Wednesday, 2 August 2023

WEDNESDAY, 2 AUGUST 2023

WEDNESDAY, 2 AUGUST 2023

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

[Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the King, and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom and humility, for the welfare, peace and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]

Petitions

Petitions

, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills

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

CLERK: Petition of Trevarr McCarthy requesting that the House allow parents with shared care the same entitlements under the Social Security Act.

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

CLERK:

Report of the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in care Stolen Lives, Marked Souls, July 2023

2023-24 statement of performance expectations for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority.

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Reports of the Environment Committee on the:

petition of David Famularo

petition of Erica Rowlands

petition of Hannah Blumhardt

report of the Social Services and Community Committee on the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Long-Term Insights Briefing 2023.

SPEAKER: The briefing is set down for consideration. No bills have been introduced.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the actions by this Government, which have led to record numbers of New Zealanders in work. Statistics New Zealand data out today confirmed that the economy has added 113,000 jobs in the June year. But that, of course, is not all; data released today also confirms that wages continue to outpace inflation, with average hourly wages rising by 6.9 percent to $39.53. We know that there are many Kiwis who are doing it tough out there, but the Government is continuing to work hard to lower costs, ensure that Kiwis stay in work, and that they get better paid.

Christopher Luxon: Was Grant Robertson right when he said in May that “we will return to surplus in 2025/26”, or will the pre-election fiscal update show bigger deficits and more debt?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the first of the question: at the time the statement was made, yes.

Christopher Luxon: Has he received any advice from the finance Minister or any officials suggesting the return to surplus will be delayed again?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, of course, the PREFU numbers—the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update—are put together by the Treasury, independently of the Government.

Christopher Luxon: So are you saying that you’ve received no advice from officials or from the Minister of Finance on whether the return to surplus will be delayed again?

Hon Grant Robertson: It will be with your spending plans.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It certainly would be if the member was the Prime Minister and was spending the huge amounts of money that the National Party have been promising to spend up and down the country, with no idea how they’re going to pay for it. But, of course, I have regular conversations with the Minister of Finance about the state of the Government’s finances.

Christopher Luxon: Why has the return to surplus been delayed twice in two years, and are more delays, debt, and deficits on the cards when he opens the books next month?

Hon Grant Robertson: Perhaps look around the world.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’d encourage the member to look around the world at the deteriorating financial position around the globe. I also might like to remind the member that our track record of producing surpluses is a significantly better one than the last National Government, where Bill English, year after year, promised that he was going to turn a surplus, and it took him a lot longer to do that than what he’d promised New Zealanders he would actually do.

Christopher Luxon: Why does he constantly blame global factors for his failure on the economy, when New Zealand is in a recession and set to borrow $20 billion this year but Australia is growing and running a big surplus?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The reason that New Zealand is in a technical recession—if the member wants to read the statistics—is because of a natural weather event called a cyclone.

Christopher Luxon: Is he aware that that natural weather event happened long after the country went into recession?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member is simply economically illiterate if he’s going to make that claim. I’d be interested to know which quarters he is talking about, because the most recent quarterly statistics show that, actually, it was the cyclone that was the difference between New Zealand having negative GDP growth or positive GDP growth.

Christopher Luxon: Doesn’t Australia’s surplus show that countries in our part of the world can face a pandemic and global challenges but still come out the other side when they properly manage the economy instead of running it into recession like he has?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No; it shows that they’re different economies, that the nature of their economies is different, and that New Zealand does not have the minerals part of its export market that Australia does, where they’ve been doing very well recently. We’re different economies.

Christopher Luxon: Can he confirm his Government will spend more this year making interest payments on debt than on primary schools or on the Police?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Of course debt repayments have gone up as, globally, the cost of servicing debt has gone up. Interestingly, then, I’d be interested to know how the member’s going to pay for his nearly $10 billion worth of debt for roads, given that he doesn’t seem to have made any allocation for paying back the debt. He thinks that somehow the private equity markets are just going to give New Zealanders $10 billion in funding to build roads and not want any return from that investment.

Question No. 2—Workplace Relations and Safety

2. ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: What announcements has she made about addressing modern slavery?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): On Friday, I announced that the Government has worked alongside business to deliver on our commitment to address modern slavery. We will introduce new legislation that requires organisations and businesses to be transparent about their operations and supply chains through a new public register. This new disclosure system will be among the strongest in the world at tackling modern slavery. This is not only about making sure people are treated fairly; it’s also about doing good business.

Angela Roberts: How big of an issue is modern slavery?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Since the pandemic we’ve seen modern slavery bloom globally. The International Labour Organization and Walk Free now estimate that 50 million people are in modern slavery on any given day. World Vision estimates Kiwi households are inadvertently paying an average of $34 each week to industries whose products are implicated in modern slavery. While we rank 12th lowest out of 160 countries for prevalence of modern slavery domestically, we know there is real risk that Kiwi businesses and organisations must address in their supply chains and operations.

Angela Roberts: Who was involved in designing this disclosure system?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The Government convened a Modern Slavery Leadership Advisory Group chaired by former Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe, who bought industry knowledge and expertise to help inform what steps we could take to address modern slavery. In 2021, the Government received an open letter signed by over 100 businesses and a petition signed by 37,000 people calling for this modern slavery legislation. The public consultation also received over 5,000 submissions, and an overwhelming 95 percent of submitters supported the proposed disclosure responsibilities. We have heard the calls for modern slavery legislation loud and clear—

Christopher Luxon: Heard the calls after 6 years—you’ve heard the calls!

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: —from those that this legislation directly affects, and the other side of the House who are interjecting, they didn’t do it during their nine years.

Angela Roberts: Why is this important for our trading relationship?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We have commitments in our free-trade agreements with the United Kingdom and the European Union to take steps to prevent modern slavery in our supply chains and promote responsible business conduct. A lack of action would be detrimental to our trading relationship. It’s important we continue to bolster New Zealand’s transparent and ethical reputation within our export markets, and on the global stage.

Question No. 3—Health

3. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Associate Minister of Health: Can she confirm that the Ministry of Health allocated funding to the National Hauora Coalition in 2019 which is being used to offer the incentive of two $50 Prezzy Cards to expectant or new mothers for attending a pregnancy assessment and a 6-week assessment, and can she confirm that eligibility for the payment is determined by whether the expectant mother identified as Māori when they enrolled at their practice?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Associate Minister of Health): I am advised that the Manatū Hauora allocated one-off funding to the National Hauora Coalition in 2019 to create and support Best Start Kōwae. Best Start Kōwae are pregnancy assessment tools that facilitate bestpractice assessments for all pregnant individuals and their babies throughout their pregnancy journey. It was designed to provide high-quality, standardised assessment to help improve the worst health outcomes such as the low lead maternity carer engagement and the low pertussis vaccination uptake by Māori hapū māmā and their pēpē. As a small part of the initiative, there is an opt-in incentive of a $50 Prezzy Card to expectant new Māori mothers for attending a pregnancy assessment, and another $50 Prezzy Card when the baby attends a six-week assessment. In answer to the second part of the question, the eligibility for the payment is determined by whether the expectant mother and/or baby identify as Māori, to address the well-known and specific poorer perinatal and baby outcomes they experience. However, practitioners are able to use the tool with any pregnant person.

Brooke van Velden: Why did the Ministry of Health reassign a $3.4 million underspend from the community services card subsidy scheme—a scheme which benefits the economically vulnerable—to a scheme which exclusively benefits mothers from one ethnic group?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: As I said in my primary answer, the Best Start Kōwae is an assessment tool that is available for all.

Brooke van Velden: Does the Minister believe that it is acceptable that two pregnant women who both have high heath needs and who are both facing financial hardship could be treated differently by being offered Prezzy Cards when it comes to receiving the incentive payment because of their ethnicity?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I again refer to my primary answer, where the Best Start Kōwae assessment tool is available to all.

Brooke van Velden: Point of order, Mr Speaker. My question is specifically about the payment incentive, not the Best Start Kōwae. The Best Start Kōwae programme is free pregnancy checks for all women, but the payment incentive part of that programme is exclusively for one ethnic group—that’s the part I’m referring to.

SPEAKER: Are you speaking to that point of order?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: No.

SPEAKER: Either way, the question has been addressed, in my opinion. The purpose of supplementaries is to use them to find out more information. You might want to use your further supplementaries to do so.

Brooke van Velden: Why, then, does the Minister suggest this is open to all pregnant women when her responses to parliamentary written questions No. 21394 and No. 21391 suggest that the eligibility depends “on whether the relevant individual identifies as Māori”?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: To answer the member’s question, I stand by the answers that I’ve given previously. In terms of Best Start Kōwae, the practitioners and practices who have implemented Best Start Kōwae—which is available to all—receive after each assessment a $100 payment as part of the Best Start pregnancy assessment, and a $50 payment per the Best Start baby assessment. That is available to all. Over $2.5 million of the $3.5 million referred to earlier was to set up the programme to be available for all. Incentive payments are paid to those practices which are implementing the tool, which is available to all.

Hon Peeni Henare: Can the Minister confirm that the national hauora Māori coalition serves all communities?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I can.

Question No. 4—Finance

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Kia orana. The resilience of the labour market is continuing to support the economy. Statistics New Zealand reported today that an extra 28,000 people were employed in the June quarter and 113,000 more for the year. There is now a record high 2.927 million people in work. The average hourly wage rose 6.9 percent to $39.53, compared with inflation at 6 percent. Unemployment did rise slightly, to 3.6 percent, due to a rise in the working-age population and people making themselves available for work. We know that many Kiwi families are doing it tough in the face of cost of living pressures, but they do so while in paid work and with wages keeping pace with inflation. This does help ease some of the pressure that they are under.

Ingrid Leary: What else did the report say about the labour market?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Looking at some of the details, Statistics New Zealand reports that the participation rate rose to 72.4 percent and the employment rate to 69.8 percent—record highs for both since the series began in 1986. The employment rate for women increased to 65.7 percent, the highest rate since the series began. The employment rate for men increased to 74.4 percent, the highest rate since 1987. Employment in tourism-related industries returned to pre-COVID levels, rising 11 percent annually to 275,300. Since 2017, the economy has added 322,000 jobs. Unemployment at 3.6 percent is low compared to where it’s been in the recent past and below the 4.6 percent it stood at when we took office.

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Westpac’s economists said that the June quarter labour market figures pointed to very strong employment growth. ANZ’s economists said that the strength in the jobs market suggested that demand for labour had remained resilient, while BNZ’s economists said the strength in employment was further evidence that soaring labour supply, driven by migration, was taking pressure off businesses and helping them fill vacancies.

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: According to Statistics New Zealand, on comparable measures, New Zealand’s 3.4 percent unemployment rate matches Australia and the US and is below the 4 percent in the UK and the 5.2 percent in Canada. The OECD average is 4.8 percent. In terms of employment rates, we rank third in the OECD. The labour market and the economy have been resilient, but there is a slowing global economy, which will affect our prospects. Last week, the IMF issued warnings about the downside risks around China’s economy and the global outlook. The Government is doing its bit in response to this and taking pressure off by restraining spending. However, further hard choices may be required as we navigate a pathway through this deteriorating global environment. This is a tough time for many households, but the Government has stepped up to support them, and we will continue to invest in conditions to support people into work and drive higher wages for New Zealanders.

Question No. 5—Finance

5. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement yesterday that “the Government has completed its tax work programme”; if so, what potential new taxation measures were discussed in the seven tax reports the Government refused to release as part of the Budget 2023 proactive release?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes. The Government is not working on anything new which has not already been clearly signalled. With regards to the seven reports, these relate to ongoing work on multinational taxation, which the member knows has long been part of the work programme. Due to the nature of the ongoing work and its potential implications on international relations and commercial sensitivity, it has been determined that it is not in the public interest to release further details on this for now.

Nicola Willis: Has the Government considered proposals to make New Zealand income earners pay more tax?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Obviously, we’ve had a significant amount of discussion about proposals that have been rejected. But I think what the member means is “in addition to that”, and the answer is no.

Nicola Willis: Has the Minister considered proposals to make New Zealand income earners—PAYE earners—pay more tax?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’ve just answered that question. The answer is no.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Has the Minister done any work on increasing GST and what the implications of that might be to the New Zealand economy and people?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No. But, obviously, there have been some Governments in the past who said that they weren’t going to increase GST and then they promptly did that. Obviously, that’s not something that we are considering.

Nicola Willis: When the Minister says that no he hasn’t considered proposals to increase income tax, is he telling the House that he has not taken advice on proposals to increase the tax that higherincome earners pay, including by shifting thresholds?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I indicated to the member in the answer to the supplementary question before this one, the member is referring to things that are in the material that’s been released to her—we’ve had that discussion previously. Beyond that, the answer is no.

