Wednesday, 31 May 2023

WEDNESDAY, 31 MAY 2023

WEDNESDAY, 31 MAY 2023

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

Bills

Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill

Government Adoption of Member’s Bill

SPEAKER: Members, I have received a letter from the Minister of Justice informing me that the Government, with the agreement of the member in charge, has adopted the Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill.

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. Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

2021-22 annual reports for:

Health Promotion Agency

Taranaki District Health Board

Whanganui District Health Board

updated Government response to the report of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the inquiry into the review of the Radio New Zealand Charter

2023-26 statement of intent for the Retirement Commission

statement of performance expectations for the year ending 30 June 2024 for the Retirement Commission

updated strategic intentions 2021-25 for the Ministry of Transport.

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. 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—Health

1. Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula) to the Minister of Health: Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. How has Budget 2023 reduced the cost of healthcare for New Zealand households?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): I was proud to announce that this Government is reducing the cost of healthcare to New Zealand households by removing the $5 copayment for prescription medicines in July this year. Removing the $5 charge will make it easier and cheaper for New Zealanders to access the medicines they need, having a meaningful impact on many households, particularly those who have multiple prescriptions to fill on a regular basis.

Dr Tracey McLellan: Can the Minister tell us more—why has the Government removed the $5 prescription fee from medicines?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: The $5 charge is a barrier to some New Zealanders getting the medicines they need. As a doctor, there were times when my patients couldn’t get the medicines they needed to stay well. This is particularly the case for low-income households, Māori, Pasifika people, and disabled New Zealanders at a time when people are facing increasing pressures on household budgets.

Dr Tracey McLellan: How will this support the health and wellbeing of those New Zealanders?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: By removing the $5 co-payment on prescription medicines, we are investing in simple treatments that prevent chronic conditions becoming emergencies that need hospital treatment. We’re making it easier to get blood pressure treatment so fewer people have strokes. People will have more access to diabetes treatments that prevent kidney failure and blindness. We’re also making it easier to get cholesterol treatment to prevent heart attacks. This will help seniors on fixed incomes, young people needing contraception, and people with chronic conditions.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What feedback have you received about this policy?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Pharmacists and health advocates across the country have welcomed this policy. Unichem Central Pharmacy Rotorua owner, David Honore, said, “It was a huge help. The co-payment has been a barrier for many of our patients.” Bindi Norwell of ProCare said, “Today’s announcement will save the Government money and shift the dial significantly from an equity perspective.” And Pharmacy Guild chief executive Andrew Gaudin, who has advocated for this policy for many years, said it would make a huge difference to patients who have previously had to make difficult choices when they are sick.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly this Government’s action in securing a gold-standard trade agreement with the United Kingdom. From today, the UK free-trade agreement unlocks unprecedented access to the UK market for our exporters, adding up to a billion dollars a year to our GDP over time. Implementation of the agreement will immediately save around $37 million, with the instant elimination of tariffs and new duty-free quotas covering 99.5 percent of our current exports. This is a major delivery milestone and sits alongside the seven new or upgraded free-trade agreements secured to date by the Labour Government—which is helping to contribute to record earnings for our exporters and thereby helping to soften the pressure of the current global economic environment.

Christopher Luxon: Was his police Minister correct when she said, “New Zealanders feel safer under Labour.”, despite violent crime increasing 33 percent, retail crime doubling, and gang membership up 66 percent?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I know the member has concerns about literacy and numeracy in schools. One of the things that kids learn in schools around comprehension is to read the whole of the sentence rather than just a little bit of it. Because if he had done that, he would find that the Minister was specifically talking about the 1,800 extra police that have been put on the beat under this Government, which stands in quite stark contrast to the reduction in the number of police relative to the size of the population under the last National Government.

Christopher Luxon: Does he think New Zealanders feel safer?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think Kiwis feel safer when there are more police on the beat. And 1,800 extra police on the beat is a pretty good track record from this Government.

Christopher Luxon: Is violent crime higher or lower than six years ago?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member himself will know that the statistics around violent crime show that there has been an escalation in violent crime, and I think all Governments should take that seriously.

Christopher Luxon: Is retail crime higher or lower than six years ago?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It is higher.

Christopher Luxon: Is gang membership higher or lower than six years ago?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We’ve been very clear—the member himself has been very clear—that there has been an escalation in gang membership and gang activity in New Zealand. In particular, I note the member himself blames the Australians for that in his public comments when he talked about the fact that it was the 501s that have contributed to that. I’m very proud of the work that the police have been doing to crack down on gang activity. I note that something like 33,000 charges have been laid against gang members as part of Operation Cobalt. We are backing the police to do that work with extra resources and extra cops on the beat, which is more than they got under the last Government.

Christopher Luxon: Does he stand by his claim in January about ram raids, when he said, “I think it is a very significant priority and you can be reassured I won’t be taking my eyes off that one.”; and if so, why have ram raids increased 55 percent since he became Prime Minister?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the first part of the question: yes, absolutely, and our work in that area is not done. The focus that we have had is on reducing offending rather than having young people going into a repeat cycle of offending. So the turnaround programmes that we’ve put in place, for example, have seen between 70 and 80 percent of the kids referred to those not reoffending. I note that the one policy the National Party have come up with—which is to send those kids to boot camps—results in about an 80 percent reoffending rate. So given the choice between a policy that could reduce reoffending by about 80 percent or have about 80 percent of them reoffending, of course only the National Party—or maybe the ACT Party—tend to choose the one that results in the higher level of reoffending.

Question No. 3—Environment

3. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Talofa lava. Does he have confidence that the approach to regulating wastewater discharges to the coastal marine and estuarine environment is fit for purpose, taking into account environmental and Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): There are longstanding problems with sewage discharges into the coastal marine and estuarine environments. Storm overflow events have become more common. Sewage discharges have continued because of under-investment in sewage treatment infrastructure. Improvements cannot be achieved via the planning system alone, which is why the Government is addressing these issues through the affordable water reforms. It is appalling that many of New Zealand’s beaches and estuaries are regularly polluted by sewage. We’re meant to be a First World country.

Teanau Tuiono: Does he consider it consistent with the aims of the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement for waste water to be discharged from sewage plants into Hokianga Harbour, and, if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No. It’s transparently obvious that we shouldn’t be pouring sewage into our estuaries.

Hon Marama Davidson: Talofa lava. What assurances can he give to the people of places like Kohukohu, Rāwene, Ōpōnoni, Ōmāpere, Waimā, Whirinaki, and Motukaraka that changes to the planning framework and water services will stop community waste-water plants discharging sewage into Hokianga Harbour?

Hon DAVID PARKER: There is, I’ve seen from the media, a live application to the Far North District Council in respect of some of those issues, and I expect those decisions will be taken by the council responsibly. I do note that the shorter, medium, and longer term solutions to these lack of infrastructure problems lie in the affordable water reforms rather than the resource management reforms.

Teanau Tuiono: What, if any, funding is the Ministry for the Environment providing to help Far North District Council shift to discharging waste water on to land rather than into the Hokianga Harbour?

Hon DAVID PARKER: None, because that’s not the role of the Ministry for the Environment. Affordable waters will address those issues.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he consider it fair that tangata whenua have to respond to every application made to destroy or degrade their local environment so that taonga can be protected?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I think it’s one of the strengths of the New Zealand system that people who are dissatisfied with applications to pollute have a right of participation. That includes tangata whenua as well as other New Zealanders.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement yesterday that “the operating allowances are designed to enable us to achieve particular fiscal goals. We have been able to achieve those goals, including keeping debt low and including our return to surplus”, and how have those goals changed since he became Minister of Finance?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first part of the question, yes. In answer to the second part of the member’s question, I announced the changes to the Government’s fiscal rules ahead of Budget 2022. The first of those is to maintain an operating balance before gains and losses surplus between 0 and 2 percent of GDP on average over time in order to allow us to respond to economic shocks as the situation requires, but also ensuring that day-to-day spending is not adding to net core Crown debt over time. The second rule is to keep net core Crown debt below a ceiling of 30 percent of GDP on the new debt measure. As I said to the member in my response to her question yesterday, even though Budget allowances have from time to time been updated in light of events and additional forecasts, this is consistent with our overall strategy and is something that the Government should do in order to make sure that spending decisions remain consistent with our fiscal rules.

Nicola Willis: Does he still agree with the fiscal goal outlined by Grant Robertson MP, who, in his 2017 Budget Responsibility Rules, stated, “For the last 20 years, core Crown spending has been around 30 percent of GDP, and we will manage our expenditure carefully to continue this trend.”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That very insightful comment from that member all those years ago is one that is still the goal. However, as the member is well aware, events occur—events like COVID or events like the global financial crisis (GFC), all of which require Governments to respond. The member needs to reflect that if she doesn’t believe that spending should have got to the levels that it did during COVID, be upfront with New Zealanders and tell them what wouldn’t have happened. Was it no wage subsidy? Was it no funding for the health system? New Zealanders needed a Government to step up and respond, and we did it.

Nicola Willis: Can he confirm that Government spending has not just exceeded that goal in the COVID lockdown years but every year since 2020 and is forecast to fail that goal for each of the next four years, and why is he now prepared to fail what he once believed was a core part of Budget responsibility?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the member knows, what the Budget forecast shows is that we will return to around 31.5 percent as core Crown spending. The decision that the member could make, if she were in the position to do so, to click our fingers and say we’re going to go to 30 percent, would have a dramatic impact on the services that New Zealanders rely on. If the National Party wants to campaign on cutting funding for health and cutting funding for education, that’s fine. We’re not doing that.

Nicola Willis: Can he confirm that core Crown spending will lift to 33 percent of GDP next year, and doesn’t he think it’s a bit rich to keep blaming COVID for what is in fact his inability to control his expenses so that New Zealanders can have tax reduction?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, the member now needs to answer the question for the people in Tairāwhiti and in Hawke’s Bay and in Auckland about how the National Party would pay for the recovery from the Auckland anniversary weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, because the member well knows that the additional expenditure that the Government had to take on, from the half-yearly update up until now, in large part relates to that recovery and rebuild. On this side of the House, we think it is our job to support those communities. If the National Party wants to abandon them, they’ll have to answer for that.

Nicola Willis: Does he recall the 2018 Budget Responsibility Rules—here they are—which aim to reduce net core Crown debt to 20 percent of GDP, and can he confirm that by that measure debt will hit 43 percent of GDP next year?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I can confirm is in the year following on from that, net core Crown debt was 18.6 percent and the Government met its objective. Then, an event called COVID happened. I know the member wants to wish it away, but she and her colleagues consistently asked for the Government to spend more money during the period of COVID. And yes, it is true that that means, on the old debt measure, which was not internationally comparable, we do reach the levels that the member is talking about. Again, this is all fine for the National Party to say this; they have to answer the question: what would be cut if they were to do anything different?

Nicola Willis: Does he still stand by the Budget responsibility rule that the Government will deliver a sustainable operating surplus across an economic cycle, and can he confirm that not only has he delayed surplus twice in a row but he is forecast to run six deficits in a row from 2020 to 2025?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I refer the member to my primary answer, where I did indeed explain to her last year’s Budget, where we updated the fiscal rules from the ones that she has just shown, also noting that, yes, it is correct that it will be six years. That is exactly the same length of time that the National Government took to get itself back into surplus after the GFC and the earthquakes. This is what Governments do. Governments step in to look after people during times of crisis. Again, the National Party has to explain what gets cut, which communities don’t get rebuilt after a cyclone. That’s what the National Party is, effectively, telling New Zealanders.

Nicola Willis: Isn’t it in fact the case that his Budget Responsibility Rules from 2018 are no longer worth the paper they were written on: he’s spending beyond what he promised, he’s running deficits, he’s loaded up the debt because he can’t control Government spending?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, and the member, as I said, needs to keep up. Last year, we had a thing called Budget 2022, where we reissued the fiscal rules to make sure (a) that we were operating on an internationally comparable basis and (b) that we set goals for ourselves to get back into surplus. The National Party can’t have it both ways. Asking for more spending, thinking that they can reduce taxes, and thinking that they can reduce debt—it’s the fiscal Bermuda Triangle, and Nicola Willis is right where Paul Goldsmith was.

Question No. 5—Education (Māori Education)

5. PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai) to the Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education): Talofa. How is Budget 2023 supporting Māori education?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education)): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. The balanced approach taken in Budget 2023 has enabled the Government to continue our substantial support for Māori education with a further $225 million investment to support ākonga and kura across the country. This funding will improve and modernise kura infrastructure across Aotearoa, fund learning support co-ordination for schools and kura providing kaupapa Māori and Māori-medium education, and support the roll-out of our local histories curriculum to make sure ākonga learn more about their home and its people, and much more.

Paul Eagle: What is the significance of the investment in kura infrastructure?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, Budget 2023 sees the biggest ever investment in kaupapa Māori and Māori-medium infrastructure, with nearly $135 million targeted at building more classrooms and modernising existing ones, acquiring new land for more kura, and setting aside specific funding for the maintenance and remediation of kōhanga reo and puna reo across Aotearoa. This record investment builds on our consecutive investments in kura property across our previous two Budgets.

Paul Eagle: How will ākonga Māori benefit from the new funding for learning support?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Ākonga Māori and kaupapa Māori and Māori-medium education have been under-served by the education system in terms of their access to learning support. This $40 million initiative provides support for learners with the highest needs. It will impact about 25,000 ākonga Māori across 325 kura providing kaupapa Māori and Māori-medium education—that’s levels 1 and 2—and their whānau. It offers resourcing for the design and delivery of solutions to strengthen the capacity and capability of these schools and kura to identify, plan, and coordinate responses to the learning strengths and support needs of ākonga Māori, in partnership with whānau.

Paul Eagle: How else will ākonga Māori be supported through the Budget 2023 Māori education package?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, there are a number of ways, but I’ll just touch on two. First of all, nurturing mātauranga Māori through the continued support of Te Matatini and national primary and secondary school kapa haka competition, but also nearly $18 million providing 6,500 ākonga Māori to enter the Pūhoro STEMM Academy. This will enable them the opportunity to study and have employment opportunities in science, engineering, technology, the arts, and mathematics.

Question No. 6—Education

6. ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of Education: Does she agree with the principal of New Zealand’s largest high school when he described the Government’s roll-out of the NCEA changes as creating a “ridiculous” situation which “doesn’t make any sense” and as “harming student outcomes”, and has she heard of any other schools that are planning on dropping NCEA level 1 next year because of similar concerns?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): No. I do, however, hold the view that schools should make decisions based on what is appropriate for their students. NCEA level 1 has always been optional and remains so. Schools are not required to notify the ministry of whether they are offering NCEA level 1. I am aware of four secondary schools that have notified the ministry that they have opted not to offer NCEA level 1. The reasons for this vary greatly.

Erica Stanford: Can she explain why schools who have always offered NCEA level 1 are now choosing to pull out, specifically citing her changes to NCEA as the reason, as they are harming student outcomes?

Hon JAN TINETTI: NCEA level 1 remains an optional qualification. It has been optional since the introduction of NCEA in 2002. It is up to each school to decide what subject-based course offering for NCEA is best for their school community. I also point out that most other countries we benchmark against only have two years of high-stakes assessments, equivalent to our levels 2 and 3. So it is not unusual that level 1 is optional when compared to international standards.

Erica Stanford: Why didn’t she just pause the entire level 1, 2, and 3 NCEA reforms to ensure consistency, rather than forcing year 11 students to sit both new and old standards that top principals are now saying will harm student outcomes?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Because the evidence does not show that. We have piloted the new level 1 standards extensively, and none of the results found any issues with the transitioning between the new level 1 standards and the existing level 2 standards. I would like to highlight a quote from a science teacher from a large Auckland secondary school, whose students participated in the level 1 pilot and are then being taught the level 2 standards. I quote: “Students who entered level 2 chemistry and biology this year have brought a stronger systems-thinking approach to their studies of ecology, a deeper grasp of variation, leading to level 2 genetics, and level 1 understanding of microbes that feeds well into cell biology and physiology, etc., at level 2.”

Erica Stanford: Is the principal of an Auckland girls’ school wrong when she says the NCEA changes “dumbed down fundamentals like writing and maths” and a level 1 maths examination that “keeps standards high” is being removed?

Hon JAN TINETTI: What I would say to any principal is that the NCEA change programme has been developed with experts, with the sector, and decisions have been made in strong consultation with the professional advisory group on NCEA, who are made of experienced sector leaders, who, only this morning at the SPANZ conference in New Plymouth, told me that they are very happy with the changes that have been made.

Erica Stanford: What does it say for educational equity in this country when high-performing schools with more resources can offer superior-quality diplomas while everyone else is forced to use her second-rate NCEA level 1 qualification that will “harm student outcomes”?

Hon JAN TINETTI: I absolutely refute the characterisation of our NCEA programme that that member has made there. What I will point out is that, when the changes about NCEA first went out in 2018, one of the proposals was that level 1 was going to be dropped completely. But, ironically, it was the schools that came from low socio-economic areas who told us that, no, it was important for them to retain NCEA level 1, and that is exactly what we have done.

Question No. 7—Trade and Export Growth

7. IBRAHIM OMER (Labour) to the Minister for Trade and Export Growth: How will the New Zealand – United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement benefit New Zealand?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): It’s a great day for exporters, for importers, and for the wider New Zealand economy. The United Kingdom - New Zealand free-trade agreement (FTA) has now officially entered into force. From today, New Zealand’s exporters will reap the rewards of this Government’s gold standard agreement. The UK FTA delivers unprecedented access to the fifth-largest economy in the world and a consumer market worth $3 trillion. As of today, 99.5 percent of current exports will now enter the UK duty-free, thanks to a combination of tariff eliminations and duty-free quotas. That saves Kiwi businesses $37 million from day one. I want to thank officials and the two Prime Ministers—Ardern and Hipkins—who have both pushed hard to get this FTA completed so quickly.

Ibrahim Omer: What does that mean for everyday New Zealanders?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: We know that one-in-four New Zealanders’ jobs depend on trade, and that employment grows up to 12 percent faster when businesses start exporting. In a cost of living crisis, the UK FTA cuts cost for exporters, boosts opportunities for small business, and creates and protects Kiwi jobs. The Labour Government knows that trade is key to our growing economy, and the UK FTA will boost our GDP by up to a billion dollars.

Ibrahim Omer: How does the UK FTA support our primary sector?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: More good news. The primary sector is hugely important to our economic security. Last year, we saw primary export earnings reach a record—a record—$53 billion. The UK FTA unlocks unprecedented access to the UK market for our farmers and growers, the kind of access that we haven’t seen since the 1970s. For example, our wine industry, New Zealand’s biggest export to the UK, has had at least $25 million in tariffs disappear overnight; honey producers will no longer face a 16 percent duty; and our dairy and red meat sectors will transition to duty-free quota access for the first time in 50 years.

Ibrahim Omer: How does the UK FTA support the Government’s trade recovery strategy?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: It just keeps getting better, I tell you! The Labour Government is committed to opening as many doors as possible for Kiwi exporters. Since 2017, we have signed seven new—seven new—or upgraded free-trade agreements: the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, thank you, Mr Parker; the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership; the EU FTA; the UK FTA; the Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement upgrade; China upgrade; and Singapore. What we have secured for New Zealanders is historic and I want to, once again, thank all the officials and politicians involved in that.

Question No. 8—Police

8. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister of Police: Does she stand by her statement, “It is my view that New Zealanders feel safer”; if so, why?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): As per my response to written question No. 11101 and oral questions on 9 May, 11 May, 17 May, and yesterday, on 30 May, I again stand by my full statement that, “In my view, New Zealanders feel safer with a Government on track to deliver 1,800 additional police officers.”

Hon Mark Mitchell: Have ram raids increased or decreased since she became police Minister?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Ram raids peaked last year in August, with 116. Since that time, we have seen peaks and troughs. I acknowledge there is a problem, and I will continue to work to make sure we see those numbers come down.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was direct and time-bound, and it was not addressed in the period since the Minister became the Minister.

SPEAKER: That may or may not be correct; I wouldn’t have a clue. I didn’t hear it. The House is clearly telling me that it did not want to hear the answer. Settle down, and we might get to hearing some questions.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Speaking to that point of order—

SPEAKER: Another point of order?

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Yes. I think you’re absolutely right, Mr Speaker, but I would add that disorder arrives when Ministers do not address questions which are clear and obvious.

SPEAKER: Not in this instance. I was listening very carefully, and it started before the Minister opened her mouth.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Have ram raids increased or decreased since she became police Minister?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: We have seen in August 2022 a peak of 116; as of April, there were 68. There’s been a decrease of 41 percent since peak levels in 2022. We are now averaging approximately 55 a month.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order, Mr Speaker. That time—in silence—it was a very tight, clear, direct question. The Minister did not address the question at all.

SPEAKER: I disagree with you. You can use your supplementaries to find out more information.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Was the Minister the Minister of Police in August of last year?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I couldn’t hear the question, sorry.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Was the Minister the Minister of Police in August of last year?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: No.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Supplementary. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Well, that just cost the—you can have an extra question for that.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Thank you, Mr Speaker. So can the Minister please answer the question for the period that she has been Minister: have ram raids increased or decreased since she’s been Minister?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: As I’ve said clearly, there has been a peak at 116. Those levels fluctuate on any given month. If that member wants to get into the details per month, we’ve seen an increase of 10 from last month to this month.

Question No. 9—Agriculture

9. MARK CAMERON (ACT) to the Minister of Agriculture: What official discussions, if any, has he had with his ministerial colleagues about a levy on nitrogen fertiliser used in agriculture, and what advice, by date and title, if any, has he received about a levy on nitrogen fertiliser used in agriculture?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): This Government is committed to pricing agricultural emissions. Global trends and consumer expectations are changing, and it is imperative that we continue to lift our sustainability credentials and futureproof our export growth. The use of nitrogen fertiliser on farm and associated nitrous oxide is something we have always been looking at. It was in the He Waka Eke Noa partnerships proposal. It was in the Government’s consultation document. It was in Pricing agricultural emissions: Report under section 215 of the Climate Change Response Act 2002. I’ve had ongoing discussions about a range of options for nitrogen fertiliser with various ministerial colleagues, partners from the He Waka Eke Noa partnership, and from my officials, and those discussions have been supported by advice and briefings from officials, a large number of which are publicly available online.

Mark Cameron: Point of order, Mr Speaker. There were two legs to that question, and I seek your clarity and guidance, if I may. The question was on notice about the dates and titles of advice he received. He didn’t provide that information in his answer.

SPEAKER: I’ll give the member an extra question, and he can ask further questions to try and find out.

David Seymour: Point of order. The ACT caucus is very grateful for that additional supplementary question. However, I just do raise with you that quite often a Minister gives an answer that is very unsatisfactory and you say, “Well, you can have more supplementary questions.”, but I do question what is the point of having more supplementary questions if they never actually answer one. You just end up getting the same result more often.

SPEAKER: Yeah, and, as you can imagine, sometimes it’s difficult presiding and deciding against whether the Minister has answered or not in that moment. I’m not absolutely 100 percent sure that he didn’t, but I’m giving the member an extra question anyway. I mean, I could have said, “Well, yes, it has been addressed.” I’ve decided to err on the side that the member can explore further. That’s the reason why I’ve done it this way.

Mark Cameron: Has he asked for advice about what the average cost per hectare on any tax on nitrogen fertiliser will be for the average vegetable grower and/or dairy farmer; if not, why not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I have asked for that at a different range of carbon prices and different scientific calculations. There is a whole range, and I’m sure it will be available for the member when he wants to inquire.

Mark Cameron: Will the Government remove barriers to technology that allow farmers to reduce their nitrogen footprint before it tries to introduce a fertiliser tax?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: We have no proposal to introduce a fertiliser tax. What I discussed with a number of partners from across the sectors was the dilemma that we face is that if we are to continue and, thanks to the Minister of Finance and Budget 2022, we put a billion dollars—a billion dollars—into the agricultural sector, $338 million of which went into research for agricultural emissions. But if we are to continue to put investment into R & D and then to support farmers with the uptake of that R & D, we need to generate some revenue. The generosity of the taxpayer can’t continue forever. And we have in the 1980s actually removed subsidies from agriculture and farmers are quite proud of that. So the discussion I had with some industry leaders was: did they think that a levy on nitrogenous fertilisers was a good way of raising revenue to pay for the research and development and the assistance that might be needed for the uptake of technology when it was discovered?

Mark Cameron: Has he asked for any advice on the likely impact the tax on nitrogen fertiliser will have on the cost of living; if not, why not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Not directly. Can I point to the average price of urea: over the past two years, it’s gone from about $500 to $600 a tonne up to $1,400 a tonne, and farmers and growers have had to continue to pay for that. That wasn’t sustainable. It’s now dropped back down to about $900 a tonne and it may come back down further. The idea of a levy that would have contributed to money for research and development was my idea of a possible good investment. The industry leaders have come back to me and said they don’t like that. We now have to sit down and work on the best way forward of following through with He Waka Eke Noa, but dealing with the dilemma that they don’t want to pay anything until they’ve worked out the full analysis of sequestration options. That will take some time. It will take more research and development. The issue is who will pay for that.

Mark Cameron: Will he now rule out a tax on urea; if not, why not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: There has been no considerate, comprehensive consideration of this by Government or by Ministers at all. I’ve had brief discussions with sector leaders; they’ve indicated that they don’t want to proceed with that. The question I have is whether I should then bother to put that proposal up to my colleagues. I probably think not, but I’m not going to rule anything in or out here and now.

Question No. 10—Disability Issues

10. ANAHILA KANONGATA'A (Labour) to the Minister for Disability Issues: Fa'afetai lau afioga le Fofoga Fetalai. How does Budget 2023 support disabled people?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister for Disability Issues): Budget 2023 increased the support for disabled people to access disability services, and continues our transformation of the disability support system. This includes $863.6 million to help ease cost pressures for disability support services. It also ensures that we can meet increases in service volumes due to demand—this includes increased demand for individualised funding, which gives disabled people more control over the support that they receive. Through this Budget, we’re also ending the minimum wage exemption, improving access to family and sexual violence prevention services for disabled people who need them, and making half-price fares for Total Mobility permanent. Budget 2023 adds to this Government’s record investment in supporting disabled people.

Anahila Kanongata'a: How will these investments impact the lives of disabled people?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: These investments are significant. Our disability support system currently supports approximately 120,000 people to access over 2.2 million days of care in residential care and the equivalent of 4.9 million funded support hours through individualised funding, as well as providing for equipment, vehicle, and housing modifications. This Budget funding continues support for Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People, which we established last year, to continue their work to transform the disability support system to ensure that disabled people have greater choice and control over the support that they receive.

Anahila Kanongata'a: What can she tell us about the changes to the minimum wage exemption?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Currently, we have disabled people being paid less than the minimum wage for their work on the basis that they are perceived to be less productive, and that just is not right. Our Government will end the discriminatory and unfair minimum wage exemption that allows more than 800 disabled people to be paid less than the minimum wage. Going forward, the current exemption will be replaced with a wage supplement that will ensure that employment opportunities are protected and that disabled people are paid at least the minimum wage.

Anahila Kanongata'a: How does Budget 2023 support the elimination of family and sexual violence against disabled people?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: For decades, disabled people have either had to turn to mainstream services that often try to accommodate their needs but don’t always have the skills or the facilities required, or they just don’t access those services at all. We are addressing this in Budget 2023 by funding extra support to enable our existing mainstream family and sexual violence providers to meet the accessibility needs of disabled people and tangata whaikaha Māori. We are also providing funding for specialist support. This twin-track approach gives disabled people choice in the types of support that they can access when they need it. This is a Government that’s committed to investing in disabled people, and that’s exactly what Budget 2023 does.

Question No. 11—Prime Minister

11. DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Prime Minister): Yes.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: How can he stand by the track record of this Government, which has not fully implemented any of the key recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group designed to ensure people have an adequate income and standard of living and can live with dignity?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Because this Government’s made enormous progress towards implementing the recommendations from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, including delivering significant increases to those on the lowest incomes, and particularly those who are reliant on the State for their income.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does he agree that it is unacceptable to be punishing the poorest in society by slashing the little income they have with benefit sanctions, especially at a time when one in 10 children and one in five tamariki Māori experience material hardship; if not, why not?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I do think it’s important that in considering welfare policy we seek to get the balance right between ensuring that we are supporting the most vulnerable, that we are encouraging people to go into work when they’re able to go into work, but that we also consider the consequences of those decisions on children.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Will he, then, remove all benefit sanctions?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That’s not something that we’re currently considering.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Is he comfortable that some disabled adults and children will get less from Work and Income via the disability allowance and temporary additional support because of the scrapping of the prescription fee policy when levels of support for disabled people have been identified as severely inadequate; if so, will he finally increase the disability allowance and child disability allowance?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The people that the member is speaking to will get the benefits of not having to pay the $5 prescription co-payment, so I think the whole thrust of his question is incorrect.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What is he doing, if anything, to respond to the 165 percent increase in food bank use across the country over the last three years, highlighted by the recent report of the Auckland City Mission that it now distributes 65,000 food parcels a year, up from 9,000 food parcels 10 years ago?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m particularly aware that, if we’re talking about food banks in Auckland, one of the pressure points for them in recent times has been the effect of the recent severe weather, and we have been working to support them through that. We are very focused as a Government, and have been in the entire time we’ve been in Government, on improving the lot of the New Zealanders who are living on the lowest incomes. That includes those working on the minimum wage—they’ve seen the minimum wage increase every year since we’ve been in Government. It includes those who are dependent on the State for their income, whether that’s superannuitants or those on the job seeker benefit, or those who are unable to work. We have been focused on making sure that we are increasing the amount of income that they are getting as well. I don’t think any party in Parliament should be satisfied with people having to go to food banks to seek that level of support.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does he stand by his decision to rule out removing GST from food when a recent poll showed that more than half of the country are buying less fruit and vegetables due to rising food costs, which in the last year have had the highest annual increase for three decades?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Removing GST off food would be an incredibly expensive policy. As I have indicated before, repeatedly, the Government has had a difficult balancing act in this year’s Budget to make sure we’re supporting people through a cost of living crisis whilst also making sure that we deal with some of the underlying drivers of that, the most notable of which is the level of inflation that we have experienced. As the Reserve Bank indicated last week, the Government’s Budget is putting downward pressure on inflation, and we should see inflation back within the target range by the end of next year. That is actually one of the best things we can do to ease the financial pressure that all New Zealand families are facing.

Question No. 12—Statistics

12. SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore) to the Minister of Statistics: Does she stand by her statement to media when asked if she would stake her job on a 90 percent census collection rate, “Absolutely”, and does she stand by all her statements and actions relating to the 2023 Census?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Minister of Statistics): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Absolutely, I stand by my confidence in Tatauranga Aotearoa Stats NZ to deliver a census that gives us a robust dataset, giving Government agencies, city and district councils, iwi and community groups, and business good information to plan for the future. In answer to the second part of the question, I stand by my actions and statements in the context in which they were made.

Simon Watts: Can she confirm that despite spending over twice as much as the 2018 Census, the current Māori response rate is just 4 percent higher than the 2018 Census and well below the 90 percent target?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: There were some considerable issues with the 2018 Census, which resulted in an overall response rate of, unfortunately, around about 81 percent overall. Significant effort has been made in this census to ensure that we get a good overall response rate. We’re now sitting close to 88, 89 percent overall, and we’re confident that we’ll get there. In terms of the Māori response rate, the response rate in 2018—the raw individual partial response rate—actually sat at about 67 percent. We are now tracking along at about 72 percent from Māori. We would, of course, like that to be higher, so I encourage any iwi leaders, any people who are prominent in the Māori communities, any sports players who can, to encourage people in the Māori communities to complete their census.

Simon Watts: Can she confirm media reports that the number of people undertaking personal grievances relating to the 2023 Census has doubled since it was last reported, and what is the number of personal grievances received to date?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: I do understand that there are some personal grievances being taken by some census workers against the person or agency which employed them. That is an ongoing process, and it is an operational matter for Stats NZ.

Simon Watts: Point of order, Mr Speaker. You may be expecting what I am going to ask, but my question was pretty clear, in regards to the number of personal grievances received to date, and that wasn’t answered.

SPEAKER: It was definitely addressed, though.

Simon Watts: Has she spoken to the Minister of Justice about reports that they will be using that same recruitment contractor for the general election as was used for the 2023 Census, given that contractor now has multiple personal grievance cases taken against them, and, if so, why not?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: I have not spoken to the Minister of Justice about that.

