Wednesday, 3 May 2023

WEDNESDAY, 3 MAY 2023

WEDNESDAY, 3 MAY 2023

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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.]

Visitors

Japan—National Diet

SPEAKER: I’m sure that members would wish to welcome Mr Asao Keiichiro and Mr Ito Shintaro from the National Diet of Japan, who are present in the gallery.

Parliamentary Membership

New Zealand Labour Party—Hon Meka Whaitiri

SPEAKER: Members, I wish to inform you that under Standing Order 35(5) the Hon Meka Whaitiri is from today regarded as an independent member for parliamentary purposes.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for that advice. I raise matters with you that I think have some very important constitutional merit. This morning, at the Waipatu Marae in Hastings, the member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, addressing a hui, made the following comment: “This morning, I have officially notified the Speaker that I have resigned from the New Zealand Labour Party and have joined Te Paati Māori, effective immediately.” Now, as you know, under sections 55A and 55B of the Electoral Act, a member who ceases to be a parliamentary member of the political party for which the member was elected, where they cease to be a member, vacates that seat, effectively. Now, Ms Whaitiri has informed the public that she wrote to you, and, on the face of it, that would meet the terms of section 55B. If that were not the case, I wonder if you could inform the House whether a written notice wasn’t received, and if it was received, what about sections 55A, 55B, and 55C were not met that meant that that vacation wasn’t triggered? Thirdly, without wanting to cast any aspersions, I think this is an important constitutional matter, the like of which has not been tested since section 55 was amended in 2018. I wonder if you would consider tabling the correspondence that you received from Ms Whaitiri.

SPEAKER: Members will be well aware that any member can say anything they like outside of this Chamber. When it comes to, as the member has pointed out, sections 55A to 55E, then there’s some very specific events that need to happen for me to declare a seat vacant. I can confirm to the House that those events have not happened, and I have therefore not done so.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Speaking to that point, Mr Speaker. I accept that, and I’m certainly not wanting to challenge that. But I do think it is important, given that the intent of section 55A in substance was that when a member resigns from a parliamentary party and indicates to you, as she has, that she is now joining another political party in this House, that it behoves those parties to that correspondence to inform this Chamber how section 55A(2) is not invoked. I tread carefully for two reasons: one is that your decisions won’t be challenged in that regard, but, secondly, this is a really, really important matter, and I’m not sure that we have yet had the full disclosure of what’s actually transpired here. I accept the point that you make, that what Meka Whaitiri says outside this House does not count necessarily, but you yourself have acknowledged that that correspondence was received, but seemed to indicate that it was not in the form or of the substance that was described by Ms Whaitiri after she sent it to you. And I do think we need to traverse this—perhaps in more detail.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): Speaking to the point of order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. The only point I wanted to add to from what the member just did is to make sure that we fully understand section 55A of the Electoral Act. While 55A(2), which the member alluded to, does state that the seat of the member becomes vacant under the circumstances he described, it is important to read that in the context of 53A(3), which says, “For the purposes of subsection (2), a member of Parliament ceases to be a parliamentary member of the political party for which the member of Parliament was elected only if—”, and then goes through. So just the impression could have been gained, from what Mr Woodhouse just said, that subsection (2) stands alone—it doesn’t. Subsection (3) is the determining factor of subsection (2).

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Speaking to that point. I accept that, and I think that was implied in what I had said, because section 55A(3)(a), basically, says that that only gets triggered if the member of Parliament delivers to the Speaker a written notice that complies with section 55B. What’s not clear to me—or the House, I would expect—is whether or not that did not happen, or whether it didn’t happen in a form commensurate with the requirements of section 55B.

I would also add this: I don’t believe it was the Electoral Act’s intention that the form of communication prevented the effect of the Act from being followed. So, essentially, what we may have is a situation where, because of paperwork, a person that has, in fact, resigned from a parliamentary political party and has joined another political party is nevertheless still able to maintain the seat, despite section 55A. Now, I’m not quite sure whether this is the right forum to have this litigated, but I do believe that the Chamber and the public have a right to understand exactly how the Electoral Act has been interpreted in this situation.

SPEAKER: I think it would be a dangerous situation for the Speaker of the House to start interpreting things that clearly have not been officially submitted to me. Now, as I began my ruling, members can say whatever they like outside of this House, but unless they inform me in the correct way by sending me a signed letter that that is the case, I can’t act on it, and I’m not prepared to do that until I get a letter signed by the member concerned that what she has said outside is her intention to do.

Chris Bishop: Point or order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Is this a new one?

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Yeah, it’s a very important point, sir, because section 53B puts out three requirements. One is that it has to be signed by the member of Parliament, and you’ve just stressed the word “signature” or “signed” a couple of times, which may be a giveaway. So could I ask you: is the issue that it was received electronically without an actual physical signature—which I think would be debatable, because it’s a longstanding rule now that electronic signatures are available and emails can be, essentially, received electronically?

The second point is that it has to be addressed to the Speaker. That seems like a matter of form. Is that the issue?

Then the third issue, sir, which I do think the House needs some ventilation on, is the issue of resignation from a parliamentary membership of a political party. Is it the case, sir, that something turns on the word “parliamentary”? Members with long memories will remember the incident in 2002, when the Hon Jim Anderton resigned from the leadership of The Alliance Party but remained a parliamentary member of The Alliance Party for various parliamentary reasons. Are you, sir, drawing a distinction between Ms Whaitiri’s membership of the Labour Party, in the incorporated society sense of membership, and membership of the Labour Party for political purposes, in a parliamentary sense? I know it sounds technical, but this is an important matter.

SPEAKER: To the first part, I can confirm to the House that I have not received any letter of resignation, signed or unsigned, OK? So that’s the first part. What I have received—[Interruption] This is important, OK? So interrupting while I’m making a ruling—you might find it funny, but this is a serious issue. What I have been advised by an—before I say this, actually, I believe I follow the law to the letter, and so when I tell this House that I do not have a letter, I actually mean it: I don’t. What I have got is an indication from the Hon Meka Whaitiri that for parliamentary purposes, she has withdrawn her vote with the Labour Party, which, under Standing Order 144 and Standing Order 145, any member can do that, and therefore she is no longer voting with the Labour Party, and she can, as any member can, give her proxy vote to whomever she likes.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Last question, Mr Speaker, if you’ll indulge me—well, it’s two. Was that communication in writing, and, secondly, was a letter—paper or electronic—sent to your office that was subsequently withdrawn?

SPEAKER: I have received the letter—the email that I spoke about—asking for her vote to be withdrawn. That was received by email.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Can you, please, just clarify: do you regard Meka Whaitiri as being a member of the parliamentary Labour Party or not? Now, I apologise if you feel you’ve addressed that, but I think it would be helpful for everyone to understand what your position is on that question. And, if the answer is no, then I don’t really see how a vacancy cannot be created. If you could just answer that question, it would be very helpful to know.

SPEAKER: It’s really not for me to determine who is in which party. For whatever reason she has made that decision to write to me to withdraw her proxy is entirely up to her. That does not mean to say that I can interpret that she has left the Labour Party, but this is for parliamentary purposes.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Point of order. Quite a lot flows from this, Mr Speaker. In the interpretation of the allocation of supplementary questions and oral questions, as part of the rota, which is done proportionally, will the Hon Meka Whaitiri be regarded as a Māori Party MP for the purposes of oral and supplementary questions, and the general debate determination?

SPEAKER: She’ll be regarded as an Independent member for those purposes.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Speaking to that, if she’s regarded as an Independent member, that can only come as an effect of her communications with you. And, if she’s given you a communication that can have that effect, how can it possibly not also create a vacancy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): Speaking to the point of order. I’d just refer that member to what you did, which is Standing Orders 144 and 145. Standing Orders there are with respect to votes that are held in this House. Communications about that are not the same as communications about the Electoral Act.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Perhaps, actually, I should just preface my question with saying that these questions might go away if the communication was released. But my question is: given your answer—

Hon Grant Robertson: You’re questioning the Speaker.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No, and I have prefaced every single comment about that with a clarification that that’s absolutely not what I’m doing. But, Mr Speaker, you have just said that Meka Whaitiri wishes to be recognised for parliamentary purposes as an Independent member of Parliament. And that can only happen if she has resigned from the parliamentary Labour Party, and therefore it is, I think, worth considering, whether it’s here or somewhere else, whether section 55B(c)(ii) has been met and, if that was inside a communication to you and signed by the member, I think there is still an open question about whether section 55A(2) has also been triggered.

SPEAKER: The law as currently drafted allows no judgment at all to be exercised by the Speaker. A vacancy can only be declared if notice is given in a specific and correct way to the Speaker. That, as I have said now three times, has not happened.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: A new point of order?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yeah.

SPEAKER: The Hon Gerry Brownlee.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Mr Speaker, doesn’t that raise the question of why you were able to make the judgment that the member is now an Independent? The two Standing Orders that were quoted by Mr Robertson relate to persons who have given their proxy or who are part of a caucus. Once you withdraw from a caucus—then if you are not able to make a judgment, why are you able to stand in the House today and declare that Ms Whaitiri will be an Independent member?

SPEAKER: I thank the member for his question. It’s entirely up to the member themselves. As I’ve said already, I’m not making a judgment on which party that the member is part of—that’s not my role. As I said in previous rulings, the Act is very clear, and until I have got a letter stating that the member has resigned under that section, then she is still a member of Parliament.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for that clarification, sir. Then why are you able to make a determination that the allocation of parliamentary time will be removed from the Labour Party and given to the Independent member, when that would seem to contravene all of the intentions of the two Standing Orders raised by Mr Robertson?

SPEAKER: Regardless of the way that the Hon Meka Whaitiri has advised both the public, the Labour Party, or anyone else about anything that she’s doing, she has not notified me. So she can, as a member of this House, tell me that her proxy vote is not with the Labour Party now, as I’ve said before, and, for parliamentary purposes, that she is regarded as an Independent member of Parliament.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Point of order, Mr Speaker. Well, this is difficult, because if she is regarded by you as an Independent member, which you have said that she is, she has fulfilled and she has told—like, you can’t regard her as an Independent member unless she has told you something.

SPEAKER: Only for parliamentary purposes.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, if she is regarded as an Independent member of Parliament and you’ve indicated that for the purposes of the allocation of supplementaries, etc., she will be regarded as an Independent member of Parliament, in a parliamentary sense she has fulfilled section 55B. She has notified you—by definition, she must have notified you, because you’ve just indicated you’re regarding her as that. She has fulfilled section 55B, which therefore triggers the rest of the Act, and the seat is vacated. I’m struggling to see how you can regard her as an Independent member if for voting purposes and for proportionality purposes she is not regarded as a member of the Labour Party any more, she can be an Independent member of Parliament in this House, and that not trigger the Electoral Act. Parliament explicitly changed the law back in 2018 to make it so that in those circumstances, those members of Parliament who do that, who distort the proportionality of Parliament by leaving the political party with which they were elected—and leaving aside the merits of whether or not that was a good idea to do it or not, the law is the law.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker. Would this whole matter not be so much simpler if you simply retracted your statement that she is an Independent member and instead said that she remains a member of the parliamentary Labour Party who has decided to have her proxy vote exercised independent of that party? Because it seems that otherwise we have a total contradiction.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): Speaking to that point of order. Just on that very specific point, it is a very longstanding convention that it is members of this House that decide their vote, and members of this House, as is covered by the Standing Orders we’ve been discussing before, who can indicate, at any given moment, who is casting their vote. So the way round that the member put it would not be consistent with where we are. It is up to a member of Parliament to indicate that. I’m not going into the other bit, but on that piece, it would be that way round, not the other way round.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I mean, the confusion here, I think, is that when you look at the purpose of the bill, it says that it provides for a member to vacate their seat in Parliament if they choose to give notice to the Speaker of their ceasing parliamentary membership of the party for which they were elected. So is it our understanding that she has not ceased to be a member of the parliamentary Labour Party but that she has withdrawn her vote from the parliamentary Labour Party? Is that what we’re being told?

SPEAKER: Yeah; there are several different issues going on, and a lot of them are repeating or asking the same thing that I’ve already answered. For parliamentary purposes, the Hon Meka Whaitiri being an Independent MP is a determination under the Standing Orders. She has not told me that she is an Independent MP, but for the purposes of Parliament, I have notified the House that she has asked me and informed me that she has withdrawn her proxy from the Labour Party and she wishes to sit somewhere else. That’s it.

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

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

SPEAKER: No petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation. No papers have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation. No select committee reports have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation. No bills have been introduced.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The strength of the jobs market is continuing to support the New Zealand economy. Today, Statistics New Zealand reported that the unemployment rate has remained at a near-record low of 3.4 percent in the March quarter. The average hourly wage rose 7.6 percent, to $38.93, outpacing the current rate of inflation. We know that many Kiwi families are doing it tough in the face of cost of living pressures, but they do so while in paid work and with wages growing faster than inflation, easing some of the pressure that they are under.

Ingrid Leary: What did the report say about employment growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: An extra 22,000 people were employed in the quarter, and 69,000 in the year. There are more women than ever in jobs. There is now a record high of 2.886 million people in work. Since 2017, 281,000 jobs have been added to the New Zealand economy. Our participation rate has risen to 72 percent, and the employment rate to 69.5 percent—record highs for both since the series began. Mr Luxon loves talking the economy down; we’re proud of New Zealanders.

Ingrid Leary: What reactions has he seen to the labour market report?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: ASB’s economists said firms were hiring with “sizable gains in employment, record labour force participation, and [with] the unemployment rate and other … measures of the labour market hovering around record lows.” Kiwibank’s economists said the report showed strong job gains and chunky pay rises. They noted that the solid gains in employment are a result of increased labour supply, including from migration, which is helping to fill vacancies. Westpac’s economists said that what workers are receiving in hand is keeping up with the rising costs of living. The constant chipping of the Leader of the Opposition means that he doesn’t like good news; I understand that, but it’s good for New Zealand.

Nicola Willis: Does the Minister of Finance think it’s appropriate to be crowing about the state of the economy on a day when the Reserve Bank has warned that more New Zealanders will be entering mortgage distress and may see their house prices spiralling downward further, and on a day when research has been released showing that hundreds of thousands more New Zealanders are waking up each day worried about their financial circumstances, with credit data showing more and more are going into debt arrears; is this a good economy under Labour?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What today is is a day to celebrate the hard work of businesses and workers right across New Zealand that means that we have an unemployment rate that sits below Australia’s, we have people in work, and our economy is 6 percent larger than it was before COVID. Every day in the House and outside of the House, we acknowledge that New Zealanders are doing it tough through a cost of living crisis. That’s why we’ve supported them to make sure that they get through that; measures that every time we put up to support New Zealanders, the National Party oppose.

Ingrid Leary: How does New Zealand’s labour market compare internationally?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On comparable measures, New Zealand’s 3.4 percent unemployment rate stands favourably against 3.6 percent in Australia, 3.5 percent in the United States, 3.8 percent in the United Kingdom, and 5 percent in Canada. The OECD average is 4.8 percent. In terms of employment rates, we are third in the OECD. The Opposition might not like it, but the New Zealand economy and the hard work of businesses and workers—[Interruption] I’m still talking—means that New Zealanders can be proud of the economy. I know the member’s anxious to talk down the economy and stand up and ask a question about that. I’m proud of New Zealanders; I don’t think the Opposition is.

Nicola Willis: In terms of international comparisons, has the Minister of Finance seen the Bloomberg recession index, which shows recession probabilities worldwide, with New Zealand in second place for the most probable likelihood of a recession, at 70 percent, which compares with other countries such as Australia, with only 40 percent such likelihood?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’ve seen many different indicators, almost all of which show that, relatively speaking, New Zealand has got through COVID in a better shape than most other countries. I know the members on the other side of the House think it’s great to talk down the New Zealand economy. I’m not going to do that, because I’m proud of the efforts New Zealanders have made.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Acting Prime Minister): Yes, in particular the significant financial support announced today to assist communities in the Hawke’s Bay and Tai Rāwhiti regions with the post-cyclone clean-up of sediment and debris. This Government is wholeheartedly committed to helping our communities, including our growers, farmers, whenua Māori, and others to recover from the cyclone. This is just another step, but we’re going to keep working hard alongside these communities to recover and rebuild.

Christopher Luxon: Has the Prime Minister lost control of the Government when one of his Ministers waits until he’s airborne to announce that she’s resigning and defecting to another party?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That is a party matter. The person resigned from the party; clearly, as a result of that, the person is no longer able to be a Minister. But we’re certainly still in control and certainly still excited to be Government with our strong 62 MPs in the House, and we look forward to continuing to serve New Zealanders, focused on what matters to New Zealand at this point in time. New Zealanders can be assured that we will continue working hard for them.

Christopher Luxon: How can she have confidence the cyclone recovery is being well managed when the Minister responsible has apparently spent more time plotting a defection from the Labour Party than on the recovery?

Hon Grant Robertson: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m the Minister responsible, and that ain’t the truth!

SPEAKER: That’s not helpful.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I’m really proud of the commitment that we have made to the regions that have been affected by weather. There are a number of announcements and investments we’ve made to respond. We certainly recognise that this is a journey that we’re on and that there is more to do. Our commitment is to working with the whānau and the communities in those affected areas to support them through the recovery and rebuild.

David Seymour: Has the Minister considered taking a roll at the start of Cabinet meetings in order to check that no more Ministers have been lost?

SPEAKER: Do you want to respond to that? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Oh, no.

SPEAKER: It’s out of order.

Christopher Luxon: How can the people of Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne have confidence that the next Minister of cyclone recovery for that region will last longer than the previous two?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I do want to mention that we have an amazing local MP who’s not a Minister there, in Anna Lorck, and she’s been working hard on the ground. It’s important to acknowledge that. The person that has been put into the role as acting Minister for the cyclone recovery in Hawke’s Bay is one of our most experienced with regards to this type of work. We trust that Kieran McAnulty, in his acting role, will serve that community and that region well, and we absolutely make a commitment to getting behind him with that work.

Christopher Luxon: Does she agree with Chris Hipkins, who said introducing a capital gains tax would be “fairer”, and, if not, why not?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I also agree with Chris Hipkins that that won’t be introduced this term and that we don’t currently have a tax policy. All political parties will have their tax policy before the next election, but it’s certainly not on the table for us now.

Christopher Luxon: Does she think a capital gains tax would be fairer?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: It’s not a matter that is on the table for discussion, and so my personal views on such matters are not a consideration for this House.

Christopher Luxon: Why won’t the Government just come clean on its plans to slap Kiwis with a capital gains tax when they’ve made it crystal clear that’s exactly what they’re working on?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The Opposition is continuing to act like we have some kind of secret tax plan. We’ve been very clear that we don’t. If it was a secret, it would be a huge one, because the Prime Minister, myself, and every other person on this front bench does not know what that Opposition Leader is talking about.

Christopher Luxon: How can Kiwis have confidence to invest for the future when she won’t be clear whether those investments will be subject to a capital gains tax?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We’ve been really clear that we’re committed to ensuring that our educational services, our health services, our social services are supported by us as a Government to provide that necessary support to all New Zealanders, unlike the other side of the House, who seem to be intending on cutting taxes and therefore services to New Zealanders.

Christopher Luxon: How can the hundreds of thousands of small-business owners up and down this country have confidence to invest and grow their businesses if they have no idea how they’ll be taxed after 14 October?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Thank you very much for confirming we will be in Government after October. We absolutely have shown our support to small businesses around this country in so many different ways, including the $18 billion that we invested into wage subsidy that held up so many businesses through what could’ve been a terrible, terrible time for them and ensured that we saved thousands and thousands of jobs for New Zealanders.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) to the Acting Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s policies and statements?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Acting Prime Minister): Yes, including the significant efforts of the Ministry of Social Development and a range of other Government agencies that have contributed to the labour market results released today. In particular, I want to highlight the fact that more young people are engaged in employment, education, and training with a fall in the NEET rate from 11.1 percent to 10.3 percent. This reflects our focus on getting young people ready for work through such programmes as Apprenticeship Boost, Mana in Mahi, and He Poutama Rangatahi.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does the Minister accept that many overstayers have lived in New Zealand for years and have deep roots in their communities yet are at risk of exploitation and living in fear of being raided at their homes without the rights afforded to residents?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I do accept that that happens sometimes. The recent event that occurred in South Auckland was unacceptable. Our Minister of Immigration has acted. We will all be watching this space because we do not accept that this should continue.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Is she concerned there’s an estimated 1,000 people with an overstayer status who are under the age of 18, including some born in New Zealand, living in households at risk of exploitation and isolated from public services?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Of course that is a concern. There is some thinking going on and some work being undertaken by the Minister of Immigration and we need to watch that space and see what comes of that.

Teanau Tuiono: Does she agree with Princess Mele Siu‘ilikutapu Kalaniuvalu Fotofili from Tonga who, at the Dawn Raids apology, urged the Government to consider an amnesty for overstayers?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We took that away. We took her comments seriously. As we have said before, and the Minister has said, regularisation as an idea or a potential policy down the track is not off the table. However, the Minister has made it clear that there is still work going on with respect to looking at that and he is still receiving advice.

Teanau Tuiono: So does she agree with her own Labour colleagues who recommended that the Government consider a regularisation initiative for undocumented migrants as part of a report on a research piece on Tuvaluan overstayers, and, if so, will she support an amnesty for overstayers, given recent revelations?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I supported that research project and I support that work. And I certainly support the work that the Minister of Immigration is doing to explore this option. It’s just not completed. But as I said, it’s certainly not off the table. There is still work under way and he is still receiving advice.

Teanau Tuiono: Does she think it’s OK that overstayers who have worked to build public housing to help fix the housing crisis were raided and subsequently deported; and, if not, would it not be better for these workers to be able to work legally in Aotearoa with decent wages and protections?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I support the work that is under way by the Minister of Immigration with respect to looking at the possibility of regularisation. And the reasons I support that, I guess, were inferred in some ways in the member’s question. There are lots of reasons why we should explore this as a possibility, but the work is not complete.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with the Prime Minister that “There will need to be adjustments to tax income thresholds”, and will he prioritise those adjustments as part of the Government’s 2023 Budget?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): To answer both parts of the question, I agree with the Prime Minister’s full quote, which was: “there will need to be adjustments to [income tax] thresholds as the overall incomes of New Zealanders rise. I am not outlining any specific plan about that today, but I do acknowledge from time to time there does need to be adjustment … But now is not the right time to do that when we have a high inflationary environment because we know that tax changes like that, that put more money back into the economy, can also lead to any additional value that people … get through tax cuts being quickly eroded by inflation.” I note that OECD analysis indicates that the tax wedge for the average single worker in New Zealand—the measure of tax on labour incomes—is the 36th lowest of 38 OECD countries. The Government is focused on supporting New Zealanders to increase their take-home pay through wage increases backed by a strong economy and more jobs, and this has been reaffirmed today by the Statistics New Zealand report reporting wages have risen 7.6 percent over the past year.

Nicola Willis: Does he think it’s fair that under his Government, New Zealanders struggling through a cost of living crisis are being forced to pay higher average effective tax rates due to inflation-driven bracket creep?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As noted in the primary answer, the Prime Minister—and, indeed, myself, in the past—has indicated that there is, from time to time, justification and reason for adjusting tax rates. That has to be set in the context in which we live and the economy in which we live. We live in a situation now where we do have high inflation. We don’t want to take steps that will unnecessarily exacerbate that inflation and we need to balance any decisions we make about that with what public services we can afford to provide. Tax cuts are not free; they have to be paid for, and the member will eventually have to explain how she’s going to pay for them or which public services she will cut to do that.

Nicola Willis: Why can he find more than $80 million to subsidise Teslas, hundreds of millions of dollars to fund more reports from highly paid consultants, and hundreds of millions of dollars to fund policy advisers, communications advisers, and the like, but he can’t find money to let New Zealanders keep more of what they earn?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Two answers to that question. Firstly, a further acknowledgment from the National Party that they will do nothing to help New Zealand meet its emissions reduction goals. They’re happy to sign up to agreements, but they will do nothing to do that. The second answer is that the member will be well aware that when tax cuts are put in place, they’re there for ever; they’re costed out for ever. It’s billions and billions of dollars, Ms Willis—billions of dollars that either the member has to find somewhere or cut services to provide. That is the debate. That’s the debate, Ms Willis: what services are you going to cut?

Nicola Willis: Why, under Labour, is it never the time to give Kiwis tax relief, but it is always the time for the finance Minister to appropriate more of their money?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What the member is offering New Zealanders on low incomes is two bucks a week. That’s what the member is offering New Zealanders on low incomes. What we’ve done consistently over recent years is prioritise support for low and middle income New Zealanders so that they are hundreds of dollars a week better off than they would have been otherwise. The member might think it’s fair, somehow, for someone on a low or middle income to get two bucks a week while someone on a high income like her gets a thousand dollars a year; I don’t think that’s fair.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Is the Minister aware of any confusing or misleading tax policy that said one thing prior to an election and delivered something completely different after?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I certainly—

SPEAKER: Order! I’m just going to warn the Minister to be very careful. Patsy questions should not be used to attack Opposition parties.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I can certainly say that that’s not something I would do.

Question No. 5—Children

5. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister for Children: What recent progress has he seen from the Enabling Communities work in Oranga Tamariki?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Children): Last week I was pleased to launch a new community- and iwi-led plan at Waipatu Marae in Hawke’s Bay to transform the way tamariki and whānau in Te Matau-a-Māui are supported. Te Ara Mātua was formed in partnership between Ngāti Kahungunu, Oranga Tamariki, and local health and social wellbeing partners. The new plan will see iwi and local organisations more involved in decision making from the outset, when whānau require intervention and support. It was so well received.

Dr Liz Craig: What does this plan mean for tamariki and whānau in Hawke’s Bay?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: The plan means tamariki and whānau in Hawke’s Bay will be better supported by iwi and community. Oranga Tamariki and its predecessors have been reviewed numerous times, including five times between 2019 and 2021, following the attempted removal of a newborn pēpi Māori in Hawke’s Bay. Following this event, I established the Ministerial Advisory Board, and, with their recommendations, set a new direction for Oranga Tamariki.

My direction was clear: communities and iwi should be supported to make decisions for their tamariki, and Oranga Tamariki should give them the support and resources to do so. Oranga Tamariki is supporting Ngāti Kahungunu to lead their own response to inform how the State can change the way it works with communities to deliver the best outcomes for tamariki.

Dr Liz Craig: Why are plans like this important?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: The Government is committed to seeing through the change needed in Oranga Tamariki. Iwi and communities are essential to this change, and co-designed programmes will deliver the change. We have committed $37 million to enabling communities to prototype Māori and community-led models across the country. The launch of Te Ara Mātua is a product of this programme, and marks a shift towards enabling and empowering communities.

Dr Liz Craig: How does this approach benefit tamariki?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: The changes are making a difference. For example, since 2018, uplifts are down 73 percent and there are 1,600 fewer children in care. Oranga Tamariki has been focusing on working with communities and iwi to make sure children are at the centre of everything they do. Te Ara Mātua was born from the flax-roots and it centres the voices of whānau. The feedback I received from iwi leaders and local whānau was positive. They are now ready to get on with their mahi to get better outcomes for their whānau.

Question No. 6—Housing (Homelessness)

6. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Homelessness): How much of the $75 million she announced in Budget 2022 for delivering the Government’s vision of an Aotearoa where homelessness is prevented, wherever possible, has been spent to date, if any, and what are the metrics, if any, for how each of the initiatives funded through the investment will be measured?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Associate Minister of Housing (Homelessness)): This is funding that I fought hard for and signals a new way of working. We are delivering long-term solutions to homelessness in authentic partnership with the community, and we must not be drawn into the same old short-term thinking. Let me be clear; we are on track. Budget 2022 funded four initiatives, three of which are brand spanking new: supported housing for rangatahi, kaupapa Māori solutions to homelessness, and new funding for outreach programmes. All four initiatives are going to plan exactly as we set out in the original Budget documents, and are either already delivering or will have funding allocated by July 2023 as we planned. Almost $17.5 million of the funding has been contracted with providers for rangatahi transitional housing; this includes nearly $1.8 million already spent with providers who are housing youth in new places across Christchurch, Hamilton, and Auckland. Developing measures of success for initiatives is part of developing these new services themselves. New initiatives, which are community-led—thank you—take time to design, and I am committed to getting them right and delivering real change for our people.

Chris Bishop: Why has just over 1 percent of the $75 million announced last year been spent, when 24,000 families are on the housing register and nearly 3,500 households live in emergency housing?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: It is absolutely unacceptable that even one person is experiencing housing insecurity. We are very clear that Aotearoa should be a place where everyone has warm, affordable, secure housing where they can put down roots, and I want to be clear that the Budget 2022 funding is only one aspect of this Government’s response to homelessness. Delivery of the Homelessness Action Plan has been ongoing and crucial. There are a range of drivers which contribute to the housing insecurity, and work is under way across Government to address the range of issues, including housing affordability and supply; poverty; access to and availability of social support services and health services—and we know there is definitely still more work to be done. My role in the Homelessness Action Plan has been absolutely crucial to focus the Government’s efforts on preventing and interrupting homelessness.

SPEAKER: That was a lot of information, but it didn’t actually address the basic part of the question. Mr Bishop, do you want another question, or do you want to ask that one again?

Chris Bishop: Oh, I’ll ask that one again, if that’s all right—it is very simple: why is only just over 1 percent of the money announced in Budget 2022 in relation to homelessness services being spent a year later?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: All of those initiatives are working exactly to plan, and by July 2023—which is what we said they would do—those initiatives will be ready. These are a new way of working; Mr Bishop should move away from the old way of working that simply counted numbers out the door, as opposed to an enduring solution that the communities are authentically helping us to lead, and that absolutely does require the time to get these initiatives right.

SPEAKER: That still doesn’t answer the question. I’m going to give the member an additional question.

Chris Bishop: When she says that these programmes are working exactly as planned, is she telling the House that it was a design feature of the announcement that no or very little money would have gone out the door a year later and the metrics for success, as to analysing the effectiveness of that money, will only be developed once the money starts being spent?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: This is four-year funding. It was very clear that working in an authentic relationship with communities was always going to require a different and new way of thinking and approaching this work. New rangatahi-supported housing, kaupapa Māori responses to homelessness, and outreach in the community with homelessness all require the planning to be done and led by community and they can never scale up this work overnight. Never ever is that going to be an expectation on a four-year funding proposal, and I encourage Mr Bishop to continue with new ways of—

SPEAKER: The Minister has now addressed it, thank you.

Chris Bishop: Why didn’t the Minister adopt the revolutionary idea of allocating money to pre-existing programmes and groups that are on the ground doing the work, who could actually deliver services to those in need right now in the midst of a housing crisis?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: These initiatives are exactly experienced providers who know their communities better than our agencies do. This is where, traditionally, services have not gotten to the people that need it the most. All of these three new initiatives have exactly been allocated and worked with, with the community providers with that experience. That is exactly what these initiatives are.

Chris Bishop: Well, if these initiatives are ones that already exist and they’re delivered by experienced programme providers, why after a year has only just over a million—[Interruption] I’m still asking the question. Why, after a year, has just over 1 percent of the money been actually delivered into the communities when 465 families live in cars?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: Firstly, the member needs to listen to my answers. The providers are all experienced providers. The initiatives are new. The three initiatives are new. The existing services in the rangatahi and transitional housing have nearly all been allocated, because it is the very existing service that the member is referring to. There are a broad range of other ministerial responsibilities that I work closely with that are also responsible for providing that emergency support to people who need it, and that does not fall inside my ministerial delegation but I work with my colleagues to do that. We are also very clear that more work needs to be done and that is the work that we continue to do.

