Thursday, 29 June 2023

THURSDAY, 29 JUNE 2023

THURSDAY, 29 JUNE 2023

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

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.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): Today the House will adjourn until Tuesday, 18 July. Legislation to be considered in that week will include the second readings of the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill, and the further stages of the Business Payment Practices Bill, the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill, and the Therapeutic Products Bill.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I thank the Leader of the House for that update and wish all members a relaxing, if busy, two-week recess before the final push. Can the Minister confirm that the business of the House in the first week back will also include a debate on the question of privilege related to time taken by the Minister of Education to correct a misleading statement? Can I note that in the end of that first week back, the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill will celebrate its seventh anniversary of having been reported back from the select committee, and would he agree that the best way to mark that milestone would be with a second reading?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): In answer to the first part of the question, yes, I can confirm that that report on that debate will occur in accordance with the Standing Orders. In answer to the second part of the member’s question, I’ll consider what the best way is to commemorate that moment. It may well need to involve alcohol.

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

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

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

CLERK: Petition of Grant Rosoman, requesting that the House of Representatives stop the importation of products linked to forest destruction and human rights abuses.

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

CLERK:

Government response to the petitions of Morteza Sharifi

2023-27 statement of intent for the Climate Change Commission

2023-24 statement of performance expectations for the Climate Change Commission.

SPEAKER: I present the 2023-24 annual plan of the Controller and Auditor-General. Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the briefing into postgraduate stipend support

reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the:

briefing on the Government’s economic response to the August 2021 COVID-19 outbreak

Controller and Auditor-General, The Auditor-General’s strategic intentions to 2028

petition of Toby Williams

report of the Controller and Auditor-General, Inquiry into the Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme

report of the Controller and Auditor-General, Auditor-General’s mid-term review

reports of the Health Committee on the:

2021-22 annual review of the Hutt Valley District Health Board

petition of Gerard Rushton

report of the Privileges Committee on the question of privilege concerning the time taken by the Minister of Education to correct a misleading statement to the House.

SPEAKER: The reports of the Controller and Auditor-General, the report of the Privileges Committee, and the briefings are set down for consideration. No bills have been introduced.

Personal Explanations

Privileges Committee—Report on Correction of Misleading Statement

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to make a personal statement.

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

Hon JAN TINETTI: I have seen the report of the Privileges Committee titled Question of privilege concerning the time taken by the Minister of Education to correct a misleading statement in the House. I accept the committee’s findings, and I apologise to the House.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Cyclone Recovery

1. RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson) to the Minister for Cyclone Recovery: What announcements has the Government made about supporting the recovery in affected regions from recent extreme weather events?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister for Cyclone Recovery): The Government is continuing to support growers, farmers, and businesses with their recovery and rebuild from the recent North Island weather events. Today, we announced the North Island Weather Events Loan Guarantee Scheme, which will provide relief to affected firms seeking commercial lending. The scheme leverages the Crown’s financial strength by carrying 80 percent of the credit risk on covered loans, allowing banks to reduce interest rates and offer more flexible terms. The Government’s underwrite will support loans of up to five years, agreed by businesses and their banks, of up to $10 million from the scheme, including refinancing of existing loans. For example, a reduction in interest rates of 0.3 percent to 1.5 percent will be the equivalent of $9,000 to $45,000 in interest cost savings per year for the average firm supported, based on a theoretical borrowing of $3 million. Over the five years the scheme is in place, these savings could total between $45,000 and $225,000 for a firm with an average amount of debt, providing meaningful relief. Further details of the implementation of the scheme will be announced in the coming weeks. We’re targeting around the end of July for the scheme to be up and running, providing time for banks to get systems in place. In the meantime, customers will be able to register their interest in looking at utilising the scheme with their bank.

Rachel Boyack: What else did the announcement say about support for affected business and primary producers?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The package also includes the North Island Weather Events Primary Producer Finance Scheme. This has been created to provide access to capital for affected growers and farmers who are unable to access lending without further support. The funding will be targeted towards severely affected businesses that have a reasonable likelihood of being commercially viable but cannot currently access commercial finance. This scheme enables the Government to provide concessionary loans and equity finance for land-based primary sector producers, up to $4 million per business from a pool of up to $240 million that has been set aside. This will provide a way for businesses to fully re-engage with lenders at a later date, once we have helped them get back on their feet. In turn, it contributes towards their recovery, and to recovery within the region in which they work.

Rachel Boyack: What reaction has he seen to the announcement?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The reaction is the result of working together with affected sectors to identify the most suitable schemes for viable businesses, particularly when dealing with their banks. Horticulture New Zealand said today’s announcement would enable their growers to make decisions now and “get on with the recovery and provide jobs for people in regional New Zealand.” LeaderBrand have also welcomed the package, saying that “being supported in this way to get on with the recovery is a win-win for everyone involved.”

Rachel Boyack: What other work is the Government doing to support those affected by the recent weather events?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Around $2 billion of support has already been committed so far, and this includes, for example, $74 million in grants to farmers and growers in the emergency phase of the response—a $1 billion flood and cyclone recovery package as part of Budget 2023. In addition, another $6 billion in initial funding has been committed for the National Resilience Plan to focus on building back better, in particular—in the first phase—from the recent weather events. The Government is committed to working together with councils, iwi, banks, businesses, and insurers to find solutions for those in affected communities. As I have said previously, we cannot meet all the costs, particularly as we know that we will be seeing more extreme weather events like this, but what we can do is work alongside the community to find solutions, and we are striking a balance between supporting communities without taxpayers bearing all of the cost.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

2. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Acting Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government’s statements and actions?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Acting Prime Minister): Yes. In particular, I stand by the support package for growers, farmers, and businesses affected by North Island weather events that the Minister for Cyclone Recovery has just outlined to the House. This package was developed with primary producers and will provide relief to key growers, farmers, and businesses, and help their regions continue to recover.

Nicola Willis: Is she concerned that New Zealanders with a car will be paying around $15 more every time they fill up at the pump after her Government rips off the fuel tax band-aid this weekend?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We were really concerned, earlier last year, when fuel nearly reached $3 per litre. We knew that at that time we needed to put that subsidy in place, but we knew that it wasn’t going to last for ever. A little bit relieved that, of course, petrol prices have come down since then. That doesn’t necessarily provide all the relief that those families need to feel, given that there will be a slight increase this week, but what they should know is that on 1 July, many of the initiatives that we announced at Budget 2023 will come into effect. Public transport will be cheaper—or free for some—early childhood education costs will reduce for many; the co-payment of prescriptions will come off for all New Zealanders. That is our attempt, at Budget 2023, to support whānau through what is a very tough time right now.

Nicola Willis: Was the Prime Minister correct in February when he said, of the fuel tax subsidy extension, “Right here and right now the increase in fuel costs is putting a significant amount of pressure on families”, and, if so, what’s changed?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Yes, Mr Speaker.

Nicola Willis: Why is every solution this Government has come up with to deal with the cost of living crisis nothing more than a temporary band-aid that inevitably creates more pain when the Government rips it off?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The 1 July changes that are coming into effect certainly aren’t temporary band-aids. We have said that the co-payment will be removed, and that’s not temporary. The changes and access to childcare and the support for childcare costs is not temporary. The fact that those on the sole parent benefit will now get child support pass-on is not temporary—but it is a reminder to the rest of New Zealand that those things are only guaranteed under this Government, and I think we need to make sure that the general public know that.

Nicola Willis: Does she stand by her statement on Tuesday that “We are in the fortunate position of our economy now doing better than what it was during pre-COVID times.”, considering New Zealanders today are facing higher inflation, higher rents, higher food prices, higher house prices, and lower growth compared to pre-COVID levels; and, if she does stand by her statement, what is it in terms of the economy that’s gotten better?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: To the first part of the question, yes.

Nicola Willis: What is it that’s gotten better?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As I said, our economy is now better than what it was pre-COVID; our unemployment rate is still at near-record lows, at 3.4 percent. That doesn’t mean that New Zealanders aren’t doing it tough at the moment: everyone is, internationally, because of global inflation increases and the impact that it’s having on the cost of living. That is why we introduced the changes at Budget 2023 that we did, and we stand by those changes.

Nicola Willis: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’ve had a couple of supps; that one was very specific. What’s gotten better in terms of the economy?

SPEAKER: It was addressed. Have you got another question?

Nicola Willis: Yes. Why is New Zealand in recession, and Australia isn’t?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That member needs to look at the annual figure. It was two quarters where we did see a slight recession, but what is good is that the forecast is that in the next quarter it will go up, and we will be watching that very carefully.

Nicola Willis: Why does Australia have lower inflation than New Zealand, and why is the Acting Prime Minister gaslighting New Zealanders by telling them they should be relieved and grateful for this Government’s failed economic management?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We would never gaslight New Zealanders.

Question No. 3—Housing

3. PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai) to the Minister of Housing: How is the Government incorporating innovative building solutions into the public housing rebuild?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Through our public house - build programme, the Government is delivering the most public houses since the second Labour Government under Walter Nash in the 1950s. This scale means we can incorporate new technologies and systems to build faster and better-quality homes more efficiently. In a first for central government - funded public housing in Australasia, Kāinga Ora has recently delivered a passive housing development in Māngere. These 18 homes utilise airtight construction, superior insulation, and a whole-house mechanical ventilation system to deliver a healthy home that is thermally efficient and better for the environment.

Paul Eagle: How will these innovative homes assist tenants to lower their household costs?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Not only are these homes incredibly warm and dry; they could see heating and cooling costs being as little as $1 per day, or, for a year, around $365. This is due to homes regulating their own temperature through smart design and the use of high-performing construction materials, meaning there is little need to run heaters during colder periods. These homes provide significant benefits to tenants and provide significant insights for sector-wide knowledge and capacity.

Paul Eagle: How else is the Government supporting innovation in the residential construction sector?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Kāinga Ora has already delivered more than 400 public homes utilising off-site manufacturing, or OSM, including 150 this financial year alone, and it has contracts with eight New Zealand - based OSM manufacturers to deliver a further 300 public homes across 78 developments in the next two financial years. Off-site manufacturing has a range of benefits, including reduced construction time, less disruption to neighbours, improved health and safety, as well as improved quality, sustainability, and waste reduction.

Paul Eagle: How will the Government’s support of off-site manufacturing benefit the residential construction sector?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Internationally, other countries have successfully modernised their construction sectors. In Sweden, for example, more than 80 percent of homes are now built off site. Our Government is making the most of a generational opportunity to improve the way we build to create a smarter, more efficient, and sustainable construction process and sector. Tex Edwards recently acknowledged our effort, saying, “Central government pressure has created a pathway to reduce costs and align [New Zealand’s home-building] with international best practice. Scale, OSM, standardisation and long-dated pipeline contracts will deliver a reduction in costs not just for Kāinga Ora but these will also flow through to kiwi first home buyers.”

Question No. 4—Housing

4. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister of Housing: What is the Kāinga Ora universal design standards target, and when did the board adopt this target?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): The Kāinga Ora board adopted the accessibility policy in September 2019. The policy set an initial target of having at least 15 percent of Kāinga Ora public homes new-builds meeting full universal design standards, with the rest meeting as many of the universal design standards as possible. What the Kāinga Ora accessibility policy seeks to achieve is homes that were briefed after 1 October 2019 and contracted on or after 1 July 2020 meeting those universal design targets.

Jan Logie: Why, then, did the Minister say in the Social Services Committee on 21 June that the target was only put in place in 2021?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Because the policy was passed in 2019 with an implementation date for delivery from 2021. As we talked about at the select committee hearing, there is a lag between a policy being set and the homes that are contracted. It is only the homes that are contracted post 1 July 2020 that will see delivery through into 2021.

Jan Logie: Is it true, as reported by Stuff on 15 March, that Kāinga Ora reached 9 percent universal design for new-build public housing, which is actually only 1.5 percent of all new-build public housing, and, if so, why have they failed to meet their own targets?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We are on track to deliver the targets for this financial year. There were some delays, as the member will know, some COVID-related construction delays, that meant that there was more in the pipeline that were contracted prior to those dates. What we are seeing, though, are some examples of some developments that are coming through that have incredibly high standards of the universal design targets—for example, Greys Avenue: 60 percent of the new apartments will reach that. In Ēpuni, where the Prime Minister and I visited last week a 32-unit development, 50 percent of those units have been built to universal design standards. And in Highbury Triangle, in Auckland, where there are 192 units specifically designed for older people, all of those are accessible properties with wheelchair and mobility scooter ramps built to an incredibly high standard. So what we can see is that properties that are contracted later and being delivered now are far exceeding that target.

Jan Logie: Does she stand by her comment, “I’m not accepting the missed targets.”, when data from Kāinga Ora’s dashboard states that they built 1,266 homes while the policy was taking effect, with only 70 houses being built to full universal design by the end of 2022, nowhere near the 15 percent target?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I’ve addressed the question that the member’s just put, in previous answers. The member needs to look at when those projects were contracted. The reality is that it takes several years in terms of design, so delivery that you’re going to see post that, many of those homes would have been contracted pre the 2020 date.

Jan Logie: Then why was the target set to be achieved between August 2021 and July 2022? That’s what’s in the policy.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As we’ve also talked about in this House on multiple occasions, clearly there was a delay in construction throughout 2020 and 2021. In fact, very few homes could be constructed while the country was in lockdown. We have already acknowledged that that did have a delay in meeting those targets, as it did with construction targets more generally.

Question No. 5—Health

5. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What changes has the Government made to the Carer Support subsidy?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): From 1 July, Te Whatu Ora will increase the daily rate of subsidy paid to carers in the home. It will also widen how the subsidy can be used to support the work of the main carer. Under the changes, the daily rate of the carer support subsidy lifts from $64.50 in some regions to a minimum of $80 nationwide.

Dr Liz Craig: So how will this improve access to care?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: This will improve access to care options, such as day programmes for respite for those in our community who cannot afford to privately top up the current daily allocation of carer support. Increasing the subsidy will also enable more people to be cared for in their communities and, therefore, reduce unnecessary hospital admissions among some of the most vulnerable members of our community. It also helps relieve pressure on the health system.

Dr Liz Craig: How many people will be positively impacted by the change?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: This change is expected to help more than 14,000 existing carers. Full-time carers or those looking after someone for four hours or more a day will be able to use the subsidy to take a break from their stressful work, reducing the risk of carer stress and burnout. Previously, carers could only claim one day’s worth of their annual allocation of subsidy at a time. Now they will be able to claim for multiple days’ worth at once in order to take a break. They will also be able to use the subsidy to compensate others living in the same household to provide respite or an external respite service.

Dr Liz Craig: Why has this change been made?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Previously, 14 of the 20 districts paid $64.50 as the minimum support rate. That has now been lifted by a minimum of $15.50 to reduce inequities across the country. The 1 July change marks a move away from the inconsistency of multiple rates across the country, correcting inconsistencies in funding between Te Whatu Ora and other agencies as well, and shows the benefit of having one agency running the health system instead of 20 district health boards. We are slowly ending the postcode lottery for care.

Question No. 6—Local Government

6. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister of Local Government: Does he stand by all decisions made around the Government’s water services reform programme in 2023?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: On behalf of the Minister, yes, in the context in which they were made.

Chris Bishop: Has Cabinet agreed to the extra transition funds required as part of the move from four entities to 10, as mentioned in the regulatory impact statement on the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill, estimated at at least a billion dollars?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Cabinet has indeed agreed to that process. I would note in the regulatory impact statement the member refers to, in a number of cases, while initial Crown funding is required, it will be recovered from the water services entities when they are operational.

Chris Bishop: Did the Government appropriate the extra transition funds required in Budget 2023, and, if so, what appropriation or appropriations is the money contained in?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, appropriations already exist for the overall reform programme. When new appropriations are required, they occur when those decisions are made.

Chris Bishop: So in relation to the extra billion dollars—at least—required, is that money appropriated for in previous Budgets, including the latest one?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It’s actually the same answer I’ve just given to the member: sometimes when the Government carries a cost for a period of time before that is transferred across, that can be reflected in the Government accounts; other times it doesn’t need to be because that cost will be paid back within the time that the Government accounts allow for.

Nicola Willis: Dodgy books.

Chris Bishop: Has he talked to his officials—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! We’ll hear this in silence.

Chris Bishop: All good?

SPEAKER: Questions are asked in silence. Chris Bishop.

Hon Andrew Little: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The deputy leader of the National Party made a statement just now by way of interjection that reflected on the integrity of the Minister of Finance in a way that I would submit is contrary to the Standing Orders and the good order of the House.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Mr Speaker, that may have been the implication taken by Minister Little, but there was no reference to any individual and therefore no reflection on that person.

SPEAKER: I will make this ruling. There has been an increase of interjections, badly timed interjections, during question time, when questions, in particular, are being asked. I would ask every member to stop doing that. I did hear the comment—timing wasn’t perfect, but I’m loath to rule it as being personally directed at a member. However, the member ought to be careful.

Chris Bishop: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Has he talked to his officials about the 32 unauthorised changes made to the Water Services Legislation Bill by Department of Internal Affairs officials that in some cases went directly against the instructions of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and, if so, what did he say?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, the Minister speaks regularly with the officials who are responsible for this work. In terms of that specific matter, we’ll have to get back to the member, and I’m sure the Minister will do that.

Chris Bishop: Why has Cabinet not altered the position under the three waters reform programme where it is compulsory for a water services entity to respond to a Te Mana o te Wai statement issued by relevant mana whenua, but not compulsory for the water services entity to respond to a community priority statement?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Those are two distinct processes, and I’m sure the member will be well aware that Te Mana o te Wai statements have been around since I think about 2014. The National Party included them within the resource management amendment reforms. They find their basis in the fact that, among other places, the Supreme Court agreed that there are rights and interests of Māori in water, and, in fact, the Rt Hon Bill English made that statement at the Supreme Court.

Chris Bishop: Why is it the Government position that the only way to give effect to legitimate Māori rights and interests in water is to privilege only mana whenua with the ability to issue directive and prescriptive statements to new water infrastructure bodies?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I completely reject the assertions in the member’s question. Te Mana o te Wai has been part of the resource management framework in New Zealand for many, many years. It is reflective of Māori rights and interests in water, which, as I say, previously, the National Party has acknowledged has been the case. Clearly, Bill English’s words no longer mean anything to the National Party.

Question No. 7—Statistics

7. DAMIEN SMITH (ACT) to the Minister of Statistics: Does she have confidence that Stats New Zealand will achieve the 90 percent completion rate target for the New Zealand Census 2023, and is she “absolutely” willing to resign as Minister if this target isn’t met by 5 pm tomorrow?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Minister of Statistics): I am absolutely confident that Tatauranga Aotearoa Statistics New Zealand will deliver an excellent census that will give Government agencies, city and district councils, iwi and hapū, and community groups and businesses good information to plan for the future. The collection period for the census ends at 5 p.m. tomorrow. However, the census process is continuing as returns are gathered, processed, and checked. The completion rate for the census will not be known until towards the end of 2024, after the postenumeration survey is completed and evaluated.

Damien Smith: Does she accept that she has ultimate responsibility for the census failing to meet its target completion rate, and, if the Minister doesn’t, who has the ultimate responsibility?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: I reject the use of the word “failing” there. The census has in fact succeeded. We are sitting on an 89 percent return rate at the moment, and, in fact, there has been particular success with increasing the rate of return from our Māori and Pasifika populations.

Nicole McKee: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The question that was asked of the Minister was about accepting responsibility, and, if not the Minister, then who. She addressed a word that was said in the question without actually addressing the question.

SPEAKER: And that would probably be addressed that way if the Minister chooses to do so. The way to avoid it is to not use such words. Are there further supplementaries?

Damien Smith: How does she measure the effectiveness of spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on vouchers for sports games and fast food for people who did not complete the census on time, when she doesn’t know the number of people who filled out the census in return for these vouchers?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: It is impossible to know exactly how many people filled out their census forms at events—community events, engagement events, and the like—where people were drawn into events in order to complete their census. The reason that it’s impossible, though, is it’s not just the vouchers, not just the events, but it’s the extended reach of that, beyond that, that encouraged people, that made them aware of the census and, therefore, encouraged them to complete their forms.

Damien Smith: How did she spend $300 million on the census and get such a poor result, and is it not a reflection of the lack of trust New Zealanders have in this Government?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: I again reject the particular word. It was not a poor result. We have had an excellent result from the census so far, where we’ve gotten an 89 percent return rate. We’ve gotten increased return rates for Māori and Pasifika. And by the time those return rates are combined with administrative data, we will get an excellent coverage rate of 97 to 98 percent. We’ve got a good census.