Budget Debate

Bills

Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill

Debate resumed from 30 May on the .

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill. There is a lot to be optimistic about in the two portfolios I lead—Health, and Research, Science and Innovation—in Budget 2023. This Budget funds the critical services that New Zealanders rely on day to day, and it is vital that we continue to deliver these services well.

Our Government is reducing the cost of healthcare for ordinary New Zealand households by removing the $5 co-payment for prescription medicines by July this year. Removing the $5 co-pay will make it easier and cheaper for New Zealanders to access the medicines they need, having a meaningful impact on many households, particularly those that have multiple prescriptions to fill on a regular basis. We know the $5 charge is a barrier to some New Zealanders getting essential medicines, and this is especially at a time when there are pressures on household budgets. Removing the co-pay will also help remove demand on hospitals and other health services.

There’s been a lot said about this initiative since it was announced, but I know from my experience as a doctor there were many times when my patients didn’t collect the prescriptions they desperately needed. We know that more than 135,000 adults did not collect their prescriptions because of cost in 2021 and 2022. This was particularly the case for low-income families, Māori, Pasifika people, and people with disabilities.

We will make a massive difference for them with this initiative. We will make a difference for the Dunedin man who told the Minister of Finance that his mother cried when she realised the four or five prescriptions she needs each month will now be free. It will make a difference to seniors, because, as Grey Power advocates report, some older New Zealanders are taking their medicines on every second day because they can’t afford the cost of prescriptions. It will make a difference to local pharmacists, who play an integral part of our health system, making their businesses more sustainable so that they can be encouraged to practise at the top of their scope, as we are doing through the health reforms. It will make it easier to get the essential medicines people need.

Now, on the other side of the House, the “coalition of cuts” has said that these lifesaving medicines are “nice-to-haves”. They are so out of touch. The Pharmacy Guild disagrees with them and has written to them to say so.

We’ve heard them say that “those who can pay should pay”, as if that’s some sort of principle to be proud of. Will that apply when you go to the emergency department? Will you need to pull out your credit card under the “coalition of cuts”? Will you need to take out a personal loan if your child needs their tonsils out? That’s what it means when they say, “Those who can pay should pay”. This Government cares about people and keeping New Zealanders healthy even when times are tough.

On this side of the House, we’re tackling the pay and workforce pressures in the health systems by allocating $1 billion at Budget 2023 to increase pay and increase the number of nurses by 500. We have also allocated half a billion dollars in the Te Whatu Ora budget to the primary and community care sector to reduce pay disparities over time between hospital and community health sector staff.

Budget 2023 reflects my three priorities of the workforce, winter preparedness, and wait-lists. It includes $63 million for progressing safe staffing. Key workforce initiatives such as Te Pitomata Grants for tauira Māori and Ngā Manukura o Āpōpō nursing and midwifery leadership training will also receive funding. We are putting $99 million towards the winter preparedness plan for primary and community care closer to people’s homes, reducing pressures on hospital, and speeding up discharge through community-based care for older people. We have allocated $118 million to help clear wait-lists, enabling outsourcing, insourcing, Saturday operating, and community initiatives to make our surgery system more efficient. We are spending $20 million to establish outreach to lift immunisation and screening coverage for Māori. Budget 2023 includes targeted investment of $37 million over the next two years to enable equitably allocated primary care funding for general practices based on high-needs populations and those providers with the highest Māori and Pacific populations. As part of this, we’re funding 193 additional front-line clinical team members across the country to focus on early intervention, faster treatment, and better support for whānau.

I want to now turn to the other portfolio that I’m responsible for: Research, Science and Innovation. It has an essential role in the low-emissions, high-wage economy this Government wants to see for its country. Through Budget 2023, we’re backing our scientists to do exactly that.

The centrepiece of Budget 2023’s Research, Science and Innovation is three new research hubs here in Wellington, making Wellington a true science city, focused on health and wellbeing; oceans, climates, and hazards; and advanced manufacturing, biotech, and energy. There will be no more siloes or ivory towers. We’ll be connecting our researchers across institutions to enable the good collaboration and linkage to industry that will get our economy and our science sector humming.

Another matter really close to my heart is progressing the role of young researchers in our science system. They are our future science leaders, and this Government is backing them with close to $50 million in support for them—be that across fellowships for early- and mid-career researchers to make sure that that hamster wheel of grants doesn’t force them out of the system and that they can stay on being productive.

In addition, we’re also going to link our talented young scientists and researchers into industry to make sure that they can get the economy to put their skills to work. We’ll do this through setting up applied PhDs that will be linked between universities and Crown research institutes.

Through all of this, we’re also making sure that our senior researchers can showcase New Zealand’s ability on the world stage. We’ve joined the Horizon Europe research initiative; we’re one of the first countries outside of Europe to join that European Union initiative. This means that our scientists can collaborate with the best in the world to be working on some of humanity’s great challenges like health and climate change mission-led science.

This is the optimistic and bright picture the Labour Government is supporting through Budget 2023. To get our post-pandemic recovery going, we are investing in science and innovation. Now, that is an entirely different vision for our country on this side of the House than what you’ll hear from the “coalition of cuts”. I am very certain that the investment we are laying down now will build a better future, both in terms of the health and wellbeing in our community and the vigour and ambition and innovation in our economy. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): This is astonishing. Here we are, and one of the Government’s senior Ministers—I’m slightly taken aback. I was watching the clock, thinking, “This will be good; two minutes to go off this long, laborious speech.”, which I don’t even think the Minister of Health believed, with her political attacks. She’s not a politician, and you can tell because the political attacks fell flat. It was a long eight minutes. I thought, “There’s two minutes to go; I have to sit there and listen to more of this.”, and then she sat down. Astonishing. But I’m prepared to stand up.

When they write the history books about this Government, they will remember it as the most incompetent, useless Government in New Zealand history in the last 50 years. They will remember it for three things: (1) massive spending, (2) waste, and (3) the fact that they are and remain soft on crime.

Let’s talk about spending, because this Budget reflects a Budget that increases spending massively. Over the six years of Grant Robertson’s time as finance Minister, spending has gone from $76 billion per year to $128 billion. That is an 80 percent increase in Government spending in six years. It is an astonishing increase in spending. That is $28,000 per house—

Hon Judith Collins: Addicted.

CHRIS BISHOP: —$28,000. He is, as Judith Collins says, addicted to spending. Every year, he turns up at Budget day, 2 p.m. on a Thursday, and hands around the documents with his merry henchmen—Megan Woods and James Shaw and all the rest of them—and proudly displays the wellbeing agenda. We don’t hear much about wellbeing any more from Grant Robertson. But every year, he hands round the Budget documents, and the year before, he said he’ll spend a certain amount of money, and then every year he breaks that promise.

Things have got so bad that the Treasury has to write into the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update—write into the documents—that he always overspends. It’s right there in the documents. They’ve had to put a note to the financial statements that say, on average, the Government exceeds the new operating allowance every year by $600 million—every year, on average. Now, you add that up over six years and it all adds up. That’s how we’ve got to a position where, after just six years, Government spending is up by over $50 billion and there’s been an 80 percent increase and $28,000 per household.

I put it to you, Mr Speaker—and to the House and to New Zealanders—that we are not 80 percent better off for that spending. Child poverty is not down 80 percent. Violent crime is not down 80 percent; in fact, it’s up by a third. The environment is not 80 percent better. We have not got 80 percent fewer people on welfare; in fact, the number of job seekers is up by 50,000, at a time of allegedly full employment. So I put it to the people of New Zealand: are you 80 percent better off for the 80 percent increase in Government spending? Actually, I think they know the answer is no, they aren’t.

What does the Budget also say? The Budget documents say that inflation will be higher for longer because of this Budget. That’s in the document written by Treasury. They say that interest rates will be higher for longer. That’s because, at the very time Grant Robertson should be taking the foot off the fiscal accelerator, he is doing the opposite. He has massively blown out the operating allowance again. We are now in a situation where the operating deficit for this year is $7.6 billion; last year, he said it would be $600 million—well, now we’re $7 billion out again. Because of that, the surplus has been delayed again. Does anyone seriously think Grant Robertson will ever—

Hon Willie Jackson: Yes.

CHRIS BISHOP: —deliver a surplus? Oh, yes, yes, “Sir Willie Jackson” says, yeah. Whatever. The next Government to deliver a surplus will be a National-led Government because we know how to get spending under control.

So interest rates will be higher for longer, and so every time in the next six months, in the run up to the election, New Zealanders go into the bank and say to the bank manager, “I need to re-fix my mortgage because I was on a one- or two-year rate two years ago, and I was paying 2.5 percent or maybe 2.6 percent or maybe 2.8 percent in my fixed-rate mortgage, and I need to re-fix because it’s expired.”, and “Mr Bank Manager” says, “I can offer you 6.5 percent or maybe 6.4 percent, if you’re lucky, and it’s not going to change much.” New Zealanders need to know they are paying more in interest bills every week or fortnight or every month because of Grant Robertson. That is the take-home point: people are paying higher mortgage and higher interest bills and paying more to the bank manager and don’t have as much in their back pocket because of Grant Robertson, because, at the same time as the Reserve Bank printed money, he kept spending—he’s utterly addicted to it.

What is he addicted to it for? That’s the second thing the Government will be remembered for, and that is waste. There was $55 million on a cycle bridge that never got built; $3 million for the Mongrel Mob to run a money-laundering scheme about anti-meth operations; hundreds of thousands of public relations consultants swimming around the Wellington vortex doing, frankly, not a lot; and Te Whatu Ora running weird Instagram ads and surveys so people can tell Te Whatu Ora that they don’t like the health system.

Ayesha Verrall has just resumed her set, and her ministry is spending thousands of dollars running weird Instagram surveys so that people can click a button saying, “I don’t think the health system delivers for me.” Well, guess what! By the way, you all pay for this—all taxpayers pay for this—90 percent of people clicked the button that said the health crisis is in crisis, because it is.

Just crazy spending throughout the bureaucracy and throughout the weird vortex that is the Wellington political industrial complex. So, as a result, the size of the State just continues to increase—it just goes on and on and on. That’s why we have 14,000 more Public Service workers in Wellington, enjoying their lunches—I’m not having a go at them; many of them work very hard, but they have an ill-disciplined, unfocused Government that’s got rid of all of the targets, that’s got rid of all of the accountability, that’s got rid of all of the leadership from the top.

That’s why we have a hapless education Minister who’s got no control—

Hon Willie Jackson: Who’s going great guns—great guns.

CHRIS BISHOP: —over her ministry—no control even, apparently, over her ministerial office, as Erica Stanford has demonstrated.

That’s why we have a hapless broadcasting Minister who spent two years trying to merge TVNZ and RNZ together for reasons that were never articulated by anyone—never actually articulated properly—and then had to get rid of the idea because, finally, the new Prime Minister came in and said, “This is crazy. Why are we spending hundreds of millions of dollars merging two functioning agencies together?” In fairness to Willie, it’s not entirely his fault; his mate Kris Faafoi was partly responsible for that, and, of course, he has shuffled off the mortal political coil because he got to the point where he probably said, “Why are we doing this? I have got no idea. I’m out of here. I’m going to hand this baby over to Willie to shepherd through.”, and then, of course, it’s been killed.

But that’s the problem—that’s the problem. We don’t have a Government that’s actually focused on getting kids to school; we don’t have a Government that’s focused on, once they’re at school, getting them to be able to read and write; we don’t have a Government focused on actually giving the police the powers that are required to get tough on crime; and we don’t have a Government that’s focused on targets in the health system so that surgical waiting lists go down and emergency department waiting times are taken seriously. We have a Government that is obsessed with fluff and nonsense, spending for the sake of spending, consultants for the sake of consultants, and not delivering anything.

They are soft on crime. There’s been a 33 percent increase in violent offending; a 55 percent increase in the last three months of ram raids; a 41 percent increase in victimisations; and a 60 percent increase in gang membership in the last six years.

So when they write the history books about this useless Government, they will remember it for massive spending, for blowing the fiscal limits. They will remember it for waste. They will remember it for being soft on crime. Mostly, they will remember it for not being able to actually get anything done. After six years, there’s been an 80 percent increase in Government spending; we’re not 80 percent better off. We will oppose it at the election. Finally, a National Government—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Broadcasting and Media): What a—

Matt Doocey: Point of order, Mr Speaker. We had a Minister that was unable to finish her 10 minutes talking about her own Budget. Mr Bishop has run out of time, so I’d like to seek leave so that he has the two minutes remaining of the Minister’s 10 minutes’ time.

SPEAKER: I think you know that’s out of order. This is a timed debate—

Andrew Bayly: Well, Willie’s not going to do 10 minutes.

SPEAKER: Well, you can come to my office later on, but, no, you can’t seek leave for someone else.

Matt Doocey: So you’re ruling that I can’t seek the leave of the House with that motion?

SPEAKER: No, that’s right.

Matt Doocey: OK. So we’ve had a change, have we?

SPEAKER: No. This is a timed debate. Each party has a number of minutes and they can use it how they like. OK?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: What a useless speech from a useless member, who dared to criticise somebody who beat him by 3,370 votes last time. Here’s the question: how much will the Minister of Police, Ginny Andersen, beat the so-called whatever he is—Mr Bishop—by next time? She’s doing such a brilliant job as police Minister, and I want to congratulate her and her contribution to the Budget. Mr Bishop went out because he knows that our Minister Andersen is on a roll.

Can I congratulate our Minister of Finance. What an exceptional Budget—

Hon David Bennett: Point of order, Mr Speaker. A member can’t—yeah, the Minister might have to sit. He can’t refer to someone’s absence.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: He just walked out—he was on the way out.

SPEAKER: Are you finished? I was going to say in response to that point of order that I heard what the Hon Willie Jackson said, and it might have been taken one particular way or another. His interjection while you were taking a point of order confirmed that, actually, you are correct—absolutely correct—and I’ve said this to the Hon Willie Jackson on a number of occasions. He cannot—he cannot—mention the absence of any other MP. I’m pretty sure that’s probably about the fourth time I’ve told you.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Thank you for that reminder, Mr Speaker.

In a tight economic environment, though, you have to say that our Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, has delivered—no doubt about it. We’ve got a focus on young families, with 20 hours’ early childhood education support, $5 prescription charges—I want to thank our Minister for a fantastic delivery of a balanced Budget.

Then we come to Māori: $900 million—$900 million—delivered to Māori. As I said yesterday, for our Māori Party friends: 17 percent—17 percent—of a new Budget. It’s massive, really. We’re talking about a home pūtea of $295 million. I’m particularly proud of that in the Māori-targeted Budget because we’re talking about by Māori, for Māori strategies there. In Ngati Porou, we’ve got a great set-up with Annette Wehi and Willie Te Aho, and right around the country we have found that by Māori, for Māori strategies are the way to go.

More funding for Whānau Ora: $168 million. Increased funding for hauora providers, iwi Māori partnerships, our boards, rongoā practitioners, and more prevention funding: $132 million. More support in Māori education for kura, kaiako, and ākonga across the country: $225 million. More funding to strengthen Māori media: $51 million. A boost for Te Matatini in terms of that going forward: $34 million. Matariki is funded into the future, for an extra $18 million.

On top of that, of course, we have funding for Mātāwai. Mātāwai is our Māori language entity that has been doing a lot of good work lately, which, sadly, the National Party have been criticising. Bilingual signs has been a huge strategy from them, welcomed very much by most of the New Zealand population, apart from the National Party. Simeon Brown and others have rubbished this strategy, and I’m really disappointed with the National Party. I look at their leader and it seems very sad that they can’t and he can’t support something when we’ve seen clear strategies in terms of Māori language.

With Air New Zealand, that was rolled out by the National Party leader—rolled out by the National Party leader—in terms of the increase of te reo Māori, and the real confusing thing for us as a Government is the number of confusing positions that National have made and have had in the 24 hours. It must be a hard time for the National caucus when the rug gets pulled from under you, first on housing and now on this. I mean, bilingual signs is something that the National Party support.

Harete Hipango has been very clear that she disagrees totally—totally—with the leadership position. I was watching Harete and I thought, “You’re in the wrong party, Harete Hipango.” She said, “My comment is te reo Māori is an official language of this country.” Asked if she was disappointed with her colleague’s comments, she said yes.

Harete Hipango: No, I didn’t, Willie. I said something different.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, you didn’t. No, she said, “I would say it’s a view I don’t agree with.”—there you go.

Harete Hipango: That’s right.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’ve got to quote the member very, very clearly, and we’re in agreement with that. Yes, she totally disagrees with the member.

Tama Potaka, who is generally a confused sort of bloke, said, “I heard about the comments, I read about them, we’ve had a kōrero. … I am pretty relaxed about [bilingual signs].” But, clearly, he has got huge discomfort with the National Party position.

But I think Shane Reti summed things up really, really well when he said, “You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who can’t identify a big read stop sign, regardless of whether it says stop in English or te reo or any other language.” So Shane Reti—who should have stayed, really, as the deputy leader of the National Party just so that they could get some real strong leadership—is clearly articulating a position along with their leader, who now agrees in principle with the Māori language signs. So I’m really pleased that they’ve come to their senses over this, particularly given that in past history they have supported a number of kaupapa Māori initiatives.

In terms of this Government, we’ve invested close to $4 billion in terms of Māori kaupapa. It’s an incredible amount of pūtea—an incredible amount of money—compared to previous National - Māori Party coalition pūtea. In 2016, for example, the National Party and Māori Party celebrated a minuscule $105.5 million across specific Māori initiatives. Now, that was peanuts. So we’ve delivered more in one year than the Māori Party could do in their entire term, and that’s the reality when you have a scale in terms of a Māori caucus.

You’ve got a Māori caucus of 15, and having the largest Māori caucus in the history of Parliament is actually producing results for our people. So I’m proud of the mahi that’s being done at the coalface, and that’s why I come back to the spend that keeps getting confused out there. Our people do get a bit confused, because you hear all the misinformation, and I think it is misinformation, because you hear the waffle from the Māori Party about 1 percent—isn’t it?

They talk about 1 percent of the spend. I’ll remind them again today that $895 million of just under a $5 billion new spend is 17 percent—17 percent. Now, the Māori population is around 17 to 18 percent, so that is a very, very good and productive spend. It’s nothing to frown at. So this nonsense about “You don’t get to all Māori” is just nonsense, particularly when Māori providers number between 5 and 10 percent, and having 17 to 18 percent of that pūtea go to Māori providers is very good. The rest of the Māoridom is hit with the universal fund, so 90 percent of Māoridom are getting access through that universal fund, and I’m particularly happy that that’s the case.

It really needs to be reiterated how far this Māori caucus has come in terms of funding. The Matatini funding—and I give credit to our previous Minister, Kiritapu Allan, and our current Minister, Willow-Jean Prime, for fronting this—has been a huge win for Māori. Māoridom has celebrated everywhere, and I’ll say that at least the National Party and ACT Party haven’t opposed this. If we go way back to 2007-08, the Māori Party only got a $700,000 increase. That’s not enough over nine years, but we’ve walked the talk in terms of getting a real difference and a real increase in terms of funding.

Our funding increase has been applauded by Te Ao Māori, and there have been a number of leaders who have come to the party and congratulated us. Tuku Morgan, for instance, said, “Absolutely an excellent Budget for Māori”, as far as the pūtea goes. Furthermore, he said, “Labour Māori … Ministers have shown responsible and courageous leadership and our people need to ensure they continue as the Government beyond the forthcoming election.” Ngāti Whātua Orakei deputy chair Ngarimu Blair also praised the Labour Māori caucus for putting Māori front and centre in tough economic times. Referring to Matatini, he said, “[Ministers] should be applauded for getting an increase for an event that resonates widely with [all] New Zealanders”. Mr Wharerau, our Ngāpuhi leader from the North, said that the Budget was glowing and “would support poorer communities.” Finally, John Tamihere, Whānau Ora chief executive and Māori Party president, welcomed the extra funding, saying, “Māori have done well and the Māori caucus have done particularly well.” We need him to talk to his Māori Party members.

Finally, I want to say in the last few seconds here that the National Party needs to look at themselves. At least the ACT Party has come up with a bit of a plan going forward. Even if it’s a plan that’s going to destroy Te Ao Māori and the rest of the country, it’s still a plan—you know, they’re going to cut Māori affairs, they’re going to cut women’s affairs, and we as a party know that the “coalition of cuts” will be disastrous for this country. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: I understand this is a split call. I call Chris Baillie—five minutes.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thanks, Mr Speaker. It was great to see Willie Jackson attempt to support his Minister of Police—admirable effort, but I don’t think anyone’s really buying it. I looked hard in this Budget to find something that would give me hope—give me hope—that this Government is taking crime seriously, but, unfortunately, no such luck. We’re in the middle of a crime crisis: unprecedented youth crime, violence, sexual crime—you name it—every single statistic has increased in record numbers. We have a Budget that’s so underwhelming it must make our police officers very depressed, and it’s no wonder that morale is at an all-time low.

There’s a couple of things that aren’t new that the Budget has continued. There is an early intervention programme, it’s been going for four months; 13 re-offended so far out of 52. And I think, if stats can be manipulated, that’s a good example. Proper funding of youth aid would do a very similar thing, and I note that youth aid funding has decreased by $2 million. Youth crime has decreased significantly over the past decade until 2017, and the Government needs to ask itself why.

There’s $56 million in the Budget going to the firearms registry. I think people know ACT’s opinion about that: it won’t work, it will be a waste of money, and it won’t take any guns away from criminals, we know it. Not one gang member handed their weapon or gun in during the buy-back, at all.

There’s a roll-out of the tactical response model—better training for high-risk situations. I remember something that was going earlier on, a few years ago—in 2020 it got canned because it was deemed as being racist and offensive. And I remember Poto Williams at the time said that it was hurting her people, forgetting that she was the Minister of Police and her people were actually police officers.

Then we have the policy of 1,800 front-line officers and allocating officers for population-based funding, which we absolutely agree with because it’s ACT’s policy—we’ve had it out for a few years now—so well done taking up ACT’s ideas. It all looks good to say “the 1,800 police officers”—fine men and women—they won’t make a jot of difference, which really does show the ignorance and naivety of what we’ve come to expect. No credit is given to the experienced police officers that are out there—their knowledge and their abilities—and they’re very underappreciated and they know it.

Along with the 40 percent increase in mental health incidents, we have a 41 percent increase in serious crime victimisations since 2017, a 121 percent increase in serious assaults since January through to December, and a 114.9 percent increase in serious assault victimisations from 2017-22. It just keeps on going. Labour’s soft-on-crime ideology just is the reason for these increases. It’s a result of no consequences and being soft on crime.

The Budget doesn’t have any targets, which is really disappointing if we look at the percentage of people who have reported offences who are advised of the results of updated investigations within 21 days. Burglaries were expecting an 11 to 15 percent clearance rate. Really, it’s just not good enough. Crime against a person—greater than 35 percent is acceptable. Targets—they’re just not there.

Every day, we’re reading about a crime committed by young people out of control. I’ve got some here: a dairy in Canterbury, in Darfield; we have Ōtara—this is just over the last week. An example from the Dairy and Business Owners Group—he really sums things up by saying the Government has given up on crime. “It will be news to the insurers who have hiked rates and excesses as a result of crime.” So what we got today is a “Crime without Punishment Budget”. Unfortunately, the horse has bolted, and it’s going to be up to a Government of adults to rein it in. Thank you.

SPEAKER: Karen Chhour, five minutes.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, I sat and listened to Willie Jackson and the Māori Party during question time. They were engaged in a debate centred around whether it was fair that Māori only received a Budget allocation of $850 million and whether the Labour Party genuinely cares about equity. Their discussion struck a chord with me, prompting me to reflect on the issues that affect all New Zealanders: fairness and equity in our society. I stand before you with a very genuine question, a question that’s been asked to me around the country by many people: is it fair to have a parallel Budget that specifically targets one race over all others, with funding initiatives that can impact all New Zealanders, regardless of their race? Housing, food, mental and physical health, and the list goes on.

This question also stems from the response I heard from Willie Jackson yesterday, who mentioned that other Māori receive what they need through the universal spend. Well, I’m uncertain about the specifics of his reference to “other Māori”. I find myself wondering: if the universal spend is good enough for some Māori, why not for all? I can speak to two personal examples that highlight my concerns. Firstly, why is it acceptable for me, as a Māori, to be eligible for a COVID booster shot based solely on my ethnicity, while my husband did not qualify? We live under the same roof. We share all the expenses that come with housing and feeding a family of six. How can it be right that I have access to healthcare resources that he does not, simply because of our different ethnic backgrounds? How many other households are being divided like this? We need to unite New Zealand behind good ideas, not divide them.

Secondly, I recall a time when I was granted a free parking ticket while I had a child in hospital. It was a small act of kindness during a very difficult time, but I did not need the help and was given it without even being asked. When I asked why, I was told it was because I was Māori. However, sitting next to me was another woman whose husband was unable to visit his child because the cost of parking was too expensive. They did not qualify for the free parking, leaving them struggling to be there for their own child during a critical moment. How can we justify decisions like this that are based on race and not need?

While I understand the importance of addressing historical injustices and supporting marginalised communities, we must make sure that our efforts to rectify past wrongdoings don’t unintentionally create new ones. I have no issue with Māori-run services, and I think they should be available to those who do want to use them. My question is around how we are funding them. Everyone should be treated fairly and have equal access to opportunities and resources, regardless of race or ethnicity. So I just ask this question again, respectfully: is it fair to have a parallel Budget that targets one race over all others? What if we consolidated the funding into a universal fund and eliminated the race-based conditions and had an equity index similar to what Labour has proposed in education funding? We could ensure that the resources are allocated where they are needed the most, and that not only would it capture Māori in need, it would capture all New Zealanders in need without discriminating against any particular group.

I understand that this is a complex issue and that people feel passionate about it. I hope that we can have these kinds of debates without being labelled racist, because if we can’t have these reasoned debates here in the House, and bring our thoughts to this table, what is the point in all of this?

We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis and all New Zealanders are feeling it right now. And I would hope that we can find a balance that promotes fairness, justice, and unity where, irrespective of race or ethnicity, we can strive to work together for all of those in need. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: I understand this is a split call, so I call the Hon Kieran McAnulty.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister for Emergency Management): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I do enjoy a Budget debate, because I think it tells the general public quite a bit about what parties stand for. I particularly enjoy a Budget debate in election year, and today’s contributions from the Opposition have been quite telling. None of them have talked about what they would do. None of them have talked about their priorities. They’ve just whinged—they’ve just whinged and complained.

This Budget is an incredibly balanced Budget that delivers relief from the cost of living and that the Reserve Bank themselves have said has assisted them in their job to bring down inflation. It outlines quite clearly that unemployment remains at record lows, that wage growth is expected to go beyond inflation over the forecast period, that inflation is forecast to come down to the target range next year. It shows that the GDP growth in this country is still admirable and comparable to those from overseas.

If the shoe was on the other foot, that crowd would be crowing, absolutely crowing, but it’s not and they know it and they hate it. That’s why they whinge. We didn’t hear anything about their policy to bring back prescription charges. We didn’t hear anything about their policy not to confirm the Police budget until after the election. We didn’t hear anything about ACT’s policy to increase taxes to our lowest paid and most vulnerable workers. We heard nothing about the ACT Party’s policy of getting rid of Working for Families and getting rid of the winter energy payment—all the things that are supported in this Budget, all the things that help people through the cost of living crisis. All we hear about is their complaints about what we’re doing to help people.

We do not hear a thing from the National Party about their proposed tax cuts, which will help the highest earners and do almost nothing for the average worker. Two bucks a week—two bucks a week, which will be swallowed up as soon as they bring up prescription charges. Nothing to talk about their cuts in real terms to health and education, which will have to happen if they cut taxes. They like to lecture the Government and New Zealanders about inflation and about the cost of living but won’t front up to the fact that if we cut taxes now like they propose, it would make inflation worse.

This Budget is about as balanced as you get. When you’ve got the Reserve Bank saying that it is assisting them to bring down inflation, you know that Grant Robertson got it right.

Andrew Bayly: That was a change of heart, wasn’t it?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: And you know, when Andrew Bayly doesn’t need a microphone and starts piping up, that we’ve hit a nerve.

Andrew Bayly: Only three weeks ago they were saying the opposite.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Only to prove my point, he carries on. But what I challenge Mr Bayly to do is, if he gets a speech in this debate, tell New Zealand what they would do. Tell New Zealand how cutting taxes now and making inflation worse and cutting in real terms to education and to health and putting prescription charges back on—how is that going to help New Zealand, when they’ve already got a $1.5 billion hole in their costings? They can’t even afford to do the tax cuts that they’ve said. They’ve identified $400 million that’s put aside for consultants; they’ve already spent about four times that to pay for God knows how many promises they’ve made. They are sleepwalking into another Budget deficit coming into the election, just like last time. That was what made Paul Goldsmith’s reputation never recover, because the first rule in politics is: learn how to count. They didn’t learn that last election, and they’re going to make the same mistake again.

We’ve seen it time and time again. We saw it this week with the issue of bilingual signs, where they think they can say one thing to one group and pretend it didn’t matter. They always get caught out, and they’re going to get caught out again because their numbers don’t add up. They cannot go round the country promising to spend more, promising to tax less, and promising to pay off debt. It doesn’t add up.

And the ACT Party can’t go around saying that their alternative is better for everyday New Zealanders when they’re going to increase the tax rate for the lowest earners. They’re going to cut tax rates for the highest earners and they’re going to raise tax rates for the lowest earners. That is backwards. It doesn’t make sense and it actually doesn’t add up.

The fact is that this Budget builds on the success of the last five years of this Government, where we have seen wages increase, where we have seen conditions improve, and we’ve actually seen record investment in infrastructure and public services—the things that actually matter to New Zealanders.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Minister of Internal Affairs): That was a beauty. I almost didn’t want to stand up to take my call, because I thought Minister McAnulty should have just taken it right through. What Minister McAnulty was talking about was legacy. Just this afternoon, I went with Onehunga High School into our caucus room. It was a leadership group, a group of young, thriving Pacific young leaders coming through, who were being fostered by Anahila Kanongata'a. I took them through the caucus room and I showed them the different legacies and the pictures of the leaders of the Labour Party. Michael Joseph Savage: State houses and the benefit system that we have; Peter Fraser: education; David Lange: nuclear-free; Helen Clark—now, this is a beauty for me—KiwiSaver, Working for Families, which, for a low-income family like my family, meant that we had an additional $100 in our hand when she was the Prime Minister, and interest-free student loans. We don’t yet have the picture of Jacinda Ardern, because she’s in that Speaker’s aisle, but what I would have said to those children is: winter energy payment, Best Start, and the extension of paid parental leave, and the contributions into New Zealand super.

So my question to the other side of the House is: what is the legacy that you will be leaving for our young children to look up to? Well, I can tell you, basically, based on the speeches that we’ve had before and over the last week for the Budget, it will be less money for people when they retire. It’ll be colder people in the middle of winter, because they’ll get rid of the winter energy payment. It’ll be less money for our families, and it’ll be less money for those on the lowest of incomes, because, since 1 April, we’ve increased the minimum wage. We increased benefits. We increased super to match inflation. It will also mean—and this one was a bit of a clanger, which I thought was quite unfortunate—less than a few hours after the Budget was announced, no sooner did we have the $5 prescription fee removed they wanted to return it, because it was a “nice-to-have”. You go and ask the people in Porirua East and in Cannons Creek if it’s a nice-to-have—medication that helps deal with the pain that they suffer every day through arthritis or through gout. You go and talk to the people in South Auckland who need medication for their diabetes and say it’s a nice-to-have.

We on this side of the House know exactly why we need to remove that fee: because it saves money on the other side; it prevents people getting more sick. It prevents our hospitals having to deal with them because they’re at the other end of the spectrum because they couldn’t afford their $5 prescription fee—not just for one prescription; it’s per script. They wouldn’t be able to get the medication to make them better. Just last week, on Friday, I was speaking to our local Cannons Creek pharmacist Kas Govind, and he said to me, “Thank you so much. Thank you so much for removing the prescription fee.” He said, “It’s going to save my business, and it’s going to save lives.” That’s the legacy that this side of the House wants to support. That is the legacy on this side of the House that means, by keeping superannuation at 65, when our people retire—in particular Pacific people, who will retire earlier, because of a number of reasons—they will have more money in their retirement plans.