Chris Bishop: Will any of the four initiatives funded in Budget 2022 target the 200 16- and 17-year-old independent young people currently living in emergency housing motels, and does she have a target for the number of 16- and 17-year-old independent young people who will no longer be in motels as a result of these initiatives?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: As we have already seen through the Homelessness Action Plan, it is the very work under that plan that has seen, for example, more than 138 rangatahi-focused transitional housing places, an additional 3,000 extra transitional housing places delivered under the Homelessness Action Plan, 1,737 households turned into a house through Housing First, $10 million allocated through the Local Innovation Partnership Fund for brand-new solutions—

SPEAKER: No. Order!

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: Hang on—wait. There’s some more good stuff.

SPEAKER: Yeah, I’m sure there is, but I’m on my feet and I’m about to make a ruling. Just simply reading out a long list of expenditure doesn’t actually address the question that’s being asked. The question was very clear around young people and transitional homes. I’m almost afraid to ask the member to say more, but I’ll leave it to Mr Bishop, if he wants to ask that question again.

Chris Bishop: I’m happy to ask it again because it’s an important point and just—I might get it slightly wrong. But the question was: will any or all of the four initiatives funded in Budget 2022 in relation to homelessness target the 200 16- and 17-year-old independent young people currently living in emergency housing and motels, and, if so, what is the Minister’s target for the number of 16- and 17-year-olds who’ve been moved out of emergency housing motels as a result of these initiatives?

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: Yes, as I was explaining, the examples of exactly where the funding has been going and will continue to go includes for rangatahi like the 138 rangatahi-focused—

SPEAKER: Thank you. Given the amount of time that you spent before, I think you’ve addressed it now, so thank you. Are there any more supplementaries? No.

Question No. 7—Transport

7. TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki) to the Minister of Transport: What recent announcements has he made about investments in passenger rail?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Last week, along with the Minister of Finance, I announced that the Government would co-fund a fleet of 18 new hybrid four-car trains for the lower North Island region, along with the Greater Wellington Regional Council. This investment will strengthen public transport links for those travelling in and out of Wellington from Palmerston North, Ōtaki, the Kāpiti Coast, and the Wairarapa. We will also support growth along these rail corridors that will deliver huge productivity benefits for the regions and the country. We know that the Manawatū and Wairarapa lines will have exceeded capacity by 2030 and that there is untapped demand for getting more people on to these lines. That’s why we’ve invested in building up the rail lines in recent years. That’s why we’re currently refurbishing carriages for the Capital Connection, and that’s why we’re now putting our penny down to transform passenger rail services for the region, and futureproof for growth in the years ahead.

Terisa Ngobi: What benefits will the investment in the lower North Island rail programme deliver for rail users?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Well, the new trains will replace the current fleet from the 1970s and will at least double the peak service capacity along both lines, enabling around 1.5 million additional trips per year. This will provide significant time savings of commuters of up to 15 minutes on both the Manawatū and the Wairarapa lines. The new trains will operate using a combination of electric wires, batteries, and fuel, lowering our carbon emissions by around half a million tonnes, making us less reliable on volatile international energy markets. The investment for the network needed to enable the new trains will also build in much more resilience for both passenger and freight services, and stations will be revitalised to meet modern accessibility and amenity standards to improve the experience for passengers. I thank the member, Terisa Ngobi, for advocating for these services on behalf of the community of Ōtaki.

Tangi Utikere: What reactions has he seen to the announcement of the Government’s investment in new trains for the lower North Island region?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Well, I have seen a range of very positive reports about the investment. Greater Wellington Regional Council chair Daran Ponter said, “The new trains will revolutionise life for commuters in the Wairarapa, Hutt Valley, Manawatū, Horowhenua, and Kāpiti who need access to Wellington, Porirua, and Palmerston North. Horizons Regional Council chairwoman Rachel Keedwell said that we know our communities will be really excited by this prospect. And, finally, Save Our Trains campaigner Paul Callister said, “This is a huge win and there are considerable benefits. These new trains will connect people, promote economic development, and help reduce our carbon emissions.” I want to thank the councils and campaigners who we’ve worked with constructively in recent years to make this investment a reality for the people of the Wellington region, including the good folks of Palmerston North.

Tangi Utikere: What other work is the Government doing to improve passenger rail services?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Since 2017, our Government has invested $8.6 billion to reverse a long period of managed decline and build a resilient and reliable network for the people and the freight of New Zealand. This investment has gone into the bread and butter work of replacing tracks, installing new culverts and bridges, and upgrading turnouts, all of which are needed for a safe and effective network. I’m proud of our investment across New Zealand’s great rail network. It’s one of the most carbon-efficient regional development building investments that we can make, and it’s great to see this investment in the Wellington region.

Question No. 8—Justice

8. NICOLE McKEE (ACT) to the Minister of Justice: Why was only $3.73 million of the $22 million approved funding for round 5 of the Proceeds of Crime Fund spent in 2022, and when the Ministry of Justice’s website states “Round 6 closed on 14 February 2022. The round is currently paused”, does this accurately reflect the status of the fund?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): Yes; that statement is an accurate reflection. Round six is currently paused due to a significant portion of the fund having been allocated to priority projects, including the $6 million allocated in May 2022 to the Retail Crime Prevention Programme to assist small retailers implementing crime prevention measures, including physical barriers such as bollards, fog cannons, and roller doors, some of which my colleague the Minister of Police will update the House on today, I am sure. The $22 million of approved funding from round five of the Proceeds of Crime Fund has been allocated to successful applicants. The $3.73 million figure referred to by the member only represents expenditure from 1 July 2022 to 30 December 2022 by the applicants themselves, and figures are aggregated on a six-month basis, with further figures expected after June this year.

Nicole McKee: Why have almost half of the initiatives that had their funding approved in 2022, such as Te Whare Hauora, which provides a safe place for victims of domestic violence, not received a single cent of that funding?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: As I just described to the member in this House, round five has been fully allocated and distributed to those successful applicants. Round six has been paused. I think it is probably useful, just to put it into some context for the House, though—some other large allocations have been made that have stopped our ability to be able to accept new applications to the fund. For example, in round six, a large-scale fraud was committed in an international jurisdiction, with the proceeds being laundered through New Zealand, and a multinational agreement and asset-sharing arrangement was negotiated, with the proceeds then shared proportionately with other jurisdictions. For law enforcement reasons, I can’t go into the details of that fraud today, but I use that as an example of the types of events and initiatives that those funds are being spent on.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Has she seen reports that lifetime Mongrel Mob member Harry Tam’s company, which received $2.75 million from the Proceeds of Crime Fund to run a meth rehab programme, has managed to spend more than $100,000 of it hiring one van; and, if so, is this how she thinks the fund should be spent?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: I haven’t seen those reports.

SPEAKER: I apologise to Nicole McKee. Sorry, I should have given you that supplementary. I mistakenly thought you had already asked two, so my apologies. Nicole McKee.

Nicole McKee: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Any bonuses would be gratefully received. Ha, ha! To the Minister, does she think that she’s taking a victim-centric approach when more money has been spent helping the perpetrators of crime-related harm through things like cultural reports than on the victims of crime-related harm?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: I don’t accept that characterisation. I think that victims have squarely been a core focus for our Government. This is embodied in the announcements that we made just last week—a three-part approach taken to the way that we look at dealing with victims who have been poorly served by multiple Governments over many years. We are looking at legislative reforms that strengthen and enhance the ability of victims to participate in the system. We are looking at trials that we are running, and, of course, we are increasing funding for both Victim Support—we’ve doubled their funding since taking office—and we’ve tripled the amount of funding that’s been available through the Victim Assistance Scheme.

Nicole McKee: Is she aware that there are organisations that have been forced to close down due to the proceeds of crime funding round being closed, with no certainty being given on when it will reopen again; and what does she say to the owners of the retreat who offered residential programmes for people suffering from drug and alcohol addictions, who recently had to announce the closure of their Ōtāhuhu facility due to the Proceeds of Crime Fund being closed?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Well, the first thing I’d say is just to acknowledge the roles that many people have, I guess, worked really hard on across a broad range of schemes in our community to look after those that have suffered, whether it’s from drug or alcohol addiction, but many of the schemes that have been provided in the community by the community. Of course, we can’t fund all of them. We’ve had to make some decisions to really focus in on some of our priorities. They have included the response to retail crime, for example, and there are many other initiatives that the Government often has to invest in. But I do want to acknowledge and thank those that constantly give their energy and their work to support those in our community that need support from people like those you’ve clearly mentioned in Ōtāhuhu.

Question No. 9—Health (Māori Health)

9. PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai) to the Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health): What recent announcement has he made on health equity?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): Last Thursday, I announced, alongside the Minister of Health, $44 million of funding for primary healthcare providers to deliver high-quality services focused on benefiting Māori and Pacific populations. The funding is for two years to support whānau with the highest needs in New Zealand. This announcement rises to the challenge this Government accepted to have an equitable health system for all. I’m also pleased to advise the House that the first payment for this funding will be paid by Te Whatu Ora later this month.

Paul Eagle: How will this funding support better access to healthcare?

Hon PEENI HENARE: This $44 million fund will enable our primary care providers to stand up comprehensive care teams such as kaiāwhina, physiotherapists, pharmacists, care coordinators, and, in some of our rural areas, they will need paramedics. Our providers have said to us that they need more of these roles so that they can provide more comprehensive support and access to whānau. With winter looming, we are also supporting these providers to access more front-line clinical teams to focus on early intervention, faster treatment, and better support over all. In addition to the funding I just mentioned, we are also providing an extra $30 million of primary care funding over the next two years to general practices based on their enrolled high-needs populations. This will cover shortfall funding in the current formula, which does not factor in ethnicity, socio-economic status, and age. I am proud of this Government for highlighting equity in a desirable health system.

Paul Eagle: What is the significance of this funding?

Hon PEENI HENARE: This announcement is significant for our communities and health providers. Better access to local care will go a long way to improving early intervention rates and help patients avoid hospital care, improving the hauora of those who need it the most. As I have travelled across the motu, the feedback I am hearing is overwhelmingly positive.

Paul Eagle: How does this announcement support Māori health equity?

Hon PEENI HENARE: For Māori whānau, this announcement is a response to the Wai 2575 report, which criticised the capitation funding system in New Zealand for not considering important factors such as ethnicity, socio-economic status, and age when distributing funds to primary healthcare providers. We know that our hauora Māori providers tend to have a higher proportion of patients with complex health needs and higher rates of chronic illnesses, and as such the existing one-size-fits-all funding formula is neither adequate nor fair. Both funds will see 78 Māori provider practices receive an equity adjuster of approximately $80 per person enrolled. Seventy-five other practices with more than 50 percent of their enrolled population being Māori or Pacific will receive a further $40 per person enrolled. For some practices, this may mean being able to continue to operate; for others, it might mean that they can employ more staff and expand their services. And, for others, they may choose to remove co-payments for some of their enrolled populations. There are no silver bullets for these challenges in front of us, but the support for this particular initiative is overwhelmingly positive.

Question No. 10—Police

10. VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour) to the Minister of Police: What recent announcements has the Government made about supporting the victims of retail crime?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): I was pleased to recently announce that the Government is continuing to help retailers get support for the security and safety measures by more than doubling the funding available through the Retail Crime Prevention Programme. While the spike in ram raids continues to trend down, it is vital, as a Government, that we continue to support retailers through crime prevention, and that is exactly what we are doing. The additional $9 million for the fund comes in addition to the initial commitment of $6 million, bringing the Government’s total contribution to $15 million.

Vanushi Walters: How many businesses have benefited from the Retail Crime Prevention Programme?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Over 500 businesses have had installations either approved or commissioned through the Retail Crime Prevention Programme, representing a total of 2,406 security interventions. Of those, 238 stores have had 1,107 security interventions installed and completed. That represents a complete fit-out of 240 fog cannons, 212 alarms, 195 security sirens, 110 roller doors, 84 sets of bollards, and 56 other interventions to improve store security. This, in addition to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s complementary fog cannon subsidy scheme, has approved 892 installations of fog cannons completed to date.

Vanushi Walters: What feedback has the Minister seen regarding the Retail Crime Prevention Programme?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Police have received a significant amount of positive feedback from dairies, shops, and other small retailers, who appreciate that this Government is backing them and their business. I’m advised an assessor recently visited a chemist in Hamilton post installation, who expressed how grateful he and his wife were at the installation, particularly when his wife was working in the store alone. Another Northland store owner recently told an assessor, “In no form could we even contemplate the cost or afford this install the New Zealand Police has offered—and, again, we are speechless with thankyous.”

Vanushi Walters: What other work is the Government doing to reduce youth offending?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Alongside our work to better protect the victims of retail crime, the Government is also funding programmes to hold young people who are committing these crimes accountable while working to get them back on track. Programmes such as Kotahi te Whakaaro are seen as a good success so far, with around 82 percent of young people referred to the programme not reoffending. The circuit-breaker programme also intervenes within a short 24 to 48 hours, if a young person was a recidivist offender, to stop them committing further crime. That programme has dealt with 84 children so far, and 67 of those have not reoffended. As the Minister of Police, I believe it is crucial that we are tackling the problem of retail crime at both ends.

Question No. 11—Revenue

11. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Revenue: Does he stand by his statement that arguments against using unrealised gains for calculating effective tax rates are “bankrupt and rubbish”, and will he rule out introducing legislation for a capital gains tax this year?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): I do stand by my full statement, which further said that the idea that you would exclude all unrealised capital gains in an assessment of the super-rich is absurd. It is widely accepted by New Zealand and international tax experts, including the OECD, that unrealised gains are economic income. In response to the second part of the question: as the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have made clear, the Government has made a series of commitments on what we would do and would not do on tax this term, and we have honoured those commitments. New Zealanders will know Labour Party tax policy for the next term before the next election, as they will for all parties contesting the election.

Andrew Bayly: Will he rule out taxing unrealised gains on assets such as New Zealanders’ KiwiSaver accounts, their bach, or their small business, and, if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER: We’ve got no plans to tax those. I would note what I said in the answer to the primary question. I would further note that the group that is in the study has, on average, $276 million of net assets, and structure their affairs so that the vast majority of their income is earned as capital income. The National Party, of course, is on the side of capital. The Labour Party notes that people who work for a living pay tax on every dollar they earn in their wages and salaries, every dollar they earn from a salary increase, every dollar they earn from overtime. It is the National Party and the ACT Party that think people who earn virtually all their income from returns on capital should pay tax at less than half the rate of people who earn their living through salary and wages.

Andrew Bayly: Is he aware that there’s no other developed country that taxes unrealised capital gains, and, if so, why would the introduction of such a policy be good for Kiwis?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’m not suggesting that all unrealised capital gains should ever be taxed. But if you want to find a country that does tax some unrealised capital gains, why don’t you count Switzerland?

Andrew Bayly: Did he express his view to the Prime Minister that arguments against a tax on unrealised capital gains were “bankrupt and rubbish”, when the Prime Minister explicitly ruled out a capital gains tax, after the release of the IRD report?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’ve addressed some of those issues in the primary answer. I would also note I don’t discuss what is discussed in Cabinet. But I can say that discussions in the Labour Party on taxation are much more economically literate than they are from the other side, who would tax labour at twice the rate of capital income.

Andrew Bayly: Does he support the introduction of a capital gains tax?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I stand by the Labour Party policy, which is that we keep our promises to the electorate. We have kept our promise this term. Our tax policy for the next term will be known before the election, and I would note that it wasn’t the Labour Party who promised not to increase GST and then did it in Government.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Today, we saw the strength of the New Zealand economy. Today, we saw that the unemployment rate in New Zealand has reached a near-record low again, of 3.4 percent. But more than that, we saw the benefits of having a Government with an economic plan so that the average hourly wage rose 7.6 percent. Members opposite seem to believe that the only way we can increase incomes is to cut taxes, but, actually, the way to increase incomes is to see wages lift, and I am proud of the fact that we have done that.

I’m equally proud that we now have 2.886 million people in work. Since 2017, 281,000 jobs have been created in the New Zealand economy. That’s what happens when Kiwi businesses work hard and when they are supported by a Government that gets alongside them, takes them through the hard times like COVID, makes sure that they’ve got skilled workforce, and makes sure that apprentices are there, and we are seeing the NEET rates coming down within this and we’re making sure that we compare ourselves well with the rest of the world. So it is a good day for the workers of New Zealand to see their wages rise and to see more people in work.

It is equally a good week for the New Zealanders who receive the winter energy payment. Just over a million New Zealanders know that they will be looked after during the winter period: an extra $31.82 a week for a couple, and $20.46 a week for a single person. That’s looking after New Zealanders when they’re doing it tough, and be crystal clear that if there is a National-ACT Government after October, the winter energy payment is gone—it’s gone. ACT don’t want it, and National don’t have the backbone to stand up to ACT and make sure that it’s there. So for every pensioner in New Zealand and for every person in receipt of a main income benefit, the winter energy payment is gone if National and ACT find themselves in Government.

But that policy of National and ACT shows you just how out of touch they are, and we’ve seen a few examples of that over the course of the last couple of weeks, including Chris Bishop deciding that it was time to bring back no-cause evictions. Now, that policy is fundamentally wrong, but then Mr Bishop said that it was a tenant-friendly policy to get rid of no-cause evictions. In the same way that Dracula is a great friend of the blood service, Chris Bishop is telling tenants all across New Zealand that “It’s OK to be kicked out for no reason, because we are your friends.”

Then we heard from Nicola Grigg that National was bringing back live exports—National was going to bring it back. It was actually an extremely bizarre interview, if you ever get the chance to watch it. It included a statement where Nicola Grigg said that she’d been on a live export ship but gave no good reason why she got off it. On this side of the House, we value animal welfare and we value making sure that we look after New Zealanders.

Then there is the latest resident of the National Party “Bermuda Fiscal Triangle”: Shane Reti. I know that I can speak on behalf of members on this side of the House when I say, “Shane on you!”—“Shane on you!”—because we know that it’s important to get the numbers right. I know that Dr Ayesha Verrall, the Minister of Health, has worked hard to make sure that Mr Reti is informed, but yet he continues to go out there and misinform New Zealanders about what is happening in our health service, and I say again, “Shane on you!”

But all of this comes from the top in the National Party. It comes from a leader in Christopher Luxon who has consistently run New Zealand down. This is a person who went to a right-wing thinktank in the UK and said that New Zealand businesses didn’t work hard enough. This is the person who decided that he wanted to get rid of a public holiday, and who didn’t understand the difference between the Clean Car Standard and the Clean Car Discount. But, worst of all, he singled out a group of New Zealanders on low and middle incomes as bottom feeders. This is a leader who is out of touch, who is leading a political party that is out of touch, and who is running down the New Zealand economy.

This is a day when we have seen a record number of New Zealanders in work and an unemployment rate of 3.4 percent. That is what having a Labour Government gives, and I’m proud of that work.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): New Zealanders are in the trenches. They are battling a prolonged cost of living crisis, waking up each day worried about money, and what does the Minister of Finance have to say to them? What does he have to say? He says, “Hey, look, the economy is going great. Don’t complain. You have me to thank for having a job.” That is what the Minister of Finance did today, on this very day when we have been warned by the Reserve Bank Governor that more and more New Zealanders are failing to make their mortgage payments; that we risk a self-reinforcing negative feedback cycle as a result.

On a day when we have learnt that around half of New Zealanders are now worrying about money on a daily and weekly basis, when we have learnt that more than 400,000 New Zealanders are now in debt arrears, we have a Minister of Finance who thinks it’s a good time to crow about the economy. I say that, right when New Zealanders need a Government focused on them and fixing the cost of living, instead we have a Government that is falling apart, beset by distractions and division and internal fighting, right when New Zealanders need leadership and strength. We have nurses leaving in droves. We have violent crime increasing. We have more children truant from school. And, instead of dealing with all of this, Labour are preoccupied with stopping their own party from falling apart.

Let’s have a look at the distractions we’ve had these past few days. We’ve had the “Minister for More Tax” David Parker out there with his academic, theoretical Piketty project—his little fantasy about all the new ways he could tax people if only he was allowed. He’s there and he’s thinking up these cunning new taxes and how he might slip them through. Never mind that talented entrepreneurial people are already leaving this country in droves! Never mind we have the biggest current account deficit in decades! Never mind we actually need more investment, not less! No, David Parker is doing everything in his power to scare them off. And I’ll tell you who he’s scaring off at the same time: every New Zealander with a KiwiSaver account. Every New Zealander who has worked hard in their life to build a small business, to invest in their hairdressing salon, to make sure that their mechanic business could expand; every New Zealander who thought, “I’m going to do the right thing and create a nest egg. I’m going to build a rental property.”—David Parker is out to get them.

And what does Chris Hipkins do about it? He says, “Oh, look, yeah, the economy is pretty fragile. It’s absolutely turning into trouble, but don’t worry; I’ll just leave the door wide open for more taxes.” “I’m not prepared to rule a single one out.”, he says. Well, I think that is irresponsible and creates uncertainty at a time when New Zealanders need confidence. It is wrong.

Then we have Grant Robertson, not only crowing about the economy today but yet again telling us there’s not enough money for New Zealanders to get the tax reduction they deserve. Yet this is the same week we learn he has happily given Michael Wood more than $80 million to subsidise Teslas. This is at the very time he’s happily signed off on more than a billion dollars being spent on highly paid consultancy reports for Government departments. This is the same Minister of Finance who has found tens of millions of dollars for more communications advisers, policy advisers, working groups, but he won’t let New Zealanders keep more of their own money.

And then we have Meka Whaitiri. We have the people in Hawke’s Bay still digging up silt from their homes and businesses. First they had to deal with the indignity of the Stuart Nash scandal, and now they learn that the Minister put in charge of recovery in their area has so little faith in this Labour Government that she’s quit it altogether. Well, I say to the people of Hawke’s Bay: National has got your back; you know which way to vote this year.

And then we have Ayesha Verrall. While nurses are leaving in their droves, she wants to have a petty debate about just how many, instead of confronting the problems.

Labour has sprayed the money hose around; they’ve created a mess. It’s time for a new Government to come in and clean it up. That is what we will be elected to do. We will stop the Government eating your lunch. We will get New Zealanders back on track.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister for ACC): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Ka tangi apakura tēnei ki ngā hunga kua riro atu ki te pō ki roto i ngā wiki kua pahure ake nei. Anā ko te kaiako rongonui, a Taini Jamison, kua riro atu ki roto i ngā rangi kua taha ake nei. Me tōku tuakana a JB Heperi Smith, kua riro atu ki te pō. Ki a rātou katoa kua riro atu, tēnei ka tangi atu, tēnei ka mihi atu, tēnā koutou.

Ka whakahokia mai ngā rārangi kōrero ki a tātou. Tēnā koe.

[I grieve for those who have been lost to the night in recent weeks. In particular, the famous coach Taini Jamison, who has passed on in recent days. And my senior JB Heperi Smith, who has also passed into the night. To all of them who have passed away, I grieve, I acknowledge them, I acknowledge you.

I now return the lines of discourse to us. Thank you.]

As I quite often do, I acknowledge those who have passed on. I acknowledge the great leadership of Taini Jamison, who broke glass ceilings in her time to lead the Silver Ferns, to carve out a distinguished career in her community and in netball, and I want to acknowledge her passing. She was a true leader, a true wahine toa of the Māori people and, indeed, of this nation. Also, to my tuakana JB Heperi-Smith: his people continue to mourn his untimely passing in Ngāti Kahungunu and beyond. I wish them all farewell, and then I come back to the living.

What we’ve heard from the other side is what we know from a National Party, and that is the status quo, because that side of the House continues to promise tax cuts to the wealthy and will not come clean to this country about what services they’re going to cut. Well, let me tell the voters out there what they’re going to cut. They’re going to stick with the status quo in health and they’re going to cut the initiatives to get equity into a health system that has failed this country for far too long.

This side of the House was dedicated to the health reforms. We’ve established Te Aka Whai Ora - Māori Health Authority. What that side of the House is telling the voters out there is that they were satisfied with the status quo, they were satisfied with the huge gap on life expectancy between Māori and non-Māori. They’re telling the public out there that it was OK that Māori tamariki in communities around the country do not have access to a fair and equitable health system that will help them while they’re young and serve them into the future. That’s what they’re telling voters out there.

We want to be very clear that on this side of the House, we are committed to making sure that, one, the health sector is equitable. We know there are challenges in the health sector. Those are challenges that have been there for many decades, ignored in the past and in my time in this House sitting in Opposition, listening to a National-led Government continue to ignore the health system at the peril of this country. We tackled that particular challenge to say we in this country deserve an equitable health system that’ll continue to serve our people, and that’s exactly what we’re delivering.

What that side of the House don’t want to hear, too, are the good, positive numbers for employment that we’ve seen under the leadership of the Hon Grant Robertson and this Government. Record low Māori unemployment—let me say that again: record low Māori unemployment. On that side of the House, they might moan about those on the bottom, they might moan about those who continue to rely on the State, but what we’re saying on this side is we’re celebrating the fact that Māori unemployment is the lowest it’s ever been on record, saying that more of our people are working hard, more of our people are contributing to the wellbeing of their family by getting out there and earning a fair day’s wage.

I’m proud of the leadership in the economic space that this Government is giving this country during the hard times. COVID-19: this Government stepped up, and when we were helping businesses, that side of the House were telling the rest of the country, “No, they’re not doing enough.” Now that we’re continuing to help businesses, they’re saying, “Oh, well, maybe we’re just spraying money around, we’re wasting it. We’re frivolous with the way that we spend our money.” That’s not true. You listen to the businesses out in the community, and they tell you: under the leadership of this Government through COVID-19, we supported them, we stood alongside them, and I’m proud of that fact. And we continue to do it today.

There are sad sights and scenes across Te Tairāwhiti, Hawke’s Bay, Thames-Coromandel, Tāmaki-makau-rau, and Te Tai Tokerau. This Government stood up quickly to support businesses, stood up quickly to support families. We acknowledge that there’s more work to be done. Ministers on this side of the House have already made it clear we’re committed to continuing that support. We’ve already started much of the work, and I myself have been to both those regions and seen the positive investment this Government has made to make sure that those communities are strong now and into the future.

This Government won’t back down from hard challenges. We know there are lots of challenges in this community, but we’re up for the challenge, we’re up for the fight, and we need the rest of this country to know that the Government that is leading them right now is the best Government for them after the election.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I heard the Prime Minister say something I agreed with the other day. It’s something I agreed with so much, ACT has been saying it for a long time. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Chris Hipkins from the Labour Party, said it’s not right for families to have to tighten their belt up and down New Zealand if the Government isn’t doing it too, and I thought, “Amen to that.”, because I hear it every day—or, actually, not quite every day.

You see, people don’t talk about the cost of living crisis, because they’re often a bit embarrassed. People who are honest, who work hard, and who do the right thing day in, day out, find themselves through those days at the end of the week a bit short and can’t make ends meet. They don’t understand why that is. They don’t understand why people who do the right thing should actually not get the dignity of being able to pay their bills on time.

I hear people say, “When my tyres fail a warrant, well, it’s at least $200 a quarter, I have to juggle for week after week, pay day after pay day, to get back on an even keel.” I talk to business owners—I won’t say who—who tell me, “I’m aware of employees that I have to give a petrol voucher to or else they can’t afford to actually drive to work and keep earning money.” So it goes on. People are having to tighten their belts up and down this country, and the Prime Minister says that’s not right if the Government’s not tightening its belt. But take a look at what this Government has been up to: it has an insatiable appetite for your and my tax money, and the way it spends it doesn’t do justice to the money it’s taking.

Just think for a moment about education. Over the past five years under this Labour Government, we’ve gone from spending about $13.6 billion to $18.7 billion—in five years. That is a 38 percent increase in spending on education. But are more kids going to school? Are they learning more? Do they feel that they’re being prepared to be skilled and talented citizens able to navigate the 21st century? Is there a place in every community where a kid can go—whether they’re boy or girl, rich or poor, Māori or Pākehā—where a knowledgeable adult will transfer them valuable academic knowledge that they want to go to, that they regularly go to? No; we’ve got a hundred thousand kids regularly not attending school, and, as we found out from Newstalk ZB last week, 10,000 that aren’t even enrolled in the system. That’s with a 38 percent increase in taxpayer money into education.

What about health? Well, in 2018, this Government inherited a health budget of $17 billion; in 2023-24, it will be $28.8 billion. They say it’s all because of COVID. I predict if this Labour Government is re-elected with its Māori Party and Green Party crutches—heaven forbid—they’ll be blaming COVID through to the next decade. But the truth is that the pandemic’s over. We’ve got an extra $10 billion in education expenditure; 68 percent increase in education spending by the end of COVID, in spite of only 20 percent inflation generally—and that’s high. For 68 percent, are people getting their operations faster, can they get into their GP quicker, can they get their medication, and are people really looked after better with a 68 percent increase in expenditure? No, they are not.

What does this Government do? It comes up with bogus studies suggesting that some people who pay the most tax aren’t paying enough, and goes on a witch hunt—or should that be a rich hunt?—suggesting, if only the Government had more money, then it could solve all our problems. Well, how’s that working out? Things are not good in the New Zealand economy, they are not good in New Zealand under labour. Real change is required, and that means careful use of Government finances to get practical results for the people who pay the bills, and real tax relief for those taxpayers so that they can keep more of the hard-earned money that they earned in order to fight the price rises that they already see at the checkout and the pump, making it harder for them to get by week to week in dignity. That is the real change and the real solution a party vote for ACT will give you this October. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Some parties in this House just whinge and moan, and others just get on with the job of looking after Kiwis, and taking care of bread and butter issues. One of those issues is making sure that our communities stay safe. The best way of doing that is to make sure our police service is well resourced. That is exactly what this Government is doing. By June this year, we will reach the target of 1,800 additional police officers. And that’s what we are doing right now.

When I’ve been travelling around the districts and meeting with front-line officers, it’s been really good to see where those resources are being used, and the differences that they are making in our communities. It’s important that we give our police officers not only the tools but also the resources to keep our communities safe.

Let’s do some sums—in terms of where we are in ratios—if we want to talk about some comparisons. So in 2008, when the Labour Government left, back then, it was one police officer for 515 New Zealanders; by the end of 2017, when National left office, we’re at one police officer for 548, gone up that much; and now, in 2023, one police officer for 486. A huge drop there in terms of being able to provide better-quality policing services and keeping our communities safer.

I remember, as a non-sworn employee of New Zealand Police, when there was a policy on sinking lids for the non-sworn staff. Each day, when you would come to work, there’d be an empty desk that would not be re-employed. It got to the point where the person who was the executive assistant—doing the emails for the district commander—was a senior sergeant. In my view, the job of a senior sergeant is in charge of their section out in the community, not doing the emails of a district commander.

Of those 1,800 additional police officers, 700 are specifically devoted to organised crime. When I visited Rotorua and met with police officers up there, it was great to see that they had used those resources specifically for gang harm reduction within the communities, by having established connections and by using their intel, it is assisting to resolve homicides quicker, particularly in those ones that are tough to resolve in gang communities.

