Thursday, 8 June 2023

Volume 768

Sitting date: 8 June 2023

THURSDAY, 8 JUNE 2023

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

GREG O’CONNOR (Deputy 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.

Visitors

Commonwealth Parliamentary Association—UK Branch Delegation

SPEAKER: I’m sure that members would wish to welcome the Rt Hon Dame Maria Miller MP, Chair of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK Branch, and her accompanying delegation, who are present in the gallery.

Business Statement

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Deputy Leader of the House): Today, the House will adjourn until Tuesday, 20 June. In that week, legislation to be considered will include the first readings of the Emergency Management Bill, the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill, and the Ngāti Paoa Claims Settlement Bill; the committee stages of the Business Payment Practices Bill, the Charities Amendment Bill, the Deposit Takers Bill, the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill, and the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill; and the remaining stages of the Grocery Industry Competition Bill.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I thank the acting leader of the House for that update. I’m sure he’ll agree that, given the way select committees and report-backs are going, it’s going to be an extremely busy July and August, in the lead-up to the adjournment of this Parliament. While I know it’s the Business Committee’s prerogative, can I encourage the acting leader to ensure that where there are plans for urgency and extended sittings, they are signalled well in advance in order that they can be planned for?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Deputy Leader of the House): Yes, the member is well within his rights to encourage me to do that, but we will, as we always do, wherever possible, give as much notice as possible.

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

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

CLERK:

Reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the:

Inland Revenue Department, Long-Term Insights Briefing 2022

Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Monetary Policy Statement, May 2023, and

Water Services Legislation Bill

reports of the Health Committee on the:

2021-22 annual reviews of the Health Promotion Agency, the Taranaki District Health Board, and the Whanganui District Health Board, and

petition of Millie Grant: Place a purchase limit on pharmaceuticals such as paracetamol in supermarkets

report of the Justice Committee on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill

report of the Petitions Committee on the petition of Patricia Fabish and the Sensible Sentencing Group Trust: Stop editing Victim Impact Statements in New Zealand, and the

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the second interim report Complaint about the E-Scooters (Declaration not to be motor vehicles) Notice 2018.

SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading. The Long-Term Insights Briefing, Monetary Policy Statement, and interim report on the complaint are set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK: Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: That bill is set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Prime Minister: On what dates, if any, did the Cabinet Office communicate with the Prime Minister or the Office of the Prime Minister since November 2020 regarding Hon Michael Wood’s shareholdings?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti): on behalf of the Prime Minister: The Cabinet Office has not communicated with the Prime Minister or his current office prior to last week. I am advised that the previous Prime Minister was informed that the Hon Michael Wood was in the process of divesting shares in Auckland Airport and Contact Energy as part of the annual reviews of ministerial interest in November 2021 and November 2022. She was also informed he had divested his shares in March 2021; however, this was incorrect advice. In February 2022, the then chief of staff was informed by the Cabinet Office that they had provided advice to the Hon Michael Wood about divesting, and that the Minister had advised he was in the process of divesting the shares.

Nicola Willis: Why, despite an entire year passing between checks from the Prime Minister as to whether or not the shares had been sold and no action having been taken, were those shares not registered on the official conflict of interest register?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: There is no question that he should have done it quicker. I’m not going to defend his failure to do it when told he should have followed the advice, and he accepts that.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The answer there was referring to the Minister’s actions. Nicola Willis was asking about the actions taken by the Prime Minister’s office and Cabinet, and it hasn’t been addressed.

SPEAKER: I agree, and I ask Nicola Willis to ask the question again.

Nicola Willis: I’ll do my best to use the same words. Why, despite a year passing between the Prime Minister first being made aware of the shareholding and those shares not being divested, were they not registered on the official register of conflicts of interest?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: There is an investigation being conducted by Sir Maarten Wevers, and I believe it is appropriate to let that investigation run its course, and we’ll find out all the information we need to know in due course.

SPEAKER: The investigation being mentioned is about a member as a member of Parliament. Members can ask about their ministerial responsibilities and Cabinet responsibilities, so the Minister has not addressed that part.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I believe the Minister did declare his shares in the register in 2022.

Nicola Willis: Why, in 2021, did Minister Wood not declare his shares on the ministerial declaration of conflicts of interest when not only he knew that he hadn’t sold them but the Cabinet Office knew, the Prime Minister knew, and nothing was done about it?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Again, there is no question that the Minister should have done it quicker and I’m not going to defend his failure to do so. He should have followed the advice that he got, and he accepts that.

Nicola Willis: Does the Prime Minister retain confidence in the Cabinet Office’s process for managing conflicts of interest when 2½ years went by in which a conflict of interest was not declared or registered, despite the Cabinet Office being aware it existed?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Yes.

Nicola Willis: What sort of standards exist in this Government that a Minister can have a conflict of interest for 2½ years, not declare it, not manage it, and that person remains a Minister?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Again, I’m not going to stand here and defend the Minister’s actions. He knows that he should’ve declared those interests sooner. He accepts that advice.

Nicola Willis: Is the Prime Minister aware that not only did the Minister mismanage his pecuniary interest register and his Cabinet declaration but he also misled a journalist in July 2021; when specifically asked if he had any pecuniary interests he had not declared, he expressly said he had not—is that acceptable?

SPEAKER: There is a part of the question that probably should not have been mentioned. Every member should be aware that the pecuniary interest process is separate to the Cabinet. So I would ask the Minister to respond to the part of the question that dealt with the Cabinet processes and the ministerial process.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I am advised that the Minister has answered questions in terms of what he understood was accurate at the time.

Nicola Willis: Does the Prime Minister think it was accurate?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: On behalf of the Prime Minister, they’d have to take the Minister’s word for that.

Nicola Willis: Why is this Prime Minister prepared to accept the word of an individual who, over the course of 2½ years, claimed they were selling shares but failed to do so, was given 12 reminders to do it, said they were doing it, hadn’t done it, and today, we’re told, won’t even front to media to talk about it—why does that person remain a Minister?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, on behalf of the Prime Minister, that’s the very reason that he’s been stood down from his transport portfolio.

Nicola Willis: Why does he remain the Minister of Immigration, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, the associate finance Minister, and the Minister for Auckland issues?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Because he’s proven himself to be very competent in all of those portfolios that she’s mentioned.

Question No. 2—Energy and Resources

2. Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: How is the Government supporting communities to be more energy resilient?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Through Budget 2023, the Government has committed to extending our successful community energy programme partnering with local organisations, including iwi, to deliver more community-based, renewable electricity projects. My intention is for this funding to enable at least 2,000 additional households to benefit from renewable electricity generation. The loss of electricity following the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle highlighted the importance of building resilience in our electricity system, especially for small and isolated communities, and our Government is committed to continuing to deliver the support to build resilience.

Hon Aupito William Sio: What type of projects will be delivered as a result of this Budget 2023 funding?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We are investing in community energy projects such as wind power and solar generation and batteries that will improve energy security. This will support target communities to get secure, renewable, and affordable energy. Many of these projects will enable a reliable supply of renewable energy, growing their resilience to natural hazards when power lines go down, and reducing their power bills.

Hon Aupito William Sio: What support has the Government already delivered for community-based, renewable electricity projects?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Through our Māori and Public Housing Renewable Energy Fund, we’ve delivered 30 renewable energy projects, with a further 12 currently under construction. When all of these projects are complete, 435 homes will benefit. We’ve rolled out solar photovoltaic systems on 170 public homes across New Zealand, including in Wellington, Hawke’s Bay, Whangārei, Nelson, Gisborne, Auckland, Hamilton, and Christchurch. Some households funded with solar and battery systems reported they could keep the lights on when the local area was without mains power for five days following Cyclone Gabrielle.

Hon Aupito William Sio: In addition to improving energy resilience, what other benefits are provided by community-based, renewable electricity projects?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Our Government’s funding through successive Budgets has helped increase energy resilience—particularly in small and isolated communities—and reduced power bills. Early reports from completed projects show all households are experiencing significantly reduced power bills, by in some cases up to 50 percent, which provides immediate financial relief for those families.

Hon Aupito William Sio: Where can people find out more about community energy?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Ara Ake, New Zealand’s future energy centre, which was established by the Government in 2019, has recently launched its Community Energy How to Guide, which provides advice for communities interested in developing community energy. The guide, available on Ara Ake’s website, demonstrates how community-scale projects can align with the grid to improve resilience, reduce costs, and lower emissions. I want to congratulate Ara Ake for their hard work on this project.

Question No. 3—Auckland

3. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister for Auckland: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Auckland): Yes. In their context, I stand by my statements and actions as Minister for Auckland.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Regarding his statement yesterday that he stood by his statements to the Cabinet Office about his personal shareholdings in Auckland International Airport, what exactly did he tell the Cabinet Office following their 6 and 27 March 2023 requests to dispose of the shares?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I would have to check the records fully, but I do not believe I have provided a formal response to those emails.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Was he arrogant enough to think he didn’t need to follow the rules?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: No, but I have acknowledged and will acknowledge again that it was a serious error on my part not to be sufficiently focused on this matter. As of today, I have taken action on that by selling the shares.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Has he contacted Jonathan Milne at Newsroom since February to correct the false statement he gave him two years ago that he had nothing more to declare beyond his pecuniary interest list—a list that did not include his Auckland International Airport shareholding?

SPEAKER: I’ll ask the member to rephrase the question. I’m mindful that there’s an investigation on this very matter. It’s entirely up to the member, though. It does leave it open, though, for the Minister—whether or not that’s his responsibility as the Minister of Auckland affairs. But if you want to ask it in a different way, that may be in order.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Just a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did say “since February”—since he’s been Minister for Auckland—and it’s a duty of all Ministers to, as Minister for Auckland, he’s responsible for international connectivity—

SPEAKER: But his pecuniary interests are not.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: No. No, no—

SPEAKER: That’s right; that’s what you said.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Has he contacted Jonathan Milne at Newsroom since February to correct the false statement he gave to him more than two years ago?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: No, and I reject the characterisation in the member’s question.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Well, which part of the statement does he reject?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Firstly, that was not a statement that I made as the Minister for Auckland. Secondly, I have acknowledged that over this period of time, I was not across all of the detail but I’ve never deliberately made a false statement.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Why did he say yesterday that he commenced the process of selling the shares in early 2022, when apparently he had made a commitment to the Cabinet Office to sell them from December 2020—more than a year earlier?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: At that earlier point, I had commenced the process—that did not proceed as far as it should have. I more fulsomely began that process in early 2022. Again, I regret that I did not complete that process. As of today, I have undertaken the necessary action and sold those shares.

Question No. 4—Housing

4. Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) to the Minister of Housing: Does she have confidence in the operations of the Temporary Accommodation Service in Hawke’s Bay following Cyclone Gabrielle?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Yes. Through Budget 2023, the Government put in an additional $70 million through Vote Housing to deliver up to 400 relocatable cabins in four rohe, including Hawke’s Bay, to temporarily house whānau displaced by the severe weather events. Government agencies are currently working through the contracts for these units, including up to 100 units in Hawke’s Bay, with delivery through Ngāti Kahungunu or its hapū organisations. In terms of the Temporary Accommodation Service (TAS) appropriation, I can also report that three Portacabins have arrived in Waiōhiki today. TAS has also reported good progress in relation to a project to place relocatable homes on Ōmahu Marae land in Hawke’s Bay.

Hon Meka Whaitiri: Has she heard of reports that in the last week the Temporary Accommodation Service has evicted whānau from accommodation in Hawke’s Bay at extremely short notice, including calling the police?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: It would not be appropriate for me to speak on individual cases in the House, but if the member would like to provide me with her concerns in writing, I’m happy to work with her directly. But, generally speaking, what I can say is TAS does have an eligibility criteria and performs a needs assessment on all registered households to ensure that we can support the households who have found themselves displaced, and, in some cases, lost everything following a natural disaster. Following a needs assessment, it may become apparent that a household does not meet the criteria, and another Government agency would be best placed to assist. TAS then works with that agency to ensure a household transitions smoothly from TAS to them.

Hon Meka Whaitiri: What assurances, if any, can she give these whānau who have lost their homes from the cyclone that they will be guaranteed the accommodation they need, particularly given that land categorisation in Hawke’s Bay is still being consulted on?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: What guarantees I can give are the answers that I gave in my primary question: that those households that are eligible for TAS assistance, there is currently already plenty of supply in the area and more is coming, that we’ve made the commitment, and, as I said to the member in the answer to the primary question only today, three more cabins have arrived.

Chris Penk: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek the leave of the House to table a letter from me to the Minister for Cyclone Recovery, dated 19 May, highlighting issues of housing insecurity post - cyclone and flood issues, and also the reply which came from the Minister of Housing in relation to the same issue.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. It may be tabled.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Question No. 5—Prime Minister

5. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: On what specific dates since November 2020, if any, did the Cabinet Office communicate with the Prime Minister’s office regarding Hon Michael Wood’s shareholding in Auckland Airport, and who in the Prime Minister’s office, if anyone, was aware of the shareholding prior to last week?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti) on behalf of the Prime Minister: On behalf of the Prime Minister, I have answered the first part of the question in response to question No. 1. For the second part of the question, no one currently in the Prime Minister’s office was aware of this issue prior to last week.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It was a question on notice. It requires more than simply being addressed. If the Minister answering on behalf of the Prime Minister is clearly aware, because he’s certain those people no longer work there, then surely he should identify those people at least by title.

SPEAKER: Yes, I agree. As the member said, it was on notice. We did hear some dates yesterday.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: And today, and the positions.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Well, I’ve ruled on it. I don’t know if the member heard them—he might have said them. But if you’ve got them there—well, I’ll give the member an extra two questions, and he can flesh them out a bit further.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: A new point of order?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Yes. The dates were said in answer to Question No. 1. It’s not for me to determine or for us to determine whether or not his hearing is good enough to hear it.

