment of more Family Court judges. Mention has been made in the House, and I do acknowledge Judges Tahana and Williams, both appointed to the Family Court. I served with Tanya Blyth Williams—she is now a judge; Judge Williams—who was a Family Court lawyer, and we’ve both practised and specialised in child advocacy as counsel for children.

So it’s critical that we have people who are experienced and have practised in the field, but, importantly, that we listen to what they do convey to us as parliamentarians, politicians, in our role and service as public servants and listen to what they share with us as to how things could be better addressed, solutions, and remedies. Despite the good intent and purpose of this legislation, it really is just band-aiding a very complex, multi-tiered, multi-layered system. It’s not just in the Family Court, but we see it in the District Court, the criminal court, the Youth Court, our Māori Land Court.

Reference and mention has been made to attempts to improve and make better, but the fallout and the offshoot of that is if we’re just going to slap on a band-aid and address just a part of that system, we’re going to soon see that band-aid being torn off and the festering of that wound underneath because it hasn’t been properly excised.

So it sounds all rather grim. The whole point and purpose and intent is to make this better, but the message that’s being conveyed, loud and clear, is if we’re going to do a job—if the Government is going to do a job—do the job properly, and make sure that it’s not just piecemeal. This is an overall complex system that requires that overall complexity of experience, and taking into account that we are not just dealing with judges; we are dealing with judges who are working within an infrastructure that is inappropriate. The configuration of the courts, the use of technology is not being efficient-sized—it’s not being used as well as it ought to be.

So the appointment of Family Court Associates may seem all well and good. As I say, time will tell. With that, at the second reading, the National Party is supporting this bill, and at the committee of the whole House, the amendments proposed under the select committee report after submissions have been factored in—to be duly done so at that stage. I commend the bill to the House.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it is a pleasure to take a call on the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill, and I want to say to the previous speaker, Harete Hipango, that while I acknowledge her significant experience in this area, I think this is a very good bill and I think it will do a lot to unclog some of the delays that we do have in the Family Court. In fact, one of the predictions is that it will save about 25 percent of judicial time, which I think is extremely significant when you think about the really important matters that Family Court judges are doing.

In essence, this is a very pragmatic piece of legislation but will aid in a very important and noble aim, which I think we share across the House, which is access to justice. We do have a significant amount of work undertaken by our Family Court judges and we do know that it is better for all participants if it’s done more quickly.

Therefore, after a significant review undertaken by three independent experts, Te Korowai Ture ā-Whānau, one of their recommendations was to introduce these Family Court Associates in order to speed things up. Now, they do the administrative side of things. The Family Court judges are left, then, with the very important work like guardianship. Decisions that materially affect children still stay with the Family Court judges. The work that these Family Court Associates do is simply to allow the important work of the Family Court to continue, which I think, on the whole, will make a better experience for the people involved in the Family Court, and will alleviate some of the stress that judges have. It is a very pragmatic solution, as I said, recommended by an independent panel, and I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Bill

Second Reading

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister of Tourism): Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Bill.

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

Hon PEENI HENARE: I move, That the Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to read this bill for the second time. This bill amends both the Freedom Camping Act 2011 and the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 2006. The bill was introduced in August 2022 and referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee for consideration.

Freedom camping is important to Aotearoa New Zealand for both our people and our visitors, with many freedom campers travelling widely to experience our wonderful te taiao and spend money in our communities. However, while the number of freedom campers has been steadily increasing over the last decade, so too have the negative environmental and social impacts. A particular concern is those who freedom camp in vehicles that do not contain fixed toilets and are disposing of human waste inappropriately, polluting our environment and angering our communities. [Interruption] I can say to the two members opposite interjecting that even their councils support the moves that we are making in this legislation, and I recommend to them to strap into their toilet seats as we flush out the people who are misbehaving in this space, and I encourage them to start seeing the light on this matter and support this bill.