Nicola Willis: Has the Minister taken any official advice on the effects of removing GST from fruit and vegetables?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No.

Nicola Willis: Has the Minister taken advice from officials on measures to reduce taxation that would be funded by him restraining his own wasteful spending; or is it, in fact, the case that the only way he will ever consider any form of tax reduction is by forcing someone else to pay more?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the member knows because it’s been released publicly, anything to do with that has to be funded. What I would do, if I were the member, would be to concentrate on trying to find how she’s going to pay for her promises rather than the Perry Mason routine.

Nicola Willis: Is it the Minister’s position that every dollar appropriated in his Budget is going to its best purpose, there is no wasteful or inefficient spending, and New Zealanders don’t deserve a tax cut?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: My position is that New Zealanders deserve quality public services. They deserve a Government that invests in health and education, they deserve a Government that builds State houses, and they deserve a Government that lifts children out of poverty. I suggest, again, to the member that her focus should be working out how she’s going to pay for tax cuts, because otherwise it’s cuts to every one of those public services that people will get from National.

Question No. 6—Housing

6. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister of Housing: What recent announcements has she made regarding affordable housing?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): On Sunday, I announced a number of key changes to the Progressive Home Ownership scheme, or the PHO. PHO helps people who would otherwise struggle to get a mortgage to buy their own homes and give their families security. Our landmark PHO scheme will now reach more potential first-home buyers by allowing existing homes to be bought through the scheme, increasing the income cap, and allowing intergenerational families to apply as a group. This means more homes to choose from in more locations and will help make homeownership a reality for more New Zealanders.

Angie Warren-Clark: What progress has been made with the Progressive Home Ownership scheme so far?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Since the PHO scheme was launched in 2020, hundreds of eligible families who would otherwise never have been able to buy their own home have now been able to do so, when they have been able to go and get a house built. So far, 978 homes have been contracted with the support of the PHO Fund, and 512 households have moved into their new homes. The changes I announced this week will assist as many people as possible into homeownership and ensure that the programme remains effective in the current economic environment.

Angie Warren-Clark: Who will benefit most from the changes to the Progressive Home Ownership scheme?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I’ve met people whose lives are transformed by the opportunities offered by Progressive Home Ownership. The changes will provide further help to more potential home buyers who fall outside of the banks’ criteria for lending. The inclusion of existing homes in the scheme will provide better opportunities for those with larger or intergenerational households, and it will mean those living in areas where there aren’t as many new builds being delivered, such as rural areas, can purchase homes through the PHO.

Angie Warren-Clark: What reaction has she seen from the sector?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: From what I have seen, the reaction from the sector to the changes has been positive. For example, I heard Julie Scott, the executive officer of the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust, say in an interview with Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB—hello, Mike; I know you’re listening—that she was a big fan of the fund and that she thinks these changes will make a positive difference to enabling it to be rolled out at a faster pace.

Angie Warren-Clark: What recent announcements has she made regarding the Affordable Housing Fund?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On Sunday, I also announced that more affordable rentals are being built with Government support from the Affordable Housing Fund. The Government is enabling 92 affordable rentals around the country through six new partnerships through the fund. These projects are at various stages of development and will be delivered between July 2023 and June 2027 in Auckland, Rotorua, Hastings, Wellington, and Nelson, where there is significant rental stress.

Question No. 7—Transport

7. SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga) to the Minister of Transport: How much money has been spent on consultants for Auckland light rail and Let’s Get Wellington Moving since 26 October 2017, and how much money has been spent on construction activities for these projects during this time frame?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I am advised that, between 2015-16 and 2022-23, $69.1 million has been spent on consultants on projects within Let’s Get Wellington Moving and $4.6 million has been spent on construction. Since 2017, the Government has spent $58.2 million on consultants for Auckland light rail, and, as the member knows, main construction works are yet to commence there. These consultants were engaged to undertake roles such as planning, engineering, consenting, and financing activities that typically occur before construction. In the absence of a ministry of works, which the member might well be contemplating, this work has to be done by consultants. For the member’s benefit, how major transport programmes work, including mass rapid transit systems, is that before construction can occur, there needs to be investment in design, planning, and consenting, rather than just going ahead with reckons and wish lists.

Simeon Brown: Does the Minister think that Let’s Get Wellington Moving has its priorities right when it has spent over $114 million so far and it’s only been able to deliver a single set of traffic lights in Wellington?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, I think that the priorities of Let’s Get Wellington Moving—to make sure that we actually can have good quality public transport across the city, that we can allow people to move across the city, and that we do other improvements for walking and cycling—are good ones. Am I satisfied with the progress of Let’s Get Wellington Moving? No, I’m not, and that is why we are moving to advance it.

Simeon Brown: Can he confirm reports—

Hon Damien O’Connor: Maybe you should have spent a bit more on Transmission Gully!

SPEAKER: Order! I’d like to hear the question.

Simeon Brown: Thank you. Can he confirm reports that Let’s Get Wellington Moving has recently spent over $113,000 on relocating offices, and is it the case that they have failed to get Wellington moving, because they’ve been too focused moving themselves?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister: no, I can’t confirm those reports. What I can, however, confirm is that Let’s Get Wellington Moving has not spent any money on consultants to be engaged as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Simeon Brown: Who is correct: Michael Wood and Grant Robertson, who said in January 2022 that the Government had selected its preferred option of tunnelled light rail in Auckland’s CBD to the airport, or the Prime Minister, who said yesterday morning that no decision had been made on the preferred option and route?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the member knows, the business case work goes on and the planning work goes on on Auckland light rail. If the member wants to make sure that Aucklanders are forever trapped in gridlock, yes, we could adopt the National Party’s policy, but, no, we actually think that Auckland deserves a proper mass rapid transit system.

Simeon Brown: How many more years will it take for Auckland to have a business case for Auckland light rail, and is it this Government’s priority to get Auckland moving or to get Auckland consulting?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Oh! On behalf of the Minister, our priority is to make sure that we address the enormous nine years of under-investment in Auckland’s transport that we inherited. We’ll continue our work on that.

Question No. 8—Social Development and Employment

8. RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Do special needs grants for dental treatment adequately meet need for dental care, considering 40 percent of adult New Zealanders are unable to afford treatment?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): This Government has shown that it is committed to ensuring New Zealanders have access to dental care when they need it. For the first time in 25 years, we increased the maximum special needs grants for dental treatment from $300 to $1,000 in Budget 2022. This has seen the number of non-recoverable dental grants nearly doubling from 23,025 to 43,479 and the total amount of support provided through the grant increasing nearly five-fold from $6,395,819 to $30,773,018. Previously, you could only receive one dental grant per year, even if it did not reach the $300 limit; now clients can access the grant multiple times in one year up to the value of $1,000. This is making a difference for whānau, but we certainly know there is more to do.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does she agree that access to preventative treatment, including check-ups, remains unaffordable given the average cost of a check-up is $80; if so, why are check-ups excluded from the dental grants?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I acknowledge that many New Zealanders struggle with the cost of dental care. I spoke about the increase in the grant that we’ve put in place. I also just need to mention that, alongside that change, we’ve lifted income limits for hardship support so that more New Zealanders can access grants, including dental grants. Before November 2021, the limits were, for example, $591.20 a week for a single person. We temporarily increased the limits to support New Zealanders through COVID-19, and then that was made permanent from Budget 2022. This now means that a single New Zealander can earn up to $900.93 a week and still access support, such as dental grants.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does she accept that not being able to cover the check-ups can lead to oral health issues going untreated, leading to more severe health issues and expensive medical interventions?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We have made significant changes. I’m not saying that there isn’t more to do with regards to dental treatment and access in New Zealand. That can’t all come down to the welfare system, though. I think the health system and perhaps even ACC need to take a little responsibility there, and there is some work that needs to be undertaken. We have made significant changes. There is a lot more covered than was previously—including if someone goes to the Ministry of Social Development with a sore tooth, then they will at least get the consultation covered. That wasn’t necessarily the case previously.

Ricardo Menéndez March: How many people received dental grants out of the 1.5 million people in New Zealand who are unable to afford dental care?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I can’t speak about all New Zealanders with regards to dental care, as I am not responsible for the dental care system. I’m responsible for the grants that we provide for the lowest-income New Zealanders with regards to providing them with support and access to some level of dental treatment. And, as I said, it is significantly more than what it was when we came into Government.

Ricardo Menéndez March: What would she say to Max, who told us his dental story and said, “I have been living with a tooth that needs a root canal for the last six years. I can’t get it pulled out, because I’ve been already having too many molars pulled out due to Work and Income declining grants. I’m only 32, and I need root canals.”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I empathise with anyone who is struggling to access the dental care that they need, including Max. We have made significant changes through the welfare system. I know that member doesn’t believe that they go far enough, but they certainly are a significant start.

Question No. 9—Biosecurity

9. ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki) to the Minister for Biosecurity: What recent announcements has he made regarding the work to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis from New Zealand?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister for Biosecurity): Today, I announced that the last known property infected with the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis has been de-stocked, disinfected, and officially declared disease-free. This is a major milestone in the work towards eradication, and is the first time that we have had no infected properties and no properties under investigation since M. bovis was detected in New Zealand five years ago. I want to acknowledge the hard work and collaboration between the Government, the Ministry for Primary Industries, DairyNZ, and Beef + Lamb New Zealand to bring us to this point, and also acknowledge the sacrifices made by affected farmers, their families, and their communities. It has been a huge effort but, as a result, our goal of a world-first eradication is that much closer.

Anna Lorck: What has been achieved since the Mycoplasma bovis eradication programme began in 2018?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: In 2018, alongside our partners DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb New Zealand, this Government made the bold decision to be the first in the world to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis. We made that decision to protect our national herd, our farming businesses, and our international reputation. In the five years since, we have completed more than 3.2 million tests for M. bovis, used movement controls on almost 3,000 farms, culled approximately 184,000 cattle, and cleared 280 infected properties. This has been a massive operation; it has touched almost every farming community across the country—but five years on, I have no doubt that the decisions to eradicate have been the right ones.

Anna Lorck: What are the next steps in the plan to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: While we might currently have no infected properties or active investigations, we still have some work ahead to reach our world-first eradication goal. It would not be unexpected to see a small number of cases pop up in the future, but all the indicators from our bulk milk testing and our beef herd surveillance show that our 10-year eradication plan is on track and moving in the right direction. The programme will now move to a national pest management plan with OSPRI taking the lead, but that doesn’t mean that now is the time to relax. We’re only as good as our surveillance and our on-farm records, and it’s crucial that we all stay vigilant and keep M. bovis off our farms.

Anna Lorck: What does this progress mean for our farmers and our businesses?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: More good news: hitting this milestone shows that our plan is working, and that the hard work from farmers, industry partners, and the Government has made a difference, allowing M. bovis to become an endemic disease. It was estimated to come at the cost of $1.3 billion in lost production in the first 10 years alone. Our progress so far will protect Kiwi farmers and businesses from shouldering these losses throughout the future. It will also protect the health of our herd, our international reputation, and our record export growth.

Question No. 10—Police

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

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): As with the past 12 times, I stand by my full statement at the time it was given. It is my view that New Zealanders feel safer with a Government on track to deliver 1,800 extra police. I also support the comments recently made by deputy commissioner Jevon McSkimming via email for police to focus on prioritising front-line service delivery. Finally, I stand by this Government’s decision to increase Vote Police funding by 50 percent, an increased constabulary by more than 1,800 since coming into Government. That stands in stark contrast to the last Government, who had an effective funding freeze for police and a reduction in the real number of our front-line staff.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does she agree with the Deputy Prime Minister, who said of crime in Auckland, “Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s bad at all.”?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: We know that we have an issue with crime, and I think that the complete quote of that member was taken out of context. What that member knows—who frequently uses quotes out of context, as we well know, in this House—is that this Government has a strong track record on delivering and, by doing that, is rolling out situations such as the tactical response model and also by making sure our front line are the best resourced that they ever have been.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does she agree with Police Association president Chris Cahill’s assessment that the front line is totally overwhelmed by the increase in crime under this Government?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I know firsthand, from speaking with front-line staff, that the two main demand pressures we see are the increase in family violence reports and also through mental health—two areas which we take seriously and have work programmes in place to make sure front-line police get all the support they need, and also by adequately resourcing the front line.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Well, after six years, why haven’t you been able to deal with those issues?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: We continue to resource our front line far better than we ever saw that Government do. And we know that what happened under National was that our front line were under-resourced, that those ratios dropped, and that over 30 community police stations across New Zealand were shut.