I’d like to talk, also, a little bit about another police operation that’s been going on for a while now, which is Cobalt. Cobalt is able to run successfully due to the fact that we’ve got 700 additional police officers. So since 13 June 2022 to 21 March of this year, the searches that have been completed under Operation Cobalt are 1,586—963 of those were warranted. That has resulted in over 30,000 charges targeted at gangs and organised crime. The number of firearms seized as a result of that work is 358 seized. That is important.

But not only is it important that we make sure our front line are resourced, it’s just as important that they are safe. That is why this Government has invested in the Tactical Response Model, keeping front lines safe, combining equipment and capability with intel. So they are deploying to demand and making sure that they have the resources in place, and even doubling the number of dog teams when they go out—instead of just one—and double the amount of tactical training, providing additional services in that space, and being able to respond to crime quicker. It’s been interesting. I keep a close eye on retail crime, and it has been good to see—in every instance I’ve watched recently—that those offenders have been quickly brought to account and police have acted quickly. Part of that, I believe, is the fact that that’s the resourcing in place to enable our police service to do their job well.

In terms of retail crime, it’s also important that we make sure our small businesses are looked after. That’s why the retail crime prevention scheme has been operating well, to not only give additional safety features to those businesses but also advice to know how to use that equipment, how to keep oneself safe, and what to do in instances when you are a victim of a crime. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment fog cannon scheme: also working well, which is good to see. We’re seeing that when those fog cannons are deployed, they stop the crime from proceeding. They are an effective tool that small-business owners are pleased to be receiving.

I’d like to finish up by saying and acknowledging the good work that our community has been doing to reduce youth offending; an 82 percent reduction in successful programmes like Kotahi te Whakaaro. This is a tough job, to try and resolve these issues. But by working together, resourcing our community well, and working together, we will do that.

Dr SHANE RETI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The health system is in crisis, and the only two people who don’t know it are Andrew Little and Ayesha Verrall. It’s just six letters, but they don’t want to say it; they don’t want the crisis on their watch. And, you know, if we look at some of the numbers, some of the data around first specialist assessments and those on surgical waiting lists, and emergency department times, it really is a travesty how bad those numbers are.

And while we’re talking about numbers, let’s talk to the numbers that Grant Robertson just put up—“OCR Grant Robertson”; “official cash rate Grant Robertson”? No, “open cheque book Grant Robertson”. Let’s talk about those numbers he just put up and contest them for a moment, because I’ll tell you something for nothing, I’m not going to be taken to task by a health Minister who, several months ago, said that the emergency department (ED) wait time to target in Northland was 99.4 percent—that is, no wait time—at the same time, they’re trying to call in the army. Highly unlikely I’m going to accept her data or any messages from her. Furthermore, she then put up the data; that terrible performance data that she took down, she eventually reposted. We said to her, “Was the original data accurate? Were resourcing decisions made on the original data that you put up?” and she said yes, it was accurate. She reposts the data that she has relooked at about six weeks later, and surprise, surprise, it’s all different—to which she says, “Oh no, there’s just administrative differences, that’s what administrative data does.” Well, you know, 4,500 extra people—and I think it was Middlemore ED: that’s not administrative, that’s an error; that’s a mistake, that is wrong. I do, however—when we’re talking about the data that’s been in contention this week—I do want to thank the Minister. We’ve had a great media run on this announcement; they have been able to stretch it through further, and more people are looking at this big number than we would have quite anticipated. So I thank them very much for that.

Look, we announced a policy to address the beginning of the nursing pipeline, and we understand that of course it needs more experienced nurses. But what we’re saying with our nursing announcement is that we value nursing students and we want to retain them. The policy that we announced—that we would give student loan relief to students in their five years post-graduate—was a policy of $4,500 per year, bonded to the system every year for five years, or $22,500. And what we’ve heard is several things, but let me come back—certainly, it’s been well received, but let’s look at where the impact was. The impact was at the front end; that is, we’re hoping to make nursing more attractive. Secondly, for those nursing students who are finding it tough with cost of living, who haven’t maximised the amount of the student loan that they can attribute to cost of living—which is about $300 a week—we’re hoping that seeing some remedy when they graduate will encourage them to maybe take that up further if they need it. Thirdly, we’re wanting to retain nurses for those five years when they graduate. And this has been very well received; if we look at the commentary from the Aged Care Association (ACA), and let’s remember, they’ve got probably the second-biggest amount of nursing shortages across the sector. Hospitals, around 300—aged residential care, at least 1,000, probably 1,200. ACA chief executive Simon Wallace says the policy is well targeted and will support the aged-care sector to recruit the nurses it desperately needs: “We are pleased that National … has taken time to understand the issues and developed [the] policy”. Very pleased with this policy.

As we stand here today, what a mess this Government is in. More in-fighting in the Labour caucus; the timing is unbelievable—as soon as the PM leaves, no one in the Labour caucus knows anything about it. I do want to say to Meka: I wish you well on your next journey, and wherever you may land, I hope that goes well for you. You know, as I was leaving Parliament last night, I heard some soulful music coming from the direction of Meka’s office, and, when I listened, it was the Engelbert Humperdinck song “Release Me” is what I was hearing. And if you recall the lyrics:

“Please release me.

Let me go, because I don’t love you any more.

To waste our lives would be a sin.

So please release me and let me love again.”

So to the Labour Party, from Meka Whaitiri’s office, please release Meka Whaitiri from the shackles of incompetence. Please release Meka Whaitri from the addiction to spending. Please release Meka Whaitiri from the bonds of socialism. And to the Labour Party, please release Meka Whaitiri, and let her love again. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Fa‘afetai lava, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise as the MP for Takanini in this general debate, and, first of all, I just want to acknowledge the three Labour Ministers who have spoken before me: the Minister Grant Robertson and the work in terms of funding the policy of 1.4 million - plus people who have received a benefit in terms of the 1 April changes, and I thank him for that. In my community of Takanini in South Auckland, that has been greatly received and I thank the Minister for that. I also want to acknowledge Minister Peeni Henare for the work that he’s done, and also the announcement of the equity funding in terms of the capitation formula that will help our primary-care providers in terms of funding and assisting our communities where it’s needed. I also want to acknowledge Minister Ginny Andersen and the police numbers. As we see today, in June 2023 seeing the numbers increase to 1,800 will be a huge benefit for our community in Takanini.

Just coming off from the recess, it’s been a great recess: three weeks back home and doing the mahi back in the electorate. I know other MPs have worked hard. There’s been a lot of engagement there, activities, and I just want to highlight some of those activities and also the changes and announcements from this Government that will definitely help our communities back in our own home electorates.

Recently, we celebrated Vaisakhi celebrations in terms of the spring harvest from our Sikh community and other faiths, and I just want to acknowledge—because Takanini has the largest Sikh temple in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I just want to acknowledge the activities that happened in our electorate back home. I also want to acknowledge Minister Michael Wood, who came to one of those events held at the Takanini Sikh temple sports complex, where we got to watch kabaddi and the activities there. I don’t know if you know that kabaddi is a wrestling/tackling match, that I thoroughly enjoy, being a rugby player as well, and I know there’s going to be a lot of wrestling leading up to elections as well.

One of the announcements that was greatly received, as well, within our community is the immigration-setting changes where we will see an assistance where 32 new health sector roles have been added to the straight to residence pathway green list. We need to support our health sector, as many of our colleagues have mentioned, and in that way, changing the immigration settings—not only for nurses and doctors but this is across the board in the different specialties to uphold the health system. So thank you to our Takanini Sikh leaders who had that discussion with our Minister.

On top of that, the nurse pay equity changes—and we’ve seen some of the interim equity payments being paid across Aotearoa New Zealand. Yes, my wife is a registered nurse (RN) and I acknowledge her and her colleagues back in South Auckland who are doing the hard mahi, so we value—definitely value—our nurses, and this will help in terms of making sure that we acknowledge the work and pay them appropriately. Some of this base pay goes up to 14 percent, so some of these RNs are getting a $12,000 boost to their pay package.

I recently got to go and visit Manurewa East School, which is in my electorate, in terms of their Bikes in School programme. I want to acknowledge the Ministry of Education and the Minister and where they support our kids in accessing some of these bikes in order to improve health and wellbeing. I just want to acknowledge the principal there and the work that they’re doing and the project-managing that we’ll keep on supporting, and I just want to make sure that I just say thanks to the ministry for doing their work as well.

We’ve seen the 1 April changes come about, and I want to also acknowledge the winter energy payments that our elderly folk and those who are eligible to access this funding to help during the winter months that are coming ahead, and this is the overall health and wellbeing of our community. We recently sent out letters to make sure that they were aware of these 1 April changes and also the winter energy payment, and we have received much correspondence from our communities saying thank you for the policies that help our community during these tough times—cost of living and also other events that have affected our South Auckland communities, such as the flooding as well.

I also acknowledge the boost to the Working for Families package as well as the students that are receiving a boost to their allowance and student loan living costs. I hold a Takanini youth council where we have the ages of 14 to 24, we have students from AUT—Auckland University of Technology—and this will greatly help them in supporting them during this time. I commend this Government’s work to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. This afternoon, I want to speak about the wellbeing of our children and young people, our tamariki and rangatahi. You know, many of them can’t vote. They definitely don’t get the same degree of access to this place as others. And it’s really important for us in the Greens that to try and balance that, we do our bit to make sure that we’re keeping them front of mind in our work in this House. And, you know, they’re going to live the longest with the impact of the decisions that are being made here.

So I want to speak to a couple of reports that have come out recently that are relevant to our young ones; the recent release of the 2021/22 Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy Annual Report, and some of the information in that. It’s showing a gradual improvement for our young people in access to food and a reduction in poverty. Though, it’s got to be said that even that gradual process is deeply, deeply uneven, that we’re seeing glaring inequities. Pacific children are four times more likely to experience food insecurity than other children—that’s really significant for all of us—and that there are much higher levels of poverty and material hardship for tamariki Māori, Pasifika, and disabled. Disabled children are twice as likely to be experiencing material hardship compared to other children.

So our policies are not delivering to all of our children and we’re going to have to fix that. And this was reinforced on another level by research that came out yesterday—Mako Mama - Mangopare—that showed 45 percent of sole parents on low incomes found it difficult to access healthy food for their whānau; 30 percent of our sole parent families are struggling to be able to get into healthy homes. Other research shows that one in five single parents don’t have enough to meet basic everyday needs. And our young people are feeling this. This is not just figures. In the wellbeing report, they had a couple of quotes I want to pull out. So one from a young person saying, “My parents and family are stressed because of everything they have to pay for and things just get harder. I don’t want to be [an] extra stress.” And another kid says, “I’m 16 and working four jobs just to help my family get by… it’s like I became an adult too early.”

This is the part of the report that was the good news, alongside—I have to acknowledge—the reduction in preventable hospitalisations. But this was the good news part of the report, because then we go into the fact that our young people are in, I think, an unprecedented crisis where a quarter of them had experienced discrimination in the last year; 37 percent of 12- to 18-year-olds had been bullied in the previous year. And that has resulted in—and I just want people to get their heads around this—over one in 10 of our 12- to 18-year-olds, our children, had attempted suicide in the 12 months before that survey; over one in 10. And that one in four disabled children between the ages of 12 and 18, and rainbow children in the same age group, had attempted suicide. They are saying they cannot cope, and that is on us. And I just can’t get past that, that being the realities for that many kids and all of their families, trying to keep them tethered to this earth to be able to have the opportunities and the life that they deserve.

And I’m not trying to pretend there’s a simple answer to this or that it’s actually a fault of any one Government. It’s actually a call to action for every single one of us in this House to feel that responsibility, to think about what we say and our actions, and are we building connection? Are we eradicating poverty? Are we taking climate action? Are we doing what our children and our young people need us to do, for them to have a sense of hope? And I’m here to say that the Green Party will do what we can, because our young people deserve it.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. And there are so many great initiatives—as the member of Parliament for the Ōtaki electorate—that I could speak about today, but today I’m going to use my time to talk about infrastructure; the amazing amount of investment that this Labour Government has put into the infrastructure in the Ōtaki electorate—I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get through it in just five minutes; that’s how much there is.

I have lived in the Ōtaki electorate for over 40 years, so I know what it looks like to travel to Wellington and back every day. I used to get stuck in the traffic jams, but no more, because we managed to finish TG—or what we now call Transmission Gully. And I know, Mr Speaker, you were also there at the opening. A great piece of infrastructure, beautiful work, and I’m hearing all the time of people being able to get home a little bit earlier and spend that time with their family. I hear from people outside of our electorate saying, “Hey, we can go and visit mum and dad or go and visit the Kāpiti beach or Paraparaumu Beach because it’s just not too far down the road now. There’s not that big, long waiting queue.” So a fantastic piece of infrastructure thanks to this Labour Government.

But that’s not all; wait, there’s more. So what this Government’s also done is made sure that we invested in PP2Ō—or Peka Peka to Ōtaki. Again, having travelled that road, and sometimes that’s where the bottleneck is, we’ve managed to build another piece of fantastic infrastructure, and, again, you shave off about another 10 minutes. So we’ve got TG saving some time, PP2Ō saving some time, you’d think that’s enough, surely to God; no, but wait, there’s more.

Not only have we done TG, not only have we done PP2Ō, but now we’ve also made sure that we’ve committed to Ō2NL—or Ōtaki to north of Levin. Now, I know the Opposition quite often say, “Oh, but they’ve cancelled it so many times.” That’s not quite true. Or they’ll say, “Oh, is it really going to happen?” Yes it is. So we are building Ō2NL, we’re building Ōtaki to Levin. We’ve already started purchasing 60 percent of the land. It’s fantastic.

Andrew Bayly: When is it going to happen?

TERISA NGOBI: Oh, wait till you see it, Mr Bayly. You’re going to have a great time coming through because it’ll shave off even more time. I’ve lived there all my life, 40-odd years, and I can tell you the excitement in the Ōtaki electorate, especially in the Horowhenua part, when we heard that this Government, this Labour Government, had committed to paying for—and we’ve committed the budget, $1.5 billion, you heard the Minister yesterday—and made sure that we are committed to making sure we build Transmission Gully—sorry, sorry, Ō2NL; oh, sorry, PP2Ō—yes, all of them.

But also, wait, there’s more. Yes, the most exciting news: this Government’s just announced, under our amazing Minister of Transport, Michael Wood, that we are getting a train. That’s right—that’s right. The Ōtaki electorate, again, having lived there for 40-odd years, we know that the last people to get the train to Waikanae was a Labour Government. Darren Hughes was his name—fantastic guy. I went to church with him and school—amazing MP. But guess what! We are now going to be able to extend that from Waikanae to Ōtaki to Levin and right through to the equally beautiful Palmerston North.

So what does that mean for the people in the Ōtaki electorate? I’ll tell you what that means. That means accessibility. That means equality. That means that people who might not have a car, can no longer drive, or might not be able to afford to run their car will be able to take the train. That means they’ll have the same access and equality to things like further training and study, to healthcare, to be able to work outside for employment but come back to the beautiful Ōtaki electorate where they want to live. Sometimes it’s a village with their whole families. Isn’t that amazing, because we know that while we say infrastructure, infrastructure also means equality, it also means access, and it means what this Labour Government stands for: looking after people. That’s right. That’s what this Government’s doing through its transport.

But not only that: I have a nephew, Rawiri. He’s a beautiful young man. He’s in a wheelchair and he’s with my auntie, so he’s a “grandparent raising grandkids” child. He’s an amazing young man—super-swimmer, really proud of him—but, actually, it’s going to be really tough for him to get to and from study. But not any more—not under this Labour Government. We’ve made sure that we’ve got trains for him to independently go to the Levin train station, jump on a train, and go to Palmerston North if he wants to study, or go to Wellington if he wants to study independently. That’s right. We are changing lives, on this side of the House—that’s what it’s about. So it’s not just infrastructure, it’s not just TG, it’s not just PP2Ō, it’s not just Ō2NL, it’s not just a train; it’s changing lives. It’s looking after all New Zealanders. It’s making sure that everyone has access to equality, and everyone has access to be able to go out.

I’ve heard from some of our elderly people who would love to just be able to jump on a train with their gold card—because it’s free or cheap—and go into Wellington, grab a cup of coffee, do a bit of shopping, and go back to the beautiful Ōtaki electorate. Why shouldn’t we make sure that that’s a thing that they can do? This Labour Government’s doing that.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, here we are today with a Government that is literally falling apart before our eyes at a time when we need focus. So what have we got? We have the mad professor David Parker thinking that we need to tax unrealised capital gains; we’ve had Stuart Nash doing whatever he did—I can’t remember; we’ve got Kiri Allan, who brought this new approach to transparency, which is to say you declare your perceived conflict of interests after you’ve been caught, and that’s her approach; and now we’ve got Meka Whaitiri deciding to join the Māori Party. And so they’ve lost three votes already, and the question is whether they’re going to make it to election time with 60 votes intact and a clear majority—I’m not sure.

So “Who’s next?” is the question that we’re all asking. Who’s next? Who’s going to go? I mean, I suppose, on the law of averages, you would have to say it would be the Minister of Police, Ginny Andersen, because the record has been that a police Minister in this Government hasn’t lasted very long, so it could be her. But if you thought about it from a sense of merit, it surely would have had to have been Chris Hipkins for five years as a Minister of Education, and after five years the kids aren’t going to school, and performance is going backwards—on any measure he should go. And then Kiri Allan is in charge of justice at a time when violent crime has gone up 30 percent, and the number of people in prison have gone down more than 20 percent, following Government direction. Surely that deserves having to go as well, but who knows? Who knows who’s going to be next?

But what we do know is, right here, right now, New Zealand is facing massive challenges. It needs a Government that is focused, that’s united, that’s strong, that’s coherent, and that is on the ball, and we’re not seeing that from this Government. We’ve got two big challenges. First, we’re in a war for talent. Anybody who reads the news knows that the Aussies are on to it. They’re out there. They’re going hard. They want to attract our most talented and skilled workers over there to help Australia. If the Government’s response, if the Labour Party’s response only, is to tax those most talented and most mobile more—well, I don’t think that’s a very good approach. I think that’s not a good approach and it’s not going to get us very far. A single measure of progress for a country is: are we losing people to Australia or are we gaining people? We’re usually losing people to Australia, but, under the Key National Government, we managed to turn that around so that they were coming to New Zealand on a net outflow of people coming to New Zealand. But that’s gone back into reverse under this Government and it’s only getting worse.

The other real issue we have is a growth problem in this country. Where do we get the money in order to sustain the standard of living that we’ve enjoyed? How do we pay for the extra nurses that we want? How do we get the teachers that we want? How do we have higher salaries? Well, we have to have a growth plan in this country. One of the key elements of how you grow an economy is through investment—somebody, somewhere, deciding to put extra money into growing a business, starting a new business, either from offshore or from New Zealand, people investing. And, again, if the Government’s only approach is to tax investment more—which is what David Parker wants to do—that seems like a dumb idea as well. That’s not going to grow the economy any faster. You need to have good quality infrastructure. You need to have low taxes. You need to have a welcoming platform for investment. You need to have a skilled workforce—you’re not going to get a skilled workforce when the kids aren’t at school. All those things are what you need to grow the economy, and that’s why National has a clear growth plan. But from this Government, we’re not seeing anything along those lines.

The third challenge we have is a sense of disorder on our streets. Here we have, right now, a Government that has perfected the culture of excuses when it comes to disorder and crime, and particularly youth crime. If there’s a crime going on, if there’s a massive increase in ram raids, if people who work in retail and in dairies around the country no longer feel safe in their working environment, “Oh well, it’s not the kids’ fault; it’s somebody else’s fault.” is the response of somebody, somewhere down the line. And you go off, you have a meeting, you have your head patted, and away you go and we’ll see you next weekend doing the same thing. That culture of excuses and soft on crime approach has led us to where we are right now. And the only—the only—target this Government has in the justice sector is to reduce the prison population by 30 percent, regardless of what’s going on in our community, regardless of the level of crime, regardless of the fact that every night we hear the chopper over our heads in Auckland. That is the approach that has to change.

So we need to win the war of talent with Australia, we need to grow the economy, and we need to restore law and order. That is what will be happening in this country in a few months’ time when National returns to Government. Thank you.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Gosh, that was so negative, and I didn’t hear a single solution—a whole lot of problems, no solutions. Now, I also heard a lot of negativity from the finance spokesperson opposite, Nicola Willis, who talked about “self-reinforcing negative feedback loops”. Well, the only self-reinforcing negative feedback loop I heard was Nicola Willis, because this Labour Government is good for women, and Nicola Willis knows it.

The National proposition is bad for women, and here’s why—and, actually, when I say “women”, I mean all women, including trans women. My heart goes out to the communities today that were out on the front lawn protesting. That is the last thing that our rainbow and trans communities need: to be debating their identity when there is a lot of struggle going on in New Zealand. This Government is here to help New Zealanders through these tough times.

The way that we are helping women is through the cost of living—the targeted support through the cost of living—but also the wages and the fair pay that the economic management is producing for women. The first two fair pay agreements around supermarket workers and hospo—those are clearly sectors where women are overrepresented. That is very good news for women in those sectors.

We have reversed a freeze on income indexation for childcare. Let’s remember, that was an indexation that the National Government introduced in 2010. Now 54 percent of families with children can access the changed system. I’m really proud of that, and it is making a real difference, not only to women but to the children they support. We’ve also increased the Best Start payment to $69 a week, as of 1 April.

But the other great news came today that the unemployment figures for women are at record lows. That is really, really good. There are 22,000 new jobs in New Zealand in the first three months. The average wage is going up 7.6 percent, and that is ahead of inflation at 6.7 percent. Why does that affect women? Well, we know that women are in the lower tiers of working, because more women tend to have fewer hours of work, tend to be at home looking after kids. So these differences in wages make a real difference for women.

What is the National Party doing? Well, one thing they’re not doing is getting the numbers right, with the numbers of nurses leaving New Zealand. Whether it was misinformation or just bad calculation, I’m not sure, but we haven’t heard the National Party say that they’re going to do anything to increases nurses’ pay. Nursing is clearly a sector which there is a lot of women in. What this Government has done has increased the baseline pay by 38 percent and the top pay by 43 percent. So for the registered nurses who are on the highest amount, that has gone up since the Labour-led Government came in from about $66,000 a year to $95,000; that is a significant pay jump for a lot of people—particularly good for women in my electorate. We have the Dunedin Hospital, we have lots of people in the tertiary and health sectors who are women, and those pay changes make a huge difference. We have not heard National say they will do anything to increase the pay for women.

What else have we done? We’ve, of course, got the winter energy payment, which has just started this week. We’ve got paid parental leave, which we’ve increased from 18 weeks to 26 weeks. There’s the expansion of bereavement leave to include those who have had miscarriages; something that I’m really proud of and was an initiative that was started by my predecessor, the Hon Clare Curran.

Meanwhile, National, if they get in, what will they do for women? Well, they’ll freeze benefits; they’ll cancel the winter energy payment; they’ll raise the age of eligibility for super, and we know that super affects more women, because women tend to live longer; they will give tax breaks to the wealthiest people who, by and large, are mainly men; and they will reserve the option to use dawn raids if they think that’s necessary—that was an open statement by the Leader of the Opposition.

I am shocked that Nicola Willis would be so negative about the progress made by this Government, and talk about negative feedback loops when, clearly, for the women out there who want to see good government, this is a Government that is delivering for you. National are not doing anything; they’re grizzling and complaining. They’re not helping the feminised sectors. They’re not helping women workers. They’re not helping mothers. They’re not helping the children that mothers are looking after. Voters have got a clear choice coming this October, and they need to vote Labour.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Some time ago, we were all witness to the dreadful weather events that started with the Auckland Anniversary floods on 27 January, and then of course the Cyclone Gabrielle event. I need not remind everyone in this House but especially those that were affected in Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, Hawke’s Bay, and Tairāwhiti of the effects of those events. But I do want to remind the House that these crippling events actually occurred many weeks ago.

In my own electorate I’ve had over a hundred people out of houses, and I’ve seen and visited many farmers; three of whom I know for sure have incurred losses of more than $500,000 each. And when I’ve gone to the Minister for primary industries and asked, “Is there going to be any more money for these people, because in many cases they’ve only received $10,000?”, I have been given no certainty that indeed there will be. And so I’ve had to say to these farmers, “Don’t bank on any more money.”

And, of course, in Auckland, we had many businesses affected. And I know there’s about 5,600 applied for applications, of which approximately half have had about $3,000 each. But when you think about those business owners in Auckland, many of them have had their homes affected and then they’ve had to go to their businesses, they’ve had to rip Gib off the wall, they’ve had to comfort their staff, they’ve had to deal with customer inquiries, and they’ve had to go about all the pressures and the risks and issues that have arisen as a result of those events. And, unfortunately, the result and the support from the Government has been tardy. Those people are hurting. They’re really hurting.

But more recently, during the recess, I was increasingly getting calls and emails from people in the Hawke’s Bay who reached out to me because they weren’t getting the help they deserved. I went down there, and I’ve got to say that it was a sobering visit. Areas like the Esk Valley, Pākowhai, and Puketapu are obviously the areas most affected. But one of the things I found intriguing was that we met up with the Chamber of Commerce, who are responsible for dispensing the funds to many of the affected businesses, and what transpired is that they found out their responsibility, after the announcement of the Government, which was that they were going to hand out money and, in fact, they were going to be the lead agency. That was outrageous. It was outrageous that they did not know about it and it showed an absolute lack of planning from the Government.

But then, in the afternoon, I met several groups of families with our excellent candidate from Napier, Katie Nimon, and it was harrowing. I’ve got to say to you that one family—and I can name them, Maik and Marianne Beekman—they own a citrus orchard in Esk Valley. They grow avocados and other such—mandarins and oranges. They explained their situation. They had come to New Zealand in 2009. They’d moved to Hawke’s Bay in 2014, and they’ve had a successful business, but the floods have caused absolute devastation. There was only one tree left on their property that would remotely stand as an orchard tree that they could use in future. The rest of the property was covered in a metre and a half of silt. They’ve lost all but one of their pets. This is a family that is hurting. And they’ve now got to the stage where they cannot live on their property, they cannot live on their orchard, and they’ve moved into Napier, and Mr Beekman has moved back to being a computer expert, trying to get a living—he’s living in rented accommodation with the family, trying to make enough money to recover the $100,000 in mortgage payments.

This is an area that is absolutely devastated. These people are really hurting. They are people without a home or a business. They’ve got children that are crying at night. These are the people that need our help. Give them certainty. Give them hope. And I say this to the Government because these are New Zealanders that need our help: stand up and help them, Government, because they’re asking for it every day.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Appointments

Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): I move, That, under sections 7 and 8A of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Act 2004, this House recommend Her Excellency the Governor-General appoint Mary Elizabeth Ollivier as Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner for a term of four years.

Motion agreed to.

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

Annual Review Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed from 2 May on the Appropriation (2021/22 Confirmation and Validation) Bill.

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. There are seven hours, 30 minutes remaining for this debate.

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 for the Environment, the Minister of Local Government, the Minister of Immigration, the Minister of Police, the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, and the Minister of Housing will be available today to respond to the members’ questions.

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 Minister for the Environment is now available for 30 minutes to respond to members’ questions.

Environment

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Chairperson of the Environment Committee): Thank you, Mr Chair. So the Environment Committee reviewed seven agencies in the environment sector, and I will give a very brief overview of some of those agencies. I am very aware that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, in a landmark report last year entitled Environmental reporting, research and investment: Do we know if we’re making a difference?, highlighted the need for more information so that this Parliament could do its job better on reviewing expenditure and looking at the allocation of expenditure across the Government as a whole, in terms of environmental issues, rather than just on an agency-by-agency basis, and if we had better environmental reporting information, we would be better able to determine whether the money being spent on the environment—over $3 billion in the 2022-23 year—was actually making a difference in terms of supporting the health and resilience of the environment.

So we do need that better information, but the committee did examine agencies one by one, and one of them, of course, was the Climate Change Commission. The commission has been incredibly useful to the Environment Committee in terms of its briefings to us on how the emissions trading scheme operates and on things like biogenic methane, but, more importantly, it’s been critical in terms of the advice that it is providing the Government in its second year of operation as a trusted independent adviser on how we get our emissions down, and also in relation to adaptation.

The commission is a small entity. It’s only in its second year of operation. It’s been working over the 2021-22 year to build up its core capabilities, systems, and processes. It’s got a small budget of $12.5 million and only 58 full-time staff, but it does seek to provide that really high-quality advice. It has provided advice to the Government on amending the emissions trading scheme and the price control settings, two reports during the year on agricultural pricing, and some clear advice on how we should not rely too heavily on forestry as a cheap abatement measure. Cabinet hasn’t always accepted that advice, but it does provide a huge amount of transparency and accountability in the system through the advice being released. Of course, a significant achievement in the year was the release and the Government’s publication of our first national adaptation plan in August last year, and the commission will assess and evaluate that report and look at how those actions are being implemented.

Also, obviously, we looked at the Ministry for the Environment. Since 2018-19, the Ministry for the Environment’s expenditure and its staff have grown significantly—more than doubling—to $170 million in 2021-22, with over 820 staff. That’s because it’s been engaged in five major reform programmes, and the select committee did make some quite strong questioning of the chief executive and senior managers there. The committee knows some of that reform well, because we’re dealing with the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill. That’s one of the major reform programmes, as well as climate change, improving regulatory systems, and sustainable land and freshwater use, and we heard from the ministry that its focus is very much now not just on being a policy agency but also on implementation.

One of the new entities that the committee looked at was the interdepartmental Climate Change Chief Executives Board and how, in terms of the national emissions reduction plan, that board is seeking to get greater collaboration across the public sector for the different areas that agencies are responsible for in terms of reducing their emissions. A similar initiative is the Strategic Planning Reform Board, which, again, is seeking to get collaboration across the greater spatial planning that is required under the resource management reform.

One of the areas we focused on was the Jobs for Nature – Mahi mō te Taiao, the $1.2 billion, four-year project which was established as part of Budget 2020, as part of the COVID-19 recovery programme. We separately examined that. The major projects that are under way from the Kaipara Harbour, seeking to improve the health of the harbour—landholders, farmers, iwi working together to reduce sediment—and the real change-making nature of Jobs for Nature. Some of us on the select committee were concerned about what happens when the funding ends in June next year. Obviously, organisations knew when they were applying for funding that it was for a four-year term, but that was one of the many projects—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The member’s time has come to a conclusion.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to, in my opening comments, thank the Environment Committee chair, the Hon Eugenie Sage, for her, I think, very comprehensive overview of the financial review hearing that we had in relation to the Ministry for the Environment and other agencies. I’ve got a series of questions, and I’ll go through them in sort of short bursts, if I might, and, hopefully, get responses from the Minister in the chair as we go.

I want to pick up on a comment that the select committee chair made in reference to staff numbers and the percentage of the ministry’s budget that is allocated to staff. It came very close to a hundred million dollars—nearly 60 percent of the ministry’s total funding allocation, went on staff; it was $99.9 million. So that’s a serious lump of money in anyone’s books. But for that, we’ve seen a doubling—in fact, more than a doubling—of staff numbers within the ministry in the last four years. It has gone in excess of 800 staff members.

The question I really have for the Minister is: notwithstanding the work that the ministry is undertaking from a policy development point of view, I really want to know whether the Minister feels that they’ve been able to produce any tangible outcomes in a way that has meaningfully benefited our environment. There’s been a lot of work, a lot of talk, a lot of meetings, a lot of consultations, a lot of planning, a lot of staff hours, and an awful lot of select committee time, I have to say, but, actually, very little in tangible output.