Kaitiakitanga is a responsibility that we all have. Whether you’re an overseas visitor, whether you’re a Kiwi, whether you like exploring our backyard, or you’re on holiday, we must all respect the whenua and preserve it for future generations to enjoy. Concerns about irresponsible freedom campers were raised in the 2021 Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment report, which noted the negative impact to our environment occurring under the current system. This followed years of calls for regulatory reform, particularly from local authorities and communities, and this Government has responded with this bill.

The bill will improve the management of vehicle-based freedom camping by creating a robust regulatory system that local government can rely on to reduce the negative effects of freedom camping. The bill ensures that vehicle certification is consistent and to a high standard, while giving a robust regulatory system that local government can rely on to reduce the negative effects of freedom camping. The certification is consistent and to a high standard, while giving local government more tools to address the specific issues to their regions. It will also give our communities confidence in our freedom camping system, and the bill supports our visitors in following the Tiaki Promise to protect nature, keep New Zealand clean, and show respect to others and the environment.

This bill does not stop people enjoying the activity of freedom camping, nor does it change the quintessential backcountry experience that no doubt many of us grew up with. It is about protecting our environment and improving things for our communities, and not preventing people from freedom camping.

I want to thank everybody who made a submission on this bill, especially those who took the time to speak to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee in person. I also want to thank the members of the committee for their consideration of the bill, and can I, at this point in time, also thank the hard-working officials. Even before the select committee process, the Government had undertaken extensive consultation, receiving over 5,000 submissions in response to the discussion document that informed the bill. Throughout the preparation of the bill, officials worked closely with representatives from key freedom camping groups and local authorities. Their input has provided an important practical perspective in the development of this legislation.

The select committee heard from around 750 submitters, many of whom opposed the bill because it will require self-contained vehicles like freedom campers to have a fixed toilet. However, the views of this minority of less than 1 percent of self-contained vehicle owners should not be blown out of proportion, and Mr Mooney should listen up, because the councils in his electorate actually pushed for this legislation. I can tell him, on a recent visit, having visited one of the gems of tourism in his electorate, there were people freedom camping there, and that is an issue.

However, the Government has heard time and time again from local authorities, in some of those members’ electorates, and the communities that they represent, about the challenges they face as a result of freedom camping, citing the fact that human waste, litter, and other antisocial behaviour has been found in their regions, and, in fact, in some of the most beautiful places in this country. As such, we saw the majority of local authorities support the bill on behalf of their communities. They are the ones currently picking up the tab for irresponsible freedom campers.

Fixed toilets are a key aspect of building confidence in the freedom camping system and reducing the environmental impacts and costs caused by irresponsible freedom campers. It’s estimated that there are 73,000 self-contained vehicles in New Zealand, and the research shows that for domestic freedom campers, 85 percent of those already have a fixed or fitted toilet. Those who don’t and who are not able to fit one will still be able to stay at any of the hundreds of private or Department of Conservation campsites around the country.

Some have argued that portable toilets are sufficient, but the research shows that fixed toilets are approximately twice as likely to be used by freedom campers as portable toilets. For domestic freedom campers, over 98 percent of those with fixed toilets use them. The fixed toilet requirement is not designed to stop people from freedom camping, but rather ensure that it is done responsibly. Requiring fixed toilets will encourage increased usage and help reduce the improper disposal of waste, which currently incurs a cost borne by local communities to repair the harm done to the natural environment by irresponsible freedom campers. [Interruption] Well, I mean, if the other side doubts it, they can always ask Simeon Brown to get out in his gumboots with a shovel to fix it. It will also help to build trust in the regulatory system, as these toilets can’t be easily removed from their vehicles after certification.

Freedom camping has never been free, and it is often ratepayers and taxpayers footing the bill. The Government has already provided $90 million of funding for tourism-related infrastructure since 2017 through the Tourism Infrastructure Fund, and a further $24.5 million on freedom camping projects since 2018 through the Responsible Camping Fund. Despite this funding, our communities are still paying for the actions of a minority of those who behave irresponsibly. That is why we’ve chosen to take a regulation-based approach, along with providing funding for local authorities to implement the new system. It is time that the cost of freedom camping is shifted from our communities to those who choose to enjoy our beautiful environment in this way.