SPEAKER: This is not a supplementary question. This the primary question. Do you want another opportunity to answer the primary question, or are we going to add extra supplementaries?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I’ll repeat the answer to question No. 1, Mr Speaker: on behalf of the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Office has not communicated with the Prime Minister or his current office prior to the last week. I’m advised that the previous Prime Minister was informed that the Hon Michael Wood was in the process of divesting shares in Auckland Airport and Contact Energy as part of the annual reviews of ministerial interests in November 2021, November 2022. She was also informed he had divested his shares in March 2021. However, this was incorrect advice. In February 2022, the then chief of staff was informed by the Cabinet Office that they had provided advice to the Hon Michael Wood about divesting, and that the Minister had advised he was in the process of divesting the shares. Point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that Question No. 1 fully answered it, and I referred—

SPEAKER: Order! I will be the judge of relevance. Do you have a further supplementary?

David Seymour: Thank you, Mr Speaker; I do. How can New Zealanders trust this Government when for 2½ years Michael Wood knew, the Cabinet Office knew, the Prime Minister’s office knew, and it turns out the Prime Minister’s chief of staff knew for part of the period but nothing was done about this blatant conflict of interest even when Michael Wood was making decisions that were relevant to his holding in Auckland International Airport?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Based on the advice that the Prime Minister of the time was given, she would have assumed that the matter was in hand.

David Seymour: Why shouldn’t New Zealanders assume the reason Michael Wood is still a Minister is that the Prime Minister’s office is donkey-deep and complicit in his wrongdoing so has no moral authority to sack him?

SPEAKER: The Minister can decide for himself whether he wants to answer that question—I’m standing up because clearly the question is out of order and was always going to lead to disorder in the House, but it’s up to the Minister whether he wants to answer it or not—obviously not.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to clarify if you’d still gifted those two additional supps.

SPEAKER: Yes, absolutely.

David Seymour: Is the Prime Minister aware that a company director so negligent in declaring their interests and carrying on for 2½ years would face severe penalties, and, if so, why should New Zealanders in business follow one set of rules when his Minister is let to follow another?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: The Prime Minister has made it clear that he’s disappointed in the lack of action from Michael Wood, which is the reason he has been stood down from his transport portfolio.

David Seymour: How are New Zealanders supposed to trust a Government when so much can go so wrong for so long, and yet, magically, it’s never really anybody’s fault?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I reject that because Michael Wood has said that he failed to do what he should have done.

Question No. 6—Housing

6. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central) to the Associate Minister of Housing: Is she satisfied that the UN-recognised human right to adequate housing of the approximately 1.4 million renters in this country is being met?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Associate Minister of Housing): The Government is committed to working towards everyone having adequate housing. The Government has undertaken a number of actions since 2017 to improve housing for renters, including implementing the healthy homes standards, which aim to make a significant improvement in the quality of Aotearoa rental homes; improving security of tenure by removing no-cause terminations; adding over 12,000 public housing places since 1 November 2017, with around 10,000 new builds; banning letting fees; banning landlords from setting rental bids; and limiting rent increases to once per year. The Government recognises that there is always more work to do in this space and we are working on it.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does she believe that the exemptions for boarding houses and student accommodation in the Residential Tenancies Act are fit for purpose?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: The Government’s long-held position on access to housing is that the most important action that the Government can take is to keep increasing supply and keep up our focus on improving standards, such as the healthy homes standards, which do not apply to boarding houses.

Chlöe Swarbrick: When can renters expect property managers to be regulated, as consultation options were released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development over a year ago?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: I acknowledge the challenges for renters in the market. The landlord-tenant relationship is also regulated by the Residential Tenancies Act. The Government is committed to regulating residential property managers to protect both landlords and tenants, and work continues on this.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Is she aware that the United Kingdom is progressing a landlord registration scheme, and, if so, is she concerned that the exclusion of approximately 60 percent of rental homes managed by private landlords in the proposed New Zealand regulations puts us behind even the Conservative UK Government?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: We are an evidence-driven Government, and when we look to the evidence, the best way to control rent is to bring on the supply of new housing. I acknowledge the challenges, again, for renters in the market. The Government is consistently considering what we can do to help people who are renting.

Chlöe Swarbrick: How many renting New Zealanders will, this winter, contract preventable illnesses from substandard rental housing?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: I do not have the answer to that specific question. If the member would like to put it in writing, then I will try and respond to it.

Question No. 7—Research, Science and Innovation

7. IBRAHIM OMER (Labour) to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation: What announcement has the Government recently made about investing in the science system?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation): Budget 2023 positioned the New Zealand economy for a low-emissions, high-wage future, with a major investment in our science system. This includes the creation of three new multi-institution hubs to increase collaboration in research and science, association with the multi-billion dollar Horizon Europe research programme, and investing in our future research and science workforce.

Ibrahim Omer: Why is the Government investing in multi-institution research hubs?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Through Budget 2023, we are creating three multi-institution research hubs to bring scientists closer together to increase collaboration, ensure better use of expensive equipment and facilities, and position New Zealand to meet complex challenges and seize economic opportunities. These hubs will place greater emphasis on innovation and create an environment that helps start-ups to grow and become significant contributors to the New Zealand economy through stronger coordination of innovation and commercialisation activities.

Ibrahim Omer: How will the Government be supporting new talent in the science and research system?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: This Government is committed to supporting new talent, addressing key domestic skills gaps, and improving career mobility. That is why, through Budget 2023, we are investing $55.2 million in research fellowships and to train more PhD students. The fellowships will help retain and develop more than 260 future research, science, and innovation leaders over the next 10 years. An additional fund for PhD students will provide certainty for researchers and improve the impact in applied science that these students get to take up.

Ibrahim Omer: How will Budget 2023 support New Zealand’s research to be showcased on the world stage?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Through Budget 2023, we are investing $37.6 million over four years in New Zealand’s association to Horizon Europe. New Zealand’s research will be showcased to the world as Kiwi scientists work alongside world-leading researchers to solve global challenges under the multibillion-dollar research programme. We will be one of the first non-European countries to offer our researchers access to the European Union’s largest ever research and innovation programme on equal terms with European scientists. This is new funding for New Zealand science and underlines our commitment to building a modern, future-focused science and innovation system.

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): I stand by my full statement in the context of that time: “It is my view that New Zealanders feel safer with a Government on track to deliver 1,800 extra police.” As the member is aware, we have now delivered over 1,800 extra police.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why is crime increasing?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: There are a number of drivers of crime, and the member is well aware from the Estimates this morning that the two main drivers of crime that increase demand to the police service are both family violence and mental health.

Hon Mark Mitchell: How can New Zealanders feel safe when, since the member has become Minister of Police, gang numbers have grown by over 300?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I did not say that New Zealanders feel safer.

Hon Mark Mitchell: So is she saying that New Zealanders shouldn’t feel safer?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I have always been clear that what my statement was is that New Zealanders feel safer with 1,800 additional police than they did with fewer police. Those additional police on the front line mean that we have more services, we are quicker to respond, and we are able to provide more referrals into those key areas like family violence and mental health that are the underlying drivers of crime in New Zealand.

SPEAKER: I just want to remind Government members not to interject while a question is being asked.

Hon Mark Mitchell: So, just to give the Minister the chance to really clear this matter up, does she think that New Zealanders feel safer now in New Zealand—

Hon David Parker: Point of order, Mr Speaker. There was an inappropriate imputation at the start of that question that did not form part of the question.

SPEAKER: Yeah, and I would’ve preferred to hear the whole question. Since becoming the Speaker, the way that I have run question time, according to the will of the House—if that has changed, then the House should let me know—I’ll make a judgment at the end of it.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Minister think that Kiwis feel safer today than they did five years ago?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I cannot speak on behalf of all New Zealanders, but what I can say is that the police in New Zealand are far better resourced than they have ever been. This means we have more resources in our front line to respond to the pressing demands that are on police, and it means we have better investment in those services in mental health and family violence, through Te Aorerekura, to get ahead of those problems that are driving crime within our communities.

Question No. 9—Social Development and Employment (Māori Employment)

9. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (Māori Employment): How is the Government supporting rangatahi into training and employment opportunities?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (Māori Employment)): The Government is continuing to support rangatahi in providing more funding into new Māori trades and training in He Poutama Rangatahi programmes across the country. We’re backing 52 new Māori kaupapa employment and training programmes, which will help Māori into further training, sustainable employment, or progress within their chosen careers. Last week in Dunedin, I announced a further $67.1 million to be invested in Māori trades and training in He Poutama Rangatahi programmes, supporting over 4,000 Māori across Aotearoa.

Arena Williams: What does this funding mean for rangatahi Māori?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Well, as we know, Māori are disproportionately disadvantaged in the labour market, and this is why this Government has a specific focus on improving Māori employment opportunities and outcomes. Programmes like He Poutama Rangatahi and Whakawātea te ara Poutama are delivered by providers with a connection to the rangatahi and their whānau, and they’ll tailor the programme to meet specific needs and provide wraparound support. We recognise that communities know their people, and community-linked service providers are best placed to deliver on this important mahi.

Arena Williams: How is this investment impacting the lives of rangatahi and their whānau?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: These programmes are not simply about getting people into employment; they all provide wraparound services that support participants to address social issues and support life changes that impact positively both for them, their whānau, and the community. We know that intensive support and upskilling will be needed to get young people, in particular, into work, so we’ve worked with providers to co-design programmes to address the need. Programmes can include but are not limited to mentoring, alcohol and drug awareness, reconnecting with whakapapa, and mental health support, such as counselling, life skills, literacy, and numeracy support.

Arena Williams: How effective have these programmes been for rangatahi Māori?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, all good news again: 5,548 young people have gone into employment, education, or training—

Hon Andrew Little: How many?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —5,548—since 2018; 71 percent of all participants who complete their programmes enter employment, education, and/or training, so it’s going well in that area; 820 participants have enrolled in the Māori Trades and Training Fund, and 635 have gained employment outcomes, or 77 percent, and 85 percent of whom have been in employment longer than six months. It’s all good news. We’re doing some wonderful work with young people. Māori trade training—all going well for Te Ao Māori at the moment. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Question No. 10—Corrections

10. TONI SEVERIN (ACT) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he think that assessing a prisoner’s psychological state when they enter prison is important for understanding their rehabilitation needs, and does he also think that assessing a prisoner’s literacy and numeracy skills is important for understanding their education needs?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): I think that both things are important in a prison context. I note that delivery of these services has been affected in recent times as Corrections—like many others—has faced challenges with COVID-19 and, more recently, staffing levels. However, I am advised that in the case of psychological reports, Corrections has also made improvements in their approach to risk assessment and is increasingly focusing its psychologists into treatment units and mental health teams. This means that more targeted assessment and support is taking place. Likewise, in the case of literacy and numeracy assessments, I’m advised that Corrections has streamlined the recording of assessments conducted, reducing the number of needless reassessments conducted, and has also seen an increase in the learners recorded in the NZQA database as having a qualification at level 1 of the New Zealand Qualifications Framework (NZQF) or higher, resulting in fewer prisoners requiring assessment.

Toni Severin: Is it acceptable that Corrections has done 2,776 fewer psychological assessments on prisoners in 2022-23 compared to 2017-18 and has fallen almost by 38 percent, and how can Corrections know what psychological support prisoners need if they’re not assessing them?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, again, there’s about three or four questions in that question. Not every person managed by Corrections will require an assessment by a psychologist or is willing to engage with a psychologist. As I said in the answer to the primary question, furthermore: a reduction in these numbers is to be expected, given improvements in Corrections’ approach to risk assessment to ensure that people in prison are not unnecessarily assessed; and an increasing distribution of psychologists in prisons towards treatment and mental health support, targeting support where it is needed. They are also interim numbers, so do not account for a full financial year.

Toni Severin: Is it acceptable that Corrections completed 61 percent fewer literacy assessments and 63 percent fewer numeracy assessments of prisoners in 2022-23 compared to 2018-19; and how can Corrections know what education support prisoners need if they’re not assessing them?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: As I said in the answer to the primary question: reduction in these numbers is to be expected, given Corrections has streamlined the recording of assessments conducted, reducing the number of needless reassessments conducted; and has also seen an increase in learners recorded in the NZQA database as having a qualification at level 1 of the NZQF or higher, resulting in fewer prisoners requiring assessment. It’s important to note that the interim figures for 2022-23 are already higher than the previous year, so we are making progress returning to pre - COVID-19 levels.

Toni Severin: How is it possible that Corrections is doing far fewer psychological, numeracy, and literacy assessments than five years ago, when there are 38 percent fewer sentenced prisoners behind bars?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: As I said in the answer to the primary question: reduction in these numbers is expected, given Corrections has streamlined the recording of assessments, reducing the number of needless assessments, seeing an increase in learners recorded in the NZQA database as having a qualification at level 1, and resulting in fewer prisoners requiring assessment.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m sorry. Due to the Hon Andrew Little shouting across the aisle, I literally couldn’t hear what the Minister was saying and I actually did want to hear it.

SPEAKER: Yeah, I could say that about a number of questions just about every single day. I’ve ruled previously that clearly the House is telling us that it doesn’t want to hear.

David Seymour: But—

SPEAKER: Yeah, I know what you’re going to say. But you can’t have it both ways. Robust, to me, means both sides of the House. You can’t be complaining about one side when, actually, the side that you’re sitting on also does the same. If the House wants a different way, happy to hear it.

David Seymour: Well, Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: A new point of order, or commentary?

David Seymour: No. I wonder if that particular question might be repeated. If Mr Little can just contain himself, we might hear the answer.

Question No. 11—Education

11. ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of Education: Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): In the context in which they were given, yes.

Erica Stanford: On what date did the Minister first possess any knowledge or awareness that the term 3 attendance data could be released on the same day as the Government’s truancy announcement on 21 February?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Mr Speaker, I’m in a little bit of a difficult position here and I’m going to seek your guidance on this because this is actually currently before the Privileges Committee, to which they haven’t had the report come back to the House. So I’m not certain what I can say in this House or not.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Speaking to that point, Standing Order 243(1) goes to the question of confidentiality of select committee proceedings, and the Privileges Committee is subject to these Standing Orders: “The proceedings of a select committee or subcommittee other than during the hearing of evidence are not open to the public and remain strictly confidential”. Now, we’ve had an hour before the committee, where the Minister gave evidence in public, in front of the committee, in front of thousands of people watching around the country, and it’ll be on the 6 o’clock news tonight. I can’t see how that could possibly meet the terms of the confidentiality Standing Orders.

SPEAKER: I’m going to allow that question.

Hon JAN TINETTI: Can the member repeat the question, please.