So I’m keen to know from the Minister whether he feels that the current staff numbers are going to increase any further. When are we going to start getting some tangible results from the significant investment of public money on a department that was actually much smaller previously? And when does he think that we’re going to start seeing some benefit from that investment?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I thank the chair of the Environment Committee, the Hon Eugenie Sage, for her introduction, and the Hon Scott Simpson, who just took his seat.

Job numbers at the Ministry for the Environment peak later this year or next year, and they thereafter decline after we have gone through the peak of the big reform projects that we have got under way, the largest of which is resource management reform. Resource management legislation is, of course, cornerstone legislation for the country. Decades of concern that the resource management system hasn’t worked properly—concerns have been both that it hasn’t adequately protected the environment, as evidenced by the very significant decline in water quality in recent decades, increasing climate change and emissions, and other environmental problems, and, on the development side, house prices that have gone through the roof, in part because overly restrictive land markets have decreased the number of building opportunities for people to build a new home. That’s driven up effective house prices, not just for the new house that’s built but for all of the second-hand houses sold in New Zealand.

There were reviews by the Waitangi Tribunal, the Productivity Commission, and a trio, being the Northern Environmental Management Agency—it was actually four—the Property Council, Infrastructure New Zealand, and the Environmental Defence Society. They did a report, then some other reports, then a report from the Randerson panel, contributions from Local Government New Zealand—everyone agreed that the Resource Management Act was past its use by date and that further tinkering wasn’t going to fix it. A big reform project—the select committee is in the middle of the consideration of that legislation. Indeed, they’ve done most of the work already, and I thank them for that. Enormous hours have been put in hearing submissions.

On the development side, the cost of consenting infrastructure in New Zealand has been 5.5 percent of project cost compared with benchmarked comparisons in Europe, done by the Infrastructure Commission Te Waihanga, where the cost there ranges between 0.5 and 5 percent of project cost. So New Zealand costs have been outside the most extreme of the range in Europe, and we’re addressing all of those issues. It is a big project, and there will be hundreds of millions of dollars saved by users of the resource management system in the future, as well as better outcomes that will save New Zealanders, over time, billions and billions of dollars in unnecessary housing costs. We’re going to save hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure consenting costs, and we’re also going to have better environmental outcomes as well.

I won’t speak any longer at the moment, because I know the member has got other questions, but the other big projects include Jobs for Nature, where, for example, Ministry for the Environment projects have already seen 869,000 hours of work planting riparian margins and doing other good work that supports the efforts to improve water quality.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Minister. I wanted to ask just by way of a supplementary whether at some further point in this debate he might give us some confidence or not as to whether he thinks that his landmark resource management reforms will actually pass during the term of this current Parliament or not.

But I want to turn now to issues relating to waste and, in particular, the waste levy increase. At select committee during financial review, we heard that the waste levy revenue is going to significantly increase, and that’s obvious by the changes that this Government has made. But what we also heard was that the ministry said that they had been preparing to invest the increased revenue from the levy effectively. So what I’d like to know from the Minister is, what is his plan from a policy point of view about the increased levy? Where are the dollars going to go; does he have any plan to change the distribution formula for the waste levy, which is currently a 50:50 split with territorial authorities; and if he doesn’t have any plans to change that, why not?

In particular, I’m keen to know, in response to the comment that the ministry officials made at select committee—and I quote from the report. It says that it can be a challenge to decide where to invest the ministry’s efforts in regards to waste. I’m interested to know what initiatives and plans he has to invest that new revenue, and whether it will conflict or not with initiatives already taking place in the private sector—potentially taken up by territorial authorities that may see that they want to use some of that funding to embark upon their own missions.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): In respect of resource management reform, it remains our intention to pass the legislation before the election and to make substantial progress on the first version of the national planning framework, which is the next layer of instrument.

In respect of the waste levy, we’re not proposing to change the 50:50 split between councils and central government. That would be very counter-productive, and you would find the consensus that we have around waste issues currently in the country would be put at risk.

In respect of the investment plan that we have for the Government’s share of that revenue that is published, some of the enabling infrastructure investments that are made possible by the increased waste levy include very sophisticated equipment. I was recently at the opening of a private sector investment that had been supported by the Waste Minimisation Fund which takes a very large quantity of the computer screens and TV screens that go to waste every year and literally puts them through a machine that chops them into little pieces 2 or 3 centimetres long. Optical sorters take those waste streams on a conveyor belt, using air and sorting them into the different grades of plastic and glass, and separating those different plastics into valuable waste streams that can then be recycled.

That piece of kit, I think from memory, was around a million dollars. We’ve only got one in the country, and we wouldn’t have it but for the Waste Minimisation Fund.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thanks very much, Madam Chair; thanks to the Minister for the Environment for his engagement. I wonder if he could reflect on the comments of the Chief Justice in relation to the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill; that the judiciary is prepared for extensive litigation following the passage of the bills, and if the Government’s concerned about that, what extra resources they’re planning in order to cope with that.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): There will always be some litigation following a change in legislation. It’s actually inevitable unless you don’t change the system, and everyone agreed the system needed to be changed; we are changing it.

We are endeavouring to minimise some unnecessary change. For example, it took many decades for the country to agree that the Resource Management Act should work through a hierarchy of the Act, then national direction, then provisions of plans, which collectively reduce uncertainty if drafted well and leave less uncertainty at the consent decision-making point. That principle is carried forward. I know that the Environment Committee is engaged on that issue, in particular, because it’s a very important issue.

The main point of the submission from the Chief Justice was actually a concern that, as drafted, in the form of the bill that went to select committee, it implied that the Environment Court has, itself, Treaty obligations, as opposed to the obligation to implement legislation that includes a Treaty clause. That’s something that probably should have been picked up in the Resource Management Act as well, because the Resource Management Act, as with the new legislation, is the legislation that constitutes the Environment Court. So that’s an issue that the select committee is paying attention to, as am I, because we don’t want to be improperly conferring Treaty obligations upon the courts as opposed to the courts having the duty to apply legislation which includes scrutiny of whether the people who are making decisions under that, like councils, are giving effect to the legal provisions in that, relating to Treaty issues.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, I just want to canvass some of the problems that have been identified to the Environment Committee when it comes to the resource management reforms and Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill. We’ve heard from submitters—including major industries, property developers, and asset owners—that they’re concerned about the cost of having to participate not just in this legislation if it’s passed but in all of the consultation, all of the legal work they’ve had to do to understand their obligations. They’re concerned about the time it’s taking to actually undertake reform of the Resource Management Act. How much time has been lost and wasted? The Infrastructure Commission said it could cost over a billion dollars a year just in consenting alone, which is still being wasted as we go through this reform process. They’re concerned about how complex the resource management reforms that this Government has proposed are and the uncertainty they introduced.

I attended a forum recently of resource management law practitioners. One of the panellists I sat with asked them, “Aren’t you overjoyed that Minister Parker’s reform is going to deliver you 10 years of litigation. You’ll all be able to buy a new beach house or a private jet with all the cashing-in you’re going to do while you work out what these new terms and definitions mean.” And they said, “No, we’re horrified. This is the last thing we want. We’ve spent 30 years litigating what terms mean, understanding how to operate under the Resource Management Act. We’d rather have that terrible Act, as it is now, than Minister Parker’s reforms.”

Minister, are you aware that the Ministry for the Environment (MFE)—and this has become clear through a number of pieces of legislation, including resource management reforms and most recently the Long-term Insights Briefing from MFE, which was developed last year and published in February—appears to have been taken over by people who are obsessed with spiritual animist beliefs. I want to quote you from the Long-term Insights Briefing: “Damage to the environment means”—and no, we’re not going to be talking chemistry or engineering or floods or storms or slips—“a loss of mauri—the energy or spark of life that permeates all living and non-living things.” How is it possible, Minister, that these beliefs have become so entrained, so normalised, in a department which is supposed to be solving some of our most difficult environmental problems, that their long-term insights policy attempts to craft public policy through the lens of spiritual and animist beliefs instead of seeking science and engineering solutions to our most common problems?

Minister, do you believe, like the Hon Eugenie Sage once said, that modern landfills are good landfills, or should we instead be seeking technology—like waste to energy, for example—to reduce the 3.5 million tonnes of waste that New Zealand buries in landfills every year, consigning future generations for thousands of years to deal with those problems? Do you think that looking at those problems through the lenses of a spiritual and animist belief system is going to help us solve those critical problems, or is it science and engineering, Minister? The ministry that you’re responsible for, Minister, appears to have lost its way.

What I want to offer instead, Minister, is—for your comment on—an alternative focus to that of dividing New Zealanders up into those who are tangata tiriti and tangata whenua, and allocating decision-making rights on planning bodies to those based on their ethnicity. Should we not instead focus on property rights, on valuing all New Zealanders’ taonga equally, on upholding the Treaty by actually acknowledging that it guaranteed the Crown’s sovereignty and decision making, that it respected the property rights of New Zealanders who were here at the time and those who come after, and that we’re all equal before the court? It doesn’t appear to be the case with the resource management reform.

Minister, have you considered whether some of the common sense and practical approaches set out in ACT’s alternative solutions for building New Zealand and conserving nature would instead be a more appropriate way to reform the Resource Management Act and deliver more affordable homes with better infrastructure for Kiwis? Minister.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: I raise a point of order, Madam Chair. This is an annual review debate, and it’s very specific in its purpose. Considering that last contribution, I just ask you, please, if you could explain whether you feel that was consistent with Speaker’s ruling 138/3?

SIMON COURT: I referenced exclusively, throughout my questions to the Minister—as context—work undertaken by the Ministry for the Environment in the last year—work which the Minister, in his capacity, is responsible for.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Yes, the Speakers’ ruling number that you—just in terms of a ruling to the member, it’s about the period of expenditure under review and the work that the member actually referred to. I’ll just leave it to the Minister to actually answer.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Madam Chair. In respect of the point as to the importance of biophysical, as opposed to metaphysical, issues, I agree with the member that the priority for the Ministry for the Environment is to deal with physical environmental effects. Indeed, the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform puts weight upon that, amongst other things, by stripping out from the high parts of the existing RMA the excessive reference to amenity, which went to matters of taste, and the focus on physical outcomes. Which is not to say that different people don’t have different spiritual viewpoints—I’m personally an atheist. I respect other people’s rights to have views that are religious, and my atheism can be no more proven than their faith, whether it is Christian or other religions.

But in respect of the other question the member raised about Māori participation in these issues, I would note that one of the complexities that we have to deal with in the reform of the resource management system is caused by existing Treaty settlements that have been negotiated by successive Governments. Some of the most complex, in respect of the management of resource management issues, were negotiated by the ACT – National Party – Māori Party Government, during the last Government, when they introduced the likes of the Waikato River Authority and the planning committee for the Hawke’s Bay region. We are, as any responsible Government would do, upholding those Treaty settlements, which were part of the full and final settlements that should not be reopened.

In respect of the assertion the member makes that this is going to cost more money, the cost-benefit analysis actually shows quite the contrary. One of the reasons why so many people support this is that they recognise that going down from over 100 RMA plans to 15 is desirable. Actually, many, many of the submissions do support it. Well, that’s probably enough at this stage because other members will have other questions.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I call the next member, I would just like to let everyone know that we have five more minutes left on this environment debate.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. Two questions for the Minister. The first is in relation to the housing supply Act, medium density residential zone law, which the Minister has written to the Auckland Council about, giving the council an extra year to comply with the law. My question is why did he not consult with other political parties in relation to that?

My second question is in relation the Resource Management Act bills that he’s just been talking about. Is he concerned about the submissions from groups like Contact Energy, Wind Energy Association—in fact, all of the major electricity generators, who have made the point, to varying degrees of intensity, that it will make it harder to build the new renewable generation that we need in this country to achieve our decarbonisation goals?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): In respect of the first point, I’m sorry if offence was taken that we didn’t consult with the National Party before agreeing a one-year extension for some of the intensity work in Auckland. From our point of view, that was a justified request on the part of the council post the Cyclone Gabrielle events, which disclosed a need for some more hazard planning in Auckland, which we thought was proper to allow them time to do, particularly because they are actually dealing with those issues as we speak, but perhaps I should have contacted the member before I did that. To be honest, I didn’t think of doing so. I didn’t think to do so and then dismiss the idea; I actually didn’t think of doing so, so I apologise to the member for that.

In respect of the second issue—just remind me with a word.

Chris Bishop: Contact.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh, Contact Energy. Yes, well, we’re updating the national guidance in respect of the consenting of new generation at the moment under the Resource Management Act. That will make it easier to consent community-scale wind. It will also make it easier to avoid accusations that everything’s outstanding in an area from a landscape point of view and therefore windfarms should be in another region when everyone needs to do their bit. That will improve things, and that will transition into the National Planning Framework in the new system.

The other criticism that was made by generators was that we were making it clear that you could get a long-term renewal of an existing hydro consent for the five main big schemes, which accounts for 80 percent of New Zealand’s hydroelectricity in the country, but we weren’t doing the same for smaller schemes. That criticism is being considered by the select committee and may be fair, but I’ll wait to see the select committee recommendation on that point.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. In terms of the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment about it being difficult to see the big picture with environmental spending, the planning is fractured, the spending is hard to account for—has the Minister made any suggestions to the Ministry for the Environment about how they could improve transparency, or to Treasury in his associate finance Minister role, so that we can get a better picture and better scrutinise whether Government investment in the environment is delivering really good outcomes?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): The Government will be responding to the parliamentary commissioner’s recommendations, as we do to all of his reports, and that is in process. In respect of the fact that you do separately have policy and on-the-ground work done by more than one ministry—like the Ministry for Primary Industries, which is very important in some of this stuff—there will always be some separation, but it’s always desirable that we report these things together as we have done through Jobs for Nature.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): We have less than a minute left. I call on the Hon Scott Simpson.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Is the Minister going to better resource the Environmental Protection Agency to ensure that they can do chemical assessments and reassessments far more quickly than they are, given that we were told that they can only do one or two major ones every 18 months?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): We have changed the law to enable them to have regard to information and decisions from trusted overseas regulators, which will assist in that process.

Local Government

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, our time now with the Minister for the Environment has ended. We now have the Minister of Local Government who is available for 45 minutes to respond to Minister’s questions.

IAN McKELVIE (Chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee): Madam Chair, thank you. It’s a pleasure to take a short call as the chairman of the Governance and Administration Committee, which, of course, deals with local government and almost all of the Minister’s other interests as well, including his racing interests—and there are, of course, races in the Far North today!

Tāmati Coffey: Who’s your pick?

IAN McKELVIE: It’s all over—it’s all over.

But I just want to very briefly talk about local government. Of course, in my 20 years in local government and central government, the relationship between Parliament and local government is somewhat fraught at times and somewhat tense. When you see the workload that local government’s under at the moment, and the reports that we have received as a select committee on some of these issues, it’s very significant. Of course, we’ve got the three waters programme going at the moment, and the Minister’s budgeted, I think, some $200 million - odd in this respect, but, interestingly, the budget that’s been allocated to some of the projects that are applicable to local government is well in excess of $2 billion. So it’s a very large funding area for the Government of the day this one, right across the spectrum because there’s also a whole lot of work going on in the post-structural reform. One of the interesting things for the select committee was the very large amounts of money spent on promoting some of these spends, including the three waters programme, and, I guess, trying to ensure people understood the potential for alteration in the local government area and the changes of the structure, I suppose.

So one of the things that interested us with respect to the service performance around the three waters programme was the establishment of the new water regulator in Taumata Arowai, and, of course, that was an essential part of the whole structure of the three waters programme—or what’s now whatever; it’s got a new name now, doesn’t it? I guess we’ll get another one before it’s finished. But the interesting thing about that was that the regulator is a really solid—we agree with the formal regulator and I think it’s very positive for the water management in New Zealand, and certainly, in the days before the regulator, the Ministry of Health handled this, and it certainly wasn’t particularly well handled. So I think that’s really interesting.

I talked very briefly about the better-off support funding—$2.5 billion which has been allocated, effectively, to local government—I was going to say to do with likes, but not quite—to manage its way through the programme with respect to the three waters implementation. It will be interesting to see where that gets to.

I’ve talked very briefly about the review into the future of local government. There have been reviews going into the future of local government for all of my life, and I suppose there will be for many years to come.

The other issue that we’ve dealt with as well—at least with two bills—is improving Māori representation in local government. I think we worked our way through some interesting issues in that respect. I think it’s resolved itself reasonably satisfactorily.

The other issue I just, very briefly, want to raise with respect to the Minister, of course, is that we’ve done a lot of work with respect to the cyclone recovery programme, and two bills have gone through recently. I realise I’m not part of this—but recently those two bills have gone through at select committee with respect to that, and, of course, the Minister now has responsibility for that as well.

So, I think, from the Governance and Administration Committee, we had a really interesting time. I’m going to leave the rest of our comments to my spokesperson. But that’s about all I need to say on this topic.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair. I acknowledge the Minister in the chair. I also acknowledge the work that the Minister of Local Government has undertaken in regards to supporting our communities, as a result of the disasters that we have faced since the beginning of this year, and I know that that work has been considered. I also acknowledge the promotion to acting Hawke’s Bay lead Minister for Cyclone Recovery, following the exit stage right—or maybe stage left—of Meka Whaitiri today.

Minister, I want to talk around three waters, firstly, because I think that is, as you know, probably one of the most significant reform aspects that your portfolio has been covering of date. My questions are as following—and I’ve got a number of series of questions; I’ll just fire those through, and I appreciate if we can engage in some back and forth in terms of those questions.

My first question is in regards to the time line and expectations by you around when you expect that that legislation that will be required in order to enact your reset of three waters will be tabled in the House. You’ve previously stated that the law will be in place before the election, and, obviously, that’s less than six months away. So what I am seeking your confirmation on is: is that actually that that bill won’t receive the full six-month select committee consideration? If that is the case, I’m, then, seeking your overview in terms of how you justify that that reduced period of select committee consideration is appropriate, considering what is, fair to say, a critical opportunity for the public to have that say in regards to changing that legislation.

I think what’s also relevant in regards to that process around the new legislation is that we know the debacle that we went through in regards to the process of trying to ram through the three waters legislation previously, and the public pressure and the constitutional crisis around the enactment provisions. So, again, the use of urgency for such legislation passing would be useful.

The second element of questioning is in regards to the councils’ support for your new reset three waters proposal. I’d be interested to know if you’ve got any councils that now support the proposal that previously opposed it. Quite simply, if you could just name one single council, that would be appreciated, and, if not, any reasons on why you don’t believe that has changed the view.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you very much. We stand by the commitment that we made to complete this by the election. However, the specific details that the member’s asking for is yet to be decided by Cabinet. So I can reiterate our commitment to get it done by the election, but I can’t actually answer those questions yet.

In regards to councils that have previously not supported the reform as proposed, but subsequent to changes have now supported, you can count the Hawke’s Bay region and Tairāwhiti region as examples, and there are many others around the country, also.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m interested in what’s happening with three waters. We’ve heard that, instead of four water services entities, there are going to be 10, but the bills that are currently before the Finance and Expenditure Committee, we’ve been told, are not likely to be amended; there will have to be more legislation.

Minister, we’ve heard time and again from this Government—from your predecessor, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta—that three waters reform is absolutely vital because people’s health depends on it, the health of the environment depends on it, and yet, Minister, you’ve announced a delay of potentially two years at least, and a whole lot more cost and a whole lot more wheelspinning before local government’s assets will be transferred to one of the entities, before those entities will have a good look under the hood and actually get on with the business of programming, designing, and delivering infrastructure upgrades to their communities.

In those additional two years, between the initial implementation date of 2024 and 2026, what’s going to happen in places like Te Atatū, in Auckland, where I live, where tens of thousands of people have moved into new homes as a result of intensification, and the waste-water system is regularly blowing raw sewage into Te Wai o Pareira Henderson Creek right next to the boat ramp where the Waka Ama club, the multisport club, the rowing club, and the sailing club all launch from—a new pontoon, new clubrooms, and sewage overflowing on a regular basis, maybe 20 or 30 times in the last year? So, Minister, how is delaying the reform programme going to help solve that problem? Or would it be more practical to adopt a much simpler approach, to say, look, put three waters aside? Maybe just park the legislation in the bottom drawer of your desk and actually give councils the mandate, a carrot and a stick, to get on with meeting their infrastructure requirements.

The problem that keeps coming up is the funding. We’ve heard that, in order to get more money for three waters, these entities are going to need to achieve balance sheet separation. Is the Minister aware there are other ways to achieve balance sheet separation from councils’ books, such as standing up a special purpose vehicle under the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act? That’s a proposal to upgrade the Moa Point sewage treatment plant in Wellington, which is off the books—doesn’t affect the council’s balance sheet. Is the Minister aware of the concept called a “revenue bond”, where, for example, if stormwater needs to be upgraded, like in Auckland, a special rate can be applied to properties and the revenue raised from that rate can be used to fund a piece of infrastructure and repay the debt associated with that infrastructure over time? There are many ways to achieve balance sheet separation.

So I just want to ask the Minister a specific question: in response to a written question, the Minister has replied that there are other factors that would allow councils to achieve balance sheet separation, in addition to having 50:50 mana whenua co-governance on the three water services entities’ regional representative groups. Minister, would you tell the committee what those other factors are that would allow for balance sheet separation?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Madam Chair. I disagree with the member Simon Court’s assessment as to those two proposals meeting balance sheet separation, because there’s one critical element to this: in both of those proposals, the councils would retain direct control of water services. And at the essence of this is that, as long as direct control is maintained, balance sheet separation cannot be achieved. We’ve seen examples of council-controlled organisations, we’ve seen examples of shared services, and neither of those has achieved balance sheet separation. The two examples that the member has provided will not achieve balance sheet separation, nor will they be able to achieve the scale of borrowing that is required. I recognise that the ACT Party, in fairness to them, have a policy on this. Their policy is to share the GST with those councils. That’s expected to raise $1 billion a year. This is a $185 billion problem. It’s going to take a long time to pay the bills.

In specific reference to the query around the two-year delay, that was as a response to feedback from the sector for some councils that needed more time to be prepared to move into an entity; however, what we’ve made clear is that, if entities are ready to go, they can do so earlier. There is no barrier to stop them doing so. Entity A, which the member referenced, is an example of one that may be able to go earlier because, despite the changes in the reform, their proposed entity remains the same.

In regards to the other factors that allow for balance sheet separation, it is a case of ensuring that there is no direct control from one particular council within the entity, and that’s where the make-up of the regional representative group comes in. The feedback that we got from the rating agencies was that, in making it clear that it wasn’t just local government that were having a say in this, we were able to achieve balance sheet separation. This is particularly the case for the smaller entities like the top of the South and Taranaki.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Minister, you’ve quoted a number of total estimated savings in regards to what you believe will be delivered under your reset of three waters, and my question is in regards to the underlying supporting models, assumptions—and also copies of the peer review analysis that you cited has been undertaken on those savings. My question is: will you be willing to table that underlying information that substantiates the savings numbers that you have spoken about in the public domain right now, and if not, why not? Because the challenge that I have in regards to this is when this question has been asked, in regards to the release of this information, to date, that has been blocked. And so why I believe that that is an issue—and why I’m seeking the opportunity to be able to table that information right now—is, you know, what is the basis for withholding the information that, in effect, substantiates the significant savings that you talk about in the public domain in regards to your reform? What is the basis on why that information is being withheld to date, and does the Minister have concerns in regards to those new numbers, or if not, what is the justification around why that information hasn’t been released?

In regards to that specific modelling information, I’d also like the Minister to clarify—and it’s pretty fundamental in regards to the overall debt position—the Minister just quoted a number of $185 billion. You know, we’re not going to get into the tit-for-tat politics around whether that number is mythical or real—I have a clear position on one aspect of that. But in regards to the way in which the modelling of the savings that the Minister has used in the public domain to date, has the Minister calculated the repayment of principal of the debt that these new 10 entities are going to borrow, or simply just the interest-only component on that debt? Because that is quite a significant difference in regards to the element that would be repaid; it has quite a significant difference in regards to the modelling of the savings that has been put out.

The other aspect in regards to the savings is that the Scottish water analysis; the Water Industry Commission of Scotland analysis used to sell the four-entity model by his predecessor. The Minister, before the reset, said that some communities—including Napier and Nelson—would be worse off versus the status quo than under an eight- or a 12-entity model. And on that basis, then, you know, the 10-entity model would indicate that those communities, Nelson and Napier in particular, would be worse off. I’d be interested in the Minister’s perspective around whether that is the case—or, if not, what his position is in regards to that.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): No, that is not the case; that is incorrect. Every single ratepayer that accesses council-provided water services will save money as a result of our reforms. The modelling is already available on the website, so too is the peer-reviewed report. There is updated modelling which will be released shortly. That is the right thing to do, particularly when you are considering something so fundamental as significant costs facing ratepayers. I invite the member to do the same for his policy.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Is the Minister aware that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) states that special purpose vehicles are intended to hold assets off the balance sheet of an entity—balance sheet separation—and that existing legislation, the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act, already allows for special purpose vehicles to hold assets, to raise the funds to establish a financing model, which includes a revenue model which could be sending people a water bill or, with their local council, establishing a bylaw to apply targeted rates on property, say, to pay for stormwater infrastructure upgrades like they do in Auckland, and that these are all off-balance-sheet facilities? And does the Minister accept it’s possible to achieve balance sheet separation to access debt at reasonable rates, to increase the pool of funds available for infrastructure without having to go through all of the machinations and subject New Zealand to the most complex form of governance involving 50:50 mana whenua allocation of seats on regional representative groups, creating two levels of governance. None of this is necessary, Minister. Do you accept what PwC say—a special purpose vehicle creates an off-balance-sheet way of funding and financing infrastructure, and that none of this is necessary, Minister?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Madam Chair. A special purpose vehicle will still be seen as part of the council’s balance sheet. It may be separate to the council, just like a council-controlled organisation (CCO), but it’s still attached to the council’s balance sheet. And the issue here is that ratepayers cannot afford to pay for the work that is required if they do so through each individual council. They can’t afford to do it if councils band together with a CCO; we’ve seen that in the Wellington region already. And they can’t do it if they share services because the scale of the costs that is required to be covered cannot be met alone. There are many creative ways in which you can raise funds for this, but it comes down to the cost, and, individually, in the status quo, we have 67 councils who are either at their debt cap already, or if they are not their community can’t afford to pay higher rates. Whether they raise the funds on their current balance sheet or through a separate mechanism, if they’re doing it by themselves or doing it without achieving overall balance sheet separation, it will be unaffordable for ratepayers. We’re fronting up to this. That is a fact. We can’t get around it. A voluntary CCO proposal will not work; nor will a special purpose vehicle.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Minister, I want to get into some of the details. You’ve just talked about costs, and I won’t disagree with you that there are considerable costs in regards to the reform programme that you’ve undertaken. But in particular, the one area that is of interest is in regards to the information services technology (IST) or technology costs in the background in terms of reforming the IT systems across the network into the new entities, and you’ll be familiar that I’ve asked you on a number of occasions through written parliamentary questions, and I’ve also requested information from the Department of Internal Affairs over the IST costs for the three waters programme through Official Information Act requests. All access to information has been blocked to date in regards to requests for transparency of that information and the scale of information, and my question is quite simple: how much has the Government spent on IST transitioning for three waters?

If you’re not willing to articulate how much, then I want to understand what is the reason for withholding this information, because it was nearly a year ago when officials indicated that the quantum of that expenditure could be in the region of half a billion dollars, proceeding up to exceed over a billion dollars. This is significant taxpayer money that potentially is being spent or incurred, and no one—you know, we’re not arguing around the justification, but actually the transparency around the scale of expenditure is significant and is of public interest.

I’m also interested in regards to whether the contract for the new IST systems that will support the new 10 entities has been given yet, and whether the Minister will confirm to the committee that any contracts in this space will be subject to an appropriate open and transparent tendering and procurement process. That assurance is important because of the scale of potential spend in this area.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the member for the question. It’s my intention to proactively release that information once commercial negotiations are complete. So as soon as that’s done, we’ll be getting that out. To the member’s previous question—which I didn’t answer before because we were looking for the details—yes, we have calculated principal and interest, and it does not change our results.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Minister, for coming back on those questions. I want to turn to the aspect within the legislation of the Water Services Entities Act, and particularly around the Te Mana o te Wai statements, which are prescribed in the legislation in Part 4 of that Act. My question is in regards to, in particular, the Te Mana o te Wai statements and what, if any, changes will be made as a result of the announced reset of this legislation. I think it would be fair to say that many New Zealanders out there probably don’t necessarily understand much about what these Te Mana o te Wai statements do, or ignore the scope of these services. But in simple effect, these statements, basically, apply to all aspects of land, and, as it’s currently drafted within that legislation, the only party that can have input into that statement is Māori.

And you will recall in the committee of the whole stage of that bill that I actually put a Supplementary Order Paper up in regards to broadening out the people or the individuals that could input into those statements, because they affect aspects of all land, including private property, that they should not be simply restricted to one group. So the question is: what are the changes in regards to that? Will you assure and commit to New Zealanders that all relevant stakeholders, including private property owners and industry users, can submit on these statements? And what will you do to ensure that there is no disproportionate influences due to the Te Mana o te Wai statements? Because it is fair to say that there is a degree of concern out there in regards to the way in which these are currently drafted in regards to constitutional arrangements. The fact that only Māori are able to write Te Mana o te Wai statements is not even co-governance—it is beyond that. So that assurance in regards to those statements would be appreciated.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Madam Chair. So I’ve already made an assurance publicly that we’re going to make some changes. And to sit alongside Te Mana o te Wai statements will be priority statements from recognised users within a catchment. They might be a rural catchment group, for example. It’s really important that their priorities go to the regional representative group so that the broader strategy, the broader priorities of the regions within the entities, take it into consideration when the independently operational decisions are made by the board.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Does the Minister agree with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, which states on its website, “The Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act enables infrastructure projects to be delivered free of local authorities’ financing constraints or from charging high upfront costs to developers.” The new model—which this Labour Government passed into law—enables special purpose vehicles to fund infrastructure projects that support housing and urban development that are free of local government funding constraints. Minister?

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you. And I appreciate the Minister—I don’t think the Minister answered my question. It was quite simple and I’ll ask him to clarify. Are the changes that are proposed in regards to the changes that are on the table, will that mean that all relevant stakeholders, including private property owners and industry users, can submit an input into the Te Mana o te Wai statements? Because what the Minister said in response to the question was that there was going to be another process. So I want clear assurance that actually all stakeholders will be able to write Te Mana o te Wai statements, because if that is not the case, then it is the fact that only Māori will be able to write these statements, and these statements impact all aspects of land and water across this country.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to the member—it’s a fair enough question. I was being really deliberate with my language because this is a decision for Cabinet. So I’ve indicated that it’s my intention for other users to be able to submit their priorities, in terms of water services, to the regional representative group, but I don’t want to go beyond that. So I want to make sure that users within each district—within each entity—are able to submit their priorities for the consideration of the regional representative group. That’s all I can say at the moment, I’m afraid.