Question No. 9 to Minister—Amended Answer

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister for Biosecurity): Point of order, Mr Speaker. Look, thank you. Look, I just stand to correct an answer I’ve just given in the House. I’ve just realised—

SPEAKER: You’re seeking leave to do that? Leave is sought for that. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Look, thank you. In the answer to my first question, I said that M. bovis was detected in New Zealand five years ago. That’s not correct: it was actually six years ago—in 2017—under the previous Government. Action began five years ago—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —under this Government.

Question No. 11—Housing

11. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Associate Minister of Housing: What is the Government doing to ensure the rights of retirement village residents are protected and enhanced?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Associate Minister of Housing): Meitaki, Mr Speaker. We are committed to ensuring secure, safe, affordable housing for older New Zealanders. Since the Helen Clark Labour Government first introduced legal protections for residents 20 years ago, the retirement village sector has grown substantially. As the sector has grown, concerns about consumer protection have increased. Today, I’ve released a discussion paper that seeks public views on a review of the legislative framework. There are improvements that can be made to better serve the housing needs of older New Zealanders. Our housing challenges have grown over the generations and we are determined to address them.

Tangi Utikere: What are the main objectives of the retirement villages review?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: It is a big decision to move into a retirement village. It is essential that protections for residents and intending residents are strong and working as intended. The overarching objectives of the review are to ensure adequate consumer protections to residents and intending residents; an effective balance between the rights and responsibilities of residents and operators; the ongoing viability of the sector and its ability to provide a range of retirement housing options and consumer choice; and the rights and responsibilities of residents and operators are appropriately defined, including where they may differ for different occupancy rights.

Tangi Utikere: Does the review respond to recent concerns raised by the Retirement Commission and Commerce Commission?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: I acknowledge the work by the Retirement Commission which has helped to pave the way for the review. It consulted on options for change in 2022. Submissions were sought on issues such as repayment times for capital sums, and weekly fees continuing after terminations. The Retirement Commission confirmed many issues remained unresolved and problematic. It recommended that a full review of the legislative framework be carried out. The Commerce Commission has also launched an investigation into complaints about unfair terms in occupation rights agreements. That investigation is being conducted independently and at arm’s length; it is at an early stage. Its findings might feed into the review but do not impact the consultation phase.

Tangi Utikere: Have the proposals in the discussion paper been tested with the sector?

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: Officials developed the discussion paper working with the Retirement Commission, Government agencies, and the sector, including both village operators and residents. I acknowledge the important role the sector plays in catering for the needs of older New Zealanders. The current legal framework has supported the significant growth of the industry. The growth of the retirement villages sector should not be at the expense of fair and appropriate legal and consumer protection. I acknowledge that the Retirement Villages Association has driven positive changes in the sector to improve consumer protection. These changes are largely voluntary and only apply to their members. Some changes do not apply to villages with fewer than 50 units. I’m looking forward to submissions from all stakeholders, including residents and village operators.

Question No. 12—Children

12. DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Minister for Children: Does he stand by all his statements and actions regarding Oranga Tamariki?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Children): Yes, in the context they were given—in particular, the move to transfer resources and decision making closer to iwi and communities. There have been nine prototypes and 10 partnerships established, which moves decision making closer to communities and their whānau.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does he stand by his statement, in response to allegations of sexual abuse, that care and protection residences need to be shut down “sooner than later”?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Yes, I do.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What specific progress, if any, has been made to shut down these facilities?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, there’s a bit of a process that needs to happen. For example, you can’t just close down care and protection residences and put the kids just in the community when they need to be specialised designed homes. We expect them to be—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Aren’t you building two new ones?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: —smaller. No, we’re not building more care and protection homes. That was a different announcement, Mr Goldsmith. But there has to be a planning process to be gone through, so it does take time. There has to be a transition into the new format.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does he accept the need for urgency in closing these facilities down, given that studies have shown that one-in-three children placed in residential care by the State ended up in prison later in life?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, there’s a number of reasons why children may end up in prison later on in life, and it’s often the home environment that they came from; it’s not just what happens to them when they are in the care of the State.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What is his response to the finding of the Waitangi Tribunal that the Crown removal of mokopuna Māori into State care is a profound and ongoing breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, what I think is that the Māori Party’s decision to disestablish one bureaucracy and build another bureaucracy isn’t going to actually address the myriad of issues that need to be addressed.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Then you’ll love this question: will he support the establishment of an independent mokopuna Māori authority responsible for ensuring our mokopuna are cared for and remain in the whānau, hapū, and iwi; if not, why not?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: For the very reason I just said: that replacing one bureaucracy with another bureaucracy that will end up telling Ngāpuhi, Muriwhenua, and Ngāti Kahungunu what to do with their tamariki is the wrong move. So replacing one bureaucracy with another is a backward step.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): I move, That the sitting of the House today be extended into the morning of 3 August for the continued committee stage of the Spatial Planning Bill; the second readings of the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3), the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill, and the Sale and Supply of the Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill.

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

Ayes 74

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

Noes 44

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 73, Noes 44.

General Debate

General Debate

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Can I just say, pretty soon this Parliament is going to come to an end. But, more importantly, this Government is going to come to an end. I have to say that this place has already got a bit of the endofschool year feel about it, hasn’t it? Because we’ve got a Labour class on the other side and they lost their proper teacher a few months ago and they’ve got a substitute teacher at the moment and the kids in the class are trying hard to make that teacher cry. They’re trying to make them quit. They’re doing everything they possibly can to get a new leader and a new teacher in place and the new substitute teacher is trying to put a brave face on it. He’s trying really hard so the rest of the school doesn’t see how hard it is.

But I want you to know we hear it because we can see it. We know that this Labour class is really struggling. And the substitute teacher managed to get rid of a few of the rowdy kids early. He got rid of Michael Wood and Kiri Allan and Stuart Nash, and they left the classroom and they were put in time out. And then some of you might remember he did a roll call, and he said “Meka, are you here? Meka, are you here?”, and, no, Meka had shot through. She wasn’t coming back either.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand it’s appropriate to refer to members by their full name.

SPEAKER: That’s correct and it’s my role to call that out. While I’m on my feet, there have been a number of things. I’m going to put it down to we’re so close to an election that members think anything goes. I think it’s pretty bad form, though, Dr Webb, to interrupt someone in a general debate. In a general debate, we debate all kinds and all manner of things and that’s what’s going to happen. I will give, however, a general—because it is becoming more prevalent where nicknames not full names and honorifics come in or go out, depending on which one it is. And so, in this case, seeing there was an interruption, I’m going to give the member some extra time to make up for it.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I really appreciate that, because there’s so much I want to say. But, the problem is this. It’s that the substitute teacher, Chris Hipkins, can’t actually run the class and now he’s making up the curriculum each and every day. And here’s what happened. He actually took a group of his top students and he said to them, “Can you work on some economics projects for me?” And they were really enthusiastic about this school project, because the school project was something called a wealth tax.

Two of the smartest kids—two of the smartest kids, Grant Robertson and David Parker—they partnered up and they said, “This is our chance. We’re going to work really hard. We’re really excited about this school project.” And they put extra time into it and they did everything. And one of them, diligent David—diligent David—he went off and he went beyond the recommended reading and he went off and he actually discovered a guy called Thomas Piketty. Now, he read all 696 pages of Thomas Piketty, and he came back and him and Grant were working very excitedly on the new project and it was exciting.

But you know what happened? Chris Hipkins then thought about it, and he thought about them presenting the project to the whole school, and he said, “No, no, we’ve got to stop that. We’re not doing that any more.” And so he pulled it out from his top team. That’s exactly what happened. And so, diligent David Parker said, “Look, I find it untenable. It’s totally untenable. I cannot be the revenue monitor any more. But I’m not so untenable that I won’t stay on the school council.” That’s, basically, what he did. He said, “I’ll stay on.” And I’d say that a confident teacher would actually say, “Now listen here, David, you can’t disagree with me in front of the whole school.” But David Parker gets to do whatever David Parker wants to do, because the substitute teacher has lost authority in the classroom, is what has happened there.

And then there was the finance Minister, Grant Robertson. He was the partner of David Parker. And he said in front of the school assembly he’d been humiliated. And do you know why? Because someone stood up in the school assembly—it was actually Nicola Willis—and she announced Chris Hipkins’ GST policy that Grant Robertson then opposes. And I guess poor Grant Robertson is getting used to this, because if you go back through the record, it’s quite profound. He wanted that fuel subsidy to end, but, actually, Chris Hipkins said, “No, no, we’re going to carry that on.” He liked his wealth tax, his little project that he was doing with David Parker, and that got nixed at the last minute after being led on. And now it’s the GST that’s got knocked on the head as well. The question you’ve got to ask yourselves is: how much more humiliation will Grant Robertson put up with, you know? He’s already moved to the list. He’s got one door sort of outside the classroom, one foot inside the classroom, and I don’t think it’s going to take much more for him to actually move on either.

Now, I’ve got to say, Chris Hipkins is looking desperate. He’s looking like he’s out of control or he’s not in control and he’s making this curriculum now up on the fly. And the problem is that he said there’d be a reset, but, actually, nothing ever follows from it afterwards. There’s no alternatives that are put in place. And he’s just chucking stuff out there each and every day and the kids aren’t keeping up and there’s no alternatives happening.

He actually doesn’t know what he stands for. And if you think about it—Let’s Get Wellington Moving. Now, he doesn’t apparently want that as part of the curriculum any more, but the class don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing instead, as a result. He doesn’t want Auckland light rail to be part of the curriculum any more. But the problem is they’ve spent their whole time, all the years they’ve had at school, working on Auckland light rail and they’ve got nothing else to do, as a result.

So I’ve got to tell you, it’s no wonder that that Labour class is incredibly restive, it’s incredibly miserable, and all you can say to them is that, “Look, the term is coming to an end; your term is coming to an end.” And all I’d say, on behalf of New Zealanders, is that it can’t come sooner, because the sooner the better.

I do want people to know that a National Government in a new school term is going to get things done. I’m telling you, that’s what we’re going to do. That’s why we’ve actually been at work. We’ve announced 30 different policies that are actually here to improve New Zealanders’ lives, about actually common-sense, practical, pragmatic solutions to the things that they’re wrestling with. And that’s what will get New Zealand back on track, isn’t it? And I’m telling you now, a National Government’s going to rebuild the economy, we’re going to make sure we restore law and order, we’re going to make sure we deliver better health and education, and we’re going to make sure that this is a place that if you’re prepared to work hard, you can get ahead and you can do well for yourself.

Mr Speaker, I have to tell you: the substitute teacher has done his time. He knows it, his class knows it, and New Zealand knows it. They want a change. They want a National Government that will get New Zealand back on track and that’s what they’re going to get on 14 October. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti): Thank you, Mr Speaker. That was a very bland and uninspiring five minutes that we will never ever get back in our lives. But, Mr Speaker, I’d like to thank you very much for giving the Leader of the Opposition an extra 30 seconds, because it gave New Zealanders an extra 30 seconds to realise why they don’t like him—because he is bland and uninspiring. But of that 30 seconds that he got, he was only able to use up 12 of those seconds, so his speech writers didn’t actually factor in that he might actually get a little bit of time. Even then, he can’t even deliver the pre-prepared speech with all that much panache. It was bland. It was uninspiring.

But just before I get into the guts of my speech, I’d just like to acknowledge what we heard in question nine with my colleague Damien O’Connor, the Minister of Biosecurity, Agriculture, who has done an incredible job in getting New Zealand to the point where we have almost eliminated Mycoplasma bovis from the country. If we do achieve it that will be the first time anywhere in the world that something like that has been achieved. I just think that, even though it was question nine, we sort of glossed over it, it is a huge achievement from this Government. Just to think about how much that has saved the country because the effects of Mycoplasma bovis were devastating on us.

This Government is just getting on with the bread and butter issues that matter to everyday Kiwis while, on the other side of the House, they spend time on their Twitter tirades. Now, I didn’t actually see the Twitter tirade that emanated from the other side there today, but so many people were laughing about it that I actually had to ask exactly what went on. But there was a Twitter tirade—while we’re getting on building roads and houses and everything in between, well the National Party can’t even tell you how their policies add up, and it’s quite telling that that Twitter tirade was all about criticism of them and their fiscal black hole.