This particular Budget, for Pacific people, builds on investment over the last five years of over $683 million. With an additional $51 million added to that, it means we have specific Pacific initiatives that can help our Pacific people. I remember, when I was young, my grandmother used to have her transistor radio blasting in Māngere with Radio Samoa. As I’ve grown older, I’ve lost my mother tongue, but this Budget has money in there to help deliver our Pacific languages strategy. That’s $13.3 million to help New Zealand - born Pacific people be able to hear our language on the radio, hear our language on TV, and read our language so that we can be bilingual, we can be bold, and we can be founded in our culture and identity. There is also an additional $14.1 million around the Pacific Community Resilience and Wellbeing Fund. That is a direct result to thank all those people in the Hawke’s Bay, all those Pacific churches across the country, who stood up and responded to our natural disasters.

This is a Budget for children, this is a Budget for our elderly, and this is a Budget for all our people, to ensure that we help them with this cost of living crisis.

SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call the Hon Michael Woodhouse.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think there’s a definite pattern emerging out of the debates on this Budget that go across the House. On the Labour side, they talk about how much money they can spend; and on the National side, National talks about outcomes. Frankly, Willie Jackson—

Hon Ginny Andersen: Cuts! Cuts! Cuts!

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, we’ll come to that. We’ll come to that, Ms Andersen. Willie Jackson talks about pūtea. What he was really talking about was poaka because the amount of pork that’s in this Budget absolutely sums up the Labour Government. For six years, they have put the word “wellbeing” on the front of Budget documents. Well, I simply ask this to all New Zealanders: do New Zealanders feel better off or worse off under a Labour Government?

We can talk about prescription charges. Frankly, I don’t need it. Millionaires don’t need it. People getting the winter energy payment who are on six-figure salaries don’t need it. I daresay Mr McKelvie would agree with me. But I ask this: what’s the point of removing a $5 prescription charge if the poor patient can’t even get to see a GP and has to wait for months for a first specialist assessment, the waiting list for which has gone up by tens and tens of thousands of dollars? What about the cancer patient who can’t even get in for a definitive diagnosis, much less the prescriptions and treatments that they need? Elective surgery has ballooned out to a disgraceful level.

Don’t even start me—Barbara Edmonds talks about Pasifika. What is the immunisation rate for our young Māori and Pasifika? It has drastically dropped on Labour’s watch. The previous National Government took a disgraceful rate of childhood immunisations—from about 65 percent—and brought it up to 95 percent. It didn’t use people’s situation as an excuse for not making them better, and we’ve gone right back down to the 60s. It’s a disgrace.

So we can talk all we like about how much money is being spent in the health sector—most of which, by the way, is being spent on a socialist centralised model; half a billion dollars to take away local decision making and centralise it into Wellington. It’s a pattern with Te Pūkenga, it’s a pattern with three waters, it’s a pattern with a number of—

Harete Hipango: Te Whatu Ora.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yes, Te Whatu Ora. Exactly.

Let’s talk about education. If they want outcomes—if we want our young to be better off—what about the woeful attendance rates at our schools? What about the significant reductions in numeracy and literacy when compared with other countries that we have observed in the last 5½ years? And the industrial action continues in our education system.

We’ve talked about law and order incessantly because people, despite what the Minister of Police says, do not feel safe. They don’t feel safe despite the—I don’t know how many police; I don’t think we’ve got to 1,800 yet. But the question is not how much money, not how many police, but how they’re being deployed. In straitened times, technologies were deployed to enable front-line police, on the watch of the previous Government, to remove 1.2 million hours of non-contact time. That’s the equivalent of putting 600 police on the beat. That’s what a sensible Government would do.

It’s about outcomes, not money. We see that in—well, I was going to say in economic development; actually it’s in the non-development of our economy, because we don’t have an economic plan under this Government. I’ll tell you which particular industry is being enhanced by the industry transformation plans that this Government is now going to spend over $200 million on. It’s the consultancy industry. It’s the contractors and consultants that have been paid something along the lines of $75,000 per page to write a report. Reports that have very little and have been criticised extensively for their lack of imagination and the fact that millions and millions of dollars are going to consultants. Not a single original idea.

Well, I’ve got a good idea. How about we create the conditions for businesses and Kiwis to thrive, and then just get out of their way? How about we reduce regulation, encourage proper productivity—not fair-pay agreements and ridiculous increases in minimum wage that are driving the inflation, that create the wage-price spiral that we’re seeing and that we won’t get out of until we change a Government? Well, those people who don’t feel better off will have a choice, and it’s coming soon.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E mihi ana ki a Tangaroa rāua ko Papatūānuku, tēnā kōrua, e te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. [I acknowledge both Tangaroa and the Earth Mother, to the Speaker, greetings.]

Oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. They provide 95 percent of the space available for life. They regulate our climate. They have absorbed 90 percent of the heat from a changing climate. We have a marine environment that is 15 times the size of our land area, and yet this Budget has not delivered for oceans and fisheries.

We are a coastal people. Most of us live near the coast, and 85 percent of our biodiversity is in our oceans. There is much in this Budget that the Green Party supports, but like Budget 2021, 2022, and now 2023, it does not deliver for oceans and fisheries. There’s $102 million as part of Vote Agriculture, Biosecurity, Fisheries and Food Safety for oceans and fisheries, and another $35 million which is recovered from the industry. But we know that ecosystems with the greatest biodiversity are much more resilient to climate change. Maintaining biodiversity should be a priority for fisheries management, and yet the amount of funding for fisheries marine research has been stuck for years.

We welcome the new multi-institution research hubs that Minister Verrall outlined and the fact that one of those hubs will focus on climate change and disaster resilience as part of a national centre for research on oceans, climate, and hazards, but that’s very much focused on that, rather than biodiversity.

We welcome the small amount of funding—some $10 to $18 million—for the roll-out of cameras on boats, but we don’t see any substantial increase in fisheries research. The level of funding for operational advice on sustainability and management controls in 2023-24 is the same as the current year—about $35.8 million. This static funding is despite the recognition by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor and many others that we need to invest more in research. We’ve got a huge deficit in fisheries management, big shortfalls in information about fish stocks, about species bycatch, and about the ecosystem impacts of fisheries.

In 2019, only 160 fish stocks had been scientifically evaluated, and there were over 200 stocks that hadn’t even been assessed. How can we know if they are sustainable if they haven’t been assessed? And we’ve got at least nine stocks that have collapsed. So we need a much better understanding of the complex interactions between fishing and other marine life, about the cumulative pressures on ecosystems, and how that can then translate into actionable policies and regulations. Yet we don’t see this increase in Vote Fisheries, nor do we see any significant increase in Vote Conservation for marine spatial planning.

I was pleased that there is a small amount of funding which increases slightly for the Kermadec/Rangitāhua Ocean Sanctuary and progressing that bill. Perhaps we will see an announcement on that long-awaited ocean sanctuary. But we depend on our oceans for breath, for life, and we need to invest more in the marine environment.

In Vote Conservation, we see a number of performance measures for land, but no specific ones for the marine environment. And yet we have in the industry transformation plan—the draft one for fisheries—the fishing industry proposing that there be $18 million spent by Government on buying three new fishing vessels. So we’ve got the industry pushing for more funding to provide vessels, but not the Government recognising that we need to invest more in fisheries management and marine research.

We’ve got a lot of goals that the Green Party would implement if we were in Government. It would increase the investment in oceans and fisheries; many more marine protected areas; reform of the outdated Marine Reserves Act—we haven’t seen any action on that; implementing the commitments for marine protected areas in the Hauraki Gulf; and banning bottom trawling through the Hauraki Gulf so that we can have a healthy marine environment. Jono Ridler, in his marathon swim of 33 hours—nearly 100 kilometres—did it for the Gulf. Now we need a Government with the political will to invest in oceans and fisheries and to take action to better manage our important marine environment and our oceans. Kia ora.

SPEAKER: This is a split call—the Hon Willow-Jean Prime.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā tātou katoa i tēnei ahiahi. Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā tātou katoa i tēnei ahiahi. He tū whakahīhī tēnei i te putanga mai o te Tahua Pūtea mō tēnei tau e heke mai nei.

Kātahi anō ka hoki mai mātou ngā Minita Māori. I patu mātou i te rori mai i Moerewa i Te Tai Tokerau, ki te Tairāwhiti, ki te Waiariki, ki Waikato ki Tāmaki ki Ōtautahi ki te kōrero e pā ana ki te Tahua Pūtea Māori. Tata ki te iwa rau miriona tāra i roto i tērā pūtea.

E hiahia ana ahau ki te kōrero e pā ana ki te pūtea kua whiwhia e Te Matatini. Toru tekau mā whā miriona tāra kua tohaina ki te kaupapa o Te Matatini. I te wā i puta mai tērā karere i hūrō ngā kapa haka puta noa i te motu o Aotearoa nā te mea kua roa rātou e pātai ana, e whawhai ana, e pakanga ana mō te pūtea, mō te moni. E hiahia ana ahau ki te tuku mihi ki te Minita i mua i ahau, te Hōnore Kiritapu Allan, nāna i mahi ki te taha o te poari o Te Matatini kia hanga i tētahi rautaki kia whiwhi rātou i tēnei pūtea hei tautoko i te kaupapa o Te Matatini. Kātahi ahau ka uru mai hei Minita mō te Manatū Taonga i mahi hoki ahau ki te taha o te poari kia tutuki tēnei tono ki te Minita Pūtea. Nō reira, āe i hūrō mātou ngā Minita Māori, te kāhui Māori i roto i te Rōpū Reipa nā te mea i whiwhi [i] tērā pūtea hei tautoko i te kaupapa o Te Matatini.

Kia mōhio mai koe ko tērā pūtea ehara mō te whakataetae nui ia rua tau noa iho, kāhore—he mea nui tērā—engari ko te hiahia o te poari o Te Matatini, ko te hiahia mō te kaupapa, ko tō rātou tino whāinga kia pēnei: mana motuhake ki te kāinga, matatū, mataora, matatini ki te ao. E ai te poari, neke atu i te whitu tekau paiheneti o wēnei pūtea ka tohatoha ki ngā rohe o Aotearoa kia whakawhanake ake, whakatupu ake i te kapa haka, mai i ngā mokopuna, ngā tamariki o te kura tuatahi, tuarua, ngā rangatahi, taitamariki, pakeke, kaumātua kuia hoki. Koirā te pai o tēnei pūtea, ka taea te āwhina ngā rohe puta noa i Aotearoa ki te whakatipu, whakawhanake i te kapa haka. Ētahi ka tae atu ki tērā atamira o te whakataetae nui ki Te Matatini Herenga Waka Herenga Tangata, engari he painga tēnei mō te katoa, mō te oranga, mō te hauora.

Kua kite ahau i ētahi rangahau e pā ana ki Te Matatini. Neke atu i te 1.8 mirona tāngata i mātakitaki i te whakataetae o Te Matatini i tēnei tau, i Tāmaki. He nui tērā, nui ake tēra i te iwi Māori katoa, nō reira he mea mō te katoa Te Matatini. Ki te hoki ahau, neke atu i te rua tekau mā rua miriona tāra te pūtea i whiwhi i te rohe o Tāmaki Makaurau o tērā whakataetae nui, nō reira he kaupapa hoki tēnei mō te whakawhakanetanga i ngā rohe mai i ēnei momo whakataetae. Engari, tētahi kitenga tino pai rawa atu ki ahau i roto i ngā rangahau, ko ngā tamariki e mahi kapa haka ana i ngā kura ka whiwhi i a rātou ngā mātauranga, ka piki ake ō rātou painga i roto i te mātauranga.

Nō reira, tino whakahīhī ana mātou i tēnei o ngā pūtea kua whiwhi i tēnei tau mō Te Matatini, nā te mea e whakapono ana mātou he nui ngā mea kei roto i tērā hei oranga, hei hauora, hei painga mō te reo mō ngā tāngata katoa e mahi ana i tērā. Nō reira, e te Māngai o te Whare, ka noho au i konei.

[Greetings to the Speaker, greetings to all of you this afternoon. I stand proudly today following the release of the Budget for the next year. We, the Māori Ministers, have just returned. We hit the road in Moerewa in Te Tai Tokerau, went to the East Coast, to Waiariki, to Waikato, and to Auckland and Christchurch to talk about the Māori Budget. There is almost $900 million dollars of funding there.

I want to talk about the funding that was received by Te Matatini: $34 million dollars was allocated to Te Matatini. At the time of that announcement, there was joy felt amongst the kapa haka groups all around New Zealand who have long been enquiring about, fighting for, and striving for funding, for money. I want to acknowledge my predecessor as Minister, the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who worked with the board of Te Matatini to create a strategy to achieve funding for Te Matatini. Then I took over as Minister for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and also worked with the board to finalise the application and its delivery to the Minister of Finance. Therefore, yes, we, the Māori Ministers and the Māori Labour caucus, are extremely happy that this funding has been allocated to support Te Matatini.

Please note that this funding is not only for the biennial national competition, not at all—although that is important—but the wishes of the board of Te Matatini, the wishes for the initiative, their primary goal, can be put like this: be independent at home, be alert, stand strong, and face the world together. According to the board, more than 70 percent of this funding will be allocated to the regions around New Zealand, to develop and to grow kapa haka, from grandchildren through to primary and secondary school children, young people and adults, to male and female elders. This is what is good about this funding: it will be able to assist in the growth and development of kapa haka throughout the regions of New Zealand. Some will get to be on the stage at the national competition, at Te Matatini Herenga Waka Herenga Tangata, but this benefits the health and wellbeing of all.

I have seen some research about Te Matatini. More than 1.8 million people watched the competition, Te Matatini, this year, in Auckland. That’s big, that’s more than the whole Māori population. Therefore, Te Matatini is something for everybody. If I go back, there was more than $22 million in revenue to the Auckland district as a result of this national competition, therefore this type of competition is also an initiative for development in the regions. But one finding in the research that really pleased me was that children who partake in kapa haka at school are not only receiving education but they also do better within the educational environment.

So we are very proud of the funding given to Te Matatini this year, because we believe there are many things within it that not only benefit the wellbeing and the health of the language but also all the people who engage in it. Therefore, Mr Speaker, I will leave it there.]

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Minister of Statistics): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker, and I’d just like to begin with a mihi to my lovely colleague Willow-Jean Prime for that beautiful kōrero in te reo. I know it’s something she works on, and gosh, that was beautiful.

There is a particular item in this Budget that I was delighted to see, and I want to talk about it this afternoon. It was a change that, when it was announced, I just cheered—I was so pleased to see it coming. That is the change to prescription charges, the simple removal of a $5 fee, and I want to talk about why it matters so much. It matters a huge amount to so many people.

Let’s start with the impact on family budgets. One of the things we know is that people who have a very tight income, who don’t have a lot of money in the house, they budget down to the last dollar. They’re incredibly careful with how their money is spent, and that extra charge can just be a charge too many for them. Only $5—maybe a bit more if it’s a specialist script—but that $5 can make a real difference in a family that is living pretty close to the breadline. As one of my friends tweeted, saying: “If you’ve never had to transfer 87c from one bank account to another in order to pay the $5 charge, then you don’t know what you’re talking about.” The difference that that $5 charge—removing it—will have for so many people is enormous. It takes real pressure off people. We know that about 130,000 people chose not to get their medication, the medication they needed, because of that $5 charge. Now, those people will genuinely be able to get their medication for $5.

But it’s not just the impact on individuals. In the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to pharmacists in my electorate and talking about how their businesses operate, the services they offer, what prevents them from doing a better job. Of course, I was in close contact with them as we were rolling out vaccinations, but I’ve talked to them frequently about this prescription charge. And I’d like here to thank, in particular, Liz Young, who is the pharmacist who runs the Avondale Family Chemist—it’s at 1794 Great North Road, in Avondale.

Liz spent an hour or so one day talking me through why that $5 charge made a difference, and it made a difference in that, when it has been in place, it has undermined pharmacists—it has undermined our community pharmacists. And what she said was that the problem is it might only be $5, but there are people who can’t pay it. So instead of going to their community pharmacists, they’ll go to one of the big chain pharmacists, the big ones that are backed by the wealth of supermarkets, that are backed by the wealth of a large chain, who can afford to say that they will pay the prescription charge on behalf of the customer.

Now, you might think that doesn’t really matter, but that $5, it didn’t go to the pharmacy; it went to Government. So what the pharmacy was doing was collecting it on behalf of Government, and the pharmacists themselves earn their income from the fees that Government pays to them for each script they fill. So when a big chain went with a loss leader—said it would pay the pharmacy charge themselves, the prescription charge themselves—it removed business from a local pharmacy, and that undercut the model of our community pharmacists. So it really mattered to community pharmacies.

And why does that matter? Well, it’s fairly straightforward. It was not only undermining the local business; it undermined a local healthcare provider. Pharmacists are front-line healthcare providers. They’re the people we go to for easy advice. They’re the people who know which medications we are on so they can give us good advice about it. They are the people who will respond to the need in front of them when someone walks through the door, and yet we were undermining their business. So removing that $5 prescription charge means that our community pharmacists now have a much more viable model for doing business.

So this is why that removing—it’s only $5, but it mattered: it mattered to families, it matters to the business of pharmacists, and it mattered for the quality of healthcare that we can get in our communities from our community pharmacies. It has made a real change, and what it shows is what this Government is all about: supporting New Zealanders with the cost of living, delivering the services that New Zealanders rely on, and doing it in a way that is fiscally sustainable. This is a great change.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon Judith Collins—five minute call.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I quite enjoyed that presentation by the Hon Dr Deborah Russell, primarily because I thought it was excellent to talk about people who do not have much money to pay for stuff and things that they need. And I want to do that too; I want to talk about people who genuinely cannot pay their mortgage or people who genuinely are striving to pay their rent. And that is actually—a lot of that is on the cost of borrowing at the moment. And as we know, when we look around other developed nations that we like to compare ourselves with, our interest rates are going up and theirs are going down.

Recently, I was in Australia—they were complaining about things like 4.5 percent interest rates, and we are seeing in my electorate in Papakura and all around the country, people who have either bought their first home or they’ve expanded to another home or they’re just dealing with the fact that they were able to borrow at 2 to 3 percent interest rates and they are now facing the loss of all of their equity because their house prices that they paid, often on the KiwiBuild scheme, were actually inflated to what they really should have been, given what they were buying. And they have had Kāinga Ora move in to their street and put gang members in it. And that is the sort of thing that we deal with in my electorate office in Papakura. How we deal with the worst landlord in the country, Kāinga Ora, which I see is now getting $71 million extra. This was an agency that used to have no borrowing, no debt, and did its job. It is now so in debt, around $14 billion, I understand, and not doing its job. It is now the worst landlord in the country and unfortunately now the worst neighbour in the country.

We have, now, a situation where people can’t pay their bills. But what we should do is keep these sorts of things like prescription charges, the $5 co-payment, which I can certainly afford to pay, and I think every member of Parliament should be able to pay for themselves and for their immediate family, particularly those living with them in their own home, rather than charging them extra power or something for their room. It is very important that we do our bit for that, but we also know that that is a charge that should be—or lack of charge that should be—targeted to those who really can’t pay; those on community services cards, those who are on national superannuation, those who really do not have extra money to spend, and particularly those who are very unwell and need repeat prescriptions. And that is already in place as those of us who have actually looked at what situation people are in would know rather than trying to grandstand, as we saw the other day from Arena Williams. What a disgrace for the MP for Manurewa being blatantly, let’s say, untruthful. What we are seeing now is a Government that has spent as though—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member can’t make that statement, so she will withdraw and apologise.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Oh yes, I withdraw and apologise. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker has of course reminded me of what I really feel about this, which is how despicable it is coming out and talking about a father having to choose between paying for a $5 prescription or pay for heating his room when the room is in that member of Parliament’s own home. It is an absolute disgrace and I am very pleased that somebody in the media has finally picked it up.

Now, looking at the debt that this Government has put on New Zealanders: $28,000 per New Zealander extra to when they came into office six years ago—$28,000. Interest rates through the roof. Nothing to talk about in this Budget except another $7 billion - odd being borrowed again on top of last year’s $7-odd billion extra to what there was before. This country is getting into debt. One of the worst finance Ministers that I can recall, and I remember a Labour Party person shouting out the other time I said that, “Well, what about Rob Muldoon?” Well, I tell them this: at least Rob Muldoon got some hydro schemes built and everything else built that’s running our renewable energy. He had some faults but I can say this: at least he got something done.

This Government has been treating money as though it’s confetti, throwing it around, not wondering about targeting, trying to get as many people as possible on taxpayer money. New Zealanders are being treated as though they are fools, and they are going to turn, and this election is going to be it; it’s the last Budget from that finance Minister.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call in this Budget debate. You have to ask the question: who was this Budget written for? It seems like it was written for Australia and written for Brisbane rather than written for New Zealand, because that is what many, many New Zealanders will be doing after looking at this Budget. This is not a Budget which will help keep New Zealanders here. This is not a Budget which gives tax cuts and tax relief to hard-working, middle-income earners like the ones that I represent in the Pakuranga electorate. This is a Budget for people moving to Brisbane, and that is unfortunate, because, unfortunately, this Government has lost sight of what their job is to do, and that is that their job is to serve New Zealanders to make sure that they are able to get ahead and not to go backwards. Unfortunately, this Government is growing the size of its bureaucracy and spending money in all the wrong areas rather than focusing on what they need to do.

I was expecting this Government was going to provide some tax relief. For the last six years, New Zealanders have seen a Government which increases taxes, which spends like there’s no tomorrow, which wastes money like it grows on trees, and now we see the Government is wanting to spend more—$7 billion more of expenditure, yet they couldn’t find some money to provide tax relief for hard-working New Zealanders who deserve that tax relief.

Todd Muller: Tip it into the potholes.

SIMEON BROWN: That’s right, they tip it into the potholes, with 54,000 potholes—a record number of potholes they had to fill last year. This is a Government which has failed when it comes to transport.

I just want to give a few numbers when it comes to transport in this Budget. You would’ve thought, after last year’s record number of potholes on our highways, that they would’ve increased the amount of money being spent on road maintenance, but no, the amount spent on State highway maintenance is going to go down from $660 million to $496 million. That’s gone backwards, and the amount for local road maintenance: down from $744 million to $429 million, a more than 40 percent reduction in local road maintenance. This is a Government which wants more potholes, which doesn’t care about the State highways which move our goods around our country, which doesn’t care about people who drive on our roads, who have noticed that the roads are in the worst state ever.

But what has this Government got money for in this Budget: $131 million for some land acquisition for Auckland light rail—Auckland light “fail”, which still hasn’t even left the consultants’ train station. It’s now spending $131 million on some land acquisition, on top of $250 million for vehicle kilometre reduction plans, because “We want you to get out of your car; at the same time, we don’t build new public transport. We spend six years talking about light rail in Auckland, six years talking about Let’s Get Wellington Moving”—which sounds more like “Let’s Get Wellington Consulting”, not that they needed more consultants in Wellington—“and at the same time spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to force you out of your car.” This is an ideological Government which hates the fact that people choose how they drive around this country and wants to waste our transport money in all of the wrong areas when New Zealanders are saying, “Get back to basics.” It was meant to be a no-frills Budget. Well, there’s money for Africa when it comes to what this Government’s own ideological pet projects are, but there’s no money for getting the basics done right and doing that job properly.

A National Government will make sure the National Land Transport Fund is focused on doing its core job of building and maintaining the roading network. That is what New Zealanders pay their petrol taxes and road-user charges for. This Government sees it as a slush fund to spray that money around for its own ideological purposes.

But what’s more is it’s quite scary what Treasury said about the transport fund in New Zealand. It’s now listed the National Land Transport Fund as a fiscal risk. There are 11 fiscal risks when it comes to transport in New Zealand, greater than any other area in terms of what Treasury has highlighted for fiscal risks. Transport is the top of that pile, and it’s across the transport sector we are now seeing fiscal risks. The Inter-island Resilient Connection Project is a fiscal risk. The National Land Transport Fund is a fiscal risk. Transport, local government’s share, is a fiscal risk. Auckland light rail is a fiscal risk. Let’s Get Wellington Moving is a fiscal risk. This Government has destroyed transportation policy in New Zealand. National will get it back on track.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Talofa lava. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Budget. I listened to my colleague the Hon Kieran McAnulty earlier and his contribution to the House, and he challenged members opposite to effectively share their plan with New Zealanders and with the House. We have had three speakers from the Opposition this afternoon—we’ve had Mr Woodhouse, Mrs Collins, and Mr Brown. Not a single one of them have taken up that opportunity to share with New Zealanders what their alternative plan is. They like to rabbit on about tax cuts—tax cuts that will benefit the wealthy at the expense of those who are far worse off than them. But they have not shared with New Zealanders the plan to deliver those supposed tax cuts. They need to share with the House. They need to share with New Zealanders what essential services they will cut, because the maths does not add up when members opposite say they will deliver tax cuts for the rich.

How are they going to pay for it? They should be upfront and clear. What cuts to education, what cuts to health, and what cuts to police are National proposing to deliver on money for the rich at the expense of those who are worse off? I am proud to stand in support of this Government’s Budget. We have heard a lot about the real difference that removing that $5 levy or that $5 co-payment will mean for communities. Perhaps members of the Opposition haven’t actually spoken with the local pharmacist, because they clearly don’t know. They clearly don’t know the difference that this will make to communities all around the country. But, of course, in the words of their leader, the Leader of the Opposition, they are only “bottom feeders”—it doesn’t matter to them. Well, it matters to this Government. It matters to Labour that we are delivering where it counts. We are delivering where it counts.

Last week, I had the opportunity in Palmerston North to talk with just one of our local pharmacists, James Carroll, at the Botanical Road Pharmacy. He’s been there for a wee while. He was able to show me the shelf of uncollected items, the uncollected scripts, because people had to prioritise their own health and wellbeing—in that case, not, and were not able to pick up the script. We know that there is a minimum of 133,000 people who fail to collect their script every year in this country—every year. And, actually, that is a conservative estimate because it doesn’t call into account those individuals who know that it’s going to cost them some money so they won’t bother to go to the pharmacist. So tell us, members opposite, where those cuts are going to be. Health, education, law and order, or elsewhere? Be upfront about this. They’re silent because they have no plan. They have no response. They are happy for Kiwis to think actually that they have a plan when, clearly, they do not.

I am proud of this Budget. I am proud of the fact that it will see a huge investment in rail, and I acknowledge my colleague, the member for Ōtaki, Terisa Ngobi. She and I have been strong advocates for the Capital Connection and rail that connects the capital and the Manawatū line. Actually, I took the Capital Connection here to Parliament this week. I’ll take it home tomorrow. But the reality is under a Labour Government we are going to see huge investment—a huge investment—to ensure that there is more frequency, that we have a service that connects our capital and the Horowhenua, and the Kāpiti Coast, Palmerston North, and the Wairarapa to ensure that our communities are able to be connected to the capital. It’s going to be a more environmentally friendly solution. It’s going to be more efficient. It’s going to be more effective. It’s going to deliver on all of those needs for our local communities all along those main trunk lines as well. That’s Labour—that’s a Government delivering for my community. That is a Government who is investing in rail after decades of under-investment.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: $8.7 billion.

TANGI UTIKERE: Absolutely, Dr Webb—absolute under-investment from those opposite. This is a Government that is focused on the basics. It is a Government that has delivered a Budget that is going to mean so much to our communities. I know that because I’ve heard it. I really don’t think that members have been out and about listening to the difference that this will make. This is an absolute Budget that will make a huge difference.

Finally, I just want to touch one other pre-Budget announcement, and that’s around increases to Defence Force personnel’s remuneration. It will make a huge difference to the people in Palmerston North. We have the RNZAF base Ōhākea nearby. We have Linton Military Camp as well. To be able to deliver significant increases, more so than in a decade, is going to make a huge difference. It shows the value that this Labour Government places on serving personnel. I am proud of it. I am proud of this Wellbeing Budget and I commend it to the House.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It comes to this time every year where we get up and obviously we’re the Government so we talk about the good things in the Government. The Opposition sit there and say that we’ve done nothing and it’s all going down the drain. This is very same, same. And for me, this is time number six. I’m starting to understand how this goes.

But I’ve got to say, I went out into the Waiariki community last week, I went down to Tūrangi, I went to Taupō, I went to Tauranga, I met up with some of our locals in Rotorua, and I really canvassed some of these policies out there. And I want to say that, actually, first of all, in acknowledgment that not everybody lives in our little political bubble, so they don’t all understand what’s in the Budget. So you have to say it again and again and get out there and talk to communities and help them to understand. This is another opportunity for us to be able to do that. But the thing that resonated with me was a thing that has been addressed by my previous colleagues here, and I wasn’t expecting it to, but it is that part payment on medical prescriptions.

It was poignant, because the conversation that I had with Leanne, who owns the Life Pharmacy in Taupō CBD—I went in there just on the off chance. Hadn’t set it up. Just popped in to say, “Hey, can we have a yarn about this stuff and tell me what’s going on.” She referred me to the shelf of brown bags behind her. She showed me the shelf. It was a very big shelf. It went from about where I’m standing to where my colleague Tangi Utikere is standing—brown paper bags that hadn’t been picked up. But not just for this month, for last month and for the month before as well. And she had a whole other shelf and a couple of boxes just for large medication packages which hadn’t also been picked up. What she said to me was, first of all, she was sad about the wastage, because all of that that doesn’t get picked up ends up going upstairs into the yellow bins.

I said, “Can I have a look at the yellow bins?” She said, “Sure.” She showed me these big, yellow bins, and they were just filled with medication that had expired—“expired” in their terms—because after three months you have to get rid of it because it’s not as effective. So I went through the bins. She was quite happy to show me through the bins, and I saw the wastage in those bins. And it broke my heart, but it also broke the heart of her and her employees too. People who—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Did the member take a photo?

TĀMATI COFFEY: Yeah, I did. People that had to stand there with their pharmacist—their community pharmacist—and go through the script. And they had to pick out the most important medication to them. Some of them didn’t have enough for the $40 or the $50 that it was, so they had to go through the scripts with them and say, “Well, maybe you can afford No. 1 and No. 5, even though the doctor’s prescribed you all of this medication. If all you’ve got is this amount of money, then that’s what we’re going to do for you. We would suggest this and this. And what we’ll do is we’ll put the rest in the bag and we’ll put it back here on the shelf and you can come and pick it up, maybe next month, maybe next week, whenever you get some money.” And she knew—she said to me she knew that as they walked out the door, she was never going to see them again.

So I relay that sad story because it’s symptomatic of other stories that I’ve gone and heard around the country. And I heard members of the Opposition before say, “Oh, go to the Chemist Warehouse—go to Countdown.” They can give it for you because they’ve managed to absorb the cost of that part-payment into their operations, which is great for them. The people it does a disservice to are our community pharmacists and our community chemists who know their communities well and they know their people. They look them in the eye. They know their family situation, they know that they can’t afford the medication, they have those personalised relationships with them that if you ask some of those community chemists, they’ll say, “At Countdown they don’t necessarily have that. At the Chemist Warehouse they don’t necessarily have that bespoke, personalised relationship with their chemist.” And for that reason, they were very proud of it. Actually, some of the people that I spoke to in those chemists, they weren’t necessarily Labour voters, but they knew that it was the right thing to do.

Can I say that I was mortified just to open up my Newshub app just then and to see the leader of the National Party say that he was going to continue to make women pay for contraceptive medication that actually they were passionate—so passionate—about putting that $5 charge on that they’re going to continue to charge women that are seeking medication for contraception, and that seems like advice that if I was giving advice to the Leader of the Opposition to tell him how to lose an election, it would be to do that.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon Meka Whaitiri—five minutes.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): I’m pleased to take a call on the Wellbeing Budget 2023. I do hope that the nation receives this Budget a lot warmer than Mr Jackson is reported to have received at the Tairāwhiti breakfast last week, where he asked for a candidate to stand in the IkaroaRāwhiti for Labour. So let’s try and see that we get some warm reception to this.

But I do want to acknowledge the gains in this Budget. I do want to acknowledge the Whānau Ora gains, the Te Matatini gains, of course, Māori housing. But when asked yesterday in the House, to Mr Jackson, around the percentage of the $850 million—and look, I’ve gone through this book; I see there’s $836 million of targeted Māori funding. But I hear the total of $850 million used, and today I heard another figure of $900 million targeted funding. Whatever it is, the point that I tried to get across to the Minister was, was it—and it’s not even 0.1 percent; it’s actually 0.005 percent. His response was around the universal Budget, in which case I said, “Well, if there’s $5 million that’s newly allocated money and you have deducted $850 million, that gives you 17 percent. What about the other $170 billion that’s allocated every year?”