I understand there were concerns raised about the impact of the bill on homelessness. The intent of the bill is not to penalise those experiencing homelessness, and I will look to ensure the legislation reflects this intent. I have listened to feedback from submitters, the Regulations Review Committee, and recommendations from officials published in their departmental report. As the committee did not report back on the bill, I am intending to take forward a comprehensive Supplementary Order Paper at the committee of the whole House stage to improve the bill’s overall operation. Some of the changes I intend to progress through this Supplementary Order Paper include lowering the default infringement fee, amending the definition of a motor vehicle, and minor technical amendments to enhance the operation of bylaws.

In conclusion, let me commend this bill to the House. It implements urgently required reforms that will create confidence in the freedom camping system. We can no longer ignore the costs that irresponsible freedom campers impose on our environment and our communities. Now is the time to respond to the calls for change from local government and make these changes while our international visitor numbers start to build back. To do nothing will only lead to more concern, more pressure on our local communities and environment, and, sadly, a loss of social licence. In this vein, I commend this bill to the House.

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

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Bill at the second reading. I’m sure that the Minister felt that that was a highlight of his career, as he spent nine minutes talking about toilets; but I now have a few minutes where I need to speak about the same subject. I do note that the previous Tourism Minister, the Hon Stuart Nash, said at the first reading of this bill that “The days of the dodgy vehicle are now numbered”—interesting words, and I think those words really articulate where this probably has gone wrong, because there’s been a focus on vehicles, rather than the behaviour of campers. National agrees that stronger regulations for freedom camping are needed, but the Government’s Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Bill is too restrictive and pushes unreasonable costs on to Kiwis, forcing us to oppose the bill.

The requirement for vehicles to have a fixed toilet punishes the nearly 70,000 responsible New Zealanders who have suitable portable toilets in their vehicles and use them. Under this proposed law, a camper with a fixed toilet who doesn’t use it will not be breaking the law, but a camper who uses a non-fixed toilet will be subject to a fine; that should be reversed. National want to see all freedom campers treated equally and fairly by the Government. The Government had a chance to listen to New Zealand at the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee and make key changes, and, as the Minister noted, most of the submitters opposed the bill. Unfortunately, the Government didn’t make any changes, forcing National to oppose the bill. National was wanting to propose some sensible changes to make this a workable bill, and hoped the Government would support them; unfortunately, that did not happen.

So law-abiding, responsible Kiwis enjoying themselves and the outdoors will be punished potentially by this. So someone with a portable toilet could use it responsibly, while someone with a fixed toilet could decide not to use it—but only one of them would be breaking the law. I note that the Responsible Campers Association founder, Rob Osborne, told the committee that imposing fitted toilets and all this stuff isn’t going to guarantee people use them. How does having larger campervans meet the Government’s long-term goals of sustainability and becoming carbon-neutral and all that stuff as well? That was the question posed by Bob Osborne.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Good question.

JOSEPH MOONEY: So I think that is a good question, Mr Mitchell, and one well-posed—and one not answered by this Government. I also note that it’s estimated that converting a van would cost somewhere between $1,200 and $5,000 now. To put that in context, we are in a cost of living crisis right now; there are ongoing supply chain issues and significant labour shortages. Firstly, how are people going to be able to afford this, and, secondly, be able to get the resources to actually install these into their campervans? It’s a real problem; and I note that the Minister made brief reference to people who are homeless, and, unfortunately, right now in Queenstown, there are people who are living in tents and vans and cars, and this bill is certainly not going to help them. So I suggest the Government is focused on the wrong thing here and is not looking at actually how to solve the real issue.