Now, the National Party have a history going back to Steven Joyce about fiscal black holes. Remember the $11 billion fiscal black hole that he accused us of having, and it wasn’t the case. Then there’s Paul Goldsmith with his “Bermuda Fiscal Triangle” where they want to cut taxes, reduce debt, but carry on spending. It just doesn’t add up. But, in July of 2017, we released a comprehensive fiscal plan ahead of the general election, and yet now it’s August—it’s August and we hear nothing but crickets chirping from the other side. No fiscal costings. And yesterday, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, they estimated a funding shortfall of between $3.3 and $5.2 billion in their plans, and that was the point of the Twitter tirade. Instead of justifying or showing how their figures add up, they didn’t. All they could do is just try this Twitter tirade that demeaned the fact that Grant Robertson had a meeting in Copperfield’s with somebody—oh my God, hiding in plain sight! Oh, there’s the start of the conspiracy theory if ever I saw one. The Minister of Finance had a meeting in Copperfield’s, hiding in Copperfield’s where no one would see them. Spooky, spooky. So that was the genesis of the Twitter tirade from the National Party. Nothing at all about saying, “This is how our plans add up, this is where the money’s coming from.”, but it’s just a big rant about some sort of conspiracy that was dreamt up in the depths of Copperfield’s.

We know that for National to be able to do whatever they say they’re going to do, there are going to have to be cuts to all the services that are really important to New Zealanders—health cuts, education cuts, housing cuts. I just want to acknowledge my colleague here—Megan Woods—and the work that she’s done in the housing field: 12,000 public homes with another 6,000 on the way to being completed, when we know that we entered Government and there was a deficit of public housing, and we wondered why there was a housing crisis in New Zealand. We have spent the last five years just fixing up the mess that we inherited, but now we’ve built on it, and I’d just like to acknowledge Megan Woods for the wonderful job she’s doing making sure that New Zealanders are housed.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): The New Zealand National Party: big on talk, low on action, low on delivery. And the thing I’m very proud of is the thing that this Government has delivered over the last six years, not only across Aotearoa New Zealand but in my own backyard in the electorate of Northcote. And when I hear the Opposition leader—a terrible speech—talking about the New Zealand Labour Party, talking down New Zealand’s economy, talking down average people in New Zealand, I want to acknowledge the work that our Government has done across our country.

New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit has been decades in the making. But being smarter about the way that we plan, the way that we deliver and use infrastructure is critical if we are close to closing the infrastructure deficit that this country has. Similarly, I want to acknowledge the housing crisis and the decades in the making to get to where we are today. Yesterday, I hosted the Deputy Prime Minister in the Northcote electorate to show her firsthand the work that this Government had delivered to Auckland’s North Shore and had delivered in the Northcote housing development. I talk openly and share an invitation to personally host anyone from in this House in this particular development. We are on track to deliver 1,700 houses from 325 old, cold State houses because we are building public homes there. We’re building homes for first-home buyers and homes on the market.

We haven’t only built homes in my area; we’ve invested in the pipes in the ground—$3.5 million has been invested by the Housing Acceleration Fund because what we saw was investment in good water infrastructure to support the growth on Auckland’s North Shore. Across the way, we’ve built Onepoto Primary School—$19.5 million, the lowest-decile school in our electorate, 12 new classrooms. I showed the Deputy Prime Minister Northcote Intermediate, that we are about to open next month. It goes on, because as we build houses we must build communities too. It was only last month that I also took the Minister of Health over to North Shore Hospital—150 new elective surgery beds that we are about to open in January. We talk about an infrastructure deficit in this country, but I tell you: over the last six years, this Government has delivered for Auckland’s North Shore and the electorate of Northcote across the board, because that is what we know is important.

But what we also know is that that takes investment. And I acknowledge the $77 billion investment over the next five years into New Zealand’s infrastructure that this Government has put in place. We’ve got to continue to grow that investment up to what the sector asked us—$150 billion to get our country where we need to. I looked at National’s transport plan that they announced this week: shocking, no investment in Auckland’s North Shore. I’ll say that again: no investment in Auckland’s North Shore. No mention of an additional harbour crossing, because the reality is that this Government is getting on and doing the work that they didn’t.

But the important part is that we recognise the opportunity of Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland, a global city—a global city that we have to invest in, because our people count. We want our people to live in warm, dry homes. That’s why we’ve invested in public housing. That’s why we have progressive home ownership for Aucklanders that want to purchase their own home. That’s why we’ve invested in every school in my electorate in their property so that they have warm, good learning environments to get to where they need. But most of all—most of all—is that every child in our education system counts, and we want every child to have the best opportunity to start their life to be educated.

Finally, yesterday my proud moment: I introduced our Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Auckland, to a number of apprentices that are working on our housing development. That is the work that we are doing. That is the work that this Government is delivering for Tāmaki-makau-rau, delivering for Aucklanders, and delivering for Northcote.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Housing is a human right. This Government believes every person deserves to live in a warm, dry, and affordable home. It is why we have undertaken the biggest systematic change in the last 40 years or more: building houses. It is why we overhauled the planning rules to encourage more density in our urban areas where people want to live and work.

When I first arrived in this country, I was given a Kāinga Ora house in Lower Hutt in Pōmare, where people like me, who come from poor backgrounds, lived in peace and love. And guess what happened to those houses? Two, three years later, those houses were bulldozed by the National Government in 2011. They had sold them to the private developers, and now there are flash houses being built in those places—

Chris Bishop: Yes. Some of them are State houses.

IBRAHIM OMER: —which is fine. But what happened to those families? What happened to those poor people, Mr Bishop? What happened to them? No one knows. They have been kicked out. God knows where they are.

That’s why we are investing billions in infrastructure like pipes and roads to enable new housing. It is why we equip local authorities with the ability to undertake long-term borrowing to ensure that they can develop the infrastructure they need to sustain and grow their communities and why we work with them to have coherent spatial planning. It is why we are investing in a land development to get a mix of public affordability in the market housing, because this is very important.

Yesterday, for me, as someone who calls Wellington home, was a proud moment. We opened the new housing project in Rolleston Street. About 20 new houses: flash, new, dry, and affordable houses, which is going to house about 20 families—and 60 more are being built.

I’d like to thank the Hon Dr Megan Woods for all the work that she is doing. You go to Auckland, and every street you go to, there is a new house and a new building coming.

This Government is for all New Zealanders. We know that having a house, having a shelter over the head makes a difference in people’s lives. To me, what made a difference in my life was getting that Kāinga Ora house. It gave me a head start in life. That’s why today I could be here, I could speak in this House, sharing my experience, because I got a head start in life. I could go to uni because I had shelter. I could work because I had shelter. In the last nine, 10 years, a lot of people couldn’t afford that. That’s why this Government is investing billions of dollars building more houses.

Rolleston Street housing project is just the beginning for Wellington Central. There is more under way. Just around the corner from Rolleston Street, there are another 300 dry and affordable houses coming up, and this is going to house around 900 families. This is huge for Wellington, and this is what the Labour Government does. In Wellington, when the National Party left the House in 2017, we were left with 89 fewer public houses. In the past five years, we have delivered about 400 much more needed public houses for people and whānau and families in Wellington City, and we will continue to provide more houses in the coming years, with over 1,000 in the pipeline across the region.

Across the country, we delivered about 13,300 public homes since October 2017, 11,285 of all those are new builds—in contrast to the National Government, which left us with 1,500 fewer public houses. To put our public housing building programme in perspective, one-in-seven houses has been added by this Government in the last five years.

I am proud to be part of the Government that is delivering the biggest-ever housing programme since the 1950s. This, housing, is just one of the things that we’re doing. You can see what this Government is doing for the working people through increasing the minimum wage. Mr Speaker, thank you so much.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. “When will it end?” farmers ask me. “Soon, soon.”—I offer it to them—“After 14 October.”

Hon Member: M. bovis you mean? When will M. bovis end?

MARK CAMERON: More vacuous assertions from the left, I see. Farmers everywhere, affronted by the political theatricality of the left, want change, and they deserve it. On this side of the House, the ACT Party have already offered solutions and are willing to deliver more to them. We’re convinced conventional wisdom trumps political pontificating and piety, and common sense prevails. Rural New Zealand, lost to the Wellington boffins, will finally see pride returned, the ACT Party ever spurring that narrative that Government has a limited role, not a controlling one. Bureaucrats, a million miles away from on-farm practice, who know not of cowshed, woolshed, or farm paddock, are dictating terms of reference.

Hon Member: Hard to get rid of M. bovis!

MARK CAMERON: In my time representing the rural sector, the questions come thick and fast—more vacuous assertions from the left I see—“Why is it so that the Government seeks solutions”, they say, “for ill-defined problems?” That central mandate runs roughshod over local nuance or how on-farm morale could actually be so bad—

Hon Member: Unless it’s to get Wellington moving.

MARK CAMERON: —something that that member would know nothing of. “And how is it that Minister Parker and Minister Shaw continually offer priestly sermons from up on high about on-farm practice or where or how or why we should even farm?” many ask.

Recently, ACT returned from its rural heartland tour. The anger and the angst offered by farmers was commonplace. “The wasteful spending in Wellington”, they said, “was nonsense.” The Ministry for Primary Industries’ allocated budget of $176 million—reconcile that one—for policy design was highlighted to me, but total disconnection from on-farm practices and outcomes and understanding were obvious, where cause and effect were leagues apart from today’s policy makers. “Come and talk to rural people.”, they said.

Wellington wonks aside, one didn’t need to look far to find glaring examples of this problem: a proposed emissions pricing scheme that would see the world’s most efficient farmers go into a taxable regime in the absence of technology only hurting small-town NZ. Ask any consumer—say to them, ask them—if driving up staple food prices is a good thing. Gracious me. It’s up 12.5 percent in a year alone. Green vegetables are up over 20 percent. Beat up the rural sector, and that reality only gets worse. When will common sense prevail?

The idiocy of this is never more evident than the freshwater farm plans. Somehow Minister Parker’s office and its officials know best—more than those that do it. No more evidence was needed to highlight that centralism over localism does not work, when research results from Otago University’s Associate Professor Janice Lord stated, in relation to intensive winter grazing, “The one-size-fits-all nature of this policy has the potential to create counterproductive outcomes.” This is common sense. Everyone knows it to be so—sadly not the Ministers.

The list and the litany of confusion in rural New Zealand go beyond that He Waka Eke Noa and the semblance of it. Good luck, I say, to those trying to make sense of that riddle. That’s right: the Labour Government still maintains that taxing the most climate-efficient farmers in the world is the way to go. Go figure. A full departure from common sense, I say, but, hey, what can you expect from an outgoing Government? Clearly no one has told these people the difference between a short-term and a long-term gas, but I guess explaining it is losing to this lot. Give me strength. While solace is just around the corner, 14 October is but a few months away, and, rest assured, for those that have suffered the foul wind of Labour, this lot will soon be gone come election. Dispense with the nonsense, and finally we can get back to what we do so well: farming in rural New Zealand.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Really pleased to rise and take a call and reassure the member opposite, Mark Cameron, that there’s some great stuff happening with our rural communities, because today I want to talk about and celebrate collaboration—something this Government is really committed to doing and is really good at doing. Collaboration is time-consuming and it’s messy, but when you come across a really wicked problem or a complex issue, and if you’re really, really ambitious, collaboration is absolutely necessary. And I just want to bring a couple of examples of this, where the Government has successfully collaborated to solve complex issues.

I will start with M. bovis, because I think it’s really important to highlight the serious commitment that this Government has to futureproofing our primary industries to sustain ourselves into the future. It was in 2017 when M. bovis was identified. I was an economics teacher in a rural school at the time, and in 2018 this Government joined up with DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb New Zealand to collaborate. They knew it was going to be really hard; no one else in the world had bothered to even try, but because we sat down together and decided to collaborate and commit, it was going to be possible. It was hard, but it was going to be possible. I was a teacher of economics in a secondary school at the time—talk about a teachable moment; it certainly was one. And it was great to hear from the Minister today that New Zealand currently has no farms infected with the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis. And the effort continues, but at the moment we have zero farms infected and zero being investigated, because we collaborated. The sector and this Government trusted each other to go through what they knew would be incredibly hard, to write the playbook as they went, and make it work.

And I need to acknowledge the hardship felt by our communities—many of us live in rural communities and we know the families, the farms, the connected businesses that have been impacted by the sacrifices that have been made. The reason we did it: if it had become endemic, it would have cost about $1.3 billion in lost production in the first 10 years alone. This was not Government dictating; this was everybody sitting down and committing to solving a wicked problem. We are moving in the right direction. All the indicators—the bulk milk testing, which is an amazing surveillance system that has grown since 2018, and beef herd surveillance—have confidence in our 10-year programme working. But of course, we’re only as good as our detection systems and our on-farm records, and we know that the ongoing vigilance and commitment will be required into the future, and we need to make sure that that sacrifice by our farmers and the hardship felt by our communities—very real hardship—wasn’t all for nothing. Like I say, I was an economics teacher at the time, and it was a golden opportunity to bring economics into the classroom and to explore the impact of decisions made by Governments and industry and how those impact directly on our families, on our farms, on our local town, on our exports and our economy. The cost was significant, nobody will ever deny that: 184,000 cattle culled, 280 farms depopulated, and thousands with movement controls and significant impact on the way that they operated.