But I’ve got some ideas, because some of the Government members have been saying there’s been no ideas from this side. I do have an idea, and I want to talk about some of our local solutions. We saw it from Māoridom, both in COVID, where hauoras are vaccinated—not just Māori communities, but they’ve vaccinated all communities: in Tāmaki-makau-rau, in my area of the East Coast, and of course down Hawke’s Bay. We also saw in Gabrielle—in terms of the response, we saw many marae stand up as evacuation centres.

My point being—as Māori have proven themselves time and time again—when there’s a crisis, they come to the fore. I would have liked to see more in this Budget because it does a nod to those that are always at the cutting edge when communities are in crisis. I’m talking about our Māori communities; our rural communities, who all banded together.

So in the $6 billion National Resilience Plan, I want to do a plug for those very communities. I know members across have talked about the $5 removal subsidies against prescriptions. On the East Coast, there is no pharmacy. There’s no pharmacy on the East Coast; you have to go all the way to Kaiti, which for some is a 2½-hour drive. So there are no pharmacies on the East Coast, but those are small beans. The point being is that Māori communities, up and down this country, stand and deliver and look after their own.

What I wanted to see in this Budget is a nod to them; a nod to them to say, “Listen, we recognise your contribution both in response to Cyclone Hale and, of course, now Cyclone Gabrielle.” From the people up at the very top of the East Coast to Te Karaka who have their own silt removers. I met the team the other day—they’ve done eight homes, removing silt, but unfortunately the Government has funded Gisborne District Council to remove silt, and yet you’ve got a local band working at this minute removing silt from houses in Te Karaka. This is just one of the examples that I want to talk about in this short time I have on this Budget. It is around local solutions, locally led.

In this instance, I want to represent those people of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti from the East Coast right through to Te Matau-a-Māui—Hawke’s Bay—right down to Wainuiōmata. Our people—that I come to this House proudly representing—talk about “when do we ever get to see the returns and the investments” of what they do? In times of great need—and it isn’t about the cost of living, I’d hate to say—it is a poverty issue for many of our communities.

So this Budget does go some way towards addressing poverty. But for me, I’d like it to have gone a lot further. I’d like to see policies that have direct funding straight to those communities that have put their hands up. I’m talking about Māori hauoras, I’m talking about iwi organisations, and I’m talking about marae. I’d love to see more go to them because they know the communities better. But I also want to see more of the funding that’s allocated in this Budget ring-fenced against population, which is about 20 percent—17 is a start, but I’d like it to be lifted to 20 percent, going forward.

This is a Budget to acknowledge. But from my perspective, it could go a lot further—I’ve identified how it could—in delivering greater gains for our people. Thank you.

Hon RINO TIRIKATENE (Minister for Courts): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Talofa lava. It’s a pleasure to speak in support of this year’s Budget. But can I first acknowledge the member for IkaroaRāwhiti, who’s just resumed her seat, Hon Meka Whaitiri. I know that she is like a beautiful manu from Te Tairāwhiti: she’s free in the great forest of the ngahere, associating with the Māori Party. But I thank her for her tautoko—qualified, albeit—for this Budget, because this is a wonderful Budget in very, very challenging times. And I want to acknowledge our Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, for his stewardship of our finances and for being able to craft this Budget. It’s about support for today and building for tomorrow. And we are showing that it is challenging times—we know that we’ve come through a global pandemic; we know that we’ve been dealing with devastating weather events that have impacted the regions around the country. Throughout those difficult circumstances, we are managing the books and we are also making sure we are getting the support where it’s needed—for today—to address the cost of living pressures that whānau are facing up and down the country.

So I want to acknowledge this Budget. I’m very proud of the support that we are giving. We’re scrapping the $5 prescription co-charge. That is greatly appreciated by whānau up and down the country, as we’ve heard in contributions this afternoon. And we’re particularly giving support for parents and young families, and the free early childhood education for two-year-olds, which my colleague the Hon Jo Luxton is shepherding—wonderful initiatives that are going to be able to support our young families.

This is a balanced Budget. We know that these are very challenging times, but I’m also proud of the fact that right across the board, as with all Budgets, we are ensuring that the resources go to the right place to ensure that we are actually delivering a thriving economy for our country. And I know we have industry titans here in the House who will be celebrating today—celebrating the coming into force of the New Zealand - United Kingdom free-trade agreement (UK FTA).

Right from today, there is an extra $37 million of money, more returns, actually coming back to our New Zealand exporters, right across our export sector, and that agreement is actually going to be better into the future. So not only are we doing things for the present, we are also making sure that we strengthen our economy, strengthen our trade, and strengthen our future prosperity as a nation. And we’re not only doing that with the UK FTA, we have seven free trade agreements, including upgrades that we have achieved in this Government—the EU free-trade agreement, which is coming on stream. We want to also ensure the regional groupings that we have in South East Asia—very, very important trade agreements for our country.

And we’re supporting our digital economy as well, an emerging sector, where we are getting wonderful support for rebates for those firms, which are actually very, very, very productive and great, great wealth generators right across our regions. That is a very welcome initiative from those sectors.

But I want to finish by coming back to the electorate that I represent, Te Tai Tonga, and the wonderful Māori caucus that we have here within this Government, on this side of the House, and the strong endorsement, the strong support that we have encountered up and down the country when we did our post-Budget road show. The support for not only our cost of living measures—to address those—but our specific targeted support that we are doing to address Māori housing, Māori education, Whānau Ora, Māori broadcasting—right across the board. In fact, it was quite moving to see and listen to the strong tautoko that we received from the likes of Te Matatini, the likes of the kōhanga reo, our providers, our Whānau Ora—right across networks.

There is strong support for the work that we’re doing. We know it’s challenging times. That’s what makes me especially proud that, under our Prime Minister, we have been able to reprioritise our programme, and that has been evidenced now. Adjusting to the challenging conditions and challenging times that we are in, we have put together a very balanced Budget. We are looking right across New Zealand society, and we are able to provide that support, for today, for our whānau while also being able to look ahead to tomorrow to ensure that we have that long-term prosperity that we all desire for Aotearoa New Zealand. Kia ora tātou.

SORAYA PEKE-MASON (Labour): Talofa lava. Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. I am delighted to take a call on Budget debate, Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill, second reading.

There is much to celebrate. It supports people today and builds a strong tomorrow. I stand to reinforce the highlights, the highlights of: the $5 prescription fee scrapped; free early childhood education; free public transport for under 13 years, and half for under-25s; 100,000 more heating and insulated homes; continuing to deliver school lunches.

I visited Marton Primary School recently, and the children were delighted with their lunches. They love the hot lunches that they get.

Prescriptions will go a long way in my electorate, Te Tai Hauāuru, also known as the seat of Te Ārepa. Many whānau can’t afford this fee. It might seem like pittance to some, but it means a huge amount of money to others, include kaumātua. It is sad to see negative National looking to cut this service and other services that people rely on, in terms of their social wellbeing.

I want to focus on the continued investment in whānau, in whare, and in whakapapa. Extra funding to build and repair more homes, boost for Te Matatini, and ensuring Matariki is funded into the future, more funding for Whānau Ora to provide more services, and increased funding for hauora providers, iwi Māori partnership boards, rūnanga practitioners, and more prevention funding.

This Budget continues to invest in whānau wellbeing, access to whare and whakapapa, all of which supports the cost of living. He whare—housing. We continue to improve housing for Māori, with a $200 million investment in the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga programme for long-term housing supply, capability building, and whare repairs. This Government has approved 1,018 homes and enabled 1,615 infrastructure sites for further development for Māori.

He whenua—the land; precious. In addition to the status quo, we are extending Te Ringa Hāpai Whenua Fund to enable landowners to undertake whenua-based economic, cultural, social, and environmental projects, an estimate of $23 million over four years. Oh, how we so much need that. I have seen for myself the struggles of landowners. Māori land landlocked—20 percent in the Rangitīkei. It’s a shame—shame on the history of this country that so much undeveloped land should be landlocked. It makes you wonder why, doesn’t it? This helps whānau to unlock that potential of their whenua. This is about building resilience, including adapting to current cost of living pressures. The Rangitīkei alone, as I said, 27 percent - plus of Māori land is landlocked. As quoted by the Minister for Māori Development, Willie Jackson, “Whenua Māori development creates regional jobs and enables Māori landowners to strengthen the economic security and prosperity.”

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Where is it? Where’s the bill?

SORAYA PEKE-MASON: In addition: a further $8 billion funded to Te Tumu Paeroa to support whenua Māori owners—I’ll tell you in a minute.

He whakapapa—the family. Whānau Ora navigators are the ones who recognise the needs of whānau. They work at the coalface. This Government backs Whānau Ora by committing a further $168 million over four years, a total package of by Māori, for Māori, of over $820 million - odd.

That is why I am proud to be part of a team in Government who cares about people, who cares about their relationship with tangata whenua, and who takes steps to honour the founding document of this country. I reiterate the words of Minister Jackson: “We have walked the talk in terms of our seven Ministers and 15 MPs getting kaupapa Māori policy across the line for Māori, by Māori.”

Some on the other side talk about a race debate. I say, what about Te Tiriti? What will you do to honour a document that your forbearers signed? A document you breached and ripped my tīpuna off. I commend this to the House. Kia ora.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have listened carefully to some of the contributions from our Government backbench members, and I think one of the things I’d just reflect on—that speech from Soraya Peke-Mason—is that one of the travesties of the Labour Government over the last six years has been not to pass Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill, which we were keen to do when we were in Government six years ago. If we talk about economic outcomes for Māori, I think that is the greatest disservice that this Government has done over the last six years.

It sounds great—Willie Jackson stands up in the House and talks about the $900 million that’s been allocated to Māori, and that’s fine; that’s the prerogative of the Government—but the biggest thing they could have done, and what the Government should have done for Māori, is actually unlock those vast landholdings that the member talked about, because that is the way to create economic wealth for Māori and to be able to build houses and to be able to create successful businesses, which, no doubt, they are very good at and have a history of being successful business people. But we’ve got a Government that doesn’t see that opportunity, doesn’t see that prospect for Māori, and all they want to do is give them band-aid solutions around creating new houses, building new houses, and giving them lots of money rather than dealing with the root cause. So I find that contribution from that particular member actually a disservice to Māori, because I think it’s shameful what has happened.

The other thing we’ve heard a lot about is prescription fees and how that’s going to solve everyone’s woes. Of course, prescription fees don’t apply if you spend more than $100 on medicines over the course of a year. But then there was a reference to the Hon Jo Luxton’s reforms around the early education centres. What a disaster—what a disaster—how to get a policy absolutely, shamefully wrong. First of all, you say to the early education centre managers “We’re going to shove up the costs of your labour.”—and, by the way, who’s going to bear the cost of that? Oh, they’re going to bear the cost of that, of course. And then they’re going to say to the parents—because, obviously, it’s a big stretch out into the people they want to try and target for the voting public—“Oh, by the way, we’re going to give you some extra time for your kids at an early education centre.” And who picks up the cost of that? Who picks up the cost? Is it the Government? No. Who normally picks up the cost when the Government’s got a smart idea? Well, every business owner, including every early education centre owner in the country. And, of course, they are screaming at it.

I can tell you that, the week after next, I’ve already got two meetings—one in Hamilton and one in my electorate, in Pukekohe—where the early education people are lining up in their droves because they know that it’s going to take their business to the brink of failure. And, of course, when you overlay that with councils, who allow new education centres to be built wherever, whenever they want—of course, they are marginal businesses right now. But here we are; we’ve got an insensitive, or maybe unsuspecting, Government that doesn’t actually understand the sector, proposing these types of reforms. What did we come up with? Well, we came up with a $3,900 saving paid to the parent, effectively, on top of our tax cuts, which would mean the hard-working mums and dads with children get nearly $5,900 of savings a year. The reason we were targeted on that is that benefits have gone up—we put up benefits; Grant Robertson has put them up twice. Beneficiaries have had a large increase—and I’m not saying for a moment it’s easy being a beneficiary. Superannuitants have seen their superannuation go up. And, of course, with rampant inflation driven by high Government spending, that means they are slightly better off.

But the group who have had no benefit—the vast majority of New Zealanders—have actually seen their incomes go down, are behind in terms of inflation and seeing what they can take home and pay for their kids, to buy food and groceries, all those types of costs, and have seen that dissipate because of inflation. That is the issue for New Zealand. That’s why the Budget should have been targeted at them. They are the hard workers of New Zealand.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Firstly, I’d like to take the opportunity in the House to acknowledge the passing of Senior Constable Bruce Lamb after 45 years’ service in Christchurch, most of that on the New Zealand police dog section and Armed Offenders Squad—one of our most highly decorated officers and probably best known for the incident that he attended in Christchurch when he was shot in the face by an offender with a shotgun and his police dog, Gage, went to his defence and was shot and killed.

I just want to acknowledge Jill, his children, Christopher, Michael, and Kimberley. Christopher and Michael have followed in their father’s and their mother’s footsteps. Jill was also a member of the New Zealand Police and Michael is now a police dog handler working in Christchurch, and Christopher is a Detective Sergeant on the organised crime unit up in Auckland. I want to pass on to them and thank them and acknowledge the service that Bruce gave to our country, which he was extremely proud of.

He loved being a police officer. Many of the headlines that the media have reported on have referred to him as a famous dog handler. He would have loved that. That’s the sort of headline he would have written for himself. But I just want to say that his service in Christchurch on Sunday is the biggest police service I have been to since I attended Constable Matthew Hunt’s service in Auckland. It was a tribute to him, and I want to let the family know that they will continue to be wrapped in the support of the police family to make sure that there are people walking alongside them to try and soften the blow of what was a truly remarkable and extraordinary man. Thank you very much.

The Budget this year clearly showed that the Government has put up the white flag and is surrendering on law and order, public safety, and crime in this country. There was nothing in there. There were no new initiatives. There was nothing to bolster any of the initiatives that are currently ongoing. The only thing that we have seen from this Government was a knee-jerk reaction with an $11 million announcement for fog cannons, when on the same day, the data came out showing that there had been a 55 percent increase in ram raids.

When this Government came into Government in 2017, the first thing they did is they held a justice summit, but they forgot to ask the victims. They invited the gang members along, and they forgot to ask the victims. The next thing they moved on to do was repeal the three-strikes legislation, the only tough piece of sentencing law that we had on our books. If that wasn’t bad enough, what was their third priority? Their third priority was emptying the prison muster by 30 percent. Well, they’ve actually been successful in that one, because it’s down to about 22 percent. But at the same time, we’ve seen a 33 percent increase in violent crime, we’ve seen an over 500 percent increase in ram raids, a 41 percent increase in victimisations, an over 60 percent increase in gang membership and gang numbers in this country, and, on top of that, our assaults on police have gone through the roof.

Quite simply, at a time when they were repealing the three-strikes legislation, we were saying to them, “Stand up a dedicated gang task force.” We needed that back in 2017. When did they do it? They did it 18 months ago with Tauwhiro, which, actually, was just a spreadsheet exercise. Cobalt—can I acknowledge the officers on Cobalt. They’re still spread too thinly. They’re doing the best that they can. But in the last two or three months, we’ve seen gang numbers increase by 300. It’s obvious that what the Government are doing is not working.

At the same time that we were saying, “Take our firearms prohibition order (FPO).”, which will actually make a difference and give the police some real powers, what did this Government do? They passed an FPO that’s been used twice in nine months. Why? Because they were warned. They were warned by the National Party and they were warned by the Police Association that unless you give our front-line officers a warrantless search power, this is useless. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on, and it’s been used twice. So unless a member of the Opposition wants to stand up and explain to me that there are only two gang members in New Zealand that actually carry firearms, it’s been a complete waste.

What’s the other piece of legislation that they passed? The other piece of legislation was the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Act 2023, where we said to them, and the Police Association, again, said to them, “Lower the threshold. Don’t make the threshold $30,000. It’ll be difficult for the front-line officers to use. Disrupt and put pressure on the gangs.” What did this Government do? They passed the legislation with the $30,000 threshold.

This Government cannot be taken seriously in terms of public safety and crime. Everything that they’ve done is lip service. It’s ineffective, and it’s only been done because there has been political, media, and public pressure. They don’t take it seriously. That was reflected in this Budget, when there’s no new funding for any of the projects that the police need to actually be able to roll out, and the only funding that did come was $11 million as a knee-jerk—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has come to an end.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is my pleasure to be speaking in this Budget debate. This is actually my first Budget debate and I’m honoured to have the opportunity—

Matt Doocey: And your last—your valedictory.

DAN ROSEWARNE: It won’t be today, though—not today. It’s fantastic to celebrate the success of this Budget, a Wellbeing Budget that provides support for today while building for tomorrow.

This Budget does a lot of good things. My colleagues have made that clear. I could easily spend the next five minutes on the positive impact of the removal of the $5 co-payment. And like many here, I’ve received a lot of emails from pharmacists just highlighting how successful that is going to be for their local communities.

I can also speak about the Apprenticeship Boost initiative that has supported 57,000 apprentices already. It’s a good policy that will help our businesses and our economy, and provide a viable career path for our young people. But there is one aspect of the Budget that has not really been mentioned much, and that is defence—something the Opposition has barely mentioned, and I’m assuming that’s because they think that Budget 2023 delivers for defence.

This Budget represents an unprecedented investment in our armed forces, and this Labour Government has consistently delivered for the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) and continues to increase its commitment to the wellbeing of our armed forces with this year’s Budget. This year’s defence Budget will represent an overall increase of around about 6 percent on last year. The Government is tackling the attrition that the NZDF has been facing for quite some time now, and to be fair it’s been an issue since the global financial crisis. This Budget will deliver the biggest pay increase in over a decade for our Defence Force personnel. In the past, 77 percent of military personnel have been paid between 5 and 15 percent less than what they would get in equivalent civilian jobs. Thirty-eight percent of Defence Force staff say that remuneration is a key factor in leaving, and this pay increase is essential so that the NZDF can attract and retain some of the best people that Aotearoa has to offer.

Our Government addresses this issue by investing more than $419 million to increase the pay of Defence Force personnel. Many NZDF personnel, including new recruits and skilled, lower-ranked service personnel, will see an increase of between $4,000 and $15,000 from 1 July. Now 90 percent of the NZDF personnel will be paid at or close to the market rate after this year’s Budget, and this will go a long way to attracting and retaining the skills and expertise that are vital to the operational effectiveness of our Defence Force and allow it to deliver on its outputs for the people of New Zealand.

This Budget also invests in the ageing infrastructure and buildings available for our soldiers, sailors, and aviators. This Government will invest more than $85 million to improve NZDF housing in Waiouru, Linton, Burnham, and Ōhākea. And this is one of the main advantages of life in the NZDF—your accommodation is subsidised so you are better able to save to buy a house, and that’s a good thing. So it’s important that we invest in the Defence housing estate, and being deployed on a ship, being on training or operations, or living on a camp or base, it creates more fluid boundaries between people’s work and personal lives. So housing is an important part of life in the military.

These investments are even more crucial as they come at a time when the pressures and demands placed on the NZDF are only increasing. And we saw that with Cyclone Gabriel, where the NZDF mobilised nearly 1,000 personnel along with vehicles to reach cut-off communities. With the increasing number of emergencies that climate change will bring, the NZDF will keep playing a crucial role to keep Aotearoa safe. So this Budget is about restoring the meaning and worth of military service. Labour is the party, the only party, with a consistent record in providing the armed forces with what they need to do the job. So in that vein we are delivering for defence.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. So if you walk into any pharmacy around the country and you look behind the counter, you’re likely to find either a shelf or, in some cases, big plastic boxes, and what they’re filled of is little brown paper bags with labels on them. They’re the prescriptions that never got picked up.

A recent survey of community pharmacists asked them about the effects of these prescription cocharges on people in their community. I’d just like to read you some of their responses. One said, “Every week, we go through the shelf and check for prescriptions not collected. We fill two big baskets with items. When we ring them to say, ‘What’s the reason?’, the same thing comes up all the time: ‘We can’t afford it.’”

Other pharmacists spoke of patients waiting to see if their infection got worse before taking their antibiotics. For others, if there was a charge, then they didn’t pick up their medication for things like diabetes, heart diseases, gout, kidney disease, asthma, mental health—some really significant conditions.

One talked about how it was heartbreaking to see patients trying to choose which medication is most important. Another talked about a patient who came in with strep throat. She was in so much pain, but she only had $5. She wanted to get the prescription for the anti-inflammatories to relieve the pain, but, instead, the pharmacist encouraged her to take the antibiotics because of the risk of rheumatic fever. So what the pharmacist did was let her put the painkillers on her account; the person never came back to pay them.

This illustrates that while $5 doesn’t seem much, for many people, particularly those on low incomes or who are having to take multiple medications, it can mean the big difference between taking everything on their script or leaving some of their vital medication on the pharmacy shelf.

That’s why I’m pleased that in Budget 2023, what we’re going to see from July is the $5 copayment be scrapped. That will not only make it more affordable for people to be able to get their medication, I think it will make a big difference for our stretched health services. If you’ve got people delaying their antibiotics to see if it gets worse, if you’ve got people not taking their medication for diabetes or gout, they’re going to be the ones that end up in the emergency department.

For me, I was, I guess, quite dismayed to hear National say that if they come in they’re going to be reinstating these co-payments, although they’ll be taking a very targeted approach and making, maybe, some exceptions for those who desperately need help. Unfortunately, for women needing contraception and things like that, I don’t think they would fit that category.

So I’m really proud of what our Government is going to be doing to make sure that people can afford the prescriptions they need by reducing and removing that $5 co-payment.

But there’s quite a few other things that Budget 2023 also does to help households with their living costs. I’m just wanting to highlight a few—particularly for families with two-year-olds, so including 20 hours of free early childhood education from March next year makes a huge difference to those who are actually having to pay those costs. Free public transport for children under 13 and half-price fares for those under 25—I think that will make a difference, for example, for tertiary students going to their studies. Expanding the Warmer Kiwi Homes programme: this will make quite a big difference down where I live, where we’ve got a lot of old housing stock that hasn’t been insulated or renovated in many cases. So what this will mean is that more homeowners who are on low incomes or who live in low-income areas will be supported to insulate their homes or get clean heat sources.

This Budget, though, is not in isolation. It builds on the work we’ve already been doing over the last 5½ years to support families, to support households with their living costs. Can we imagine—it’s really tough right now, but what if we didn’t have those increases to superannuation or the increases to the benefits or the increases that we put in to the minimum wage. So many households now rely on the winter energy payment. It’s something that we still get feedback on every single year: people are now being able to turn the heater on without worrying about the cost. Low-cost doctor visits for community services card holders—that’s something that we now take for granted, but it was something that we brought in very quickly when we came into Government.

This is a Government that really cares for people and for households and for supporting people through the cost of living. This is a brilliant Budget, and I’m very, very happy to commend it to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon Gerry Brownlee—full 10-minute call.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I begin by acknowledging the comments made by my colleague Mark Mitchell in support of the late Bruce Lamb and his family and the great service that he gave to the New Zealand Police and, by virtue of that, the community that he lived in, and the example that he gave to so many that have seen his own family continue his legacy inside the police force. A truly valuable member of our community, who will be, I’m sure, sorely missed.

Well, this afternoon, of course, we’re talking about the Budget. And this is a Budget that people on the other side of the House have been standing up, repeatedly saying, “It’s wonderful. It’s fantastic. It’s the Labour Government caring about New Zealanders.” Well, here are some things to consider. First, this Budget was constructed and based on $4 billion worth of savings that were announced by Mr Robertson ahead of the Budget. And then it includes $1.3 billion worth of what was his new allowance. So that takes us up to $5.3 billion. And then, on top of that, add the $7.2 billion that we’re in deficit. And suddenly you see a Budget that has spent $13 billion that the country doesn’t have. Somehow this is, according to members over on the other side, about how to build a future for a nation. Well, debt is no way to do it. And I think some of the targeting that should have gone on in this Budget was totally missing.

Let’s just look for a minute at the headline policy that everybody on the other side of the House, the Government members, has been talking about today: prescription charges. Well, there was no public clamour that I was aware of or that any of the media were aware of for the removal of co-payments. And if there was a problem that was being articulated, then targeting would have been the answer. I heard the member from Palmerston North stand up and say that, “Oh, I go down to my local chemist—he’s a good bloke; he’s been there for 30 years—and he’s got shelves and shelves of unclaimed prescriptions.” Well, I am quite sure that he would have been able to work out whether or not those people had a community services card or whether there should have been some targeting of that. Because people like Anna Lorck don’t need the $5 prescription charge. She does not need to save $100 a year on her prescriptions.

I think you can look across the country and say, “Well, of that $680 million policy, how many are going to benefit who were not asking for that, who did not need it, and who are on incomes that allow them to pay for that sort of level of prescription?” It would be a reasonable speculation that there is about $500 million being spent there that could easily go into alleviating some of the massive waiting lists that this Government has managed to accumulate because of their health changes and because they don’t like targets being set for health delivery. No answer over there.

Targets are the way—members over there might like to consider—of knowing that the service that’s supposed to be provided is being provided. And that $500 million would have made a huge difference to all those people who are sitting at home with bad hips, bad knees, cataracts, and all range of other sorts of conditions that will be found on that waiting list. The worst of it is that they’re saying, “Well, we’re going to attack the waiting list by writing to people who are on that waiting list and asking them if they still need the surgery.” Now, what sort of an abdication of responsibility is that? So all the back-slapping over the $5 prescription charge being taken off is a waste of time, because the people who really, really need services are not getting them through the health budget in this particular 2023 Budget.

I’ve got some responsibility for the foreign affairs Vote. I’ve been looking through it and I’ve found a very interesting sort of statistic in here: one is that we are going to spend, apparently, $87 million—$87 million—on capital improvements for the ministry. You’d assume, then, that most of that is going to go on upgrades for various facilities that the ministry has across the world. And some might say, “Well, that’s perfectly reasonable. We’ve got to look tidy, got to look up to it.” But the interesting thing is that there’s about $26 million earmarked for the upgrade of the embassy and residence in Moscow.

Now, just in case people on the other side of the House don’t know, Moscow is the capital of Russia, and Russia is the nation that has put the whole world on alert through its attack on the Ukraine—its unsolicited and indiscriminate attack on the Ukraine—a country that’s put the rules-based system of the world out the window. Their capital is Moscow, and the New Zealand Government, having condemned Russia for their actions, are turning around to spend $26 million upgrading the interior—just the interior—of a building that would house our embassy there. The building itself, interestingly, is owned by the Russian Government. So here we have all these sanctions—all these sanctions—against the Russian Government. Businesses can’t deal with Russia, and everyone agrees with that. Cut them off, they’re terrible, get rid of them. But then the Government turns around and says, “Oh, but we’ll spend $26 million in the Russian economy, because we want to keep channels open.” Channels open with who? I think it’s a disgrace and it makes me think that when there is a pencil taken to all the lines in this Budget, there will be more than the $4 billion he was able to find that apparently didn’t upset anything. There will be billions in there.

So some of that $13 billion that this Government chose to spend when we don’t have it can be sliced back. And it’s interesting that in a time when New Zealanders are saying they would like some tax cuts, all the Government can say is, “Well, look, people in the middle bracket, all they’re going to get is $800 a year under National’s bracket-moving proposal.”—$800 a year. “But guess what, folks, we’re not going to give it to you”—says Labour, says Grant Robertson—“but we’ll save you $100 on your prescription fees.” What sort of a Government is it that imagines that because it spends money there is no inflationary effect?

Treasury makes it extremely clear—and this is something the Government always used to when they did those early Budgets: “Treasury says this, Treasury says that.” I’ve never been one to actually listen to Treasury, just by the way, but they are saying that if a tax cut is given, it does not have the same inflationary effect as expenditure by a Government. Very clear. What they’re saying is that if people keep more of their earnings—and it might only be $800 a year that’s of no consequence to members on the other side of the House; no consequence at all. Rail about the difficulties people have with cost of living but then deny them that extra $800—that’s the sort of mentality that we’re dealing with. Those people are likely to use that for debt reduction. They’re likely to, in some cases, do a bit of saving, and that has a deflationary effect. But no, they’ve just gone out and spent $13 billion the Government doesn’t have, encumbering New Zealanders with a greater level of debt than they already have managed to pile upon them.

I just want to finish with two comments from a previous speaker, Dan Rosewarne. One was about the “wonderful” apprenticeship scheme and the $500 payment that’s now going to be, apparently, paid out perpetually. Well, the big question to look at is: what’s the completion rate on apprenticeships? That’s the big question. How many start an apprenticeship and finish it? And I think that’s the unanswered question, and we got absolute silence on the other side of the House. Perhaps over the next few hours we’ll be able to get some degree of answer. I think we’re going to find that that is not the great panacea that they are proposing.

Then there was the ridiculous comment that this Budget has done wonders for defence. All it’s done is correct the damage that was done with the long duty that they had to perform on the isolation hotels. And that’s not disputed. I think the other point that’s worth making is that this barely brings New Zealand’s defence spending up to 1 percent of GDP—barely brings it up. So I think it’s interesting to listen to some of the speeches on the other side of the House. It would be more interesting to read the propaganda that they’ve all been supplied by the Labour research unit in order to make their outrageous support speeches for the Budget.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Tracey McLellan—five minutes.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I feel very proud to stand in support to stand in support of this Budget, Budget 2023. Why? Because it’s clear that we are focused on the issues that matter to most New Zealanders.

We’re supporting people with the cost of living, we’re delivering on the services that people rely on, and we’re doing so in a fiscally sustainable way, which is important. How were we able to do this? The Hon Gerry Brownlee touched on this earlier: under the leadership of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, we have had a significant reprioritisation and savings have been made. That’s allowed us to reinvest in helping to ease the cost of living pressures; it’s helped us to reinvest back into health, back into education and housing; and to boost our infrastructure, including the immediate needs of the cyclone-affected areas.

But the particular initiative that I wanted to speak to today was the $5 prescription charge, because for some people it’s an insurmountable barrier. This initiative is not just about the cost. Universalism—having universal free access—actually removes a variety of barriers. What we know is that people go without their medicines, their health problems get worse; some of them even end up in hospital. That’s bad for them and it’s also bad for our health system.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Andrew Gaudin, who’s the CEO of the Pharmacy Guild, said, “Removing the prescription charge is an investment in New Zealanders’ health and the wider health system.” He goes on to say, “It means more New Zealanders will get the medicines they need and help keep them out of hospital. This means there will be less pressure on the health system and will result in savings for taxpayers.”

I also want to give a shout-out to Des Bailey, a constituent of mine in Banks Peninsula who’s the president of the Pharmacy Guild, who has done a fantastic job of advocating about this issue—although his pharmacy is actually in the Selwyn Street shops, which is technically in Wigram, but we love Wigram too. He has made sure that this is an issue that has been to the forefront of many of our concerns.

This initiative is also a genuine two-for, in so far as removing the $5 charge also levels the playing field for many of those community pharmacies who are small businesses. These are professionals who know the people in their community. They’re used to managing the medication and the needs, and they need to thrive and do what they do best in our communities, and I’m proud that we are supporting them. In fact, a constituent of mine—a good friend, Paul McMahon—texted me on Thursday to say that he was in his local Woolston pharmacy. The pharmacist was “over the moon” and said that customers were talking about it while he was there.

But the scary thing is this win might be short-lived, should National reach Government—heavens forbid. Because the National Party have explicitly promised to bring it back; they’ve explicitly promised to put up all those barriers.

What we know is that for every dollar that’s forgone in prescription charge co-payment, we actually save $18 in health costs down the line. So they’ve done their special maths. Nicola Willis has got out a calculator—probably borrowed Paul Goldsmith’s calculator. They’ve done their very special brand of adding things up, and they’ve calculated that saving $18 by spending $1 simply isn’t worth it. Keeping people out of hospital apparently isn’t worth it. Making sure that women don’t have to pay for contraception apparently isn’t worth it—praise be!

The other phrase that really hit a nerve today was, “Those who can pay should pay.” That quote alone should send shivers down the spine of all New Zealanders who treasure our publicly funded health system. It’s a sad state of affairs, but we shouldn’t be surprised. The “coalition of cuts” over there have already said they’ll cut super—yes, we know that they can’t afford their tax cuts without cutting other services. Will that be police? Will it be nurses? Will it be teachers? Who knows? They haven’t put their plan in front of people.