Hon JAN TINETTI: I would have to say that, from my recollection, I didn’t have that knowledge until the data was actually released. That was on 23 February, I believe—I haven’t got that information in front of me, but I’m willing to correct that if I have got that wrong.

Erica Stanford: Why did she definitively tell The AM Show on 21 February that “term 3 data is going to be released today by the Ministry of Education” if she had no certainty the attendance data would be released that day?

Hon JAN TINETTI: That was in the heat of a media interview. I genuinely had no knowledge of when that data was going to be released.

Erica Stanford: Why, in a later interview on Breakfast on the same—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Sorry, can you just start the question again? I couldn’t hear.

Erica Stanford: Why is it, on the same day after the AM Show, she stated on the Breakfast show that the data would be released that day or the following day?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Same reason—exactly the same reason. I genuinely had no knowledge of when that data would be released. I was being interviewed by the media at that particular time. As I said in the committee this morning, I actually had a hope that the data would be released at some point.

Erica Stanford: Is the Minister making a habit of saying things that she suspects or doesn’t know is true and then standing by them?

Hon JAN TINETTI: No.

Erica Stanford: Why, when the Minister read emails on 5 April showing the Minister’s office had input into the delaying of the attendance data, didn’t the Minister at that point immediately correct her answer when the House sat the next day?

Hon JAN TINETTI: As I said in the select committee this morning, that was when I started to have some questions around that. I wanted to talk about that with my staff at the time, but then we were going to rise for the recess. At that point in time, I didn’t have the opportunity over the recess—I was on a ministerial trip to Ottawa and Washington. I was going to come back and have that conversation with my staff on 1 May, and then other events happened, such as a letter from yourself.

Question No. 12—Emergency Management

12. JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East) to the Minister for Emergency Management: What recent announcements has he made on emergency management?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister for Emergency Management): Yesterday, the Government introduced legislation to modernise our emergency management system. It takes on the lessons from previous responses to natural disasters, including the Christchurch and Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquakes, and other emergencies. The Emergency Management Bill replaces the two decades of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002. It is my hope that the select committee process will be able to incorporate any lessons that emerge from the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle.

Jamie Strange: What are the key changes in the bill?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: The key changes include clarifying roles and responsibilities across the system at national, regional, and local levels; requiring civil defence emergency management group plans to identify and engage with communities that are disproportionately impacted by emergencies; recognising the important role Māori play in Aotearoa New Zealand’s emergency management system; and enhancing Māori participation at all levels—national, regional, and local, and across strategic planning and operational activity.

Jamie Strange: Why is it important for emergency responses to continue to be locally led?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: The strength of our emergency management system is that it is locally led, regionally coordinated, and centrally supported. The changes in the bill build on this strength. Locals know their communities best. They know the risks and they are first on the ground when disaster strikes.

Special Debates

Local Issues

SPEAKER: Members, we now come to the debate about local issues, arranged by the Business Committee under Standing Order 80. Can I just let members know that there’s no particular order, but times have been allocated per party.

MELISSA LEE (National): I move, That the House take note of local issues.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to rise in this debate. It is my very first time to talk about local issues, and I’d like to talk about the Mt Albert electorate, which was in fact the former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s electorate. She’s no longer there, and since then, as the list MP who looks after the Mt Albert area from the National Party, a lot of the community have been in touch, more so than normal. One of the biggest issues that they contact me about is actually law and order and the victimisation in our suburbs, and I’m sure that my colleague Helen White probably also hears about this. The issue of victimisation in the Waitematā area has actually gone up tremendously, as well as in Auckland City.

I had the Hon Mark Mitchell in the electorate last Friday for a law and order public meeting, which was well advertised, and the room at the Mt Albert Senior Citizens Hall was pretty full and there were people who wanted to discuss issues. One of the stories that a father brought to the meeting was actually really, really moving and touching. He was very emotional, actually, because he was away overseas, and his wife and his daughter had been held up in a home invasion by people with hammers who were threatening them. When he got back, he felt helpless and powerless, and he raised this issue with the police, who were there—and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the area commander, Alisse Robertson, who came to the meeting to address the meeting and answer questions about the police actions on this lawlessness.

We have had quadruple the number of ram raids in New Zealand. Apparently, there has been a 465 percent increase in the last two years, and the majority of those caught doing these actions—70 percent of them—are under the age of 18 years old. The Government has actually spent $6 million on crime prevention, on fog cannons and bollards, but it seems nothing is actually working—well, not effectively, anyway.

Retail crime costs this country more than $1 billion a year, and I have to say that when the Minister of Police, Ginny Andersen, earlier answered a question that Mark Mitchell asked her, she said the police are more resourced than ever before. That might be true statistically, but I’d like to urge the Minister to reconsider her answer, considering the fact that front-line police actually feel the brunt of these increases in ram raids and lawlessness in our country, and in every shift of police that I meet with, they are short staffed. They have police, front-line officers, who are away because of stress and because of mental health issues as a result of this lawlessness that they have to actually face day in, day out.

The thing is that this Government doesn’t seem to be dealing with it. The majority of the complaints, apart from the sheer amount of lawlessness that we face in Mt Albert—I mean, we’re talking about the local dairies, or the local coffee shop. There’s Handpicked Coffee Roasters, for example, on New North Road; Stewart Dawsons at St Lukes, the murder of Lena Zhang Harrap in Mount Albert itself, and, obviously, Janak Patel in Sandringham last year, in November.

Hon Scott Simpson: Labour is soft on crime.

MELISSA LEE: I mean, we are facing softness in our justice system. “Labour is soft on crime.” is what I’m hearing from the people in Mt Albert, and I’m sure Helen White is actually getting that from the constituents as well, because they feel that we’re not doing enough. They feel that there are not enough police to actually come to their aid. The justice system, they feel, is actually hitting the offenders with a wet bus ticket instead of being harsh so that they understand that they are not supposed to do these actions. The victims are the biggest worry that I have, because when people are victims of home invasion or they’re victims of ram raids, it lasts a long, long time for them to actually get over the crime, and I think this Government needs to do more in this space.

SPEAKER: Before I give the next call, I just want to remind members that this is a local issues debate. It shouldn’t venture off too far into general policy areas, and I’ll be listening very carefully to this.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I stand today to speak on a very local issue, although, saying that, it is something that vicariously members in this House will be involved in. As they fly home tonight to their various locations, I invite them to look out the window as your plane crosses the wonderful Ōhāriu electorate, and the wise among you will have noticed that there’s been a change in flight track. A flight that used to go straight up the harbour now turns left and goes across Khandallah, Johnsonville, and Broadmeadows, bringing with it new issues, not least of all is new noise. This, of course, has been the result of changes—operational changes—that are impacting directly on the electorate.

Now, Wellington is a wonderful city, it has an airport really very close to its centre, and, of course, there are always going to be issues with airport noise. Having previously lived in the eastern suburbs, I understand that it’s something that many people in different suburbs around airports in New Zealand live with. However, this issue is a change. Recently, Airways have introduced a new flight path and it’s around the DMAPS system. The DMAPS is the Wellington Divergent Missed Approach Protection System. Again, for members who often land at Wellington Airport, when flights currently land, there is a four-mile gap between the flight taking off and the flight landing. That distance being reduced means there is an increased chance, on a missed approach, that the missing plane will actually connect with one that has just taken off. Therefore, a new flight path has been created, and that now goes left so that the planes are on different flight paths, and this is the issue I wish to speak about today.

As a local MP, it’s always a little bit of an issue. There’s often a displacement issue involved here, because when noise moves to one part of the city, often it comes from another. However, in this case, the flights were further over the harbour under the old approach. Under the new approach, they are actually now hitting land much lower and much more closely causing this issue. Now, the decision was made by Airways to bring this approach in, and more importantly a decision was made not to consult with locals. One monitor was put in place that did pick up what was thought to be acceptable noise. However, it was introduced on 1 December 2022. No notification was made. The first notification was when Wellington Airport put on their public site that this was actually occurring. But until the complaints started coming in, and considerably more noise was noticed by residents, only then was it seemingly noticed that this change needed to be addressed.

A local group of residents known as Plane Sense have done an excellent job of coming together and now looking at what has happened, and there will be a public meeting on this shortly. The main issue—and this is an issue that, while it is very much a local issue, all should be aware of—is that when an operational change is brought about like this for purely operational reasons, if some sort of template had been put over the rationale, it would have instantly become obvious that there was going to be some kickback from locals. Now, I don’t want any other Wellingtonians or anyone else to say this is a group of nimbies. It is not. These are people that directly—literally, their houses now, in many cases, are shaking with the effect of these new flight paths. So it has actually brought about considerable change to the lives of many people in this area.

It’s not going to be a simple matter of just reprogramming the computer to put this back to the old way. What’s going to happen now is that, as a result of pressure by myself and the local group, there will be monitoring stations put in place, four of them in Johnsonville, Broadmeadows, and Khandallah, and it is very likely that—and I’m confident, as are many in this group and many in my electorate—the noise level results that will be monitored will be considerably higher than were predicted. In this case, there will be need for Airways and Wellington Airport to get back to the drawing board and actually start ensuring that, if you’re going to bring in these operational changes, however well intentioned, there needs to be consultation with the local community, so at least, if nothing else, they can be prepared for this and some sort of mediation, some sort of remedial action, can be taken. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to this, to what is, I believe, a very, very local issue. Thank you.

SPEAKER: I understand Dr James McDowall would like a four-minute call.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Anyone who travels to Wellington by road knows that Transmission Gully delivers a safer and more reliable journey time than the old State highway did. Not only was the old highway heavily congested at the best of times, it was often closed by waves breaking across the road and by, unfortunately, head-on collisions resulting in severe injuries and fatalities. The 15,000 trucks and cars that used to crawl along the vulnerable two-lane coastal road now travel on a four- and six-lane highway separated by concrete barriers. With that traffic redirected to a new, safe road—much nicer road—the lovely coastal towns on the Kāpiti Coast can become destinations rather than just another set in a series of traffic lights on a State highway. This shows how good infrastructure can deliver social, economic, and environmental benefits. So, then, why have the sponsors of Let’s Get Wellington Moving, a behemoth $7.4 billion road-to-nowhere project, failed to look up the road and learn some lessons from Transmission Gully?

For Let’s Get Wellington Moving’s total $100 million spend, all they have managed to tangibly produce is a $2.4 million pedestrian crossing near Wellington Airport. A slightly old joke about how to make a small fortune: in this case, take a large fortune and give it to Let’s Get Wellington Moving. I go to Wellington Airport quite a bit, and I haven’t seen a single person using that pedestrian crossing, which is probably a good thing, because it’s in the middle of a busy thoroughfare which is congested enough. It is the most shameful waste of public money on a transport project since the now-cancelled Auckland bike bridge. As my colleague Simon Court, ACT’s transport spokesperson, said recently, “If spending money was a medal-winning achievement, then Waka Kotahi, the Greater Wellington Regional Council, and Wellington City Council would share the podium.”

ACT would cancel this project and go back to basics. The Basin Reserve flyover project—declined by a planning committee or tribunal—was meant to unlock traffic congestion and enable efficient public transport between the city and the eastern suburbs, which includes the airport. Instead, Let’s Get Wellington Moving pretends that a light rail to the south coast and sterilising the “golden mile” with a parade of buses is somehow going to help the long-suffering citizens of Wellington get to where they need to be. The “golden mile” aspect of this project will result in more than a decade of construction work and disruption for local businesses, especially retail, and they will become less accessible as a result—just like the retail businesses affected in Auckland by the City Rail Link. Wellingtonians should be asking what they’re getting for the “golden mile” project. They can already walk these routes. They can bike. They can take buses if they choose to do so. All this project will do is take away the most flexible point-to-point option that is using a private vehicle.

Then there’s the safety element: people leaving bars on Courtenay Place late at night, for instance, all of a sudden can’t get a taxi or an Uber just outside the entrance, and, presuming the bus isn’t going anywhere where they need it to go, the only option is to walk down a potentially dodgy, dimly lit side street to try and find a more useful transport option. This project is based on ideology that would be embraced by the likes of the Restore Passenger Rail protestors who glue themselves to roads and motorways in Wellington, causing chaos and frustration for motorists and bus users alike. The priorities are all wrong. They should be getting Wellingtonians to and from places that they need to work and to take their families with them, but instead they’ve focused on delivering the Government’s carbon reduction agenda. That is the same Government that can’t even electrify its own fleet.

ACT agrees with the seven councillors now who have no confidence in this multibillion-dollar transport plan. It’s an outrageous waste of public money. The wheels have fallen off, and it needs to go. Sadly, what we have is a green activist dream. It’s got nothing to do with getting Wellington moving; in fact, it is completely the opposite. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise in this local debate as the member of Parliament for Coromandel to speak on behalf of the people who live in the Coromandel, who do business in the Coromandel, and who visit the Coromandel, to talk about the fact that we are now into nearly 5½ months of the main arterial Coromandel Peninsula Road, State Highway 25A, remaining closed and causing enormous heartache, inconvenience, and grief to all those people who love the Coromandel.

Now, it was just yesterday that we finally, after 5½ months, had confirmation of the commercial consortium that is going to be engaged to build the bridge that will span the chasm, which was the drop out in the highway that closed that road back in January of this year, following wet weather and heavy weather damage caused by Cyclone Hale and then, subsequently, by Cyclone Gabrielle. So, since that period of time, the good people of Coromandel have been left in very uncertain circumstances. Their day-to-day lives are inconvenienced; cost and time is added to any and all travel across the peninsula to and from the eastern seaboard. Visitors have stopped coming in the large numbers that they would normally do. In fact, just last weekend, on the King’s Birthday weekend, it was noticeable how few people were actually in the Coromandel spending time and money in an economy that so desperately relies on people coming and spending their hard-earned dollars in our patch.

But it’s not just across the Coromandel peninsula, in my electorate, that has been bruised, battered, but not beaten; further south from the peninsula, just last week, more homes were inundated and flooded by heavy weather at Waihī Beach, and my thoughts and condolences go to those people who’ve had their lives and their homes impacted so negatively. Then, further south again, close towards Ōmokoroa and Katikati, at the southern end of my beautiful electorate, traffic and roading issues are again causing enormous delays and frustration and lost productivity to people travelling on State Highway 2, who are impacted by the construction of a cycleway on the Wairoa Bridge just north of Bethlehem in Tauranga. So, for weeks now—indeed, it’s been a month or more—there have been incredibly long peak-hour traffic delays, leading to massive inconvenience to people in Ōmokoroa, Katikati, and anyone travelling on that piece of State Highway 25. So these are issues that in my electorate—roading, weather, access to infrastructure—are crucial matters.