So at this point, I’d like to segue to talking about education in the classroom and just talk about something else that was a difficult problem and issue that has been hopefully resolved with an offer today to the Post Primary Teachers’ Association and the secondary school teachers of this country. It’s really difficult—teachers are the most expensive but the most valuable part of our education system; it is really, really hard to value them when it costs so much. And after careful consideration and weighing up the current challenging financial environment, this Government has decided to make sure that we prove that we value our teachers and that we can bear the cost of making an offer. This historic offer will see beginning teachers receiving an annual increase of almost $11,000—35 percent at the top of the scale. This is a Government that recognises the value, not just the cost, of teachers, and we hope that this shows that we acknowledge the challenges in front of them and helps them to continue to fight for a fabulous education system.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This week, hasn’t it been fascinating to see what Labour really thinks about roads? They hate building roads, and we’ve seen what they’ve done in their last six years of office. When Labour came to office in 2017, the very first thing this Government did was they cancelled roading upgrades up and down the country: the East West Link in Auckland, Mill Road, Cambridge to Piarere, Tauranga Northern Link, Woodend bypass. The list goes on: Whangārei to Port Marsden, which has had 60 deaths and serious injuries over the prior 10 years. These are big, important projects to get New Zealand moving, to provide safer and more resilient connections, and what have we seen this week from the Labour Party? Once again, their hatred of building roads, their hatred of delivering for New Zealanders who use their cars in getting around the country, who want to spend less time and congestion and more time being able to do what they want to do.

This is a Government which not only cancelled building and upgrading our country so we had highly productive roading connections between our regions but they also said, “What we’re going to do is we’re going to build Auckland light rail.” Well, how’s that going? As we heard from the Minister of Finance this afternoon, not one bit of construction has been done. They’ve had six years in office, but they haven’t even started construction. Shanan Halbert from the North Shore said, “We want Auckland to be a global city.” Well, you’ve had six years to turn Auckland into a global city, and absolutely nothing has been achieved. We’ve seen tens of millions of dollars spent on consultants but nothing actually delivered. This Government has not been able to start and complete any major new infrastructure projects since they came to office, and that tells you everything about this Government. Not only do they hate roads; they hate delivering—they hate delivering for New Zealanders.

But let’s also talk about Let’s Get Wellington Moving. Wasn’t it hilarious to hear the Minister of Transport saying, “Well, it’s not really living up to its name—it’s not really living up to its name.”, then the Minister of Finance saying, “Well, we’d like to get Wellington moving faster.” Well, again, this Government has spent tens of millions of dollars, $114 million, on Let’s Get Wellington Moving, and what have they delivered? Well, for those of us who drive to the airport frequently, a new pedestrian crossing on Cobham Drive—a new pedestrian crossing. Oh, and a slower speed limit on State Highway 1 going along Cobham Drive. That is what this Government has delivered in transport.

So this Government has failed to deliver. They’ve cancelled the pipeline of infrastructure investment the last National Government has delivered, and what National has said this week is that we will get New Zealand back to delivering the transport infrastructure that New Zealanders need. We’ve outlined our plan to deliver the roading upgrades that New Zealanders need so we can have safer, more resilient infrastructure across our country, where we can reduce travel time for New Zealanders stuck in congestion and we can give more people transport choices in our major urban environments.

This Government spent the last six years talking about Auckland light rail but has failed to deliver it. We are going to get on with delivering rapid transit in Auckland with a Northwestern busway, completing the Eastern Busway, and starting and completing the airport to Botany busway. These are projects which will make a huge difference to New Zealanders’ lives, and while this Government talks, National will get on and deliver.

I just want to reflect on the Prime Minister’s comments yesterday where he said, “Oh, look, well, we’ve not even decided the route or the mode for Auckland light rail.” This is the problem with this Government. They’re now saying, “We’re not going to make those decisions until next term.” How many more years do these guys need just to make a decision, just to actually get on with doing things? This is a Government which has sat on their hands rather than actually delivering. They’ve had six years to be able to actually make a difference for New Zealanders stuck in traffic, six years to actually deliver better public transport for New Zealanders, but they haven’t done it. They’re all talk and no action.

National has a plan. National has a policy for transport for the future in New Zealand. It delivers for New Zealanders across our country. It costs less than their $29.2 billion Auckland light rail they haven’t even started, and it will impact far more New Zealanders. National will get New Zealanders back on track, we’ll get transport back on track, and we’ll deliver for New Zealanders.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, we’ve just been asked: what does this Government do when it comes to action and delivery? Thank you for the opportunity to tell you how much we’ve been doing in Hawke’s Bay and how much more we’ve ever done compared to the National Government, who did absolutely nothing for Hastings.

In fact, one thing they seem to think was such an achievement in Hastings was building six State houses. Well, I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that in this Government we’ve built over 333 homes in Hastings, we’ve got another 111 under way, and we’ve got another 86 in development. Now, that’s what we call housing. We don’t sell down and sell out. We get on and we build—and build back Hawke’s Bay we will! Hundreds of millions of dollars of Government investment is coming in to back Hawke’s Bay as we rebuild and rebuild resilience in the region.

And as I say this, I absolutely acknowledge that there is a portion of our region that has absolutely been smashed, but there’s also a major significant part of our region that is pulling our socks up and getting on with it to get the work done and to keep Hawke’s Bay moving. And moving we are, because there have been hundreds of millions of dollars invested, firstly, into the regional recovery, but also into what we’ve been doing. And if anybody wants to know how much I love lists, you only have to listen to my general debate speech when I start talking about the millions that we have been investing in Hastings.

A record of over $280 million has gone into Hastings outside of the recovery, and that has gone into things like water infrastructure. It’s gone into civil engineering, of investment into infrastructure to build housing. Just in Hastings, in Flaxmere, we opened another area that’s getting on with building, thanks to $11.5 million of Government investment, because we partner and we work together.

As I read the news this week, it was absolutely so exciting to see that spending, spending in Hastings, is up, and it’s up 27 percent because of international visitors coming back to the bay. That’s because we know that tourists love our region and the sun will come up on Hawke’s Bay and the visitors will come back and we will continue to see people coming in and backing the bay.

And when it comes to advocating hard and working with those Ministers that are making decisions on how we get our region moving, on how we build investment, you can absolutely be assured that when it comes to Stuart Nash, the MP for Napier, and with me, we’re working hard out, advocating hard out for our region. And I’m excited about what’s yet to come for our region, because I can tell you that there are hundreds of millions of dollars coming in. We will build back bridges, we will build on the roads, we will recover, and we will back our growers, and we will back our farmers, and we will continue to do everything we can to keep our region moving forward.

On that, I just want to acknowledge again the hard work of our community, because it’s by working together and showing community pride and spirit and keeping going—the volunteers keep coming in and helping, people keep helping each other, and every day I speak to people in my region who are needing help, and we are there and we will continue to be there.

This is a Government that backs the bay. This is a Government that knows how much Hawke’s Bay means to New Zealand. That’s what’s important and that’s what I know from what we’re seeing: hundreds of millions of dollars—hundreds of millions—coming into the region to keep our region going forward.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just want to take a brief moment in my general debate to acknowledge the success of the Mycoplasma bovis eradication programme. I want to say that there are a lot of farmers out there who had their hearts broken in this programme, in the interest of what has developed into something good for the wider industry. Many of us felt it with you, and it’s important to acknowledge today that that has been successful and it wasn’t done for nothing.

Now, I want to move on to transport for the future. So, this week, the announcement from the National Party around transport for the future has really got people excited all the way around our country—all the way around. I want to particularly focus on a couple of areas today—largely the Waikato and Taranaki, which are either end of the beautiful Taranaki-King Country electorate. So what National has committed to do is to reinstate the Cambridge to Piarere road, which was in place and in play under a former National Government, and this current Government canned it. So that’s back on the drawing board—the thing that I really want to get excited about, as well as the Southern Links project. So that project is going to link Hamilton down through the wonderful area where the Hamilton Airport sits, in the wonderful Taranaki - King Country electorate, right through to where the Mystery Creek Fieldays are. It’s going to join up a nice road around Hamilton, because, as we know, the Waikato Expressway has been fantastic. That was a National Government project, and that is working extremely well. And the southern Hamilton area, where I join in, is now going to get some attention.

But the good piece about the Southern Links is that New Zealand doesn’t have enough houses, and we know this. We know that we need to enable our urban areas to grow. How we’re going to deal with some of these roads is to enable greater use of the value-capture and cost-recovery tools so that we can fund major State highway projects specifically to unlock tens of thousands of new homes. So the Southern Links one is directly related to the Peacocke area, where the development is going on. So very excited about that. So that’s the first part of it. It’s going to unlock some housing.

For far too long, we’ve heard so much about the “golden triangle” in this country that links Auckland with Hamilton and across to the Bay of Plenty. And I keep going, “Excuse me, we’ve got a west coast over here.” Now, we’re actually in the phase where we can start linking the Southern Links to come down through the Taranaki - King Country electorate. We can start focusing on the diamond—forget about the triangle; under the National Government, the area has become a diamond, and women love diamonds!

So, as we focus down through that area, we go through the Awakino, where the two bridges are being put in place and the Awakino Tunnel Bypass has happened. And that was a John Key - Simon Bridges National Government project. We currently have cranes, diggers, and all sorts of equipment sitting in Mount Messenger, which was a John Key - Simon Bridges National-led project. It just seems to have taken almost six years to get through resource management, which is another problem that the National Government will attend to after 14 October. So we come down through there, and we have Port Taranaki. That’s a great link for our goods and services to end up through the Waikato, and we can actually get some great linkages going on with produce, productivity, and all of the good products that we share between both of the regions.

Now, I just wanted to make one more mention about the Forgotten World Highway, because there’s a piece of road there—the Hon Shane Jones came, when the previous Government, which included this Labour Government, actually took the gas out of the country and left a small amount in Taranaki, and offered to do the Forgotten World Highway; except they forgot! It’s only just beginning to get some movement. Simeon Brown and Christopher Luxon, under a National Government, have committed to finally finishing that road up, the Forgotten World Highway—so it will be remembered under a National Government!

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): One in seven—one in seven public homes in this country have been built by this Labour Government. It’s an incredible record of this Labour Government to have delivered public housing at the rate of no other Government since the early Labour Governments that we are so proud of. To look back and say that this Labour Government has delivered that many public homes is worth celebrating.

And how have we done that? We have invested in the infrastructure that it takes to build those homes, and stripped back the barriers to building them. Because not only does this Government build homes, but we build the infrastructure that is needed for them. We build the roads that are needed for them—as my colleague Anna Lorck pointed to, the example in the Hawke’s Bay very recently announced. We also build the classrooms, we build the hospitals, we build those things that people need to live in their communities—

Hon Rachel Brooking: The pipes.

ARENA WILLIAMS: —and to thrive. But as my colleague Rachel Brooking shouts, yes—we build the pipes. We put the groundwork in, we are doing the mahi that makes it possible for families to move into these new houses which my colleague Ibrahim Omer pointed to, announced very recently in Wellington. We build those pipes; we do the groundwork that puts those houses up faster and more efficiently than ever before.

It is a track record that this Labour Government has, of delivering those things which New Zealanders need—a roof over their heads, shelter to make their lives more enjoyable, better, to make sure that their families have somewhere warm and dry to live. I’m proud of that record. We’re also on track to deliver 18,000 new public and transitional housing places by 2024. There is vision for delivering more of the kind of housing that we need to make sure that people are thriving.

But not only does it mean those things that we can see and those physical things: the groundwork, the pipes, the roads, the flood protection, and the waste water. This Government has also done the work this term to make sure that we are adapting to the different kinds of conditions that we will continue to see. Earlier this year, we were all reminded of the devastating effects of climate change we are having right now. Things like flooding affecting Auckland, cyclone affecting Hawke’s Bay—extreme weather events that are causing more and more damage to people’s homes and livelihoods. Building houses is not just about putting those pipes in the ground, it’s also making sure that people are out of harm’s way, that they can live in a place which is safe for them to live. We haven’t had rules in place before that have meant that the Aucklanders who are affected by the Auckland floods were safe and that their children could go to school in the morning, and that is something which this Government needs to advance. It needs to be advanced in a cross-partisan way as well.