In regard to Simon Court’s comments: yes, I’m aware that special purpose vehicles have a role to play, but that wasn’t the question that I addressed. The question was around balance sheet separation, which I did indeed answer. The member is incorrect, in my view, that a special purpose vehicle will solve the issue of up to $185 billion facing this country, which, without full overall balance sheet separation, would fall to ratepayers at a cost that they simply couldn’t afford.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Minister, for clarifying that point. I want to move over to talk about consultancy expenditure with regards to the three waters transition programme. When I questioned you on this in the House before the recess, you noted in one of your answers that you had written to the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) about consultant spending. Given the expenditure since, would it be fair to say that the DIA Minister has ignored that letter that you have sent to them? Or, if not, what is your view in regards to that?

Can you also outline what is the total year-to-date expenditure on the three waters transition programme, and how much of that money or expenditure has been spent on consultants? In regards to the consultancy spend, the previous questions that I’ve asked you were in regards to concerns around the type of consultants that were being paid for by taxpayer money as part of this programme. I want to understand whether you’ve got any update in regards to how much of that consultancy spend is spent on day-to-day positions. What I mean by that is non-technical positions; roles that could and should, by any reasonable person, be appointed and recruited within the public sector and not through the use of consultants—executive assistants, personal assistants, analysts, junior roles such as that, that should and could be funded by our Public Service, which has the capability and competence and are the appropriate ones to undertake that task.

I also want to get an understanding in terms of what the costs are or whether the Minister is aware of what the costs are of actually undertaking this reset of the three waters programme.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve tried to be as forthcoming as possible with the wide range in questions. However, when it comes to finances and expenditure in an annual review debate, I prepared for the period which the annual review has covered, so I don’t have those figures. I can give you the figures for the relevant period to this debate, 2021-22, and that is total departmental expenditure of $34 million, of which $3.3 million were for contractors. But in terms of the other questions, I didn’t prepare for that, because, in my view, that’s out of the scope of the focus of the review.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Look, I acknowledge that, Minister, in terms of the review under period. But I think it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to be able to articulate, in terms of what are your expectations around the expenditure of consultancy spent and whether you deem it appropriate that taxpayer money is being spent on high-priced consultants undertaking tasks which should—could—be undertaken by our public servants and not undertaken by high-priced consultants.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before the Minister answers, I do want to say that the annual review looks backwards at the last financial year. The kinds of questions that you would like more details on is what we will do soon, which is the Estimates hearing. But I will hand over to the Minister the Hon Kieran McAnulty for any comments he might like to add.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Don’t want to open up the scope too much, Madam Chair, I might comment about all sorts of things! Specifically, in general, I agree, of course. Generally speaking, where people should be employed with permanent jobs with good conditions and good wages—absolutely; that should always be the preference. But when you’re talking about reforms that require specific skills, then sometimes you’re going to have to rely on the expertise and contributions of consultants. This is not new. The previous National Government did exactly the same thing.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Minister. I was recently in Westport on the West Coast, only last week, and I know that the Minister has visited that location. I’m wanting the Minister to outline, in terms of any update or progress in regards to providing certainty to that community. As you’ll be aware, it was over a year ago when significant flooding impacted that part of the world, and the implications of that flooding have placed considerable uncertainty on that community. Can you give us any indication, in terms of time line, of when you believe you are going to be able to provide certainty in regards to that community, so that they can move forward in what they do in regards to potential relocation of some of the homes within that flood plain and any other aspects in regards to that?

My other question is in regards to the future of local government review. As the Minister will be aware, we’ve seen one report out during the period under review. I’d be interested in what action or anything the Minister foresees will be undertaken in regards to that review. What can we expect in regards to subsequent outcomes from that review, and does the Minister have intent in regards to implementing any of the draft recommendations that we’ve seen to date?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): In regards to Buller, I’ll just repeat the statements that we’ve made publicly. This is a matter that’s included as part of the Budget process, so this is a message that I’ve shared with local elected representatives in that area, ably served by their mayor and their member of Parliament, Damien O’Connor. They know that we can’t confirm either way until the Budget process finishes, and they accept that.

In regards to the future of local government review, there’s no doubt that this review is timely and was actually requested by the sector. Now it’s just a matter of timing. So the draft report came out, and there was a real emphasis on it being a draft report. They indicated that the final report would be coming out shortly, and I understand that it is on track to do so.

But then we have a period where there isn’t much time between the report coming out and the election. So the Government will acknowledge the report and welcome the feedback from the sector, but unless there is something that is straightforward and non-controversial and would have the support of other parties, I don’t anticipate that anything would be pursued between now and the election.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I make the next call, I just wanted to let all members in the Chamber know, in case you want to ask the Minister of Local Government any questions, we have about seven minutes, if there is anyone else other than the two members who have been asking most questions.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I appreciate the Minister’s indulgence, in regards to these questions. My question relates now in regards to workforce. As the Minister will be aware, one of the most significant issues that local government across this country is facing is the constraints around the ability to get workforce to undertake the tasks which are critical to our communities. The fact that a number of their workforce through the period under review have left or resigned and moved to other aspects of the government sector—in particular, central government. What plans, if any, does the Minister have to address what is probably one of the most significant aspects impacting local government, over and above funding and financing, which is the ability to retain and enhance the workforce that support our local government sector?

The sector, obviously, is under significant pressure due to the scale of reform and change that’s under way, but also, as we’re all acutely aware, from the implications of and the role in which they play in regards to civil defence and disaster response within their communities. The capability of some of these roles that are impacted as a result of uncertainty in regards to reform and other pressures that are out there does mean that when faced with the significant challenges that many of our communities have faced, not having that workforce in place does put significant burden on the others within those teams. Many of those teams are highly skilled, but they are dispersed in terms of the geographical location. So I’m interested, in terms of the Minister’s perspective, in what action he is taking in regards to that significant issue.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Madam Chair. I actually acknowledge the concerns that the member’s raised, because I share them. I used to work in the local government sector before I came to Parliament, and I know full well how committed and hard-working they all are. I also know the strain that the sector is under because they simply can’t match the wages and conditions that are on offer elsewhere. Why? Because they are constrained by their level of revenue. At the moment, for the majority of councils, all they get is rates, and that can only go so far. So it is a massive issue.

I am reluctant, however, to share my thoughts, because it’s already been indicated that the future of local government review is going to look at this. It’s an independent review, and right throughout my tour of all the councils and engagement with sector groups and regional groups, I’ve always said this when asked about it: I don’t ever want to be accused of trying to steer the review in a particular way.

I can assure the member that there isn’t any work under way in this regard, because we’re waiting for the outcomes. My views, at the moment, will stay with me until we get the review’s recommendations, and then we can have a conversation. What I am willing to do is acknowledge that this is a major issue. It is driven in part because of the level of reform, but it’s mainly because of the constraints that councils find themselves under when they are limited, on the whole, solely to rates for their revenue.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Look, I acknowledge that response. The Minister will be aware, as I am, that one of the significant drivers of demand for these resources is actually central government. Central government agencies are actually—and this is what councils tell me across the country—poaching local government staff and paying them, in some cases, 30 or 40 percent more in regards to salaries than what they are receiving through the local government sector.

So my question is quite simple. I acknowledge there is a review. But the challenge for our councils and our communities is a challenge that they face today. For many of them, they don’t have time to be able to wait for a review which may or may not provide recommendations, of which the Government then may or may not implement. The challenge exists today, and the challenge, in part; not all—I acknowledge that not all of that is driven by central government, but the feedback that I am getting is that a large portion of it is driven by some of the biggest central government entities based here in Wellington.

I’ll give you an example. I was talking to some staff in Invercargill. They had lost one of their staff members, a technical skillset, by a large Government agency here in Wellington; a 30 percent pay rise, and the central government agency here in Wellington—very close, maybe within a couple of hundred metres of where I’m standing right now, so I won’t give you any more clues—said, guess what, you can work from home as well. So you can work from home from Invercargill, and we’re going to pay you 40 percent more.

So what is the Minister doing in regards to correspondence with his colleagues in regards to dealing with what is a real issue impacting our local government sector?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): I acknowledge that this is an issue for the sector, but I think that we really need to be careful with our language. Workers are not commodities. They’re not being stolen. Workers are making the choice to go to another employer because that employer is offering better wages and conditions.

The point is that councils can’t compete, because they are constrained by rates. It’s not that other employers are stealing them, because the converse of that argument is that if we constrain wage rises, that will solve the problem. That’s not the solution. The solution is finding a long-term sustainable funding stream for councils so that they can compete with better wages and better conditions and attract their staff that way, rather than trying to constrain higher wages elsewhere.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): We have half a minute left. I call on Simon Watts.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Does the Minister actually acknowledge that there is a problem, that central government agencies are offering on like-for-like roles significantly more than what those individuals are receiving in local government, and that is creating a significant imbalance within our local government and central government sector?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): This is the third time that I’ve acknowledged this is an issue facing the sector. I think it’s politics at play saying that this is central government, because it’s the private sector that are attracting these workers as well. The point of the matter is that the councils as a sector can’t compete, because they’re constrained by wages. Central government is competing with the private sector, with wages to retain and attract staff. We want to be able to make sure the local government sector can compete on the same playing field.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, our time with the Minister of Local Government has come to an end. We now have the Minister of Immigration who is available for 45 minutes to respond to members’ questions.

Immigration

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m here as the deputy chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee, in the absence of our chair, Camilla Belich, who is away on a work trip. I am here to talk about the briefing on the 2021-22 performance and the current operations of Immigration New Zealand. I’d like to start with thanking the staff and clerks who put in endless amounts of hours preparing this report.

The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee conducts an annual review of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE); however, the Education and Workforce Committee is responsible for immigration subject matter. We believe that Immigration New Zealand’s work is sufficiently important that it merits specific scrutiny, so we initiated this briefing and conducted this briefing as if it were an annual review. We received advice from the Office of the Auditor-General, held the hearing, and sent the questions for written response. We also heard from the Minister of Immigration himself, the Hon Michael Wood; MBIE’s chief executive; the Deputy Secretary of Immigration; and the General Manager of Employment, Skills, and Immigration Policy.

The primary focus in the major team of the Minister and MBIE over the period in question is supporting the New Zealand’s reconnection with the world after years of border closure and disconnection. We asked the Minister and MBIE about the following: amnesty for overstayers, standards of health, visa wait times, pathways to residency, refugee resettlement, case review on asylum seekers, and the 2022 Special Ukraine Policy.

The Minister noted the extension and the opening of visa types, and he acknowledged the challenges of transitioning from closed to open borders. One significant challenge seen in the report are wait times. An example: the skilled migrant category wait time is four years and two months, on average. MBIE acknowledged that this wait time reflected those applications that have been lodged before the closure in April 2020 due to the pandemic and our closed borders. The Minister also acknowledged that wait times have been a big focus for him and MBIE. More staff and streamlined processes has seen more visas being approved in late 2022 and early 2023, compared with late 2019 and early 2020. Roughly 140,000 people have gained residency through the 2021 Resident Visa, whereas 30,000 to 40,000 people gained residency in most of the previous years. The Minister has acknowledged that there are now more pathways for people to gain residency than previously, including the reopened skilled migrant category visa and the expanded Green List. Thank you, Madam Chair.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, I know that late last year you were under an extraordinary amount of pressure because we needed workers in the country and the main way to get into the country under a work visa or The Accredited Employer Work Visa wasn’t opened until mid-year, and then there was a very, very slow start to that while businesses become accredited and job checks got under way. At the very start, things were very, very slow. And I know that you were under an extreme amount of pressure to get things sped up and that seems to have happened, but my question to you today is have we gone from the sublime to the ridiculous?

I want to ask you, firstly, a series of questions around the job check. Firstly, the first question is what is your understanding, Minister, of what happens in a job check—what should happen for a job check in terms of Immigration New Zealand and what they do when they receive a job check? And my second question is how are they able to do all of that—what your understanding is—in three hours? Because that is the amount of time that many immigration agents and lawyers are saying that a job check can be approved in. So those two questions to start with. I don’t want to give you too many to go on. If you could answer those straight away then I’ll carry on with another one. If not, I’ll keep going. No? All right.

Great. It looks like the Minister’s going to back up a number. With those job checks, Minister, I want to read you out an email that I got from an immigration agent, who says, “The labour market tests, are they being submitted and uploaded to Immigration New Zealand with job check applications? Is there a requirement to do this?” She said to me, “because an example is, as to how we are working”—this is the immigration agent—“to a higher standard than Immigration New Zealand for that labour market test, we ask our employers to complete a spreadsheet that gives us a breakdown of candidates for the jobs, insights into follow-ups, as well as reasons why no suitable Kiwis were available for that job. We do this for our integrity of the process, but we are never asked to upload it by Immigration New Zealand.”

So Immigration New Zealand are not uploading data as to how many Kiwis were available to do the job, whether or not there were any. They are just taking it on face value that the company is just doing that themselves and that they are checking that there were no Kiwis. It is a very, very high-trust model. Is that what the immigration Minister expects? Because what it used to be in the old days is that you would have to prove that there were no Kiwis available to do the job and you had to upload all the details of who applied and why they weren’t suitable. Is it the Minister’s expectation that that is still happening, or does he agree and understand that it’s not happening? And, if that’s the case, is he happy that that’s not happening?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): Can I acknowledge Ibrahim Omer, who presented the Education and Workforce Committee’s report; the member Erica Stanford, who’s just resumed her seat; and other members of the Education and Workforce Committee, who have completed the report that we are considering and whom I’ve had a number of interactions with over the course of the year in question, with that being the 2021-22 year. I’d just like to start with a few opening comments, and then I’m happy to respond to a couple of the questions from the member.

The 2021-22 year that is under consideration in this report was an utterly unprecedented year for the immigration system. This was, of course, the year in which we moved from having an immigration system in which our borders were primarily closed to a system in which our borders were progressively opened from about February-March of that year, and were finally opening in July, just at the very conclusion of the year in question. So it was a very challenging one for any immigration system to manage.

Despite the fact that for nearly—or for all of that year, in fact, borders were either partially or completely closed, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) continued to carry a very significant workload and processed close to 100,000 border exemptions for critical roles that did need to come into New Zealand. So I want to acknowledge that for Immigration New Zealand, even though borders were closed, it wasn’t as if the work stopped; in fact, in many respects things became more complicated for the organisation. But it was also in the back end of that 2021-22 year that preparations were being made for the reconnection—that is, the reopening of the border—there was the establishment of new processes, and, of course, they were also getting ready for the Government’s immigration rebalance and the implementation of those settings. I know that for many people who have been engaged in the system, it has felt like there has been an awful lot of change over that period, and they are right in that.

I just wanted, for the benefit of the committee, to run through some of the key pieces of work that were worked through in this period under consideration of the 2021-22 year and then implemented more latterly. There was the establishment of the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) system, which is an entirely new main gateway for migrant workers to access temporary work visas in New Zealand, and the establishment of the Green List, a new simple and streamlined residency pathway to attract those people who are most in demand for skilled professions in New Zealand.

We got ready for and opened the skilled migrant category. It had been closed for the period of border closures. We established a number of sector agreements to enable particular sectors where there were skilled needs and particular needs in terms of requirements to get workers in here, and sometimes there were challenges to get the median wage requirement set up and then to move into action.

We reopened the parent category. It had been closed way back in 2016, and it had been one of the major requests of our migrant communities settled in New Zealand to enable there to be a process for families to reconnect.

We made significant changes to a range of visa types, including the working holiday visa, where extensions were made during that period of border closures to enable people to stay on longer. Further extensions were made post - border opening, and also the capped schemes for particular countries were doubled for this period.

The Resident Visa 2021 (RV21) pathway was established in this year of 2021-22. It has been an extraordinarily successful and vast operation. As we stand here today, approximately 180,000 people have been approved for residency under RV21 in about 15 months. In our system normally, it takes about five years for that number of residency applications to be approved, so it has provided significant certainty and stability for those people, their families, and, very often, their employers as well.

We reopened the Pacific and Samoan quotas, and, in fact, increased them to make up for some of the time that was lost during the period of border closures.

We agreed to and are now implementing for the first time an increase to our annual refugee quota to 1,500 people, which has been a really outstanding outcome. We are proud of the contribution that our immigration policy makes to our humanitarian contributions to the global community, and that has been an important step forward.

At the same time, we’ve doubled the number of places from 300 to 600 available for family reunification; we’ve established the Ukraine temporary shelter policy, which has provided a pathway for around about 1,300 people to be approved to seek shelter in New Zealand; we’ve established the significant Afghan evacuees category—and I acknowledge the Hon Phil Twyford in the Chamber, who played a very significant role in the establishment of that policy—we came to an arrangement with Australia to finally implement the Nauru arrangement, which is now coming into effect, with New Zealand being able to settle people from that very difficult set of circumstances; and it was in this 2021-22 year that the Government agreed to bring in new measures to support our ongoing efforts to stamp out migrant worker exploitation, with a number of those measures coming into effect from 1 July 2022.

So it has been a huge year for the system, and really what I’m conveying to the committee is that even as the borders were closing, there was a massive amount of work that was being done in the system to prepare for reconnection and to modernise our settings. There is much work ahead as well, and I’m sure we’ll cover some of that in the course of discussion.

I thank and acknowledge the member Erica Stanford for her acknowledgment that we have got to a point now where the processing of visas has significantly improved. That was something that we had always anticipated. It required work and it required additional resourcing, but we always anticipated that it would take a little bit of time for settings to bed in for both immigration officers and clients using the immigration system to get used to them, and, of course, for migrant workers to sort of get into the swing of applying, engaging, and then being prepared to come to New Zealand. But we are seeing a significantly improved processing time now. I thank the staff at INZ for their work on that, and I acknowledge the member for her acknowledgment of that.

The member asked for an overview of what is expected at the job check stage of the Accredited Employer Work Visa. I’ll take her through the four key steps here. Firstly, Immigration New Zealand will check evidence of advertising and confirm that sector employment agreements are in place.

Secondly, employers are required to make declarations that the roles that are being recruited for were made available to New Zealanders. That is an important step, and perhaps this goes to part of what the member was getting at. The AEWV is a system that does put a reasonable amount of trust on employers, but it is on them, and because it is a system that is based on accreditation—that is a step before job check—ultimately, if employers do not fulfil the obligations that are within it, they potentially lose the right and the ability to recruit migrant workers.

Thirdly, skill requirements for an AEWV, which are generally led by the employer, are assessed. Job checks ensure that a worker has a qualification and work experience, skills, and other specifications as listed by the employer as the minimum requirements for the job.

Fourthly, the main areas of immigration risk being looked at at this stage include migrant exploitation, role and salary information, as well as whether there have been non-genuine job offers or advertising.

These are the steps that we expect to be worked through by the immigration officer. I can’t speak to every individual case, and we have instructed officers to take a positive and facilitative approach in working this through with employers, but we expect at this stage good standards to be upheld.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. So I just wanted to traverse, I guess, the use of dawn raids and visits to people’s homes, as advised by the Speaker to use this debate. So I wanted to get an understanding and comment from the Minister about the proportion of people from Asian countries that are being deported, because from the information we received, there seems to be—from 2017 figures, the majority of overstayers seem to be from the Pacific, yet the majority of recent deportations actually are coming from mostly China and India. So I acknowledge that there was an apology for the Dawn Raids that seem to be a targeting of Pasifika communities. But it feels right now, if we look at the figures, that if we look at the proportion of overstayers and deportations, that there is a bit of a sort of greater ratio of people from India and China being deported, so I wanted to understand what was behind that ratio. Secondly, from figures provided, it’s estimated there was around 1,000 under-age overstayers; around 100 of those are from the ages of zero to four. I guess I wanted to understand whether the Minister had received any advice, or whether he’s got any comments around the welfare of those overstayers who are under-age, and what he thinks the impact that may be to have people who perhaps have no connections to their parents’ homelands facing deportation.

Moving on to another topic, in the few minutes that I have left, I wanted to get an understanding of with, you know, in light of today’s announcement on the boosting response to the Ukraine, whether he’s receiving feedback from the Ukrainian community around the need to have pathways to residency; and, with the special policy for Ukrainians, yet having devastating conflict elsewhere in the world, whether he has considered implementing similar schemes for other countries as well during this time.

Finally, I wanted to get an understanding as to whether he had at any point actually sought advice around the number of people who may have missed out on the Resident Visa 2021 scheme. Particularly, I’m thinking of those who went back to study and who now, under the new scheme, may face actually many years without potentially having a pathway to residency. So I wanted to get a sense of those people. And, actually, just while I’ve still got a few seconds—on the opportunity that he gave to post-study work visa holders to come back to the country, I wanted to get a sense of whether the Minister had also considered other types of visas that would have expired during the border closure, and to offer those people a chance to come back who may not necessarily have a straightforward path to come back on to other schemes? Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, the Minister will come back after dinner. He has 25 more minutes, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. We will resume the committee at 7 p.m.

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

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): I thought I would just take the opportunity to quickly respond to a few of the questions asked by Ricardo Menéndez March just before the dinner break interrupted us. Specifically, he asked about some of the events of the last week, where it has been widely reported that an immigration operation arrived at a person’s house pretty early in the morning to find that person and to proceed with a deportation process due to their status as being illegally within New Zealand. I won’t go into the details of that particular case, as it is still being worked through and is subject to a request for intervention to the Associate Minister.

I just want to address the issues that the member raised. This remains a practice—that is, out-of-hours visits to people who might be liable for deportation—that is exercised on a very small number of occasions. A total of 3 percent of visits occur at what is called “outside of hours”, at a time either earlier or later than, effectively, non-business hours.

Since this event and in recognition, in particular, of the Dawn Raids apology, I have written directly to Immigration New Zealand to set out my expectations and the Government’s expectations, firstly that events such as this should only occur on extremely rare occasions where there is a strongly justified case based on, for example, it being the only safe way of conducting an operation. It is the job of Immigration New Zealand to enforce the law, and sometimes that does mean to find people and to start deportation proceedings. It is not a nice part of Immigration New Zealand’s job, but it is a part of enforcing immigration laws that they are charged with. We want them to exercise that as reasonably and as proportionately as possibly, and, in this particular case, to give particular consideration to the traumatic history of the Dawn Raids for our Pacific communities.

Specifically, as well, in order to give effect to that, I have acquired a deputy secretary, who is the head of Immigration New Zealand, effectively, as the person who will have to sign off any out-of-hours operations. So the Government has taken steps to make sure that, as I said before, the spirit and the intent of the Dawn Raids policy is given effect in respect of how Immigration New Zealand proceeds in this area.

The member asked a question which is, effectively, to the extent of: is there a disproportionate focus on some communities when it comes to deportation operations? Based on the information that I have seen, that is not the case. Deportation activity occurs, broadly speaking, in proportion to the number of people from particular source countries who are illegally within New Zealand.

The member also asked about potential future residency pathways for people who have taken advantage of the Special Ukraine Policy, for which we have approved around about 1,300 people to arrive in New Zealand; around about 600 or so have arrived in New Zealand so far. We have undertaken, within the next period, probably the next few months, to commence work into what the future of that policy should be, given that, sadly, the conflict in Ukraine does continue due to Russia’s brutal and unjustified invasion. I do believe it will be necessary to give consideration to future next steps, but we will just work through that process and we will consult with the effected communities.

Finally, the member had a question around the Government’s decision around the granting of an additional special one-year visa for people who lost their post-study work rights because they were, effectively, overseas at the time that the borders closed. The member, really, was asking: is the Government considering a similar provision for other people who might have been offshore at that time? The answer to that is no, and we have communicated that clearly to communities. We believe that there was a special place in respect of post-study work rights in that people had, effectively, come to New Zealand, had studied, and had—to use a loose term—earned the right to then have work rights at the end of that study, and it was particularly unfair that due to border closures, those people lost that opportunity. That distinguishes that category a little bit from other areas. I do note that in other areas, particularly when it comes to temporary work visas, all of our systems are now opening. There is a need for labour in New Zealand. I encourage people in those situations to consider applying under existing pathways.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, I want to go back to the processing times. You noted that they had improved, and I guess the question is: at what cost? Because if you can get accredited in 90 minutes from putting your application in, what on earth are Immigration New Zealand doing in 90 minutes to check that you are a good enough character to be an accredited business? And what on earth are they doing in the three hours that it takes on occasion to approve a job check?

Minister, I want to put it to you that this—and I put it to you at the select committee as well when we had the briefing around the fact that this is now being exploited, because it very quickly has got around the world that we are a soft touch, and that there are migrants who know that they can buy their way into New Zealand, lie and cheat their way into New Zealand, because nobody at Immigration New Zealand is verifying their work history or their qualifications. That’s why we get, yesterday, an article in Stuff that says it’s easy to lie and cheat your way into New Zealand. And this is accurate, because this is what all of the immigration agents and immigration lawyers are now feeding back to us.

And I want to share with you, Minister—because I want to ask you a question at the end of this—an email that I got sent from an immigration officer after our exchange at the briefing. There are close to no checks being completed on these Accredited Employer Work Visa applications for the sake of numbers. There’s constant talk of fraud where migrants are successfully getting visas with no work experience and then getting a variation of conditions to switch to another employer onshore. He said about the ESWV days—the essential skills work visa days—it was never this light touch despite what the officials said. We have one hand tied behind our backs and we can’t do the checks that we need. That is from Immigration New Zealand. These articles are from case officers.

We are getting ourselves into a situation, Minister, where an employer can put out a job advert for any job with no qualifications and no skill required, even if it is a skilled job, and no one at Immigration New Zealand is picking that up. There’s no verification that’s required, so when the migrant turns up, there’s nothing to verify. And then they’re getting a variation of conditions and entering New Zealand and switching job. We are setting ourselves up for a big problem down the track. Now, Minister, you talk very much about not wanting migrant exploitation. This is going to lead to more migrant exploitation with low-skilled people who are lying and cheating their way into the country because we are a soft touch, because no one at immigration is doing the right checks. There has to be a balance.

Minister, and I want to ask you this question: how do you think that a business that is accredited in 90 minutes is having correct and proper checks done on them? I have seen businesses with no website and no phone number being accredited. They are then able to employ people with no skills and no qualifications and no verification required. And, Minister, you have just put off their re-accreditation for another year. They now have two years before they have to become re-accredited. Guess what? Set up a shell company, bring in a whole lot of unskilled migrants, disappear, and set up another one. We are setting ourselves up for a massive problem down the track.

Minister, I want you to tell me how we can properly accredit businesses in 90 minutes, how we can do proper job checks in three hours, and where is the balance, and are you concerned about articles like this and—I forget the name—Anu Kaloti, who heads up the migration group, saying that they are seeing more and more workers and visitors turn up in this country who are asking them for jobs and asking them for accommodation, and are we setting ourselves up for a massive problem down the track? Are you concerned about it? Are you worried about it? Because more and more people are talking about it. It’s now in the media. And is there a better balance between what I think the Minister has done and just gone, “Oh, we’ll just trust businesses and not have any checks at immigration at all.”, and allow people to do zero, zero—no qualification and no skill—applications? And nobody checks that. Is there more of a balance to be struck? Is he considering what that balance is? Where does it lie? And is he concerned about these articles that are now starting to pop up day after day about the fact that we are a soft touch, because the Minister was under so much pressure to get these applications done quickly?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): The member Erica Stanford has a talent for turning on a dime that is perhaps unparalleled in this House. The unrelenting criticism from that member up until a few weeks ago was that the immigration system was too slow and no amount of reasoned discussion about the things that Immigration New Zealand has to do within its processes would satisfy her, and now we have switched entirely and she is asking for exactly the opposite.

Now, I will address the member’s questions. She is right that there is a balance to be struck here. She throws out some individual examples, and, as I indicated to her at the select committee, please forward those on and if those things are happening, they will be reviewed. The facts are that at the different stages of the Accredited Employer Work Visa, the median time for processing an employer accreditation is seven weekdays; the median time for processing a job check is four days. There may be some particularly good reasons why some take a shorter period of time. There may be some examples of practice that is not as good as it needs to be. Across a large system, that will sometimes occur. We need to know about it and deal with it, and we will.

The member points out examples of fraud and abuse of the system. We do not tolerate that, but the member shouldn’t be wide-eyed about the fact that since Adam was a boy, people try on fraud and abuse of the system with our immigration systems—they always have, and, regrettably, they always will. The purpose of our system is to make sure that doesn’t happen. The key thing within the system, in addition to the checks that I outlined in my previous answers, is that the accreditation system means that when employers are checked, if there has been those abuses of the system that occur there, there is now a clear mechanism in place that they lose their accreditation, which means they lose the ability to be able to employ migrant workers—and they should, if they have been abusing the system. That process is under way, with a particular focus on some of the higher-risk sectors, including franchisee and triangular employers. So we’ll work diligently on that—Immigration New Zealand will—to make sure that standards are being upheld.

These risks have always been and will always be apparent across our immigration system and others. We have a system set up to put the onus on employers, as, frankly, this side of the House has asked us to do, to actually have some trust in employers, to work with them, but then to hold them accountable if there are breaches.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just very briefly, one of the questions that I asked that wasn’t addressed was around the estimates of under-age overstayers and whether the Minister would, for example, expect deportation of the estimated 100 overstayers aged zero to four, or whether he’s received any advice or feedback around the welfare of those community members.

The other one that I wanted to get some comments on was regarding the Special Ukraine Visa. As I’ve expressed before, obviously our preference is that there are residency pathways, but I was also interested as to whether similar schemes have been thought of as part of a response to where there may be conflict elsewhere in the world. We’ve got conflict in Sudan, for example, right now and the community is asking for some response. So I’m just interested to understand whether at any point he’s sought advice around other conflicts around the world where the community may be needing reunification pathways.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll just turn to the topic of visitor visas. It’s obviously a good thing that we’re at a point where numbers are on the rise, but I think we’re also seeing the beginnings of a bit of a backlog in the processing of visitor visas. We’ve long been aware that visitor visas will be ramping up. If we look at numbers still being processed, those on hand—you know, starting with 775 in January—the latest figure I have was a partial month for April, which is almost 8,000, so perhaps the beginnings, and we’ve got 182 staff involved in processing visitor visa applications. In March alone, there were more than 42,000, so roughly about 230 per staff member, and we expect that to rise. That’s a good thing; we want people to come to New Zealand.

However, I’d like to just get the focus on the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. I’d like to ask the Minister: is he aware that over a third of the teams in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup represent non - visa waiver countries? And with 54 work days to go until the start of the competition, have would-be visitors, many of whom will require national security checks, now left it too late to apply, as could be interpreted on Immigration New Zealand’s website where it suggested the end of April? And further to that, how can he be confident that Immigration New Zealand can stay on top of visitor visa applications in the lead up to this event, given that from January to March this year there has been, as one country example, a 176 percent increase in applications from Chinese nationals, who will require initial security checks? I’d like an answer from the Minister on that.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Just while we’re talking about visitor visas, I thought I’ll throw in my questions as well. Last year it was reported, because of the 40,000 backlog in visitor visas, that Immigration New Zealand decided—it was a leaked document that showed that they were to have a much more light touch when it comes to risk, reducing those risk factors, having a quick scan of documents. My question to the Minister is is this instruction still in place? Have we gone back to the old monitoring of risk when it comes to visitors, or are we still working under that instruction that came out late last year—that leaked document that said that it will just be a light touch?