About the only thing that National have yet to say that they won’t cut is this $420 million policy to make Apprenticeship Boost permanent. Let’s see how long that lasts, having just listened to Gerry Brownlee bag it while Nicola Willis was supporting it earlier on. Who knows?

I want to commend the Hon Grant Robertson for this Budget. It’s his sixth Budget—his fifth Wellbeing Budget—and he’s done a fantastic job. This Government has done what good Governments do, and we’ve leaned in and we’ve looked to look after people when they need it most.

I think that’s something that we can all be very proud of, and I know that everybody on this side of the House is—hence the fact they’ve been going out around their electorates and talking to people and finding out what really matters most to people as they do so. So I have no hesitation to commend this Budget and I do so gladly. Thank you.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Over the past almost two weeks I’ve done exactly what has just been said: I’ve been around and about the electorate of New Plymouth talking with people. And I’ve been humbled by the interactions I’ve had with people in my electorate, as we’ve shared our Government’s Budget with them. I’ve appreciated being part of this Government and I continue to appreciate being part of this Government. I appreciate being part of a Chris Hipkins - led Government—our hard-working Prime Minister who is doing right by New Zealanders. I appreciate being part of a Government with a finance Minister like the Hon Grant Robertson, and his laser focus on ensuring that we get today’s issues right while looking towards our future.

As I’ve got around New Plymouth and talked with people, I’ve been blown away by the appreciation that has come back to us in terms of what we’ve been putting in to the people in our regions around Aotearoa New Zealand. I was at the 50th jubilee of Tainui Village, a rest home in my community, and we were celebrating the amazing achievements of that community-run facility and all it’s done in the past 50 years. During the celebrations, I had the local pharmacist who administers the medicines to that rest home come and see me, and the appreciation he had for this Government’s policy—removing the $5 co-payment for prescriptions—was evident as he was shaking and telling me did I realise the difference this was going to make for his customers and his clients, but also the appreciation that he had as a small-business owner. The fact that this change meant a lot for a place like New Plymouth, a small city—and we have two of the Australian big brand retailers who have come in to town, who have been selling their wares, and it’s been a challenge for our pharmacists and they’ve appreciated what’s happened. Rather than, I guess, what we look at in terms of the other side of the House, and their deprecation when they pull these things to pieces and they say, “It’s just $5, what the heck, what does it matter?” Or that they’re going to reinstate the $5 prescription and then they’re going to roll that back and then they’re going to sort of have that bit where they carve parts out for SuperGold card holders or for community services card holders.

But $5 is actually a decent chunk of money. I was doing my maths: $5 is three loaves of bread; it’s two litres of milk with a bit of change left over; it’s half a dozen eggs with a bit of change left over; it’s a kilo of potatoes with change left over; it’s a kilo of bananas—and the list goes on. So this does make a difference, and it concerns me when I hear the deprecation, the cuts that come from the other side of the House. Even Christopher Luxon, this afternoon, talking about what he might do in terms of cutting, whether it be for women’s contraception products, whether it be them being in coalition with the ACT Party, who are going to axe the Ministry for Women—the “coalition of cuts” and, obviously, the “coalition of cutting women in spaces where they should be”.

I also want to mention that during the break and during my time getting around the electorate, I was part of the Reducing Energy Hardship conference in New Plymouth, and there were about 300 people who came along looking at the challenges that we’re facing. We are doing work on this side of the House around alleviating poverty, alleviating energy hardship, but, boy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. As I was at that conference, there was the appreciation for the work that we’re doing around reducing power bills and adding 100,000 more additional heating and retrofitting to create warmer, safer, healthier homes. And at this conference I got chatting with one of our local providers, the WISE Charitable Trust, and they last year did a partnership with Te Whatu Ora and their paediatrics ward. They worked with families who’d had their children come in with respiratory issues, and they went into the homes and they looked at the heating in the homes, they looked at energy efficiencies, they looked at ventilation, they looked at moisture control, they looked at reducing heat loss. And as I spoke to the organisation about how it had gone in terms of the retrofitting work they’d done and they’d insulated—they had done the work in many of these homes of these families with these children with respiratory issues; last winter none of those children went back to hospital, none of them. None of them went back to hospital, because they had found ways to ensure that their homes were warm, their homes were healthy, and their homes were in a state that they could care for their own children. And that comes down completely to this, where we have ensured that 100,000 more additional homes will be warmer, will be healthier, and will be safer for children, for our tamariki.

That’s why we on this side appreciate the work that we do. We appreciate the appreciation we received, and we don’t want to see the deprecating cuts from the other side that they are spouting.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Stuart Smith—five minutes.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I believe it’s not my turn, but I’m going to take it! So thank you very much, Madam Speaker. There’s been a massive spend-up in this Budget.

Matt Doocey: I wouldn’t want to talk about the Budget, either!

STUART SMITH: Well, that’s right. It is hard to actually be positive about this. We saw this earlier with Ayesha Verrall in the House, and I did feel for her. My colleagues have been making the point that, in the six years since this Government’s been in, expenditure on the Budget has gone up by $50 billion—where it was $28,000 a household; an 80 percent increase—and we are no better off. We’ve got rising crime, our education system is failing, and, of course, our health sector is a complete and utter mess.

I wanted to focus on some of the issues that come from that, and I’ll come to that in a minute, but I think the warnings that have been touched on by the Hon Gerry Brownlee just before, about Treasury giving warnings about this Budget, have pointed out that the finance Minister has a track record of overspending on the Budget of $600 million. Of course, the Governor of the Reserve Bank came out and kind of saved the finance Minister’s bacon a bit by, while raising the OCR by 25 basis points, giving soothing words about there being no more rate rises. However, Treasury’s warning in those Budget papers about the finance Minister overspending by $600 million every year after a Budget has not fallen on deaf ears. I see that one of the banks today has come out and said there will be another rate rise. That’s quite contrary to what the Governor of the Reserve Bank said and that’s something that we should listen to.

I think the disenchantment with the Government, and the anger out there, is really palpable. I had Erica Stanford in my electorate on Monday night. I didn’t spend a cent on advertising and we had a huge crowd inside a pub to hear her. People are angry, I can tell you that—they’re not angry with us—and I don’t feel good about that. All this money, where’s it going? The wasteful spending, we heard about that. I thought I’d give you some examples. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) spent $300,000—$300,000—on a TVNZ climate change special. Is that good investment of our taxpayers’ money? I would argue it’s not. They spent $470,000 on the world carfree day. That’s another waste of money. But it gets worse: $2.8 million on telling us all to have shorter showers. Now, I would have thought, with the mood on that side of the House, they would want to have longer in the shower, not less time in the shower! And the mental picture that was put up, with the memes of poor old Grant Robertson, on the shower story, is quite, quite amazing! They’ve spent $3.4 million on EECA campaigns, on Google advertising. I think that’s outrageous. But, of course, the worst is the $600 million they are giving in corporate welfare to large multinational companies.

In the case of New Zealand Steel, that company made a $3 billion after-tax profit in 2021, and they gave them $140 million of our money—money that we have all paid. They only got that money out of the carbon credit scheme, which we’ve all paid for by paying more for our petrol—when people are paying, in a cost of living crisis, and then it goes on corporate welfare. We’ve had so much with those 14,000 more bureaucrats, $1.8 billion, but it is finding money in weird places, and those weird places are where the Government is spending it themselves. Don’t lecture New Zealanders, in a nanny State way, about having shorter showers; save the money in your own backyard first. They’re wasting money on stupid things, and New Zealanders have really had enough of it. They are absolutely fed up with this Government.

Anna Lorck: Go on, have a cold shower every morning!

STUART SMITH: Well, I know Anna Lorck has a lot of cold showers, and it’s quite clearly not good for her.

Anna Lorck: What? What? Go on!

STUART SMITH: My case in point. Fine—if you want a cold shower, that’s fine, but don’t tell us what to do. I like a warm shower, and I will have my showers for as long as I like. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m not going to talk about showers, whether they be long or short, because my colleague Stuart Smith—

Hon David Bennett: Whether they’re cold or hot.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —has done a very good job on that—whether they’re cold or hot as well, says David Bennett.

But Grant Robertson’s last Budget as finance Minister was a typical Labour Party socialist Budget: big spending. Tax, tax, tax; spend, spend, spend. That’s what it was all about—a last, desperate throw of the dice to try and bribe New Zealanders with their own money. We were told, in the lead-up to Budget 2023, that there would be $4 billion having been found down the back of a couch somewhere, that Grant Robertson had somehow miraculously managed to save somewhere. Well, what we found was, actually, a Government that in their last year of office is actually collecting $100 million a day extra tax—$100 million a day in extra tax—from hard-working New Zealanders who can least afford it during a cost of living crisis.

This is a Government that is spending a billion dollars a week more—$1 billion a week more—than they did when they came to office in 2017. So where is some of this massive spending going? Well, some of it’s going into the massively bloated Ministry for the Environment, a policy advisory department that is twice as large as it was five and a half years ago, employing now nearly 1,000 people, most of them mired in the minutiae of resource management reform.

I want to put it to you and to members of this House that, actually, our environment is no better—arguably, far worse—than it was five and a half years ago. For all the big words and the highfalutin talk, there has been, actually, mostly a reversal of environmental benefits that have occurred during this Government’s term. Extra funding has been required to feed the beast, and the beast is the policy bureaucracy that has actually achieved very little—had an awful lot of meetings, an awful lot of hui, but very, very little actual positive results.

On first glance, people would think that probably the budget for the environment had gone up massively. Well, actually, if you drill down into the weeds of the Budget line, $500 million of the increased spend in Vote Environment has gone to prop up the collapse of the emissions trading scheme (ETS) unit price. That ETS scheme requires an extra allocation of a massive $500 million because of the loss of sales on the emission units. Now, that’s just a sad indication, a policy decision made by the Government to have that impact.

But there was some good news—well, I hope it’s good news—because for my area of the Coromandel, still with munted roads, the main highway closed, there was an allocation of extra money for the repair of local roads. And that’s good news—and that’s good news—but I’m very sceptical, because this is a Government that’s very good on announcements, very good on the press releases, but absolutely hopeless on the delivery. So what I want to see, as the member of Parliament for Coromandel, is that money allocated quickly so that the roads administered by the Thames-Coromandel District Council can be fixed, and fixed quickly.

The Tapu Coroglen Road, a council road that is still closed after the cyclones from earlier this year in January, needs a lot of money spent on it. Now, the Thames-Coromandel District Council doesn’t have the resource to do it. We are hoping that central government will quickly allocate some of that money from Budget 2023 to do that. So far, no sign. All we’ve had is the press release and nothing actually happening. That is typical of this Government—no sense of urgency, no sense of actually understanding the needs of people in electorates like mine that are still suffering and doing it tough because of the consequences of the cyclones earlier this year. State Highway 25 remains closed with no prospect, according to the current Government, of it being opened this side of Christmas. That is a shameful and devastating prospect for the people of my electorate, who are going to face the fourth consecutive miserable trading summer that they have to face if that road isn’t open.

So I call on the Government to actually pull finger, get on with it. They’ve allocated the money in the Budget. Why don’t they just get on with it, do the job, get things done, and get regions like mine back on track?

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I graciously take the opportunity to speak in the House because I am proud of this Budget 2023. Our Government is focused on the issues that matter to most New Zealanders, supporting New Zealanders with the issue in front of us at the moment: the cost of living; delivering the services New Zealanders rely on, recovery and resilience and fiscal sustainability.

I get tired of the Opposition talking down our economy. We have to end it. We have to talk up New Zealand. Yes, times are tough—yes, times are tough—and we feel the pressures of inflation. But let’s get real and let’s look at the facts. The Reserve Bank has said to us that inflation has peaked. Mortgage rates have peaked. Things have peaked, which means, because of good fiscal management from Grant Robertson, our Minister of Finance—he has set us up well for some very challenging times in front of it.

But I will not have a bar of it where we talk down our economy, where we talk down hard-working New Zealanders, when we call people “bottom feeders”—yes, Madam Speaker, call people “bottom feeders”. That is unacceptable. And all I’ve seen from the Opposition since Budget time is them being mean-spirited—mean-spirited, negative National. They’re negative, negative, negative.

How mean-spirited is it to take away a $5 prescription fee—a $5 prescription fee—that is going to change the lives of over 130,000 New Zealanders? That is just mean-spirited.

Not only are they negative, but they haven’t shown us their fiscal plan. In fact, they haven’t actually shown us any of their plans. They’re showing us a bit of a flip-flop plan, post-housing of course, and walking away from the mutual relationship, the partnership, and legislation that we collectively put in place in this House to build houses, because we simply don’t have enough. But I come back to: you can’t trust National—you can’t trust National—you can’t trust ACT.

Simon Watts: Oh, come on. That’s a bit unfair. Come on, where’s the friendship?

SHANAN HALBERT: And we’ve got to ensure that we protect that. So the question for us, here it is: in this Budget, what are National going to cut? Are they going to cut, Simon Watts, our increased police numbers on the beat on the North Shore? Is that what you’re going to cut? Are you going to cut the community policing teams or the mental health teams or the online community police that we know serve our community? Because you cut them; we put them back. Are you going to cut our harbour bridge? Are you going to cut the harbour bridge? What’s your plan? It’s in this Budget. These are the things of our realities that you’re going to cut. Are you going to cut the beds being built in North Shore Hospital? Are you going to stop the investment in our local community, post-Auckland floods? Are you going to stop the investment in water infrastructure in the Wairau Valley that you talked about in this House? What are you going to cut?

It’s time for National to stop the negativity, stop the politics; let’s talk about it and stop being mean-spirited. Because I will hold you to account on the things that we have invested in—

Matt Doocey: Why can’t you talk about your Budget?

SHANAN HALBERT: —in this Budget.

So let’s talk about it. The $5 prescription fees that National will repeal—you will do it. The Defence Force increase in pay—Simon Watts’ electorate, are you going to cut that? Cheaper energy bills. KiwiSaver contributions for paid parental leave. Free public transport for under-13s, and half-price permanent public transport for under-24s. Those are the things that matter in this Budget, because Aucklanders—North Shore people—have asked us to front up to the cost of living. They’ve asked for real measures that respond well to the inflation challenges that are in front of us. National might give cuts—they’ll certainly cut things from this Budget—but our people will not be better off.

So it’s time for National to front up. If this isn’t your Budget, what will you cut? Is it our police, Simon Watts? Is it our investment in the coast? Is it our nurses? Is it our police? What is it? Potentially—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time has expired

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Fa'afetai lava lau afioga le Fofoga Fetalai. It is a pleasure to rise as the MP for Takanini to speak on this Budget, as it shows the support for my community and also the communities around Aotearoa Niu Sila.

This Budget, as reiterated by my colleagues, focuses on four themes, and that’s supporting our Kiwis, our whānau, our aiga with the cost of living. It also delivers the services within New Zealand that we rely on heavily throughout. It also focuses on whānau and communities that have been hit hard by the cyclone and the environmental changes here. It also focuses on whānau and communities that have been hit hard by the cyclone and the environmental changes here. And it also looks at fiscal sustainability. I give it up to Minister Grant Robertson: it was a hard task to do, and he has brought a balance to it, in order to support our whānau in the here and now while also building for tomorrow by not putting the pressure on inflation that many of our whānau are facing.

I want to comment on the busyness of last week, when we went as a Pacific caucus—and many of our colleagues around Aotearoa went around with their roadshows—to show the Budget and also to get the feedback from our communities. We started off in Porirua, where Minister Barbara Edmonds, the MP for Mana, was. I just want to acknowledge the EFKS church that hosted us there. Christchurch was our next stop, and we went to St Paul’s Trinity Pacific Presbyterian Church, where we met up with our community. One of the big things was, like many of our colleagues have mentioned, the $5 prescription fee. I just want to acknowledge the University of Otago. In 2015, there were a couple of studies that showed that we needed to make a policy of removing the $5 prescription fee. In February of this year, the University of Otago did another study, where Professor Norris mentioned, in one of the articles, that we need to make sure we remove this in order to support our whānau to have access to medicines in order to get better health outcomes, especially for our vulnerable communities.

I know that Minister Ayesha Verrall has mentioned, as a doctor herself—and I myself have been a GP in the community—that it is a huge thing to help our community remove this barrier. Many of our patients that come through will say, “Look, can I delay my antibiotics prescription till Thursday, when I get paid?” or “Is there any medicine in the clinic that I can have access to?” It’s such a vulnerable position for our communities to have, and, to be frank, we do go into the cupboard—obviously, we record everything—to make sure that our patients are getting the right medicines at the right time. I know our local pharmacists, who say, “Look, we’re getting a build-up of medicines in the back corner. Is there anything else that we can do?” So it is a huge thing for us to remove the $5 prescription fee, even though the Opposition will say, “Oh, it’s just a cup of coffee. It’s nothing. I want to pay for my medicines.” They neglect the fact that there are thousands of people that need this barrier removed in order to get better health outcomes for our people.

I want to mention the different areas that we went to, across the motu, ensuring the Budget. Ōtaki—thank you to the member Terisa Ngobi for hosting us there at the Levin Memorial Hall. We came to my own electorate of Takanini, and some of the organisations that came through were organisations that will benefit greatly with the Budget, as mentioned. Our local early childhood education centre came through and said their feedback on the extension of the 20 hours’ free for two-year-olds—that being extended. In my community of Takanini, almost two-thirds are under 35 years old: young families, young kids who are either at home or at day care. So this extension to the two-year-olds will have a great benefit for our people. It will make mum or dad be able to go work or do the things that they need to do to serve in the community. I want to mention our New Zealand Sikh Women’s Association, which did come as well; our Takanini rest homes; our R and R groups that came to discuss the Budget. All these things, all these organisations—I want to say a huge thank you to them.

One of the things I did last week was get my booster: my COVID vaccine in one arm; my flu vaccine in the other arm. And I also got to speak with the local pharmacist at Unichem at Gateway Shopping Centre, and he obviously said, like many of our colleagues said about the local pharmacists, it is a huge thing for them—not only, on the one side, to support the patients that come through and have access to better medicines but also, on the other hand, to support local businesses as well. So I give it up to all our local pharmacists. We do have to work together, and they do a great job in supporting our community, and this policy will make a huge difference for Takanini and for all the electorates across the motu, as well. I commend this Budget to the House. Fa'afetai tele lava.

ANAHILA KANONGATA'A (Labour): Fa'afetai e te Mana Wakawā. It is an honour and a privilege to stand to contribute in this Budget debate. The Wellbeing Budget is a balanced Budget, with support for today and building for tomorrow.

I want to acknowledge the leadership of Grant Robertson as the Minister of Finance. I’ve heard a lot of talk thrown around this House, and I feel that I need to remind this House that in 2019, Grant Robertson led the Wellbeing Budget—the Wellbeing Budget, which was incorporated from advice from experts like the Government’s Chief Science Advisor.

I want to say it again: this Budget is a balanced Budget. It is about support for today and it is about building for tomorrow.

The cost of living: I spoke to Ramona Durie. She’s a budgeter in Papakura, and I asked her what she thinks of the $5 co-payment. She said—and I quote—that not only would it help me with her medication, or her with her medication—I’ll just get my English correct. It’s Samoan Language Week, so I might flip-flop around that—just like the National Party leader, flip-flop. Anyway, she said to me that it will benefit her as a person who receives medicine, and the people who come to her for budget advice. That’s the $5 co-payment.

What she also said to me was “Do you realise that the free public transport for under-13s and the half-price for under-25s is going to add more money into families’ grocery budgets?” I said, “Is that right?”, and she said, “Yes, that is right.” She said that that was what she liked about this Budget, because it speaks to the people she sees every day for budgeting.

I was also out in Ōtaki and there was a person there—and I’m still talking about the leadership of Grant Robertson, which brings me to the winter energy payment. I was at Ōtaki, and a pensioner there said to me, “Thank you for the winter energy payment. It’s doing a lot, but can we have that all the time”—so, listen up, that’s something that we might do—“because it makes a huge lot of difference?”

For the leadership of Grant Robertson, throughout the country, we were in Mana with the Minister for Pacific Peoples, the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Minister of Finance, where he delivered a speech on the Budget to share with the Pacific people of Mana. When he finished talking about the Budget, one of those people said, “Actually, I had a lot of questions to ask, but you have answered them all.” That tells me that our Minister of Finance is correct in what he talks about with regard to our Budget priorities, where he talks about lifting opportunities for Māori and Pacific people.

I want to move now to the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins. I want to move to him to share with you what I experienced in Beachlands. Beachlands is part of Papakura. I went along with the Minister of Education, the Hon Jan Tinetti, where they have opened up this school wing that houses a lot of students, who told me about that. What they said was that they wanted to acknowledge the Prime Minister now, who was then the Minister of Education, because under his leadership, these schoolchildren were so proud to talk to us about their school. I was honoured to be there.

There was a whaea there. Her name was Zaelene Maxwell Butler, from the local iwi, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki. She named that school block—which under the leadership of our Prime Minister, who was then the Minister of Education—Kāpia, which is the kauri gum. She named it after that, and then she talked about the history of kauri and Beachlands, and she talked about that. Our investment in teaching Māori local history in our schools—from that moment, the penny dropped for me. Those students who will be using that classroom will learn about the history of their school and will learn about the local Māori of their school.

Leadership is about judging people on what they did in the past. Past behaviour is an indicator of future behaviour, and we see what we see, in just over a hundred days with the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, leadership that we can rely on in tough times, unlike the other side, who are flip-flopping away.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. What an opportunity it is to stand and talk about Budget 2023, which provides support for today and builds for tomorrow. However, I thought it might be appropriate to start with the description of what “tukituki” means—as the MP for Tukituki—in te reo, and it means “attack”. It is appropriate tonight to tukituki the National Party for what has to be one of the worst things that I can think of that I heard prior to coming into the House. The National Government is going to make women pay—women pay—for contraception, if they are elected. They’re going to make them pay for the fee for contraception.

As a mother of five daughters, it is a duty of mine to stand in the House tonight and say that the National Party is doing an absolute disservice—a disservice—to play politics against a policy that will change people’s lives, will protect people, will help the health system, and care for women. For the National Party to think it’s right to fight a policy like this purely on politics speaks absolute volumes for how sad and negative, and, frankly, despicable, that the National Party will go to those sorts of lengths when this is the right thing for women and it is the right thing for New Zealanders.

You cannot trust the National Party. You cannot trust them on what they will cut next. Will they cut police, like they cut our community cops?

Shanan Halbert: They cut them last time.

ANNA LORCK: They cut them last time. Will they cut the winter energy payment that keeps people warm during winter? They have said that they will; that is their plan. The only thing they are prepared to put up is the super age. They want to cut super for 65-year-olds and 66-year-olds. The only other thing I reckon they’ll put up is GST, because they have a track record. They told New Zealanders to trust them, that National would cut taxes and they wouldn’t put up GST, but they did. And they love tax. Don’t think for a minute that the National Party doesn’t love tax.

So in tukituki-ing the National Party, I want to bring it back home to what we are doing for Hawke’s Bay right now. We’ve just announced a billion-dollar cyclone recovery package as part of our commitment to working together with Hawke’s Bay. Part of that is $100 million to help regions hit by cyclones to build back stopbanks. We’ve put forward a $6 billion resilience plan to build back that critical infrastructure that has been smashed through the cyclone—roads, electricity lines, communication lines, lifelines that were so necessary. We have to have the resilience for the future to make sure that we build back safer, we build back smarter, and we build back for a better future for our region.

That’s what the National Party should actually be saying: “Good on you. Good on getting on with the job.” But instead, I’ve heard nothing but negativity and attacks on women’s health tonight. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): You know, it’s always a sign of a Government on its way out that it releases its Budget and its backbench members spend not the time talking about the Prime Minister or Grant Robertson or what they’re doing for the community; they spend five whole minutes attacking His Majesty’s loyal Opposition. I think that’s all you need to know. They’re obsessed. The Labour Party is obsessed with the National Party, and at one level I’m flattered with that, because I suspect, come the election, the New Zealand public will be obsessed with us and we will win hands down.

This Budget is a failure, and that is certainly the feedback from my constituents in Tāmaki. As I’ve been out and about, particularly in the last week of recess, a few people asked, “What Budget?”—it was that boring they didn’t realise. A lot of others, though, completely see through the spin. They understand that, yes, if they are someone who receives a dollar or two of support, that, yep, they’re a winner at one level, but what my constituents understand is the enormous cost and burden which this Labour Government, over six years, is putting on the people of New Zealand.

As I’ve said at several public meetings and engagements, at one level it doesn’t affect me; I’ll be dead. But my children and my grandchildren will be paying the costs of this Government’s spending. We know that six years ago we spent about $60 billion a year in Government; now we’re almost at $140 billion—a billion dollars more a week. Do those Kiwis struggling, like my constituents in Tāmaki, feel that the cost of living is getting better for them because Labour’s spending a billion a week? Course not. It’s getting worse. So for all the talk of free transport and early childhood education centres (ECEs)—by the way, we’ll come back to the ECEs—it’s costing us more and more, and a debt projected to be around about $100 billion; like, four, five times higher than six years ago, projected to be in 2026. It’s outrageous—it’s outrageous. People in my electorate, I’m sure in others, on this side, as we go out and engage—parents, grandparents and others—are going, “Who is going to pay for this?” And the answer, again, is very simple: our children and our grandchildren. As I say, the cost of living is getting worse, and the Government has not addressed this.

Crime is getting worse. Just last week, three—actually, four; there was a robbery at one of our jewellery stores, and three of our shops ram-raided. I think I’m up to 45 of our businesses now. They’re soft on crime. They talk about the 1,800 new police officers; not one of them, I understand, is actually reaching the proper and full front line. The only thing that’s succeeding is our Eastern Bays Community Patrol, but they’re not funded by Government. They’re out and about—that’s probably a lesson there.

I mentioned the ECE network. Well, I’ve talked to the ECE providers; they’re furious about what this Government is doing. Elements like pay parity and so forth need to be addressed, but no, Labour’s splashed the cash around in the wrong way that’s actually—and this is from ECE, or early childhood providers, that are telling me—going to make the system worse, not only for them but, obviously, for the children.

And then all the talk of infrastructure. Well, look, again, Labour’s great at promising, they’re great at putting out press releases, but they can’t deliver anything. Again, my electorate’s been struggling through the flooding of recent months—and I want to be really clear: Tāmaki has not been as hit as, obviously, some areas of the country, but I’ve been visiting families whose homes have been flooded out, their businesses. It’s a disaster, and where is the funding to improve the infrastructure? Now, granted some of that’s at a council level, let’s be fair; but some of it’s at a central government level as well. It’s just not happening.

Then, of course—well, actually, in recent days—and it’s not so much on the Budget per se—well, it is the Budget—we’ve seen a little bit of a change around our housing policy. I have to say, to people in Tāmaki, that is something that they fed back to me very strongly about, and I’m really pleased to see a growth in development—that’s probably a pun—in National’s approach to housing policy there. The assurance I can give to the people of Tāmaki is we will continue to see an intensification that is helpful and healthy in our area but one that’s not going to be too oppressive, and I think it’s really good to see that new policy there.

Look, on the final bit—because I think we can’t always throw too many bricks. We can’t throw too many bricks at the Government; they are very sensitive souls. So, on the positive side, I am glad to see there’s more money from Customs to fight on illegal tobacco. The Government has a big challenge there. I’m actually quite pleased to see, overall, the funding in arts and the likes of Te Matatini being acknowledged, and, putting on my IPAC, or Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, hat, delighted to see the extra money to Internal Affairs to target the likes of foreign interference in our media. So I think that’s incredibly positive, but, as I said right at the start, what a failure this Budget’s been—so much that Labour can’t even talk about it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Simon Watts—five minutes.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, an absolute pleasure to rise to talk about what can be without doubt a failed opportunity by this Labour Government to actually course correct an economy which is heading completely in the wrong direction. And we’ve heard the members on the other side just continually talk about the National Party—continually talk about the National Party. Not about their own policies, not about the fact that their policies have led us to this position. Oh, no, no, they want to talk about the National Party and the opportunities that lie ahead for Kiwis in the next 134 days from today.

I want to refer to a key few aspects in regards to this Budget. Sadly, for my constituents on the North Shore, there was very little in this Budget that they can take away and say that will actually deal with some of the core issues that they are facing, particularly around the impacts around the cost of living, the high degrees of inflation, the high impacts in regards to their interest rates on their mortgages. These are significant costs on families in the North Shore, and the Government had an opportunity of which they have wasted not to deal with the underlying issues.

A topic that we have not heard much about is the increasing levels of debt, the amount of money that this Government has borrowed. So let’s take a little walk down memory lane in regards to where we have started and where we are now. In 2017, gross debt $87 billion. That is about $45,000 per Kiwi household; $16,000 per person in this country. That was in 2017. So let’s do a little bit of a quiz. What do we think in 2022 the gross debt level is? Well, I’ll tell you: $119 billion. Up to $62,000 per household, up to $23,000 per person in this country, in that short amount of time. OK, maybe we think that was just a blip. Let’s go to 2023, forecast: $135 billion, $71,000 for every single Kiwi household in this country, of gross debt that is feeding the addiction of spending by this Labour Government. That is $25,000 of debt per every single Kiwi individual. That is a Toyota Corolla sitting in every driveway, for every Kiwi—it reflects on finance, it represents the gross debt that this Government is incurring. That is a 55 percent increase in gross debt since 2017. And let’s look forward to 2027. God blimey, I hope we’ve got a National-led Government by that point, because the debt level is going to be $215 billion, per the forecast: $114,000 per Kiwi household, $41,000 for every single man, woman, and child in this country, of gross debt. Wow, that is a lot.

But let’s talk about paying for that debt, because that is the aspect that no one is talking about. In 2022, $2.8 billion is spent on the interest costs of that debt; $1,400 per Kiwi household is being spent on interest costs of that debt in 2022. In 2023, we go from $2.8 billion to $6.3 billion; $3,300 per Kiwi household. That is the fourth-largest amount of spending, above social service and welfare, health, education. The fourth most expensive thing that this Government spends its money on is paying for its debts and its addiction to spending. And let’s go forward to 2027, because this is where it gets pretty scary: $8.6 billion of interest costs per annum, $4,500 for every single Kiwi household in this country, of interest costs alone per annum. Law and order budget dwarfed by the interest costs being funded on that debt.

And what do we have to show for it? Very little. A missed opportunity, set up for failure in the future. We need to turn around, and National will do that in 135 days.

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

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

SPEAKER: Tēnā rā tātou katoa. The House is resumed. Members, the next call is a split call from the Labour Party.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Talofa, Mr Speaker. It really is a pleasure to take a call tonight in the House around Budget 2023, and that is because it’s such a great Budget. We’ve got a lot to be proud of in this Budget. Our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins, said that this Budget would be focused on the cost of living, and that it was. There’s lots in this Budget that I want to talk about, so I’m going to try and talk really quick with my five minutes.

The first thing I want to talk about is the scrapping of the $5 co-payment for prescriptions. Five bucks might not be much to some, but to a lot of people I hang out with and love and know, $5 is heaps. Five dollars can be a milk and a bread. Growing up, I used to be able to do two loaves of bread and a tin of creamed corn, and then you’ve got toasties; you’ve got a dinner. So, for some people—

Simon Court: What with inflation, it’s really 7 percent.

TERISA NGOBI: —$5 can do so much, and so if you’ve got to choose between feeding your kids or picking up your prescription for five bucks, you’re going to feed your kids, Simon Court. That’s where it’s at. So that’s how important the scrapping of the $5 prescriptions is.

What we also know—and, actually, I’ve been really lucky to be part of the Pacific caucus but also quite active in my community of the Ōtaki electorate. So, up and down the community, we’ve been talking to people around the Budget and what it means to people. People have said to me—I know Leo, or we call him “Grandpa Leo”, at St Joseph’s church in Levin; he said to me that is a big deal for him, because our elderly are not only on one medication, they’re often on two, three, or four—you’re getting up to 20 bucks now. That’s a lot of money, especially for our pensioners; our people who have worked hard; and in their retirement age, they shouldn’t be having to scrimp or worry about how much they’ve got left over to get some food. So that extra $5 or, if it is a few prescriptions, that extra 20 bucks in Grandpa Leo’s pocket is a big deal, and it’s a game-changer for him. He was really appreciative; he said, “Please thank ‘Chippy’ for me.” So I did.