For nearly 5½ months, we have been told that it would be early 2024 before State Highway 25 was reopened. I have been consistently saying that that road needs to be opened sooner than that. It needs to be opened before Christmas. The people of the Coromandel need to have certainty so they can plan their lives, so they can plan their businesses, so they can organise matters that are so important to them—and we don’t have that certainty. Now, the Government has been saying it will be early 2024 before that road was reopened. Well, I want to tell this House that I think we have been led down a merry path by the current Government, because, in response to a written question, we find out that—and this is question No. 14088, which was answered by the Minister of Transport; well, the then Minister of Transport, the Hon Michael Wood. He says that, of the options that are being considered for the road—and he gives some time frames: the bridge option has an estimated duration of 12 to 14 months before completion; 12 to 14 months. By my calculations, that takes us well into at least this time next year, June next year, 2024, or possibly into August, September, or even October of next year.

For the good people of the Coromandel, that is simply unacceptable, and I want to encourage this Government, the New Zealand Transport Agency, and, indeed, our local Thames-Coromandel District Council to apply more pressure for an urgent solution to the roading problems and hassles and disruptions that are causing such grief to the people that live in, love, and enjoy the beautiful Coromandel.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m delighted to tell you about the Hillside railway workshops and how they are transforming South Dunedin, but, perhaps more importantly, what economic benefits they open up for the region. In doing so, I’d just like to acknowledge the late Jim Kelly from the Rail and Maritime Transport Union—which I am a member of—who worked so tirelessly for the revitalisation of the workshops, and I also acknowledge my predecessor the Hon Claire Curran.

In 2012, the previous National Government said that they were going to, effectively, close down Hillside, and 90 jobs were lost. That was quite a different feeling from the days of 1935, when there were 800 workers working in the workshops to help build train carriages. Many of my constituents are descendants of those workers, so there was a real sense of pessimism and depression in the area. But thanks to investment by our Government of $105 million over several Budgets, the wagon assembly will be revitalised, and now we can see the visible difference on the skyscape in South Dunedin. We can see buildings going up.

I was walking through there recently with the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, and then again with the Prime Minister, and there is just a great sense of excitement. There are men and women construction workers. There are about 200 construction jobs happening to make the workshops come to fruition, and the lead contractor, I’m very proud to say, is Calder Stewart, based in my electorate, in Milton, who have got a fantastic track record for doing this type of work. When Hillside is up and running, the locomotive mechanical workshop will be able to work on 21 locomotives at one time, and it will be able to assemble 1,500 wagons over three years. There will be 45 new jobs, 10 percent of which will be through apprenticeships or trainees, and when the office block is finished, there’ll be 170 staff on site. So the future is looking bright, and parts of Hillside will be operational next year.

But what I think is so exciting is that this speaks to the revitalisation of rail generally. I am hoping it means that we will eventually see a strategy around port and rail that will see the South Island able to act autonomously, so if we get border closures such as through events like COVID, we will be able to have alternative ports and rail for New Zealand to be able to continue those supply chains. My dream for my electorate is to have an inland port, such as what we’ve seen in Hamilton with the work that my colleague Jamie Strange did there to help get that investment happening. That is a real game-changer. It means we can get trucks off the road. At the moment, we’ve got trucks coming into Dunedin at the rate of about one every eight minutes, I’m told by one of the unions. The port is creaking with the logs that are there, and we are seeing excavation happening in the port as the big ships come in to try and move those logs off.

In order for this to happen, I do think there will be need to be a streamlining of consenting, because there is a willingness across the electorate to have some kind of inland port, but there’s a number of consents that have to be gone through, and when people have a vested interest—such as Dunedin City Council or the Invercargill City Council—in having a port, they may not necessarily support an inland port, which is a great proposition. So I think, perhaps, in the future, we could look at economic development, and at streamlining that so that electorates like mine can take advantage of it.

The other element to all of this is just rail and the part that Hillside in particular has played in the history of South Dunedin. We have a fantastic industrial heritage story, and I’m really proud that KiwiRail has committed to keeping one of the buildings. It’s using what’s called, I think, the “1920 building”—but it was actually built in the 1870s—as a storage site. That’s fantastic. There is another managers’ building that’s being used by the unions, which has got a little bit of a question mark over it, and negotiations are ongoing with a local group about whether that building, or parts of it, can be saved. I’m really keen that the story of that building is kept alive and well, and I’m really grateful to KiwiRail for the engagement that they’ve had with the local community. It’s just all a great-news story. Hillside Workshops are transforming South Dunedin.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m really pleased to see the Mt Albert electorate getting a bit of love today, and rightfully so, because the electorate is a network of communities, each with their identity. We’ve got so many families who have long, deep roots in the community and who are deeply invested in the changing electorate.

Indeed, it is an electorate that is changing, with housing developments and young families raising children changing the landscape. This is why it’s so important that we all get behind supporting the many schools and organisations who are calling for the Inner West Projects to be resumed. It is a project that has a seven-year - plus history, receiving commitment and funding from both National and Labour Governments, yet Auckland Transport hasn’t gotten on board with actually doing what is needed. It’s a project that will deliver improved cycleways in areas such as Grey Lynn, Westmere, and Point Chev. It was due to start last year but, unfortunately, it was recently paused and is now in peril of actually not going ahead in the way that was planned.

The problem, though, is that as our schools, communities, and other advocates are calling for improved transport infrastructure, the project stalled at a time when 34 mature trees were felled—at a time when we know the importance of tree protection in our communities and the importance that good transport infrastructure and tree protection plays in protecting our communities from flooding events, which Mt Albert saw at the beginning of the year. So now our communities are faced with the challenge of having mature trees being felled for the project. Yet, without the cycleways—that would have actually given greater safety for the children of Mt Albert, who in a great proportion walk or cycle to school. The children themselves who cycle to school and the young adults who cycle to school have spoken out in favour of this project and how important it is for them to be safe.

I did want to quote a Mt Albert local, Radha Patel, who studied at Western Springs College, who talked about the need to move on quickly with this project to prevent further tragedies and for young people to not be injured on their way to school. They talked about the fact that “We can’t wait for a tragedy to happen before we start valuing and prioritising the lives of students in our community.” Back then, when she was advocating on this project, she delivered a petition with several thousand signatures to her local board. This project has support from schools such as the Newton Central School, Grey Lynn School, Westmere School, Western Springs College, Pasadena Intermediate School, and Point Chevalier School. It just shows that there’s a deep level of investment from our communities for council to move on in partnership with central government, alongside local businesses and communities, to provide decent transport infrastructure.

This is important. Having a connected city and a connected Mt Albert electorate is important, particularly when there are housing projects that will bring new families into the area, with places like Carrington Road seeing greater density of housing, which will be good for the climate and good for the people. Yet, without the transport infrastructure in place, it actually risks not creating the cohesive communities that we need. It is more important now than ever that we all rally behind improved infrastructure projects. In relation to the housing projects nearby, it is really important that, as we build greater density, central government also provides funding for community venues to go alongside it. Often with Kāinga Ora projects, what is happening is that there’s commercial spaces to go alongside the public housing projects and then communities have to compete with commercial entities to be able to provide the social services and goods to create thriving, cohesive communities.

Those are key solutions to the general feedback that people just want safe communities around them. As other members may want to talk about whistle-blowing comments on crime and justice, it’s the good infrastructure and safe communities and listening to the young adults, the children, and the schools who are calling for this that we all have to listen to, and we will continue—hopefully, all of us—advocating for decent infrastructure in Mt Albert.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real privilege to take a call in this local debate. I want to talk about two particular orchards. I want to talk about Ngāi Tukairangi Trust and Wī Pere Trust. These two orchards, despite being devastated through both Hale and Gabrielle, are finalists in this year’s Ahuwhenua horticultural awards, which are on tomorrow evening in Tauranga.

I want to talk particularly about Ngāi Tukairangi Trust: it’s 106 hectares, mainly kiwifruits and apples, in Ōmahu, and if people had watched Gabrielle and the devastation, Ōmahu was one of those images we saw on televisions where the banks came over and the marae and the urupā were completely flooded out. Well, this particular orchard is just up the road from the devastation of that river. They also called for volunteers because it was their first cropping of kiwifruit, and they called for local volunteers because their crops were deemed to be unusable. This was their first crop of beautiful kiwifruit, and I answered the call, like many, to go there and help to take the fruit off the trees. It was devastating, because there were millions and millions of dollars that we were picking to drop on the ground. I’m really proud that they are one of the finalists in this year’s Ahuwhenua awards, so I want to mihi out to Ratahi Cross and to all the owners and the chairs of this particular orchard: 106 hectares in Ōmahu.

The other orchard I want to mention is Wī Pere, which is a 79-hectare mixed-hort operation in Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa flat areas. It has kiwifruit, persimmons, citrus, blueberries, and apples. Again, another one of our great orchards throughout my electorate devastated through recent flooding, but they still find themselves being classed as a finalist in one of the longest-running horticultural pastoral awards in this country. Can I just acknowledge that Ahuwhenua was created by Sir Apirana Ngata and Lord Bledisloe back in 1933, so it is New Zealand’s oldest continuous horticultural and pastoral awards system. So I wanted to stand up and acknowledge these particular orchards that are in the final. But I also want to pay a tribute to Whiritoa Orchards, which is located in Te Teko, because they’re the third finalists.

It’s important that when we are talking about local issues—particularly as we’re trying to deal with the aftermath of Gabrielle—we still have some gems that come through. These two local gems are mine, which is why I want to draw attention to that and say that, despite some of our challenges in our electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, we’ve got these amazing operations that employ local people, that are on whenua Māori, and that operate in a very Māori kaupapa way, and they should be celebrated.

I also want to talk about the young growers who are also nominated for tomorrow’s award. I want to acknowledge Alix Te Kere, Erica Henare, and Grace Rehu. The reason why I want to acknowledge all of them is because Alix is Ngāti Kuhungunu, Ngāti Tu, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Maniapoto; Erica Henare is Ngāti Kuhungunu, Ngāti Maniapoto; and Grace Rehu is from Rangitāne. So these people whakapapa to my electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, which is why it makes it especially pleasing for me to stand and put a spotlight on the positivity, despite some of the challenges of the people throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, but I particularly draw our attention, and this House’s attention, to our ability to grow good things. I come from an area that grows great food and grows great people.

So it has been a delight to acknowledge Ngāi Tukairangi Trust, Whiritoa Orchards, and, of course, Wī Pere, as the shared 2023 Ahuwhenua horticultural finalists for this year, and our young Alix Te Kere, Erica Henare, and Grace Rehu. Despite our challenges, we have these gems amongst us, and it’s important that this House takes the time, like I have done, to acknowledge them. Tēnā koutou katoa.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to talk about the electorate of Rongotai, here in Wellington, and who can’t talk about it when the incumbent has a majority of 19,207 votes? But can I just divert for a minute and acknowledge those five vulnerable citizens who died in the blaze at Loafers Lodge on Tuesday, 16 March, and I know that on the 15th of this month at St Paul’s, at 5.30 p.m., there will be a memorial service there. Can I thank all of my colleagues for the mahi and for the compassion that you have put in for those people.

Today, I want to talk about the best part of the electorate. Wellington’s south-east? No, it’s Rēkohu, Wharekauri, the Chatham Islands, and I too want to start with an acknowledgment, to Mrs Raana Tuuta, who was the recipient of a Queen’s Service Medal in the recent King’s Honours List. I want to acknowledge her work of more than 60 years.

For those who land on the Chathams at the Inia Wiremu Tuuta Memorial Airport, you will see her smiling face, and—she won’t mind me saying this—at 85, she’s still working there. She’ll probably make you a cup of tea if the plane’s a bit late. But none the less, she’s wired to serve, and, certainly, she’s been on the Chatham Islands County Council, on that Department of Conservation conservation board, she’s taught kapa haka at Te One School there, but, most of all, I think she runs a farm still and looks after the golden oldies. So, if any of you get down there for lunch, the mutton’s in the oven, the blue cod and the crayfish are out, and it’ll be Raana Tuuta who is serving you. So you are truly deserving.

I digressed for a minute there, but I want to now talk about the four entities on the island, and they are the Chatham Islands Council, the Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust, Hokotehi Moriori Trust, and Ngāti Mutunga O Wharekauri Iwi Trust. They are the four entities who make up the Chatham Islands and provide that on-island leadership. It’s been demonstrated through an investment strategy—a mechanism produced and led by them to say, “These are the bread and butter things that we need for Chatham Islanders.”, and the first thing—and I want to thank all of those four stakeholders for their mahi—is the broadband. Many of you won’t know that, up until 18 months ago, you couldn’t make a cellphone call on that island. They didn’t have a broadband network—the basics. They couldn’t make calls from their farms out on the coast, out on the water, or just everyday life—the basic things that we take for granted. That’s been put in place for $11 million.

The key thing, though, is that the Chatham Islands are now in the jet age. Thanks to that runway extension put in there by the Ministry of Works all those years ago, and thanks to the enterprise trust for their leadership, there’ll be a jet plane about to land on that island. So that’s a significant thing, too.

But I say that the biggest thing is the renewable energy: $10 million to ensure that they can decarbonise the island. But, more than that, this is about making sure that their power bills, which are some of the highest in the world, are cut in half or slashed even further. I want to just read out something from one of the islanders. She said, “When power is so expensive per unit, those on fixed income, be it sickness, superannuation, or similar—something has to go. Whānau here are paying up to $800 for their power in winter. We have a wood-range fire with a wetback, a wood fire in the lounge, a gas range for cooking, no electric water, and still our power bill is roughly $400 to $500.”

These are some of the costs that are affecting our people—New Zealanders living 800 kilometres offshore—and those that tried to save power had damp homes, leading to deteriorating health. “Heating the stars” is their favourite saying, as housing repairs for many are needed. These are the things that are really making a difference for everyday New Zealanders.