Question No. 8—Māori Development

8. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Minister for Māori Development: What recent announcements has the Government made about support for owners of whenua Māori in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): I’ve just announced $30 million of funding to help—

Hon Member: How much?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —$30 million of funding to help whenua Māori owners in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay with the clean-up of sediment and debris on their whenua. The Minister of Forestry and I have also announced that $2 million of the $10.15 million woody debris fund announced as part of Budget 2023 has been allocated specifically to manage woody debris in catchments on whenua Māori. This funding recognises hapori Māori, community Māori, are still dealing with the aftermath of the cyclone. The Government is committed to continue to support the recovery of communities affected by the cyclone.

Arena Williams: How will this funding benefit owners of whenua Māori in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Owners of whenua Māori can apply to Te Puni Kōkiri, which is really good because they can get direct access for their grants to help clean up sediment and debris on their whenua. This helps owners make their own decisions about how to manage the clean-up. Owners of whenua Māori who have completed or started their clean up can also apply for grants. We recognise that iwi and hapori Māori moved quickly after the cyclone to get started on the clean-up. This funding may be able to help them with those costs. The $2 million from the woody debris fund will also be available as grants to clean up woody debris in catchments on whenua Māori.

Arena Williams: When will this funding be available?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Funding will be available from 1 July 2023. Māori land owners in Te Tairāwhiti and the Hawke’s Bay can contact the Whenua Māori service in Te Puni Kōkiri for more information and advice about how to apply.

Arena Williams: What other assistance is being made available to help clean up debris and sediment?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Last month, my colleagues the Minister of Local Government and the Associate Minister for Cyclone Recovery announced funding of $102 million to help councils process and dispose of debris and to manage sediment on council land. They also announced $70 million to assist commercial properties with their clean-up. Some owners of whenua Māori will meet the criteria for commercial funding. Te Puni Kōkiri is supporting landowners who choose this route through the application process.

Hon Meka Whaitiri: Why has it taken nearly five months to get targeted funding to remove silt from whenua Māori in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: It’s been a tough process for this Government, it’s been a tough process for this country, but we’re committed to looking after not just our own people but all the people in the different communities, and I’m proud of the response from this Government.

Hon Meka Whaitiri: Will he support Te Paati Māori’s policy of $100 million for a dedicated clean-up fund for tangata whenua; if not, why not?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I will support any fund in terms of supporting our people if it’s thought through well, which clearly that view has not been.

Question No. 9—Corrections

9. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he agree with the reported statement of the Chief Ombudsman following his report initiated after the Waikeria Prison riot, “Corrections was being defensive, risk averse and believed it had made changes when there was no evidence of it on the ground”; if not, why not?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): I think it’s important to remember that prisons aren’t an ordinary work environment. We need to be realistic about the serious challenges and risks front-line staff are managing every day. Any change needs to be made with the safety of staff and prisoners front of mind. I agree that it can take time in an organisation as large as this for changes to be made from top to bottom, and I’ve expressed that I think progress on recommendations on the ground should be faster. Safety and the humane treatment of prisoners are not mutually exclusive, which is why Corrections has acknowledged that it can do more, and that is why they have accepted all of the Ombudsman’s recommendations made of them, which I’m supportive of.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does the Chief Ombudsman’s concern about a divide between senior leadership and the front line at Corrections include him?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I absolutely back our staff on the front line and acknowledge the challenging work that they do. I think the reality is that with a large operational agency, there’s always a challenge to face in how the central leadership and the front-line staff are linked.

Hon Mark Mitchell: How can Kiwis have any confidence in his leadership of Corrections when the Chief Ombudsman says that Corrections accepted most of the recommendations yet the riots occurred?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: First of all, I don’t think it’s helpful to speculate on what would’ve changed the behaviour of the rioters. Ultimately, it was unacceptable and endangered staff, other prisoners, and themselves. But a number of changes were made immediately as a result of that Ombudsman’s report in 2020. There was an ongoing programme of maintenance of cells. The yards were being checked daily for damage. There was increased resourcing in the property area. There was development of consistent streamlined procedures for ordering and managing prisoners’ clothing. They were providing prisoners with additional food and additional food to prisoners with their evening meals. So there were a number of changes that were made as a result of the August 2020 report, but, ultimately, it’s pointless speculating on what might have changed the behaviour of those rioters.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why after six years of his leadership is the Chief Ombudsman reporting that because Corrections have been too slow to act, the fair treatment and rights of prisoners have unfortunately been the collateral damage?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I disagree with much of that, but I have expressed that I think the recommendations made by the Ombudsman should’ve been implemented faster. I’ve continuously expressed that to the leadership of Corrections.

Hon Mark Mitchell: What does he say to the Chief Ombudsman, who said, “I was concerned to find that people I interviewed during the course of my investigation consistently described a divided organisation and a pattern of disconnection at all levels, mainly between front-line prison staff and head office.”?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I have made my expectations clear, but, like I say, with an organisation as large as Corrections, it is possible that there is a gap between those in head office and those working on the front line. But I also have to say that despite the fact that I would like the pace of change to be quicker, there has still been a large number of changes made. In fact, there are six organisations that have oversight of Corrections, and since October 2017 there have been almost 3,000 recommendations made, of which over 80 percent have been completed.

Hon Mark Mitchell: How embarrassing is it for the Minister that the Corrections union is presenting pens to guests inscribed with “Where’s Kelvin?”?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: How embarrassing is it for the spokesperson for the Opposition that in all the time that he’s been the spokesperson, this is the first question he’s asked me, and, secondly, where was he at Estimates?

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table this pen from the Corrections Association of New Zealand, inscribed “Where’s Kelvin?”

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, no, no, I don’t need that.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, I just wanted to make the point—

SPEAKER: Well, no, no, no—no, sit down. Anything with writing on it can be tabled with the agreement of the House. The member needs to tell me when it was published.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Mr Speaker, all I can tell you is that it’s not readily available to the public; it’s only given to people that front up to the Corrections union.

SPEAKER: OK, well, I hope we’re not starting a new trend of tabling all kinds and all manner of things. However, I’ll put the leave. Leave has been sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? No.

Leave received to table object.

Question No. 10—Local Government

10. SIMON COURT (ACT) to the Minister of Local Government: Does he intend that in the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill, the powers awarded to the wider population through community priority statements are less than those awarded to local Māori through Te Mana o te Wai statements, and does he think assigning input on water management on the basis of iwi affiliation will help provide effective and efficient water services?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: On behalf of the Minister, the provision of effective and efficient water services continues to be the responsibility of the entity board, which is appointed on expertise, skills, and experience alone. Community priority statements add another tool for communities to have a say on the long-term direction of their water services entity. They are distinct from Te Mana o te Wai statements, which acknowledge the special rights and interests of Māori in water. These rights were recognised by the Supreme Court and previous Governments on the basis that Te Mana o te Wai statements extend well beyond the activities of just water services entities, give effect to Treaty settlements, are already integrated into our planning system, and do give effect to a Supreme Court decision. As the member is aware, the amendment bill strengthens the voice of the wider population, as he calls it, in the water services entities by aligning them to regional communities of interest and ensuring every district is represented on a regional representative group.

Simon Court: Can the Minister explain how having Te Mana o te Wai protect the mauri of the wai will help provide effective and efficient water services when, according to the Ministry for the Environment, mauri is not defined; it is a Te ao Māori concept that speaks both to the life energy that flows through all things and the interconnectedness of all things?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, Te Mana o Te Wai statements reflect the interests and rights of Māori in water that have been known about and exercised by Governments since 2013. Any member of this House who believes that we can have effective and efficient water services bodies without making sure that those rights and interests are recognised is dreaming.

Simon Court: Is the Minister confident that recommendations made through Te Mana o te Wai statements will improve the efficiency and affordability of water services, and how would he expect those to be prioritised in circumstances where Te Mana o Te Wai statements are contrary to those aims?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, as I said in my primary answer, the provision of effective and efficient water services continues to be the responsibility of the entity board which is appointed on expertise, skills, and experience. They will take into account a range of matters, including Te Mana o Te Wai statements.

Simon Court: Supplementary—

SPEAKER: No, no more supplementaries.

Question No. 11—Housing (Māori Housing)

11. TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing): E hia ngā kāinga hou kua whakaritea ki te hōtaka Whai Kāinga Oranga, ā, tokohia ngā whānau kua hūnuku atu ki aua kāinga mā te hōtaka rā?

[How many new homes have been contracted through the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga programme, and how many whānau Māori have moved into homes completed through the programme?]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing)): That’s a beautiful question. I want to thank that member for that question, because Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga has been one of the great successes of this Government. Māori housing stands out. I want to thank Minister Megan Woods for all her support. Bringing together Te Puni Kōkiri and the ministry of housing has seen a real change, and we’ve got people all around the country flourishing. I want to thank that member for this opportunity to talk about this, because we launched Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga in 2021 and we made it clear that that was a four-year programme to build 1,000 homes for whānau Māori by June 2025. I’m proud to inform that member, who’s been a great supporter—him and his family and his wife. They’ve been great supporters of Māori housing and Māori development; I really think he’s been a terrific supporter, actually. I’m proud to inform that member that we’re well on track to deliver on this commitment. To date, we’ve contracted 1,003 homes, with a further 15 homes being approved and they’re in the contracting process, bringing the total approval to 1,018. In response to the second part of the question, I want everyone to understand this because the member was speaking Māori and quite rightly so. I applaud him for that. But he was asking about how many whānau have moved in: 62 at this stage.

Tama Potaka: He aha te kaute pūtea mō te kaupapa iwi prototypes i raro i te hōtaka Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga?

[What is the Budget allocation for the iwi prototypes initiative under the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga programme?]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: In terms of the pūtea that has been approved so far, in the 2023 Budget we put aside $200 million additional but $150 million specifically for Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga so that we could support the pūtea that was put aside in 2021, which was $700 million. The National Government never put aside one cent—they never put aside one cent in terms of by Māori, for Māori programmes. Again, I want to thank ourselves for this brilliant strategy—in particular, Minister Megan Woods, Minister Grant Robertson, Minister Kelvin Davis, who have started this innovative and brilliant, brilliant programme that we’ve never ever seen before from any other Government in history. As well as that, there’s incredible Māori providers that that member has supported. We’ve got Toitu Tairawhiti with Willie Te Aho on the East Coast. We’ve got Ka Uruora with Jamie—

SPEAKER: Can I ask the Minister to wind up his speech.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Can I—

SPEAKER: You’ve answered.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: OK.

Tama Potaka: E hia ngā kāinga hou kua oti te hangā ake i tō te kaupapa iwi prototypes, ā, e mākona ana tō ngākau i tērā nama?

[How many new homes have been built under the iwi prototypes initiative, and is that satisfactory to you?]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Kei te harikoa taku ngākau i tēnei wā, e hoa, harikoa. Kei te tino whakahīhī mātou, nā te mea he tino rawe tā mātou rautaki e pā ana ki te hanga whare. E mihi ana ki te Minita, ki a Megan Woods mō tana kaha ki te kōkiri i tēnei kaupapa me te Minita mō te pūtea, Grant Robertson me Kelvin Davis. Kei te tino whakahīhī tō mātou kāhui Māori. E mihi ana ki a koe, e hoa mō tō tautoko ki a mātou i ngā wā katoa. Kia ora.

[My heart is happy at this point, my friend. We are very proud because our strategy for building houses is a good one. I acknowledge the Minister Megan Woods for her hard work in leading this initiative, and to the finance Minister, Grant Robertson, and Kelvin Davis. Our Māori caucus is very proud. I acknowledge you, my friend, for your unwavering support. Thank you.]

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order, Mr Speaker. That was a great reply, and congratulated just about everybody on the Labour front bench, but it didn’t answer the question of how many have been completed.

SPEAKER: Yes, that’s correct. It wasn’t. Do you want to ask it again?

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: No, no, no. I’m going to give Tama Potaka the opportunity to ask the question again.

Tama Potaka: Ka pai.

SPEAKER: Order! In silence.

Tama Potaka: E hia kē ngā kāinga hou kua oti te hangā ake i tō te kaupapa iwi prototypes, ā, e mākona ana tō ngākau i te nama rā?

[How many new houses have been built as a result of the iwi prototypes initiative, and are you satisfied with that number?]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: In terms of the numbers, in terms of the iwi prototypes, and in terms of where we’re working in terms of Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga, I’ll go through the numbers for everyone. I want to go through all the numbers: 517 of 1,018 homes have been approved or contracted or have resource consent; 246 have commenced build; and 62 homes have been built and received code completion—62 homes. Now, you can rubbish that, but we started at the end of 2021. We’ve made a start. There was no strategy from Tama Potaka’s National Party and I know that’s why he’s asking the question—to embarrass his colleagues—and I thank you for the question.

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Can the Minister confirm that by partnering with iwi, Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga enables the Government to increase housing options on whenua Māori or by leveraging the Māori asset base?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Absolutely. The reality is that the funding provided by Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga is a grant and that funding can be used by those Māori housing providers to either employ local Māori directly or support other local Māori businesses. The beauty about the strategy is it’s not just about a house. It’s just not about a kāinga. It’s about a whole new lifestyle. We bring in employment around these people. We also get them to learn their whakapapa, to learn a bit of reo. It’s a whole whānau-type approach and it makes us very, very proud as a Government to produce this, and I know Tama Potaka’s proud of us too.

Tama Potaka: Kei a wai te whakautu tika? Kei a koe i whāki mai ai e ono tekau mā rua ngā whare hou kua hangā i tēnei pūtea. Kei te Minita Matua rānei, a Megan Woods, i whakautu mai ai i tērā wiki i te komiti social services, tata ki te kotahi rau ngā whare hou kua hangaia mai.

[Who has the correct answer? According to what you said, 62 new houses were built using this funding. According to the Minister Megan Woods, she answered last week in the Social Services and Community Committee that nearly 100 new houses were built.]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: E hoa, ehara nōku te hē, e hoa. E hoa, ehara nōku te hē. Kōrero ki a Megan Woods.

[My friend, it’s not my fault, my friend. My friend, it’s not my fault. Talk to Megan Woods.]

Ki ahau [to me] she was pretty close—not too far off a hundred.

Tama Potaka: E hia ngā kāinga hou kua hangaia atu ki Ihumātao?

[How many new houses have been built at Ihumātao?]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Ihumātao was a different situation. I have to say I’m proud of the work that has gone on down there, but we have five years—we have five years to produce a result and now we’re about 18 months into this so far. It’s not just about houses; it’s about whānau, it’s about communities, it’s about working through, and we came up with an innovative strategy. And do you know what that strategy was? Work with the community, work with the people, and work with Tama Potaka’s relations, and we have done a wonderful job.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Another very flowery response but the question was very direct: how many had been built?

SPEAKER: Yeah, I think it was addressed.

Question No. 12—Commerce and Consumer Affairs

12. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What is the Government doing to support the transition to a low-emissions, climate-resilient future for businesses?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has released new guidance for large entities preparing to make climaterelated disclosures for the first time. These new disclosures are a big stride forward for the climate in three ways: first, they encourage entities to consider the short-, medium-, and long-term risks and opportunities that climate change presents to their businesses; second, it provides the format for a business to demonstrate publicly what its approach to these risks and opportunities is; third, they enable investors and other stakeholders to assess the merits of their approach to climate risks and opportunities that the business has taken. The Government is radically improving the consistency and transparency of business information on climate change, and I commend the FMA for their work.

Angie Warren-Clark: What is the purpose of the climate standards?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: The overall aim of the Aotearoa New Zealand Climate Standards framework is supporting the allocation of capital towards activities that are consistent with a transition to a low-emissions, climate-resilient future. By entities systematically disclosing reliable information about climate risk and opportunities, the market will be able to make more informed choices about where to invest capital. That is a very good thing.

Angie Warren-Clark: How does the new guidance help businesses meet their reporting requirements?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Businesses need to know what records they should be keeping in order to meet these new standards, and the FMA have published draft guidance on this. Businesses can choose to work through the standards themselves, or they may wish to engage an external provider to help them. The FMA has put out an information sheet on what businesses should consider and what questions they might ask before engaging an outside party for this work. Finally, the FMA has published its plan for monitoring, as they move from building the system to operating it.

Angie Warren-Clark: What are the next steps in the plan for climate reporting?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Large businesses that are required to report against climate standards are now preparing to do so, with the guidance of the FMA, and I thank them for that work. The FMA’s approach going forward will be pragmatic, focused on outcomes, and will include education to support businesses’ successful transition to the new reporting standards. We all know that we need a low-emission, climate-resilient future, and this Government is making progress to make sure that happens.

Bills

Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill

First Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): I present a legislative statement on the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill.

SPEAKER: Kua tāngia taua tauāki ā ture i raro i te mana i raro i te mana o te Whare, ā, ka kitea ki te pae tukutuku a te Pāremata.

[That statement has been published under the authority of the House; also, you will find it on the parliamentary website.]

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill.

Tākiri mai ana te ata ki runga o ngākau mārohirohi korihi ana te manu kaupapa ka āo, ka āo, ka awatea tīhei mauriora. E mihi ana ki a koutou kua tae mai i runga i te kaupapa o te rā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. E mihi ana ki te hunga mate, haere, haere, haere atu rā. Ki a tātou te hunga ora tēnā tātou, tēnei au, tēnei mātou te Kāwanatanga e mihi ana ki te kaupapa o te wā, Ngāti Tara Tokanui, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[The dawn breaks on the stout of heart, the birds sing out, the sun rises, it’s the breath of life. Acknowledgments to you all who have arrived here to support this meeting of the day, thank you, thank you, thank you all. I acknowledge our loved ones who have departed, farewell. To us the living, this is I, this is the Government, acknowledging the bill that brought us together, Ngāti Tara Tokanui, greetings to you all.]

It’s an honour and a privilege for me to be here today to speak in support of the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill. This bill is the next step following the deed of settlement signing by Ngāti Tara Tokanui and the Crown here at Parliament nearly a year ago. It has taken many years for Ngāti Tara Tokanui to reach this point in their settlement journey.

First, I want to acknowledge the tīpuna and esteemed members of Ngāti Tara Tokanui who have since passed on and who are not with us to witness this significant day. I know you will hold their contributions and memory front of mind during today’s proceedings.

I want to acknowledge the Ngāti Tara Tokanui negotiators, Russell Karu and Amelia Williams, for their dedication to their people and this settlement since negotiations began in 2011. I also acknowledge the trustees of the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Trust, the governance entity for this settlement, who, unfortunately, could not be with us here today.

On the Crown side, I want to acknowledge the work of the chief Crown negotiators Michael Dreaver and also the Hon Rick Barker. I acknowledge my predecessor the Hon Chris Finlayson for the work that he did in the initial engagements with Ngāti Tara Tokanui and many other Hauraki iwi, and I thank my ministerial colleagues and Crown agencies for their support to achieve this settlement with Ngāti Tara Tokanui.

Negotiations with Ngāti Tara Tokanui began at Ngahutoitoi Marae in 2011, when iwi members formally gave the negotiators, Amelia Williams and Russell Karu, the mandate to negotiate a comprehensive, historical Treaty settlement with the Crown on behalf of the iwi. An agreement in principle was reached in 2011, and the deed of settlement was initialled in 2017 and then signed here, at Parliament, in July last year.

The deed of settlement records the Crown’s acknowledgment of, and the apology for, the Crown’s breaches of the Treaty in relation to Ngāti Tara Tokanui. Between 1865 and 1868, the Crown confiscated 290,000 acres of land around Tauranga, including lands in which Ngāti Tara Tokanui had interests. From 1868, the rangatira Te Keepa Raharuhi entered agreements for gold prospecting and mining on Ngāti Tara Tokanui lands in the hope that Ngāti Tara Tokanui could retain ownership of their land and gain income from leases in mining agreements. Instead, the Native Land Court processes left Ngāti Tara Tokanui in debt, and the Crown’s lease arrangements for mining at Ōhinemuri did not provide Ngāti Tara Tokanui any income from goldmining on their lands. Later, Crown purchasing and the operation of native land laws and public works takings further alienated, divided, and fragmented Ngāti Tara Tokanui land.

In 1895, the Crown authorised the discharge of mine tailings, including cyanide-treated waste, into the Ōhinemuri and Waihou rivers. Ngāti Tara Tokanui used the rivers as water sources for washing and drinking, and the poisonous discharges caused illness and, in some cases, death.

Crown actions and omissions caused harm to Ngāti Tara Tokanui communities, whānau, hapū, and iwi, and left Ngāti Tara Tokanui virtually landless by the 1920s. To put that into context, before the land alienations started, Ngāti Tara Tokanui had literally tens of thousands of acres of land. By 1896, that was down to 2,500 acres of land, and then, by the early part of the 20th century, it was just 290 acres. That was the level of devastation of landholdings of Ngāti Tara Tokanui caused by the Crown’s actions. In the deed, the Crown acknowledges that until now, it has failed to address the longstanding grievances of Ngāti Tara Tokanui in an appropriate way, and that recognition and provision of redress for these grievances is long overdue.

The Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill will give effect to the Ngāti Tara Tokanui settlement package, and this includes financial redress of $6 million, the vesting of seven sites of cultural significance in Ngāti Tara Tokanui, including Mimitu Pā and Tawhitiaraia, and two sites jointly vested with neighbouring iwi Hako and Ngāti Tamaterā, including Karangahake. The Karangahake area is especially significant to Ngāti Tara Tokanui. It has been described as the manawa, or heart, of their rohe, and I’m pleased their relationship with this area will be recognised by the redress through this bill. The redress also includes relationship protocols with Crown agencies, statements of association for 14 areas of significance, including the Ōhinemuri River and its tributaries, and enhancing Ngāti Tara Tokanui’s ability to participate in resource management processes. It also includes an overlay classification, or whenua rāhui, which provides for the Crown to acknowledge iwi values in relation to Karangahake Scenic Reserve, and, finally, a cultural redress payment for Ngāti Tara Tokanui cultural revitalisation.

In the coming weeks, this country will celebrate Matariki. Matariki represents many things but, most importantly, new beginnings such as the beginning of the new year. In the same way, this first reading of the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill represents a new beginning for Ngāti Tara Tokanui and the Crown. While no settlement package could ever fully compensate for such a magnitude of loss, suffering, and prejudice, it’s my sincere hope that this package will provide a foundation for prosperity for Ngāti Tara Tokanui and provide a foundation for the Crown to rebuild its relationship with Ngāti Tara Tokanui based on trust, cooperation, and partnership, as it should have been many generations ago.

I propose that the bill should proceed without delay to the Māori Affairs Committee. I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, mauri ora ki a tātou katoa.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia ora, Minita. Ko te pātai kia whakaaetia te mōtini.

[Thank you, Minister. The question is that the motion be agreed to.]

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, huri noa i te Whare nei, he mihi atu ki a koutou katoa. Tēnei te mihi nau mai haere mai te iwi o Ngāti Tara Tokanui, he mihi atu ki a koutou katoa.

[Thank you, Speaker, and throughout the House today, acknowledgments to you all. I am delighted to welcome you all here. Welcome, Tara Tokanui nation, greetings to you all.]

I rise to speak on the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill for its first reading. This bill gives effect to certain matters containing the deed of settlement, signed on 28 July 2022 between the Crown and Ngāti Tara Tokanui. It is the final settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Tara Tokanui of all historical Te Tiriti o Waitangi claims resulting from acts or omissions by the Crown before 21 September 1992. I wish to take a moment to acknowledge the work done by the negotiators; the Crown officials; the present Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Andrew Little; the previous Minister Christopher Finlayson; and all others who have been involved in, no doubt, a big piece of work to get it to this point.

This package includes an agreed historical account, Crown acknowledgments and apology, a cultural redress of $444,166, financial and commercial redress of $6 million, and collective redress through the Pare Hauraki Collective Redress Deed. The iwi of Ngāti Tara Tokanui has an area of interest centred around the Hauraki region, and the 2018 census estimated that Ngāti Tara Tokanui had 834 members. Ngāti Tara Tokanui and Ngāti Koi traced their origins to Tara, who migrated from Maungatautari in the 16th century.

This bill is intended to address the wrongs that have been done in the past as best as that can be done. Always in these Treaty settlement processes there can never be a full reflection of wrongs that have been done in the past, but this is intended to address that as best as possible to provide a base from which the Crown and Ngāti Tara Tokanui can move forward and importantly, create a better future for their iwi and for those who follow and come after them, which is what these Treaty settlement processes are intended to do—and it certainly is my hope that that will be the case here.

We are supporting this through to select committee. There are a few things that we will wish to seek a little bit more detail on at the select committee, including some of the governance arrangements that are proposed in this, the conservation framework, some of the catchment authorities, and the proposal to transfer ownership of any Crown minerals and lands transferred to Ngāti Tara Tokanui except for petroleum, gold, silver and uranium. So we will be seeking some more information and clarity, and look forward to hearing from the community and from other interested members, and, importantly, from Ngāti Tara Tokanui if they wish to speak at that process.

But this is an important process; it is an important step forward, and it is good to see that this is able to be progressed towards what is, hopefully—well, what should be the final step in this process in respect of the issues that are addressed in the bill. I do note that Ngāti Tara Tokanui is also a member of the Hauraki Collective and will receive collective redress through the Pare Hauraki Collective Redress Deed, which does include other iwi, and there’s no doubt it’s been a very select piece of work in its own right, but that will be addressed separately in another bill.

Paeroa and the area around it is a special place. I can say I have been there a number of times over my lifetime and known people who lived there and had a deep connection to the environment; in fact, an old friend of my mum’s was a potter who had a little section just outside of Paeroa and had done a lot of work rehabilitating that land, growing trees, and making some pretty amazing pottery. So I know some of the objectives that are set out in this bill, about improving the environmental outcomes, and the quality of water, etc., will be well welcomed by many in that region, and that’s something that will find a wide community of interest who have agreement on those tenets that this bill does touch on.

I was an army reservist at one point—I’ll just throw this in here—and I did have the privilege one day, on Anzac Day, to go in as an army reservist and present arms to recognise those who have gone before and those who have sacrificed for a country, which, I note, would have been members of Ngāti Tara Tokanui as well in years past. So I will conclude my contribution, and we will have more to say.

I do look forward to this and I hope that I have an opportunity to hear evidence when this matter comes before the select committee. These are quite special, these processes, and they are certainly very challenging for all involved. But it’s really important that we are able to resolve these issues as best we can; to put right as best we can in the current time those things that have gone wrong in the past, and to create a solid and enduring basis for people to be able to live good lives going into the future, which is what these settlement bills aim to do. So thank you, Madam Speaker, and with that I will conclude my contribution.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi o te wā Matariki hei a koe. As the Minister said, this is the time of Matariki. Matariki is in the sky and that is a time for all of us to look to the year ahead and the possibilities that it brings us, but it’s also a time to reflect on the power of te pō and te whaiao, those periods of time in our metaphysical history as well as our real time at the beginning of the day before the dawn breaks. It’s a time of possibility but it’s also the time of profound darkness and the difference between the darkness and the light is what we notice there with te whaiao, and that time is the time for us to think about those things that we have done, which have wronged the people around us. I allude to those parts of our history as Māori because it is in all of our whakapapa, because these settlement bills are some of the most important work that this Parliament does. They are the time for the Crown to atone, to say sorry for things we have done that have wronged people, that have hurt generations, and that now we have the opportunity to put right. It’s a real privilege as a member of Parliament to be a part of that process, and it’s not one that any of us take lightly.

So to those members of Ngāti Tara Tokanui who are watching today, I say thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this process, this moment in history for you, and to carry with us our role of stewarding this bill to effect the deed of settlement, which you have entered into with the Crown in good faith, through its final part of the process of lawmaking.

If I can take the House to one of the most important parts of this bill, which is giving effect to the agreed historical account in the deed, those historical accounts are a feature of all settlements—as my colleague on the other side of the House alluded to, this bill is a part of a broader collective settlement which is an approach that the Crown elected to take in June 2009, when it was proposed that a regional approach to Treaty settlements for iwi and hapū with interests in the Hauraki region would be taken. The Pare Hauraki settlement is a piece of collective redress which acknowledges the overlapping interests that all of the iwi and hapū have within this piece of land, and that goes along with a sort of shared account of those collective interests. But it’s in this bill that Ngāti Tara Tokanui has an agreed account of its history, and so it’s important to recognise that—it might be the most important part of it.

These grievances stem back to te raupatu in Tauranga in 1864 to the land which is known as Waimatā, which is the name given by Ngāti Tara Tokanui to the land which would become known as the Tauranga Confiscation District. Those lands have been subject to a number of inquiries by the Waitangi Tribunal, and I have a personal connection to those inquiries because my father was involved in them as one of the original historical researchers in the time before he was a journalist. He spent years of his life recording interviews and direct evidence with kaumātua and kuia from around the region, who told their oral histories and the recollections of what happened in Tauranga to them personally and also to their whānau—recollections of trauma that had been handed down to them, and it was something that they carried and they shared with him. He was also responsible for compiling notes from the Native Land Court and writings of the chiefs of the area to the Native Land Court and to the commissioner who was the representative of the Crown in Hauraki at the time. Those reports that the Waitangi Tribunal has compiled—Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana, the report on the Tauranga confiscation claims; the Hauraki report; the Tauranga Moana report on post-raupatu claims in the Hauraki settlement overlay the claims inquiry.

All of those inquiries have given the Crown and the Minister the benefit of those historical accounts which have been prepared by many people over time, thinking about the legal rights that arise from each of those instances. So that has informed the deeds that have been agreed that we have before us, which this legislation gives effect to. It’s a real benefit to the Ministers when those historical inquires have been done by the Waitangi Tribunal and by the historians who have been involved.

One of the letters I spoke of as being evidence in the Native Land Court is recorded in the historical account, and I want to present it to the House as an example of the kind of writings that make the case. “In October 1869, Te Keepa Raharuhi”—which the Minister referred to—“wrote to the Native Minister and the Crown’s representative in Hauraki asking them to honour undertakings negotiated at an earlier hui”. He wrote, “E hoa mā tēnā kōrua. He kupu tāku kia kōrua, ko mātou whakaaro kua tūturu ki runga ki o tātou whakaaro. E hoa mā, tera pea mātou e mate i te Hauhau, e ngari kei a kōrua te whakaaro kia mātou. Kāore hoki e tahi o mātou i whiwhi i te tika, i enei mo te wahi, e kino ai Te Hauhau kia mātou. E hoa mā, tēnei ano tētehi o a mātou kupu kia kōrua. Kō matou pīhī whenua i roto i te rohe a te Kawana, i te takiwā o Katikati i tukua e mātou kia Te Maki i mua. Whaka-ae ana ia i tēnei ra ka tukua atu e mātou kia kōrua, ma kōrua e whakaputa mai kia mātou. He oi ano te kupu kia kōrua.”

[“Friends, greetings. I have a message to you both, our thoughts, we have agreed to what us and you suggested. Friends, we may die at the hands of the Hauhau, but we will leave our decisions to you. Not one of us received any rights to this block where the Hauhaus may not like us. Friends, this is another message to you. Our piece of land within the boundaries of the Government, in the Katikati district, we gave to Mackay before. He agrees on this day to give over to you, for you to hand back to us. This is all we have to say.”]

That writing from the chief represented the plight of his people. It is about his fear of attack and of the vulnerability of his people, not only through the land takings—because Crown land was not set aside for his people—but also to neighbours, who in the context of the 1860s when raupatu had occurred, it had destabilised the community of iwi and hapū who were living on the land at the time. So it’s representative of the political strife and the real threat to people’s lives at that time that the Crown was interfering and taking land in an ecology and a community that had been working before that. In the decades before Te Keepa was writing, there had been prosperous trade in the region, but land takings over time and raupatu and then outright conflict had destabilised the society, and that is the context in which he was writing to the Crown—an appeal of working together, of collaboration, which fell on deaf ears. That is part of why the Crown needs to atone for that now. It’s not only the loss of land and loss of life; it’s also the loss of trust that came about during those years.

I’m proud to be the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, which will consider this bill, and I look forward to more discussions in the select committee about the history which is so important to recognise. I commend this bill.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): E tū nei au i runga i te whakaaro, “nōu tōu piki amokura, nōku tōku piki amokura”, me te tautoko hoki i ngā kōrero mō tēnei wā. Āe, e tika ana te kōrero, e taku tuahine, ko te wā o te Matariki. Engari i mua mai i tērā kāhui whetū, ko Puanga tērā. I muri mai ko Te Atutahi, nā reira Puanga, Matariki, Atutahi, e mihi ana, e mihi ana.

Hei whakawāwāhi i āku kōrero e tere nei i te ahiahi, ko te rau matataki o te aumihi, o te auaroha ki a Whetumarama Wereta. Tautoko ana i ngā kōrero, nō Ngāti Ranginui, nō Ngāi Te Rangi kua ngaro ki tana tāne, a Tūmanako. Engari hei tā te kōrero, nāna ngā whetū mārama me tērā kātuarehe tangata kaitā, a Matiu Rata, i tuhi mai, i whakarite mai ai i ngā pepa e kīia nei i tēnei wā ko te Ture Treaty of Waitangi 1975. I roto i tō Whetumarama me Tūmanako rūma whakaata, ehara i te Whakaata Māori, Whakaata Pākehā, nāna me tōna ringa tuhi i whai mai i ngā kōrero a Matiu Rata i tērā wā.

 Nā reira e mihi ana ki a ia me te whakatakoto hoki i te huarahi kei te takahia i tēnei wā e Ngāti Tara Tokanui. Mei ka kore a ia me tōna momo a Matiu mā, ka kore tātou e wānanga i tēnei kaupapa i tēnei wā. Hāunga ko āna mahi ki te kāhui mātauranga o Pīkau, ki te Kōmihana Rōera, mō ngā mahi pōti, te taonga o te mate, te manawa tītī, te kākākura o te mahi tatauranga. Nō te Paati Reipa ōna whakaaro, engari mō tātou katoa āna mahi. Kei te mihi atu ki a ia me te whare pōtae pūāwai mai, ka hui e, ka tāiki e.

Te Aroha me Moehau ngā maunga. Tīkapa te pātaka kai, Tīkapa Moana. Ōhinemuri te awa. Ngāti Tara Tokanui te iwi. Ngahutoitoi te marae. Te Awapū te tupuna whare, me Te Aroha te wharekai. E mihi ana.

Kei ngā uri whakaheke a Whatihua, tērā o ngā kāwai tupuna o te waka o Tainui, tae atu ki a Tara me ngā iwi taketake a Ngā Marama, tae atu ki a Tokanui, nau mai, haere mai ki tō koutou nei Whare Miere, ki tō koutou nei whare tōrangapū. Me te mea nei mauria mai ō koutou wawata kia pūāwai mai anō ngā uaratanga me ngā whakatinanatanga a ngā tūpuna mātua. Te whakahohou i te rongo ki tēnei Whakaaetanga Whakataunga i waenganui i a koutou me te Karauna. Āe, ko te whakahoki whenua tērā, ko ngā whakapāha me ngā mihi a te Karauna tērā, te whakarite pūtea me te whakarārangi manatū, te whakarārangi kawenata i waenganui i a koutou me ngā maikuku o te Karauna ā ngā rangi ka heke.

Mai i Maungatautari ki Paeroa ki Hauraki, me whāki ka tika ēnei papa kāinga hei tāpiri atu ki ngā miniti o tēnei Whare: te wai o Rongomai, Pīraurahi, Mimitu, Tawhitiaraia, Pouarua, Maramarua, tērā o ngā kātū pāmu nui o Hauraki, te Kura Māia, Ōpūkeko, Whangamatā, tae atu ki Tūhua, ki te motu rā, te mūrau o te tini, te wenerau o te mano mō ngā taonga toka, ngā taonga kōhatu whakahaehae i te poho a tēnā, a tēnā. Ngā repo me ngā wai a waka a Tiki Te Aroha, te puna ora, te puna kai a tūpuna mātua ki te pō. Kei ngā tūpuna te tai o Whakarea. Matarehua Maioro mā, hoki mai anō hei rama, hei ārahi hoki i tō koutou iwi e tere nei.

Kua kitea ngā āhuatanga o tēnei momo pepa, te whakariterite mai i ngā kokoraho a iwi mā, a hapū mā. Kei te whakapono te Karauna me tō koutou iwi ki ngā hītori me ngā hurt-ori o te iwi, ngā pūtea, ngā rawa, me ērā atu o ngā kātū ahuatanga, ngā hononga i waenganui i a koutou me te Karauna. Engari kei te tāhūhū o tō koutou nei whare tupuna, a Te Awapū, me ngā pakitara ā-whare, e maumahara ana ki ngā wā o te heke, ki ngā wā o te piki, me te ake ake e tere nei. Ngā mahi hoko whenua, whakapēhi tangata a te Karauna. Ērā kōrero a taku tua’ine, a taku hoa, a Arena, e pā ana ki ngā mahi raupatu ki Tauranga Moana, me te tāhae i ngā whenua a Tara Tokanui, e mihi ana ki a koutou.

Ngā mahi ki te whakatū rua kōura ki Ōhinemuri, ki Ōwhāroa, ka kino hoki ngā mahi o tērā rautau, me ngā kīanga a te kōti whenua, me ngā hononga, ngā mahi tāmana pūtea i waenganui i ō koutou tūpuna me te Karauna. E pērā ana ki ēte’i atu o ngā iwi e tere nei ki te Ika a Māui pērā i a W’anganui me Mōkai Pātea, tērā āhuatanga o te tāmana, he mahi kino rawa, ehara i te kino o te reka, he kino te kino.

Ka paitini ō koutou awa, ka ngaro hoki ngā repo, ka pekepeke mai Te Keepa mā, heoi tē rongo a te Karauna me ēnei āhuatanga. Kātahi te whakaawa i ngā mānia me ngā repo o Hauraki kua tere atu ki te moana, kua tere atu ngā wai me ngā kai. Ērā o ngā drainage schemes nei ki Hauraki, e hoa, tapu tapu tapu rawa te kite i a koutou i te rā nei, wetiweti, e hoa mā, wetiweti.

Ka whakamīharo, ka matakoakoa hoki e ō koutou piringa ki Aongatete, ki Karangahake, ki Wharekawa hoki, me ērā o ngā kātū whanaungatanga i waenganui i a koutou me ngā iwi katoa o Pare Hauraki. Pērā i a Ngāti Hei me Ngāti Paoa i ngā wiki ka taha ake nei, me tērā iwi taketake a Wiremu Brown mā ki Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki. Me te mea nei, te kī mai a ruahine, te tupuna wahine o Waikato a Te Puea, “mahia te mahi hei painga mō te iwi”. Ka pai hoki. Te whai mai i a Te Puea, ki te tika mai te utu, hokona. Koirā ngā kōrero mō te Kāreti o Paeroa e tere nei, e whakatakoto nei hei kura, hei rawa moni ā-tau mā koutou.

Kei te tārewa tonu ēte’i āhuatanga o te pire mō mātou o te Paati Kahurangi, mō mātou o te Rōpū Nāhinara, engari ki tō Te Awa Matua, e tino tautoko ana i ēnei mahi, te rere o ngā kōrero, te rere o te haere, ngā whakariterite kei mua i te aroaro o te tangata. Me ngā kōrero a taku hoa, a Hōhepa Mooney mō tērā āhuatanga.

Atu i tērā ko ngā whakahaeretanga i waenganui i a koutou ko Te Papa Atawhai; ki te whai rongoa koutou, me whakamōhio mai ki a mātou katoa i te mea ehara i te mahi poka noa, ehara i te mahi hanga noa; he mahi kai tangata te mahi tahi me Te Papa Atawhai. E mihi ana ki a Willow-Jean i tēnei wā e whakaupoko nei i tērā taha o te Karauna.

E tika ana te kōrero, e mihi ana ki ngā Minita nā rāua hoki i ārahi mai ai i tēnei kaupapa. Ko Kiritopa Finlayson i te tuatahi, engari kua riro i tēnei wā mā Anaru Paku te whakahoki i tēnei āhuatanga, i tēnei pepa ki mua i te aroaro o ngā kaitōrangapū i tēnei wā. Nō reira kei te mihi au ki te Minita mō ēnei āhuatanga, mō ngā kerēme Māori, a Anaru Paku, me te mea nei mākona ana te ngākau, e koa ana te wairua o tana hiakai, o tana ngana ki te tautoko, ki te kaha whakahaere i ngā kerēme i kei mua i tō tātou Whare nei. Ahakoa he mahi kai tangata, he uaua parāoa ōna i tēnei wā. Nā reira kei te mihi atu ki a ia.

Kāore e roa ka whiriwhiri mai, ka kitekite mai i a koutou e whai ana i tō koutou huarahi. Hei whakatauira hoki i tērā huarahi, ka kite mai i a Waikato-Tainui, ka kite mai i a Ngāti Ranginui, ka kite mai i ngā kātū iwi katoa o Te Ika a Māui, whiti atu ki Te Wai Pounamu, me ngā motu tautoko a Wharekauri.

Taihoa ake nei, tēnā pea, kāore au i kite i te pounamu L&P, te pounamu Rēmana me te Paeroa i roto i tēnei pire, me te whakaaro hoki tēnā pea kāore i tau atu tērā kōrero i waenganui i a koutou, engari ko te tikanga me ngā whakataukī a kui mā, a koro mā, “mā mua ka kitea a muri; mā muri ka ora a mua”. Nā reira ki a Russell, tērā o ngā hoa rōia, ki a Amelia, engari ki a koutou katoa, nau mai, kawe mai i ēnei mānuka takoto ki mua i a tātou. Tēnā tātou katoa.