I note that it’s not just the 70,000 responsible New Zealanders who have suitable portable toilets in their vehicles—and use them—who will be punished by this bill. A large tourism company made a submission to the bill as well, and noted that they operate over a thousand motorhomes in the country. They’ll only have 18 months to transition to bring their whole fleet up to standard, and as motorhomes are relatively long-lived assets, they’ll need to retrofit them all. They have the resources to do that, but will still face those supply chain issues and labour shortages in retrofitting a significant number of the thousand-motorhome fleet. They did point out that others will struggle, however, because “This requires capital expenditure [that] for many operators, [has been] carefully managed following the effects of COVID-19”, and I really do not think the Government has turned their mind to this. So this is not only impacting the 70,000 responsible Kiwis who have suitable portable toilets in their vehicles and use them but it also will be punishing these companies who are just trying to trade their way out of the last, incredibly difficult, three years.

So, again, the Government has focused on vehicles as opposed to focusing on the behaviour of campers, and that’s where this has gone wrong, so we will be proposing changes to this bill at the committee of the whole House stage. I certainly hope that the Minister will support that and we can actually look at having a useable bill that is actually going to address the real issue. With that, I’ll say, regrettably, I cannot support this bill.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Can I just thank, first of all, the advisers of the House on all their work on this bill with us together. Can I just also thank our out-going chair as well, Jamie Strange, for shepherding the first half of this bill, and here we are at the second reading of the Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Bill, better known as the freedom camping bill.

This bill, I think, has brought a lot of emotions to the select committee process, and you can probably see, here in the House here today. It is because I think being able to camp and enjoy the great outdoors in New Zealand always has been part of the Kiwi lifestyle. And I definitely know that when my friends and family come to Aotearoa New Zealand, they appreciate what nature has to offer to everyone.

That’s where I want to start my contribution tonight. The precise reason why we have this bill in this House today is that we need to protect New Zealand’s nature. We trade on the international stage as 100% Pure New Zealand. By having that branding, we actually need to do the work behind it. It’s not enough just to say that as a slogan all across the world and not actually deliver the goods of a clean, green New Zealand. This is the bill where we have to make sure that everyone who comes to our country—including those who live in our country—and enjoys freedom camping, does so responsibly.

I still remember during the select committee process, vividly, where lots and lots of submitters had actually made their submissions via audiovisual link from their own campervan. Probably one of the most interesting things was seeing the different size, the different styles, and the different settings they had, and just them being absolutely proud of their own motor vehicles. Then I realised, as those who opposed the bill started saying that this is their right—you know, they wanted to be able to keep enjoying that freedom—and as we started to push back and say that, “Well, so where are you calling us from at the moment?”, they said, “Well I’m on council land right now.” I said, “Well, is there a toilet there?” They said, “Yes.” “Is there a shower facility?” “Yes.” “Are there cooking facilities?” “Yes.” Then I said back to them, “Well, you are not going to get affected by this bill.”

So I have been concerned by the amount of information out there that is not actually correct. This bill actually only regulates those places that have no shower and no toilet facilities. Actually, the majority of New Zealand campers—in fact, the majority of all the submitters who actually submitted to us—they’re not technically freedom campers in terms of the way that we want to actually legislate in this bill. They might be parked on the driveways of their relatives and their friends, they might be in a caravan park—those still will not be affected by this bill.

I just want to use the last few minutes of my speech to talk about the issue of homelessness. That was actually one of the issues that the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee had grappled with over and over again, and also with a lot of contribution from our colleagues from the Green Party as well. So I think we’re at this point where we want to make sure that the local authorities have discretion over who they prosecute and to make sure that they have the responsibility to check that the person who’s in the vehicle at that time—that they’re not just there because they’re homeless—so to be able to have regard for that community and to look after all of the New Zealanders who needs a home and a place to live as well.

So this is a bill that I think has come at the right time—as New Zealand opens up our doors to the rest of the world, as tourism starts to come back to our shores. We really need to deliver the goods. We need to make sure that we keep up our reputation and that everyone who comes to our shores really has the responsibility of keeping this piece of land clean and green. So, therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. This House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Good evening.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.