Can I finish by acknowledging Owen Pickles, the retiring chief executive of the Chatham Islands Council, with 53 years of local government service and 21 years as the chief executive. He was sent there to sort the council out, close it down, or look at another option. What he did was he came up with a viable alternative through a Crown appropriation. We’re all paying for the council to operate, but it’s the right thing to do because they want to govern themselves, and so they should. All the best to you, Owen, and your wife, Lynette. Kia ora.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call in this local issues debate as the member of Parliament for the National Party based in Te Tai Hauāuru. Te Tai Hauāuru is the Western Māori seat, that has an extensive history, and I have tūpuna whose photographs are in the hallway for having been the first member of Parliament for Western Māori, Paetahi Takarangi Mete Kīngi. So I stand in this local issues debate in the context of being local, with w’akapapa to Te Tai Hauāuru, and also as issue, as uri, as a descendant of my forebears who have been members of Parliament in this House for Western Māori formerly, now Te Tai Hauāuru. So I stand to take a call in this local issues debate.

Te Tai Hauāuru is a Māori seat. It is the second-largest of the seven Māori seats, which encompasses nine to 10 general seat electorates. The geography of Te Tai Hauāuru, to give context in terms of the local issues—and the Rt Hon Adrian Rurawhe is the member of Parliament elected as the representative for Te Tai Hauāuru. So, in speaking to this House as a Māori member of the National Party, and as Māori standing in a Māori seat in the upcoming elections, we always reference and connect with w’akapapa, our genealogical, ancestral ties. I am uri, I am issue, of many of the tribes, and there are some 42 tribal entities within this vast electorate, to give context to the scale and the size.

I also whanaungatanga—I have relationships, I network, I have those connections which are important right throughout the electorate, which starts at the bottom end of Te Ika-a-Māui, the North Island, in Mana-Porirua. Then, it stretches up, weaves through the western coast; Te Tai Hauāuru, encompassing Whanganui, Taranaki, up to Southern Waikato. So it extends as far as Waikato to Putāruru, and Tīrau is the upper point and reach, and then it weaves its way back down through Tīrau, Putāruru, Tokoroa, Mangakino, the western reach of the Taupō lake, through to Waiōuru, Taumarunui, encompassing Te Kūiti—

Barbara Kuriger: Kia ora!

HARETE HIPANGO: —down through to Taihape—with my colleague Barbara Kuriger, MP for Taranaki - King Country—Marton, Rangitīkei, and again connecting Palmerston North, Manawatū, down through, swerving Paraparaumu, the Kāpiti coastline, and then rejoins in Mana-Porirua.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Great. If the member can come now to the local issue. Now that we’ve got the geographical picture, come now to the local issue. Thank you.

HARETE HIPANGO: That is a local issue, and it is about sharing that with members of the public listening in, because the expanse of our electorates in Māori seats is huge, as are the local issues. So my two colleagues who spoke in the House before—the Ahuwhenua awards. There are many of those—trusts, Māori entities—within that vast electorate of Te Tai Hauāuru who will be present there; w’akapapa relationships.

The local issues that are impacting on that vast geography and vast demography of our communities: our people are labouring under this Labour Government. Cost of living: our whānau are trying to feed each other. Cost of living: our whānau are struggling to pay the bills. Access to health services has deteriorated and worsened. Mental health: I was in the local hospital of Whanganui, supporting one of our locals in terms of being able to access those services. Hospital care also has worsened under this Government. W’akapapa and relationships are so important, and these are issues that are impacting on those 10 general seat electorates encompassed within the one Māori seat. We know that Māori struggle and that the challenges are greater. I heard my colleague talking about the cost of power bills. This is the reality. Our whānau are struggling.

The relationships are extensive, the issues are extensive, in terms of how it’s affecting our whānau to be able to put kai on the table, to feed and to be nourished. So, in addressing that, I say, importantly, that an advocate for our communities must be bold, must be brave, and must challenge this Government.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to stand up and talk about local issues; it’s been a while since I last spoke to this issue. At the time, the issue was around chip seal on roads, and that seemed to be one of the biggest issues in my area. But, unfortunately, when I’m going around the streets now, talking to people in the shops and in public meetings, the number one concern when I ask, “What would you like us to be speaking about to make sure that we’re actually representing what’s on your mind?” is crime. Crime is on the minds of the people in Upper Harbour, on the North Shore side of Auckland.

We’ve had lots of incidents at the moment where people are actually telling me they’re scared to walk the streets at night; they’re not sure if they’re going to be safe. I’m hearing from parents that are scared to send their kids to their after-school jobs in the supermarkets in concern about whether they’re going to come home having been assaulted, or whether they’re going to come home having been verbally assaulted to the point where they’re actually in tears, not wanting to go to work the next day. This is all in the beautiful area of North Shore. I’ve heard stories even in my backyard about cars getting stolen, tools getting stolen to the point where fathers are waking up at the littlest sound because they can’t get to sleep at night. They’re scared for their families, and their mental health is deteriorating. These are the stories I’m hearing in my local area.

Probably the biggest crime is around ram raids on the North Shore, and the fear this is causing for the staff and even for people visiting these areas. We’ve had Albany mall with a daytime ram raid, we’ve had Glenfield Mall with a daytime ram raid, and we’ve had ram raids in Takapuna just down the road from a local police station. People are saying, “Why is this happening? Why are we not safe in our streets on the North Shore of Auckland at the moment?” I’ve also heard stories from staff where they’re scared to actually confront the issues in a retail space. And these are young people and they shouldn’t have to be dealing with this, and they’re talking about working at the front end of a retail store. They may have someone that comes in and decides to shoplift or comes in and decides to verbally abuse them. When they do stand up to this kind of behaviour, one staff member told me that the person came back and sought revenge and actually followed one of the staff members into a bathroom and beat them up—actually sought revenge for a staff member just doing their job.

This is what’s happening on the North Shore in Auckland, and it’s actually really sad. I’d like to see us go back to the place where we just feel safe and feel like we’re all looking after one another.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Happy World Oceans Day, everybody. It’s important to think global but also act local, and that thought came to me when I was visiting up north. Like many urban-born Ngāpuhi, I like to go up north to remind my relatives what I look like. I think some of them can’t forget me fast enough, but I had the privilege of going up there and hanging out with one of my whanaunga, Reina Penney. She took me for a bit of a tiki tour around the Hokianga and Northland. If you’re looking for a good Green voice to represent you in this place, check out my whanaunga Reina—good heart for the environment, good heart for the community—and also my other whanaunga standing for Te Tai Tokerau, Hūhana Lyndon, my whanaunga there from Pehiāwiri Marae.

We went for a bit of a wander around and we actually stopped at the Kohukohu Pub—a very classic pub, a very nostalgic pub. It was like the hotel in “Hotel California”—you can check out any time you like, but if you don’t leave, you might miss the ferry to Rāwene! The locals there were so passionate about the area; they were so passionate about the harbour. I was chatting to one guy; he was rocking his Red Bands, and I’d like to have Red Bands myself, but I’m waiting for the green bands to come in so I can stay on point and stay on brand! But they were talking about all the sediment that has been going into the harbour. They were talking about the environmental impact and damage done through the years, through the decades—the human sewage that has been going into the harbour; really heart-breaking stuff.

We went and visited people and they continue to talk about this stuff. It reminded me that, actually, a few years back, I was in Waitangi with the locals that organised the hīkoi on Waitangi Day to protest, to push back, and to raise awareness about it—to raise awareness about all this tūtae and tiko going into the Hokianga Harbour. Going into the Hokianga Harbour—it’s disgraceful. It’s disgraceful because it tramples on tikanga Māori. It tramples on the history of that place, because there’s a really deep, deep, meaningful history in the Hokianga. It is the place where Nukutawhiti came with the Ngātokimatawhaorua. It’s the place where Ruānui came with the Māmari waka. It’s the place where the Hokianga got its name—Hokianga Whakapau Karakia. We’re exhausted with karakia because of the situation that was happening there—so very, very deep, deep history there.

Also, it is one of the places where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, where people gathered together to sign that founding document of our country. So there’s a rich history there; there’s a rich culture there. Then, of course, there’s the people themselves—the people that love that place, that love that area, that have been pushing for, I understand, more than 40 years to stop the practice of putting human sewage or putting sewage into the wai. Places like the Hokianga are like pātaka kai. They are like food baskets for the area, and to have human sewage in there is just not acceptable. So I would encourage all the councils—the Far North District Council, the Northland Regional Council body—to sort it out and to sort it out now. People have been waiting for long enough to get this situation sorted out.

Having said that, I do think that there is a role here for central government—there is a role here for central government. We can’t just leave it for the affordable water services stuff to roll out and to maybe land and happen. There’s something that must be done now. There must be something to do within that transitional phase. You can’t just kick the can down to the affordable water services processes when we don’t know how the dice are going to end up in October—right? So, between now and then, it is important that the Government stump up some support to help the transition, because they’re doing other stuff in other places around Northland and looking at other strategies around finding land-based solutions but also other ways of dealing with waste water within the short term as well, while you get to that place.

So I would like, once again, to acknowledge all of the work of the people of the community up in Hokianga, and also right across the north there as well, people that have been holding e mauri o te wai, i te mea ko tērā te āhua o tātou. Kia pai te mauri o te wai, e pai ana te mauri o te moana, e ora ana te mauri o te tangata. Nō reira Hokianga Whakapau Karakia, anei ngā Kākāriki e mihi ana ki a koutou katoa. Tēnā tātou e te Whare.

[people that have been holding te mauri o te wai, because that is how we are. When the life force of the water is good, the life force of the ocean is good, and the life force of humanity is healthy. So Hokianga Whakapau Karakia, here are the Greens greeting all of you. Greetings to all of us in the House.]

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to take a call on this special debate on local matters. Last night, I was given the opportunity to make a contribution to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for Race Meetings) Amendment Bill, and I do want to acknowledge the member Ian McKelvie. But this is about local matters, and I wanted to report to the House with regards to alcohol in our local community. It’s really just to highlight where we’ve come.

I’m going to roll back a bit: in 2012, the then National Government passed the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012. Basically, what that meant was that businesses could come into our local area and consumers were able to come into their shops and purchase alcohol and take it off the licensed premises. Well, back in 2013, a shop called—oh, it escapes me now. But anyway, they set up shop across from one of our local high schools, Southern Cross Campus—straight across from the school gate. Now, the issue of alcohol in our area of Māngere at that time in 2013—there were just far too many issues with regards to alcohol. One of the issues for our community was that our young people, who were actually probably 14, 15, 16 at the time, actually looked about 21, 22, 23. So they were able to purchase under age, but we couldn’t prove it at the time.

Long story short, the new Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 enabled businesses to do that, so there was nothing illegal about that activity. I just wanted to highlight that, in the community, we were able to collaborate; we were able to work as a partnership. And, as a resilient community, individuals and community leaders came together and they worked with the then local council board people and mobilised, and, basically, they got involved when there were new licences and, because of the legislation, were able to object to those new licences.

I wanted to highlight that there is a good news story, and it is about participation as a community. It is about education that there is a place for alcohol, but it’s just that if there are far too many licences and it is far too accessible for our young people, then sometimes our young people don’t have the maturity to make good decisions. So I wanted to report that, as a result of the community leaders, as a result of parents who wanted to mobilise and object, the process that was under the district licensing Act enabled the community to be empowered, to come together, and be able to participate to give their lived-experience voices for why it is not a good thing to have an alcohol shop across from a school gate.

So what I wanted to bring to the House was that I have really been involved in the process, like our member Aupito William Sio. We have appreciated the Government’s assistance by way of the police, by way of Te Whatu Ora, by way of also Minister of Justice Kiri Allan, who has come to our community, who has listened to the issues, and who has helped the community to understand the legislation.

I just want to end off by acknowledging the individuals in our community who have led the charge in terms of educating the community, when they’re not happy with an off-licence in our community, about what they can do as a community. I want to acknowledge the Communities Against Alcohol Harm. I want to acknowledge papa Trevor, nana Glenn—who actually comes to the hearings in her walking frame, but she is a very vibrant and educated nana who has helped the community object to the too many liquor licences. But understanding the legislation and collecting better evidence has enabled the community to come together in Māngere and be able to put their case forward as to why they would object to those off-licences. So, just as I end off, I wanted to thank all the locals that are involved in this process and thank them and acknowledge them. Thank you.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very pleased to talk about the local issues in the great and proud seat of Tāmaki. It’s an amazing community, wonderful suburbs, incredibly vibrant—it doesn’t matter if it’s Glenn Innes to Ōrākei, Glendowie to Mission Bay and everything in between—a wonderful community. One of the things I find most striking about the good people of Tāmaki is that I never go to sleep wondering what they think! They are always very clear and explicit. So I just want to take the short time I have here today to raise what are several of the local issues, if you will, and then a few of the wider community issues, if I might.

First and foremost on people’s minds of late is, unfortunately, crime, but there’s a negative and a positive story to this. The negative is the likes of our shops on Melanesia Road. Three of them were hit recently—a bakery, a cafe, and a fish and chip shop; the owners have been there 37 years—and this is absolutely terrible. A jewellers store has been hit recently as well, and those are only four examples of over 45—45—that I know of that I proudly—not proudly; sadly—have to go and visit.

Why I wanted to share this is not simply because crime is a prevalent and major issue to the people of Tāmaki but because the local community is stepping up. Now, we’d much prefer that the Government did, but the local community is stepping up with the formation of our Eastern Bays community patrol, which I had the pleasure of being part of—I want to stress that—and helping to set up. I want to just acknowledge the likes of Bayleys, La Vista, Siri Thai, Kawa Dojo, and most recently the Pigeon—locals will know what I’m referring to; the famous Pigeon Racing Club there in St Heliers—who all have been donating money to assist the community patrol to operate. That’s been really, really important.

Around crime has also been the issue of all these dirt bikes. I actually want to say thank you to the police who did the operation over the weekend. Granted, it was out Ōtara way, but those who live in and enjoy the likes of Tamaki Drive know the scourge that these motorcycles are. I’d just like to say in this local issues debate that I’d like to see further and more police operations, including in my electorate.