[I stand on the concept, “your school of thought is yours, my school of thought is mine”, and I also support the statements made at this time. Yes, the comment is true, my sister, it is now the time of Matariki. But prior to that was that other constellation, it is Puanga. Afterwards it was Atutahi, and so Puanga, Matariki, Atutahi, I greet you, I acknowledge you.

To open my statements that will flow this afternoon, effusive acknowledgments and condolences for Whetumarama Wereta. I support the comments, from Ngāti Ranginui, from Ngāi Te Rangi, she has gone on to her husband, to Tūmanako. But according to the narrative, it was her, alongside that other esteemed gentleman, Matiu Rata, who aligned the bright stars, who wrote and prepared the papers known these days as the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975. Inside the television room of Whetumarama and Tūmanako, not Māori Television, mainstream television, it was her and her drafting hand that followed the discourse of Matiu Rata at that time.

So I acknowledge her who blazed the path that is being walked at this time by Ngāti Tara Tokanui. If it wasn’t for her and her ilk, Matiu and others, we would not be debating this topic at this time. That alongside her work with the academic community of Pīkau, the Law Commission, her work in elections, the treasure who has passed on, the determination, the eminent leader in the statistics sector. Her ideas were from the Labour Party, but her work was for all of us. I acknowledge her and the house of grieving that flourishes, assembled and bound in conclusion.

Te Aroha and Moehau are the mountains. Tīkapa is the food source, the Hauraki Gulf. Ōhinemuri is the river. Ngāti Tara Tokanui is the iwi Ngahutoitoi is the marae. Te Awapū is the ancestral hall, and Te Aroha is the dining hall. Greetings.

To the descendants of Te Whatihua, that ancestral line from the Tainui canoe, including Tara and the indigenous people, Ngā Marama, and including Tokanui, welcome, welcome to your Beehive, to your house of politics. And also bring with you your aspirations so that they may flourish, as well as the values of the forebears, and the implementation. The forging of peace through this deed of settlement between you and the Crown. Yes, that includes the return of land, that includes the apologies and acknowledgments of the Crown, the organising of finances and the listing of various ministries, the alignment of covenants between you and the claws of the Crown in the days that follow.

From Maungatautari to Paeroa to Hauraki, it is appropriate to mention these settlements so they are included in the minutes of this House: the water of Rongomai, Pīraurahi, Mimitu, Tawhitiaraia, Pouarua, Maramarua, that enormous farm in Hauraki, Kura Māia, Ōpūkeko, Whangamatā, all the way to Mayor Island, to that island, that inspires the masses, and is envied by the multitudes for the stone artefacts, the stone implements that are used to lacerate the chests of the many. The wetlands and the waterways of Tiki Te Aroha, the fountain of wellbeing, the source of nourishment of our late forebears. To the ancestors of the coast of Whakarea, Matarehua Maioro and others, return to us to light and lead the way for your people that have sailed here.

The nature of these kinds of papers is easy to see, the preparation of the claims of the many iwi, the many hapū. The Crown and your iwi believe the histories and the hurt-stories of the people, the finances, the resources, and those types of things, the connections between you and the Crown. But the ridgepole of your ancestral hall, of Te Awapū, and the walls of the house, remember the times of the ups and the times of the downs, and the eternity that flows on. The alienation of land, the suppression of the people by the Crown. Those statements of my sister, my colleague, Arena, with respect to the confiscations in Tauranga Moana, and the theft of the lands of Tara Tokanui, I acknowledge you.

The work to establish gold mines at Ōhinemuri, at Ōwhāroa, the actions of that century are indeed wicked, not wickedly good, but wickedly wicked.

Your rivers were polluted, the wetlands disappeared, Te Keepa and others jumped up and down, but the Crown did not hear these things. Then the drainage of the plains and wetlands of Hauraki that flowed out to the sea, the water and food washed away. Those types of drainage schemes in Hauraki, oh boy, what an amazing thing it is to see you here today, awesome, my friends, awesome.

I am amazed and happy also because of your relationships in Aongatete, Karangahake, and Wharekawa too, and those types of relationships between you and all of the iwi of Coromandel and Hauraki. Like Ngati Hei and Ngāti Paoa in recent weeks, and that indigenous people of Wiremu Brown and others in Ngāti Tai ki Tāmaki. And also, in the words of the matriarch, the female ancestor of Waikato, Te Puea, “do the work for the benefit of the people”. So good. Following the example of Te Puea, if the price is right, buy it. Those are the statements about Paeroa College that sails on, established to be an asset, an annual income resource for you.

Some of the features of this bill are still pending for us of the blue party, for us of the National Party, but according to Te Awa Matua, we very much support this work, the flow of the discussion, the flow of the journey, and the arrangements that are now before us. And the statements of my colleague, Joseph Mooney, about that very thing.

Aside from that, the management between yourselves and the Department of Conservation; if you find a solution, you must inform all of us because it is not something that can be done off the cuff, it is no simple thing; it is dog-eat-dog working alongside the Department of Conservation. I acknowledge Willow-Jean at this time that is heading up that side of the Crown.

The comment is true, I acknowledge the Ministers who have lead this work. Initially it was Christopher Finlayson, but it has been left up to Andrew Little at this time to return this thing, this paper before the politicians at this time. So I acknowledge the Minister for this thing, for the Māori claims, Andrew Little, and also my heart is satisfied, my soul is happy due to the hunger, and the persistence to support, and to strongly manage the claims that are before our House. Even though it is a soul destroying job, he has the strength of a whale at this time. So I thank him.

It won’t be long before we discuss, before we see you following your pathway. As an example of that pathway, we see Waikato-Tainui, we see Ngāti Ranginui, we see all manner of iwi in the North Island, crossing over to the South Island, and the supportive islands of the Chathams.

Hang on a minute, perhaps, I have yet to see the L&P bottle, the Lemon and Paeroa bottle in this bill, and the thought occurs that that discussion hasn’t landed among you, but in the customs and proverbs of our matriarchs, of our patriarchs, “through the work by those leading, those who are supporting are seen; and by the work of those supporting, those that are leading are made strong”. So to Russell, that one of my lawyer colleagues, and to Amelia, but to all of you, welcome. Bring before all of us these challenges. Greetings to us all.]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): Ka tanuku, ka tanuku ka tanuku te tihi o maunga nui a hā, he kapo ki te whetū he kapo ki te marama he kapo ki tātou, kei aku raukura ka riro rā, he tangi ana te ngākau i te rironga a Whetumarama Wereta īnanahi nei. Nō reira e kui he tika ki te maumahara tō mahi mō Te Ao Māori, he wahine toa, he wahine matatau, nō reira e kui moe mai, moe mai, moe mai rā.

[The mountain there yonder has collapsed. Snatch the stars, snatch the moon, snatch humankind as it does, our departed have gone from us. My heart aches for the loss of Whetumarama Wereta only yesterday. Therefore, it is right to pay homage to your tireless efforts for the world of the Māori, a courageous woman, a wise woman, and so rest well, rest well, rest well in peace.]

I want to support the previous speaker in his beautiful poroporoaki. We’re starting off by saluting this kui who’s died, and one of the—as most Māori members in the House know—most influential kui and Māori women in recent years, Whetu Wereta. She was a Māori statistician, whom there were very few of, and had a huge influence in terms of people around Wellington. She trained people like Peter Douglas, which must have been tough, but she also trained Peter Douglas, who’s with the Prime Minister’s office, and Geoff Short, one of our finest bureaucrats. She trained my wife also, and was a mentor for my wife.

I wanted to just mention her today because I was listening to the member Tama Potaka, with his beautiful poroporoaki, and I wanted to tautoko that because some of these kui, some of these wāhine, are very much some of the unsung heroes of Te Ao Māori. Her husband, of course, was a bit of a star—Tūmanako, as we know. But she was the tuarā—she was the backbone. She was brilliant. A lot of people are going out and I want that member to hoatu taku aroha ki tōna whānau [pay my respects to her family] when he goes out to pay his respects, and she’ll be going to Rātana Pā on Saturday.

She was manager for the Māori Statistics and the Ministry of Māori Development. She also spent time at the Department of Internal Affairs. She rejoined the Department of Statistics as the general manager, and Whetu served on the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO. She was a member of the five-person 1985-86 New Zealand Royal Commission on the Electoral System. We salute her, we remember her, and we thank her and her whānau for her contribution to this country.

In terms of today’s bill, in terms of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, I’m very happy along with other members to tautoko our kaupapa today. While this is the first reading, I think we’re all just making different points. As I was reading through this and looking to the—listening to the Chair and others talking about this kaupapa, I can’t help but be absorbed by the story of the rangatira Te Keepa Raharuhi, who, like many of our people, had faith in the system in 1868, and he entered into agreements for gold, prospecting and mining on Ngāti Tara Tokanui lands in the hope that his people Ngāti Tara Tokanui could retain ownership of their land, and gain income from leases in mining agreements. Instead, sadly, the Native Land Court processes left Ngāti Tara Tokanui in debt, and the Crown’s lease arrangements for mining at Ōhinemuri did not provide Ngāti Tara Tokanui any income from goldmining on their lands.

That story from that rangatira is replicated in so many settlements that it can bring you to tears. It’s something that when I was going through the settlement, I thought that this story has just been retold and said in so many settlements, and I just want to salute that rangatira’s legacy. He’s someone to remember, and I’ll talk further on this kaupapa as we get into the second and third reading. Tika ana ki te maumahara tēnei rangatira, tana mahi ki te kokiri te kaupapa kokiri te kaupapa i ngā wā katoa he poto te kōrero i tēnei wa, Madam Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa.

[It is right to pay homage to this esteemed individual, his esteemed efforts to take charge of this matter, to always carry out the work that needs doing. I’ll keep my speech short at this stage, Madam Speaker. Thank you all very much.]

SIMON COURT (ACT): The ACT Party is proud to support this settlement. The ACT Party supports the concept of property rights, and where one group of New Zealanders find that their property rights have been impacted by the behaviour or the actions of another group, including the Crown, the ACT Party believes that those people whose property rights have been infringed should have their day in court, and, in this case, their day in Parliament.

So the ACT Party will support this claims settlement bill. I do note that many of the places that the redress—particularly the cultural redress properties and Ngā Whenua Rāhui—applies to are places that many New Zealanders would recognise and enjoy, particularly people travelling regularly from Auckland to the Bay of Plenty and vice versa, through the Karangahake Gorge. So it is of great interest to many people that these places have care and protection, and that is what this bill anticipates.

It is also wonderful to see the acknowledgment that the minerals in part of the lands that have been returned to Ngāti Tara Tokanui are available to be developed, because one thing that New Zealand is blessed with is many minerals, not just gold and silver but others that are absolutely vital as we move into a technology century. If we want to achieve a low-emissions, low-carbon economy, having access to those minerals and being able to derive value from them means that we can create not just economic value but social benefits from the employment that development of those mineral resources allows.

So we hope that under the guardianship and care of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, they will find a way to develop the land that is available to them and to enrich themselves and their people for many generations to come. So, with that, I just want to summarise that the ACT Party supports this bill.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Ka tū ake tēnei hei Māngai mō ngā Kākariki ki te tāpiri atu aku nei mihi ki ngā mema katoa o te Whare. Ki a koutou Ngāti Tara Tokanui mēnā kei te noho i konei ki te Whare nei rānei ki roto i te ao tiwi te reo irirangi rānei anei mātou e tautoko ana tautoko katoa ngā mihi ki a rātou mā kua riro atu ki te pō rātou anō i whakapou werawera i roto i ngā tau kia tau tēnei pire ki tōna āhuatanga katoa, nō reira ngā ringa rehe ngā ringa whiti ngā ringa ikahāpai i tēnei o ngā kaupapa anei mātou ngā Kākariki e mihi atu ana ki tēnā o ngā kaupapa.

I au e rangahau ana ngā kaupapa kōrero mō tēnei o ngā pire i te mea ko te mea pai ki au kia mārama te taha o te tātai whakapapa te taha o te tangata me te piringa ki te whenua mā runga i tērā mārama ka puta te mōhio i tēnei mea ngā ngau kino ngā tūkino a ngā kāwana a te Karauna ki ēnei o ngā iwi kia tino mārama tātou ki tēnā nō reira mihi atu ki a koutou Ngāti Tara Tokanui ki tō hitori. I haere au ki tā koutou nei pae tukutuku kia tino mōhio au i ngā kōrero tuku iho mai ō koutou nei mātua tīpuna.

I heke a Ngāti Tara Tokanui mai i maunga Tautari i ngā rā o mua kātahi ka whakarite pā me te kāinga tata ki te tāone e tū nei a Paeroa i au i whakaaro ake mō te taha Paeroa i te mea ehara nō taku taha Māori engari nō taku taha kuki airini i te wā i te hūnuku mai ōku whānau mai te Kuki Airani ko te tāone tuatahi i noho nei rātou ko Paeroa. Kātahi pērā te nuinga o ngā tāngata i hunuku mai i ngā Airani i heke mātou katoa ki Tāmaki Makaurau, nō reira e mihi atu ki a koutou e noho tonu ana ki tērā o ngā tāone.

A Tara he pānga nōna i te mea ko ia te teina o Te Kauwhata me Tūkōrehu he mokopuna rātou ō Raukawa. He karangatahi a ia ki a Marutuahu. Ki roto i ngā pire i pānuihia e mātou ki roto i ngā wiki, kua kaha putaputa ērā o ngā ingoa i te mea mēnā kei te whakaaro tātou ki ngā horopaki o Tikapa Moana kāore e kore he piringa he wehenga he tukinga ētahi o ngā wā, heoi anō, nā te tātai o te whakapapa o te whānau o te hapū o te iwi tērā te whāriki e hono i a tātou ki a tātou otirā i a rātou ki a rātou.

E ai ki ngā rangahau ko te ingoa o Ngāti Tara Tokanui he toka anō i whakaaro e te kawenata i waenganui o te awa pū o Ngāti Tara me te rāe o Ngāti Hako nā tō rātou nei whakapapa ki a Ngā Mārama ki tōna mārena ki a Hoturoa ka mutu ko Tarawa nō Ngāti Hako me Ngā Mārama tērā ngā piringa whakapapa. Heoi i au i pānuihia ki ngā kino huhua ki roto i te pire mai rānō i te mea i pērā ki ngā pire o mua kei konei ki roto i tēnei o ngā pire i timata ki roto i te pire me te toha atu i waenganui i te tau 1865 ki te tau 1868 ka raupatuhia e te Karauna ētahi 2,090 ēka i ngā whenua huri noa i Tauranga. Tini te mano o te tangata whenua i ēnei whenua, ahakoa te whakahoki a te Karauna te nuinga o taua rohe ki ētahi atu Māori me te pupuri tonu i ētahi 50,000 ēka mōna, e pā nō Tara Tokanui ki ngā whenua i riro i tēnei raupatu. I te tau 1864 ka hokona e te Karauna ētahi whenua i ngā poraka o Katikati me Te Puna mōna i tētahi atu iwi. Ka riro ētahi whenua o Ngāti Koi i taua wā ko Ngāti Koi ko rātou i tēnei tauhokohoko. I hoatu whenua ki ētahi atu, ko ēnei ngā pōraruraru ka puta ki tēnei o ngā ngaukino ki te iwi.

Haere tonu ka taka te wā ka kite i tērā i roto i ngā tau ngā tino raru ki a Ngāti Tara Tokanui. I te marama 1868 ko ngā rangatira o Ngāti Tara Tokanui tonu ētahi i hāina i tetahi whakaetanga me te Karauna kia whakatū maina, mahinga koura i Ōhinemuri. I te tau 1870 ka tono te rangatira o Ngāti Tara Tokanui tērā tipuna i kōrero te Whare, Te Keepa Raharuhi ki te Kōti Whenua Māori kia āta tirohia te taitara mō te Ōwhāroa kia whakāetia te mahinga koura nā runga i tērā nā ngā imi haere o ngā nama o te iwi te whai i ngā tukanga o te kōti ka pīkaungia e te iwi te taumahatanga ki runga i tērā, mā runga i tērā ka iti haere tō rātou nei mau ki ō rātou nei whenua ki ā rātou nei rawa. Hei tauira anō mai i te tau 1872 ka timata tētahi o ngā āpiha o te Karauna ki te utu tōmua i mua i te whakawhiwhinga taitara ki te whenua ki te tangata takitahi, i a mātou ka pānui i ēnei pire ko tēnei kaupapa i tīno kitea. Haramai te Karauna kātahi ka takitahi te Karauna i te whenua, ā tōna wā ka ngaro atu te whenua. I te mea he iwi takitini mātou te iwi, mēnā kei te takitahi te whenua, mea rawa ka ngaro haere. I kite mātou i tērā ki roto i ngā āhuatanga ngā tukanga o te kōti ki a Ngāti Tara Tokanui.

Tae noa ki te wā kua tino raru anō te taiao, ki ētahi atu kua paru i ngā toinga o ngā maina ki roto i te awa ka paru katoa mai i tērā o ngā āhuatanga kātahi ka porotū tō rātou nei tipuna me ngā Māori ki tērā o ngā āhuatanga. Me matua mōhio mai tātou ki ngā whakaaro o rātou mā nā te mea kei te noho tātou i roto i te horopaki o ngā pōraru o te āhuarangi i kite tātou ngā paru ki roto i ngā awa nō reira i whakaaro anō ērā o ngā tipuna i te wā i whawhai rātou mō ō rātou nei whenua. Anei anō ko Ngāti Tara Tokanui. He tauira anō mō tērā. Nō reira me kaha tātou ki te hoki atu ki tērā o ngā āhuatanga kia matua mōhio mai tātou, kia tiaki tātou te taiao ka tiaki tātou te tangata. Te piringa o te tangata ki te whenua; koira te take e kī ana he tangata whenua anō tātou.

Te rahinga o ēnei pire kua haramai i mua i a mātou te Kōmiti Whiriwhiri Take Māori, ehara i te māma, he uaua. He maha ngā aupiki ngā auheke, he maha ngā pouritanga ki tēnā i haere mai i mua i te komiti, nō reira kāore ēnei momo whakataunga kereme e āhei ana te ea i ēnā o ngā tino pōuri, heoi, ko tētahi mea pai o ēnei matapaki kōrero ētahi wā tautohetohe kōrero ko te puta o ngā kōrero kia tuku iho ki ō rātou nei mokopuna kia tukuiho ki ō rātou nei tamariki. Nō reira e tika ana te kōrero ko tēnei te wā o Matariki, me mānawatia a Matariki, me mānawatia ano hoki ō tātou nei hītori, te katoa, te hītori kei raro i ō rātou nei rekereke. Mā runga i tēnā te mārama o te tangata ki te hītori kei raro i ō rātou nei waewae kei raro i ō rātou nei rekereke. Ka taea e te tangata te tino mōhio ko wai ia, kei hea ia. He aha te take e pēnei ana te iti me te rahi o te whenua kei te Māori mā runga i tēnā ka puta tātou katoa ki te āo mārama.

Ki a mātou ngā Kākariki, ko tēnei mea Te Tiriti o Waitangi ehara i te kirimana noa ehara i te mea ka haere noa ki te hokomaha ki te tauhokohoko, kao. Ko tēnei mea Te Tiriti o Waitangi he kawenata he tūāpapa mō tātou katoa e noho ana ki Aotearoa nei. Ki runga i te ora ki runga i te pae, ki runga i ngā whakaaro o rātou mā i waitohu i Te Tiriti o Waitangi ki Waitangi i taua wā. Nō reira ko ahau anō tēnei nō ngā Te Paati Kākariki e mihi kau ana ki a koutou katoa ngā ringa rehe ngā ringa hāpai o tēnei kaupapa Ngāti Tara Tokanui, tēnā koutou, otirā te Whare tēnā koutou katoa.

[Greetings, Speaker. I stand here as a representative for the Greens to extend a warm welcome to all the members of the House. To you Ngāti Tara Tokanui, if you are here present or if you have tuned in via the radio station or TV, we are here to support, and to also support the acknowledgments to our loved ones who have been received by the night, and to everyone who gave their indefatigable efforts in the years to settle this bill to its full completion, and so to the experts of this matter here are the Greens in full acknowledgement.

As I was researching the relevant information regarding this bill, because I think it’s important to understand the genealogy and the connection to the land, through that you will understand the difficulties by the Crown towards these nations, and so acknowledgments to you all, Ngāti Tara Tokanui, and to your history. I searched up your webpage so that I could fully understand your history from your ancestors.