I also know, with the Pacific Budget roadshow, we spoke to another elderly Tongan community leader in the Horowhenua, and her name is Saane Tovo, and she also said how important that would be for her. Again, she’s on more than one medication; she is going to be able to save some money in terms of that for her as well. That’s what we mean about supporting people, supporting New Zealanders through the cost of living.

I also heard from James Westbury, who owns Westbury Pharmacy in Waikanae, in my electorate. He emailed me to tell me how grateful he was for this initiative from the Government. It is going to help his pharmacy, but it also means it’s going to help his community. That’s why he got into being a pharmacist: he wants to be able to support his community and to support his people to keep well. If people aren’t picking up their prescriptions because $5 is too much, that is not him being able to support his community. So he was very grateful for this Government having the foresight and seeing that that was a need in our community.

But that is not all. Not only did we have the scrapping of the $5 co-payment for prescriptions but we also got a pre-Budget train, yes. So, in our electorate, we are really lucky—well, lucky, but also, pre-Budget, me and the beautiful Palmerston North MP Tangi Utikere worked really hard to make sure that this Government knew that a regular train from Palmerston North, through Horowhenua and Kāpiti, right through to Wellington would be a game-changer for our people. What it does is it makes sure that everyone has access to health, education, and employment. That should be the basic access for everybody; everybody should have that same equality to access.

I’ve spoken before in the House about my nephew Rawiri Tristram, who is in a wheelchair. He’s a really good athlete. He does wheelchair rugby. He also is a really good swimmer. He will now be able to get on that train regularly by himself, independently, and take himself to university, if that’s what he wants to do—but take himself out of the region and come back to the beautiful Ōtaki electorate where he lives. A game-changer.

There are so many more things in this Budget, but, actually, this is what this Labour Government is about. We’re about supporting people. We support people with the winter energy payment—an absolute game-changer for our elderly, and I know that from working as a case manager. Free lunches in schools is also another game-changer for many. We are going to extend the free trade training and apprenticeships. This is what’s at risk. We on this side of the House are the party for the people; on that side of the House, they oppose those things and they want to scrap contraception access as well—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. Naisi Chen—five minutes.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Happy free-trade agreement (FTA) day; this is the day that our New Zealand - United Kingdom free-trade agreement comes into effect. And I’m so proud of all the effort that this Government has put into securing eight—eight—FTAs, either upgrades or brand new FTAs. Today is with the UK, and we’ve signed it with the EU, we’ve upgraded it with China, we’ve done the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership—we’ve done so much more to make sure we grow the pie.

Trade, for New Zealand, is a crucial lifeline, and we’ve seen it support our economy through the toughest times in COVID. In fact, our exporting volume has grown during COVID. I know that our wine industry hit an actual historic record; I think it’s all the people drinking wine in lockdown. So good on you, and good on the industry, but I’m also extremely proud of all of our public servants for negotiating that deal. This is why I begin my speech about the Budget on this, because this Budget is about making sure we grow the economy in the toughest of times.

I am particularly proud of the support we’ve given to our digital sector—20 percent rebate for our game development sector. How amazing is that? That is an industry that we know are high skill but also high wages—making sure that we keep these talents, especially a lot of young talent on our shores, growing our economy, and, once again, that is also an export sector. It’s what we call a weightless export. So, with the Government’s investment into that sector, we know that we’ll be able to expand our range of exporting goods as well.

But one thing that I’m actually really, really proud of is also our support into the digital sector. In fact, the night before the Budget got announced, I was in the Beehive theatrette hosting a Diplosphere talk about artificial intelligence (AI) or AGI—artificial general intelligence. One of the things that all the industry leaders were talking about specifically was that New Zealand needed to ramp up our skills, our labour workforce, in the digital space and make sure that they had the right skill set to face a day and an age where AI is now evolving rapidly. Well, guess what? The next day we announce another $25 million. It’s almost as if they’d read it; another $25 million for our digital sector, making sure that we’ve supported the development of an apprentice-like pilot programme, which will include part-payments for trainee wages, employer support and guidance, and will also cover set-up costs for trainees. That all comes under the Digital Technologies Industry Transformation Plan.

But also we’ve invested into the agricultural; we’ve also invested into lots and lots of other places where we can actually grow the industry. We’ve invested into our research units to make sure that our science and research stays onshore, where there’s hubs—that they can communicate ideas and actually grow that seedling into full maturity when it becomes full business plans, when it becomes an industry and the New Zealand economy actually reaps the full benefit of that investment.

I also know that for us to grow the economy we have to be able to look after everyone. That’s why I’m particularly proud of the fact that we’re now funding two-year-olds to go into early childhood education training. When our workforce becomes very tight, as we are right now, we need to make sure that everyone, including every single mother, unlocks their potential as well. So, by being able to support our young mothers into work, I know that this is going to not only help each family meet the cost of living payments but also it’s going to make sure that we unlock the full potential in our economy as well.

But it’s also making sure we look after the most vulnerable in our economy, as well. It’s those elderly; it’s those who are paying that $5 prescription fee. There is no reason why we should ever cancel that. It’s making sure that we look after the most vulnerable; it’s about investing so that they don’t come back into the emergency department sicker. It’s making sure that they are able to live healthy and productive lives. There is so much in this Budget that is support for today and investment for tomorrow and making sure that we really support the industries that will take the New Zealand economy into the long term.

So I’m going to end where I started: happy UK FTA. This is such a great day for all of us, and I look forward to seeing more FTAs come into force and New Zealand and our produce going right across the world, selling at the price they should.

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. Chris Penk—we’ve got about six minutes left.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. In terms of the Budget that was passed—or started to be passed—by the Government last week, there was much that was underwhelming; much that was disappointing. But the most disappointing aspect is the reliance of the Government on the fact of cyclone recovery to excuse a number of other shortfalls and shortcomings: the announcements versus the expectations that have been built up over the past six years.

The reason I say that—and I don’t think any right-minded New Zealander would begrudge the people of cyclone-affected regions if that were indeed the case. But if the claim’s going to be made by the Government that the reason they can’t afford a whole heap of other stuff—that they’ve led New Zealanders to believe they can take care of with every aspect of their life—is that all the attention, the resources, and the focus is going into the cyclone recovery, then that had better be true. Otherwise, all of New Zealand has a reason to feel let down by what’s happening—or rather, what’s not happening—in those regions today. So, in my time, I will cover the fact that the cyclone recovery, both as announced in the Budget and also in the initial four months—as it’s been now since the first Auckland floods of anniversary weekend—has been slow, it’s been disconnected, it’s been reactive, and it’s been unaware.

So, first of all, it’s been slow. It’s been more than three months now since Cyclone Gabrielle, and we still don’t even know what the areas are that are not going to be able to be rebuilt or available for regrowing. Now, in fairness, the Government said that that answer is coming tomorrow. But also, in fairness, they said in March, it would be April; in April, it will be May; in May, it will be 31 May. Here we are on 31 May, and we still don’t have it. No doubt there will be something tomorrow.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: A new Minister, most likely.

CHRIS PENK: And I do actually mean that’s likely. A new Minister—well, actually, it’s interesting you talk about a new Minister, Michael Woodhouse. My colleague and friend interjects that, actually, that might be necessary. But, in fact, in terms of ministerial leads within one of the particularly hard-hit areas, we had, initially, Stuart Nash and then Meka Whaitiri, and those have—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: How did that go?

CHRIS PENK: Ha, ha! How did it go? Well, it’s funny you should ask. It didn’t go well, but they did go. Now we have a third, and maybe it’s three strikes; maybe it’s third time’s a charm—I don’t know. But, for the people of that area, what they do know is that they feel underserved, and disconnection between the announcement and the delivery—between what’s actually going on, on the ground, what’s actually needed, and what’s actually being delivered—could not be wider. It is as great a chasm as some of those physical areas that need a physical bridge to be put across them.

So, with the more than three months since Gabrielle, we’ve heard from Minister Robertson that a good decision is needed—[Hon Grant Robertson enters Chamber]

Hon Grant Robertson: Speak of the devil.

CHRIS PENK: —not a quick decision. But I put it to the Minister—and I’m able, now, to do it in person and it’s helpful that he’s here to hear this—that the decisions need to be both good and quick. In the context of letting people know that they can rebuild or they can regrow in the places that they want to, that really should have happened before now.

Because, of course, even assuming we get the announcement tomorrow—and having spoken about the delays already that we’ve had month by month—even then, we won’t know the areas that can’t be rebuilt or regrown, because that will come at some later date; some unspecified date. For areas that are not going to get even the benefit of tomorrow’s announcements—the relatively easy bit; the category one, the ones who can, effectively, get the green light, the green zone, call it what you will—all of this uncertainty is adding great strain to the people who have already been hit very hard, of course, by the cyclone itself. So we’ve talked about slowness.

As for disconnection, the funds that were meant to be provided by central government to affected businesses via local delivery partners, LDPs—in practice, mostly chambers of commerce locally—there’s been a lack of clarity about the criteria. That’s set up, unfortunately, a situation where, locally, people have been looking at the neighbour to say, “Why have they got this? Why have I got only that?”

There’s been, frankly, a lack of sophistication and nuance. Even allowing for the fact that decisions needed to be made quickly—money needed to go out the door quickly—that does seem strange; particularly when it’s clear that we’ve actually had the worst of both worlds: we’ve had the lack of clarity and the lack of delivery. Because as at today—or, at least, as at yesterday, and I don’t imagine much has changed in 24 hours—the thick end of $9 million is yet to be allocated through that fund in the Hawke’s Bay area.

If there was ever an area of New Zealand that was crying out for the help that’s already been announced—that’s already on the table and now about to be taken off the table—it would be the Hawke’s Bay area. I say that with all due respect to the other areas which also feel that they need or want much more. Of course people always want and need much more than Governments are prepared to give them. That’s fine; we understand that. But, for goodness’ sake, at least, if the money is going to be announced and made available, it should not be taken away with the other hand from that with which it was given. But that’s the situation we have now.

We’ve also got a problem in the design of the system, whereby affected businesses got some compensation from the Ministry for Primary Industries, the primary industries, and then they can’t claim money as an affected business from that more general fund. That’s actually precluded people getting the help to which they would have been entitled if they had regarded themselves only as an affected business, as opposed to a rural business, in the first instance. It’s also been a reactive response. It took months for a silt removal - specific fund to be needed where it was obvious to anyone who visited on the ground—and by ground I mean waist-height or head-height silt-covered ground—that that was going to be necessary.

In terms of orders that need to be made by the Government, broad powers that were given by this Parliament, including with the support and the blessing of the National Party—for example, to be able to burn material that can’t usually be burnt, even if there’s a relatively small amount of that tied up in the debris in these cyclone-hit orchards—that must be a bit of red tape - cutting that can and should be done from the Government. I urge them to do it.

For that reason, on that basis, the Budget announcements cannot be regarded as a success.

SPEAKER: In response, I call the Hon Grant Robertson.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Fa'afetai tele lava. I want to thank all colleagues for their contribution to the Budget debate. It is an important part of the parliamentary process to be able to give those first reactions that people have when they see the Budget, and the reactions, as predicted, within the Parliament have been varied. The naturally positive and optimistic Government has gone through the Budget and said this is a great Budget for the times that New Zealand is in. Others in the House, reflective of their more pessimistic nature, have found things to pick holes in or irrelevancies that they mentioned or things that aren’t even in the Budget, but such is the nature of a Budget debate in Parliament.

I do want to reflect, too, that the next step in this is the parliamentary process also doing its job with select committees, and that is an important part of the way our democracy works: that we go through the Budget and we have the exercise of everybody scrutinising it. But this debate has been an important one, and I want to acknowledge all of my colleagues across the Chamber who have been a part of that debate.

It is a tradition for Ministers of Finance to hit the road after the Budget and do the roadshow and sell the Budget to the people. Tomorrow morning—hoping Terisa Ngobi is with me—I will be with the people of Kāpiti doing that. But, last week, I was in a number of other places around New Zealand, and you occasionally, as Minister of Finance, feel a little bit like a stadium rock band when you say, “Hello, Dunedin” really hoping that you are in Dunedin when you say that, in case things go wrong.

Hon Dr David Clark: You were—you were!

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: But—I was; that’s right. Dr Clark was with me, and I was in Dunedin. One of the things I wanted to reflect on was the way in which New Zealanders have received this Budget, because New Zealanders know the times we’re living in: that these are tough times for many people and many families. We know that the cost of living spike—the inflation pandemic, as Chris Hipkins likes to call it—is affecting not only New Zealand but countries around the world, and that is hitting home in people’s lives. So this Budget recognised that that was the time we were in and it needed to have that focus on the cost of living. We reflected on what we had done over the past few years, things like the wage subsidy scheme, the cost of living payment, the 1 April changes that made significant differences to the lives of more than a million New Zealanders, the fact that we’ve been able to lift main benefits by 7.2 percent, to lift the family tax credit, to be able to lift the minimum wage—all of those things have helped people with the cost of living that they have been facing.

But, in this Budget, we knew we had two jobs to do at once in that regard, and that was making sure we found ways to support people but we didn’t exacerbate inflation, and we have struck that balance in this Budget. We have found those cost of living measures, and we wanted to add to that as well. We wanted those cost of living measures to be things that had co-benefits: that did other things for society and the economy.

So, for example, the $5 prescription co-payment being got rid of: not only does that relieve a particular cost pressure on people; it also relieves pressure within our health system. It means that people who pick up those prescriptions won’t end up at the emergency department; they won’t end up inside our hospital system. That particular policy has resonated right across New Zealand. When I was in Dunedin, there was a gentleman who came up to me who told me that his elderly mother cried when she realised that her prescriptions were going to be free, because that five or that 10 or that 15 or that 20 bucks that comes along makes a difference in that person’s life. So we’re doing our best by the health system and our best by people with those cost of living measures.

Another example is the free public transport for children and the half-price public transport for under-25s. We know that, if we can make it easier for families and for young people especially to use public transport, not only are we relieving a cost of living pressure but we are doing the right thing by our climate change goals and our climate change policies.

So we sought out those policies. They were thought about by the Government as ways of relieving that cost of living pressure, but also knowing at the same time we wanted to see inflation come down, and that’s what the Budget shows: that inflation tracks down. It’s down to 4 percent by next year. It’s then down inside the Reserve Bank’s band at the end of 2024 and about 2.5 percent in 2025. That’s the trajectory that New Zealanders want us to be on, because we know inflation affects the lives of so many New Zealanders when it’s up at the levels that it is at the moment.

But the way of getting there, the way of making sure we do bring inflation down, the way we get ourselves back to a level of spending that is more fiscally sustainable, has to take into account the world we all live in today, and we had this exchange in question time earlier today. It is theoretically possible for the Government in this Budget to have snapped our fingers and said we’re back down to 30 percent of GDP as Government spending. We could’ve done that. The consequence of doing that in one go, in one Budget, would’ve been cuts to our health system, cuts to our education system, and cuts to our housing programme. We know that New Zealanders rely on those public services that we provide, and the cost of providing those public services has also risen significantly as inflation has risen.

So I stand by the balance we’ve struck in this Budget of saying we must keep investing in the public services that New Zealanders rely on. We need to do that in ways that make sure that we’re looking to the long term—and I’ll return in a moment to talking about the wellbeing aspects of this Budget—but that focus on the cost of living whilst also having those other benefits, I believe, has meant that we’ve struck the balance, and we do see inflation coming down inside this Budget.

Another element and one other big focus for us in this Budget was around recovery and resilience, and I did catch the end of Mr Penk’s speech there. We have put aside around $1.8 billion over the course of the last few months to help with the recovery and the rebuild. We’ve tried to make this a locally led response. That’s what was asked of us by the regions. We’ve learnt some lessons from what happened in Canterbury, and we want to make sure that’s what we do. But this is a long-term recovery and rebuild, and I do think it behoves everyone in this Parliament to explain how they will fund this long-term recovery and rebuild, because we’re in this for the long haul. The likes of our MPs like Anna Lorck who are here today know that, on the ground, we need to be there as a partner for the long haul.

So, within the Budget, we had the National Resilience Plan. For me, this is something that hasn’t had as much publicity—it wouldn’t as much as a cost of living measure—but, actually, I think, long term, it’s going to have a huge impact, because this is finally a chance for us to get ahead of the infrastructure deficit that has grown in New Zealand over decades; no individual Government to blame for it, but it has grown over decades. We have, as we’ve got in this Budget, $71 billion worth of capital spending over the next five years, all of it important—on the schools and the hospitals and the rail and the roads—but much of that is just keeping things going as they are now, and what we’ve got to do is get ahead. We’ve got to make sure we’re more resilient to the next weather event. We’ve got to make sure, when we rebuild the rail and the roads in Hawke’s Bay, in Tairāwhiti, in Northland, that we’re rebuilding them in a resilient way so that, the next time a weather event comes along, we’re ahead of it.

So that’s what the National Resilience Plan is about. It is the first and the initial payment in a plan that I hope will make sure that we take adaptation as seriously as this Government has taken emissions reduction over the last few Budgets, because both of them matter—you can’t just do one. We’ve got to be there. So that focus on resilience and on making sure that New Zealanders are looked after when we have these cyclones is incredibly important.

I want to mention a couple of other areas in the couple of minutes I’ve got remaining. The first of those is that this is a Budget that is excellent for women, and it is something, for one of the first times in New Zealand’s budgeting history, where we put a gender budgeting lens on the Budget. What that did was guide our decisions. So things like the early childhood extension for two-year-olds, Ngā Tini Whetū, the extension of school lunches—we looked at those through a gender lens, and this Budget is particularly good for women. There’s one area that I want to mention, and I mentioned it on Budget day: I am extremely proud of the fact that this Budget says to working women, “If you go on paid parental leave, the Government will support you to keep your KiwiSaver contributions going.”, because we know that the lifetime incomes of women go down when they are out of the workforce. That is a way that we, through this Budget, using that gender budgeting lens, have made sure that we are supporting women, and I think that outcome is an excellent one.

Finally, this is a wellbeing Budget, and I stand proudly behind the changes we have made over the years to the way we put our Budgets together. It matters that we are fiscally disciplined. It matters for future generations that we make sustainable fiscal decisions about debt and about the surplus. But, alongside that, we also have to measure other things. We have to measure the health of our environment, the wellbeing of our people, the strength of our communities, and that’s what we’ve changed, so that, when we put this Budget together, I hope New Zealanders can see themselves in it—they can see their future, their children’s future, their grandchildren’s future being looked after, that balance of making sure we are fiscally sustainable, we help with the cost of living, we look after the public services that we need to deliver, and we focus on the resilience of our economy and society. That’s wellbeing. That’s why I’m proud of this Budget, because this Budget enhances New Zealanders’ wellbeing and looks after future generations.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.

Ayes 42

New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 72

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kerekere.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 72

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kerekere.

Noes 45

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

House in Committee

House in Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the House is in committee on the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill, the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill, and the Charities Amendment Bill.

Bills

Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill

In Committee

Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we come first to the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill, and we begin the debate on Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 28, and Part 1 of the Schedule, “Amendments to child support legislation”.

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

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none. The question is that Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 and 2 stand part.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. I expect that members will have a lot to discuss in the committee of the whole House stage for this piece of legislation. I did indicate in the second reading, which was only yesterday, that National supports it, but with some significant reservations, so my expectation is that, as a result of the committee stage, those reservations will go one way or the other.

My first question to the Minister in the chair is: what is the primary objective of this legislation? Is it around child poverty reduction, and why is it that the figures for the number of children who would be lifted out of poverty by this bill have changed from the regulatory impact statement until now?

Madam Chair, it would be really helpful to get some answers, so—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! It is up to the Minister as to when the Minister addresses the questions. In order to keep the debate going, members should seek a call.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. For those who have just tuned in to the committee of the whole House, this is a recommendation that was agreed by the Government in the report of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, which reported back in May 2019. So I’m going to give a bit of a time line to help the Minister in the chair answer some of the questions. May 2019 was the Welfare Expert Advisory Group report back, and in March 2022, the regulatory impact statement (RIS) was drafted. So what generally happens is that a piece of legislation goes to a Cabinet committee, and the Government of that day decides. So it’s somewhat puzzling that it has been 12 months later, on 26 March, before a bill then landed in this Parliament—oh, and then it became urgent. Then it became urgent, because the Government wanted to be able to say it had done something by 1 July, which is—guess what!—a mere few months before an election. Fancy that!

Unfortunately, as is common with the Minister in charge of this bill, we had another rushed process. That’s why it is really important in the committee of the whole House to have a high level of scrutiny, because the public didn’t have the opportunity to scrutinise it fully in the select committee.

So, as I say, my first question is around the pure essence of this legislation. Is it about increasing welfare payments—in this case—to sole parents, or is it about lifting children out of poverty? If it is the latter, I’d like to know why the numbers affected, in terms of the numbers being lifted out of poverty according to the RIS would change, and what the evidence is for the change.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): I thank the member for her questions. As I see in the legislative statement for the bill at the second reading of this bill, the major purpose of this bill is to correct an unfairness between sole parents on benefit and other families on benefit. So that is the purpose of the bill. The fact that children are lifted out of poverty is of course a good thing, but the major purpose of the bill is, in fact, to correct that anomaly between the way that sole parents were treated and the way that coupled parents were treated.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Following on from that, because it’s evident from the regulatory impact statement—or at least in some of it, because there are still heavy redactions in the regulatory impact statement. So there is still a lot that’s not open and transparent to the public or to this House.

But in terms of the options that were considered, given the Minister’s comment about it being to change the status of the sole parent benefit to match others, I’m interested to know, given that one of the drivers of the welfare system—and I’m not quoting directly, but perhaps I should. Let me quote directly: “the general purpose of … welfare assistance … [is] to use all available resources before seeking financial assistance [through the Ministry of Social Development].”, whether or not in considering the options available for this bill that liable parents—who tend to be fathers—are responsible for their children, irrespective of whether the receiving parent is receiving welfare or not. So the fundamental principle here is that families are responsible for their children, and in the child support legislation, the liable parent is responsible for their children, and they pay the receiving parent accordingly.

The question of principle that I’m interested in the Minister responding to is whether or not that then means that there should be a differential with the sole parent benefit, because it is about the liable parent financially supporting and providing for their children, irrespective of the receiving parent’s economic status—i.e., whether they’re on a benefit or not, and whether that should be agnostic in terms of the pass on of support. If you are then saying that the liable parent is liable, then those funds—it’s entirely appropriate that it offsets the costs associated with the sole parent benefit. So I’m interested in the Minister’s explanation for this legislation as to why that differential shouldn’t have been maintained.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. Whilst the Minister’s contemplating her responses to the questions posed by my colleague Louise Upston, I turn to clause 5 of the bill, replacing section 9, which is headed “UCB”—which is “unsupported child benefit”—“beneficiaries must apply for formula assessment”.

So, Minister and officials, advisers, my question is focused not so much on, as the Minister answered, unfairness to the sole parent recipients, but, actually, the unfairness to the child or the children who will be the direct beneficiaries of payments from a liable parent. Minister, submissions have been made by members of the public such as the Child Poverty Action Group, Community Law Centres of Aotearoa, and Salvation Army Te Ope Whakaora identifying that this bill is, effectively, addressing the rights of sole parent beneficiaries by way of the process of pass on of payment from a liable parent rerouted from IRD directly to the sole parent.

New section 9, inserted by clause 5 in the bill, identifies and sets apart that a child who is in the care of not their sole parent, for which a liable parent is responsible for direct payment towards the upkeep of that child—New Zealand has a number of children who are not in the care of one or other parent. That is, effectively, either a grandparent, a foster parent, or a family member not deemed as a sole parent beneficiary but as an unsupported child benefit beneficiary. Minister, can the answer be provided, please, why there is a discrimination directly as a result of clause 5 of the bill, which identifies that a child who is in the care of not a sole parent but another caregiver—why the UCB beneficiary is not entitled to the liable parent pass-on payment for the direct benefit of the child?

So the focus of my question is not about fairness to sole parent recipients, but, actually, it’s about fairness to all children, be they either in the care of the sole parent or a non-parent who is a caregiver under the unsupported child benefit beneficiary.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): I’ll answer the member who just spoke, Harete Hipango, first, as to why children on the unsupported child’s benefit weren’t taken into this bill. It’s a straightforward reason: it is because it is being considered by Oranga Tamariki as part of the long-term work to reform the system of financial assistance and support for caregivers. So that issue is being addressed in that particular review, where it’s the appropriate place for it to be addressed, I believe.

In response to the Hon Louise Upston, who is concerned about the differential between sole parents and other parents—I think the real concern was about parents being liable for their children and using their resources to support their children before calling on the resources of the State. One of the things, in terms of a behavioural response to the child support practices in place at the moment, is that we know that it discourages—it discourages—liable parents from actually paying child support. We know that there has been a great deal of information to suggest that if child support paid by a liable parent flows through to the caregiving parent, then the liable parent is much more likely to pay. So, indeed, it does encourage liable parents to take up their responsibilities.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. I recognise my colleague will have a number of questions. So I want to start from that very point that the Minister has answered around liable parents, because what is not evident in any of the documentation that would be very interesting, given the cost of this policy being $354 million, and there are lots of ways that you could alleviate child poverty with $354 million, is: how many additional liable parents will child support be recovered from as a result of this policy? How much more child support, in terms of quantifiable amount is expected to be received on behalf of receiving parents, and what evidence do you have for that? That’s my first set of questions around liable parents and the theory of the incentive. I’m interested in the evidence of that.

I want to pick up on the comments that my colleague Harete Hipango raised about the unsupported child benefit—or the UCB—which is in a number of parts of this legislation, that one was a really significant issue raised by submitters in the very short period of time they had to consider this—and I understand the work that Oranga Tamariki is doing, but why is it not that, as a stage one, they could have been provided assistance? Most people would agree the most vulnerable children in New Zealand are those who are not in the care of their direct family, and those who receive an unsupported child benefit fit that category. Therefore, why wasn’t the extension, even if it was as a transitionary method, until the final work—goodness knows how long that might be that Oranga Tamariki is doing that review—couldn’t have been paid even in the short term? And what number of children would have been lifted out of poverty had that extension to the beneficiaries of the unsupported child benefit been extended the generosity of the State through this policy?

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Following on from my colleague Louise Upston’s question around the unsupported child benefit, it’s a cop-out and it’s an easy answer to say that there’s work being done by Oranga Tamariki addressing this issue. Again, advocating the child’s interest—and this must be about, because it’s called the Child Support—not the “sole parent beneficiary support”—(Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill. So when is this piece of work from Oranga Tamariki going to address the recipients of the unsupported child benefit for our children? When is that? What is the time frame? Repeatedly, I’ve stood in this Chamber and I have advocated from a child-centric point of view, which this Government consistently—which is something that they are consistent about—dismisses the relevance, the significance, and the importance of our children in this legislation. When is this piece of work by Oranga Tamariki going to be completed to address this very issue of concern about not only our most vulnerable children who are in the custodial care of a non-parent—and, often, they are our kaumātua; our nannies; our koros; our aunties; our uncles; and, sometimes, older siblings; if not, foster parents—but for the benefit of the children of Aotearoa New Zealand?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): In response to the Hon Louise Upston, who asked about the evidence that liable parents were more likely to pay out, there is, of course, no evidence from New Zealand yet because the change hasn’t been put in place. However, there is evidence from overseas research showing that that tends to be the case. I refer the Hon Louise Upston to Cancian, M; Meyer D R; and Caspar E, 2008, Welfare and Child Support: Complements, Not Substitutes in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 27(2), pages 354 to 375, which will give her that evidence that she asked for.

In terms of what we might have available for New Zealand in evidence, there is provision in the funding for this to review the proposal over the next two years, to see what actually does happen, and to get the evidence from New Zealand as to what happens with respect to liable parents—what we hope will be the increase in liable parents paying child support.

Both the Hon Louise Upston and Harete Hipango, again, focused on the unsupported child benefit and why that wasn’t included in the child support pass-on. There is work being done, as I said before, in Oranga Tamariki on what to do with respect to unsupported children. I understand the request came from Oranga Tamariki not to include the unsupported child benefit in this particular piece of work, but to wait until that review was done. Of course, I can’t explain when Oranga Tamariki will do that work, because I do not have responsibility for Oranga Tamariki.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. So in the second reading, I alluded to the issue of the child support pass-on being treated as income for the purposes of benefit entitlements and eligibility for the income-related rent subsidy. Hopefully she can hear me better. And one of the things I was interested in, in terms of the bill’s potential for child poverty reduction, was—it’s my understanding that there was no analysis being done around the sort of distributional impacts—well, mostly child reduction impacts—there would have been if the child support pass-on hadn’t been treated as income for the purposes of benefit eligibility.

And, I guess, I want to get the Minister’s reflection about whether this could have been a missed opportunity in terms of—because I’ve heard the arguments, right? But if we didn’t treat it as income, you could then have people, in theory, double-dipping into a benefit and receiving child support none the less. But, I guess, the trade-off is that the gains for those families on a benefit would have been considerably higher, and, therefore, the number of children that we could have lifted out of poverty would have also been significantly higher. And, ultimately, because the child support payment is supposed to go to the child, and the benefit, in and of itself, is just supposed to go to the household, I’m curious to get some analysis as to whether the Minister, at any point, had considered exploring something different.

And in terms of the income-related rent subsidy eligibility, while I understand that there will be very few people who fully lose it, I guess I’m just interested in her reflections on how that will impact housing affordability.

Lastly, when it comes to the impact this will have in terms of people’s placement in the public housing waiting list, I was curious to also get a sense of how this may impact, in the long term, people’s placement in the public housing waiting list in terms of those people who would have otherwise been high priority. We don’t expect many, if any, people—basically, we expect an insignificant amount of people dropping from the public housing waiting list. But inevitably, in terms of their priority numbers, there will be some people who will be affected, and so I wanted to get the Minister’s reflections around whether any work could go on to ensure that people who hadn’t been considered adequately housed are now considered to be adequately housed.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): I thank the member for his questions. I’ll answer them as best I can. In terms of why child support that is passed on to the receiving parent will be treated as income for benefit purposes, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t mean that people won’t get the benefit; it just means that the income that is taken into account for when the benefit starts to abate will include the child support received. What it does is it places people who receive child support payments in the same sort of place as people who perhaps earn some extra income through wages and the like. It treats it in the same way. But, of course, there is actually just straightforwardly a parity issue within the law there anyway. For other beneficiaries who received child support payments already and have received them in full, because they’re perhaps partnered or something like that, already those payments are taken into account as income for calculating eligibility for benefit or how much they might receive in terms of benefit. So couple of reasons there. One is it ends up treating sole parents in the same way as partnered parents are treated for the purposes of child support pass-on. So that’s a straightforward parity reason there. And the other one is just that that does count as income, and it also treats that income in a similar way to wage income that sole parents might receive.

In terms of what impact it might have on accommodation assistance and housing allowances and the like, of course, the major constraint on when people can access public housing is simply the number of public houses available. So, rather than the particular income they might have, if they are on the list, they are on the list, and their eligibility criteria are taken into account as best possible. That includes how much income they receive and, of course, typically a whole variety of other circumstances. So I don’t think this particular measure, in and of itself, would have had a dramatic effect on that.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just was looking and thinking about some of the submissions that were made and some of the comments that were made within the select committee process. It was around debts caused by disruption to the automatic electronic system, the sharing system that we’re going to be using to identify what income is coming in and going out. There’s a clause in there that states that debts caused by the errors would not be recoverable, so we wouldn’t be putting sole parents into debt through mistakes that were made through this new sharing system.

But there’s a section within the bill in new section 115A, inserted by clause 64A, about duties to advise around change of circumstances in relation to payments. There was a concern that people will feel, because it’s automated and because they think that everything’s being done automatically, that they may not have to advise on change of circumstance. There are examples on here where the person would have to advise the Ministry of Social Development on a change of circumstance, and it was brought up that this may be confusing to a person that is receiving this child support in this way. If they fail to report on change of circumstances, will they then be liable for any overpayments if they don’t meet that obligation of reporting a change of circumstance?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. And I thank the Minister in the chair for her answer about the provision of international evidence about liable parents paying. I’m interested to know, though, what estimates have been made in terms of the options put forward—what the estimate is, both in terms of the number of liable parents who will now pay child support as due, and, second, the child support that would be collected to offset this. And I’m sure that analysis has been done and the formulation of the options considered and then the decision. So that’s my first line of questioning.