Locals, too, are very pleased with National’s recent changes around housing intensification. It’s been one of those pieces of policy which I, obviously as a party member, have mentioned in the community. The community in turn has been very clear to me that having three-storey houses right up to the boundary was not something that they wanted. We in Tāmaki already see a lot of intensification which is under the Unitary Plan, and that’s having an impact itself without going further. So locals are very pleased with that change, and I’m pleased to have played my part there.

The other aspects are around roading. If you’re a local and you’re, like me, going down Elstree Avenue or Apirana Avenue or, God forbid, you’re trying to go through the new roading change in Mission Bay, it’s a nightmare. So this is a plea to Auckland Transport and others to get their act in order. We as locals are tired of the endless cones, the endless disruptions that just go and on and on. We want to see that change.

In my last minute, I just want to turn to a couple of our local communities, just to acknowledge them. I’ll have to move quickly because we only have a minute and a half left. I was very pleased to work with our local New Zealand Chinese community. I joined them on Sunday night to acknowledge the massacre in Tiananmen Square. These are very strong, proud people who came out to speak for freedom and democracy, and I just want to thank them. Our local Iranian community in Tāmaki held some of their biggest protests in Mission Bay to continue the solidarity—I know that goes across the House; many MPs are involved—and to continue to call out what is happening there. I want to also acknowledge our Afghan community. I’ve had a lot to do with them, particularly during the evacuation out of Kabul, for various reasons. There are quite a number of them all through the electorate, but quite a wonderful grouping in Glen Innes, and I just want to acknowledge them and say they are not forgotten, particularly around their need for visas.

That segues me on to both the Ukrainian and Uyghur communities. I had the pleasure, actually, over the weekend to meet Abduweli. He is one of the foremost linguists in the Uyghur language and a great activist who is here in New Zealand. It was a real pleasure to meet him. For both our Ukrainian and Uyghur communities, for me, opening up the visa categories to allow those groups and families in is a no-brainer, in the same way it should be, actually, for Hong Kong people, many of whom continue to reach out to me with my work with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. These are no-brainers to me and something that New Zealand should do, and I can certainly say, as the MP for Tāmaki, we would welcome more people. But I say to those communities that not only do I represent the people of Tāmaki but I’m pleased to represent as best I can their voices as well.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour): Mr Speaker, thank you. I just want to address an issue that has been brought to my attention by my community in the Waimakariri electorate, and that is youth vaping. School principals, concerned parents, and even children from local schools have contacted me to express their concerns around the growing problem around vaping, particularly with young people, and rightly so. There was an outcry within my community of Woodend when a specialist vape retailer just opened across from the school. And to make matters worse—I took the kids out during recess on their bikes; we went down Petries Road, across Main North Road, State Highway 1, to the local park there—littered throughout the bark were disposable vapes. There was a whole lot of kids playing there—you know, three-year-olds—and there was the risk there that young toddlers would pick up the disposable vapes, try and emulate what they had seen from their siblings, or maybe their parents, and they could use it, particularly because there’s no safety mechanism on there. That kind of really resonated with me at the time.

Let me be clear: this is not about preventing people that smoke to come off—you know, to take up vaping as a mechanism to quit. It’s all about preventing young people from taking up the habit from scratch and becoming addicted lifelong to vapes. Of concern, in 2021, 26 percent of students from years 9 to 13 had tried vaping, and then in 2022, 18.2 percent of year 10 were actually vaping on a regular basis. I mean, even beyond these stats, you just ask any school principal out there, not just in my community but probably any community, and they will tell you that it’s actually becoming a huge issue.

The rise in specialist vape retailers in our community is a driving trend. We’re seeing more vape stores open, and more dairies and gas stations are also selling vapes. Just in 2022 alone, there was a 40 percent increase in the number of speciality vape stores. It’s a huge issue because it may be that it’s harmless in comparison to smoking, but they are highly addictive and there’s actually more nicotine in a vape than there is in a cigarette. Myself, I gave up smoking back when I was a young soldier in 2005—

Simon O’Connor: Can’t be that long ago.

DAN ROSEWARNE: It can’t be that long ago. But, you know, that was some time ago. Even now, sometimes I’ll wake up feeling gutted with myself because I started smoking. I’d actually just dreamt about having a cigarette, and it just shows how addictive nicotine can be—and that was a cigarette. Some vape products actually have twice the amount of nicotine in them. So that can have a huge impact on actually pulling out of that addictive habit.

Vapes can also have a huge impact on cardiovascular health. It also means that young people will get into it. There was a bit of a trend there where people say, “Hey, it’s not as bad as smoking.” But we actually don’t know about the long-term health implications that vapes have, and we’ve heard things about popcorn lung, and particularly with flavours where we actually don’t know what chemicals are inside them.

I have children around about that age where some of their friends are starting to vape. I was actually very impressed with Woodend School in particular, who decided to run a petition and get out there in the community and raise concerns with the local MPs. Just quickly, what I’ll bring up is this map here, and that there is Kaiapoi central, and in Waimakariri there are currently nine vape retailers, of which eight have opened up in the last two years. You’ll see that the location is near schools, and the red area on this map has a deprivation index level of 10.

It seems like there’s an overall strategy among the companies behind these vape retailers: they’re actually switching lanes from tobacco products and opening up in vulnerable areas. This is something of particular concern in Waimakariri. I’m particularly proud of the announcement that Labour and the Government have released about those boundaries around schools, and I’m really looking forward to hearing back from the community with their thoughts on the new policy and continuing this push to prevent it in our communities. Thank you.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Despite what anyone says, Nelson is the sunniest place in New Zealand. It’s got the best beaches, skiing is an hour away, and there are rivers to kayak in. We’ve got apples, kiwifruit, but, most importantly, we’ve got hops that grow abundantly and help this country’s economy tick along.

Those industries have done it tough over the last five years. Like small businesses, they’ve had to deal with unprecedented increased costs and have found employing workers more and more difficult. It’s sad to see so many retail and hospitality businesses close despite huge efforts from their owners. They need to know that we tried to provide some sanity, and we’re as frustrated as them. We also have a council that increased rates on some commercial businesses up to 52 percent in the middle of a pandemic—just no idea. But Nelson business owners are tough, and I’m sure the vibrant city I grew up in will return.

Like all of New Zealand, crime is rising in Nelson. Police do a fantastic job keeping it under control in difficult and increasingly difficult circumstances, but there is an ever-growing underbelly that threatens to disrupt the idyllic and traditionally safe lifestyle of Nelsonians. In April 2017, there were 56 gang members in the Tasman region. Police knew who they were and generally what they got up to. Now, there are 196. That’s a 250 percent increase in gang members in the Tasman District in the last six years, while police numbers have increased 12 percent. At the last count, there were eight differing gangs in Nelson, and we’re seeing them more and more, riding the streets like they own the place. Why? Because they can.

I was a general duties constable when community stations started to be shut down, when police hierarchy consulted with front-line officers who told them it could only end badly. The police’s definition of consultation is “to fairly inform”, which is the same definition that the current Government uses. I worked out of Stoke community station, a suburb five kilometres out of Nelson. We knew the bad guys, whatever their age, their tags on walls, the school they went to, the cars they drove, and who made up their family. Any new crime wave, burglaries, or cars stolen, the first thing we would ask is “Who is new in town?” All offences were dealt with; no matter how small, there were consequences for that offending. Offenders were held accountable. Police numbers are important, but police knowledge is more important, and experienced members are not appreciated enough—and the public felt safe.

I’d like to talk about Nelson’s fantastic schools or the great, mighty Tasman Mako. But I’ll just end with: Nelson is the best little city in New Zealand, and we need to keep it that way by voting ACT on 14 October.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I just want to remind the previous speaker, Chris Baillie, that New Plymouth is actually the sunniest city in New Zealand—I hate to bring it up, but it is—for the second year in a row. Nelson, I think, hasn’t been for a long time.

We’re talking local issues this afternoon, and bringing it into my electorate of New Plymouth, I often sort of think more about the local possibilities and the issues that arise but also the possibilities that come with that. So I want to talk this afternoon around branching out to a low-carbon economy.

In our rural sector in Taranaki, it’s about looking at ways and means to do things differently. Taranaki is an awesome place to live, to work, to play, and to create. It’s a place where our economy and our businesses thrive and grow, and as we have to work and shift to a low-carbon economy and shift to a low-emissions future, we need to be at the ready and at the forefront. That is the issue, but that is the possibility that we have for our region.

Now, as part of the Taranaki 2050 Roadmap, we were looking at how we co-design with our local people for our local region. There were some key things that came out of that for us to explore, and I’m grateful that as a Government we’ve taken note of that and we’re implementing them. I’ll shortly mention the Hon Damien O’Connor and the work he’s done for our region, and continues to do, but those key themes were things such as a strong and sustainable environment. They were around education options that move and flow with our changing world. They were about attractive jobs, around the lifestyle that we love, in the sunniest place in New Zealand, and also about leading the way in sustainable low-emissions energy, and a region that looks out for each other and cares for its people—those were things that we as a community said were important as we move forward. We have the issue of decarbonisation, we have the issue of looking at how we diversify our agricultural sector, and we are on the game and moving forward with our Taranaki 2050 Roadmap.

Now, Branching Out has been a big part of that, and I was really grateful back in 2020 for the Hon Damien O’Connor, the Minister of Agriculture, to put some money into our region and to look at what Branching Out could do—how do we look at our food and fibre sector and its future, and how do we diversify it? Currently, we have such fertile and wonderful land, but so often it’s only in just one thing, and that’s our dairy industry, so we looked at ways and at the opportunities, and what we could do to diversify that. It’s saying yes to our agriculture, yes to our farmers, but also yes to how we can look at different ways of using the lands that they have. We engaged catchment communities, funding more than 200 of them around Aotearoa, but also in our own region, ensuring that we had support from catchment communities, and where they could share ideas, they can innovate, they can improve their waterways, and they could continue to build their communities.

The aim of the Branching Out project—and we’ve now honed it down; we were grateful at the last Fieldays, last November, to have the Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, again put another $2.17 million of funding into Branching Out, looking at what the challenges and issues are, to say, “Look, how can we find possible opportunities to move forward?” So we’re focusing on hemp fibre, on medical ingredients, on indigenous ingredients, on hops, on gin botanicals, and on high-value fruit crops.

It’s exciting when I get out and about and I talk to farmers and I talk to industry and I talk to those who are developing new ways of utilising their land, new ways of developing their businesses—whether it be around trees, whether it be about using sheep for dairy, whether it be about developing avocado or kiwifruit on dairy farms, and whether it be about grains and legumes and vegetables or hemp fibres—we’ve got our wonderful industries like Shining Peak Brewing, like Juno Gin, who are all part of this plan to take an issue, which is decarbonising, take an issue which is a challenge for us, but then to find a possibility and a way forward.

We have fair-trade agreements in place. As a Government, we have four new agreements in the last five years, and three upgrades. We need to be competitive. We need to be competitive on the international market, and they are demanding green and sustainable products, and green and sustainable farming practices.

That’s why I am encouraged and grateful to be the MP for New Plymouth who has seen an issue and a challenge and is now embracing the possibilities of the future. We are branching out to a low-carbon economy, and I am excited.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): E mihi ana ki a Kīngi Tiare, ki a Kīngi Tūheitia hoki. [I greet King Charles and King Tūheitia.]

Hamilton West is best. We’re moving off Surf Highway 45 and back to State Highway 1. The people of suburbs like Frankton, Saint Andrews, Temple View, and The Lake are proud Kiwis and Hamiltonians. This weekend, our country’s finest Super Rugby team, the Chiefs, host the Reds at FMG Stadium Waikato for the quarter-final. Anyone in this Chamber, including folks from Taranaki, are welcome to come to Kirikiriroa to support our tourism sector, DMac, Clayton McMillan, and that fantastic team.

Whānau, we’ve got a lot of big challenges in Hamilton West. Why don’t I start with Waikato Base hospital? Right now, the holistic health and wellbeing of the whānau in Hamilton West communities is under extreme pressure. Waikato Base hospital is in Hamilton West—it’s under severe pressure. Wait times at the Waikato Base hospital: way up; A & E wait times have dramatically ballooned over the past couple of years. The Base hospital has been left off Labour’s emergency department hotspot and winter preparedness plan despite ongoing reports of serious staff shortages: nurses shooting through to Brisbane and the Gold Coast; ambulance ramping and ambulance diversions to sibling electorates like Tauranga. Our hospital and our health need help. Our pharmacies aren’t even part of the minor winter ailments plan—outrageous. Every major health decision that’s been made at the moment is making it harder for the Waikato Base hospital to do the job it needs to do. We need more surgical precision and timing for Hamilton West, and less decisions based on us playing the Operation board game.

Crime: Hamilton West is known as the ram raid capital of New Zealand. Ram raids, aggravated violence, and crime—both in homes and businesses—are at a rate higher than nearly everywhere else in Aotearoa. Children feel unsafe, parents feel unsafe, communities feel unsafe, seniors and superannuitants feel unsafe, and businesses feel unsafe. Like Puneet Singh down in Frankton, the Irvine Street dairy. Just before Christmas last year, his dairy worker—fog cannon aside; there was a fog cannon in there—had his hand chopped off by a machete. Absolutely outrageous. A week later, his wife had a miscarriage. Kei te aroha ki a rātou. [Condolences to them.] We need real action and real change to re-instil safety in all our neighbourhoods in Hamilton West, and not just Chamber talk. In Waikato, gang numbers have far outstripped police numbers.

The cost of living, again, in Hamilton West: phenomenal rise in mortgage payments for the average mortgage holder—$380 per week. Financial hardship has been normalised in Hamilton West. Some young people—I caught up with them recently down on Primrose Street in Dinsdale; two young ladies—paying $500 a week between them for a two-bedroom unit; struggling to live but keen to work, play, pray in Hamilton West. They wanted to stay in Hamilton—as many reasonable people like to do—but, with costs and rent going up, Australia’s starting look really appealing. The cost of living is actually made even harder by Countdown Nawton shutting down in August. Countdown is shutting down a store in Hamilton West, making it harder for people to get there to buy their food, to buy vegetables, to buy their meat, to actually live their lives. Now they have to drive all the way over to Dinsdale or into Te Rapa or into town to get their basic needs.