So in the old times, Ngāti Tara Tokanui left from Maunga Tautari and then set up their village near the small town Paeroa, which brings back memories regarding not my Māori side but my Cook Island side, when my families moved over from the Cook Islands where Paeroa was the first town in which they all settled. Then, like the majority of the rest that moved over from the Cooks, we all ended up in Auckland, and so I would like to acknowledge everyone still living in that town.

Tara has connections because he is the younger sibling to Te Kauwhata and Tūkōrehu who are all grandchildren of Raukawa, and a first cousin to Marutuahu. In the bill that I read in the past weeks those names appear often because if we think about Tikapa Moana no doubt there were times of separation, connections and time of strife as well, however, it is through genealogical connections to family, to nations that connects us together.

According to research, the name of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, a rock that the kawenata thought was between the river of Ngāti Tara and the bridge of Ngāti Hako, and it was through the genealogy to Ngā Mārama to her marriage to Hoturoa, also, Tarawa is from Ngāti Hako and Ngā Mārama, these are the genealogical links. Moreover, as I read all the bad in the bill from way back, because that’s how it was in all the old bills, in this bill it starts between the year 1865 to 1868, where the Crown confiscated around 2,090 acres of land around the Tauranga region. There were multitudes living around this are, although the Crown gave back most of that land to other Māori and held on to about 50,000 acres for the Crown, including an area of Tara Tokanui that was confiscated. In the year 1864, the Crown bought some lands in the Katikati and Te Puna blocks for itself from other tribes. Some lands from Ngāti Koi at that time, they were selling and buying. Land was given to others, these were some of the challenges that the iwi had to go through.

Moreover, as time went on many troubles came before Ngāti Tara Tokanui. In the year 1868, the leaders of Ngāti Tara Tokanui signed the agreement with the Crown to establish a gold mining project in Ōhinemuri. In the year 1870, the leader who is spoken about in the House, Te Keepa Raharuhi sent to the Native Land Court to carefully look at the title for Ōwhāroa to approve the goldmining, and due to that the difficulties of following that rules made it hard on that, and because of that their ability to hold on to their land and assets became difficult. Another example, in the year 1872, one of the Crown officers started to pay early before given the title to the land to the one person, and so, Speaker, when we read the bill this matter is very evident. The Crown came and then they divided the land, in time the land was lost. Because we are a multi-nation people, if the land is divided, in time no doubt it would be lost. We saw that in the court procedures to Ngāti Tara Tokanui.

Right up to when the land becomes waste, to others the leftover waste from the mine made its way to the river and due to that it became filthy, and then their ancestor and the Māori of the time protested. We really need to understand how they felt back then because we sit in the context with different challenges, they saw the waste in their rivers and so that was what they fought for when fighting for their lands. And that is Ngāti Tara Tokanui. Another example. And so we must be wise to go back to that process so that we are properly informed. So that we take care of the land and the people. The connection of the people to the land; as the saying goes, people are the land.

The many types of bills that are presented before us, the Māori Affairs Committee, they aren’t easy; they are hard. There are many ups and downs, and sorrow shown with what comes before the committee. So these settlement claims will not fully satisfy for the difficulties that have happened, however, some benefit moving forward is the discussions to have, and with the children as well. So it’s correct to say give thanks to Matariki, to honour Matariki, and to honour our history under their presence. People can fully understand who they are where they are and why the small and big things are done by Māori on their land, and through that we are all born to this world of light.

To us, the Greens, the Treaty of Waitangi is not only a contract; it’s not as if you just go to the shop to buy things, no. The Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement a foundation for all of us living here in New Zealand. Bonded by love and life, bonded by the people who signed the Treaty of Waitangi during that time. So this is me from the Greens thanking you all the experts and leaders of this kaupapa, Ngāti Tara Tokanui, thank you all, and also the House, thank you all as well.]

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill, and here we are again, in this House, talking about historical Treaty settlements. It is an uncomfortable truth for us as members of Parliament to come to this House, representing the Crown, knowing that it was the Crown that actually stripped Ngāti Tara Tokanui and many of our iwi across the land of their land, of their language, of their culture, and it’s an uncomfortable truth that we stand here today in this House and try and redress those wrongs.

You see, this is a shining example of colonisation, and I think that sometimes we don’t really—I think sometimes people that hear that word, they don’t dig into it, they don’t understand it, and so they put up a big barrier. If they were to only understand it—what we’re talking about right here now with this historical Treaty settlement, the uncomfortable truth about the actions of the Crown to alienate a people from their land and from their culture—then maybe there’d be a bit more sympathy out there in Aotearoa for the plight of Māori. But, unfortunately, there are still some people that will see this settlement, it will pass, and they will still believe that Māori are getting too much. They will still believe that we should not create spaces and places for Māori to be able to achieve the rangatiratanga and the mana motuhake that was signed up to in Te Tiriti o Waitangi all those years ago, back in 1840, and that covers the ones that did sign it but also the ones that didn’t sign it as well, because there’s plenty of iwi that didn’t sign it, but they were affected by it.

So this for me represents an attempt at trying to bring mana back to the people of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, to bring some redress, for the Crown to be able to accept the part that it played in that whole space, and an opportunity for, hopefully, the wider New Zealand public to understand that actually we’re still not out of the woods. We should be doing a better job of publicising these settlements so that we can share some of the hurt and the pain and the suffering, the loss of housing, the loss of land, the loss of language. We can share that with wider New Zealand so that they actually understand the pain that sits in these documents—the absolute pain.

For that reason, I need to read some of the acknowledgments, because I fear as though we don’t do a good job in this House of acknowledging that. I hope that some very intelligent people out there cut this up into little videos and play it out there on social media and share it so that people understand this settlement and the role that it plays in the history and the milestones of the people of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, but also understand that this is part of a long process that we’ve been on.

While some iwi have done really well—they’ve settled, they’ve moved on, and they’ve been able to address that historical pain—there are some that are still in the line and there are some that aren’t even in the line that wish they could get in the line. This is kōrero that’s going to go on well past my time here in Parliament, but if there’s one hope that I have, it’s that we do a better job of telling these stories.

So for that reason, I’ve got some time; I’m going to read through some of the acknowledgements that are listed as clause 9 in this settlement bill: “(1) The Crown acknowledges that until now it has failed to deal with the long-standing grievances of Ngāti Tara Tokanui in an appropriate way and that recognition of, and provision of redress for, these grievances is long overdue. (2) The Crown acknowledges that the Tauranga confiscation/raupatu and the subsequent Tauranga District Lands Act 1867 and Tauranga District Lands Act 1868 compulsorily extinguished all customary interests within the confiscation district, including those of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, and this was unjust and breached te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles. (3) The Crown acknowledges that it failed to actively protect Ngāti Tara Tokanui interests in lands that they wished to retain when it initiated the purchase of Te Puna and Katikati blocks in 1864 without investigating the rights of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, and this failure was in breach of te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles. (4) The Crown further acknowledges that—(a) Ngāti Tara Tokanui whānau and hapū had no choice but to participate in the Native Land Court system to protect their land against claims from others and to integrate land into the modern economy; and (b) the native land system caused division between hapū, and the Native Land Court title determination process carried significant costs, including survey and hearing costs, which at times led to further alienations of Ngāti Tara Tokanui land; and (c) the operation and impact of the native land laws, in particular the awarding of land to individual members of Ngāti Tara Tokanui rather than to the iwi or hapū, made those lands more susceptible to partition, fragmentation, and alienation; and (d) this contributed to the further erosion of the traditional tribal structures of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, which were based on collective tribal and hapū custodianship of land, and the Crown failed to take adequate steps to protect those structures and this was a breach of te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles. (5) The Crown acknowledges that—(a) it sought to purchase Ngāti Tara Tokanui interests in land blocks before title to the land was [even] determined by the Native Land Court, making payments that sometimes took the form of goods from storekeepers charged against Ngāti Tara Tokanui land; and (b) it made these payments despite recognising that they created severe divisions among Māori of the area; and (c) it agreed to lease the Ōhinemuri block from some of the owners in 1875 and assumed control of the leased land without the consent of all the owners. All the rents payable to Ngāti Tara Tokanui were used to repay the advances paid before 1875 even though some of the owners had not accepted any of these advances; and (d) it resumed purchasing Ōhinemuri in 1877 despite its commitment in 1875 to refrain from purchasing Ōhinemuri lands; and (e) it used monopoly powers in all negotiations to purchase Ngāti Tara Tokanui lands; and (f) the combined effect of these actions was that the Crown failed to actively protect the interests of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, and this was a breach of te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles.”

There’s a lot in this bill, and I want to thank the people of the tribe that have gotten to this point. And, as a previous member suggested, there are only about 800 of them left. So to them, I acknowledge your pain. I acknowledge their suffering. I acknowledge their kuia, their koroua, their tūpuna kuia, their tūpuna koroua that are no longer here to be able to witness this. I wish them the best on their journey, and I hope—I really do hope—that we continue to make strides as a country by acknowledging these past wrongs, by acknowledging the stories, by taking down that wall that some people put up when they hear about colonisation, that uncomfortable truth of colonisation. I hope that our young people, when they’re taught history in our schools, understand their local stories. And I hope that those people that benefited from the raupatu, benefited from the confiscation by the Crown of those lands, acknowledge the history of that whakapapa of that land and how fortunate they are that they’ve been able to build their wealth on stolen land.

This is a really important part in the Treaty process. I really hope that we can continue to tell these stories—not just Ngāti Tara Tokanui, but I think it’s time for us as a country to revise some of those stories as well. Because, I tell you what: once these settlements happen, they get a staple and they go on the shelf. We owe it to the people of Ngāti Tara Tokanui to do more than just put a staple on it and add it on the list of Treaty settlements. We owe it to their tūpuna, to the people that were parted from their land, to the people that died fighting for their land to do more. To do more: to be able to enable the people of that land to achieve their tino rangatiratanga and their mana motuhake as well.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call. I call on Todd Muller—five minutes.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can I just firstly acknowledge the contribution of Tāmati Coffey. There’s a strange thing in this place that when we have the moment to reflect on Treaty settlement bills, it tends to bring the best of politicians to the table—from all sides. I think we have heard it today from all speakers, but I think Tāmati Coffey’s determination for this House to hear the historical record and the pain that has caused Ngāti Tara Tokanui over the years—it was a powerful contribution and I want to acknowledge that.

Obviously, the National Party supports this bill, and we will support it as it goes through select committee. But, in the short time that I have, I want to simply continue Tāmati Coffey’s contribution by reflecting on some of the actions of the Crown—he got up to about the 1880s.

So, in 1882, the Native Land Court awarded the Crown 31,000 acres of land in Ōhinemuri for mining—only 3,700 acres were available to non-sellers, and particularly Te Keepa. But, by 1896, Ngāti Tara Tokanui were left with just approximately 2,500 acres. I often reflect, in the context of the conversations that we all have today and that people reflect on in terms of their own commercial interests, that it is beyond our ability to comprehend, actually, the pain that that would cause if you applied a modern context to that degree of confiscation. So you are just left with 2,500 acres. But, then, in 1895, the Crown authorises the discharge of mine tailings into the Waihou River and Ōhinemuri River, including cyanide-treated wastes. By 1900, a Crown official estimates that the local Māori needed an alternative water supply because the river was polluted and unfit for either human or animal consumption. The Crown eventually initiated a number of schemes to try and control flooding because of the discharge of mining waste into the rivers, causing silt. And all this area—the last remaining land for Ngāti Tara Tokanui—was the land that was being affected.

But it doesn’t stop there, because, in the early 1900s, the Crown established the Hauraki Plains drainage scheme to drain the swamp and develop it for farming. Through to 1995, the land which Ngāti Tara Tokanui had traditionally occupied was taken under the Public Works Act for works related for that scheme. So the 2,500 acres that Ngāti Tara Tokanui retained in 1896 was reduced to 232 acres.

I just want to reinforce the message that has been said, particularly by Tāmati today: that it is, in the summary of historical account and acknowledgments and the apology of the Crown, so critical that we—as a Parliament; and broader, actually as a nation—never lose sight of this. I think, again, it was a fair contribution to say that these bills are passed and they’re put into a file somewhere with a staple, and people move on. But, actually, it’s important that we allow that history to always be refreshed and understood that it is still with us today, as we all seek to build a stronger and more prosperous Aotearoa. This doesn’t get wiped from history; it is part of us. It should be acknowledged, and that is the power of what we’re doing today. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call the Hon Meka Whaitiri—five minutes.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): He mihi tuatahi, e ngā mate o te wā. E te māreikura, Whetumarama Wereta, kua hinga, haere i te taha o tō hoa rangatira o Tūmanako haere, haere, haere atu rā. Ko tōna whānau, kua pūāwai, kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui.

[First, acknowledgments to recent loved ones who have passed. The esteemed Whetumarama Wereta who has passed, farewell back to your husband, Tūmanako, I bid you farewell. The family has blossomed. Be resolute, be brave, and be strong.]

I was saddened to hear in the contributions today of the passing of Whetumarama Wereta, who was clearly somebody that had a significant role alongside many others in this particular bill that we are reading for the first time.

Can I mihi to Ngāti Tara Tokanui for the work that they have done in bringing this bill to the House. But I want to add the unjust Treaty process that we find ourselves in, because, at the hands of the Crown, these people’s land, as previous speakers have acknowledged, went from probably in excess of 290,000 acres, which was confiscated, right down to currently 232 acres—that was at the hands of the Crown. Not only did they confiscate their land, acquired their land; they put paru into their rivers, and so I feel very, very saddened for these people, Ngāti Tara Tokanui. But it is their day. It is their tino rangatiratanga that has brought this bill to the House.

But I wanted to acknowledge their hard work and acknowledge the passing of Whetu Wereta. Like many, maybe, in this House, I came to know Whetu as a very young person when I first started in the Public Service. She was inspiring for me, as a young Māori woman, to claim such heights, and she had such great mana, Whetu, as did her husband, Tūmanako.

So here we are discussing and contributing to a reading of the bill, but its premise is in an unjust settlement process that previous speakers in this House have alluded to. It’s unjust because not only has the Crown taken these people’s land but they determine the process in which we settle, and for Te Paati Māori, on their behalf, it is important that I put on record that Tiriti o Waitangi is not to be settled. It should never ever be settled, I say to colleagues in this House. We should never have “Te Tiriti” and “settlement” in the same sentence. It’s about honouring the Tiriti, if we go back to 1840 and the purpose in which it was signed, and that is why it’s important that we acknowledge that it’s an unjust process and an unjust system.

I do want to acknowledge all the work that the Ngāti Tara Tokanui negotiators have done to get it to this place. I don’t want to repeat what messages other contributors to this bill have said, but in reading particularly the deed of settlement, which gives us broadly how this bill came about, it gives an insight into the historical account. There were a couple of facts that my attention was drawn to that I want to raise in my contribution here, and that is that the deed of mandate, the process in which we acknowledge who is going to negotiate on behalf of this iwi, was signed on 29 June 2011. The agreement in principle (AIP), which is what iwi agree with the Crown are the key areas that we have negotiated for, was signed a month later on 22 July 2011. The deed of settlement was not signed until 1 June 2017.

So the question I have to ask is, why did it take six years from AIP to deed of settlement? Perhaps that’s something that the select committee can traverse and perhaps come back to this House on. I support this bill.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to speak on the first reading of this, the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill. E te iwi Ngāti Tara Tokanui, tēnā koutou katoa, ngā mihi nui. Kia koutou. Can I say as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, it is an honour to speak on any claims settlement bill and it’s certainly been one of the highlights for me personally to work through each and every one of these claims that have come through the committee, this House, and to learn about the grievances but also the facts surrounding some of these, which are often at odds with how history presents itself. So I’m looking forward to taking this through the House.

I want to just focus on the big picture here, and it certainly gives effect to the elements of the Ngāti Paoa deed of settlement signed on 20 March 2021 between the Crown and Ngāti Paoa. You’ll see an explanatory note to the bill states that the deed provides for the settlement of all historical Treaty of Waitangi claims of Ngāti Tara Tokanui against the Crown. Certainly, the bill aims to address all aspects of the settlement that require legislation, and today is the start of that process in the House.

The settlement outlines, as they all do, the redress, which includes an agreed historical account. Sometimes, these can take some time to get right. The previous speaker talked about the length of time between signing the agreement in principle—the AIP—through to how it lands here. But I know, working through other settlements, that getting an accurate account of history documented as part of this process is very important—getting those Crown acknowledgments right, the apology itself. That’s critical, as is the cultural redress and financial and commercial.

When I look at the package that pertains to Ngāti Tara Tokanui, we know already that it includes $6 million in terms of the financial redress. Those seven sites of cultural significance for Ngāti Tara Tokanui include Mimitu Pā and Tawhitiaraia. Those two sites are jointly vested with the neighbouring iwi Hako and Ngāti Tamaterā, including Karangahake—that area, Karangahake, being especially significant to Ngāti Tara Tokanui. I know that the Minister Andrew Little talked about it being the manawa, or the heart, of their rohe. I’m pleased that their relationship with this area will be recognised through this redress and provided through the bill.

One of the things that’s been happening in Parliament of late has been some accords, and I guess those have been good processes for some who have settled, and this redress includes relationship protocols with Crown agencies. An accord of such may be something that they’d like to package to ensure that those things in the settlement are delivered upon.

There will also be statements of association for the 14 areas of significance. They include the Ōhinemuri River that enhances Ngāti Tara Tokanui’s ability to participate in the resource management process. An overlay classification for whenua rāhui, which provides for the Crown to acknowledge those iwi values in relation to Karangahake Scenic Reserve, and then that cultural redress payment for revitalisation.

We’ve talked a lot about the history today, and that’s been valuable in terms of recognising those who have put some work in here. I was at the settlement signing here in Parliament nearly a year ago, and so we’ve heard, also, that it’s taken many years to reach this point. So can I acknowledge the tūpuna, those members of Ngāti Tara Tokanui who have since passed but have very much been part of this process and who are not here today to see the start of what will be finalised, hopefully, this term.

I want to acknowledge the Minister—I’ve talked about the Hon Andrew Little, but also his predecessor the Hon Christopher Finlayson—for their work; their negotiators, Russell Karu and Amelia Williams, because they were the ones who were part of this process since 2011; the trustees of the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Trust, the governance entity for this settlement. They are not here today, unfortunately, but that’s an important part of the process too. Often, there is a change in the governance structure once settlement is made into the post-settlement entity and getting that structure right to deliver on those points I made earlier in terms of the financial redress, the cultural redress, but also to set them up in a way that they will be able to deliver on the promises and to do the things that they want to do in the way that they want to do it. I also want to acknowledge the work of the Chief Crown Negotiator Michael Dreaver and, more recently, the Hon Rick Barker, for their work too; those Crown agencies of Te Arawhiti and others who have worked together to achieve this settlement.

When I look back at when this process first started, it began at Ngahutoitoi Marae in 2011, and along with Russell Koru and Amelia Williams. That, essentially, was when the mandate was made to negotiate this settlement with the Crown. That was reached in 2011, and the AIP—the agreement in principle—was signed in 2017 right here, as I said.

There are some points in history that I want to reinforce they have been made well. I think one of the saddest things that comes through all settlements is, I guess, the Crown purchasing and the operation of the native land laws together, say, with the Public Works Act, where land is taken, the people are alienated, divided, and fragmented. That certainly was the case with Ngāti Tara Tokanui. I think one of the saddest things, for me, is learning that there was some authorisation made by the Crown in terms of some discharge, which would certainly not be allowed to be made in this time in the Ōhinemuri and Waihou rivers. Those discharges ultimately caused illness and death. It’s not unique, but it’s great that we’re able to be in a position where we’re able to acknowledge those who passed, and, for many, they may not have known why. So, for us to expose, document—and I made mention of getting the accuracy of the history right, because too often these sorts of incidents or the exposure of such incidents are so horrific that there’s a temptation not to ensure that they are put in. This is in the Crown address in terms of its history. I acknowledge both parties for achieving that. The third point on this is that by 2020, Ngāti Tara Tokanui was, essentially, landless.

That, I guess, sums up, for me, the first step in this House of addressing the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill. I look forward to working through this on the Māori Affairs Committee. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as the member of Parliament for Coromandel, an electoral constituency area that includes most of the rohe of Ngāti Tara Tokanui, and it’s an area that I travel through regularly, have come to love, and enjoy its particular nature, its history, and its beauty. But there are scars on that rohe, there are scars on that land, and there are scars that some of my colleagues across the Parliament this afternoon have clearly set out. I’m not going to go further on that matter because I think Tāmati Coffey, Todd Muller, and Paul Eagle have done a very good job in that regard.