That brings me to an important piece of work that I’d like to highlight for the House. It’s the Māori Affairs Committee briefing on Māori climate adaptation. That committee has done some important work—and I have the report here, which was reported back recently to the House—on traversing those issues which are particularly impactful for Māori assets, Māori land, marae, urupā. Those things which are important to not only Māori having houses and a place to call home and a place to call kāinga, but also to our identity as Māori. And as we grapple with those extreme weather events and sea level rise, it will become increasingly important for Government to face up to the issues which are specific for Māori and make sure that Māori do not bear the brunt of climate change and become particularly badly affected by it.

That briefing was an extensive piece of work where the committee came to a host of what are cross-partisan recommendations. All of the committee agreed to the recommendations included in that report, and they are vast. They are about the particular planning processes which we should have to make sure that people are safe in the homes that we build. They’re about how we should engage with communities, not just Māori communities, but in a way where everyone can get around the table and make decisions about what communities need to do to make sure that their houses and their infrastructure is safe from climate adaptation, and that—where it’s necessary—they can move in a way where if they need to be together, they can be together. If they need to move to other parts of a city or an urban environment or another part of land, that they can have those conversations.

Those are really important recommendations, and I do want to thank the Ministry for the Environment officials who assisted the committee with its work, as well as Te Puni Kōkiri officials and the clerks—Jayden, Violet, and David—thank you for the work on that. It’s all part of this Government’s plan to continue to invest in the infrastructure that we need to strip back the barriers to build more houses and to give people the homes they need.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): I stand today to honour the strength of communities who are doing their best to survive, and I’m talking specifically about rangatahi and young people who are forced to find paid employment while still having to go to school, because housing costs are way too high and incomes supporting families are not high enough. This is when they should instead be going to school, but I want to acknowledge their fierceness, their loyalty to their families, and their protectiveness of their families. They are really clear: they do absolutely reject the stigmatisation and dehumanisation of their very families that has for far too long been dominant over many, many years.

I want to acknowledge also their school communities, who fight hard for these rangatahi to be recognised for the incredible leaders that they are. They are loyal and dedicated and they love school, but they want to help their families.

The problem is that for too long, we in this House have continued to make political choices over successive decades in Government that keep prioritising housing as a way to build wealth for a few and that keep undermining the incomes and support that families should have always been having so that these rangatahi can prioritise their education, instead of being forced into situations that sacrifice their education. Successive Governments could have always chosen to end poverty, and instead tax people who own and not just tax people who earn, because political leaders have continued to dehumanise and stigmatise these very families, who continue to try and do their best.

What are we here for if not to improve lives and address the underlying systemic drivers of these causes—whether it’s ACT squabbling over a $50 voucher, without mentioning and fighting against the long-held health inequities that have existed in our system for Māori, or whether it’s the National Party talking about forcing someone to pay more tax, without mentioning the choices when families are forced to live in crappy, expensive, unaffordable homes. This country still allows housing to be used to build wealth instead of homes for people. It’s something we should all be stepping up to, including if we are serious about reducing offending. Improving incomes and housing will go a heck of a long, intergenerational way towards solving that issue, with a wellbeing focus.

The Greens are clear that we can absolutely have a guaranteed income, where everyone has what they need to provide, including top-ups for people raising families, and where we could actually end poverty. What a goal that would be, and the intergenerational wellbeing impact that that would have—my goodness! We should be fighting to make these decisions.

We can also end poverty by addressing housing, having a pledge to renters while controlling the amount that rents can increase, and, at the same time, massively prioritising and massively scaling up public, affordable, and community housing. These solutions have always been here for us, but it has been simple, political will that has refused to put these solutions in place.

The politics of leadership would prioritise these voices. In these schools, we’d prioritise the principals, including these principals from Ōtara and Glen Innes that are sharing these stories, not to further stigmatise these families, but to highlight the very leadership and solutions. They are asking us to talk not just about low attendance, but they are asking us—their voices are clear—to look at what is happening behind the low attendances.

We want tamariki to go to school, to improve our incomes, and to end the housing crisis and unaffordability—that’s what will help improve attendance for these rangatahi and these families with schools. Don’t just listen to me; listen to these principals, listen to these families, and listen to these rangatahi, who are generously sharing their voices and their leadership. That is the political leadership that surely we should all be invested in in this House for many generations to come—long-term solutions that will actually get to the depth of drivers that are causing the big issues that we are facing, the big issues that many of us, I have no doubt, genuinely care about but are refusing to pull the levers that would make the most difference.

We have costed our policies. We can count. We would be able to solve so much with a wealth tax on those who have more than enough. That’s leadership.

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

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Last week, the Labour Government’s fantastic health Minister, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, visited my electorate of Nelson to make an exciting announcement that our Government is rebuilding Nelson Hospital. The rebuild of Nelson Hospital is the largest capital project in a generation, and I’m delighted to be able to speak about our new hospital and the exciting project that is about to start.

The current buildings at Nelson Hospital are outdated, they are cramped, and they require earthquake strengthening. The Minister and I toured part of the hospital, and I’ve visited parts of these buildings before as well—they are cramped, there is equipment down the corridor, there are bathrooms that are not fit for purpose, there is an emergency department that needs to be expanded. When the former health Minister, David Clark, did a stocktake of all hospital buildings in New Zealand, it was found that the George Manson and Percy Brunette buildings were some of the worst hospital buildings in New Zealand. These two buildings require significant earthquake strengthening. The Percy Brunette building will need to be strengthened and repurposed. The George Manson building is continuing to have work assessed to determine whether it needs to be either strengthened or completely pulled down. The initial plan for this building was to completely demolish it once the new building was in place—there is current work occurring that could mean we could save that building and repurpose it; but I’m confident in the work that’s being done at the moment to make that full assessment.

Another reason why we need a new hospital is that our population is growing—it’s growing, and our population is ageing. Our current hospital serves 170,000 people across Te Tau Ihu, the top of the south areas of Nelson-Marlborough and into Tasman. It’s predicted to grow by 2040 to 186,000 people. That’s why I’m so delighted that as part of this announcement, the hospital building itself will have an increase in beds from 161 beds to 255 beds. The number of theatres will increase from six theatres to eight theatres. There will be a bigger emergency department. And one of the groups who have been very excited about our new building is our helicopter pilots from our emergency helicopters that fly around the region. They’re delighted they’re going to be able to land on the top of a building, rather than their precarious arrangement flying over my home and people who live in the Nelson south area and landing on a very small patch of gravel right next to a set of traffic lights. So they were delighted when I spoke to them recently about the improvements being made to Nelson Hospital.

The new hospital building will be built across the top of our current car park. There will be significant work that will require a couple of years’ worth of work to do all of what we call enabling works. That includes the engineering and architectural design, the planning, clearing the site, laying the pipes and the infrastructure needed before we build this very large new building. A lot of people have asked me, “What will happen to our car parking; where will we park when we go to the hospital?” And the hospital has leased car parking from the nearby fields called The Broads, owned by Nelson College, so we will have temporary car parking in place while the new hospital is built.

I’m grateful that our Government has taken the time to fully scope and cost this project. Previous senior leaders pleaded with me to do this job properly and to not cut any corners. The National Party only promised $500 million—that was part of a campaign budget that had shonky numbers around it, and it’s why I’m so grateful that our Government has pledged the full amount for this hospital: $1.098 billion, because that is what it will cost, and it is what Nelsonians deserve.

Make no mistake that National’s plans have billions of dollars of holes in them; their tax cuts will mean cuts to important projects like Nelson Hospital. The new Nelson Hospital is what patients deserve, it’s what the staff of Nelson Hospital deserve, and it’s what the people of Nelson deserve, and I’m proud to be the Nelson MP delivering this project for Nelson.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for further consideration of the Appropriation 2023/24 Estimates Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill.

House in Committee

House in Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The House is in committee for further consideration of the Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill.

Estimates Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed from 1 August on the Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come first to the Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill. The Business Committee has determined to organise the debate by portfolio, so there will be no sector specific debates. All Votes are available for debate, but only specific Ministers will be available each day to speak to the indicated portfolios only. The Government has indicated that the Minister of Police and the Minister of Finance will be available today. Each debate will be led by a call from the chairperson or member of the committee that considered the Estimates most closely related to the Minister’s portfolios.

This debate expires after 11 hours, at which point questions will be put that the Votes stand part of the Schedules and on the provisions of the Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill. There are six hours, 58 minutes remaining in this debate. New Zealand Labour has three hours, 18 minutes remaining. New Zealand National has two hours, 11 minutes remaining. ACT New Zealand has 42 minutes remaining. The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has 32 minutes remaining. Te Paati Māori has 11 minutes remaining. Dr Elizabeth Kerekere has six minutes remaining, and the Hon Meka Whaitiri has six minutes remaining.

The Estimates debate should be relevant to the Government’s current spending plans as contained in the Estimates of Appropriations. A compendium of the reports of select committees on the Votes is available on the Table.

The question is, once again, that the Votes contained in the Estimates of Appropriation for 202324 stand part of the Schedules. Members, we start with the Minister of Police. The Minister is available from 3.55 p.m. to 4.55 p.m.

Police

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Deputy Chairperson of the Justice Committee): I rise as deputy chair to report on the Justice Committee’s hearing regarding Vote Police, Vote Serious Fraud, and the appropriations for retail crime subsidy, which we heard from the Minister of Police, the Hon Ginny Andersen, the New Zealand Police, the Serious Fraud Office, and had advice from the AuditorGeneral’s office.

In opening, I note a continuing trend of significant increased funding for Police over the last three years and the levelling off of funding for Serious Fraud following two years of very significant increases. The first discussion was of police numbers and both the Ministers and the Commissioner of Police confirmed that the Government has achieved its target of increasing the number of frontline police by 1,800 from 2017 staffing levels.

The Police commissioner noted that some of those staff focus on organised crime, working COVID operations, and forensic accounting that, and I quote, “doesn’t sit naturally in a police station, but which is having a direct impact on organised crime.”

The Minister also reported on significant increases in diversity within the police, with around 40 percent more Māori, 80 percent more Pasifika, 60 percent more women, and 157 percent more people of Asian descent serving in the police compared to 2017.

Next, the Police commissioner explained that their struggle to meet performance measures is due to the challenging environment following COVID, which created heavy demand for urgent mental health and family violence responses, which had risen and which needed to be prioritised. We asked what work is happening to ensure an interagency response to those kinds of incidents to reduce pressure on the police.

The Minister highlighted Te Aorerekura’s ongoing work, increasing interagency cooperation in family violence, and the promising results of the Government pilot of joint police and mental health experts or paramedics in mental health callouts.

We heard from the Police that target time frames for processing firearms licences have increased from 30 days to 90 days because of the greater diligence required by the recommendations of the royal commission of inquiry into the terrorist attack on the Christchurch masjidain. The Police said they have cleared a large backlog and are confident they are on track.

We asked also about the impact of the new nationwide firearms register. The Police acknowledged that while the vast majority of firearms offences are committed by unlicensed individuals, most such firearms have come through licensed owners, through burglary as much as by anything else. On the register, the Police stated “helps ensure accountability”. We also heard that in the last year the Police completed more safety compliance checks than ever before and under the new system they pointed out that they can prioritise checks for higher risk individuals.

We asked also for an update on the nationwide roll-out of the tactical response model (TRM) which improves safety by, inter alia, doubling the tactical training of front-line staff from 3.5 to 7.5 days a year and introducing tactical two-person dog teams. The Police told us that the four district trial of TRM had shown increased safety for front-line police who felt safer and more assured in their decision making.

We also addressed changes to the fleeing driver pursuit policy with the commissioner, following the review of the December 2020 changes which, while designed to reduce the level of deaths following pursuit, had seen an increase in fleeing drivers. The new policy increases the criteria available in decision making for individual officers. But the commissioner emphasised, and we acknowledged, the difficulties of setting and operating these parameters.

Finally, we discussed the Government’s November 2022 retail crime subsidy scheme, giving small shops and dairies a subsidy to install fog cannons with a $4.5 million funding, for which the Minister is responsible. The Minister reiterated that the level of retail crime is unacceptable. She reported positive feedback from those accessing the subsidy scheme.

We also heard that the Police’s new dedicated retail crime unit has already initiated the prosecution of 200 people for 1,200 offences, while the Minister told us that the involvement of a specialist unit in prosecutions has meant higher sentences on average. She refuted the suggestion that the rise in retail crime was linked to the Government’s work to reduce the prison population, since sentencing rates for retail crime offences have not changed and most of the reduction in prison numbers is due to reduced imprisonment for traffic and drug offences. I commend this report to the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Mr Chairman, thank you very much. I just want to acknowledge that we have the Deputy Commissioner of Police in the Chamber, and acknowledge the work that his staff did in Auckland recently with that tragedy in downtown Auckland.