We’ve got some outstanding schools in Hamilton West: Nga Taiatea, Melville High School, Te Kōpuku High, and also Fraser High School—many primary schools. These schools have challenges, like Melville High School—it’s still in prefabs from the 1960s, and we’re waiting for the Government to come and say, “Yes, we are going to replace those prefabs as you join up to make a composite school with Melville Intermediate.” It’s little wonder, for me, while we’ve seen a system that’s spent $1 billion extra a year and hired 1,400 extra public servants, there is no change to the educational output and outcome in Hamilton West. In fact, putting Hamilton Girls’ High School aside, the university entrance achievement rate for all the secondary schools in Hamilton West is between 15 and 23 percent: 15 and 23 percent of students in Hamilton West—Hamilton Girls’ aside—get university entrance. That is outrageous.

Emergency housing: when you come to the game this weekend, you’ll see everything that you need to see down on Ulster Street. Again, the highest amount of emergency housing—emergency motels—across the country is in Hamilton West. I met a young lady called Everest the other day. She’d been living at eight motels with her four kids over two years. She’d finally made it to transitional housing—fantastic. Eight motels in two years—that’s the life that people in Hamilton West lead. It’s a motel battleground.

Hamilton West has hope, but it’s not in the current administration. That hope has faded as people have faced the cost of living crisis, the law and order issues, and a crumbling education and health system. But we’ve still got the rugby. All hail the Chiefs and Chiefs Manawa. Kia ora.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): We have two more calls left, and that’s divided in two between the National Party and the Labour Party.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Thank you. I want to speak on a matter that’s very dear to my heart, and that is the disastrous impact of centralisation and the creation of the mega-merger of the polytechnics and Industry Training Organisations, Te Pūkenga, on the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) in my electorate, Invercargill. I want to talk about four things that are impacting on them, particularly the zero-fees scheme which was put in place in 2001 and is in jeopardy through Te Pūkenga, the impact on international students, on accommodation, and also on the community of SIT.

So, firstly, the zero-fees scheme was brought in in 2001. It is under jeopardy because of Te Pūkenga’s decision making around this—so, not Southland, not Invercargill, not SIT making this decision but rather Te Pūkenga making a decision. In 2000, $7.25 million of community funding was put into SIT to enable the zero-fees scheme; that came from philanthropic entities, from the local authorities, and from businesses and families in Invercargill to enable the zero-fees scheme to be put in place. It took the size of SIT from just around 1,400 fulltime-equivalent students up to over 4,000 fulltime-equivalent domestic students. The impact on Invercargill, the businesses in Invercargill, and the community of Invercargill was significant, and the financial impact of that was also significant in terms of the millions of dollars that were then circulating in the Southland community.

The second point is the impact of Te Pūkenga on international students, and that has been a diminishing of the number of international students that SIT is able to attract, because Te Pūkenga is making decisions about what fees will have to be charged so that they are uniform right across the country. So SIT cannot take advantage of a lower cost of living in Southland, and SIT cannot promote itself with any cheaper fees; it must have the same fees as throughout the country. That is meaning reduced numbers of international students, and that is impacting on our domestic students, who are not getting exposed to students from across the world and preparing them much better for a global economy when they graduate. It’s also hurting our community in terms of those students were out working in our healthcare facilities: they were out working in our retail outlets, and so our whole community is suffering from that.

We at SIT were about to build 33 apartments just when the change or the mega-merger occurred. SIT had the funding, the consents, the land, the plans, the specifications, all the money there to spend $23 million on building these apartments, and that was stopped by Te Pūkenga. So they added to the shortage of rental accommodation in Southland.

Our community has suffered: our Stags, our Steel, our Sharks were all sponsored by SIT; Te Pūkenga has not allowed that sponsorship to continue, again hurting our community. Te Pūkenga has damaged our community. It is a centralisation that does not help Southland.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call this afternoon about one of the biggest and most important projects in Nelson, and that is the new Nelson Hospital.

Growing up in provincial New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s, I spent a lot of time at provincial hospitals. Thankfully, it wasn’t because I was sick; it was because my father, Jonathan, held senior management roles at New Zealand hospitals throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. He finished his career in New Zealand as the chief executive of the Manawatu-Wanganui Area Health Board before moving to the UK to take up senior roles in Birmingham. As a young girl, I would spend time visiting has offices, attending marae for consultation with iwi about Māori health initiatives, and going to what I thought at the time were very boring openings of new buildings. In fact, I look back with great pride now on a photograph of myself aged eight, alongside my father and Sir Paul and Lady Beverley Reeves, at the opening of a new building at Wanganui Hospital.

My family aren’t known for our medical prowess. My father wasn’t a doctor; he has accounting qualifications. My mother is a doctor, but definitely not the kind you would want to call on in a health scare—sorry, Mum. What my family is known for is getting things done. We take great pride in making projects, stories, and events happen. My formative years as that young girl, observing people like my dad and then health Minister Helen Clark getting things done for the people of New Zealand, definitely stirred in me a desire to get things done for our community.

As the MP for Nelson, the biggest project I have on my list of things to do is the rebuild of Nelson Hospital. It’s the biggest capital project in a generation, and we’ve been waiting decades for it. We are approaching one of the biggest milestones for this project: the final stage in the project’s approval process. The programme business case is going through the Te Whatu Ora board for approval, and then to Cabinet within the next two months.

Nelson is at the top of the list, across New Zealand, for a new hospital, and I want to acknowledge one of our former health Ministers, David Clark, for the groundwork he laid to make this project happen. David Clark commissioned a study of all hospitals across New Zealand, and it was found that Nelson Hospital was in the worst condition of all of them. That has helped us make the case for this important funding. The George Manson building—most of it will come down. The Percy Brunette building will be refurbished. I’m really proud that, prior to the Budget, James Shaw announced that all coal burners at New Zealand hospitals will be replaced by 2025. I know that Nelson Hospital is working very steadily towards a new energy centre in 2024 as part of our rebuild.

I spoke to a former member of the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board who said to me how important it was that we don’t cut corners on this project—that, in previous years, funding was given but it was not enough for what was needed to ensure that Nelson had the best facility possible. I’m really proud, as the local MP, to have secured the first funding for this important project in Budget 2022 after decades of waiting for it. Very shortly, we will have the full story in place. I hope my dad will be proud of me when we get to turn that first sod for our amazing new hospital. But, most importantly, I know that Nelsonians will benefit from having the best facility possible and will celebrate when the first baby is born in our new hospital, when the first surgery is performed, and when the first patient walks through the new emergency department.

Labour is the party that builds hospitals, and I’m proud to be the local MP that has secured the first round of funding for the most important project that our community will see in a generation.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The time for this debate has expired.

Standing Orders

Sessional

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Deputy Leader of the House) on behalf of the Leader of the House: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the following rules be adopted, with effect from 12 June 2023:

1 Sittings of the House

(1) The House sits as follows:

Tuesday and Wednesday: 2 pm to 6 pm and 7.30 pm to 10 pm

Thursday: 2 pm to 6 pm.

(2) On a Tuesday and a Wednesday, the sitting is suspended at 6 pm until 7.30 pm.

(3) Standing Order 46 is suspended.

2 Effect of extended sitting hours and urgency

(1) Whenever a sitting on a Thursday has been extended under Standing Order 56, the sitting is suspended from 6 pm to 7.30 pm, is suspended at 10 pm, and resumes at 9 am the following day.

(2) Whenever urgency has been accorded, and the Government has advised the Business Committee of the intention to move on a Thursday to accord urgency to business, the sitting on that Thursday is suspended between 6 pm and 7.30 pm and between 10 pm and 9 am.

(3) Standing Orders 56(4)(b) and 58(2)(b) are suspended.

3 Casting of party votes and proxy votes on Thursdays

(1) On a Thursday, from 5 pm until that sitting adjourns,—

(a) there is no limit on proxy votes that may be cast by a party,

(b) a party that consists of five or fewer members, if not present in the Chamber, may have votes cast on its behalf by the leader or whip of another party, and

(c) an Independent member, if not present in the Chamber, may have their vote cast on their behalf by the leader or whip of a party.

(2) Standing Orders 144(5) and (6) and 146 are read accordingly.

(3) This rule does not apply to a sitting that has been extended under Standing Order 56 or in respect of which urgency has been accorded.

4 Business Committee determinations

Rules 1 to 3 do not affect the Business Committee’s powers to determine hours or arrangements for sittings and to adjust or waive the limit on proxy votes.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

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

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 31 May.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. [What is the greatest thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.]

There have been some tragic accidents and incidents at workplaces all around the country, particularly on farms, forests, near railways, and driving on roads. Getting to mahi and home safely is the priority for all today and every day.

Kei te mihi ki te whānau o Tim van de Molen me tana tuahine. Tāiki e. [I acknowledge the family of Tim van de Molen and his sister. It is done.]

National opposes this bill. As a former health and safety manager of Tainui Group Holdings in—you know it—Hamilton West, I appreciate the chance to listen to and speak to this matter: the third reading of the amendment bill. Thank you to the Hon Michael Wood for his diligence here.

Coming into health and safety as a young legal zealot, convinced about me being right all the time, I was confronted with the iwi, corporate, and business reality, which focuses often on the potentially oxymoronic objectives of manaakitanga and profit. However, through the guidance of leading sentinels of that great tribe of Waikato Tainui—people like the Hon Koro Wētere, Kingi Porima, and Pokaia Nepia, coupled with the steely determination of the Tainui Group Holdings, officialdom like John Spencer, Tania Simpson, and Mike Pohio—I was able to see through the sometimes foggy lens of health and safety to practical and workable solutions to achieve those noble objectives of manaakitanga and profitable business. Hazard and risk identification: the Excel spreadsheet that defined my Microsoft Excel career; health and safety engagement with representatives, with committees, with others who are interested in this subject; subcontractor management—that little black hole that many property developers fall into.

I recall one exciting example when we were building The Base retail centre out at Te Rapa in Hamilton West, and a subcontractor decided that he was going to use an acetylene torch up next to an air conditioning unit. So at the first week of opening The Base, we had to shut it down for a few hours because one person decided, as a subcontractor, he could do that.

Another great example was a place where many of us have been to, actually. It’s called the Auckland Airport, and out at the Auckland Airport, Tainui Group Holdings built a beautiful hotel called the Novotel Auckland Airport. There’s another one coming called the Pullman Te Arikinui, and when we built that hotel, one of the subbies had a great idea to go cruising on his bulldozer and digger and hit the main gas main of the Auckland Airport and shut it down for four hours. That’s the type of experience and excitement I had to contend with as a health and safety manager of Tainui Group Holdings. It wasn’t like that jet fuel line there, Mr Cameron.

Health and safety training and education are a fundamental part of health and safety, and emergency procedures, which became as important to me as my fitness regime with Johnny Gillet of CrossFit Waikato: a few press-ups. The proposed legislation introduces more regulatory fog, reminding me of early morning runs alongside the Waikato River—haven’t done those for a while—dense fog, wet fog, Hayes Paddock fog, and St Andrews Golf Club fog; dangerous hazards for risks and under-stretched and slow runners like me, and perhaps others who sit here in the backbench of the National Party.

This proposed legislation does not eliminate, isolate, or minimise hazards and risks prevalent in small businesses. The bill is more about Kāwanatanga than manaakitanga. Not only that, it actually downplays one of the six foundations of the Treaty principles, that being pūkengatanga or expertise—the expertise that actually exists in many small and medium enterprises (SME) to deal with health and safety issues, without Big Brother watching every day and telling people what to do.

The bill seems more about ticking an election manifesto—oh, that’s right; that’s what it is. “What is right for small and medium enterprises? Health and safety reps—tick. Whakapapa profiling in ACC legislation—tick. More tax for whānau trusts—tick. Cat wash solutions for showers—tick. But potholes—don’t worry about them.” Probably the most dangerous health and safety risk presented to most businesses in this country today—nothing being done. “Let’s not fix the number one health and safety issue, but instead load more compliance on to businesses”, and that’s where we’re at right now. “Don’t worry about the pūkengatanga or the expertise around health and safety that already exists there. Let’s make sure that every business, no matter how many employees they have, have the chance to spend more money on health safety.” Folks—all of us—there are only two more ticks we need this year.

The election of one or more representatives on request by a worker replaces the existing provision whereby a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) is not obliged to elect representatives if there are more than 20, and not deemed a high-risk industry. Another provision that’s proposed requires the establishment of a health and safety committee on request by five workers or a health and safety representative. This is unnecessary. Moumou wā, moumou kōrero, moumou pire ki te pō. [Waste of time, waste of discussion, waste of a bill to the darkness.]

National set the limit at 20 employees because adding more compliance—and especially for the 105,000 small and medium enterprises that this is going to influence who fall under the rubric of this legislation—makes it harder for human resource to ideate, to innovate, to invent things, and market and sell them.

There is minimal evidence that I have seen that shows how low-risk SMEs are not already dealing with health and safety issues in a prudent and reasonable manner. This bill does not add de minimis costs. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is saying that it is about $1,500 an employee on an average wage to train up, days away from work, and productivity loss therein. Business New Zealand and the Employers and Manufacturers Association have both submitted against the proposed legislation so far, and the regulatory impact statement demonstrates that consultation with the SME sector prior to developing the bill was very, very marginal.

SMEs generally are not unreasonable PCBUs. They know that a productive and incentivised workforce is critical for their own profitability, manaakitanga, and future. Businesses like Tainui Group Holdings crack into the mahi and organise their people to be trained around health and safety for the good of the business, not to fulfil some election manifesto check box.

So, alas, we vigilantly and diligently oppose this bill in being, yet again, an inefficient use of limited parliamentary resource and my time, on a closing Thursday afternoon. I concur with my party colleagues who have spoken about this bill already, with reference to the well-known song by North Shore singer Kings, “Don’t Worry ‘Bout It”:

All that really mattered was the company I got

And everything else was just a hand inside the clock

And now getting insta-famous for a Like is not a shock

Snapchat strangers for a boost is all you got

It’s funny when the times changed

But for some of us it never changed

I’ve got great company today—I had a couple of birthday friends last night—but this bill adds more regulatory fog. My limited experience in health and safety, as a health and safety manager, suggests that we empower businesses, give them the respect they deserve, and facilitate them to do business on reasonable terms, and not forced by legislation to meet unwise manifesto aspirations. Mimicry is the best form of flattery. Get things done. Kia ora.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): I’m very humbled to rise and take the final call on the third reading of the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill. I proudly stand here and honour the fact that we are delivering on manifesto commitments. We are making workplaces safer for our workers. We are not apologising for that; we are proud of that.