The second question is has he seen—well, the Minister at the time in the media said that he didn’t think that our borders would be compromised because of that lowering of the risk factors. And I want to ask the Minister: has he seen any evidence of the fact that our borders have been compromised? If he has, what is that evidence and what is the prevalence of it? And just reminding him my first question is is that instruction still in place around reducing the risk factors and having a quick scan of documents.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): Madam Chair, I thank the members for their questions. Mr Menéndez March—his question around under age overstayers. Immigration New Zealand doesn’t hold age data on hand about the age of people who might be overstaying and in New Zealand illegally. I do have concerns for the welfare and wellbeing of many of those people, particularly including children and young people. I do note that children are still able to attend school regardless of the regularity of their immigration status. As we have discussed previously, the Government is considering whether a regularisation initiative in this area is appropriate. That is something we are giving careful consideration to.

In respect of his question about whether the Government is considering something like the Special Ukraine Visa for people in other conflict zones and areas of difficulty around the world, we’re not currently considering any specific proposals. We have established a number of those in recent years, including for Ukraine and for Afghanistan, as quite bespoke processes dealing with particular situations in those places. We do continue to rely on our United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees quota as the main pathway for humanitarian resettlement in New Zealand, but we do give consideration, as I say on a bespoke basis, as to whether there are other cases.

Mr McDowall asked about visitor visas and the extent to which there might be a backlog building there again. I wouldn’t characterise it that way. There has been an increase in numbers over about the last two months. That has been particularly linked, effectively, to the opening of borders in China, and a significant inflow of interest in visitor visas from people in China. And on-hand numbers have built up again to around about 30,000. I’ve been monitoring that very closely. My main concern is that that does not result in a decrease in processing performance. Ultimately, even if your on-hand numbers are a bit higher, but you still have a good output in terms of getting decisions made, that is less of a concern. I’m well satisfied at the moment in that respect. Our processing times are as fast as they have been since reconnection—77 percent are processed within 20 days, and the average is eight working days. We do expect to see the numbers begin to recede, probably from later this month.

In respect of FIFA, Immigration New Zealand does work very closely with FIFA to facilitate a smooth event in that space, and we do encourage people to apply in a timely fashion themselves. There is always a responsibility on people to apply, taking account of how long it will reasonably take to process a visa, but we do have an added process there to make sure that event goes well.

In respect of Erica Stanford’s question around the processing of visitor visas and the risk rules—on a point of terminology, she used, not maliciously at all or inaccurately but, the term instructions I’ll just be very clear, because the word “instructions” has a particular meaning in the world of immigration, that we are not referring here to instructions that are issued by the Minister, but operational rules that are set and can be altered by the department itself. And what they did in the latter part of 2022 was to have sort of a common-sense review of the rules that were put in place to make sure there wasn’t anything in there that was unnecessary, that was creating additional slowness in the system but not really helping us to manage risk in a meaningful way. So there was a bit of a sweep through those rules; a number were removed. As I understand it, that remains the same and I am satisfied that those rules are appropriate.

She asked if any further risks have been manifested; I have not seen evidence of that. We have had a small increase in the number of asylum seekers in recent months—month on month—but it’s too early to establish whether there is really a pattern there. Although I do note it is consistent with what compatriots in other like countries are experiencing at the moment, and I think it is, therefore, just more likely linked to the fact that we are living in very turbulent times.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one very quick question on the parent category this time: I just wanted to get the Minister’s thoughts and reaction around the fairness of the parent category at present—just referring to the latest circular today that, from August 2023, expressions of interest submitted on or after 12 October 2022 will be included alongside those submitted before that date. It’s probably fair to say that the backlog won’t be worked through at that point in time. So I’m just wondering what he thinks about whether that is fair or not on those who actually submitted those applications a long time ago.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): I want to move to partnership. Minister, this Government said that they would review partnership, with a view to fixing it. Nothing has been done. The culturally arranged marriage visa has around about a 90 percent decline rate. It’s not fit for purpose. I want to know whether or not, in the last little while, the Minister has had a review of the culturally arranged marriage visa, with a view of updating it to fit what the actual view of a modern culturally arranged marriage is.

The main part of my question is around the living together requirement. We sent nurses offshore during the pandemic to live with their partners for three months in some weird exercise, even though they were married and they were in a genuine relationship but just couldn’t meet that living together requirement. Is that being reviewed? Has it been reviewed?

And my next question is: why is it, then, in the last little while, there have been a whole lot of declines of visitor visas for partners to come here, to prove their relationship, even though Immigration New Zealand have said, “We know you’re in a genuine and stable relationship, we can see that you’re married, we can see all the evidence you’ve given us, but you can’t fulfil the living together requirement, but we are now not going to give you a visitor visa to come here to New Zealand to prove that living together requirement.”? That has always been the backstop sort of workaround that Immigration New Zealand has done. I’m really concerned now that they’re not doing that. Where does that leave partners who can’t prove they’re living together? Minister, this was, I think, something, potentially, the Government said at the last election that they would fix. I forget the timing, but they certainly said that they would. It doesn’t seem to have been fixed, and now we’re in a situation where partners aren’t even able to come in on a visitor visa, because they’re being declined. I don’t know if that’s just a lot of anecdotal stuff or there’s something going on in the background that’s been decided that that’s not allowed any more.

So I want to know when the review and fixing up of the partnership is going to happen.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): In respect of partnership settings, firstly, I will just correct a comment the member Erica Stanford made about—I think she said a 90 percent decline rate for culturally arranged marriages. I do have the figures with me: the approval rate in the 2021-22 year that we are considering here was in fact 45 percent, and that has in fact increased to 63 percent this year. The numbers are higher than they have ever been, and I think that is largely because Immigration New Zealand has been doing some quite grassroots work with communities to understand particular cultural practices and to make sure that they are assessing them in a relevant and accurate way.

In respect of broader partnership settings, the member is right that the Government did say that we wanted to get on to a review of those. That is in the context of a broader review of family and partnership settings. As the member will know, there are a number of component parts of family and partnership settings, and we’re basically going to work through those one at a time. The area that we have determined we will start with is a review of the settings around family violence settings that builds on the work from earlier this year when we extended the family violence setting to those people who are partners of temporary visa holders. I do expect that we will after that then be able to advance on to broader partnership setting issues, including that complex area of culturally arranged marriages.

In respect of the later part of the member’s question about recent declines of people in those situations, I have not received any information of that. I’m not aware of any changes of practice or rules that Immigration New Zealand has. It might just be that there are some cases which have arisen that have particular characteristics. I’m happy to talk to Immigration New Zealand and the member about that.

Mr McDowall asked about the parent category. We’re very pleased that our Government made the decision and has got that category open after it was closed in 2016. That has been welcomed. We are, effectively, dealing with a big backlog and we are giving precedence to the processing of those first, but the first draw for new expressions of interest (EOIs) will take place in July of this year. People who have an old and existing EOI and it might take a bit of time to work through are not disadvantaged. They do still have the ability, if they wish, to also put an EOI for the new draw in the ballot.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, our time with the Minister of Immigration has ended.

Police

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Minister of Police is now available for 45 minutes to respond to members’ questions.

Hon VANUSHI WALTERS (Chairperson of the Justice Committee): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to begin the annual review debate on the New Zealand Police for the 2021-22 year. I’d just begin by thanking the Justice Committee for its professional work on the review—thanking our clerks as well—but also thanking the New Zealand Police. We, as a committee, expressed our appreciation for all the work that the New Zealand Police do, but particularly the front-line staff in terms of keeping us safe over the last year. We’d also express our appreciation to the Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster; deputy commissioners; and the Police leadership.

We tabled this report with the House on 30 March but the hearing was conducted on 15 December, and what we learnt was that, as of 30 June 2022, the Police employed 10,342 constabulary staff, 4,292 non-constabulary staff, and 265 recruits. We heard from the Police that the work of the New Zealand Police focuses on three goals: safe homes, safe roads, and safe communities. The work includes keeping the peace, maintaining public safety, enforcing the law, and preventing crime, but the Police also participate in policing activities out of New Zealand. They also participate in emergency management and national security.

The Police, in our discussion, acknowledged a growing demand for their services and particularly for family harm and mental health responses. They explained that prioritising some responses over others is an established necessity. They noted that demand for services has always exceeded their available resources. They provided statistics from the Ministry of Justice’s crime and victims survey, which showed that nearly 80 percent of people believe the police effectively respond to serious crime, and they told us that while there is a low average reporting rate, there has been an increased reporting rate on family violence incidents, and this really does demonstrate an increase in the trust in the police.

We heard about the six Te Pae Oranga panels targeted at preventing youth offending, and we asked what influence Te Pae Oranga panels could have in combatting the underlying factors driving youth crime. The Police told us that Te Pae Oranga panels have the ability to take a holistic approach to a youth offender, and these panels will often address the wider influences on a youth offender that may have driven them to commit a crime. They told us that experience shows that young offenders are often more intimidated by being held to account by their community than by the traditional youth justice response.

We noted that many retail businesses throughout New Zealand have been struggling with ram raids, and the Police told us that offending levels for ram raids appear to be trending downwards from an August 2022 peak. They also told us they had brought 333 prosecutions and made 133 youth referrals from the 487 ram raids between January and October 2022. They said they are confident they are apprehending most of the offenders, noting that an individual will often be involved in multiple offences.

They told us about Operation Tauwhiro, a nationwide operation aiming to disrupt and prevent firearms-related violence by criminal gangs and organised crime groups, and it operates in conjunction with Operation Cobalt, which aims to target unlawful behaviour and intimidation by gang members that threaten the community’s sense of safety. Some members asked the Police—or they expressed a concern—about the scope of Operation Tauwhiro and asked the Police how many staff were assigned to it. The Police responded that Operation Tauwhiro is a whole-of-police operation.

So we covered a lot of ground in the review, and I would just like to end by thanking again the select committee for its robust and professional work. I look forward to the debate in the committee this evening and once again thank the Police for their work.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Chair. Firstly, can I just take the opportunity to congratulate the incoming Minister of Police, Ginny Andersen, in her new role. It is the fourth police Minister that has come into the role since I’ve had my role, and I hope that it’s the last because, when you’re talking about pressure on police, a briefing to incoming Ministers can be exhausting for those that have to put it together and brief a new Minister.

I just want to come back to the comments that were just made by the chair of the Justice Committee, Vanushi Walters, and acknowledge them. We try to work in a bipartisan way on that committee as much as we can. But she talked about ram raids, and we’ve seen a 551 percent increase in ram raids since 2018 through to 2022. We’ve heard quite a bit of talk recently in the media, and from the Minister herself, that we’re seeing a decline in ram raids. There were two figures that were used. One was in August of 2022, which was at a peak, and the next was February of 2023, which was at a low, and that was used as an example of percentage reduction in ram raids.

But I’d ask the Minister—and I’m sure that she’s keeping herself abreast of the Police website in terms of ram raids. In February there were 41 ram raids. We’re now in March, with the latest data, where there’s been 51. That’s an increase of 25 percent. So can the Minister just stand and square for this committee why she’s talking about a reduction in ram raids? Of the offenders, 82 percent have been rehabilitated, which means that there’s only 18 percent out there offending, and yet we’re seeing ram raids and aggravated robberies appear, reported in the media every day, and that is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what our front-line police are having to deal with. So could the Minister explain to me how she’s telling the country that there’s a reduction in ram raids when it’s very clear that there’s been a 25 percent increase since February, which is the last number that she used, through to the end of March, which is the latest number that we have?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much. Well, thank you to the member for that question. Look, I do acknowledge that both ram raids and the correlating youth offending has been a significant issue for New Zealand, and particularly for retail owners who are directly impacted. My view would be that we did—from looking at the statistics to date—in August of last year, we reached a peak of 116 ram raids for one month. And while the member is quite correct that February saw 41 and March is sitting at another 10 over that time, I still see that as a decrease from the 116 which peaked in August of last year.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Is there not a 25 percent increase?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I mean, we can debate about the semantics of it. I do think that the measures that have been taken by police—which is through the retail crime prevention scheme and installing security measures—are proving to be a good way of deterring crime.

I’d like to note that I’m aware of a recent spate of ram raids in Christchurch. And in two of those instances, the security features in one dairy—which was the bollards and the security features at the front of the store—prevented goods from being stolen. And in a different instance—and I know that, as far as I’m aware, it was a jeweller that had a fog canon installed. I don’t think that was part of the Government scheme. However, the activation of the fog canon in that recent instance also resulted in there being no goods taken from that store. I’d like to note that there’s still significant damage to those businesses which result in insurance claims and ongoing problems for those businesses, but I think that the combination of the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment fog canon scheme and also the retail crime prevention scheme are important to note.

I will point out to the member: look, I think it’s important we have a robust debate about these things. We are actually looking for the financial year that ended in June last year. So debating about the numbers of ram raids that have occurred over the past couple of months—

Matt Doocey: Oh, sorry, I thought that was the chair’s role.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I’m still happy to answer those questions, but if we are actually referring to the select committee report, which is 2021 to 2022, the point that he does make, even though I’ve provided an answer, is outside the term that we’re referring to.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Could the Minister explain to me, in the last review period, in the document that was provided to us, under “Our People. How we ensure our staff are well and safe”, it says, “We are committed to ensuring the wellness and safety of our people to enable them to remain fit for work and fit for life and are deployable, through a prevention, advisory, and responsive service delivery model. We are creating and building on a culture where safety and wellness are part of every employee’s DNA and intrinsic in everything we do, and where they are valued and feel valued. Our priority of Be first then do is about focusing on our own people’s wellbeing and their safety in order for them to be [able to do] their very best in their roles.”

How does that square, Minister, with the fact that on 9 February, there was a meeting between the commissioner; the Attorney-General, David Parker; the MP for Wellington, Grant Robertson—and I’d like to hear your comments on this one, why an MP is meeting with our Commissioner of Police—and the Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, and that that meeting, as reported by the commissioner, was uncomfortable. The police staff that were on site the following day, their operations order was quite simply to continue to do what they had been doing, and that was provide security, perimeter security, and observation.

At 10 o’clock that night, after that meeting with the Speaker, the Attorney-General, and the MP for Wellington, those operation orders were changed, and those officers were put out on a skirmish line, without, according to the Independent Police Conduct Authority report, a proper plan, without the proper training, and, actually, without the proper equipment. Just about every single one of those officers that were deployed felt very strongly that the decision around that and the timing related directly to political pressure that was brought to bear on the commissioner.

My question to the Minister is this: why were staff deployed into a situation that police already knew was dangerous for them? Because there had been two incidents prior to that, where parliamentary security staff had gone out into the crowd and had had to withdraw because of the aggression and the violence shown towards them.

There was a second incident where police staff were deployed into the crowd, and had to do a tactical withdrawal because there was aggression shown towards them. They knew that there was an aggressive element of the protests. There were a lot of good people there. There were some people there that were looking for a confrontation with police officers, without a doubt. Why were they deployed without the proper protective gear, and why were they deployed into a skirmish line when that’s not what the plan was for them on the 10th? How did those changes come about, and why was there not investment made—in the year 2021-22—to ensure that there was enough protective equipment, and that our staff was given it? Because everything that happened that day on the 10th flies in the face of this annual review in terms of what the police are saying around valuing their people and making sure that they’re put in a situation where they are safe and they can return home to their families after they’ve finished their role.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Minister, the previous speaker, the Hon Mark Mitchell, previously referred to the subject of youth crime and the ram raids, and I really appreciate your comments on that. One of the interesting points that the Police made to us in the hearings was that they see the best focus for turning our young people away from crime as being to focus on the fundamental causes of offending. I would like to hear from you what initiatives the Government has introduced to get our young offenders back on the right track, some who, of course, have never been on the right track, and I would like to hear from you what impact these are having, in a bit more detail.

I’m really interested also in the Te Pae Oranga panels; I believe there are six and they’re up and running, and they seem to be having some quite marked impacts on the way in which young people are dropping the recidivism.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister Andersen. I’m sure you’re familiar with Sir Robert Peel, the father of modern policing. One of the core ideas was that an effective police department doesn’t have high arrest stats; its community has low crime rates. It’s great to hear so many extra arrests are going on, but I just wonder whether that core idea has been lost a bit. And I wonder—if we combine that with a statement from Chris Cahill, president of the Police Association, who said, “All police officers know that the crime the community witnesses is only the tip of the iceberg. I am consistently surprised when a reporter expresses shock at a high profile incident when I know there are many similar events that just don’t make it into the media.” I just wonder how confident you are with the statistics that you’re receiving and whether they’re being addressed.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I will do them in order, if that’s all right. So in relation to Mr Mitchell’s questions in relation to the protest outside Parliament and actions taken in and around that, I am not responsible for operational decisions that are made, but I think it is important to refer to what is a very thorough investigation by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA). The IPCA has confirmed—and I was pleased to see that—that police did a good job in tough and unprecedented circumstances. I’m pleased to see that their work has now been independently recognised. I’m particularly assured by that report, Mr Mitchell, that the police generally acted with remarkable restraint and professionalism and that all the tactics they used to defend themselves and others were justified in the circumstances.

It is clear, however, that the response wasn’t perfect. The report highlights important lessons that will assist police in managing future public-order events. Police has already begun such work, and that’s been recommended by the report by the IPCA, and I will continue to work with the commissioner to see that that work is progressed.

The IPCA also made a recommendation that the Government undertake a multi-agency review of the laws specifically governing public-order events, given the deficiencies highlighted through their investigation. The Government has sought advice on what a multi-agency review would look like, but we acknowledge that the outcomes of any such review would require careful consideration to ensure that that fundamental democratic right to assemble and protest is not impeded. I guess I would like to conclude by saying that the IPCA made it incredibly clear that there was no suggestion of interference from Ministers or members of Parliament, and specifically at paragraph 284 of the report, the IPCA stated: “we reiterate that our investigation did not uncover any undue political influence at any stage of the occupation. In fact, what we did find was explicit recognition of the need to respect the constitutional divide between politics and Police operations.”

I’d like to move on briefly to the point that Ms Henderson made in relation to some of the work that’s going on specifically to address youth offenders—I think that was the question. I’ve been really heartened to see those programmes that are operating in both Counties Manukau and in Waitakere in the west of Auckland. I’ve met with our police officers who are working in that space. I appreciate that there has been some frustration in the fact that a family group conference can take some time, particularly to deal with those repeat youth offenders. These programmes have proven to be a really useful circuit-breaker to identify those underlying drivers that are causing a 12- or 13-year-old to be out late and conducting these types of crimes. Because more often than not, there is family violence, there is sexual abuse, there is mental health, and there are ongoing issues within that particular whānau that will not only be impacting upon that young person but quite often their siblings. The heartening statistics I’ve seen is that these programmes are also looking at the other children within that family unit. That’s where the real prevention opportunity lies, because while it’s a sad state that these young people are out committing these crimes, let’s use that as an opportunity to understand what is going on within that family unit to make sure that other children in the same family do not end up in the same position. And that’s what I’m really keen in driving.

And the other member’s question was, I think: do I believe statistics? The answer would be I do. Yes.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): What evidence does the Minister have, as the incoming Minister who has made several public statements—and I’m assuming that she’s relying on both the briefing to the incoming Minister and the annual review. I can’t find anything in the annual review to support her comments when she says that because the Government has almost delivered 1,800 more police officers, New Zealanders feel safer. What is she basing those comments on?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): I’m really pleased with the fact that we are going to be reaching our target of 1,800 extra police. And it is my view that the best way to increase community safety in New Zealand is to make sure our police service is equipped to be able to respond. As I’ve already noted, with ram raids, the particular issue at the moment that has been causing concern, the ability for police to be resourced and have front line available to be deployed as quickly as possible has resulted in most of the cases I’ve seen recently, in the offender being apprehended, sometimes within hours of the offence. I believe the fact that an offender is rapidly apprehended and held to account to be a significant contributor to increasing community safety. The fact that we have additional police to do their work, the fact that we have a tactical response model, the fact that we’ve invested in extra abilities for our police to be able to respond rapidly, to assess risk and to know how and when to act, and to receive that additional training that’s delivered now through the tactical response model—I believe all of those factors contribute to being able to respond to crime and safety within our communities, and those things increase community safety within New Zealand.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): So just to confirm, Minister, are you saying that when you made statements that New Zealanders feel safer, that’s more you going off your own vibe and what you think rather than actually any evidence or information or stats either contained in a briefing to the incoming Minister or in an annual review to say that Kiwis feel safe? Or is it just the Minister’s vibe?

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thanks, Madam Chair. The last three years, Minister, of my police career I spent in youth aid, and New Zealand has a world-leading youth aid service. However, it’s not going to work if the other agencies surrounding it don’t work themselves—Oranga Tamariki or the mental health issues and all of those other agencies that are involved. Family group conferences get a lot of flak, but they work if they’re done properly. Are you confident that the other agencies involved in those conferences and the wellbeing of the young offenders, are up to it? I know the police are—are you confident that those other agencies are up to it as well?

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just reflecting on some of the other contributions. I know the Ministry of Justice’s New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey showed that nearly 80 percent of people believe the police effectively respond to serious crime, and that’s something that did come out in the discussions that the Justice Committee had, and, indeed, in our report as well, but I wonder if the Minister could specifically speak to Operation Tauwhiro and Operation Cobalt and the disrupting effect that they’ve had in terms of firearms-related crime and dampening down gang activity in particular, and perhaps give us an update in that area.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you, Madam Chair. Right, I will respond to those in order. When I became the Minister of Police, Mr Mitchell, I was asked what my aspiration, as the Minister of Police, is for New Zealand. I stand strongly by my answer—it is to make New Zealanders feel safe. I stand by that. That is still my aspiration as the Minister of Police. I was asked about the three main ways by which I intend to do that—I stand by those three main ways, which I will continue to work on.

The first way is by backing our police by making sure that they are resourced, by ensuring that we do have 1,800 additional police officers working in New Zealand by the end of June, and, specifically, that 700 of those additional police officers will be specifically dedicated to tackling organised crime and gangs.

The second is by tackling retail crime by ensuring that our retail crime prevention team is appropriately resourced. It has now had a second tranche of funding, totalling $15 million to provide security, prevention, and advice to those small-business owners that have been victims of an aggravated robbery; and also, with my other hat on, as the Minister for Small Business, by enabling quicker access to security features such as fog cannons, to be done online.

The third area that I’ve really wanted to do, to deliver to make New Zealanders feel safer, is to deal with the issue of youth crime. I know this goes to the heart of people feeling that New Zealand needs to be safer. The fact that young people are out after hours, committing aggravated robberies in stolen vehicles is simply not acceptable. It is a symptom of something that is not going well, and we need to look within that family unit and provide wraparound services to ensure the care and protection of those young people are put first and foremost in order to reduce the offending that we are seeing within our community.

The point that Mr Bayly raised in relation to other services that work alongside police—this is a really fair point to make. One of the opportunities that has come through the spike of ram raids that we’ve seen is that we are seeing Police and Oranga Tamariki working more closely together than we have ever seen before, and particularly in those 24 to 48 hours—when it’s that circuit-breaker, or the Kotahi te Whakaaro. It’s those high end, high-need individuals that police are getting far greater engagement with Oranga Tamariki in a short period of time, and I see that working really well.

One area that I would always want to see improvements in is mental health. I know far too many hours of front-line time is being dedicated to areas that police are not trained in delivering. Mental health continues to be problematic. There’ve been some good pilots going on in parts, where we’re seeing people with trained medical expertise in mental health sitting alongside police officers—this is well outside the review, but I’m keen on seeing more of that happen. I think it holds great benefits to be able to get those people who are in distress the medical attention they need, but also to free up police officers so that they can be doing those things that they need the most—to be out in street, doing their job, essentially.

Finally, Operation Cobalt has been a great success. The number that I’ve just actually heard tonight is the total number of charges now exceeds 35,000 across different crime types—35,000 charges laid by police, specific to organised crime. That is a significant amount of activity that we are seeing in that space. It’s the extension of work that goes right across police, but I would like to point out that having, by the end of June, those additional roles specifically dedicated to target organised crime has had a significant impact.

For the public, they have been able to see increased visibility of policing in and around events that do involve larger numbers of gang members in public places. That has, I believe, contributed to managing some of those events we’d seen in the past that were really concerning the community in terms of their safety.

Operation Cobalt is a nationally coordinated operation with all districts, right across New Zealand. It specifically addresses unlawful behaviour and intimidation by gang members that affects the community’s sense of safety both in our communities and on our roads. So I see that particular operation as being hugely successful, and I’m pleased to see it continuing to deliver results.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just want to thank the Minister the Hon Ginny Andersen for her contribution. I slightly disagreed when she said mental health is not in the annual review, because, of course, it was clearly in the Police annual report. I do want to focus on what the Minister said about the Co-Response Teams, because the history of the Co-Response Teams—which were announced for $8 million in the last National Government—is that in 2017 this Government came in and cancelled and reprioritised that funding. Here we are five years later and the Co-Response Teams that the Minister referenced in the committee just now are being funded—well, the one in Wellington was $700,000 of baseline Vote Health funding.

So my question to the Minister is: does she think the cancelling of the Co-Response funding in 2018 was a good decision when she now knows that police are reporting 50 percent of their time as non-core business, attending mental health call outs? Fifty percent of mental health call outs in New Zealand are unattended by the police. Will she commit funding through the police budget or the proceeds of crime budget to resource the Co-Response Teams so that they don’t have to draw funding out of the already stretched previous district health board baseline funding?

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Just following on the topic of call outs, you know, one of the things that the select committee did hear in the report, and we reported back on, as we also reported back on the findings of the victim survey, is that 80 percent of people are in fact satisfied with police response, much as you yourself, Minister, had said earlier. We heard that demand for police services has always exceeded the ability of police to fund that. And there has been an increased confidence in the police, of course, and particularly we’re seeing that in the increased numbers of family violence reports—police were reporting that they feel that that is a real sign that they have the community’s trust.

So what I’d like to know from you, Minister, as you’re going forward in this work, is: what progress has been made on the Government’s promise from 2017 that you touched on earlier—so I’d like more specifics—to deliver the 1,800 extra front-line officers, if you could, Minister?

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): I want to make one thing very clear: there’s no criticism of our front-line police officers coming from this side of the House. There’s only deep admiration and pride for the way that they just keep performing and picking up and having to deal with a 33 percent increase in violent crime, a 41 percent increase in victimisations, an over 500 percent increase in ram raids, a 60 percent increase in mental health call-outs, and a massive increase in domestic violence incidents. They are outstanding. And in spite of the fact that even at their parliamentary protest, they weren’t always supported by the best decisions made from their leadership, the leaders on the ground and the police officers out there doing the job made most Kiwis proud of the police service that we have and the front line that we have.

I’m glad that the Minister has clarified the fact that she got a bit mixed up and what she meant to say was she wants to make New Zealand safer, rather than coming out and saying New Zealanders feel safer. Those are two very different things. The one thing that I would like the Minister to speak to and she still hasn’t—she said it’s semantics—is that she’s pinning her performance on ram raids, and whether they’re reduced, and the rehabilitation around offenders, which we all want and we all need. And we’ve made announcements on this side. Obviously there’s a different approach taken on the other side. There has been an increase of 25 percent in ram raids since February this year, which was the last data point that the Minister herself has used. When we take the latest police data in March, there’s been a—I don’t know why she thinks it’s semantics. It’s very clear when you go from 41 to 51 that that’s a 25 percent increase whichever way you cut it. How does the Minister explain that when she’s been telling the country that we’ve got 82 percent of these offenders, it’s a small cohort, so we’ve reduced it to 18 percent? How does she marry that up with the fact that we’ve had a 25 percent increase in ram raids in the last month? Thank you.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you, Madam Chair. In relation to the points around mental health, the member raised—I think he was referring to the Wellington Co-Response Team (CRT), and that is, I will say, a successful example of a multi-agency response, which involves co-located police, ambulance, and mental health services being jointly deployed to emergency mental health calls. Wellington CRT operates as a face-to-face service for individuals in mental health crisis, and, as a remote resource, provides situation-specific advice to those front-line officers. The CRT evaluation did find that a multi-agency approach did reduce police use of powers to detain people and increase referrals to pathways outside of transport to police custody units or into, even, emergency departments. There is strong support from police, Te Whatu Ora, and also Te Aka Whai Ora for the extension of multi-agency responses, including elements of the CRT model. So that’s important to note.

I can’t remember exactly what she said, but there was a question around reaching 1,800. I can comment that in terms of that aim, we are on track to deliver by 30 June. Over the last 12 months, we’ve seen some attrition; attrition sits around 4.5 but we’re still on target for the end of June. I guess I would add, in relation to that, that I’ve been really heartened in the graduations I’ve seen to date with the increasing levels of diversity that we are seeing come into the police, and that it’s great to have a police service that reflects the population which they serve. I think police are doing a great job at being able to do that.

Back to the member’s question around how you cut the numbers in terms of whether there’s been an increase or a decrease in terms of ram raids. It’s true that they were a somewhat new event. We first saw ram raids occurring about a year or so ago. It was a new event. We hadn’t seen those happening in the past. I think it’s important to note that they are a complex matter that police alone cannot solve. But, saying that, police actively investigate every single ram raid, and it’s been good to see those outcomes happening. I still go back to the point that when we saw those increases happening, which was back, say, from the beginning of 2022, we saw those numbers each month climb up. So from January, 52; February, 53; March, 60; April, 77; May, 83; June, 62; July, 77; August, 116; and then from that point in August of last year, we’ve continued to see a decrease, and those decreases have gone 85, 76, 72, 73, 57, 40, and then a slight jump from last month, up another 10. So I still maintain that the 50 we’ve seen this month is substantially lower than the peak that we saw in August of 2022.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): On a lighter note, I’ve had my good friend and colleague Penny Simmonds inform me that we have some VIPs in the House tonight, from Stewart Island. I was going to ask a question to the Minister of Police, and say: how important is the police officer on Stewart Island, and does she remain committed to making sure that they are fully funded and supported?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Full respect—I don’t know the name of the officer on Stewart Island, but I would like to say a big thank you for the service you provide in Stewart Island and all the great work you do. Thank you very much.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we still have a few minutes.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister Andersen, I would like to clarify something with you, and it’s in terms of the international relationships that the New Zealand Police have. They’ve got many partners and law enforcement agencies that they work with around the world, and they do that because they’re focused on keeping our country safe, they’re focused on shutting down supply chains, and they’re focused on sharing intelligence.

Recently, you came out very publicly and criticised them for having met with the Hong Kong police, who there has been a longstanding relationship and exchange with. I recognise the fact and the sensitivity around interference in Hong Kong and the way that there was violence involved with the protests there, but I would like some direction from her in terms of how much involvement does the Minister and the foreign affairs Minister intend to take in terms of decisions that our police make around law enforcement and the safety and security of our country. And was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade involved or consulted at all around the decision that was made in terms of the visit and the interaction with the Hong Kong police?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): I spoke recently at the transnational organised crime conference, and at that conference, which New Zealand Police hosted here in Wellington, it was really encouraging to see all of those international partners come together. They ranged from a wide range of countries. I know that those relationships, not just Five Eyes but further afield, provide police here in New Zealand with valuable intel that have led to significant operations—where we’ve seen encoded apps that are really difficult, from a New Zealand technology point of view, to be able to understand and get warrants to look at what is going on. That wider cooperation with our transnational organised crime-fighting partners has facilitated quite significant terminations of warrants here in New Zealand.