My question to the Minister is this: in an internal email sent out to police, it was said that “as we continue to operate in a more fiscally constrained economy with growing demand on services we deliver, there remains pressure on Police’s financial position.” Can the Minister please stand and just give us some background and let us know exactly what that means and what the implications are, please.

If the Minister doesn’t want to answer that question, can she answer this question or respond to this and explain to this committee and to the people of New Zealand who are currently experiencing the worst levels of violent crime that we have seen in our history as a country—and I think that they deserve an answer to what seems to be an apparent attempt to apply some fiscal restraint to our police service at a time when they’re trying to respond to enormous demands, certainly on their front line.

So my next question is this: are there going to be any delays to recruitment for non-specific constabulary roles? And, if they are non-specific constabulary roles, what exactly does that mean because the Minister stood in the House two or three weeks ago and quite clearly told the House that authorised officers, now, are considered the front line of policing and so, if that is the case—if there is going to be a restriction on these roles—how is that going to impact the new front line of policing and what sort of pressure is going to be put back on the front line if these fiscal restraints are going to mean that either positions can’t be hired for or they can’t be replaced?

What does it mean to front-line police officers when another point that has been highlighted is that they’re looking at minimising the collection of time off in lieu (TOIL), annual leave, and the appointment of any new non-constabulary position.

Minister, these questions are critically important not just to this House, not just to the people of New Zealand but to the front-line police officers that are actually out there every day trying to keep our community safe whilst at the same time dealing with a huge increase in violent crime.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Thank you to the member for those questions. I’ll run it so I won’t answer every single question, if that’s all right, but I’ll clump them and do them all and then do a bit, if that’s all right.

So, in relation to the email that was sent out by the Deputy Commissioner of Police, that was in relation to funding that has been allocated. So there is no cut to funding. It was, I think, a very prudent and wise reminder for how those funds will be utilised. So things like not doing excessive travel are really important ways of making sure that we get good value for taxpayer money.

What that does not change at all is the fact that this Government has committed funding to continue the ratio of one police officer to every 480 New Zealanders. So that funding has been taken as part of Budget 2023 and that will continue forward. So the fact that there was an internal email sent out to police staff to remind them to be prudent in terms of not overly engaging consultants if not necessary is simply what I think is good practice in terms of the Public Service and that we are making sure that that money is being used effectively. So I think it was a wise thing to do and it’s good to see that we see those sort of practices happening within Police.

In terms of the pressures on demand, the member knows I’ve already stated quite clearly in this House that, from the front line, what we do here is the two big areas we see putting pressure on demand—the increased number of family violence occurrences that we’re seeing, and also mental health; they’re the two main areas.

So, in terms of making sure that we meet those demands, there is nothing in that email that takes away from the fact that we will continue to maintain that 1:480 ratio and that we will also continue to work with wider programmes like Te Aorerekura and Whāngaia Ngā Pā Harakeke, which works alongside, to make sure that we have good practices in place for sharing information, for ensuring that community safety is paramount, and we’re also working smarter in the area of family violence because we know it’s those long-term investments in community resourcing that will have an impact on that demand over time.

When we look at family violence, in particular what we are seeing in the statistics is that, while we’re seeing an increase in the numbers of family violence occurrences, the level of really serious ones is not as high as it has been. So that demonstrates to me that there is an increased appetite within the public to report family violence, and that’s a good thing, I see as Minister, because it shows trust and confidence in our front line, it shows trust and confidence to report family violence, and it gives us some hope that we can continue to work in this space to bring down that reporting.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just continuing the more fiscally restrained environment theme—just this week, teachers got a 14.5 percent pay increase and I’m just wondering what sort of advocacy the Minister is taking to her Cabinet to maybe secure police a 14.5 percent increase?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Could you repeat the question, please? The Minister had difficulty hearing it.

CHRIS BAILLIE: Just this week, the schoolteachers got an increase of 14.5 percent approved by Cabinet, I understand. And I’m just wondering what sort of advocacy the Minister is taking to Cabinet for police officers and whether she is also asking for a 14.5 percent increase.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I’ll ask two questions on two different topics—just to give you some time to be able to answer them. The first one is looking at the Budget. In 2017, Police were given $1.8 billion in their Vote Police budget. This year, they’ve been given $2.6 billion. We’re seeing an increase in crime and, as such, we’ve seen money allocated to crime prevention drop from $564 million to $537 million; investigations and case resolution from $819 million to $808 million; primary response management from $702 million to $662 million—at a time when crime is increasing. So, Minister, I’m wondering why it is that, with the actual overall increase in Police budget, there is a decrease in some of the areas that actually need more input and improvement so that police can get out there and tackle crime. That’s my first question.

My second question is around the $200-plus million that has been given to establish the Firearms Safety Authority and how, when we have allocated that much money to the authority, we are in a position where emails are being sent out. I have to wonder, Minister, whether there has been no input into the ability to have a secure email facility, because this is the second time that this has happened in four years. It’s not acceptable. It doesn’t help with the registry. I also just want to know whether or not there is going to be improvement in that—what sort of improvement are we looking for?—because the firearm owners out there are telling us that they are sick and tired of being at the end of data breaches by New Zealand Police and no one being held accountable for it.

So, Minister, when we’re looking at this massive amount—over $200 million—going into the firearms sector, why are we having such fundamental silly mistakes occur? And before I sit down, I’d also just like to acknowledge Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming and also policy people that are here. I look forward to your answer. Thank you.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Mr Chair. The Minister got up and she spoke for five minutes on family harm. By the way, this Government’s got an awful record on family harm, especially when you consider that they have a dedicated Minister for that role. But she is not here to answer our questions or respond to that.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Mitchell, you know you don’t comment on the absence of people from the House. So just carry on. You’ve been around long enough.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you, Mr Chair. So I am going to ask the Minister again to, rather than talk about family harm, please address these issues that are very specific and very direct. How is the fiscal constraint that has now been introduced and is having to be dealt with by the Police actually going to impact and affect the day-to-day operations? Please stand up and explain to us and let us know and give us some confidence that this is not going to impact on districts—that, if someone leaves a position, it is going to be filled even if it may not be a sworn constable position—and please explain delaying recruitment for specific non non-constabulary roles. What does that mean and what impact is that going to have?

And by the way, the most important one for all of our 9,000-plus front-line serving police officers out there today doing the job, that are prepared to put in the hard yards, work longer hours to try and respond to what they’ve had to deal with—and that is a massive increase in violent crime and offending—is a proposal here that’s looking at minimising the collection of time off in lieu, annual leave, and the appointment of any new non-constabulary role. I would ask the Minister to get up and actually show some respect to those front-line officers and respond to the question and explain what the implications of this are and what her expectations are as the Minister. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. In terms of Nicole McKee, look, I straightaway acknowledged that I was really not happy at all with the fact that that email was sent. I’ve made that really clear. I met with the commissioner that very day within hours of me finding that out, and I’ve asked specifically what happened and what steps have been taken to make sure that what I understand is a human error will not occur again. So the Privacy Commissioner’s office has been advised and also a rapid review has determined what steps we can do in the future to make sure that that never happens again. And so I’ve been assured by the commissioner that the process, when sending emails internally, has now subsequently been changed in order for that never to be able to happen again.

Look, I think it’s important to state that there’s been contact back with all of those people who the email was sent out to. And the mistake was that instead of them being bcc-ed, they were sent in the send, so they received the email addresses of other people. So each of those individuals has been contacted and liaised with. Look, I’ve made it clear I’m not happy with that, but I think it’s also important to note that that email itself is separate to the integrity of the firearms registry and the data that is kept within that registry. It in no way compromises the data that’s held in there and the way that that has been managed.

In terms of the member’s question, in terms of—I don’t have the same figures you were talking to in terms of where the breakdowns of spending occurred. So police projects can fluctuate, and that can depend on things such as proceeds of crime, what money comes in from that process of restraining those illegal items from gangs and organised crime, and also being able to put that into and resource new types of streams. So there are fluctuations in that space—that does occur. Regarding the huge investment in front-line capability, my understanding is that that enables crime prevention to take place because we have more police officers who are able to establish relationships, who are able to do that work in the community, and that means when they call upon that or when they go and investigate a crime, then those issues are resolved more quickly if there is that ability to already have had a relationship in place.

You know, that is very much of the policing with the consent of the community, the model that has been developed over time. And it’s that trust and confidence and investment in the front line that enables good information to come back from the community, in that tight relationship with police.

In terms of the other member’s question in relation to that email—I think I did answer that. My view was that it was prudent, the way that is spent. There is no impact on front-line resources; we have a 1:480 ratio that remains funded. We have had a 50 percent increase in the amount of funding since 2017 to now a 50 percent increase in funding of Police. A big part of that has been increasing those police ratios from the mid-500s to now 480. So that is unchanged and the email that was sent was simply stipulating the prudent management of existing funding. In no way, shape, or form did it erode or cut from what funding has been secured for this Budget. And that also means that that 1:480 ratio will be maintained.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Well, I’m totally confused in relation to that answer. The Minister just stood up and said there’s going to be no change, that the funding is still there, and that there are not going to be any changes. But it’s very clear by the email that’s been sent out that there is going to be a delay for recruiting of specific non-constabulary roles and that they’re going to be minimising the collection of time off in lieu (TOIL).

She hasn’t answered this question, and this question is very pertinent for front-line police officers, many of whom will finish their night shift and have to carry on working, because there’s enormous pressure on the front line—often understaffed, trying to deal with the calls that are coming through and being triaged and getting backed up. They’ll work past their night-shift finish time. They’ll work past their early shift finish time. And they collect TOIL, time off in lieu. What does it mean when you’ve got a police service that is already stretched—and the police Minister acknowledged that in the House today in relation to the Police Association president’s comment that the police front-line are overwhelmed with the increase in crime—and what is meant by the fact that they’re looking at minimising the collection of TOIL and annual leave, and why is that being looked at and proposed if she’s standing in this committee and telling us that there is going to be no change? Either the deputy commissioner is wrong or she’s wrong. It can’t be both, so which one is it? I would, please, drive home the importance of articulating very clearly as the police Minister—and I hope that the Minister understands how TOIL and annual leave work and how it impacts the welfare and the mental health of front-line staff who are under enormous pressure. I would like her to stand up and clearly articulate for us exactly what the proposed minimising of the collection of TOIL and annual leave actually means to our front-line staff.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. My question to the Minister is about some of the repeated questioning that she has received with regards to people feeling safe and, of course, the 1,800 additional police that we have added to the front line. So my question is specifically to the roll-out of the tactical response model and what we can expect to see from that roll-out over the next 12 months.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Sorry, I couldn’t catch the end of that.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Just repeat that last part of your sentence?

MARJA LUBECK: Oh, sorry. It’s about the roll-out of the tactical response model and what we expect to see from this roll-out roughly over the next 12 months.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): I thought the Minister would at least be able to answer a patsy from someone in her own team.

Marja Lubeck: Sour grapes over there. Sour grapes.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: The Minister couldn’t even answer a patsy. It’s ridiculous. It makes a joke—it makes a mockery of this process.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): On task, Mr Mitchell. On task.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I am going to ask the Minister why we had to roll out the tactical response unit in New Zealand. What was it a response to? Was it a response to the fact that our front-line police officers are having to deal with a lot more violent incidents involving firearms? Is that the fact that assaults on our front-line police officers were increasing at an alarming rate? Is it recognition that it was a mistake to get rid of the armed response unit that was already in place? If the Minister is able to answer any of those questions, it would be much appreciated. But the one that I’d really like an answer to—the one that I’d really like to know about—is about those officers that are on the tactical response model and take great pride in the service that they’re providing, the back-up that they’re providing, to their friends and their colleagues in keeping communities safe. They’d be very interested to know why there’s an email that’s come out as part of fiscal constraints that have been applied to the police, out of Police National Headquarters, that’s looking at minimising the collection of time off in lieu and annual leave. There needs to be a very clear, succinct answer to that. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Like all organisations, Police is facing increases in costs reflecting the inflation that we’ve seen. I think that email is simply a reflection of that reality. So, just to be really clear, the recruitment freeze doesn’t affect—I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again, because I don’t think I was heard the first two times—constabulary or authorised officers; it is only support or Police National Headquarters staff. Now, it is interesting that that member made quite a point of the fact that, in terms of the views that I’ve seen expressed, there were far too many bureaucrats and far too many non-sworn. And so, now, it seems quite a different angle where you’re saying that you want to see more of those people, and you’re actually quite concerned that, if we don’t employ those, it will have an impact on front line. So that’s quite different to the line of argument that we’ve heard in previous weeks. But just to say it again, to be crystal clear, that email does not mean that there will be any impact on authorised officers or front-line constabulary.