We’ve heard a lot—it’s really funny, I kind of anticipated what the debate was going to be about—that this bill is unnecessary, that we have these small businesses that have really strong, healthy cultures where health and safety can be managed and looked after and attended to. Well, great news: it isn’t compulsory. In those firms where workers are already a part of a healthy health and safety environment, they will not feel the need to require this of their employer. So rest assured.

It is interesting that the limit has been set at 20 and that, below 20: nothing to see here, folks. But actually, you are 57 percent more likely to suffer an injury if you’re in a small firm of around 20, and you’re 23 percent more likely to suffer a serious injury. So to give half a million workers access to the right to organise around health and safety is critical.

It does improve productivity; when you invest—I keep hearing the word “cost”, and it really makes me upset—we’re talking about investing in workers. When we invest in them, they participate in health and safety, they take responsibility for the things that they do, they’re engaged, they own the health and safety environment, and you are more likely to have retention of well-trained staff that are healthy, and you are less likely to have days off work. Our whole economy is less likely to have people who cannot work. They are less likely to have people who are going to be under-employed. There will be lives saved. I’m really, really proud to say that we are standing here today delivering another manifesto promise to our workers in New Zealand.

I just need to say: we thank the officials and we thank everyone on the committee and everyone who has contributed—submitters, workers, and businesses alike. But I just need to take a moment to recognise the significant leadership and perseverance of our fabulous Minister, the Hon Michael Wood, who has led so much change for workers, for our economy through this Government. I want to acknowledge that in the House today. It is his leadership that has seen this come to this moment. Thus, I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 39

New Zealand National 29; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Amended Answers to Oral Questions

Question No. 11 to Minister

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): I seek leave to correct an answer to oral question No. 11 today.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave for that purpose is sought. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

Hon JAN TINETTI: Mr Speaker, when I said that the data was released on 23 February but that if I was wrong, I would come back and correct it—I’d like to correct the date to 22 February.

Bills

Crown Minerals Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) on behalf of the Minister of Energy and Resources: I present a legislative statement on the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill.

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

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I move, That the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The Government commenced a two-part review of the Crown Minerals Act 1991 in 2018. Tranche one of that review was completed later that year, and it gave effect to the Government’s policy to end future offshore petroleum exploration and confine any future onshore developments to the Taranaki region only. In progressing tranche two, the Government decided to focus first on the biggest issues and risks: the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Act was passed in 2021. This strengthened the Crown Minerals Act (CMA) to help mitigate the risk to the Crown and other third parties from having to undertake and fund decommissioning in the future. No one wants to see a repeat of the events surrounding the Tūī oilfield, where the operator liquidated and the Government had to step in and pick up the bill at the cost of the taxpayer.

This bill aligns the Crown Minerals Act with wider Government policy while maintaining its current role, which is for the economic development of Crown-owned minerals within New Zealand for the benefit of all New Zealanders. This bill concludes tranche two of the review by proposing amendments to remove the promotional intent in the purpose of the Crown Minerals Act, and to improve permit and licence holder engagement with iwi and hāpu. The bill also seeks to clarify decommissioning-related provisions.

Before speaking about the bill’s proposed changes to the purpose statement, it’s important to understand some of the context about the Crown Minerals Act and how it fits in with wider Government objectives. The Crown Minerals Act was amended in 2013 to attract investment in our petroleum and minerals sector. A purpose statement was added, which is “to promote prospecting for, exploration for, and mining of Crown owned minerals for the benefit of New Zealand.”

Since 2013, the strategic and wider regulatory environment in which the Crown Minerals operates has evolved. Climate change is an increasing focus, as is the use of an intergenerational lens in decision making. New Zealand has domestic targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, with carbon emissions to reach net zero by 2050. We’ve set an aspirational target of 100 percent renewable electricity generation by 2030. Our 2022-25 emissions reduction plan sets out strategies and actions needed to contribute to the global effort to limit global warming. The Government is also progressing the development of the New Zealand Energy Strategy, which will set the direction for New Zealand’s path to a low-carbon economy and signal pathways away from fossil fuels. While fossil fuels continue to play an important role in keeping the lights on today, we know the future will be bright and look different.

Whilst it is important that the Crown Minerals Act sustains investor confidence to continue the development of Crown-owned minerals where appropriate, its current focus on promotion allows limited flexibility in the choices available to the Crown, particularly in the context of a transition away from fossil fuels. So this bill makes changes to the promotional intent. The main proposal is to change the word “promote” in the purpose statement to “manage”. That will neither require nor prevent the development of Crown-owned minerals.

The key intended effect of the removal of this promotional intent is to increase flexibility in relation to when and how often future public tenders for petroleum exploration permits take place. An updated Crown Minerals Act that no longer promotes the extraction of fossil fuels will sit better alongside Government policy that is moving New Zealand towards a greener, low-emissions future, but the Crown Minerals Act will continue to play an important role. These amendments will not change the fundamental role of the Crown Minerals Act, which is to allocate development rights to Crown-owned minerals in a way that increases economic benefits to New Zealand. The Crown Minerals Act will continue to operate within a wider Crown minerals regulatory system that includes environment, health and safety, and climate change laws.

The bill also proposes changes to improve permit and licence holder and permit applicant engagement with iwi and hapū. Feedback from iwi and hapū has been that engagement with permit and licence holders under the CMA is variable. Engagement with iwi and hapū is not always prioritised by permit and licence holders, the quality of engagement is inconsistent, and there can be a lack of transparency.

The bill proposes a number of changes to create more certainty around engagement expectations. It proposes amendments that will provide iwi and hapū with opportunities to review and discuss annual iwi engagement reports that are currently required from tier 1 permit holders. It will enable regulations to specify minimum content requirements for those reports. It also proposes to clarify the feedback from hapū and iwi on past permit or licence holder engagement as a consideration when the Minister makes a permit allocation decision.

The bill also makes decommissioning-related clarifications to support interpretation of the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021. It is important that the provisions introduced through the 2021 Act are clear to enhance certainty to both industry and the New Zealand public. For these reasons, the bill proposes to clarify that assessments can be carried out to consider a person’s financial and technical ability to decommission, and that decommissioning obligations apply to all persons regardless of status and apply to all persons, such as applicants, licence holders, or transferees.

The bill was referred the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on 22 November 2022 and 334 written submissions and 17 oral submissions were made, and I want to thank that excellent select committee for their work and consideration of this bill. I want to thank those who took the time to submit with all of their feedback.

Four amendments to the law have been recommended by the select committee to address matters raised by submitters. First, the select committee has recommended that a proposed change to the purpose statement actually be removed. That change would amend the focus of the purpose statement from “economic efficiency” to “administrative efficiency”. Since administrative efficiency is already expected, the select committee thought the proposed change does not add value and should instead be removed.

Second, the select committee has recommended an amendment to the provision relating to how the Minister considers feedback from iwi and hapū. The introduction version of the bill stated that “the Minister may consider feedback from iwi and hapū when assessing permit applications.” The select committee recommended that “the Minister must have regard to feedback from iwi and hapū about the applicant’s engagement where that is provided in engagement reports or in annual meetings, and the Minister may have regard to other feedback.” This change makes it clearer about how the Minister considers feedback from iwi and hapū when assessing permit applications.

The third recommendation from the select committee is to delay commencement of one provision. The commencement date for all provisions in the introduction version of the bill was set to be the day after the bill receives Royal assent. The select committee recommended that the provision outlining how the Minister has regard to feedback from iwi and hapū comes into effect on 1 April 2024. This date aligns with the start of the next reporting year for engagement.

The select committee considered that all stakeholders would benefit from some time to understand the proposed change and that it would also allow permit and licence holders some time to make changes to their engagement and reporting before they submit their next reports.

The fourth and final recommendation from the select committee was that a regulation-making power should be added that allows for time frames to be prescribed when engagement reports are passed for permittable licence holders to iwi and hapū and back. That will give clarity to all those involved to streamline the feedback process.

The select committee process has led to a better bill; I thank the select committee for that, and I commend this bill to the House.

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

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, and I too would like to thank my fellow members on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, and the chair, Naisi Chen, who is in the Chamber today. The National Party does not support this bill and nor did it support all of the amendments. However, we did not seek to block those amendments; we could’ve, and sent the bill back to the House unchanged and not recommended to pass. However, we didn’t want to be obstructive, and so in the spirit of cooperation we committed to be cooperative on this matter.

However, I do have some serious reservations about this bill, and it’s interesting that the Minister, the Hon Duncan Webb, made a few references in his speech to climate change, intergenerational issues, transition away from fossil fuels, etc., and moving to a greener economy. That is the refrain from across the world by environmentalists, but they forget one thing—they forget one thing—the only way to transition is actually through minerals. We require more minerals, not less, in a greener, if you like, economy, in an electrified economy. For example, in the humble cellphone we have gold, copper, silver, tantalum, tungsten, aluminium, lithium, cobalt, silicon, tin, potassium, indium, aluminium, gallium, neodymium—these are quite hard, some of these—samarium, nickel, and praseodymium.

Hon Member: Such chemistry.

STUART SMITH: Such chemistry, yeah. That’s just one of our consumables. If you go to an electric vehicle (EV), it’s a similar story, a lot of those minerals, and it’s actually a significant amount—six times more minerals needed in an EV than a conventional vehicle. Things like wind turbines: an average wind turbine takes 220 tonnes of coal to make that wind turbine. All of these things come from minerals. All of these things have to be mined. The extractive industries are essential to any transition that we have. Renewable energy, particularly the intermittent renewable energy of solar and wind—they are really diffuse sources of energy. That means that we have to have a lot of plants all around the country, small wind turbines or solar panels, to extract anywhere near the energy levels that we need—all dependent on minerals. We all want to transition, but we have to be realistic. The National Party is realistic, and that’s why we stand here against this bill.

One of the major changes in this is clause 4, which alters the purpose of the principal Act, which the Minister alluded to. It’s no longer including the requirement for the Crown and the Minister to “promote prospecting” and instead going to “manage prospecting”, etc.—and exploration and mining. The Minister mentioned the oil and gas ban, which I have said many times in this House had a chilling effect on the sovereign risk profile of New Zealand. It is a significant issue for us now in a world where, accessing capital for anything—renewable projects or anything, actually—we are now seen as a much higher risk. It’s not that they think that we’ll default, but they have to price that risk—far better to actually go to some other country with a lower risk profile and put their money there. They have voted with their cash, essentially. So that has left us in a much more difficult position than we would otherwise be.

The issue about consulting with iwi—I don’t have an issue with that at all. All of the mines I’ve been around—unlike the Minister, actually, I have been down two gold mines and I’ve been to several other mines and some mines that are in the process of being reinstated after the mining has finished. The work that goes on in those projects, I’m not sure if you’re aware, on the West Coast or anywhere else, when a mine has come to the end of its life, the people that come in to restore it—and bear in mind they have to have significant bonds to ensure that they live up to their obligation—those people are passionate environmentalists. They are employed by mining companies, but their job is not to penny pinch; their job is to meet the criteria that they are required to under the law. So trying to go and really steer a horse by its tail, by trying to slow down the permitting process—Mr Speaker, I don’t know if you’ve had much to do with horses, but I have. I can tell you, steering a horse by the tail is a good way to get kicked and it’s not really effective in getting a good direction. So I think that is where we’re going wrong here.

So those mining companies do a great job in getting their land back to where it was prior to mining, as best can be. We have to accept that our existence on this Earth does change things—where we trade, we leave a footprint. The best thing we can do is to ensure that that footprint disturbs as little as possible. And I can assure you, they are doing that.

In regard to iwi engagement—all of those mining companies, it’s in their best interests to engage with iwi. They do that anyway—relationships, absolutely. However, there will be times when iwi have little to do with that particular. And that’s where my rub with this comes. Actually, the Treaty of Waitangi, under article 2—and I’m just going to quote the Waitangi Tribunal, who say, “guaranteed Māori the undisturbed position of their properties, including their lands, forests, and fisheries, for as long as they wish to retain them.” That’s great—fantastic. But so do other people. And I think I’ve had this conversation before—ahikāroa, I think, is the term—I have a relationship with the land, as I’m sure you do. Why are our rights not the same as anyone else? I really object to this provision. It should be those that are affected parties and interested parties. It should not be based on ethnicity. It should not be based on a particular iwi or anything else. If they are an interested party, they will be identified as that anyway. It’s nonsensical to put this in the law, it doesn’t make sense, and it’s just a crazy situation.

Permits and permitting is what New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals are supposed to do within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. They have been slowing down, I suspect, in the view of trying to do their bit for climate change. The processing of permits and the mining sector—it’s been an appalling performance that we have seen to date. Whether it’s deliberate, I don’t know. I have to assume that it might be, given that one permit application I’m aware of has been almost five years—five years—in the processing of that permit, and I’m not aware if it’s been either granted or declined at this stage. I can tell you, as of December 2022, there were 16 permits that were sitting within New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals—just sitting there, languishing. Miners tell me they are finding these issues all the time.

I spent time at Stockton mine—I’m sure you know where that is. We’re talking, here, about emissions, and we hear a lot about that from the other side of the House. Coal from Stockton lowers global emissions. Coal from Stockton is used by steel mills to lower their coal input into making steel. It’s not the emissions here that are important; if you really care about climate change, you’d care about global emissions, not the emissions in your patch. Yes, we can have an influence and we should. But when we have coal of a quality that comes from Stockton—the metallurgical coal used to make steel and other products like carbon for carbon fibre—that should be able to be extracted and sent to those countries to help lower their emissions to make high-quality steel. That might end up in a wind turbine that we put up here in New Zealand.

I think we have lost sight of the ball, here. Look, everyone cares about climate change and dealing with that, but let’s get our facts right. Let’s approach this in a way that’s sensible and actually is going to have the most effect, not do something that is simply signalling our virtue and beating our chests rather than focusing on the issue at hand. I cannot commend this bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time has come to suspend this debate—this is all wrong, let’s get my wording correct for this time of the night. The debate is interrupted and set down for resumption the next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 20 June. Thank you for your work this week.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 4.55 p.m.