I want to go back, because I don’t believe the Minister answered my question around the change of figures in the regulatory impact statement from March 2022 to March 2023 on the number of children that will be lifted out of poverty. And I think I would have unanimous support in the House that every party in this House wants to see fewer children living in poverty, so the detail behind the change of the numbers is important. So the original estimate was that 7,000 children on the fixed line AHC50 measure would be lifted out of poverty. That’s increased to 10,000, so quite significant. It would be really interesting to know the detail of what’s behind that change.

And then, also, in terms of the before-housing measure, it was 5,000, and with the revised figures in the regulatory impact statement, it is 6,000. And I’m interested to know of the other scenarios that were considered, what the number of children on both of those measures that would have been lifted out of poverty were in determining option 2 that became option 6 that’s now in the bill we’re debating before Parliament tonight.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): It may take me a while to just get my head around that last question, I’m sorry. But if I can address the question raised by Karen Chhour, who was concerned about debts caused by disruption or, basically, errors. Obviously, if there’s an error caused by the Ministry of Social Development or by the system doing something wonky, then, no, there is no liability to pay—that’s just a matter of fairness. But, then, recipients are required to advise a change of circumstance. And Ms Chhour asked, if they failed to advise a change of circumstance, would they then be liable for overpayments? Yes, there is an obligation to advise a change of circumstance. Yes, that can be confusing if you think that the system is doing it all for yourself. Nevertheless, that obligation still exists, and that exists right across our systems. So would they then be liable for overpayments if they had failed to advise a change of circumstances? The answer is, yes, they would still be liable for that.

The Hon Louise Upton asked about why there was the change in the number of children living in poverty that would be lifted out of poverty by this measure. And I do want to point out, again, that the major purpose of the bill was to correct the disparity between sole parents and partner parents in terms of how child support was treated. Nevertheless, it does also have the effect of lifting more children out of poverty. The reason for the change between the numbers in March 2022 to March 2023 was, pretty straightforwardly, that we have some different economic data over the course of that year. So that means that some of the data behind the modelling changed over that time and that was why we got those different numbers. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t be able to go into the detail of that modelling as I’m not an economist myself, but that is the reason—I’ve been assured—as to why it happened that way. And I’m sorry, Ms Upston, that I think I lost the detail of the second part of your question there, if you would care to repeat it. Thank you.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you. Talking first about the child poverty numbers, the Minister has clarified that that wasn’t the primary objective of the legislation. I actually find that somewhat disappointing, because, actually, I think that would have been a more noble objective in this instance. As I said, the National Party still has reservations about this bill, and that’s why I want to interrogate some of it. So, with those updated Treasury figures that have been built into the numbers that mean the regulatory impact statement from this year has changed from last year, does that also reflect the increase in the number of sole parents on benefit from 12 months ago? And a related part of that question is: is it seen, as a result of this policy, that there may be an increase in sole parents, and, if yes, by how many?

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I acknowledge the Minister for the attempted answers to complex legislation, however I am going to labour the point with this Labour Government and seek some direct answers, please.

Back to the UCB—the unsupported child’s benefit. I’ve been advised that Oranga Tamariki is doing a review around caregiver payments, but, again, the concern is: when is that going to be completed? How long is a piece of string? How long do our children have to wait before they become the direct recipient beneficiaries of these child pass-on legislation payments? That’s my first question.

The second limb is, Minister, the lack of external consultation. It’s been noted that the Welfare Expert Advisory Group commissioned by the Minister for Social Development and Employment—so that Welfare Expert Advisory Group consulted with 3,000 New Zealanders for its 2018 review of the welfare system. It’s noted that its consultation included benefit recipients, advocates, and Ministry of Social Development (MSD) staff. So the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommended that child support payments from the liable parent should be passed on to the receiving carer, not just the sole parent beneficiary—a receiving carer is also an unsupported child beneficiary.

So, Minister, IRD and MSD—it’s been noted that the Minister engaged this Welfare Expert Advisory Group. The recommendations from that have been, again, kicked into touch by this Labour Government. Why is that? Why are our children not benefiting from this Government with some direct answers that are going to be accountable to our very children who need it the most, and the caregivers who are looking after them, under this Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): With apologies to the members in the Chamber, there is a film crew up in the gallery. I’m advised that no permission has been sought or given for them to film, so I’d ask them to clear the gallery.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. So the next question, again—although I understand it’s not the primary objective—I am interested, in terms of the child support pass on, the demographics or data on two levels. One is of the liable parent, where the pass on occurs—and I’m making assumptions about them being higher-income earners for the level of pass on to go through. So that’s one end of the question—the collection of child support from the liable parents, and data around who the liable parents are. But, more importantly, and more importantly in terms of child poverty reduction, the children in the families with sole parents who will receive the pass on—what is the percentage of Māori and Pasifika children who will benefit as a result of the sole parent child support pass on?

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): I too am a little bit concerned about the unsupported child benefit being left outside of this bill, but my question is, really: was any consideration taken by officials or the Minister to include the UCB—or the unsupported child’s benefit—within this piece of legislation so that these families did not miss out on the support as a temporary measure between now and when this other bill that we’re thinking is being worked on in the future comes into place? Because, after all, isn’t this bill about looking after all children and making sure that no child is living in poverty, and helping every child to have the best quality of life possible. And was any consideration at all taken to adding the UCB into this bill temporarily until the alternative came around?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): With respect to the unsupported child benefit, the answer—I realise that members may not find it satisfactory, but it’s the one I’ve given several times already—is that Oranga Tamariki are working on what to do with respect to unsupported children. There’s a major review going on there. Oranga Tamariki asked for this particular measure not to be included in this bill. That is the reason, and I can keep on repeating that a number of times, but that is the reason.

I also want to just talk about, in terms of the demographics—questions which were raised by the Hon Louise Upston. In terms of the demographics of the liable parents and the like, I don’t have those to hand. The objective of this bill is to correct the disparity between the treatment of sole parents and the treatment of parents in partnerships, with respect to child support and whether or not they get that child support passed on from the liable parent. So that is the major—the primary—purpose of this bill. It is to correct that disparity. Of course, data around liable parents is likely to be available on request. It is the sort of data that might well be available through IRD and the likes. So it is available, but it is not the major reason for this particular bill. I may be able to find the data for Māori parents for her—or I’ll see if I can do—on that.

In terms of whether or not there would be an increase in sole parents as a result of this legislation—I think that was the question the member asked, but I think the question she meant to ask was whether there would be an increase in sole parents claiming benefit as a result of this legislation—there is not expected to be. I’ve been advised that there is not expected to be an increase in the parents claiming benefit; that parents don’t claim benefit because then they would get the child support pass-on, I’ve been told. However, that is exactly the sort of information we will get out of the review that has been built into this so that, within a couple of years, we should have some evidence around that, which would answer that particular question.

And I’ll try to find out whether or not the increase in the children lifted out of poverty is because there was an increase in the number of sole parents on benefit.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora. A couple of questions. What specific programmes is the Government implementing to reduce the number of individuals receiving sole parent support, and what is the annual success rate in numbers of those individuals over the 2022 year and 2023 year to date? Final pātai is: will the Government asset test the intended recipient parents of the support, and, if not, why not?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): Thank you, Madam Chair. Of course, I’m not sure that the Government has in place any specific programmes to decrease the number of sole parents on benefit, except perhaps we’re ensuring we have free contraception available when people need it. That’s not, you know, part of this legislation. The object of this legislation is to ensure that sole parents are treated fairly in comparison to parents who are coupled.

I have now a couple of answers for some of the questions that the Hon Louise Upston and Harete Hipango raised. So in terms of the increase of the number of children that we expect to be lifted out of poverty by this legislation, the change will be March 2022 and then March 2023. And the Hon Louise Upston asked was that incorrect because the number of sole parents increased; well, the number of sole parents increased by 1,200. That would not be sufficient to—unless they’ve all had several children—generate the increase in the children lifted out of poverty that’s estimated in this bill between March 2022 and March 2023. So it really is due to the underlying economic conditions that has changed those numbers around.

We expect, in terms of the demographics of some of the families who will be affected by this—the numbers are being given that we expect that about 41,000 families will be positively affected by this change in the legislation. So that’s about 41,000 families who will get the child support paid directly through to them instead of it being tapped by the State in-between. And so they’ll be better off because of that. We think there will be about 20,000 Māori families who will be better off as a result of this legislation, and about 3,700 Pasifika families who will be better off as a result of this legislation.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Minister, for providing the statistics and the information. Again, I’m drilling down on the point that has been made by the Government: that this bill is actually about entitlements for the sole parent. I’m focused on the actual rights and interests of the child. So the caregivers—under an unsupported child’s benefit (UCB), who’s looking after these children? They’re vulnerable children who aren’t being looked after by a sole parent or the liable parent. How many UCB beneficiaries, and the number of children that are in their care, are going to be detrimentally affected by the non-inclusion within this bill?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. So we’re aware of the 41,000 sole parent benefit recipients that will benefit from this policy an average of $20 a week. And as someone who’s been a recipient of the sole parent benefit, $20 a week makes an enormous difference. So my question is really looking at the targeting of that additional support. Was there another way that could have better targeted the financial support to reach those with higher needs, and, if so, what were they and why were they discounted? So that’s one question.

And then I want to come back to—because, I think, philosophically we’ve still got this sticking point between our side of the House and the other side of the House around whether or not a status, in terms of when somebody is on a benefit for the reason that they are a sole parent, is the simple justification as to why the child support should be captured as an offset against the cost of the sole parent benefit, and I think that’s still our philosophical sticking point. And I know there were other options considered, and it appears from the regulatory impact statement that it became about the time pressures involved in implementing something because it had to be done by 1 July so the Government could say to the 41,000 voters, “You’ve got some more money available.” What were the other options, had time not been an issue, that would have been a preference if it was about delivering greater support? And was the issue of the comment I made earlier—because I’m not sure that that’s been addressed—that the first port of call for welfare assistance is to use all available resources, and, in this case, all available resources is the child support that is actually being collected by the liable parent.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): In terms of looking at other ways of supporting children in sole parent families, of course, our Government always considers this. However, that’s not the objective of this bill; the objective was to correct the anomaly between sole parent families and partnered-parent families, where the payments made by liable parents to sole parent families were not passed on to the sole parent family until the amount of benefit was recovered, whereas the payments that were made by liable parents to parents and partnered-parent families on benefit were passed straight on through to the receiving family. So it was correcting that anomaly, which was the purpose of this bill.

In terms of why this particular measure is being pushed through—though it has been in development for quite some time—there are about 41,000 families. It’s a fairly straightforward way of doing it. The calculations are fairly straightforward. There are some complexities for a number of families—although conceptually it’s easy to talk about how the child support payment would be passed on, in actual fact the legislation is very complex, so they are being worked through and we expect to have a solution for those families within the next couple of years—actually, at about the same time as will end up having some more evidence to be able to assess what’s going on and whether or not this is an effective measure, in particular with respect to encouraging more liable parents actually to make the payments that they’re supposed to make.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. I think, on the philosophical difference, we’re probably not going to get that bridge covered, so I want to focus on a different area, and that is the area of the temporary additional support. Again, if you think about the social contract that taxpayers and recipients of welfare have, there is a general agreement that where you can provide for yourself and your family, you do, and, where you have responsibilities and where you have children, you fulfil your responsibilities and obligations.

So I’m interested—if the Minister could answer the questions around why there is a change in this bill to then say for the liable parent who is on a benefit themselves, the expectation that the temporary additional support goes up, which is, of course, paid by taxpayers, to pay for their children.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Ahh—thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Hon Dr Deborah Russell.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): Sorry, I was standing up here, saying “ahh”—ha, ha! Thank you, Madam Chair. When this whole child support pass through was being developed, we worked out that there was a gap in the temporary additional support settings, and the bill was an appropriate vehicle in which to correct that gap. The idea of temporary additional support is that so someone literally has enough to live on, that they can actually buy some food, pay their rent, and have a place to live. There are cases where the obligation to pay child support out of their benefit would have left the person with—I never like using the term “negative income”—simply, literally, not enough money to pay for the necessities of life. The temporary additional support allows them to do that, just to ensure that they are not left to starve in the streets because they’re paying child support out of their benefit. It’s a simple pragmatic matter.

The member Louise Upston referenced the philosophical difference, if you like, a couple of times between one side of the House and the other, and the thought that, of course, parents ought to support their children; indeed. The fact is that some parents don’t have the resources to; some parents, through all sorts of circumstances, end up on benefit—and, in this case, on this side of the House, we feel that the State ought to step in and provide support to enable them to get back going again. I can’t resolve that difference between us, I’m sorry.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): So just exploring that further, in terms of the liable parent, they pay child support to pay to support their children, and that’s where this $350 million bill—to now assume the responsibility of that and not offset—creates a dilemma. So I still want to put that on record. My colleagues on this side of the Chamber wouldn’t forgive me for not putting that figure on the record, because it is really important. Every Government has choices, and if the choice is to support the children in those households of sole parents, there are a number of ways to do that. And that’s why I labour the point, and I’m kind of disappointed, actually, that the main objective of this bill isn’t about lifting children out of poverty.

So, then, the second part of it is—and I appreciate your attempt at the answer around the temporary additional support, and I’m grateful for this, the numbers that you’ve provided in answers to other questions—how many recipients are expected to get temporary additional support? So I’m interested in the number of beneficiaries, and I’m interested, on average, what that amount of temporary additional support is, because that is another cost to the taxpayer. And every dollar spent of taxpayer money in this inflationary environment has an impact on interest rates and the costs of New Zealanders—hard-working New Zealanders—all over the country. So we must treat the $350 million with respect and dignity in scrutinising the costs.

And I appreciate that the interaction between Inland Revenue and the Ministry of Social Development and benefit payments is complex. I know that some of the submitters raised—as the colleague from the Green Party raised—concern about flow-on impacts to assistance that those on sole parent benefit may be receiving that will be impacted by the child support pass-on. And I am interested to know in the numbers of those that will have reductions in other areas of support.

The other piece that I’m interested in, because the Minister in the chair, the Hon Dr Deborah Russell, has referred to it a couple of times—and I do want to acknowledge the Government for doing this, for funding an evaluation. I’d like to see every piece of legislation with funding for post-implementation evaluation to be included. So if the Minister could provide detail about when that evaluation will occur and exactly what the measures of success of this policy would be measured on.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): In terms of the number of people receiving temporary additional support, there’s about 81,000 people who receive temporary additional support at the moment. Of those 81,000 people, we think there’s about 6,450 liable parents who will benefit from their child support being an allowable cost. We think it will benefit them to the average of about $21 a week, so that’s the amount there. Obviously, that’s not the whole $345 million; it’s just a small portion of it.

In terms of the evaluation of this piece of legislation, we’ve been allowed—I think 450,000 has been allowed to evaluate it in the two years following implementation. Inland Revenue will undertake a process evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the initiative, and they will be monitoring some of those key metrics like changes to the number of child support applications, the amount of child support received, and also the amount of child support arrears. We know that liable parents often end up in arrears, and, of course, often they’re not very incentivised to pay because they think the money isn’t going to their kids. So this should help to change that figure.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to come back to a line of questioning that my colleague Tama Potaka raised, and that is looking at—and I’m hoping it will be included in part of the evaluation—the number of those receiving the sole parent benefit and whether or not the additional funding that will go into that household will mean greater access for sole parent benefit recipients—the majority, by far and away, are women—and whether we see, as a result of additional financial support into the household, that there will be greater numbers of sole parent benefit recipients commencing work part-time or training, and, if so, what those numbers are.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): Thank you, the Hon Louise Upston and Tama Potaka, for that question, which I didn’t answer before—sorry, I lost track of that one. Will there be more sole parents, as a result of the additional support, going into training or into paid employment? Of course, if sole parents go into paid employment, it depends how much there is, how much they take on, because, of course, if they go into sufficient, they go off benefit anyway, so the pass-through question becomes irrelevant.

In terms of people going into training, I suspect that the Training Incentive Allowance will have a much better impact on whether or not people can access training. It is worth remembering that there is extra money going into sole parent households because of this. On average, we think it’s about $47 a week, but the median is only $20.

Hon Louise Upston: Yeah, 20.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: 20. The median is only $20 a week. We know it helps. We know how many loaves of bread that buys and things like how many pints of milk. Although it will all help, I don’t think it’s going to make a sufficient difference—or it may do, but, you know, that’s possibly not enough to make that difference. Which brings us back, really, to the point that this was to correct the anomaly, and that being the overall objective of this. We do think it will help lift some children out of poverty, but, actually, the real objective of this legislation is to correct the anomaly between sole parent—receiving carers and coupled or partnered—receiving carers.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Minister, for clarifying those aspects of anomaly. Again, a question was asked in the Chamber earlier this evening—still awaiting the answer—which is: how many children in the care of unsupported child beneficiaries are there that are not the direct recipients or benefactors of this legislation, in comparison to those children who will be under a sole parent with this pass-on legislation? Which will give a clearer picture of the number of children in need of care and support from the State directly from the liable parent, which is what this legislation is about.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): I don’t have those numbers to hand, and I believe I have already answered several times as to why the unsupported child’s benefit and pass on has not been considered in this legislation. It is because there is a review of the unsupported child benefit in the legislation going on through Oranga Tamariki, and Oranga Tamariki asked for that not to be considered as part of this particular piece of legislation.

I could go back through my cards and count how many times I’ve answered that. I’m afraid the answer is not going to change.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Yes, thank you, Minister. Has the Government assessed the long-term liability of a child living in whānau that receive sole parent support? And has the Government assessed the long-term liability of a Māori child living in whānau that receive sole parent support? The final one is that we’ve seen some elevated reporting for Māori proposed in the ACC space, is there an intention for this type of reporting for Manatū Whakahiato Ora and Te Tari Taake?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): I apologise to the member. Could I ask you to repeat the question? I blanked out for a moment.

Tama Potaka: The third question?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: The first question.

Tama Potaka: Yeah, has the Government assessed the long-term liability to the Crown of a child living in whānau that receive sole parent support?

Hon Louise Upston: Point of order, Madam Chair. It is actually really difficult to hear the question and the answer with all the chatter on the other side of the Chamber. As I said, we’ve had limited scrutiny of this legislation, we do want to support it, but it will mean getting some answers to the questions.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. Yes, that is quite right. I was struggling to hear. So I would ask the Government benches to just quieten down a bit. Equally, I don’t know whether Tama Potaka’s microphone is—or maybe it’s his dulcet tones, I don’t know, but I was struggling to hear him, as well. So thank you for that. Now, where were we?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): A little lost, I think, Madam Chair.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): OK, why don’t I try and speak into the microphone—I feel like I’m at the karaoke down at Cuba Mall!

Has the Government assessed the long-term liability to the State of a child living in whānau that receive sole parent support? Has the Government assessed the long-term liability of a Māori child living in a whānau that receives sole parent support? And we have seen some elevated reporting for Māori proposed for the ACC space—the compensation scheme, is there an intention for this type of reporting for the Manatū Whakahiato Ora and Te Tari Taake?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): Those are really interesting questions, but I’m not sure they’re comprehended within the scope of this bill. It would be a question to go to the broader Government stuff around benefits in general, rather than the child support pass on. So I agree they’re interesting questions, but perhaps not in respect of this particular bill.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Chair. And I actually think the questions put by my colleague Tama Potaka are very thoughtful and actually really come to the—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK, sorry. I’m just going to clarify this. Relevancy is the sole judge of the Chairperson. So I will judge whether or not matters brought up by members are relevant, thank you.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Thank you, Madam Chair. On that, then, I look forward to an answer to that question from the Minister. I have a separate question, which is a bit technical—I appreciate that—but, given we are now at 31 May and this is the committee of the whole House, so there are further steps for the bill to pass before it is passed and before it is signed, assuming it does get signed, by the Governor-General, what is the confidence level that this can be actioned and implemented on 1 July, given that we have less than a month to go?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): Thank you for the question. It has taken a long time to get this legislation in place. In part, that was because the systems were being built at the Ministry of Social Development and IRD to handle the technical complexities of making sure the payments actually flow through to the receiving families. I have been assured that those systems will be ready in time.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Is the Minister saying that activity and action has been taken by the Public Service ahead of Parliament’s decision about the legislation passing or otherwise?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Associate Minister of Revenue): That would, in fact, be a fairly common practice. Tax systems and social welfare systems are very, very complicated, as I am sure the member knows. Of course, a lot of preparation work is going on in the background to make sure that this does all work.

Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

Bills

Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Parts 1 and 2 and clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we come now to the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill.

SHANAN HALBERT (Junior Whip—Labour): Point of order, Madam Chairperson. I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none. The question is that Parts 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2 stand part.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. Good to see the Minister of Agriculture in the chair, although, a bit like me, I presume he hasn’t had a lot to do with this particular piece of legislation.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Not this particular piece.

ANDREW BAYLY: Not this particular—I know he’s very knowledgeable about many things, but maybe not about the Health and Safety at Work Act.

So first question: in replacement section 62, inserted by clause 4, why is it considered that in a very small organisation that may have only two employees, or, in fact, only one—technically one—employee, why was it deemed sufficient that if that single worker believes that there should be an election of a health and safety representative, that process must occur? What was the rationale? I also understand that the issue around the riskiness of the business has been done away with, so why was it deemed that one person should be sufficient? I’m glad to see the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has just turned up and hopefully can illuminate.

I’m just going to give the Minister a moment to sit down. So maybe I’ll just repeat my question. So just a bit of background, Minister, while we start this bill. I just want to understand why the Minister thought fit, and it certainly is not the unanimous view of the Education and Workforce Committee, that if you had a business with, in fact, only one employee—because technically, I think that would be the case that could occur under the situation under replacement section 62, or even a business of two employees. Why the Minister thought it was appropriate that that single person could request—and I take the wording “request”, which means “compulsory”—to form or establish a health and safety representative immediately or as soon as practicable. What was the rationale behind that?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): A couple of comments to the member’s question, for which I thank him. The first that I think it’s important to note is that this is not a compulsory system. It will not be the case that once this bill comes into force that every workplace with 20 or fewer employees will have to have a system of a health and safety representative or a health and safety committee. But if workers in that workplace request for there to be one, then that would be the outcome. What is the reason for that? The reason for that is twofold, effectively. One is that it is the workers themselves who face the risk of health and safety harm in their workplaces, and are, therefore, the ones who are in a good position to judge whether there is a benefit in there being a formal system of a representative or a health and safety committee.

Secondly, the overwhelming body of evidence, both within New Zealand and internationally, shows that when there is a high level of worker participation through a formal representative system, we reduce rates of harm.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): I’m not quite sure the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety actually answered my question, and maybe I’ll phrase it differently. If you have one employee, could that one employee technically request an establishment or election of one health and safety representative, and, technically, under new section 66 in clause 5, also require a health and safety committee, presumably consisting of one person? Is that technically possible under this bill?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have no doubt that my participation in the committee of the whole House on this bill is going to lead to some flashbacks and nightmares. I’ll do my best not to sound like the grumpy drunk at the end of the bar. But as the former Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, who passaged the Health and Safety at Work Act through in 2015, I think there is a line of questioning that I’d like to do for establishing the case that this amendment is necessary.

Why the flashbacks? Well, this was the section of the bill that led to the lampooning of said Minister in relation to worm farms and lavender growing. It was because I was trying to be helpful by issuing what was, effectively, an exposure draft on a regulation that had not been passed. Unfortunately, the unfortunate consequence of that was that probably no Minister since has ever offered draft secondary legislation in advance of the passage of a bill, lest there be that sort of ventilation, that thinking out loud may cause similar derision. I have, for the record, to state that the regulation did not contain such provisions.

But I want to start with that case for change, because the regulatory impact statement, the departmental report talks about the considerable literature that worker participation reduces injury and disease. I don’t think there is a doubt at a macro level that that would be the case. But does the Minister agree—these are the first of three questions. Firstly, can he confirm that the bulk of the research that was quoted in the regulatory impact statement was either qualitative or actually referred to worker participation in high-risk industries such as underground mining and the energy sector and the chemical industry?

Secondly, would he agree that the definition or the goal of worker participation can take a number of forms separate from a health and safety committee or a health and safety representative? And can he confirm that the existing Act requires all businesses, regardless of risk or size, to encourage worker participation regardless of whether they have a health and safety rep or committee?

And thirdly, what work has WorkSafe or the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment done to check compliance with that obligation in the current regime, and what was the level of compliance?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Responding to questions from both of the members who have just spoken, the first in response to Mr Bayly: the answer is that, yes, a single employee could request to be a representative in that workplace. And there could be good reasons for that. I mean, I think the member is trying to create what appears to be an absurd example, to diminish the bill. It is potentially less likely that a worker in that situation would do so, but it is possible to imagine that an employer might employ a single worker who might undertake some very hazardous work offsite, and that worker might be of the view that having the formal training of a health and safety representative—and, for example, the ability to issue provisional improvement notices—could be an effective and important thing in order to address issues. As I say, I suspect it would be much less likely in a situation where there was a single employee in that workplace, but, as I stated in my previous comments, a part of the rationale for this bill is that it is workers who are exposed to the burden of harm within workplaces, and we believe that there is a reasonable case to say that those people should have the option to choose formal representative mechanisms if they believe that is going to improve their health and safety.

I thank the Hon Michael Woodhouse for his question and reflections on the parent legislation here, and many of us do remember the brouhaha around worm farms. For members who might not have recalled that particular episode, back in 2013, 2014, when the Health and Safety at Work Act was being established by the member and the Government of that time, this was around the high-risk designation to certain workplaces.

The relevance to this piece of legislation is that high-risk workplaces below 20 can have a health and safety representative. OK, there was some media exaggeration and mischief around that particular example, but the reason why it became somewhat unstuck was that it to some degree exposed the difficulties of establishing what a high-risk occupation should be and, therefore, including or excluding certain people in terms of certain types of protection. Some people felt that it was absurd to include worm farming within that but not to include other kinds of agricultural work where people thought that there probably would be a high level of harm. And the difficulty here is: how do you actually judge that?

The member mentioned in his question certain types of what he considered to be hazardous work—underground mining, etc.—where there probably are high rates of fatalities and serious injuries compared to some other industries. But, equally, there will be other workplaces—for example, parts of the Public Service—where that sort of harm is very minimal, but there might well be other forms of harm which are actually quite high and cause health and wellbeing impacts on workers. The fundamental contention of our Government that is embedded in this bill is that it’s a little bit artificial to say that workers experiencing one kind of harm but not another should have recourse to having formal representation in the workplace through a health and safety rep or committee, and gets a bit arbitrary. And that is where the worm farming example came unstuck.

The member is right, and I think he might have possibly known the answer to some of the questions that he asked. Workers can raise concerns and participate in ways beyond and outside of the formal workplace health and safety representative or committee system. An expectation of workers being able to have their say and being engaged is embedded in the Health and Safety at Work Act, and that is a good thing. And, in many cases, particularly in small employers, I expect that might well be sufficient. As I’ve said in my previous speeches in the House on this bill, I certainly don’t expect that all workplaces below 20 will take up this route. I don’t even necessarily expect that most will. The contention of this bill is that workers in these worksites should have the same—a worker in a worksite of 18 employees should have the same ability as a worker in a worksite of 22 employees to request that level of representation.

The member asked does WorkSafe check into these matters, and whether there is appropriate worker participation on workplaces. WorkSafe does do a lot of work in this regard. They do a lot of proactive work in terms of supporting, encouraging, and educating to ensure that there is worker participation. Often, in their enforcement and support activities with employers, a part of what inspectors will do is to inquire into and encourage that there is good worker participation in those workplaces.

And the final question that the member asked was related to the nature of the research that was reflected in the regulatory impact statement and, I think, in the departmental report in answers to questions from the Education and Workforce Committee as well. I do believe that some of that was qualitative and some of it did relate to high-risk industries, but the broader suite of research is unambiguous that the more you can do to encourage worker participation, no matter what the kind of harm you are dealing with, the better results you’ll get.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the Minister in the chair, Michael Wood, for those answers. Nobody disagrees that worker participation is both necessary and appropriate in managing risk in the workplace, but the Minister’s own words talk about how certain aspects of worker participation that don’t involve a health and safety rep or committee—he said he suspects might be sufficient, which is consistent with the kind of high-level rhetoric that we’ve had about this change, but what I’m trying to do is establish the case on a quantitative basis.

Now, we’ve had this legislation in place for seven years, one month, and 27 days. I remember the day vividly, 4 April 2016, when it came into effect—happened to be the same day that the Panama Papers were released, and I also was Minister of Revenue at the time, so I was a bit busy. But I don’t think that’s sufficient now, Minister, because we have had more than seven years to assess whether the businesses and the workplaces of those who do not have health and safety reps and committees have had a poorer outcome with respect to injury and disease than those who do.

The regulatory impact statement at page 10 points out that the elected health and safety reps and health and safety committees—26 percent of businesses with fewer than five staff already have them; they’re probably high-risk industries. Of those 48 percent, 6 to 9 percent have a health and safety rep; they may well be high-risk industries. But I want to know if there’s been any analysis undertaken to model the rates of injury or occupational disease stratified for these differences. So if there were fewer than 20 at a low risk with no health and safety rep or committee, fewer than 20 of high risk—well, they’re going to have a health and safety committee—more than 20 of low risk that don’t have a health and safety committee because they’re not absolutely required to; they’re only required to if it’s asked for. Even high-risk industries of more than 20 don’t—oh, actually, high-risk industries of more than 20 do have to have them, I think, regardless of whether they’re asked for.

But we’ve got these stratified populations where, over seven years, we should be able to see whether or not the injury profiles of the staff that work in these PCBUs are different. Similarly, we should also see whether there are ones that have low risk and small numbers who nevertheless do have a rep and a committee—what are their injury rates?

Throughout this whole process, since the Government campaigned on this in 2017, I haven’t seen a single case that establishes that there are differences according to this, and the risk we run is that the nearly 105,000 small businesses that are not currently subject to this regime because they’re low risk and small and who could—well, will—be subject to the regime and could well have these committees and reps are going to benefit from them. If the Minister can establish that case, I’ll back down. I’ll go quiet. But in the meantime, all we are hearing is lofty rhetoric without the substantive case for burdening small businesses, who are already burdened, with a higher level of compliance than they were six years ago. I want to know whether or not there’s any benefit to it.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, just following in line with the previous speakers, I just really need clarification for myself, and I’ll give you an example. My daughter works in a cafe. There are four employees in the cafe: a couple of baristas, a chef, and a waitress. If one of those employees decides that they want a health and safety rep and a committee, is that enough for the owner to establish one—to force the owner to establish one? One of those people who work there is actually the owner. Is the owner a health and safety rep?

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Chair. Given that we’re all revealing ourselves tonight, I think I’m the—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope you’re speaking metaphorically, Mr Bayly.

ANDREW BAYLY: —yes, yes, Mr Chair—only one left on the committee that actually passed the original legislation. So whilst I haven’t been involved in this particular—and I was a freshly minted MP, actually, and at the time I owned a business that actually was a very large worm composting business. Actually, during the process of the original bill, I put it through the lens of what it would be to be a person conducting a business or undertaking that involved lots of heavy machinery. That was the lens I actually assessed it at. The Minister Michael Wood’s statement saying that this is about making sure we’ve got safe health and safety practices at work—no one disputes that at all, and in fact that was the original intent of the legislation. But the Minister used the word “absurdity”, and I think it is absurd that one worker—and I take Chris Baillie’s comment just there: does that or does that not include the owner or owners? Potentially, under this bill, one employee could say, “I want to see in place a health and safety representative.” Of course, that would have to be them, I assume, but they could then, under new section 66—inserted by clause 5—also request a committee be set up of one person. That seems absurd, and I think the Minister has confirmed that.

So the question—and it was quite a deliberate line of questioning—is that when we put the original legislation in place, we did it quite knowingly pitched at 20 or fewer employees, but we also were conscious of making sure that those industries and businesses operating in high-risk areas did have the requirement to establish them if the workers so wished. So that was a pragmatic approach. My good friend the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s questioning around what has changed and where’s the evidence—I haven’t seen evidence of that yet and eagerly await the response from the Minister.

But the question is: why was there no minimum threshold? First of all, why was it, like, that you have to have a minimum of five? Why did the Minister allow it to go to one? Why wasn’t there any consideration that it should be a majority of the workers? In many workplaces, you have difficult people, just as you have difficult people in political parties—I’m sure if I looked across at the other side there, we’d find difficult people. You might have one very difficult person who actually decides, because they can’t work with the team—Labour—to come join another party over the other side of the House. Now, we just think that those arrangements might have at least considered a majority arrangement of the employees. So you deal with the aberration, but you still have in place an arrangement where, if there is sufficient combined view or majority view that that should be the case, that should be the case, and people have no issue with that.