Who police meet with, who they talk to, and how they share information on how to counter transnational organised crime: that is a matter for police, in order to get those relationships in place and to make sure—and organise in conferences such as the one I’ve referred to—how important it is to keep those relationships warm. So at the time when they are called upon to collaborate—because we are seeing transnational organised criminal groups far more further afield into different countries—it is critical that police have that operational ability to share information and act unilaterally to make sure we shut down those organised criminal groups.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Just before I call the next member, I just alert the committee that we have four minutes left.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, to follow up the Minister in the chair, Ginny Andersen—and I’m all for how we combat transnational crime, but does she feel as a Minister that it’s appropriate that the New Zealand Police are engaging now with a police force who were actively and deliberately involved alongside Chinese police forces who violently suppressed democracy, crushed democracy, in Hong Kong, continue to deny the rights, the basic rights, which we take for granted? Does she feel it’s appropriate that New Zealand Police had anything to do with the Hong Kong police forces as they are today, with the behaviour which they demonstrated against loyal, good citizens? She can sense I’m a little bit angry, and I will acknowledge that here, but I find it reprehensible that New Zealand Police would engage with the Hong Kong police forces after all that they’ve done to crush the democratic aspirations of the people of Hong Kong.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): I’ve addressed the question. I understand that New Zealand Police meets with a range of partners who are international partners with the primary purpose of reducing the harm and destruction that organised criminal networks have within our country, whether that be through drug trafficking, human trafficking, or whether it be through undermining our international reputation. There are a number of significant risks that transnational organised crime presents to New Zealand, and it is important that our police service can work alongside other international partners to not only share information but to cooperate to dismantle organised criminal networks that bring harm to our communities, peddle drugs to our communities, and profit from that harm. So the more that we can work with international partners to reduce the harms that organised criminal networks have in the world, then that is, I believe, fulfilling the purpose of keeping New Zealanders safe.

Oceans and Fisheries

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, time with the Minister of Police has ended. Thank you to the Minister. The Minister for Oceans and Fisheries is now available for 30 minutes to respond to members’ questions. I’ll wait for just a moment until we have the Minister in the chair, and I will take the first call.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Deputy Chairperson of the Primary Production Committee): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise as deputy chair of the Primary Production Committee to lead the debate on the Appropriation bill for fisheries. I just want to acknowledge the two previous fisheries Ministers who cover this period, the Hon David Parker and the Hon Stuart Nash, who came and spoke to the select committee about the review. And, of course congratulations to, and I wish to acknowledge, our new Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, the Hon Rachel Brooking. It feels good to see you there.

Fisheries is, of course, covered by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), and their mahi is a true reflection—it’s reflected in its complexity of demands and opportunities in the sector. During the review, we heard how MPI have worked to ensure our fisheries are managed well and that we have sustainable and healthy fish stocks, aquaculture, and a wider marine environment. Fisheries is an incredibly diverse and complex sector concerned with the sustainability and the development of our commercial fisheries, including aquaculture and, of course, our recreational fisheries. Our fisheries, our oceans, are such a vital part of our identity as individuals, as whānau, and as a nation.

It is not just about culture; it is about economics. Seafood exports, we were told, were up 8 percent in 2021-22, to a total of $1.9 billion, almost back to the pre-COVID levels. A significant focus for fisheries has been, over the last year, the development in aquaculture. They have released the Accelerate the Aquaculture Strategy: Investment Roadmap, and this strategy has been led by MPI and is ambitious and aims to grow the industry to $3 billion per annum by 2035—five times its current value. In order to make that real, what they have done is have significant collaboration, such as with councils, around the development of open-ocean aquaculture guidelines, and with iwi to improve settlement allocation mechanisms, and they’ve also investigated the carbon footprint of shellfish. This is part of their exploration of how we lean into the way that we futureproof this massive global industry.

They told us about the Provincial Growth Fund and other funds that have enabled a number of projects aimed at building our aquaculture industry and making sure that it is world leading. Shellfish: we heard about the potential because New Zealand farmed shellfish have a lower carbon footprint than any other globally produced animal protein. So there is some significant potential there, and MPI is really ambitious about supporting our aquaculture industry at staying at the forefront of it.

There are challenges, of course, with regards to conservation, restoration, and sustainability. They are real and complex and constantly changing. We heard about the projects including work to protect Hector’s dolphins, the Hauraki Gulf, and the work internationally around fisheries and exploitation, and of course our beloved scallops.

Another really important aspect of making sure that we have sustainable fisheries is the significant work that has gone into monitoring, and I guess one of the most obvious projects that they’ve been involved in is the process of financially supporting the roll-out of the on-board cameras that were enabled by the Fisheries Amendment Act 2022. Approximately 300 boats are in the process of receiving cameras, which will mean that we can monitor about 85 percent of the total catch. That monitoring isn’t just about compliance; it is about ensuring that those who are doing the right thing are shown to be doing the right thing, and to protect and enhance our international reputation economically, as well as making sure we can do the best we can do to protect our fisheries for our future generations. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thought it would be useful for me to start with a brief introduction, as a new Minister and very new to this portfolio.

Chris Bishop: Congratulations!

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Thank you for the congratulations. Thank you to the deputy chair of the Primary Production Committee for that. I’ve been very fortunate that right as I’ve started as the Minister, I was able to launch the draft Fisheries Industry Transformation Plan. That launch was last week and it had industry people there, iwi, environmental groups, scientists, and also some mental health people as well. So my approach to coming into this portfolio as a new person to oceans and fisheries is really to meet as many people as I can and ask questions and learn about this. So the industry transformation plan relates to the $1.45 billion of wild caught fish, and that’s obviously a very significant part of our economy.

There are some key issues that I’ve observed as I’ve been the Minister, and one of those is, of course, the importance of this new roll-out of cameras on boats. That’s really because the better information we have about what is happening on the water, then this means the more we can do in terms of sustainability for everyone. And that’s $68 million over four years of Government spend, rolling out cameras on up to 300 commercial fishing vessels, and this is in addition to the GPS technology that we already have. There’s been the proof of concept of these cameras on boats, and the focus on the cameras that are already on boats has really been around protected species.

Also, in recent times, we’ve had the legislation on discard rules, and this links to those cameras on boats. This recent legislation, it’s been explained to me, is to encourage the wrong fish not being caught in the first place. So that legislation means that all catch must be reported regardless of whether it’s quota, and almost all fish must be landed unless an exception has been issued. So the idea here is that improving the level of monitoring and verification of catch with on-board cameras reduces the ability of fishers to dispose of unwanted catch.

Also, of course, we’ve had COVID and that had a significant impact on the industry. This is an industry of $2 billion in export revenue in 2022. And a thing I learnt when visiting some industry people recently was that 70 percent of fish sales goes to restaurants. People don’t seem to like cooking fish at home. So, obviously, when you have the COVID lockdown and the restaurants are closed, that was a challenging time and they were well supported by Government.

Obviously there’s a lot of other issues as well that we’ll discuss during this debate, and I’ll sit down.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Chair. My congratulations to the Minister on her promotion. I wonder if the Minister would tell us, with her southern roots, what focus does she have on the fisheries around Stewart Island / Rakiura, and, in particular, the world-famous Bluff oyster beds, because I know there are a number of young people in the gallery tonight who would be interested to briefly hear her comments on that.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister, for taking the opportunity to have a quick conversation about all things cameras on boats. Congratulations on your new role. Minister, $68 million over four years—I’m cognisant of the fact that there were about 35 cameras installed of the 300 thus far, from proof of concept in 2019. We’re now 2023, Minister. I’ve questioned the Hon David Parker in this House, and he said there were delays, so I think this House would like to know why there are delays. We’re now three years in, Minister, and that is $68 million over four years. So how are we going to get the 300 cameras rolled out in quick succession to meet the 2024 cut-off date?

And can the Minister please allude to and give some insights to this House how the coastal commercial fishing fleet, which is going to be the lion’s share of the fleet affected by the camera roll-out reality, what technologies she sees that industry adopting on the back of the facilitation of these cameras, in regards to alleviating the 50 more or less bycatch which will see them fall into a prosecutorial reality, which is quite substantial?

The third question I have for the Minister—and maybe, as she acclimates to the role, she may not yet be aware of it—but what does a licensed fish receiver for unwanted bycatch look like, when the average fish for unwanted bycatch by the kilogram for the costing to the individual commercial fishermen is about 30c in the kilo, when those that are inside the quota management system by return are about a dollar? Can she ascertain what current technology would look like to alleviate that, and what these licensed receivers are, as a reality? If she could speak to that. Thank you very much.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to join with others in congratulating the Minister on her new role and her good luck at being able to roll out the discussion document so early during her term of office. But I want to just follow up a little bit on the previous question relating to cameras. At select committee, the Minister’s predecessor said, and I quote from the select committee’s report, “The company responsible for delivering the cameras has encountered technical problems. The company had intended to deliver in March 2023, but the date has been pushed back to November 2023.” So I’m keen to know what progress has been made on meeting that new belated deadline, and what the Minister’s intending to do, from her point of view, to hurry that along.

Another question, maybe, Madam Chair, or do you want to—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Well, if the member wants the call—

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Well, I think the Minister is making her mind up.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you. Well, I’ll answer some of those questions on the cameras on boats. So Hon Scott Simpson, thank you for acknowledging my good luck there. But you are asking about the arrangements with the fixed-price contract that Fisheries has with Spark. There has been a delay and there continues to be a delay, so that is work that the ministry is working on extensively at the moment.

Hon Scott Simpson: Well, what’s the Minister going to do about it?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: So what’s the Minister going to do about it? We’re working very hard with Spark to deal with those issues. The issues relate to some of the technology required for those cameras, and Fisheries is doing a lot of the work that you can do that doesn’t require that specific technology in the meantime. So if you’re on a boat, for instance, and you’re putting cameras in, then you need a whole lot of kit to help that isn’t the camera and isn’t the technology—that’s the issue. So that work is continuing to happen at pace so that all of the cameras, when they are installed and with all the relevant technology, will be as close to the proposed times as possible.

The southern member, Penny Simmonds, alluded to some people in the House being from the beautiful Stewart Island / Rakiura, if I’m correct. A couple of things I’d say in terms of Bluff oysters: obviously, it’s iconic fishery, and it’s surveyed regularly, but it is dredge fishing, so it does have some environmental impacts, but those are closely monitored. In terms of the area as well, the wider fisheries around the island, there is obviously some very important aquaculture there as well, and some moves for further out to have some open ocean aquaculture as well. So it’s a great place for, hopefully, both the fish and the fishing.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I congratulate the Minister on getting the portfolio, which she’ll do a very good job in, I’m sure.

Jono Ridler has just come ashore on Campbells Bay, having swum for over 100 kilometres from Aotea Great Barrier because of his concern about the health of the Hauraki Gulf – Tīkapa Moana. It’s an awe-inspiring swim, huge endurance, swimming continuously for 33 hours, and he’s done that because he knows, like so many others, that the health of the Hauraki Gulf is declining.

Fisheries New Zealand has put out a Hauraki Gulf fisheries management plan, so that has a number of actions that it goes through. There have been hundreds of people calling for an end to bottom trawling in the gulf. That fisheries plan talks about excluding bottom trawling and Danish seining except for defined areas or corridors.

So my question is: what does the Minister say to Jono Ridler after this epic swim to celebrate the gulf and to call for action? Is she open to excluding bottom trawling and Danish seining from all the gulf because of the heavy impacts on the seabed, in recognition of repeated state of the environment reports which have charted the decline of the gulf, and doing something concrete to actually act towards restoring it?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you, Madam Chair. I would also like to acknowledge Jono Ridler. Being able to swim 100 kilometres is a phenomenal feat, and obviously he is very passionate about that beautiful part of our country.

My understanding is that the fishery plan discusses these corridors and that the details around those corridors of where they might go and how wide they will be is being investigated by a technical advice group at the moment, and so we’re awaiting the advice from that group about the environmental impacts of any trawling and where it is—remembering, of course, that there is a large area in the gulf that is free from bottom trawling already. I’m very interested in obtaining all the details about where some bottom trawling might be needed and why it’s needed but also the environmental effects that that bottom trawling would have. So I am waiting for that advice and it is a matter that I’m very interested in.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Following on that note, the Hauraki Gulf is the nation’s most intensely recreated piece of marine space, and all the indicators—in terms of its health—are heading south; none of them are improving particularly. I’m interested to know what she intends to do, as the new Minister, to make up for the failing of her predecessors in terms of implementing the Sea Change plan that has been literally sitting gathering dust for the entire term of this Government’s administration?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): I would like to assure the member that I am also very keen for the implementation of the Sea Change plan and the work on the Hauraki Gulf, and I’ve been talking with officials—

Hon Eugenie Sage: Madam Chair.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —about that work, and work has been progressing.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Hon Eugenie Sage.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): My apologies to the Minister. So there are proposals that came out of the Sea Change plan in revitalising the Gulf—which the Labour Government announced in 2021—for 19 marine protected areas. Is it likely that there will be special legislation introduced before the House rises at the end of August to help establish those marine protected areas? And what progress has been made in the year under review, 2021-22, on establishing marine protected areas elsewhere in Aotearoa New Zealand? This graphic, thanks to James Frankham of New Zealand Geographic, shows Aotearoa New Zealand’s dismal position in terms of marine protection. The areas of grey are countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ). The areas of blue are the areas that are protected. The United States, on the right of the diagram, has an EEZ larger than New Zealand’s and 26 percent of its national waters are protected. The United Kingdom on the right: 39 percent of its EEZ is protected. Aotearoa New Zealand, at the very bottom with a pin-hole size of blue: less than 1 percent—in fact 0.4 percent of our EEZ is protected.

The Minister is very aware of proposals for the south-east Otago network of marine protected areas, which the former Ministers of Conservation and Fisheries committed to progressing in May 2019. Those proposals started in 2014. Is the Minister confident that there will be any progress before the election? And what, if anything, has Fisheries New Zealand, working with the Department of Conservation, done or is going to do to reform the Marine Reserves Act, which is long overdue for review?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you. As the member knows, there has been a lot of work over the past five years that the member has been involved with as well, and that work continues, and I’m very interested in it and how it progresses, and want it to progress as fast as it can. There are some complications to these areas, which is why it hasn’t been done, but, as I say, I think there will be work in this space before the term is out.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. Given the opportunities that exist in our marine space for further advancement of aquaculture, but also the risks that come with that from arrival from foreign vessels and biosecurity issues and things of that nature: in the year under review, officials told the select committee that no fishing vessels had been turned away and that there had been two cruise ships that had been directed to leave and another five were subject to restricted itineraries. That strikes me as not being a particularly large number. I’m interested to know what the Minister is doing in relation with the Ministry for Primary Industries officials about better monitoring biosecurity issues relating to our marine space, particularly as it poses a threat to our burgeoning aquaculture sector.

And then following on while the Minister is receiving advice, I’m also keen to have the Minister’s view in relation to the closure of the Coromandel scallop beds: what is her view on that, how long does she anticipate that that will need to remain closed, and is she anticipating any other shellfish closed areas, particularly around the Coromandel but in other parts of the country as well? Thank you.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you. On the biosecurity issue, I’ll note that I’m not the Minister for Biosecurity, but certainly there is work being done. And, absolutely, the biosecurity risk to aquaculture is huge, and there’s a lot of work going into that and also there’s work into being able to turn around more of the boats. On the scallop beds, I haven’t been briefed at the moment on whether that’s likely to change soon. So I don’t have anything else to say on that.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. On the topic of aquaculture, in the Primary Production Committee’s report, it notes that the former Minister had a goal which was set in the aquaculture strategy for aquaculture to earn $3 billion for New Zealand by 2035. So there’s a huge effort that the Government is putting into promoting aquaculture, expanding aquaculture. The Minister is very familiar with spatial planning on land, so what effort is being undertaken by Fisheries New Zealand to promote spatial planning for the marine space so that we don’t just see aquaculture use and development of the coastal marine area proceeding apace without also ensuring that there is marine protection progressing at a similar rate, given that we haven’t seen one new marine protected area created in the last five years?

The Government is pushing ahead with aquaculture and there’s a lot being done to promote its expansion, but we really do need to see the sort of spatial planning that happened in the Sea Change exercise about identifying areas for protection at the same time as areas are identified for aquaculture. Is she confident that the Mōtītī decision, which enabled regional councils to identify areas which should be protected from the impacts of fishing, is a sound one and should form a basis for the work of regional councils under the Resource Management Act reform?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. Although the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries doesn’t have responsibility for immigration matters, I’m interested to hear her views around capacity issues within the commercial fishing sector, particularly around the inability of quota holders to employ people from other countries to work fishing boats, and that are not able to fulfil their quota allocations, simply because they can’t get staff. I’m interested to know whether the Minister will engage with the Minister of Immigration for alleviate that issue, and, if so, when?

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, very quickly, of the $68 million that was appropriated for the four years, can you tell this committee tonight, if you can, how much of that money has so far been spent? And when will the cameras—the 300 that were due to be installed—be completed and installed?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you, Mr Chair. Going through some of those topics—thank you to the Hon Eugenie Sage for pointing out the ambitious goal of $3 billion in aquaculture by 2035. That’s something that I support, as well. I note the plea there for good spatial planning to both marry up the new aquaculture, and particularly if it’s—I’m assuming from the question—open ocean, and to see if there’s any protected space as consequence, when you plan those things together. So I know Fisheries New Zealand is, of course, interested in the spatial planning, as the member mentioned, that has been done in the Hauraki Gulf and that’s seen as best practice that should continue.

In terms of the Mōtītī case law, I have not heard anything to the contrary.

The Hon Scott Simpson was asking about the capacity of the workforce, and Fisheries New Zealand has been working with industry, which is part, also, of the industry transformation plan. But there has been work as well with immigration officials, and that will, no doubt, continue.

The issue of the cameras and how much has been spent: the $68 million is a fixed price with Spark, so I won’t comment on exactly how much has been spent at the moment, but it is a fixed-price contract. In terms of the dates, Fisheries New Zealand and I do want that to be as soon as it can be done. But at the moment, we have a technical issue that Spark is addressing as quickly as they can.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. The responsibility for bringing the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill back to this House rests with the Minister for the Environment, but I’m keen to know, wearing the hat that she does as oceans and fisheries Minister, what advocacy she will bring to her Government to ensure that that legislation is passed before the end of this Government’s term in office.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): I am happy to confirm to the member that I will work with the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation on progressing that longstanding issue, but, as the member knows, it’s a complicated issue.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): The issues relating to bottom trawling are ever-present in any discussion and debate around oceans and marine space. There has been little activity from the current Government in terms of progressing issues relating to bottom trawling, and the Minister gave a bit of an indication about some views in the Hauraki Gulf—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): I’m sorry, but, members, our time with the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries has ended. Thank you, Minister.

Housing

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The Minister of Housing is now available for 30 minutes to respond to members’ questions. I’ll just take a moment for the Minister to take the seat.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair, thank you. It’s a pleasure to lead off the debate for the annual review 2021 for housing and urban development as the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee. I’d like to thank the clerks, the officials, and the select committee members for their professional and comprehensive efforts during the annual review period. I also want to thank the Minister of Housing for appearing before us and making herself available in the sessions that we held.

During this annual review session, we heard from Kāinga Ora, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development—HUD, from now on—and Tāmaki Redevelopment Company Ltd. The Auditor-General gave Kāinga Ora a “good” rating on its controls and systems. The committee heard that they had achieved 61 percent of its measurable performance indicators. It met all of its targets for urban regeneration, development, general housing supply, and supporting first-home ownership.

The Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 has set a goal of having approximately 81,000 public housing places and approximately 6,500 transitional housing places. We heard that, currently, there are around 77,500 public houses and 5,000 transitional places, and we heard that Kāinga Ora delivered 1,815 newly built homes in 2021-22.

We heard about Project Velocity. This project aims to reduce building times. We heard how Kāinga Ora looked at a multitude of factors that contribute to building a home. They concluded that construction systems should be reviewed as a whole-of-system process. Consequently, we heard that they have reduced the pre-construction phase from 18 months to 33 days for projects that include up to 16 homes. This includes the resource consent process. The project has also reduced billable hours from 1,100 to 450 hours. Kāinga Ora declared that building times have also reduced from 100 to 67 days. They intend to use this model for projects over the next two to three years, with a goal of constructing 4,000 homes annually.

The Auditor-General rated HUD as “good” in all three areas, and we note the work that HUD have done to make good progress on its performance measures and reporting. We heard about a number of HUD programmes, one being the place-based approach that is being used in some areas. This approach looks at a variety of factors to help planners make the best decision for the area. HUD advised that for a thriving, sustainable housing system, they need to start with people and community, and work backwards. They advised the committee how they trialled this approach in Hastings. We learnt six months ago, 150 families were in emergency housing, and now there are 50 families. The place-based approach is now being progressed around the country. We heard other examples as well.

MAIHI Ka Ora—housing for Māori—is the National Māori Housing Strategy, which the Minister spoke on. She mentioned how the committed and targeted funding will see an improvement in housing outcomes for Māori. The ministry told us how they have prototypes in four regions.

We also took the opportunity to talk to the ministry about healthy homes standards. They advised us that, from their annual survey, 85 percent of landlords are now either fully compliant or had started the process of work to be compliant. HUD also let us know that by working with Te Whatu Ora, they identify eligible families and help them to make their homes warmer and safer. They noted that this work is showing benefits such as reduced hospitalisation and less illness.

Also, we heard from Tamaki Redevelopment Company—TRC. The Auditor-General rated them “very good” in all areas. They spoke to the committee on a number of items, particularly about supporting people into work. They operate the Tāmaki Jobs and Skills Hub in partnership with the Auckland Business Chamber. TRC advised us about providing warm, dry, healthy homes with 85 percent compliance, and 25 percent to be completed by the 1 June 2023 deadline.

The Social Services and Community Committee, therefore, recommends that the annual review report for housing 2021 be accepted. Thank you.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Ngā mihi matakoakoa o te pō roa nei.

[Pleasant greetings on this long night.]

And I always acknowledge my brother in arms from Hamilton East, Jamie Strange. Kia ora, chiefs. The right to adequate housing is well articulated in a number of international rights documents: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and of course the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. As a country, we’re failing to facilitate conditions where those rights can be fully expressed by all New Zealanders. Tragic.

The housing system is broken, particularly for the most vulnerable Kiwis. I can refer to all the stats that can move hearts and minds in this regard: over 3,000 households in emergency housing arrangements and 25,000 or so households, whānau, waiting for social housing—a lot of whom actually live in the Waikato and Hamilton West. Now, various agencies continue to deliver results, especially under programmes started by Nick Smith and others of our great National Party like the Land for Housing programme—kei te mihi.

However, my observations over years of being actually involved at the pounamu-face of housing in tribal and private enterprise are instructive. The numbers, particularly with Māori and Pasifika and young people, are absolutely disturbing. The appropriations for housing have led to some unusual results—unusual accountabilities. Now, Ihumātao in South Auckland is a great example of that. A significant protest and $30 million appropriated, ultimately for the Land for Housing programme, and since then—over two years ago—we have not heard of or seen any major planning to take place to actually deliver housing.

So one thing that I want to find out a bit more about tonight is: when do we expect housing being actually (ā) planned at Ihumātao, and (ē) built there to help address the broken housing system that we all see?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): I’m very happy to be joined tonight by two of the fantastic housing team in Willie Jackson and Marama Davidson, and we will share some of the responses to questions that are here.

But it was refreshing to hear a member from the National Party acknowledge the housing crisis we have and ask to talk about the statistics that led to this. I’d just like to throw some out here for this debate that we’re going to have on Estimates, and one of those is that one-in-seven of the public houses that we have in New Zealand have been built by our Government since 2017. An extraordinary statistic when we consider that we have been building State houses in this country since the first Labour Government in the 1930s.

I think this speaks to the fact that there has been a deficit of commitment in certainly the decade preceding our Government coming to power. I am proud to say that since we’ve come into Government, 11,830 public housing places have been added to the stock. I’ll put that against the 1,500 fewer houses across both community housing providers and Housing New Zealand that the National Party finished up Government in 2017 with. They came into Government in 2008 and there were 1,500 fewer when they went out of Government in 2017. They did not add public housing. It wasn’t just the loss of those 1,500 houses; it was the failure to build or add to the stock for nearly a decade that is the cause of our housing crisis that we are facing today.

But we are seeing the green shoots of change. We are seeing that we are finally repairing the damage of a decade of extracting dividend from Housing New Zealand—$500,000,000 by the National Party—rather than building houses for the most vulnerable New Zealanders. We are a Government that has turned that around. We are starting to see the green shoots of change, and I’m incredibly proud of our sector and what they are achieving and what we are achieving together. But I’ll ask Minister Jackson to address some of the other questions.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing)): I’m just responding to that member, Tama Potaka. That member should know better, because this is a unique situation in Ihumātao and I know most of the members over there wouldn’t have a clue in terms of by Māori, for Māori solutions. The member Tama Potaka should, actually, know a lot better, having been involved with many of those people in Ihumātao. Just because Tama Potaka and his National Party want houses built straight away doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen. It’s a five-year agreement—a five-year agreement. For the first year, when you have different mana whenua groups working with the Kīngitanga, it’s not easy. You’ve got Makaurau Marae; we’ve got some of Minister Davidson’s best friends down there, all Greenpeace and protesters. Let’s be clear about this. You know this, Tama Potaka: none of them want to build a house. Let’s be clear: none of them want to build a house. So you put them with Tainui and you put them with Tukoroirangi Morgan—someone who worked very closely with Tama Potaka—and Kīngitanga want to build houses. This is not an easy mix, no matter whether it is us or the National Party. You’re trying to bring them together.

So that’s why we came up with a brilliant solution—brilliant, I might say—probably worked up by Minister Woods and our Minister of Finance. We’ll give our people five years—five years—and they’ll work it through; not on Tama Potaka’s time line or the National Party’s time line but on a Māori time line that Tama Potaka should respect more, given that he came from that area.

His shocking comments on Māori TV about mana whenua getting their act together—who does Tama Potaka think he is? All of a sudden he’s telling mana whenua, his uncles, what the story should be. Shame on Tama Potaka, I say. We’ve got a strategy. Ihumātao is on track. Twelve months—yes, they haven’t built any houses, but they will over the next four years.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’d like to question the Minister in the chair, Megan Woods, about urban land supply, because, ultimately, what we’re talking about here is making housing more affordable—and I just want to leave aside the Minister’s highly political comments about social housing supply. Actually, we need houses across the continuum. We need more rentals, we need more social houses, we need more community houses, we need more market houses, and, actually, I think we need to focus on that as the solution, because that is the ultimate answer to everything when it comes to housing.

I’d like to direct the Minister to a recent report of the Infrastructure Commission which finds that restrictions on urban land supply at the edges of our cities significantly raise the cost of housing. This is a very recent report from the Infrastructure Commission. They found that urban boundaries add over $600,000 to the cost of sections at Auckland’s fringes and around $250,000 at the edge of Wellington. This is allied with work done by Treasury last year as part of the housing affordability work that they’ve been doing. I think it was October last year in which Treasury released a report that finds that, actually, the big driver of the house price growth in New Zealand over the last 20 to 30 years is very restrictive urban land supply—allied with other things, but the big thing is land supply.

To be fair to this Government, Phil Twyford, her predecessor in this portfolio, kicked off a series of work around urban land supply, urban development programme, but I think it’d be fair to say—and this would be including the period of time we’re talking about—that work has, I think, fizzled out a bit.

I’m not trying to be too pejorative, but we don’t hear Ministers and the Government talking much about freeing up land. We’ve done some stuff on density—that’s great, and we’ve done a cross-party arrangement around that—but I would put it to the House that we need to go up in our cities but we also need to go out. Because once you go out, you get competitive urban land markets and the price of land goes down and the price of housing is more affordable.

So I wonder if the Minister could elucidate for the House what the Government’s doing around creating competitive urban land markets and what the work programme is from here.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): I’m happy to give a brief response to that. In terms of the work that the Government has been doing, it’s been actually addressing the issue of how we have truly competitive land markets, and that’s about having build-ready land at the fringes. It’s not sufficient to just say that you’ve got land that can be zoned; if that land lacks in the infrastructure in order to build on it, then it is not actually adding to a competitive land market on the urban fringe. That’s exactly why the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, along with some of the shovel-ready projects that we’ve done, have been around just that, in terms of creating build-ready land.

I think that’s one of the problems that we’ve had in New Zealand: we’ve concentrated too much about measuring how much land is there that’s zoned and, actually, if that land is not build-ready, then it isn’t doing anything to increase housing supply.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. You know, when I go around New Zealand, I’m talking to many, many people who are asking, “Why is it that the Government is spending more and more of our money, and yet we don’t feel like we’re actually getting any benefits from it?” We’ve got more and more money being spent, taken from hard-working taxpayers, and yet they don’t feel like there is added benefit for where that money is going.

I wanted to ask the Minister of Housing about Kāinga Ora’s number of people that it employs. Since 2019, the number of staff at Kāinga Ora has increased to 3,235 fulltime-equivalent staff now. That’s an increase of 1,400 people in a space of three years. Of that, there’s 400 managers, and the managers are on an average of $175,000 each. Yet we’re not actually clear what benefit this is. There’s been a 74 percent increase in the number of staff at Kāinga Ora, and yet the number of homes that Kāinga Ora manages has only increased by 7 percent.

How is it acceptable that there’s so much blowout in bureaucracy and how much money we’re spending on staff at Kāinga Ora, when the number of homes is only going up by 7 percent and the number of staff is going up by 74 percent? Where is the added benefit for all of that money to New Zealand Kiwi taxpayers?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Just a very quick answer to that. The added benefit to New Zealanders is the largest build of public housing since the 1970s—the biggest investment in public housing in a generation. This is not simply about an agency that manages a rental portfolio; this is an agency that is building the houses. It is an agency that is helping us solve a housing crisis. So the member is quite correct: it’s not the sales unit that it was under the previous National-ACT Government; it’s not an agency just set up to sell off an asset and asset-strip. It’s an agency that’s set up to build houses and to make sure that we’ve got a Government that is doing its bit to solve a housing crisis.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): In the building of houses, the acquisition of land, and the implementation of civil works and infrastructure, one of my observations over the last three or four years is that Kāinga Ora gets into competition with iwi, with tribes, with Māori organisations, and with private developers to actually acquire land, rather than help facilitate those entities to build and deliver housing for the community. I’m interested in the Minister responding to the following question: when will Kāinga Ora stop buying land, driving up land values—particularly in the middle of towns like Kerikeri—and sometimes competing with iwi and others, making it the biggest buyer in the country?

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. At the same time that we have a Government housing agency asking for $3 billion to compete with the private sector, the Government housing agency has not been doing its actual job. I’ve been looking through the rent arrears at Kāinga Ora over the past three years. The amount of money owed in rent arrears has gone from $2 million to $17 million in uncollected rent.

Now, the Government thinks it’s kind by not asking people to pay their rent. But that money has to come from somewhere and somebody else is forking out for that—and that’s hard-working Kiwi taxpayers. How is it acceptable that this Government is spending so much money focusing on competing with private developers to build homes—bidding up the price of land and making things more unaffordable for Kiwi taxpayers—and, at the same time, it is not doing its job to collect rent that’s actually owed under Kāinga Ora?

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Thank you, Mr Chair. Can I just say thank you to the Minister for reminding us about the massive house build, and thank you for the thousand houses in Ōtaki. But I’d like to ask the Minister to talk about what’s happening in terms of the support and what’s been rolled out with iwi Māori to support by Māori, for Māori approaches.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing)): A fantastic time for Māori. We’ve had more investment in Māori in the last couple of years than the Opposition put in—in terms of Māori—over their previous nine years. You know, we understand in terms of the solutions that are needed. It’s not just about a house; it’s about the flow on and what’s happening with the whānau. So we’re able to apply our other kaupapa initiatives along with some of the housing projects like Whānau Ora.