One of the slightly strange and perverse historical features of our Parliament is that every word is written down—every word that is spoken in this place is written down for the record and is kept for posterity, and that’s a good thing. Many of those words are wasted words, in many respects. Many of those words, and in too much of the work that we do in this place, are aggressive, are adversarial, are petty in some ways, and are partisan. But when it comes to pieces of legislation of this sort, there is unanimity, there is, I hope, a sense of trying, inadequately, we know—inadequately—but trying, genuinely and sincerely, to right some egregious wrongs.

I hope that in years to come, there won’t just be a staple on a piece of paper in a filed document somewhere; I hope that in years to come, when we’re all long gone from this place, there will be people yet to be born who will come and maybe look at the words that have been spoken in a debate like this, and they will learn something. They will learn something about the process of Treaty settlements, which were originally commenced a long time ago by Jim Bolger and Sir Doug Graham—highly criticised at the time, highly contentious. But, here we are, all those years later, still working our way through this process, still trying to right wrongs, still trying to educate people of my generation and other generations who were not taught the history, who were not taught the background, who were simply told that this is the way things were and that everything was fine, and we know better than that now.

From time to time—not recently, I must confess—I have had an opportunity to cycle along the banks of the Ōhinemuri River. People who will know the Karangahake Gorge will know the road is on one side of the river, and now the cycleway, the Hauraki Rail Trail cycleway—it’s one of the most ridden pieces of the cycleway in the country. It’s beautiful, and I can recommend it and can endorse recommendations for anyone who wants to go and have a very good cycle ride to go and do it.

But as people cycle through that area, I can’t help but notice the physical scars on the land, and I’m thinking particularly of the Victoria Battery that stands on the banksides there where you can still see the massive concrete cyanide tanks that not only leached but flushed cyanide into the river and polluted it to a point where it could not be fit for either human or animal consumption. That’s very sad because those monuments, that physical stuff, are still there. If you go further up in to where the kilns were burning 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and burning massive, massive quantities of native timber—literally, just raked and pulled out from the hillsides and the hills around the Karangahake—and see those kilns there and the physical scars that are still there as you cycle through this, as I say, very peaceful, tranquil part of the cycleway, it’s a confronting physical aspect of our collective history. Then, more recently, there was the draining of the wetlands and the impact that that has had on the land and the people who occupy it and, sadly, those who are no longer with us.

So I want to join with others in this House in acknowledging what now has been a long journey, and when we were debating the Ngāti Paoa and Ngāti Hei first reading pieces of legislation only a couple of weeks ago, I reminded the House that the year 2011 is etched into my mind very clearly, because that was the year that I was first selected to be a candidate for Parliament, and then, later in that year, elected. People were saying to me right from that time, early in 2011, “Get ready, the Treaty settlements are coming. The Hauraki Treaty collective settlement is coming. Get ready for it. It’ll be six months away—get ready.”, and then, every consecutive six months for the last 12 years, people have been saying to me, “It’ll just be six months; it’ll just be six months.”

Well, here we are getting closer to what has been a very long six months, where the people of Ngāti Tara Tokanui have been patient, have been generous with their time, and have been very understanding of a settlement process that is by no means adequate or appropriate in terms of the hurt and the payment and the suffering and the history that has taken place. But their generosity of spirit and their patience brings us to the point where we are today.

We’re a step closer to a formalisation of the process. We’re a step closer, at the end of this debate in a few minutes, to the bill being voted on and then being sent to select committee, where some of the outstanding issues that have yet to be resolved and tested and talked about will take place at select committee, and that’s a good process. Then we’ll come back and have a second reading and then a third reading, and then the bill will be passed to become part of the law of the land. That is, I think, appropriate: slow—interminably slow—but a process none the less.

So, in acknowledging people who in years to come may read some of the words that have been spoken here today, I hope that this is another step along the way to a brighter, better future—a more prosperous, a more optimistic, and a more united future for us all and those that will follow us. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Foreign Affairs): Tēnei ka tū au ki te tuku aku whakaaro mō te pānui tuatahi o te pire nei. Matariki tāpuapua, Matariki whanaunga kore Matariki tohu mate. Tērā a Pohutukawa e hāo nei e tō nei i te tini ki te pō. Tēnei me haere wheturangitia atu ra koutou ngā mātanga o Tara Tokanui, koutou kei te waka a Māui, kei te ika a Māui - te hautupua. Tupua Nuku kia hono atu koe ki te kāhui whetū hau e piataata mai na e whakanikoniko i te waka o Taramainuku. Whatu ngarongaro te tangata toitū te whenua toitū te kupu ko te kupu ki a koutou rā haere, haere, haere.

Ka tika me mihi atu rā Tara Tokanui ki a Ngai Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui tērā ki a Whetumarama Wereta me tōna momo kua rongo tātou te nui o tana mahi i te wā o te ora hei whakapou kaha kia hiki kia hāpai i ngā kaupapa mō te iwi Māori, he ringa rehe he kai rangahau he wahine humarie ki te nuinga o ana mahi. Nō reira e Whetu ka hoki ngā mahara i te wa ka noho koe kei runga i tērā o ngā poari hei whakariterite i ngā tūru Māori i raro i te komihana pōti, nui o mahi ki a mātou nei. Ko te whakaaro ki tō whānau i tēnei wā, ko tā rātou nei tāonga ko te wā ka mahue ake tērā pouri. Nō reira i tēnei wā tonu haere okioki e au te moe.

Mehemea ka titiro ake ki te rohe whanui o Tara Tokanui māma noa te rongo ki ngā hononga ā-whanaunga, ā rohe, ki Hauraki whānui tatū atu rā ki Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui ā hipa atu ki te pūtake o te hononga nui ki a mātou ki Waikato. Nō reira e mihi ana ki te nui o ngā kōrero kua puta mai i tēnei wā te taumahatanga o te whakahaere o ngā take Tiriti. Ehara tēnei he huarahi māma he huarahi tino tino taumaha na runga i te āhuatanga o te hitori e rua ngā wāhanga ki a Tara Tokanui mō te rironga atu o rātou whenua tētahi mō te take raupatu ko ngā mahi o te Karauna kia tangohia ngā whenua o Tara Tokanui. Te mamae nui e kawea nei e rātou. Tuarua ko te ture, i raro i te ture o te Public Works Act tērā tētahi anō o ngā patutanga me ki kei runga i a Tara Tokanui.

Nō reira, ko tāku ki a rātou kia kaha kia kaha kia maia i ngā au piki me ngā auheke o te wā kia kaha kia maia ki te whakatakoto tika ā koutou nei kaupapa i mua i te komiti taketake te wetewete i te maha o ō koutou nei hiahia whakaaro kaore e kore ka puta mai ētahi o ngā whakaaro awangawanga i mua i a koutou; ēngari i te mutunga me anga whakamua mō te anamata te tino take ka tāea koutou tātou te rapu i ngā oranga o ngā take Tiriti.

Ka nui te mihi atu rā ki ngā Minita o mua ki a Chris Finlayson o ināianei ki Andrew Little arā ki ngā apiha o te Karauna ki ngā kaiwero o Tara Tokanui nā koutou te mahi nunui hei whakatakoto te nui o ngā hiahia kei roto ki tēnei o ngā kaupapa i tēnei wā tonu. Ka hoki ngā whakaaro ki te hononga a Tara Tokanui ki to rātou whenua ki te ia o Ōhinemuri ki a rātou nei marae maha tērā ki a Ngahutoitoi ko te tumanako mā ngā whakatupuranga e kite i ngā painga e kite nei koutou me mahia kia whakamahi i ngā painga mo ratou ake ake tonu atu. Tēnā tātou katoa.

[I’d like to stand and express my thoughts about the first reading of this bill. Matariki the rainy season, Matariki of the departed loved ones, Matariki the sign of passing. There yonder is Pohutukawa pulling and scooping the multitudes towards the night. Farewell to the wise and noble of Tara Tokanui, everyone on the great canoe of Māui and the great fish of Māui, the demigod. Tupua Nuku where you connect to the clusters of stars that adorn and beautify the mystical canoe of Taramainuku. People fade away but the land always remains, and so does the word, and this word I send forth to you, farewell, farewell, farewell.

It’s also important to acknowledge Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngāti Ranginui, to Whetumarama Wereta and people of such calibre. We are very familiar with her huge efforts while she was still alive, her efforts to support and advocate for kaupapa pertaining to iwi Māori, a hard worker, a curious mind, a compassionate woman during her time working. And so, Whetu, I remember the time you sat on the board to manage Māori seats under the voting commission. We saw you worked a lot. The thoughts at this stage are to your family. What they have on their side is time to heal the sadness. And so, for now, farewell and rest in peace.

If you look towards the wider region of Tara Tokanui, you will also see the many kinships and relationships around the region, from wider Hauraki all the way to Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, and further towards the wider region of my people of the Waikato. And so I want to acknowledge what has previously been said pertaining to the difficulties and issues of the Treaty. This isn’t easy; it is very difficult, especially in regards to the past, in which there were two events that rendered Tara Tokanui without land: one was the taking of land by the Crown to take the lands of Tara Tokanui, the oppression of their people; second was the law, under the Public Works Act, which had major repercussions against Tara Tokanui.

I encourage them to remain diligent and brave during the ups and downs of time, and to remain forward thinking when it comes to laying down your case before the Māori Affairs Committee, to calculate and discuss your aspirations, and I have no doubt that there will be times where you will disagree with what has been said before you; however, at the end of the day, you must always push forward for the future is the main concern. Only then will we all see the benefits of te Tiriti.

I also want to acknowledge the former Minister Chris Finlayson and the current Minister, Andrew Little, and to the officials of the Crown, and to the leaders also of Tara Tokanui, whose huge efforts go unseen. I’d also like to acknowledge Tara Tokanui’s connections to their lands, to Ōhinemuri, their many marae, to Ngahutoitoi as well, with the hope that the future generation will see the benefits that you wish for them so that you can work towards that goal for ever and ever. Thank you all very much.]

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the Ngāti Tara Tokanui Claims Settlement Bill be considered by the Māori Affairs Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.

Bills

Deposit Takers Bill

Third Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I present a legislative statement on the Deposit Takers Bill.

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I move, That the Deposit Takers Bill be now read a third time.

This piece of legislation is the third in the trilogy that emerged out of the Reserve Bank Act review—the first of those widened the objectives of the bank and changed its decision-making processes to be a more modern form of monetary policy decision making; the second of those dealt with the institutional arrangements of the Reserve Bank. This, the third bill, deals with the modernisation of legislation for arrangements for deposit takers—in other words, banks and non-bank deposit takers, such as credit unions, building societies, and retail funded finance companies.

Can I, at the outset of this contribution, thank everybody who has been involved in what has been a very, very long piece of work. This is a piece of work that began as far back as the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018 when our Government came into office and we set about the Reserve Bank Act review. At that time, it was clear that it was a very big undertaking and that it needed to be split apart—as is being done at the moment, with the third of these three bills. At that time consultation began—and I want to thank everybody who has been involved in that consultation within the broader finance sector and indeed the wider community. I want to especially thank the officials from both the Reserve Bank and the Treasury who have been heavily involved in the drafting work and the redrafting work.

And I do, as I did in earlier reading, want to especially thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who I believe did excellent work to improve the quality of this bill, and I know that members of that committee will get a chance to talk about that in the coming calls on this bill. In particular—and I do just want to briefly mention this again—the work that was done to alter clause 3 and clause 4 of the bill around the purposes and the principles, in addition to the vitally important and core purpose of the legislation: to ensure we have a stable financial system, that we also ensure that the system has diversity, and that the management of it, the supervision of it, has proportionality. So those principles around stability, diversity, and proportionality now feed through in a coherent way in clauses 3 and 4 of the bill as a result of what the select committee did, and I think that is a really good example of how a select committee can add value to the legislation and can reflect the views of submitters, because we do want a diverse deposit-taking sector that provides to depositors a range of options that are in line with their lives and their circumstances. Equally, we want those to be institutions that are stable and strong and that we can have confidence in, and I think what the select committee did in those changes is indeed quite significant.

We’ve dealt with, in other readings, some of the core provisions of this: particularly around the modernisation of licensing, supervision, and enforcement. These are serious powers—and this came up during the committee of the whole House stage a couple of times—these are serious powers that the Reserve Bank has, but they’re important ones, because New Zealanders need to know, if they’ve got money in a bank, credit union, or building society, that that institution is strong, stable, well-governed, and behaving in line with the law. Unfortunately, in our history, New Zealanders have had examples where that hasn’t happened, and in those examples that has caused significant financial distress to a wide range of New Zealanders.

This bill makes a strong attempt to create a modernised and rigorous regime, and as I’ve said in a couple of the other, earlier readings of this, earlier in the year, when we saw Silicon Valley Bank—signature bank in the US—New Zealanders rightly raised their eyebrows and said “Could that happen to us?” The thing I can say to New Zealanders is our banking system is more robust and rigorous in how a bank is established. It is more robust and rigorous in that jurisdiction, as it is too in these supervision and in these licensing and enforcement regimes that are covered in this bill. So New Zealanders can have confidence in the system we have, but its legislation that gives them that confidence and underpins it.

In the remaining time I’m going to take today, I want to talk about what is being created under this legislation, and that is the new depositor compensation scheme. And this is a red-letter day; this is something that has been discussed for years in New Zealand, about whether or not we should do as most other countries do and have some kind of standing scheme for the time when the very, very worst happens and people’s deposits are at risk. Now, I know—and we all know—what happens when you don’t have that scheme: you have an ad hoc response. Invariably, it is the Government that people turn to and say “Well, can you help us out in this situation?” I vividly recall my first election campaign; we had Mr Simpson talking about his. It was Mr Woodhouse’s first election campaign as well in 2008, when in the middle of that, we were faced with these issues. I can recall being at the Labour Party’s launch of its campaign, and Michael Cullen was off to the side of the stage, on his phone, working out what to do in the face of a potential collapse and run. So these are real issues. They don’t happen very often, because our banking system is stable and our financial system is stable, but when they do happen, we want New Zealanders to have confidence that they will be looked after.

So today, when we pass this legislation, we will create that depositor compensation scheme. We’ve again—over the course of that consultation—made improvements in how that scheme is going to operate. We started out with a protection limit of $50,000 for a deposit. We consulted, and out of that consultation it emerged that that wasn’t going to cover enough New Zealanders, so we increased it to $100,000. That means that 93 percent of depositors are covered, and I think, of actual deposits—obviously that number is a bit different, because that missing 7 percent have quite large deposits. But that’s $100,000 in each bank, or in each institution—so if people have spread their money out, they would be covered in the event that it would happen in another institution. So that gives New Zealanders that basic assurance that their money is going to be looked after if the worst thing happens.

What happens from here: when the legislation passes today, the Reserve Bank and the Treasury will enter into a period of consultation around the funding strategy and the levy framework. So yes, this will be levy funded: the levy will be on those deposit takers, and the funding framework for that will need to make sure that the scheme is able to fund itself—and when it does have to pay out, it’s able to manage itself. When we look internationally, this can be done with a fairly modest levy on those institutions, and I hope those institutions will see that as part of their responsibility to be part of a banking system. Invariably, some costs may be passed on to those who are putting their money into the bank, but we hope that banks will be absorb as much of this as possible as part of their licence, as it were—a social one, in this case—to operate in New Zealand. So the piece of work that will take place over the next months will get us to the point that the scheme can be operational in 2024. That will be an important day for New Zealanders to know that that scheme and that backstop is there, and I’m very proud of our Government for having addressed a longstanding issue; a longstanding absence in our framework of the way that we ensure that New Zealanders’ money is looked after, and I look forward to the deposit compensation scheme coming into force.

With that, I am proud of the fact that we have now completed three bits of legislation as a result of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand review. We have a modernised bank; we have a system that is designed for confidence in our financial system and confidence in the way monetary policy is created. This bill contributes strongly to that. I again thank everybody who has contributed to it, and I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I begin by joining with the Minister of Finance in his thanks to everybody who’s been involved in this. As he said, it’s been a long journey of over five years. In fact, it’s straddled virtually the term of this Government. I hope it’ll bookend it, but that’ll be over to others.

I was an interloper on the Finance and Expenditure Committee over the last few months and, as a consequence, I’m sure members of that committee will agree that this is a notoriously complex piece of legislation to get one’s head around, and for that reason we needed to rely very heavily on officials and the experts that were advising the committee. I think they did an excellent job in advising the committee, but so too did the committee do a good job in taking that advice and turning the bill into a better shape. It came in in reasonably good shape; it’s come out of that process in better shape.

It’s interesting to reflect on the fact that when it came in, the winds of change have blown since then. Barbara Edmonds was the chair of the committee; she’s now the Hon Barbara Edmonds, Minister for Economic Development; Ingrid Leary, a member of that committee, is now the chair of the committee. The bill will get Royal assent tomorrow but many parts of it aren’t going to come in for potentially months and in some cases automatically after four years if certain things haven’t happened. There’s every likelihood that we’ll have a new Minister of Finance in that time, maybe a new Minister of Economic Development—well, definitely a new Minister of Economic Development if we get a new Minister of Finance. The point is that the sorts of banking and Reserve Bank monetary policy legislation does need to endure across administrations. It’s important that legislation like this does have broad support across the House, because if there is strong opposition to the things that the Government of the day is doing and we continue to yoyo from a policy perspective across Governments with this important fiscal and monetary in particular—monetary policy framework—then that is not good for banking stability.

I’m pleased to note that, actually, in our history by and large, certainly in the last 30 or 40 years, we’ve had that. Now, that’s got some caveats in it, I think, as the Minister said. This is the trifecta. The first two bills did have some things that we had some serious concerns about to the degree that it may have been undermining the independence of the Reserve Bank and allowing the Minister of Finance to have perhaps a little more hands on influence than was appropriate. And time will tell whether or not that manifests, but overall, with those caveats, there is broad support. Indeed, the National Party will continue to support the Deposit Takers Bill at third reading.

The Minister has talked about one of the significant changes that will be brought in by this, and that is the introduction of the depositor compensation scheme, effectively. And this is a really interesting issue. I don’t call it a red-letter day, I think it’s probably slightly hyperbolic to describe it as that, because there is the risk, as had been kicked around by the select committee, of the moral hazard that comes with such a scheme. Indeed, with any investment, whether it’s cash deposits, equities, bonds, buildings, there is always a reasonably high correlation between risk and return. So for those people who are prepared to seek a higher return, the corollary is that there will be a higher risk, and it’s of interest to me to see whether or not this will change behaviour in the retail deposit market once the depositor compensation scheme comes up. It is a caveat, it’s not an opposition to it.

I think the other thing that is a bit of a caveat to me in this is the number and extent of powers that are being given to the Reserve Bank during a crisis. It’s really important to imagine what—it’s all very well to pass legislation in times of relative stability in our banking system, but that can be upset. Indeed, Mr Robertson and I did experience that. His Minister of Finance at the time, the late Sir Michael Cullen, was required to put in place the retail deposit guarantee scheme, which the Hon Bill English enhanced and then had to call upon with the collapse of South Canterbury Finance. When that occurred, I was a backbencher. By the time that was being mopped up, I was in Cabinet.

That was a particularly challenging period both for the country and for the Government to negotiate through that period. But the powers that are being given through this bill are quite strong: the powers to suspend debt payments, to negotiate with creditors, to suspend deposit repayments and cancel liabilities to creditors, converting unsecured liabilities to equity. These are quite strong powers. Frankly, if I was a depositor in a bank or a non-bank organisation that was on the brink of collapse, converting my cash into a share is probably not something that I would be particularly enamoured towards. So these are quite broad powers that I hope we don’t test for a very long time, if ever.

The other thing also that has troubled us to some degree is the extent to which the reach of regulation balances that risk with efficiency in the bank and non-bank market. Now, I don’t think that risk is as high as some of the other concerns I have, but it is real that every time we put in place a levy or a requirement, ultimately the costs of that fall on the customer. It’s too easy to say, “Well, the banks make billions of dollars and therefore they can pay.” The fact is they do, but they also have an enormous capital base, and rates of return on capital are not nearly as extravagant as some in the media or in the Government might have thought. Ironically, we’re having a banking inquiry commencing at the moment on the basis not that our banks are at risk, but that our banks are so strong they could be making hyper-profits.

And this is one of the problems with what I call commodity products. If one thinks of things like petrol or cash, in this case, a deposit interest rate, or milk or anything that’s pretty generic if you like—we try and dress them up as different—what happens is that pure competition and pure collusion look almost exactly the same. It’s really hard to tell one from the other. If when returning to Dunedin, Dr Clark drives along Kaikorai Valley Road and there is at that time a price increase in petrol, he’ll notice that all four of the service stations along that road will increase or decrease their prices at the pump at the same time, almost. Now, does one suspect collusion? I don’t. I know that’s because of competition, but it’s really hard to tell the difference. And I think the banking inquiry will sort of run into this challenge that actually the banks that we have are strong and rightly so—we want a strong banking system—but they’re also highly competitive. I hope that the introduction and passing of this legislation doesn’t have the opposite effect of what we want, and that is to reduce the number of players in the market at just the same time as we want to actually increase competition in our banking sector.