But this has been compounded furthermore by removing the risk element of the business, which means that, as Michael Woodhouse points out, that’s now drawn in a huge number of additional businesses, and one just must ask themselves why. I just ask the Minister: what was the logic train that got him to the position where he thought that any worker, no matter how many employees they’ve employed in that business, can initiate this process, even if all the 99 percent of other workers in that business felt that it wasn’t necessary?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I have already addressed the question about the Government’s fundamental rationale for this bill, but I’ll come at it a different way by saying that the Health and Safety at Work Act, by dint of the fact that it establishes a system of representatives and committees, recognises that this is an important measure in order to ensure that workers are able to participate and have their say and reduce risk.

Actually, if we’re asking for the question of evidence, the question would be: what was the evidence that the previous Government used to put in place an arbitrary exemption that this does not apply to workplaces with fewer than 20 employees, and the answer is that there is not one—the answer is that there is not one. The previous Government established that there was a value in having workplace health and safety representatives. During the legislative process, they arbitrarily determined to put this exemption in place, and that is what has not been justified. It is well established, and I have pointed to the fact, that there is clear evidence, both on the record and as a matter of logic, that workers being empowered to be able to raise concerns and act on them in a formal way in respect of health and safety will reduce health and safety risk.

Mr Baillie asked a question which has also been asked previously. Yes, a small group of workers can request that there be a health and safety representative. No, that does not include the owner of the business; it includes the workers within the business. In respect of a health and safety committee, under new section 66, inserted by clause 5, that must be requested by five or more workers at that workplace.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, the Minister ended up asking us questions, which was: what was the rationale for doing it in the first place? Well, as the Minister at that time, I’m very happy to answer him and even happier to swap seats if the Minister wishes—although I think we’d have to wait another five or six months before that happens.

But when I was sitting in the seat that he was in, explaining to a vociferous Opposition in the form of the Labour Party and the Greens, the answer was quite simple. It’s because the cost of investing in that, for a small business, was not exceeded by the benefits in reduced injury and disease—particularly when there was a legal obligation on the person conducting a business or undertaking to have an active participation of all employees in health and safety matters.

So if they opposed that, then the corollary must be that they turn that question around and tell us what information they have to demonstrate that that was wrong; that the benefits of doing this will exceed the costs. One of the dearths of information in the regulatory impact statement and the department report is that there isn’t any analysis of that that I can find.

I’ve asked the Minister tonight if it’s been done, and there’s not been an answer to that. So I’ll come at it from a different angle as well, Minister. The law, as it currently stands, required a review of the definition of high-risk sectors and industries in 2018 and then five years thereafter. So by now, we should have had one completed review of what was considered “high risk” and we’d have been probably halfway through another.

Now, what that review was required to do was exactly what I’m asking. Had the Government bothered to follow the law, it would have answered the question, and maybe it would have been able to identify whether the risk profile had changed; whether there was a correlation between that risk profile and injury and disease rates. So my question to the Minister is: was that review undertaken? If so, what were the findings of that review—because that could answer my questions—and if it wasn’t undertaken, why not?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I’m advised that there was not a review undertaken in 2018.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Why?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: In respect of 2023, the Government’s response to that issue—well, it’s actually outside of the debate that we’re having in this committee, Mr Woodhouse. In respect of this bill, the way that we are responding to that issue is to remove the need the high-risk classification.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Well, the first question—the obvious question—is why did the Government break the law, because the Act required a review in 2018? I’d love to hear the Minister’s formal, proper answer to that. Secondly, going back, the Minister keeps saying that he’s answered the question. Well, actually he hasn’t. So maybe we’ll just do it in numbers. The first question—I’ve now asked for the third time—is about the issue around majority. Why did the Minister not move to a situation where a majority of the employees wanted to form one of these committees or to be a representative? And, secondly, even in the event, under section 62, in clause 4, that you have an election of health and safety representatives, who determines the number of health and safety representatives? Then I’ll come back, because we’ll do this slowly to try and get the answers we might need.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I think it is a bizarre suggestion that having a health and safety representative should be some sort of a popularity contest, in terms of whether there is a need or not. That is not the procedure which applies to workplaces of over 20, and I’m not sure why it should be the procedure that applies to workplaces under 20.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): That answer could qualify as the single silliest answer I’ve heard in the committee of the whole House for quite some time.

I think I heard the Minister say that the questions that I was asking around the review were somewhat outside the scope of this debate. Actually, Minister, this is central to the debate and to the reason we’re passing this bill. I think I’ve read somewhere—and the Minister can confirm this for me; it might have been in the regulatory impact statement or one of the advices to the select committee that, no, they didn’t do—well, they didn’t say whether or not they’ve done the review, but they said that the review was redundant because we’re going to get rid of it anyway. Now, that is a terrible logic. Had they undertaken that review, the very case for this bill could have been established.

What I reckon is that what’s much more likely is that had they undertaken that review, they would have found that the system was working perfectly adequately and that there was no difference, material or otherwise, to the injury or disease rates for small, low-risk businesses that did not have a health and safety rep or committee. If that had been found, his lofty rhetoric would have been ruled redundant, and that’s why they didn’t want to do the review, because they were absolutely hell-bent on getting rid of this provision and imposing more cost and more administration on small businesses—small businesses, I might add, Minister, where the person conducting a business or undertaking, in an overwhelming proportion of them, works side by side with the workers.

It’s not as if the employer needs a health and safety rep to help him or her identify where the risks are. On the farm, in the cafe, and in the small retail organisation, they know exactly where the risks are, because they’re side by side with the workers, and they are as at risk, but they’re also obliged to ensure that every worker participates. So for the Minister to say that the questions about the review are outside the scope of the bill is utterly ridiculous. I ask—maybe for the last time—where’s the case?

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Minister, I just want to come back to a point I made earlier on. The owner of the business: if they work in the business, like their employees, and if they pay themselves wages—which is the example that I gave you—are you telling me that they are not eligible to be the health and safety rep?

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Yeah, I think we really are going to have to do this by the numbers tonight. So, hopefully, Minister, we will return to the 2018 issue of why the Government did not meet its legal responsibility in terms of the review of the health and safety Act.

For the second one, which was the argument around majority, the Minister’s response said that there were no such examples, even with companies employing more than 20. I understand that, but there’s lots of options, and the Minister hasn’t provided any logic chain—to use that same word I used before—as to why it is one, because, normally, in a lot of companies’ situations, you might have a rule like a certain number, or 10 percent of employees, or you might have a threshold or a majority or you might have a whole range for it. There are many options, but for some reason the Minister has decided that there’s one person who decides he or she wants to have it, and even if no one else in the business wants to do it, that one person gets their way. That means, obviously—as the Hon Michael Woodhouse referred to—that there are the costs of all that.

So it raises another issue: why wasn’t the option, if there are situations where you have a small number of employees who felt very vulnerable, that they could have the right to proper health and safety training as an option to try and deal with this? What were the other permutations? What I don’t understand is any of the logic to get to where we are, and I’m looking forward to, hopefully, getting some response from the Minister that’s meaningful.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Well, I have responded to the member’s question a couple of times, and the response is that workers are well placed to judge the risks that they face because they are the ones who are exposed to those risks in the workplace. If it is their view that it is appropriate and it is helpful and it might reduce risk for there to be a health and safety representative in place, then our Government, through this bill, believes it’s appropriate that they are able to request that that happens. It would be possible to set an arbitrary threshold in the way that the previous Government did in its legislation, but our Government does not believe that that’s appropriate.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): OK, I’ll go back to the other question I’ve asked, and we’ll do this in twos. Who determines the number of health and safety representatives, and is it any correlation to the number of employees in the business? That’s under section 62. I’ll ask that question first. Let’s see if we get an answer on that.

All right, I’ll ask the second question. Under new section 66, inserted by clause 5, who determines how many people go on the health and safety committee? Is it the person conducting a business or undertaking? Is it the workers who nominate themselves or who they want at formation? Or is it all the employees of the business?

So same question, but two examples. Let’s see if we can get those answers. [Interruption] He doesn’t like it—very good.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Andrew Bayly.

ANDREW BAYLY: Thank you, Mr Chair. Tell me, turning the logic upside down, once one person in one business decides, let’s say it’s a he, he wants to have a health and safety representative—

Hon Member: Could be a she.

ANDREW BAYLY: Yeah, could be a she, of course—and that gets established because under these absurd rules, using the Minister’s words, and that said person then leaves the business, does the health and safety requirement remain?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Most of these things will be worked out by sensible people in businesses who work together. The members who make so much of the fact that people should be able to work together in a reasonable way somehow make out the case that because there was a health and safety representative in place workers in this workplace are going to go crazy.

That is not what is going to happen. Employers and workers will work together to come to sensible arrangements around these matters. If the person who is a health and safety representative—the same thing would happen in that workplace of, say, 18 people, as happens in a workplace currently under the legislation where there are 22 people and there’s a health and safety representative in place. Nothing different will happen. There will be a new process to determine who that representative is.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): So can a person conducting a business or undertaking decide to disband either the representative role or the committee role, or what is the process? Does it require all the workers of the business, some of the workers of the business, or, heaven forbid, the majority of the workers? Can you just answer that question, Minister?

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just would wonder if the Minister would really think hard about my question before about those people who own their business but pay themselves wages and work alongside other employees, because that scenario is really common, and we’re going to face it a lot.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Again, this is a situation where I think members are trying to find enormously unlikely examples to try and discredit a bill where it is highly unlikely this will occur. I suppose it is the case that if an employer who is working in the workplace in an onanistic fit of health and safety fervour decided that he wanted to be a representative to himself, then he might determine to do that. But it strikes me as something that no sane person would do.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Can I go back to my two questions, because, heaven forbid, it’s like drawing blood out of a stone tonight! Who determines the number of health and safety representatives and is there any correlation to the number of employees—I’m just trying to repeat the same question—and who decides it, is it an absolute majority, is it a majority, is it the one person, whatever? And the same question for the health and safety committee. Hopefully, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety can turn to his officials over there, because, hopefully, they might know the answer.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Bayly, could I just state at this stage that giving yourself up to repetition is probably one of the reasons why I’ll be looking at, perhaps, some closures. So you’ve coughed up actually the same question a few times. I’m not closing the debate now, but just be aware, we are getting quite repetitive at the moment.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Mr Chair. In light of the wording of the legislation, does the health and safety representative have to be a worker of the organisation involved?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Yes.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Enjoying the debate. Very interesting and important subject, obviously. I’m just curious if the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety can talk us through the rationale for the fines that are set out in, well, what will be new, or rather, amended section 62, under clause 4, “Election of health and safety representatives”, which is, for an individual, a fine up to $5,000; for any other person, which I presume is a legal person and not an individual—an actual person—a fine of up to $25,000. And that relates to the election of health and safety representatives.

Similarly, and in fact the same amounts in both cases—individuals versus other brackets, legal persons—health and safety committees: the establishment of that that must take place in the way that’s set out. Is there a particular rationale for those dollar amounts for those fines?

And, as a related question, is there any thought to allowing those to be amended? For example, indexed to inflation—hashtag, you know, rampant inflation, cost of living crisis, etc. And if there’s some sort of rationale that the Minister can give, I think that’ll be helpful. I mean, obviously there’s always a tension. If you put something in primary legislation, then it has maximum scrutiny, versus regulation, which can be a stroke of a pen by a Government agency or, technically, a Minister advising the Governor-General, or whatever. But, on the other hand, if we’re going to set this in stone, does the Minister envisage that it might be in five or 10 years or some other period in the future that we might need to come to this House—those of us who are still here in five, 10 years—and make a change merely to update the penalty, to make that more suitable for the times in which we are then living?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): The penalties that the member Chris Penk describes are simply the penalties that are in the existing Health and Safety at Work Act, bearing in mind that all that this bill is doing is, effectively, applying the same provisions across the Health and Safety at Work Act in respect of health and safety representatives to workplaces with fewer than 20 employees as currently apply to those with more than 20 employees.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want further clarification. I don’t think that the scenario that I talked about is that unusual. I just need to know, if one of the five employees decided that they wanted a health and safety rep, could the owner of the business, who works alongside them and pays herself wages, be appointed as the representative?

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Chair. Mr Chair, I take your comments before about repetition. But I would say that I’ve got a number of questions outstanding, which the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety hasn’t even attempted to answer. That’s a little bit of frustration and that’s why I keep asking the question.

But I’ll approach it from a different way, because he may be trying to characterise this as being vexatious and silly, but I would imagine these are the type of things that would have been traversed by the Education and Workforce Committee. I wasn’t on the select committee but there’s no doubt, with a majority of Labour members, I would have thought that they would have been eagle-eyed over this.

But the reason I’m asking these questions is that the Act comes into force on the day after which it receives Royal assent, and then it sets out in replacement section 62(2), inserted by clause 4, that if the person conducting a business or undertaking receives requests, it must—within the time described within regulations. So we’ve got some regulations. We know there are regulations coming in. When are the regulations? Presumably the things are like a disbandment of health and safety representative or committee, what the arrangements are, the process for that, and if the Minister doesn’t know the answer, which I suspect, when will those regulations be available? So current employers—we know over 100,000 additional businesses are going to be captured by this, because it seems that little thought has gone into that issue—how do they plan for it? With Labour going to ram this through in the next, probably, couple of weeks, employers are going to be pretty shortly thereafter facing the prospect of having to try and put these things into place.

So maybe another question for the Minister—hopefully, we might even get this answer—is: when will the regulations be available so employers who bear the cost of this and also the legislative liability for not doing it properly, when will those regulations be available?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): There will not be new regulations. What is referred to here are the existing regulations that are in effect, in respect of health and safety representatives. Again, I note the point that all this bill is actually doing is saying that the same things apply to workplaces where there are fewer than 20 employees that already apply to every other workplace where there are more than 20 employees. For most of them, the structure is already in place.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you, Mr Chair. I wonder if the Minister can speak a bit about the situation of a sole trader, which is a business of fewer than 20 persons, of course.

I suppose that might sound like a question to which the answer is obvious—which is that one person must advise oneself and elect oneself and represent oneself to oneself in these matters. But actually, I think there’s a very serious and real possibility that if you have a structure whereby you have a sole trader, and a number of contractual arrangements that might be in the nature of consultants or contractors who are very close to being in the nature of “employees” and “workers” in the way that term is used in this legislation.

By the way, I acknowledge the way the primary Act’s being amended. So I’m not suggesting to the Minister or to this committee that this bill is doing something novel in this space by having a definition of a worker that can work—so to speak—across the concepts of employee, self-employee, and contractor, etc. But I think it’s worth asking the question in relation to businesses that have fewer than 20 workers. If the number of workers is very small, such that you wouldn’t expect representation—for example, effectively a one-person business; a sole trader—but who has people who are caught by the intent of the health and safety at work legislation and to whom the person conducting a business or undertaking has responsibilities, quite rightly so; they are responsible for a safe workplace and so on, notwithstanding the nature of the employment contract or otherwise.

Just grateful if the Minister can explain to the House how in that kind of situation, he would envisage—relative to the idea that such a small workplace on paper will have these additional obligations?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Under the legislation, someone who was a contractor to that small business would, in effect, be another person conducting a business or undertaking; they would not be a worker for whom the provisions of health and safety representatives’ rights applied.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, if I was consulting on Māori land legislation and proposing change, then I would consult with Māori land owners, and I’m just wanting to know from the Minister whether or not there were any small businesses, and, if there were, how many small businesses were consulted with prior to undertaking the development of this bill.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): To some degree, the Labour Party consulted with 5 million people when it put this in its manifesto and campaigned on it at the election. We then engaged in formal consultation with the peak bodies, being the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand. Of course, Business New Zealand do an excellent job as the peak body in representing the views of businesses, small and large. They gave their views, and then there has been a full select committee process which has received representations from a range of people, including small businesses.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Chair. I understand from the Minister that these two operative sections—62 and 66—in clauses 4 and 5 come into force, and, obviously, we remove the high-liability, high-risk businesses. But, from what I understand, he said before that there are no further changes to the regulations. So presumably, then, if that is the case, it’s quite easy to answer my question, which is: if a health and safety committee gets set up at the behest of one person, even if it’s in a 19-person firm, what is the procedure for it to be disbanded if either that person leaves or other members—is there a formal process to enable it to be formally disbanded? And what is the role of the person conducting a business or undertaking in that process, and can they, of their own volition or own initiation, actually disband the committee if there is little interest shown by workers?

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. If I can just develop a theme begun by my colleague and friend Tama Potaka, in relation to consultation—and I accept the Minister’s answer, of course, that the legislation we have in front of us is a result of Labour having made those undertakings in its manifesto commitment ahead of the last election. Given that we are so close to the next election, then, I wonder if the Minister would contemplate that the commencement date should be not “the day after which it receives the Royal assent”—in these dying days of the current parliamentary term, and indeed the dying days of this current Government—but actually to make the Act come into force sometime after 14 October, to allow the democratic—

Hon Scott Simpson: Mandate.

CHRIS PENK: —mandate, to which he refers in a positive way for him and his side, in terms of having brought it in, given that it might be that other parties who may or may not form Government following 14 October might have a different view, and maybe we’ll be back to someone whose name is very much like the Hon Michael Wood, but with the addition of a “-house” in this House! So I look forward to the thoughts of the Minister in terms of how we might justify this—and, actually, on a very serious note, the importance of certainty in this space. So I’d be grateful for the comments of the Minister on the commencement date, in that light.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you to the member—a very good use of a minute 25—and the member’s question there. The member Chris Penk is, in the House, as I look around, maybe with one exception, probably more constitutionally minded than virtually anyone else, and constitutionally trained than anyone else in the Chamber at the current moment. So I am sure he will be aware that the Government continues to govern up until the time of the election, and that most Governments continue to do that and pass legislation in that period. The democratic process will have its way after that.

In respect of Mr Bayly’s question around whether there are measures around the disbanding of health and safety committees, no there are not. Again, I note that that is not something—a situation—created by this bill. I’m referring here to the overall architecture of the Health and Safety at Work Act, which, of course, was put into effect by the previous Government. Ultimately, if there are no workers who want to be on a health and safety committee, there will not be a health and safety committee.

SHANAN HALBERT (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. It’s possibly my final question, but I can’t resist the temptation, as the Minister has taken us down—or allowed me to take the committee down the path of democratic mandate and so on.

Is the Minister aware that his bill includes the phrase, “triggering an election”, and I wonder if the Minister would consider, at this late stage, the committee of the whole House stage, broadening the definition of “triggering an election”? I almost said “Tigger-ing an election”, which would be a Winnie-the-Pooh reference, and an entirely different matter, even for this bear of little brain. So I’m grateful for the Minister’s comments on that.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): If I had that power through this legislation, I would be very interested in doing so, if for no other reason than seeing how Parmjeet Parmar does in Pakuranga.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Parts 1 and 2 and clauses 1 and 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 75

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 2; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Parts 1 and 2 and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 73, Noes 43.

Bills

Charities Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Charities Act 2005

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to the Charities Amendment Bill. We start with the debate on Part 1.

SHANAN HALBERT (Junior Whip—Labour): Point of order, Mr Chairperson. I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is.

We start with the debate on Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 30, “Amendments to Charities Act 2005”, and the Schedule. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Chair, and I’m pleased to take a call to kick off the committee stage of the Charities Amendment Bill. My first set of questions really is about the intention behind this legislation, and it is, of course, amending the Charities Act 2005, and I do understand that the charities sector was very excited about the Labour Party’s 2017 election promise to do a first-principles review of the charities legislation. So my question really relates, then, to why it is that the definitions of “charity” and “charitable purpose” were excluded from the scope of work, given it was an undertaking and a significant piece of work that was committed to.

I wonder if I might even attempt to answer my own questions, which is probably a bit unorthodox, but let’s give it a go. Whether or not it was really just the fact that, because insufficient progress had been made about Labour Party election promises not being delivered, all of a sudden the scope was shrunk. The scope was shrunk, and now we have to have a piece of legislation that, I think, pleases no one, with the exception perhaps of the Minister. I would like the Minister in the chair to answer the question why the definition of charitable or charitable purpose was excluded.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, I didn’t have the benefit of hearing any of the select committee submissions on this bill, but I do have a broad understanding of a number of charitable entities that I’ve been involved with in the course of my working life, my parliamentary life, and personal life. I’m very conscious that this Charities Amendment Bill actually has an impact on a very large number of people who, by and large, are by definition doing good things, good work, making a positive contribution to the wellbeing and lifestyles and communities within which they work and operate. So I’m interested to know particularly around some of the changes that have been made, relating to the definition of “officer” or an “officer of a charitable entity”. This is in clause 4(1).

Now, there’s quite an extensive re-wording from the 2005 Act, which would give quite a broad definition as to an “officer”. So I’m interested to know from the Minister in the chair about the reasons and the rationale for the scope of the definition of “officer” being expanded and advanced in the way it has been, because it captures a very wide range of people. At one point, it says it “includes any class or classes of persons declared by regulations to be Officers for the purposes of this Act:”, and I’m really just quite keen to understand what the purpose and reason and rationale for that broad extension is, please.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Thank you, Mr Chair. I thank the member for his question. It is a good one. The “officer” definition should really only capture people who exert influence over the strategic decision making or financial decision making of a charity. This includes people who have delegated powers to make those significant financial or strategic decisions. The purpose of the changes to this bill are really to ensure that we can support charities. As the member Scott Simpson mentioned at the start of his contribution, charities do some really good work. And the point of the changes in this bill is to enable them to be able to do so but also to balance that with the fact that the public need to have trust and confidence in the sector as a whole. The changes that are proposed here to the definition of “officer” clarify and include those who have significant influence over the charity and, therefore, should be held accountable in that space.

To the point raised by Louise Upston in her contribution, while I would love to debate the principles of a first review into charitable purpose, that’s not actually within the scope of the bill. So, if the member would like to point to which clause in the bill captures that, I’d be quite happy to debate it.

Debate interrupted.

Voting

Correction—Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Just before I take the next call, I just need to correct a vote from the previous Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. The correct count was 75 for the Ayes, 43 for the Noes. Thank you.

Bills

Charities Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Part 1 Amendments to Charities Act 2005 (continued)

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Chair. In the first part of this legislation, as my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson talked about, we’re talking about the definition of an “officer” in relation to a charitable entity.

The very first submission that I’ve picked up is from Age Concern, and I want to give a shout out to my local Age Concern in Taupō because they do extraordinary work. Their first statement is: “Age Concern New Zealand would like to see a first principles review of the Act … A first principles review would include revisiting the definitions of a charity and a charitable purpose. [And] we note the first principles review was deemed out of scope [which] is at odds with the Government’s original stated intention of widening the definition of charitable purpose.”

So, when you talk about definitions and the definition of an “officer”, I think it is important to the committee to be clear about, first and foremost, what the definition of a “charitable entity” is, because it was absolutely resounding and shouted very loudly by the submitters, who came before the Social Services and Community Committee on this bill, that that was the bigger issue in terms of their organisations.

A secondary issue was then around the definitions, and the feedback when we talk about the definition of an “officer”—actually, although the bill was meant to make it easier for charitable organisations to do their work, the very changes in the definition of an “officer” have made it more difficult and more complex and more confusing. If you think about many of the charities that this bill purports to improve life for, then if we just start in Part 1 alone, with the definition of “officer”, it hasn’t done the job.

So the question is: in terms of analysis of the unintended consequences of the existing definition of an “officer”, what has been considered and what protections are in place for what will now be a more confusing definition of an “officer” than there was before?

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you, Mr Chair. I actually am referring to a tabled amendment which I will table in a moment, if that’s all right. It’s a new clause 27, so therefore it’s going to be inserted after clause 26, and it’s entitled “the charities that hold a class 3 operator’s licence”. So the question is to the Minister around the likes of Coastguard, Countdown Kids Charitable Trust, the national Heart Foundation, and potentially others. So the Minister will know in the charities space that because of COVID—actually, if I might, Mr Chair, refer to the tabled amendment in Part 1—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Proposed tabled amendment.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh, I can table it right now. Actually, if I might, very welcome to have it taken through. Look, long and short, the Minister will know that many charities like Coastguard and the national Heart Foundation have only ever been able to do raffles in person. During COVID, they’ve been able to do that online, and the Government rightly responded to that with two pieces of legislation. But the Minister will also know that these exemptions, if you will, expire in October next year. So charities like the national Heart Foundation, Coastguard, Countdown Kids will no longer be able to run their charitable raffles online, and this is potentially a bit of a problem.

Really, the question tonight in using this tabled amendment is firstly, to the Minister, to draw attention to this. These are charities who do great work in our community. They want to be able to continue to fund-raise online using the class 3 operator’s licence. There are crossovers into the Gambling Act—I want to acknowledge that—but this is within the charities space. They want to continue to raise funds online. Personally, as the shadow Minister of Internal Affairs, I think that’s a really good idea. This tabled amendment to insert a new clause 27, basically, allows these registered charities to continue to operate with a gambling class 3 operator’s licence. And it’s trying to make sure that post-October 2024, these charities, which do amazing work in our community, can continue.

I suspect by the nature of the tabled amendment, partly because I drafted it, it will probably be ruled out of scope. I’m just feeling prophetic this evening. But I would like to know from the Minister whether there is work being done by this Government. In fact, it would be wonderful, with the likes of the Heart Foundation, the Coastguard, and others, if the Minister could confirm to us whether the Government will undertake to ensure that these charities can continue to do their good raffles and so forth online.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve just got to admit up front, in the second reading of this bill, that it was new to me to come to this. I got quite a lot of feedback from the public and the sector on my speech. They said that they enjoyed that except for the fact that we said we were supporting the bill. They gave me quite a long list of reading to do to get me up to speed on the detail of this bill, and I want to thank them for that. It’s great when Parliament works in that way. So I have now done my homework, and I’ve got quite a few questions for the Minister that I hope will help me understand and put their minds at ease as well—or not.

I’ll pick up from the issues that have been raised by members of the National Party about the role of the officer and the changes in this legislation. I’d love to hear the Minister explain or talk to the concern that this extension of the role of officer potentially bringing in staff members—because it covers those with significant influence over substantial decisions, which could well be a CEO who has a role in the organisation—then would cut across traditional governance management splits and established rules and settled practice within organisations that may have been working really hard to try and get those differing roles kind of embedded in their organisation.

I understand that the Department of Internal Affairs argued that, actually, this is just about increasing accountability. But the view that was coming through to me was, “But, actually, for staff members—of that CEO, as an example—their accountability is to the trust, who is their employer.” Community Networks Aotearoa asked me to ask: what are the implications in terms of an employment decision or a decision made by a charities trust on an employee? How will that interact with employment law?

There was also the changes in terms of the role of the officer, and the roles and duties of those who govern organisations in the area. It was pointed out, I think, by Sue Barker—and I understand that some people had a concern, in a sense, that she was campaigning against this bill. I do want to raise the point that this woman is the director of Charity Law Association of Australia and New Zealand, a member of the core reference group of the review of the Charities Act, co-author of the text The Law and Practice of Charities in New Zealand, and was awarded the New Zealand Law Foundation International Research Fellowship on what a world-leading framework for charities law would look like. So she’s not some marginal person. You might even suggest that she’s the person with the deepest understanding in our country of charities law that we may want to really listen to in this area.

She raised the point that the language in relation to the role of the officer in new section 36A—clause 17—uses the language where their role is to assist in “deliver[ing] its charitable purpose”. This is in new section 42G—clause 20—“achieve its charitable purpose”. Whereas for other legislation around that—say the Trusts Act—a huge amount of work was put into the consideration of the language relating to the role of officers in those pieces of legislation. What they came up with was that it be “furthering” the charitable purpose—not “delivering”; not “achieving”—because, actually, there is a difference between those things. By introducing new language through these amendments, we’re actually creating confusion between those pieces of legislation.

Why are we not just articulating the responsibilities and the roles and duties that exist in those other pieces of legislation? That’s the concern. Why are we not just doing that? I’d really love to hear some answers around this.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. I think that Jan Logie has posed a series of very good questions that do need a substantive answer to them, and I’m delighted to hear that, through a process of participatory democracy and what a former employer of mine would have referred to as “balanced feedback”, she’s now more enlightened and more au fait with this piece of legislation.

As I said in my first contribution, this is actually really important. In a previous life, I had the privilege of being chief executive of a charitable organisation, the Make-a-Wish Foundation. It was involving literally granting wishes to children and young people who had major health conditions to confront. While that was being done, I got to have a very good understanding about the impact of the regulatory regime that revolves around being a registered charity and what that entails.

Now, in the case of Make-a-Wish, it was a longstanding, credible—always looking for more support—reasonably well-resourced organisation. It was always obvious to me that, in fact, for many smaller charitable organisations—and there are literally tens of thousands of them around the country—this regulatory regime and change that is being imposed by this Charities Amendment Bill will have a big impact on their ability to do the good work that the charity was set up for in the first place.

I want to go to a matter that I think was raised by my colleague Maureen Pugh, who was very involved in the select committee process. It goes back to the purpose, the rationale of why this piece of legislation is being debated in the committee of the whole House tonight. What I think my colleague Maureen Pugh was keen to know was whether, as the Minister explained in select committee—and I understand this was the quote—the bones of the Act are working well and therefore do not need a major review. And it was the major review that was committed to in the Labour Party manifesto—when many of the submissions from the charities were critical that that first principles review did not take place, because the existing Act is deficient.

So, if the Minister in the chair could give us some insight into the motivation, the rationale, and the purpose for pursuing this, which will create so much change in the sector—not to think for a minute what some of the change to terminology will mean in terms of potential litigation to define judicially the new words that are in this piece of legislation. I really am having difficulty understanding why the Minister is pursuing this to the degree that she is.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): I’ll just clarify some of the points made by members in their contributions this evening, starting with Jan Logie’s comments. Just to reiterate—I’ve made this point a couple of times already in regard to questions or comments around the definition of “officer”—the point of this is in response to the Social Services and Community Committee’s recommendation that the definition of “officer” be amended so that it’s clearer and that it’s more precise and actually clarifies who’s captured by the definition. I do believe that the amendment achieves that aim. As I’ve said previously tonight, the aim here is to capture those who exert significant influence over either the financial decision-making or the operational and strategic decision-making of an entity, of a charity.

To the point around language that the member raised: I am advised that the Parliamentary Counsel Office has advised us that the two words that she mentioned—“achieve” and “furthering” a charitable purpose—actually have the same effect when it comes to the legislation. So that has actually been checked and squared off in that sense.

To the point around the crossover, or the potential crossover, into employment law, if the definition of “officer” captures, for example, a chief executive, which it well may if the chief executive does exert significant influence over either the financial or strategic/operational decision-making of the charity—and that is the point, because in some cases there will be individuals who are either in management or governance roles but who do exert significant influence. The whole point of the amendment is to ensure that they are accountable if they do so.

With regard to crossing into employment law, it does not, is the short answer, because, basically, the implications that arise from the officer’s duty will be confined to this particular legislation, the Charities Act. Most charities will have a different legal structure, whether that’s as a company or a trust or something else entirely, and there will be different pieces of legislation that deal with issues therein.

Finally, to the amendment tabled by Simon O’Connor, being able to—

Simon O’Connor: Great amendment.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Sorry?

Joseph Mooney: Great amendment.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: —by Simon O’Connor—I feel your support for the charitable sector, and, of course, it is one that I share, and would want them to be able to carry on with their duties. However, unfortunately, my understanding is that the issues you raise are actually dealt through the Gambling Act and therefore out of scope with this particular piece of legislation.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to follow on from my colleague Jan Logie in terms of exploring in more practical terms this definition of “officer”. I want to use a practical example from the submission of Philanthropy New Zealand, who have over 200 members representing the donors to many of the 28,000 registered charities that this bill is purporting to support. In their submission, they ponder the question of definition of “officer” and whether or not in the new definition even a donor can be captured by this definition. There is confusion around whether it’s someone in senior management, like a chief executive, other staff, or volunteers. So I would ask the Minister to very clearly and succinctly put on record for the committee today: who is captured by the definition of an “officer” and who is not?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The time has come for me to report progress. I would anticipate some time for that answer.

Progress to be reported.

House resumed.

Report of committee of the whole House

Report of committee of the whole House

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Child Support (Pass On) Acts Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. The committee has also considered the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. The committee has also considered the Charities Amendment Bill and reports progress. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

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

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.