When you look at Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga, we’re talking about a $730 million investment. This Government was very innovative. It pulled together the two agencies, our mainstream agency and Te Puni Kōkiri, and we set ambitious goals: 1,000 houses, to undertake repairs and maintenance to 700 homes, and to provide infrastructure support also for 2,700 homes.

On top of that, we’ve put an investment into providers, and I want to compliment our Minister for the way she has worked with iwi. She’s been a real role model in terms of how Ministers can embrace iwi. We’ve seen some wonderful set-ups, particularly our first prototype—which was in Taranaki, with Jamie Tuuta in Ka Uruora—which received $55 million to provide for up to 172 homes and 203 infrastructure sites for whānau in Taranaki and across the motu.

Then we went down the East Coast with Willie Te Aho and Toitū Tairāwhiti, which received $55 million to deliver 150 new homes for whānau and 150 infrastructure sites across Te Tai Rāwhiti. I again compliment the Minister. You know, Willie Te Aho is not the easiest person to deal with—can be a bit volatile, my cousin, but we love him and he gets things done. He gets things done and we mihi to him for that. He, alongside the people of the coast, are really turning things out—got a neat woman with him, I think. That’s probably his saving grace, with Annette down there supporting him.

Ngāti Kahungunu—they’ve received $45.3 million to deliver up to 131 homes. And we’ve got the chairman, Bayden Barber, down there. In the Tai Tokerau—and we mihi to Ben Dalton for his wonderful work in facilitating what we’re doing up there—$55 million in terms of a prototype that will deliver 80 to 100 new builds. So you just have to compliment this Government for the way we’ve looked after Te Ao Māori.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thanks very much, Mr Chair. One of the things that’s happened in the review period we’re talking about is the interest deductibility changes that the Government made have started to bite. Of course, 1 April just gone, they started to bite even more for many landlords out there. Of course, interest rates have risen very steeply in the last 12 to 18 months as well. So the twin combination of the phased removal of the ability for landlords to deduct interest as an expense, allied with very steep rises in interest rates, have put a real crunch on a lot of people. The material that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development survey in terms of the rental market does show, actually, that that is a real pain point for landlords.

So I’d just ask the Minister whether or not the Government has given any consideration to an alleviation of those interest deductibility changes, because I think it’s now fairly clear that that removal of interest as a legitimate expense for rental property owners is putting upward pressure on rents, and at a time when we have a real cost of living crisis, that is really hitting families hard. We’re at 50 percent now; next year, it’s 25 percent; the year after, it’s zero. So I just ask the Minister: is any relief on the way for mum and dad landlords who can no longer deduct interest as an expense?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): I’m happy to give just a very quick response to that. Has consideration been given to bringing back interest deductibility for landlords? The answer is that there is interest deductibility for landlords, of course; there is interest deductibility for landlords that want to help us solve the housing crisis, that want to add to the housing stock. So new builds have a 20-year exemption and are eligible for interest deductibility. We haven’t seen the over 200,000 building consents that we’ve seen during our time in Government happen by accident; it’s because there’s a programme of intentional policies around ensuring that we are, for the first time in a generation, putting all the efforts into increasing supply.

In terms of it driving up rents, unfortunately the facts just don’t match the member’s arguments. If we have a look at the year-on-year rental increases, it’s either 2.3 or 2.7 percent—I don’t have the statistics sitting right in front of me; 2.7, my officials are telling me, thank you—for the 12 months to March 2023. You put this against wage growth for the same period, which is in the 7 percents. So what we can see is that rents are—and that is new rents; I think that’s a really important point to note—actually rising at a much lower rate than wages are. So the arguments don’t stack up there.

We also see the number of rental properties entering the market continues to grow. There was around a 3.1 percent increase of rentals available in the market over that year. So the narrative that the member is trying to run—that we’ve got fewer rentals and rents are escalating at a rate that we haven’t seen before—simply is not correct. The evidence shows that not to be the case, and, in fact, if we stack that up against previous periods when the National Government was in power, we see much higher rates of rental growth and actually far fewer rental properties, as a proportion, entering the market.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Mr Chair. As I speak to the Aucklanders in the room, I know that many of us were impacted by recent floods in January. I just wondered if the Minister could talk to how Kāinga Ora’s large-scale projects fared in this year’s flood events.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): What good news we have out of some of the large-scale projects (LSPs). The member will be particularly familiar with some of the works that were carried out in Northcote. In terms of some of the work that’s been done is that new development, where, previously, that was an area that, without the flood mitigation work that we put in the town centre, the local area, the other properties in that neighbourhood probably would have the flooded in something like the Auckland Anniversary flood event.

What we saw was, actually, the whole neighbourhood drained in 15 hours; we didn’t see neighbouring properties flooded. That is because Kāinga Ora, through its LSPs, is putting the investment into those neighbourhoods. We saw that in Northcote, we saw that in Roskill, we saw that in Māngere. We can see that this is not just about building houses; this is about strengthening and building more resilient neighbourhoods and communities.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to come back to the wasteful spending of this Government and the fact that so many Kiwis are asking where their money is going, and what do they get for it. We’ve seen the number of staff at Kāinga Ora increase, but that’s not the only cost. Is it acceptable that the recruitment spend on advertising since 2019, when it was $100,000, has gone up in three years to around $500,000? What an increase. This Government finds ways to tax and spend and waste our money. That’s an incredible recruitment spend. Is it worth it?

SHANAN HALBERT (Junior Whip—Labour): I understand that concludes our time that we have allocated this evening for the Housing annual review debate. I move, That the committee report progress.

Motion agreed to.

Progress to be reported.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Madam 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.

Reported adopted.

Bills

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

Third Reading

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Minister of Conservation) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment 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 WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I move, That the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

In recent years, we have seen the evolving nature of terrorism become a serious threat on our shores. Four years on from the terror attack on the Christchurch masjidain and two years since the LynnMall supermarket attack, I want to acknowledge the enduring harm of terror attacks on victims and the wider community; we owe it to them to do everything we can to protect our communities from terrorism.

We are continuing to assess and update our counter-terrorism legislation to ensure it is fit for purpose; this bill is a step towards that objective. The Government is committed to continuing to respond to the royal commission of inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack, who recommended reviewing all of our counter-terrorism legislation. There has been significant ongoing work by the Government, since the March 15 attacks, to make New Zealand safer and more inclusive.

Some recommendations to the royal commission’s report have been addressed in the short term, while others have taken more consideration. This includes the initial ban of all military style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles and the establishment of a dedicated firearms unit within police, to take over firearms regulatory activities.

It also includes the establishment of the Christchurch Call; the Ministry for Ethnic Communities; the Ethnic Communities Graduate Programme; He Whenua Taurika, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism; He Whenua Taurika’s annual hui; and He Whenua Taurika scholarships, as well as delivering ongoing support and establishment of the Collective Impact Board.

Also under way is the development of a response outcome framework to monitor the ongoing response to the royal commission of inquiry. This will include identifying goals, ways to measure our success, and the sorts of data we need to monitor to ensure we are on track. Significant assistance has been provided to the most affected, including the families who were living in New Zealand at the time of the attack.

Today’s bill makes amendments to two counter-terrorism measures: the designation scheme and the control orders regime. These amendments will ensure operational agencies have the right tools to better prevent and respond to terror attacks to individuals who present a risk of committing such attacks.

Designation: I will start by discussing the changes we are making to the designations regime. The Prime Minister has the power to designate entities and individuals as terrorists, which freezes their assets and makes it a criminal offence to support them. Normally, these expire every three years, after which the Prime Minister would need to review the designation again to see if the entity still poses a terrorist threat. But if a terrorist is already in prison, how can we determine if they still pose a threat? This presents difficulties, as being in prison puts many restrictions on an individual that make it hard to determine whether they still pose a terrorist threat. This bill will address that issue. By pausing the expiry of the terrorist designation when an individual is in prison, we can ensure that the designation will not be revoked while an individual continues to pose a risk. This will prevent imprisoned terrorists from using their funds to support and finance terrorism.

While paused, the designation will still be reviewed every three years to ensure it is removed if it is no longer necessary. These amendments to the designation regime will ensure our legislative settings are clear, while also protecting the rights and freedoms of designated individuals.

Control orders: I now turn to the second part of the bill, which makes targeted changes to strengthen and improve the control orders regime. Control orders are civil orders made in the High Court on application by the Commissioner of Police. A control order imposes restrictions on high-risk individuals in the community to prevent them from engaging in further terrorism-related activities. As I have mentioned, the nature of terrorism is evolving. The bill, therefore, makes several targeted changes to reflect this, as well as incorporating some of the lessons learnt from the making of New Zealand’s first control orders.

The bill broadens the range of precursor offences with a link to terrorism that would make someone eligible for a control order. This responds to concerns about individuals who are coming to the attention of the police, presenting a wide range of concerning behaviour. The bill also extends the eligibility threshold for a control order to include people sentenced to home detention or a community-based sentence for a specified offence, and it enables the concurrence of control orders and post-sentence conditions. The bill also ensures that control order conditions can account for the specific circumstances of each individual by giving judges greater discretion when setting these requirements.

To balance the need to protect an individual’s privacy while allowing for public reassurance that appropriate action is being taken in respect of individuals who present a terrorism risk, the bill adjusts the current automatic name suppression requirement.

Lastly, the bill clarifies the protocols for the management of electronic monitoring requirements to ensure that individuals subject to electronic monitoring as part of a control order condition will be appropriately and effectively managed.

It is important to note here that while the eligibility criteria is being expanded to a wider range of high-risk individuals, there are several safeguards in the legislation to ensure a control order can only be granted when necessary and where the limitation on the individual is proportionate to the public safety risk. I acknowledge that this bill will not end the debate about the way we define and approach terrorism in Aotearoa. Ultimately, this Government believes that these amendments are necessary to ensure operational agencies are equipped with the most appropriate tools to respond to the changing nature of terrorism.

In conclusion, I’d like to once again thank my colleagues for their support on these important amendments. I appreciate the collaborative approach this House takes to matters of national security and public safety. I would also like to thank the Justice Committee and all those who submitted on the bill. You have ensured that the bill we will pass today strikes the right balance between protecting individual rights and keeping Aotearoa safe from terrorism. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you. Look, firstly, can I acknowledge the Minister that just stood and took the call, Willow-Jean Prime. This is a really important piece of legislation, and when it comes to national security, it should be a priority for any Government. And, of course, the Opposition has taken the position that we must support the Government and work with them. But I’m disappointed that the justice Minister, who has been very good and we’ve dealt with throughout this bill, didn’t get here in time to take the call herself. But I want to acknowledge the member that did take the call, and she did well. So, well done.

It is a really important piece of legislation. We have worked closely together in the select committee. The Minister also involved us early on in terms of reviewing and having a look at what was being put forward. And we’ve worked well together to make the changes that now the House is happy with, and putting the bill forward. Can I acknowledge the chair of the Justice Committee, who is in the House, Vanushi Walters, who does an excellent job of chairing the committee, and has done a very good job herself.

There’s one issue, and the Minister raised this, and I do want to speak to that. And it is around the royal commission of inquiry into the Christchurch attacks. I think that when I spoke on this through the committee stage, I did highlight the fact that it’s two years since we had that terrible tragedy at LynnMall. But right now I think there’s no greater need to be hyper vigilant around the fact that we have massive confidence and faith in our security agencies, our police—the agencies that are responsible for keeping us safe. But we are in a difficult situation at the moment where vulnerable people are becoming more vulnerable. We know that we’re struggling in dealing with mental health issues, and we know that terrorists look for and recruit those that are most vulnerable. So I think that there needs to be even more of a tighter focus around looking at what’s happening inside our country at the moment around national security.

If I can come back to the royal commission of inquiry—this is really important. There are actually only one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—there’s only been eight recommendations that have actually been completed. The rest are under way. If I go through them: recommendations 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, and 42 are still under way, and that is not acceptable. There has to be some urgency shown towards this. These recommendations have to be implemented. There has been enough time.

The three recommendations that we really want to focus on, and just highlight tonight, is recommendation 1: appoint a Minister to lead and coordinate counter-terrorism efforts—we think that’s very important—recommendation 2: establish a new national intelligence and security agency to be able to handle that intelligence and to be able to coordinate across our security services and in law enforcement agencies; and recommendation 4: develop and implement a public-facing counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism strategy. This is critical because at the moment in this country, we have got all sorts of issues and terms we are grappling with: division, freedom of speech issues, protests; people have become polarised. And so, actually, we need to have a mechanism to be able to deal with anything that may flare up and morph into something that, of course, all of us as a country would reject.

So I just encourage the Government to please stay focused, treat this with urgency. It is important. It is serious. Like I said, I would have preferred to have seen the justice Minister here in the House actually taking the call, but we do—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, and I’d prefer you to now start talking about the bill, Mr Mitchell. You’ve had a good four minutes now, so on the bill, please.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yes, so I was just responding to the comments that were made by the Minister. But we do support the bill, and we do think that it’s important, and we commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you for the opportunity to take a call at the third reading of this bill, Mr Speaker. I’d like to begin also by recognising Minister Allan, who’s done an exceptional job ushering this bill through the House—and it is a complex area of law—and also by acknowledging Minister Prime, who’s spoken to the bill this evening. I’d like to acknowledge the Justice Committee. We do work very collegially across the House on these important bills, and I think the conversation at committee stage last night reflected some of the tensions that we did have to deal with. So acknowledging my colleagues from the National Party and the ACT Party, as well as Labour, who worked very well. I almost think that we worked in a best-practice way on this bill: we took advice from officials, we then heard from submitters, and then we went back to officials for further advice and clarification.

This is a complex area of law, because it requires us to strike a balance between rights and community safety and make some really difficult balance calls. But I think everyone in this House will acknowledge that we’re in complex times and we need to make those difficult calls.

But I also do think that there are areas of law that we need to either keep under review or ensure that our eye is persistently on, and I think this is one of those areas, for a number of reasons. The first is the complexity around definitions. A while back, there was a UN Security Council Resolution 2178, which asked States specifically to take action around terrorism and foreign returned fighters, but it quite conspicuously didn’t set out a definition for terrorism. I think what we’re seeing internationally is the domestication of international law, but we’re all starting to grapple with these difficult terms around who is a foreign fighter, who is a returned fighter, what are the boundaries of terrorism. This is a complex space.

I think the other challenge for this area of law is that there’s a certain hybridity to control orders, in that technically they sit in the civil space, but there’s a conceptual flavour about them that gives them a criminal lean, and so the natural questions to ask are what are the proper procedural oversights, etc. In this case, I think we landed on recognising that while section 25 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—on criminal charges procedure, isn’t triggered—section 27, which embodies common law principles of natural justice, is.

Finally, I think it’s complex because it’s preventative in its nature. Some of our submitters did dwell on that. But this isn’t the first time that laws have been preventative—they often are. Catherine Hensen points out in her thesis that we find the germ of this concept quite early in justice legal theory. In fact, it’s present in Hobbes’ and Locke’s conception of a social contract, where citizens have to sacrifice some degree of their personal autonomy in exchange for the security provided by the State. This is a difficult area of law.

But I do want to assure everyone in the room and those who are watching that the select committee very diligently went through looking at what the appropriate balance was. The Minister, in the House yesterday, spoke to the gates that you had to step through to be able to be subject to a control order. There are three, the first being that the person must be a relevant person. The fact that that gate had been expanded, but also the fact that the second two gates stood as is—that there needs to be a real risk of engaging in a terrorism-related activity and, finally, that the judge needs to make the call on those particular circumstances. So I’m assured that there are suitable protections in place in this regard. This is a complex area of law, but it is very much needed now. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): It’s always excellent to have the likes of Hobbes and Locke being quoted in this House, and the member who’s just resumed her seat, Vanushi Walters, will know just how excited I am about that. Fortunately for this House—and for you, Mr Speaker—I will not be engaging in that. I’m going to stick to the bill, the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill. The member who has resumed her seat has outlined, I think, very well—as she said, this is a very complex area of law. It’s one of those classic cases where we are balancing various rights. At one degree, this is trying to balance the rights of the group, of the community—the safety, particularly, of the community—with the particular freedoms of an individual, and those, in particular, that we call terrorists. And it’s quite a balance.

I think it really is important to acknowledge that the Justice Committee—and again, other speakers, not only in this reading but in others, have talked about it—has worked incredibly hard, importantly alongside officials, advisers, the public, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and others, to tease out areas which did trouble us. I want to make it clear to the House that it wasn’t that anything was felt to be particularly bad in the legislation; it was just trying to think through how this might manifest in different scenarios, because ultimately we are giving enormous powers in this counter-terrorism Act. And I want to make the next comment clear: it’s not about any particular individual, but we’re giving enormous powers to the Prime Minister, and that in itself, at one level, is not a wrong thing. And again I want to stress that it’s not about whoever is the Prime Minister at the time, but, ultimately, one person gets quite a lot of powers; naturally with a caveat—there are lots of conditions within the bill; there’s lots of advice and so forth. But it’s quite substantial power.

I suppose I’m wanting to say, for those who are listening at home—or, of course, the Hansard into the future—that the select committee spent a lot of time, we as the House have spent a lot of time considering this, and I think we’ve landed in the right place. You might hear the slight hesitation in my voice. That’s not because I have any particular issues or problems—I think we have landed in a good space—but I’m always nervous when you’re dealing with something this substantial; that we may have missed something or overcooked or undercooked something. Who knows? But, to quote another philosopher—Voltaire—“the enemy is the perfect of the good.” So let’s give it a crack—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

SIMON O’CONNOR: “The perfect is the enemy of the good”—sorry. OK, I’m being well corrected here, which is possibly illustrating the point between perfection and good! But anyway—[Interruption] Oh, Lord! OK, we were doing so well until that point. As has been traversed—I’m not going to go too long into it now, because I’m getting concerned—there are two sorts of pillars to this: one is around designations; one is around control orders. I’ll start with the latter.

Control orders are, effectively, those measures, those controls, which can be put around those people who are deemed to be terrorists. One of the elements—I raised it yesterday in the committee of the whole House—was particularly around the nature of objectionable materials. There were concerns put forward by the likes of the Free Speech Union and others that this bill would see the notion of terrorism—or those objects, those points of media which we deem at this time to be objectionable, could now be seen as terroristic. That, understandably, is a problem. I certainly sit on the side that, first and foremost, doesn’t want more violence. I don’t like it. I don’t like a lot of these video games and other things which are out there glorifying violence. But I am also someone who is quite nervous about expanding who gets to decide what is and isn’t appropriate.

However, those objections, valid as they were, fault, if you will, or don’t fully understand what this law is doing. In effect, for a control order to be in place, you’ve got to be already identified to be a terrorist, having been involved in terrorist activities.

As a consequence of that, this piece of legislation is expanding—well, it’s expanding what the State can do, but it is limiting what access an individual can have to, in this case, objectionable material. I struggled with it yesterday, trying to articulate it, which in itself is an indication that I haven’t fully grasped it in my head. But, ultimately, we are not restricting the rights of ordinary New Zealanders to various materials—objectionable, offensive, extreme as they may be. What we are saying is that if you are the subject of a control order, then that can be more widely interpreted now, and I think that is appropriate.

The second is around designations, and that, again, falls to the prerogative of the Prime Minister, on advice, to make sure that they are able to designate entities and individuals as terrorists. By the way, this is an amendment bill, so, again, for those at home, this is not new; we’re amending an existing piece of legislation. But we’re just ensuring that those designations can remain. Put really, really simply, we’d found, unfortunately through experience, that someone being in prison for terrorist activities was finding that the designation could expire. So just one example of what this amendment bill does is ensure that that designation does not expire while they’re in prison, and there’s a whole lot of other elements with that as well.

So, as we’re saying, overall, it’s a good bill. Again, I’ll just put on the record, I’ve just got a slight nervousness, not for any particular reason, and I suppose it’s just a reflection of something that is so substantial. But I will make one last little plea, because that’s what I do, because designations, of course, as it says here, the scheme will allow the Prime Minister to designate terrorist entities, be they individuals or groups. I’ve spoken about it in the House before, but I do call on the Prime Minister and this Government, or any future Governments, that the likes of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps should be, in this country, designated a terrorist organisation, and also—and it won’t surprise some members of the House—I see the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas; they should also be designated terrorist organisations. I just want to make that call here today, but in particular with all that’s happening at the moment, particularly with the movement around Mahsa Amini, around women, life, and freedom, it is well beyond time that this Government, this Parliament, makes sure that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is aptly made a terrorist entity in this country. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I stand to take a call on this bill, the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill, and I do so first to acknowledge the Minister, Minister Allan, who, as my wonderful chair Ms Walters earlier mentioned, has taken a really difficult area of law, and she has shepherded this bill through, and it is greatly to her credit as to the thoughtful and collegial way in which she did that. I want to thank Minister Prime for bringing the final ministerial statement on the matter through. Minister Prime, in her previous incarnation as a mere MP, was in fact a member of the Justice Committee and, I believe, sat on the early stages of this bill, so it’s nice to see her here tonight to bring it to a final conclusion.

I also want to mention our Opposition members. Well, no, I want to then go back to our chair, because, actually, I think you’ve seen tonight why it is such a joy and a privilege to work on this particular committee. To work with someone of such knowledge and thoughtfulness as Ms Walters is a real joy. To work also with members such as Mr Mitchell, Mr Penk, and Mr O’Connor has also been a real pleasure on this occasion.

And I do just want to diverge slightly and say I recently was listening to my favourite podcast, The Rest Is Politics, a discussion between Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, which is the number one podcast in the UK, I believe. It’s about UK political life. And Rory Stewart was reflecting on his time as a senior ambassador in Afghanistan, and he mentioned that it was a wonderful police officer by the name of Mark Mitchell who got him out of an extremely dangerous situation where they were surrounded and under serious fire. And he praised Mr Mitchell’s calm and collected demeanour. It made me slightly nervous to realise that I was serving on a committee with someone with quite that familiarity with violence, but on the other hand, he does give excellent advice on dog control.

But returning to this bill, I do want to reiterate just how seriously it was taken, because this bill is something that does seriously impair the liberty of those who are either designated or subject to control orders. We took the responsibility extremely seriously. My colleagues have amply and ably gone over the detail of this matter, so I will not strain this House’s attention span any longer other than simply to reiterate that this is a serious piece of legislation. It does serious things to the liberty of those who will be subject to it and who, in fact, in the one case are subject to it. I assure this House that we treated this matter with the seriousness it demands, and I commend it to the House.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do want to begin by acknowledging, in the context of this particular law change, that we’re a nation now who has, in very real terms and very close memory, experienced an act of terrorism that resulted in 51 deaths on New Zealand soil, which was on March 15th in 2019.

So, in the past, when we’ve taken the Acts on counter-terrorism through this House, they’ve been as part of a remote movement in terms of the war on terror, for example, led by some of our ye olde allies, and we’ve been followers. But now it is something that we need to take even more seriously in our own, very real context. We’ve had a royal commission report, even, into not only our legal frameworks but also the ways that those frameworks interact with the institutions that we’ve entrusted with doing the work of counter-terrorism.

The control orders regime, it’s also really important to notice, is not a regime that applies to those who have been convicted, necessarily, of terrorism offending. It’s a much broader regime, and it implies a sort of ability, on the part of our institutions, to know ahead of time when someone might be a risk, when certain types of publications may be a risk, certain types of activity, travel—funding actions even can be seen as being part of that person’s risk in terms of terrorism. Whenever we deal with things as amorphous as that, we have to take account of the inherent prejudices in our systems and in the operation of our institutions. I think, now that we have a royal commission report, more than ever we know those prejudices to be real.

So in the past, when we’ve been part of that remote war on terror, we’ve gotten counter-terrorism law very wrong. We’ve detained an asylum seeker without charge or trial for two years, and that was Ahmed Zaoui. Our courts had to tell us, at every step, that we need to have a mind to a human rights - based process, and that we weren’t in fact acting in terms of counter-terrorism if we were giving away powers, giving away the rule of law and our own standards of human rights in order to look tough.

So the Green Party did support this bill to the Justice Committee because we wanted to see how that work would go. But our hesitation in part, which stands again and still, is in the ad hoc approach in terms of bringing this law back to tweak it, so to speak, but, in fact, including much more than what would be just cursory tweaks without waiting for that broad, systemic review that’s in the works. So we already had hesitations because this was an ad hoc approach to a review of counter-terrorism law, but we wanted to see what the select committee would do. We stand, as we did at second reading, unsatisfied that our concerns in terms of the rule of law and in terms of that rights-based approach and in terms of the safety mechanisms that we want to see in lawmaking, even when it comes to counter-terrorism, are there.

The committee heard from the likes of Amnesty International that this law includes unacceptable application of retrospectivity. So, again, that’s the rule of law being undermined—so sanctioning someone for an activity that, at the time they did it, was not unlawful. In a very real way, because the control powers within this regime are pretty restrictive, they go well beyond the Bail Act, and the Bail Act’s applying to people where there’s been a crime actually alleged, and this isn’t about that in all cases. So that’s pretty serious. And Amnesty International, I should say, also shared the Green Party’s problem with this kind of ad hoc approach to bringing back bits of counter-terrorism law and changing that without waiting for the broader, proper systemic review.

We heard from the Law Commission that there’d been no Māori consultation, which is also quite galling in the context of the way that we saw counter-terrorism law weaponised against Māori activists, and what we saw in the royal commission report that said that our institutions at the time of the royal commission report—and we’re yet to see any kind of meaningful reform since then—were focused on the wrong groups, which included the Muslim community itself and Māori. So to say that there was no consultation with those groups, and no Te Tiriti - based partner consultation, is quite stunning at this point in our experience of what counter-terrorism law can miss, what our institutions can miss, and how much those powers can be misused, not to keep us safe from terrorism. So that’s pretty concerning.

This bill doesn’t represent a new way of doing things in terms of having a global systemic vision of what counter-terrorism in the modern world, in Aotearoa’s context, should look like. It represents a repeat of what we’ve seen for decades, which is just doing little bits here and there without proper consultation, without taking account of current contexts, without taking account of the ways that power is misused in this space against communities and groups who are not, in fact, the threats to our society, and how to better balance those powers as against the right and, in fact, the very valid threat of modern terrorism. So, unfortunately, we can’t commend it to the House.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party for this, the third reading of the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designation and Control Orders) Amendment Bill in support, as we have been throughout the different hearings of this bill.

Mr Speaker, I’m going to divert a little bit away from the bill, if you would just give me this moment, to reflect on a trip that I’ve just made with the Pacific Mission 2023. One of the countries we went to was Fiji, which is experiencing its very first coalition Government ever. In speaking with one of the select committees there, one of their members asked the question, “How do you work in a bipartisan way within your Government, because we’ve never had to experience that ourselves before?”, and my answer to him was that when we can look for the betterment of the people of New Zealand, we can come to conclusions, usually, where we can be mostly all in agreement. I think that this is one of those bills where it has been complex and it has been hard to understand, and yet the officials were fantastic in giving us the information that allowed us to all come together and actually be able to support counter-terrorism controls and designations within our country.

There are two parts to this bill. The first part changes the provisions that are held in the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, and the second addresses changes to the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act 2019.

Since 2002, when we had the Terrorism Suppression Act, the Prime Minister of the day was able to designate only entities rather than individuals, and what we have found is that we’ve now got a lot of lone actors within the world, let alone New Zealand, that are going off and creating terrorist attacks based on their own ideology, rather than that of an entity. They may follow an entity, but it’s not the entity itself that is committing this attack, or even directing it; it is the lone individual. So we’re making changes that an individual can actually have a designation placed upon them, rather than an entire entity like ISIS or the Taliban, for example.

The Christchurch terrorist is a great example of where we should use this legislation, and, in fact, the royal commission inquiry had made a recommendation that make these changes because of him. Tarrant has been convicted of murder, of attempted murder, and of terrorism. Our courts have determined that he carried out the terrorist act on our soil, and this amendment means that he can be declared as a terrorist entity in his own right. He doesn’t have to belong to a group; his actions and subsequent convictions are enough for any Prime Minister of the day to make that declaration as to his status.

By this designation being made, it also means that no third party can provide any material support to him. He cannot be supported by property being made available to him, and if he had had any property here in New Zealand, no third party could deal with it on his behalf. It actually cuts potential supply and support from others towards a designated lone actor determined to be a terrorist in his own right.

Our changes also include that when a person is designated as a terrorist and is then incarcerated, a hold will be placed on their designation while they are incarcerated. Currently, they can actually apply for the designation to be revoked after a mere three years, and they can apply for this based on the fact that they are entitled to a three-year review, and they’re incarcerated so they cannot be a terror to the public. By being in jail, they can’t be cavorting with a terrorist entity, and this means that the terrorist could no longer meet the requirements needed for the designation. Our changes will mean that the incarcerated terrorist designation can be placed on hold for that time that they are incarcerated under His Majesty’s roof—that is, the requirement for continuing the designation is able to be placed on hold for the duration of that incarceration—and it saves the Prime Minister of the day having to reflect on whether or not that person still meets those requirements.

This brings me to the second part of the legislative changes, and this is about how we deal with designated terrorist entities once they leave prison. Being able to place a control order on to a person who is thought to pose a real threat to society will now be able to occur. We all recall the New Lynn supermarket horror attack of 2021, where a person injured six people, three of them critically, in his frenzied attack. That individual was a lone actor who was inspired by ISIS. Our legislation prevented him from being retained in a prison environment. Because we could not impose stricter control orders upon him, he ended up under heavy surveillance, and, thankfully, that surveillance enabled lives to be saved on that horrific day.

But we have to be smarter about how we deal with these individuals. That is why ACT is supporting these changes. Having police watching individuals 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because there’s no other option available to them needed to change. With that, I’d like to acknowledge the police and the work that they did not only in identifying that this person was a risk but actually being on his shoulder and able to stop that attack from being any worse than it already was.

We hope that by changing the legislation and by creating new protocols for managing electronic monitoring and allowing each order to be constructed for and unique to an individual in their circumstances—we expect that will greatly assist New Zealand Police.

I’d like to thank the Minister, who, in the committee of the whole House last night, clarified clause 15 within the bill, which relates to the objectionable material additions that we have placed into this bill. We did have a lot of concern from members who submitted to us that it would create possible terrorist entities for having possession of certain elements that they were deemed to be prohibited. The clarification from the Minister last night detailed that it’s actually not being in possession of objectionable material alone but rather as well as, meeting other criteria, to be a designated entity. Importing objectionable material alone will not designate a terrorist; rather, it will assist in the determination after other factors have been identified.

So, in summary, the changes to the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 will, effectively, mean that an individual can be named as a designated entity, the expiry of a designation is paused if the person is in jail, the three-yearly review is retained but the grounds for that have been amended, and the designated entity will still have the ability to challenge the designation and its ongoing status, but this will be done through a review process rather than a revocation one. The changes to the control orders will add some new definitions which will include and allow control orders on community-based sentences and electronic monitoring, as well as post-detention conditions and residential requirements.

In March 2019, we lost our innocence as a country. Our police expect us to help them protect our people, and this is a step that we can assist them with once an individual has been designated as a terrorist threat. At least one part of the recommendations from the royal commission inquiry is focusing on the terrorist and their activities, rather than the good citizens of this country—that, we can and will support.

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

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.