The other thing about efficiency—and I see Dr Clark nodding. Although this is a criticism, we do sometimes pass well-intended legislation that has unintended consequences. It’s a score draw in that respect with, I think, the previous Government having passed anti - money laundering legislation that ended up being very, very unwieldy, and I think needs streamlining and simplifying, so too the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act has probably burdened stakeholders to a much greater degree than I think the Minister or the Government anticipated, and there’s still, in my view, some work to do there. I hope we don’t add the Deposit Takers Act to that list of well-meaning but unwieldy pieces of legislation. The good thing, I guess, is that if we do have broad support across the House for the monetary policy framework that we have in our legislation, if there are things that need to be improved in the future, we can. But with that, I have pleasure in confirming that the National Party will continue to support this bill at third reading.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I’d just like to pick up on a couple of points made by the Minister Grant Robertson in the previous contribution around the flexibility, proportionality, and competition, because in fact the issues that the Hon Michael Woodhouse raised around the need for flexibility and proportionality, so that smaller players and a diversity of players in the market can thrive, are exactly the reason that the Finance and Expenditure Committee did make those fairly significant changes both around access to the financial system in terms of the purpose but more particularly around diversity and diversity of provider and diversity of people accessing the players in the market. Because it was our view that this type of more nuanced approach to regulation would ultimately lead to greater competition and that, in turn would lead to more stability.

So it’s interesting that one of the debates we had in the select committee was when we looked at including those elements, there seemed to be an assumption at times from various people that the stability of the financial system and the elements of diversity and access were mutually exclusive, where in fact some of us believe that they do go in the same direction very much for those competition reasons that I’ve just stated. Nevertheless, there is a backstop in the legislation to ensure that if they are at odds with each other it is stability of the financial system that will take primacy.

The other thing I’d just like to raise is around what will happen now with the standards. The Minister mentioned what would happen henceforth. The conditions of regulation will now be replaced by standards under the Legislation Act 2019, and that means that the work that the Reserve Bank does will go before the Regulations Review Committee. But also the Reserve Bank has undertaken to come back to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, whether under this Parliament or much more likely the next, and we just all wanted that in the Hansard to ensure that they do that, because a lot of the devil will be in the detail, and the proportionality and the functioning of those standards will be really important. We are aware that the Reserve Bank is in effect writing its own rules, so that oversight will be critical. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m happy to support this bill, and, as the chair of the Regulations Review Committee, I of course look forward to—

Hon Rachel Brooking: Oh, a great committee—great committee.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: It is a great speech, thank you.

Hon Rachel Brooking: It’s a great committee—great committee.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: A great committee—yes, it is that too, and we have a lot of cross-party support for everything on the committee, normally. The reason that it does need to actually look at all these regulations coming through, and particularly those of the Reserve Bank coming through—and I see Helen White, the deputy chair of the committee here, nodding away, agreeing with me, which is a very good thing to do.

What we see on that committee, though, from time to time—in fact, quite frequently—is that not every entity whose regulations that we review, and particularly not some Government entities, take the whole process as seriously as we would like them to. So I can assure the Reserve Bank—who, I am sure, is listening somewhere—that we will take a very careful look at their regulations, and particularly at any complaints that we have. We’re very ably assisted on the Regulations Review Committee by the particularly capable officials that we have working with us from parliamentary counsel, legislative counsel, who are, I find, just a delight to work with and very professional.

It is good to have this sort of legislation coming through where we have cross-party support. I think this is the sort of thing that the public would expect us to do. It is, essentially, an insurance scheme for depositors, and I think it can—if it works as intended—work as an opportunity to enable other deposit takers to be able to at least compete in some way with the big four Australian-owned banks, which, as we know, are incredibly powerful in the market. They take up about 85 percent of deposits.

It’s very good to have such big players in the market because of the stability of the Australian economy and the strength of it, but the problem is that, as has been said to me from time to time, they’re always there with an umbrella when the sun is shining, but they’re not always there with the umbrella once the rain starts. I think that that is true, particularly for those people involved in things like property development that have found it very hard to get any funding lines at all at the moment, yet they were there only a few years ago. I think too that we’re seeing those banks move very much towards models that mean that they don’t always finance the industries or sectors that they have in the past because of perceptions around whether or not, they’re, essentially, politically correct to do so. I think that’s a real shame, and that’s why we need to actually have to give a little bit of help to some of those financial institutions and deposit takers to give them a little bit of an even playing field when it comes to being able to take people’s deposits.

There is a limit, obviously, to compensation of $100,000 per person per institution or deposit taker, so it’s not a blank cheque. Hopefully, we won’t need to use it, but the fact is that we most likely will at some stage, because one of the upshots of the results from the global financial crisis in 2007 to probably 2010 was that a lot of the mezzanine financing that used to be available for people in business and, particularly, development suddenly was no longer there, and so that left them very much at the mercy of the big banks.

Certainly, when I first started practising law, we used to have solicitors’ nominee companies that used to be involved in a lot of lending to developers and others being able to have different terms from banks, but always at higher interest rates because higher risk brings higher interest rates. Those have all mostly disappeared because of the liability for the partners in those law firms if something went wrong, and also the reputational risk as well as the personal risk of having to pay out of their own money as partners in a law firm should they lose money or where there’s been some sort of fraud or something like that by a staff member.

So these are all the things that have happened over the years that actually tightened the screws on the ability of people to access financing. It really does mean that when you’re looking at, say, innovation, for instance, or technology areas, it’s very, very hard for anybody to get any funding at the moment from those areas, and I think there’s a real opportunity here for some people involved in the deposit taking and finance areas to look at opportunities for them to be involved in that sort of financing.

But it’s pretty hard, and I just think it’s like one of those things where sometimes we put a lot of regulations and rules in where we’re trying to protect everybody, and I think that’s one of the things we found with the—what was it called again?—the CCCFA, or the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act. It ended up with banks turning down people to get home loans because of the numbers of flat whites they had had that day or something—for spending too much, they thought, on coffees. It was ridiculous behaviour, given that, actually, people can adjust their own behaviours. When they’ve got a mortgage to pay as opposed to rent to pay, they can make those decisions. But that sort of nanny State-ism and trying to protect people can actually end up keeping people away from the opportunity to better their own situation and to build their own assets.

So I think you always have to be very careful with this, and this is one of the reasons I think this seems to me to be a reasonable response to a situation. I think with the Reserve Bank too, we’ll be taking a very clear look at just how that is being used.

But the other thing is we need to always be aware, as we perhaps were on the CCCFA, that sometimes you just have to come back to Parliament—or we have to come back to Parliament—and change the rules if they’re not working in accordance with the way that we anticipate them to do, because whatever we anticipate may not be the way they work. I agree with the Hon Michael Woodhouse that the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act, which I actually had to be the poor Minister to bring it through, finally—what a dreadful piece of legislation. Basically, the European Union was making it really clear that if we didn’t do it, our banks weren’t going to be able to operate in the EU.

That’s what happens when you’re part of the international world—you know, in the world, you have to actually do these things. But that doesn’t mean to say we can’t come back to it and say, “How is this holding back businesses, how is it leading to less productivity, and how is it adding more cost?” We should always be open to review, because if every piece of legislation was going to be perfect from now until the foreseeable future, then why would we ever come back with amendments? The fact is that every piece of legislation should be able to be looked to say: is it bringing out behaviours that we expect it to do and is it working well, and, if not, then how can we make that change that is obviously necessary? I think that’s what we need to be open to.

So if this piece of legislation doesn’t work out in the way we think it will, we’ll have to come back with an amendment. But I hope that it does work and I hope that we end up with some more competition in the deposit takers sector, but I also hope that we always say to people that they should understand that where there is more risk, there’ll be more interest, and where there is more interest, there’ll be more risk. That’s not a golden rule, but if something sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin): It’s a delight to speak on the Deposit Takers Bill, which I’ve interacted with at various points in various guises over many years, and it’s interesting to hear other members’ reflect on their connections with it through its long passage through the policy and parliamentary stages.

I do want to just draw a couple of points that Ingrid Leary, the member for Taieri, has touched on around the proportionality framework—I really support her comments. And I also note the fantastic influence of Dunedin members on this bill—we’ll claim Grant Robertson back—of course, Rachel Brooking and Ingrid Leary both chairing the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC), and the Hon Michael Woodhouse making contributions, as you heard earlier. There’s some really good Dunedin input into this bill, and I think it’s the better for it.

So the bill, as we’ve heard, does some really important things: setting clear objectives for the new deposit taker regime; it sets out the licensing process for deposit takers; it provides the Reserve Bank with power to set standards for deposit takers, it might be capital requirements or liquidity requirements; and it also expands the ability of the Reserve Bank to supervise and enforce the provisions in the deposit takers regime. And of course, much of the debate has focused around or commented on the deposit compensation scheme of up to $100,000 per deposit and per institution. All of those things were a real response to the International Monetary Fund’s review of the New Zealand financial sector regulation in 2016-17. So it’s got a good pedigree and achieves things that we would want to see to make our banking sector more stable.

But I wanted to just note the proportionality framework that is going to be developed by the Reserve Bank and the fact that they’ve committed to bringing that back in its draft form to receive some feedback from the FEC, probably in the next Parliament.

Just for context, we know that registered banks account for $650 billion in assets in the New Zealand market, whereas the non-bank deposit taking sector accounts for just over $3 billion—it’s a really big difference. Members of that committee felt it incredibly important that the regime really looked at where the risk was and responded in a proportionate fashion.

I do again congratulate the members the Hon Rachel Brooking and Ingrid Leary—both Dunedin colleagues—for their input into this bill and the overseeing of these changes that have, I think, made the bill stronger and better and, hopefully, more responsive to the needs of New Zealanders. I commend the bill to the House.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Look, the ACT Party won’t be supporting the Deposit Takers Bill. Damien Smith, our representative on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, has made it clear that ACT is very, very concerned about the moral hazard that a Government underwriting depositors may create. I just want to refresh the memory of the House on what ACT’s primary concerns are—a depositor and a deposit taker isolated from the consequences of risky behaviour, which could increase its occurrence.

Evidence from overseas is that deposit insurance only increases the risk because depositors feel that they don’t need to pay as much careful attention to the nature of the investments that they’re putting their money into, because it creates the sense that, well, the Government will take care of us, the Government will sort it out, the Government will bail out the bank or the non-bank deposit taker.

What is a much more important factor in preventing runs on banks where depositors might lose their investments is a strong, credible financial institution, and New Zealand is very fortunate that our four main trading banks are anchored in our neighbouring country, Australia, where they have enormous balance sheets and where they have extensive investments in hard assets, including minerals and resources, to underpin the solvency of their banks.

New Zealand is a relatively small market with only 5 million people, only 3 million who work, and not all of those are net taxpayers. And yet, the cost of deposit takers’ insurance is going to fall primarily on the Crown. It’s going to require an expansion of Reserve Bank powers, and it’s also going to be funded by levies on deposit takers, which means an increase in cost and a reduction in return.

Hon Dr David Clark: Not the Crown.

SIMON COURT: Well, the Hon David Clark says “not the Crown”, but the entire sense that the bill has created—

Hon Dr David Clark: The sense! The vibe!

SIMON COURT: —the vibe—is that the Crown is on the hook, that the Government will take care of you. That’s the moral hazard.

ACT believes that strong, credible financial institutions, especially a credible Reserve Bank and a credible Governor of the Reserve Bank, are far more important to ensure that deposit takers and depositors feel confident and are protected than this legislation. That is why ACT would reform the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act to ensure that the board has appointees that are credible economists with significant financial governance experience. It turns out that the Reserve Bank has been recruiting people and it says explicitly in the recruitment advertisements: no economics experience or qualifications required. So if anything is going to undermine the confidence in our banking depositors and deposit taking institutions, it’s having the sector administered by people who are not in fact economists and don’t have any financial experience. That’s why ACT would reform the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act.

So ACT will not be supporting this bill, but we look forward, should there be a change of Government, to opening up the discussion again and delivering a far better outcome for New Zealand borrowers and New Zealand investors.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I’m just going to take a short call on this bill. As I said in my second reading speech on the bill, this bill will finally implement something that the Green Party has called for since 2013, at least—so over 10 years. At that time, Russel Norman was our co-leader and finance spokesperson, and made the point that this type of scheme would be similar to an Australian type of scheme. Far from what the previous speaker said, it’s not actually falling on the Crown. It’s ensuring that ordinary people don’t lose their savings up to $100,000. Their savings are protected in the case of financial insolvency, or a collapse in the financial sector. It ensures that the funds that are available for that are paid by the institutions themselves.

Of course, those institutions, especially the four largest banks operating in New Zealand, which are not owned in New Zealand, have been excessively profitable for many, many years. This is a sector that cannot fail, it is too big to fail, and takes excess profit and takes—essentially a, kind of, I would say, tax in the way that the parties on the right use the word tax. Like it’s money that New Zealanders are paying, but rather than it going towards public services or public goods that benefit New Zealanders, it’s going to the private shareholders of the banks, and that’s not particularly good for the economy, it’s not good for our people—

Simon Court: It kind of is because then they keep lending us money. I mean that’s the point isn’t it?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: My colleague to the right seems to think that the banks are the ones who are responsible for the society and the good that we have, these private shareholders. And yet, the banks are institutions that exist because of rules made up by people, and at the moment those rules are enabling those shareholders to make excess profit, to make lots and lots of money at the expense of New Zealanders, and, you know, at the expense of the environment in some cases. It’s one thing for something to be sustainable, but it’s quite another for it to take in excess profit. So those are things that are quite clearly defined in the field of economics. I say to my colleague, who I don’t believe has an economics degree, who was previously complaining about people who don’t have an economics study commenting on such things—quite the irony.

Anyway. Look, the bill is good. It’s brought in the deposit guarantee scheme that we’ve been calling for over 10 years. It’s great that the two largest parties are supporting that. I guess it takes about 10 years for National and Labour to catch up with the Green Party, but that’s fine. We’ll almost be able to make it on climate change since they now admit that climate change exists. Maybe in 10 years they’ll support policies that actually take action on climate change. That would be good.

In terms of the changes that were made during the select committee process, while I wasn’t on the select committee, I was happy to see that there was special consideration given to non-bank deposit takers. I laud the role of credit unions and other types of societies that provide really important access to finance for communities, and the Green Party would like to see a much bigger role for them in our society so that people have access to finance and financial services without having to pay the extra for, you know, the big Aussie-based banks for their senior executives and their board members to have lavish lifestyles on their lavish salaries. For their shareholders to get excessive returns while people are struggling with a cost of living crisis here in New Zealand—struggling with rising interest rates, rising food prices, which are related to rising interest rates. The point is all of these rules are made up by people and we can change them so they work for people and the environment, and let’s do that. That’s what the Green Party wants to do.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I’m going to make a very short contribution. I think I will just go to two points. One, I absolutely agree that the small cooperatives and non-bank depositors have really had their interests protected in this in a way that was the result of the work and the thought of the select committee. What came to us didn’t really have that kind of accommodation and what left did. I think that’s a really good thing, because I belong to one of those, and I think that they’re a very good part of our market.

The other point I wanted to make was that this idea of securing deposits has been around for a long time. In fact, in America, they’ve had it since 1933. It has been one of the things that’s made their system more stable at times. I don’t think it was the Greens’ idea; I think it’s a general principle and it’s a good one and it stabilises things. I reject the idea that there’s a moral hazard in doing it. It makes good sense. I commend this bill to the House.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Look, I look forward to adding a few comments to the top drawer contributions that we’ve had this afternoon on this bill. I appreciate the contribution of Simon Court, bringing in one of the greatest movies, actually, of all time—The Castle—talking about the fact that he didn’t really “get the vibe” of the thing. Well, mate, that speech of yours “is going straight to the pool room”—straight to the pool room! It was—

Hon Phil Twyford: Tell him he’s dreaming.

TODD MULLER: Yes, exactly—he is dreaming. But frankly, I agree with the comments that have been made. This is not a moral hazard at all; this is sensible legislation, and National and Labour, have actually, you know, collectively worked through it to get it to a good place.

I acknowledge the Greens’ contribution by Julie Anne Genter. She is right—every one-in-a-hundred of their ideas is actually worth reflecting on and putting in some legislation. So she is right that the National Party does see merit in this, but I wouldn’t get her hopes up that it’s going to occur again any time soon.

It’s had a very good select committee process. You heard that from the contributions of the members across both sides of the House who have been involved in this bill from its inception. The contributions from submitters were insightful and saw a number of sensible changes that we support.

We think this actually strikes the right balance between contributing to a stable and efficient financial system, on the one hand, without being overly burdensome on deposit takers. I think it does strike the right balance, we support it, and it’s a piece of legislation that we hope can quickly progress this afternoon.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): I would like to commend the previous speaker, Todd Muller, and I want this to move through quickly as well, as it’s good legislation. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Phil Twyford: Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): The question is that motion be agreed to—

Hon Phil Twyford: Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): Oh, we have another—I apologise, Mr Twyford. I call the Hon Phil Twyford.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Unaccustomed as I am, Madam Speaker—a very brief call. I just wanted to say a couple of things. One is just to credit the Hon Grant Robertson for stewarding through this triptych of Reserve Bank reform legislation that modernises one of our most important institutions. This bill is all about the financial stability and the resilience of the system and there’s been some very good work done through these three bits of law.

Secondly, just to really note that when there are bank runs, when there are financial crises, as there are under capitalism—think to think about the 1997 Asian financial crisis, think about the global financial crisis, the great crash of 1929 is the one in our folk memory—Governments generally are quick to bail out the banks to buy some stability, but generally what happens is that it’s ordinary people who lose their shirts. Ordinary people are the ones who suffer, whose living standards get hammered and assets get devalued when there are big financial crises.

What’s good about this bill is that at the heart of it is this deposit insurance scheme, which will provide some backup, some confidence, some reassurance to depositors and, in doing so, actually inject some confidence and stability into the system as a whole. So it’s well worthwhile. And I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yes, everyone is in support that needs to be to get the Deposit Takers Bill through, so well done to the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and to those that have worked on this bill.

The financial arrangements in New Zealand become more acute when there are difficult times, as we are experiencing at the moment, so people take a greater interest in what their position is at these particular times. To ensure that deposit takers have got some security will be something that they will no doubt be very satisfied to see, and to give them that comfort at this time. They’re also getting reasonably good interest rates at the moment so they should be doubly happy with their position in the banking sector.

One of the big things about the banking sector at the moment, though, is the role of the Reserve Bank, and they have had sustained criticism from this side and for good reason. The Reserve Bank simply got it wrong in regards to COVID and interest rates in the last few months, leading to the last couple of years. Their failure, in many regards, needs the sunlight of this House to really look at it, because if you’re looking at the interest rates—and deposit takers are experiencing high interest rates at the moment—the other side of that is that borrowers are experiencing very high interest rates, and the impact of that on our economy is huge. The role of the Reserve Bank in managing the economy has been something that many people have been disappointed in in the last few years.

It’s all right us passing legislation like this to try and protect deposit takers, but the reality is that the Reserve Bank has a bigger role in actually looking after the economic fundamentals of our banking system and setting interest rates effectively. That is the most important thing in the banking sector—the setting of interest rates and the security available.

We support the bill, but we have some concerns around the role that the Reserve Bank has played in the last couple of years. A deposit taker’s guarantee is nice, but a Reserve Bank that actually manages the financial affairs of the country better would be of much more financial support to the New Zealand economy at this time.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise and take the final call on the Deposit Takers Bill. I do despair as somebody’s who’s obviously had a colleague in the education system who’s failed to teach basic economics to some members in this House. The idea that the sky is falling, there’s moral hazard, and there’s magnificent risk if we pursue this legislation is interesting, given that we were only one of two countries in the OECD that has yet to undertake such a piece of work. So a bit confused there.

But, anyway, as we’ve already heard, this bill is about confidence. Confidence is a really important part of our financial system, and confidence that’s actually based on fact really helps to ensure stability. So the deposit compensation scheme helps to give some certainty and fact. When we have that, then it helps ensure stability and certainty and confidence, and it’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’ve heard about all the amazing collaboration that has made sure that this bill is as strong as it can be. As somebody who is simply a mere client of a bank, I’m very grateful for all of the hard mahi that’s gone in. Because of that, I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Deposit Takers Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 109

New Zealand Labour 62; New Zealand National 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 2; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 28 June.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a great pleasure to rise and take a call on this third reading of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

Just like the last bill that we passed, the Deposit Takers Bill, this bill is the third in a series of bills that have resulted from a significant piece of work culminating from the temporary migrant worker exploitation review. We’ve heard a lot of concern in relation to this bill that this is some big heavy-handed thing that isn’t going to solve anything.

It’s actually got to be seen in the light of the suite of reforms that have come into play. This is about making sure there’s an opportunity for low-level intervention; an opportunity to establish a more proportionate and efficient enforcement toolkit for immigration officers to make sure that we can intervene before things get out of hand and exploitation becomes something that is—we’ve heard the stories—really quite awful and unacceptable. It is a sensible thing to do.

We’ve got three new employment infringement notices that really nip things in the bud. “Can you produce a payslip?” is a very valid question to be able to ask any employer. It’s a legal requirement and it’s really simple, and it’s a really good way of starting to ask questions of employers about the responsibilities that they have. Those low-level, early interventions to help to educate—rather than waiting for things to get completely out of hand—means that it is with great pleasure that I recommend this bill to the House.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to take a call on the third reading of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. As ACT has already stated in prior readings, we are going to oppose this bill. The Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, in the opening statement, said that this is a fit for purpose, gradual infringement regime—or words that effect anyway. I’d just like to touch on a few issues that we have with the bill, as to why we don’t think that is particularly the case. I would also mention that the case that the Minister mentioned at the start of the third reading, highlighted at the beginning of her speech. Sympathetic as I am to that case, that is a situation which is already in breach of the law, in breach of the Immigration Act. These are cases that frequently go through the system, so not something that this bill would especially be focused on.

The Minister also, when explaining the justification or need for this bill, stated that immigration officers can only resort to criminal offences. I heard that and I thought, “It’s almost as if the Immigration Act 2009 doesn’t exist at all if we take that statement literally.”, because immigration officers have significant power. Anyone who has dealt directly with Immigration New Zealand (INZ) over the years will know that that power trip can be quite real, and migrants are often terrified of officials. And that’s not to mention the Labour Inspectorate. With their powers, they can go in there and, effectively, end business operations overnight on a whim if they see fit for right reasons, wrong reasons—whatever.

Regarding the document request powers—which we’ve labelled “fishing expeditions” previously and will continue to do so—the idea that requesting payslips and employee records will effectively identify bad employers is quite naive because, in many cases, there will be no documentation or the documentation will be completely falsified, like it is already. I would also ask if such a power of information request will end wage recycling. This is something that is quite common in the migrant space, and especially in cases where the migrant has worked with their employer and has set up this wage recycling arrangement with them, and they’re happy to do that—well, “happy” is probably the wrong word, but they’ve been put to a point where they have to do that in order to fulfil visa requirements or residency requirements, and so on.

I would also just mention the lack of the reasonable grounds. I’m kind of in two minds about this—the fact that reasonable grounds hasn’t been covered for these inquisitions. I don’t think, based on my experience with INZ, that it would actually make much of a difference if it is zero or not. If we take, sort of, a more extreme example—look at the dawn raids. And when I say the “dawn raids”, I’m specifically referring to the 29 of them that have happened since the Government made its apology in August 2021. The Government can have its view of how they want the system to be run, and INZ can get carried away and do things regardless. And not a single application to the national compliance manager was declined in that time—they were all approved. So were those grounds met? Who knows?

So if we look at the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme, which is a scheme that, in our opinion, will not help with migrant exploitation in the way it’s set up, it has been watered down substantially and has done little to address worker shortages. The scheme is effectively a self-assessment, with little to no review of the employer, and mandates that employers watch some self-help videos that were produced by bureaucrats in Immigration New Zealand. Now, I don’t know how many businesses have actually watched those videos or how many thorough self-assessments have been done, but I suspect not many. If that’s one of the cornerstones to find good employers, then that’s just not reasonable.

What migrants are looking for is a pathway to residency, ultimately. Specifically the skilled migrant category is a big part of that, especially now that it’s reopened. The Government’s announcement, though, of the changes that are forthcoming this year shuts the door on a lot of those migrants who are not considered high skilled, according to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations system, the antiquated list of occupations that the Government said they were going to stop using, but they’re still going to use it.

This will lead to more rule breaking, because suddenly a whole lot of migrants on temporary work visas no longer have that pathway to residency. So therefore, there is a greater incentive to actually infringe the rules and there’ll be more migrant exploitation as a result. The new skilled migrant category has a built-in disincentive for even trying, because if those migrants don’t qualify, their one-time work visa expires and then they’re effectively shut out. They can’t come back; they can’t get another visa. It’s a stand-down period. So I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help with migrant exploitation, but that’s the Government’s immigration system.

Regarding the publishing of company names, practically speaking—I mean, I’m not opposed to it, but what’s the point? Because at the end of the day, INZ can stop—and it’s in the bill—those employers hiring migrants anyway, right? So it literally says they get fined, they get the infringement notices, they pay the thousand dollars. The thousand bucks to them is meaningless. Really, the point is they can no longer hire migrants. So this public register thing—again, fine. Not opposed to it, but really, what’s the point? So that’s one issue there.

Regarding the Supplementary Order Paper, we’re pleased to see some focus on this. That was introduced, according to the Minister, to ensure that information obtained from the employer under that section cannot be used by an immigration officer in future to prejudice that application. Now, this is good in theory. Practically, what will it mean for that migrant further down the track especially? They may not use that information right there and then and they may try to help them, as was discussed in the committee stage, to get a migrant exploitation visa—or rather, a work visa or a resident class visa, but further down the track will this actually affect their future applications? Because as soon as something goes wrong with a visa application and you get into sort of appeals territory, it gets insanely complicated and the likelihood of success just diminishes over time. So this is quite tricky. I’d just say, look, compliance officers, immigration officers are human after all, and, you know, they can’t unsee something they’ve seen. So how will this actually roll out? I’m not confident this is going to work very well.

The Minister admits that this will not eliminate migrant exploitation, which is a very obvious fact. But the question is: could this make it worse? And I’ll just point out that many nefarious employers who are nefarious in their violation of the immigration system, they’re getting even more sophisticated, and have done so for many years, at getting around INZ’s compliance officers, at breaking the rules, at going undetected. I just wonder if this sort of system is going to actually give them even more reason to get even more sophisticated, because at the end of the day, if you look at the Accredited Employer Work Visa system, it’s a continuation—just like “essential skills” back in the day—of tying migrants to their employer.

To change even role types within the same organisation, they’ve got to go through a bureaucratic process. To change employers, they’ve got to go through an even bigger one. So locking them into that arrangement is a cause of migrant exploitation that I just wish the Government would look into and admit that there is work to do here. And certainly, from ACT’s point of view, we would remove that requirement and, in time, abolish the accredited employer work visa system as a whole, because it is a total rort.

So, look, we’re opposing the bill. We’ll take the ideology out of the system. We’ll make it simple: a viable option so that businesses can get on with it and that we can finally once and for all eradicate migrant exploitation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support the third reading of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. As other speakers have noted and traversed in the previous readings, this creates a regime to aim to tackle low-level offending, and wraps around other measures to discourage exploitation, and, I think, most importantly, to also create a regime that creates consequences for employers. I think this is what will contribute in this bill to addressing exploitation, particularly the publishing of names of employers convicted of immigration offences. We’re going to have to do a lot more work to prevent the phoenixing of companies who are caught in these offences, but I think that the move towards actually having a register of employers who are caught exploiting workers will actually help create more awareness and accountability in order to send a message to employers that exploitation won’t come without consequences.

Through the passage of this bill, one of the key things the Green Party raised—and I feel really stoked that we successfully secured amendments to the bill—was the use of information by immigration officials and how that information could be used. It’s really good to see an acknowledgment that, in order to create a robust system, we need to take workers’ experiences and migrant experiences into account, and for this regime to work, in practice, we need to give migrants a certainty that they’re able to raise matters of exploitation without them fearing that they or their colleagues will face adverse consequences. So we do welcome the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), which comes from our own SOP, as the Minister has acknowledged, to tackle this.

But there are unresolved questions. Look, the ACT Party and the Greens may not have a lot in common on many topics, but the previous speaker, James McDowall, raised some really valid points in terms of having to keep a close eye on how this will end up working in practice. I think that Immigration New Zealand will need to take a really robust approach to ensuring that the SOP will work as intended, because, as Mr McDowall said, once the case manager sees some information, they can’t unsee it. That is so true in terms of, then, what may drive decisions within Immigration New Zealand regarding how further investigations may happen in practice.

The other thing we wanted to touch on as this regime will start being put into practice is addressing the core drivers of exploitation. Yes, again, the consequence component is really, really important, and this bill does go some way towards addressing this, but, ultimately, one of the key drivers of exploitation is how we set up the visa system altogether. I think, unlike the other side of the party that wants to abolish the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme, I want to make sure that we build it in a way that enables this bill to work as best intended so that a lot of the low-level offences that are being caught by this bill are not a direct result of the way we’ve designed the visa system—right?—because so much of the low-level offences that we see, and, actually, more serious offences that we end up seeing, come from the binding of workers to single employers. That in itself creates the power dynamics and the situations where we end up having a bill like this trying to address some of those offences, right? So I do urge—well, and this will fall on Minister Little more than the Minister in charge of this bill—to address employer-bound visas, so that, actually, we can focus on the offences that come from employers’ behaviour and not because of the way we’ve designed the visa system.

But, overall, we do support this bill and we do think, actually, that this will be an evolving piece of work, right? We will need to see how the infringement regime actually—whether they’re punitive enough to discourage exploitation happening, whether we need to tweak those settings in the future, whether we are also creating the wraparound support for migrants who are raising exploitation, to enable this bill to happen, and therefore we’ll need to have a conversation about the settings of the Migrant Exploitation Protection Work Visa and whether those themselves are enabling workers who are in workplaces that are being affected by this bill to adequately be supported into other forms of employment, because right now it’s a six-month visa and there’s no entrenched support for people who need to leave their visas to that one in order to escape exploitation.

So I think the key message that we want to send is that, in order for this bill to work as intended, we need to look at the broader settings of the immigration system, and, at all levels, we need to incorporate workers’ voices and migrants’ voices because the SOP from the Minister and the contributions towards this SOP were coming from constituents that we talked to, who they themselves said, “I’m really scared of raising these matters with Immigration New Zealand because of fear of them being put into a limited visa.”, which that visa then doesn’t allow you to apply to other visas in the future, right? That is the experience that many migrants are facing right now.

So I’m really keen to see the passage of this bill, really keen to see this working in practice, and really keen to continue to work with the Minister to make any further amendments that may be required.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. There’s a saying that goes: “Don’t confuse justice with the law.” Justice is about fair outcomes and about equity; the law is the tool that helps to get us there.

But sometimes those tools don’t reach into the shadows and, unfortunately, that is where many of our migrant workers are working. Migrant workers are more likely to be underpaid, denied leave, work excessive hours, and denied basic employment protections—although these are already law. So measures like requiring document production, while they might seem small; while, as my ACT Party colleague said, they might be considered “fishing expeditions”, in my view, in this side of the House’s view, it’s about equalising access to justice. It’s about creating tools that can and do reach into those shadows to protect migrant workers’ rights. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. Todd Muller—five minutes.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think one of the key reasons that we are opposing this legislation and this bill this evening is based on the contribution from the previous speaker, Vanushi Walters, when she said that from their side of the House this is all about justice; however, she acknowledged that some could critique this as creating the conditions for fishing trips, essentially, by overzealous immigration desk officers. At one level, when you hear that, you think, you know, what’s that all about? But from my experience in the New Zealand kiwifruit industry over the years, and particularly when you hear their very strong resistance, along with Business New Zealand, to this bill, they are very clear about the fact that there has been migrant worker exploitation in that sector and in others, that when it occurs there should be the full force of the law, particularly when it is at the more egregious side of, you know, impacting individuals poorly.

But rather than dealing with the significant and harder and more complex issue of egregious migrant worker exploitation, the Government has, through this bill, created a mechanism that, essentially, gives a desk officer in Immigration New Zealand in Tauranga the ability to say, “Well, actually, it’s the kiwifruit harvest season. This is a sector where perhaps a couple of contractors at the margins might be, you know, not following every single rule. I’m not exactly sure where that is, so what I’m going to do is I’m now just going to go out and demand this documentation from every single contractor in the middle of a harvest when you have six weeks to, you know, to pick a $2 billion crop.”

On the one hand, the Government will stand and crow about the growth of the primary sector and the importance of those export returns to the New Zealand economic story, but where the sort of rubber hits the road, when a business is trying to get kiwifruit picked under pressure and you’ve got a whole lot of people in that space trying to follow the rules and do the right thing, the Government’s view is “No, what we should do is create this power for desk officers to really get their faces in everyone’s business when they’re under the most pressure.”, trying to be able to give every single piece of documentation that is expected—names, addresses, locations; all the detail of every single person that’s on their orchard at that time.

I can see this creating significant cost and frustration, and it’s likely, frankly, to have the perverse effect when you will find—and I’m sure this will happen—that in time when the desk officer for Immigration turns up, there will be people scampering, and so you end up not actually being able to sit with the sector and work with New Zealand kiwifruit growers, Zespri and the like, to actually identify the real challenges, the real culprits, if you like, but instead creating frameworks that that simply won’t deliver for New Zealand when, frankly, we need resources and we need people and we need labour, particularly for some of those rural sectors.

So we think the Government has got their focus wrong. Typically, there’s high-end rhetoric around the importance of ensuring that migrant worker exploitation is reduced, but then they go to the low-hanging fruit, if you like: administrative obligations that will only frustrate and cause, I think, significant disruption for sectors when they’re at their most stretched. So, poorly thought through and actually won’t deliver the big changes that are needed to reduce significant migrant exploitation at the larger end, and that’s why the National Party opposes this bill.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. There’s been some good, robust debate today on this piece of legislation. As was said by our Green Party colleague, we want to see this enacted so therefore—on that case and that matter—I will commend this bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I just want to tell one anecdote which will help the New Zealand public understand this. I had a case that involved three chefs; they were Indian chefs. They were really scared about what Immigration would do when they raised issues which were absolutely exploitative practices. They were working 92 hours a week, they had their passports taken away, and when they complained, they were kicked out on the street.

They were really concerned about that, and I know that this law and this Supplementary Order Paper will help people come forward. I know that people going in and demanding basic information will also help make New Zealand a better place to work. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I once remember a proud Labour Party that stood for migrants, that actually believed in migration—

Glen Bennett: We do.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: And one of the members said, “We do.” Well, we have experienced the worst period of migration in New Zealand’s history under this Government. OK, they might blame Winston Peters because he campaigned on anti-immigration rhetoric, but the reality is when they had a chance, they kept it going. The union movement took over the Labour Party members and decided it didn’t want migrant workers in New Zealand. They will do anything to stop migration and they have shown that over the last two terms.

And New Zealand has suffered from that failure of the Labour Party. I remember years ago when I was first elected and we would go to all these events and the Labour Party members were there every Friday, Saturday night and they were telling all the migrant communities, “We are for you, we’re for you.” And as soon as they got in Government, they turned the tap off—they turned the tap off—and they stopped migration. Pre-COVID, they stopped migration; post-COVID, they stopped migration. They’ve only let in migration this year to try and get the economy looking good for an election; that’s all they’re doing. And migrants are well aware that post-election, if Labour gets back in, they will stop migration again, because the unions don’t want migrants.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): Order! Mr Bennett.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: I am on the bill, because this bill can essentially hurt migration, because it’s going to be harder for employers to want to take that risk: there’s the risk that there will be people coming after you in another Government department trying to inhibit your business.

The ability of current processes to deal with these things is possible. Nobody wants to see any exploitation of workers’ rights, and nobody wants to see exploitation of migrant workers’ rights, and there are processes now to do that. But the Labour Party doesn’t want migrants in New Zealand—they have made that very clear. And that is the nub of what we see in the Labour Party. That is why the migrant vote will come back to National at this election, because the migrants—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Ha, ha!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: And Kieran McAnulty laughs, but, you know, I don’t know too many Filipino dairy farm workers in the Wairarapa that are going to vote for the Labour Party, and I don’t know too many dairy owners that are going to vote for the Labour Party, or businesspeople who have had to do it really hard and who know that their safety and security have been put at risk because of the Labour Party, and who know that they don’t have the ability to stay long term.

Hon Willie Jackson: Stick to the subject.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Wow—Willie Jackson sticking to the subject! This is the man that took half an hour at question time to tell us the story, you know? Ha, ha! Go back to sleep, Willie, it’s OK. We’ve only got 10 minutes to go and you can get out of here.

The reality is that the greatest injustice we do in this country is we don’t let migrants stay. We as a country have got a very poor record of allowing people to stay. We put up all these barriers around income levels you have to have, skill levels, English language requirements—all those sorts of things. And we take away the very people who are the future of this country, and their children, who will build this country even more. We should be enhancing migration in New Zealand. We should be welcoming people who want to come to this country, because they add so much to this country. We shouldn’t be trying to pass legislation to make it harder for migrants to come to New Zealand.

The Labour Party wants to make it harder for migrants to come to New Zealand. They’ve said that; they’ve proved it. [Interruption] And I say to Ibrahim Omer, a great member for the Labour Party: stand up against the leadership of the Labour Party, stand up against them for the last six years when they stopped migration, stand up for those migrants that want to come here and be part of New Zealand.

So this bill we are opposing, but the big problem we have in New Zealand is that we don’t welcome migration. We can say it all we like, but the reality is that we don’t let people come here and make their future here, and that is the problem. The Labour Government is the worst party in this Parliament at doing that. The Labour Government have shown over the last six years that they are anti-migrant and they are anti - the future of this country. That should not be allowed going forward. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANAHILA KANONGATA'A (Labour): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It would be remiss of me not to comment on that last speaker, I think it was four minutes full of filibustering that we didn’t need to hear. Anyway, it’s an honour and a privilege to speak on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. It’s in the name: protection, protection, worker protection. This completes the Government’s manifesto commitment of 2020 in terms of continuing to stamp out migrant worker exploitation. Judge us—if there’s a statement I remember from leaders on this side it’s, “Judge us by our actions”. This is our action. We said that we would continue to stamp out migrant worker exploitation, and this is going towards that—stamping out migrant worker exploitation. I commend the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill to the House. Mālō.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) 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 44

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Crown Minerals Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 8 June.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I’ll make a short contribution, really just to say that this bill is about creating more flexibility in managing Crown-owned minerals for the benefit of New Zealand. There’s two notable things, really. One is that it replaces the word “promote” in the bill with “manage”, in the context of managing this resource in a climate change environment, and that’s fairly self-explanatory.

The second one is just around the duty to consult with iwi and hapū. Instead of making it a “may”, consulting is now a “must”, and actually the way the permit holder applicants consult with Māori can be taken into account in terms of whether that permit is granted and the conditions. So quite a bit of strengthening there and an updating of legislation that was passed in 1991. I commend it to the House.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill. The National Party is opposed to this bill. We have stringent environmental considerations which all extractive mining companies in New Zealand must meet in order to gain consent. Unfortunately, this legislation adds more bureaucracy, more layers of consultation, which ultimately will make it more expensive to do business in New Zealand.

Somewhat ironically, green technologies—or what people think of as a green technology such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels, etc.—require metals; they require minerals for wiring, batteries, and other components, including copper, lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, graphite. Mobile phones, which everyone has, require a number of things: copper, lithium, cobalt, manganese, tungsten, etc. Solar panels need metals such as tellurium—might have pronounced that incorrectly—and silicon for the solar cells that turn sunlight into electricity. I mean, all of these technologies that people think as green technologies require minerals.

There’s increasing discussion that people are talking about—particularly in the green economy discussion—about a circular economy and trying to reduce the distance that goods have to be transported. With the focus of Labour, it’s quite ironic that they are focusing more on extracting minerals from other nations, where we have no control over what’s happening in terms of the environmental considerations, and transporting a very long distance to New Zealand rather than doing it in a sensible, managed way right here in New Zealand.

In terms of protecting our environment and making sure the environment, where it is disturbed, is restored, we have very stringent conditions here in New Zealand. It’s, frankly, a bit of an own goal that Labour is bringing this bill in to take away the promotion of the use of Government-owned minerals right here in New Zealand, which we need for the technologies that we are going to have to build if we are to transition to what people call the “green economy”.

So, unfortunately, it’s a bill that we cannot support as we think that although it might be wellmeaning, it is not going to achieve the outcomes that the Labour Government is seeking to make. So with that, I will end my contribution.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): Members, the time has come for me to wish you a safe and relaxing recess. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 18 July 2023. Pō mārie.

The House adjourned at 5.57 p.m.