In terms of the time off in lieu (TOIL) reduction, it also ensures our staff aren’t overstretched in terms of health and safety issues. That is standard management to make sure that, if people are accruing annual leave or TOIL, it is being used. That’s a good reflection and a good employer that encourages people to utilise what they’re owed and not let it add up. If someone has lots and lots of hours of TOIL or lots and lots of annual leave accrued, that’s a good indicator they have not had a break. That’s not my job as Minister; that’s the job of Police in terms of operational management, to make sure their staff are well looked after, to make sure they’re getting adequate breaks, to making sure they’re getting adequate time to take a rest. It’s a good employer that encourages staff to take their TOIL and take their annual leave, so I do not see that as a reflection of stopping good service being delivered and good safety to New Zealanders; I see that as a prudent employer who’s thinking about the wellbeing of staff.

In terms of the questions in relation to the tactical response model (TRM): to both, I’d just like to say that the benefit of the TRM, as asked over here—just to answer the patsy for the benefit of those members—is to really combine intel with kit. We know we’ve got some great capability within the police service. We want to make sure that that’s being used where there is risk. It’s tailoring the intelligence, weighing up the risk that’s there for the front line, and having a proportionate response to that risk. And so the feedback I’ve had from the Wellington district alone is that they’ve actually been able to do some quite big jobs that they were anticipating being problematic, and they were done incredibly swiftly and safely for front-line officers. The best thing about the TRM, for me, and the benefits of using intel alongside capability really means a decrease in front-line assaults. You’re right; I take the member’s point that we have seen an increase in weapons in the community; we have seen an increase in more brazen crime, and that can sometimes, more often than not, bring risks to our front-line officers. This model is the right thing to do to make sure our front line are appropriately equipped both in terms of the intelligence and the kit to be able to respond to those threats. And what we see in those areas where the tactical response model was trialled is that we had a significant reduction in the number of assaults on police, and those are the numbers that I watch clearly. I’m really pleased to see that, now, this will be rolled out right across New Zealand in all 12 districts. I’m really looking forward to seeing a continual decline in those assaults on front-line staff.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just regarding the fiscally restrained environment again and the freeze on the non-sworn, Police National Headquarters increased over the last six years by 806 members; 153 of those I believe were sworn staff, the rest non-sworn. Can we assume that those numbers won’t increase at all over the next however long this freeze is on for the non-sworn staff? Just on another topic, I’ve heard anecdotally on a number of occasions that there are front-line staff who aren’t equipped to go out and deal with front-line duties—mainly the reports I’m getting are the body armour, the lack of body armour—and I’m just wondering whether that is an issue anywhere around, and what they should do to remedy that. Thanks.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, first of all, I’ll just address your comment that we didn’t seem to put any value on backroom staff or authorised officers—let me correct the record on that one. Our point was quite simply this: you led the country to believe that the 1,800 new staff—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): No, I didn’t do anything, Mr Mitchell.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —were front line. I’m addressing an issue the Minister raised.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The Minister did.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yes. So I’ve got no right of reply to that, Mr Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): No, no, just don’t use the word “you”.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh, sorry, sir, I apologise—I apologise. So the Minister raised that issue. Quite simply, our issue was this: you misled the—sorry, Mr Chair. The Minister quite simply misled the country and was deceptive in making just about every Kiwi believe that they were delivering 1,800 front-line sworn officers.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Mitchell, just be careful with that choice of terms, please. You know the rules; you’ve been here long enough. Just be careful with your choice of terms, please.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I’m being very specific in my choice of terms, Mr Chair, because, in my view—and I’m entitled to my view—it was deeply deceptive to keep standing up in this Chamber—

Tangi Utikere: Point of order, Mr Chair. The terminology that the member is referring to or using is something that is long held as inappropriate in terms of being used in the House, whether it is someone’s view or not. It is a reflection on the member, and I invite you to rule accordingly.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Mitchell, I did warn you. You have a reasonable range of vocabulary, could you just widen it, please? You’ve been here long enough to know that. You’re just detracting from your message.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you, Mr Chair. So the message is this: you had two Prime Ministers, you had at least two Labour police Ministers stand up in this House and reconfirm that the 1,800 were front-line beat officers and sworn officers. They clearly were not.

Hon Stuart Nash: They were.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: There was 1,530 that were—no, they’re not. They were not sworn police officers with the power of arrest; 270 of them were authorised officers. And although authorised officers have got an important role to play—I recognise that—albeit in a non-sworn position where they can’t respond to a member of the public that’s putting their hand up to try and deal with an aggravated robbery, with the power of arrest, the point was quite simply this: it was not 1,800 front-line police officers. The Police Association has come out, as recently as today, and reinforced that and supported us in that position as well.

I want to come back to the time off in lieu (TOIL) and leave—and the Minister needs to be very clear about this. Is the Minister saying that there is going to be no interference or no directive coming out of Police National Headquarters (PNHQ) in terms of how the front-line police officers are choosing to use or take their time off in lieu or annual leave? The issue seems to be this: time off in lieu and annual leave has always had to be managed within the police service—that goes back for as long as the police service has been in existence. But the concern here is: are front-line police officers now going to be dictated to and told by those that sit in PNHQ, when they are to take their leave or when they are to take their time off in lieu?

By the way, if time off in lieu is becoming such a big problem, why is that? Is that because there’s too much pressure now on the front line and, because they’re dedicated and because they want to provide the service to the communities and the public they serve, they are taking more time off in lieu or they are accruing more annual leave because they’re trying to keep their head above water and they’re trying to support their colleagues on section so that they don’t drop down to a dangerously low number? What is the reason that is driving, now, a focus coming out of PNHQ, whereby they’re saying that there has to be a minimisation of the collection of TOIL and annual leave? I’d like a very clear response to that, thank you, Minister.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, when I spoke about increasing crime and an increasing budget for Police but a decreasing budget to actually go after crime, one of the things that you had answered in your answer to my question was about the changing priorities of the New Zealand Police. And at the time that we have at the moment, where we do have or are seeing ram raids at a huge amount—an over 500 percent increase—when retail crime is happening, 14 events every hour of every day over a year, we do have to ask whether or not those priorities need to be reset, Minister. Then, with that, we look at the 700 percent increase in youth on the National Gang List, and yet funding for youth services has also decreased at a time when I think that it is critical to policing that we do have money in these areas for police to be able to work solidly on it. So I just wonder, Minister, rather than saying it’s about police looking at their priorities, what are the critical policing areas? Because if it’s just going to be domestic violence—as an example, which is very, very important—but we have a 500 percent increase in ram raids, then we need to, please, have an explanation as to why we have some areas more critical to others and why we cannot accomplish it all.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much. Just in relation to the member Mark Mitchell’s questioning around this Government, or me in particular, misleading the committee or being deceptive in terms of authorised officers being counted as constabulary staff, I would just like to refer the member to the Policing Act 2008, which was passed under a National Government. It is that 2008 Act which provides for authorised officers. And I would like to highlight the fact that not only did that Act establish authorised officers, it was decided when that Act was passed under that Government, that those authorised officers would be counted as constabulary staff. So I don’t think it is a correct reflection of history to say that that was a new thing under this Government. It is something that was initiated by the National Government in 2008, and that is where authorised officers were not only established but also it was agreed upon that they would be counted as constabulary staff.

In terms of the other point in relation to specific comments around time off in lieu (TOIL), I have covered this before but I will go back to it again. It might help the member Mark Mitchell if I read from the email that was distributed to staff. It’s quite long—I could read the whole thing; I won’t do that. But it says, “Manage your budget. Make sure we have good corporate hygiene”. And the points covered under that heading are to limit non-essential activity such as discretionary travel and consumables, approving timesheets in a timely manner, monitoring allowances and only approve when it’s an allocation and not being accrued unnecessarily, managing annual leave balances, and minimising the collection of TOIL to ensure it is being taken within the policy guidelines. And I think that’s the really important part—that the email has encouraged staff to simply abide by the existing policy guidelines. It also reflects that members needed to review the Budget forecast and actually reflect expected cost during the year and to be realistic about what will be spent to monitor and update forecasts on a monthly basis, to manage cost pressures within budget and avoid taking on new costs, and to make sure that credit card monthly returns are being reconciled and submitted within the specified time frames.

In terms of the question in relation to those priorities raised by the member Nicole McKee, I will need to get the breakdown—I’ll have to come back to you in terms of the youth offending figure that you have. But what I will say is that a lot of that work has actually been expanded with, now, Circuit Breaker. So that programme is specifically targeting youth offending and specifically responding to the increase in ram raids we’ve seen—that started in two places in Auckland. That’s now been expanded to Hamilton and also into Christchurch, and there’s a number of other sites that are currently being looked at. So while that doesn’t sit within the Police budget—it sits within Oranga Tamariki—there is a significant amount of resource that’s going into providing that full wraparound support.

I think the success rates we’ve seen out of programmes like Kotahi te Whakaaro and Circuit Breaker are because they take a whānau approach. And the problem or, I guess, the fault in the past is quite often that young person was lifted out, given some treatment, and put back into the same unit that maybe was not good for them or maybe was dysfunctional in other ways. But this approach is different—it’s looking at mum, dad, siblings, and all those other factors going on in their life. And, yes, it probably does cost a bit more, and, yes, it probably does take a little bit longer, but it also stops the nine- or the six- or the five-year-old in that whānau taking the same pathway as the 12 or 13yearold has.

So I think that’s a really good use of resource. And I also see it’s a really huge improvement in terms of the way Police and Oranga Tamariki are now working more closely together in that 12 and 13- and 14-year-old space, where we’re seeing the problem occur the most.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): I’d have to assume that, as the police Minister, you’re actually talking to front-line staff, and I think that you’d find their view of Oranga Tamariki and the way that the two agencies—or certainly the Police—are supported is quite different from the one that you’re putting forward in this Chamber today.

My question to the Minister is this: is she, in the Chamber today, standing and saying that it is business as usual; that there is not going to be any impact on front-line staff in terms of the loss of back-office support that will have to go somewhere; that there is going to be no change in terms of time off in lieu (TOIL) and annual leave, other than the fact that people have been reminded to manage it; and that districts are not going to be impacted with the loss of staff or the failure of filling positions of someone that has left? Is the Minister basically standing and saying that it’s business as usual? Because I don’t even know what the point of this email was to send out to people, other than a reminder that we’re just going to keep doing things the same way.

Or is there going to be changes, and if there are going to be changes, would the Minister please tell us what they are? Because up until this point, with her responses, it’s quite—especially when it comes to TOIL and leave—nothing’s changed. It’s just “stick with the guidelines, everything’s carrying on as normal.” If that’s the message, then send the message, because this is something that does worry and concern front-line staff. Thank you, Mr Chair.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. In answer to Mark Mitchell’s question, I think the email was sent out to prepare front-line staff for not much of a wage increase.

I’d just like to get back to my original question: will the Minister be advocating for a 14.5 percent pay increase for police like teachers got this week?

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Following on from my colleagues Mr Mitchell’s and Mr Baillie’s concern for the wellbeing of our front-line officers, I wondered whether the Minister would also like to—we’ve talked about the tactical response model and the changes that that has made to the officers’ sense of safety and security. But I wondered whether she perhaps would like to talk to us about the tools—the increased tools—that we have given the police under legislation which she has been so much involved in.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Look, thank you for the question, Mr Baillie. I can’t get ahead of Cabinet. I appreciate your interest and advocacy, but I’m afraid in matters of pay negotiations, I’m not going to make a comment now. Those will have to go through a formal process and a Cabinet decision. I wouldn’t be able to pre-empt that, so I can’t give you the answer that you’re looking for.

In terms of the increased tools, there’s been some great increase of tools. The Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill is one that was put through this year, and, and that’s already being utilised. We’ve seen in Ōpōtiki that that’s been really useful in terms of that 14-day new warrant when there’s intergang conflict, being able to search specifically vehicles.

Front-line police, when I speak to them, told me that what really surprised gang members was that they weren’t expecting their vehicles to be searched, that they’d seen in the past that houses were searched, but they were relying on the fact that they could carry weapons within their vehicles and not have those searched. So that was the element that was utilised in Ōpōtiki that enabled weapons to be seized under those warrants that were granted. And it was, I think, the district commander at the time during that operation who commented that the new legislation was effective and it was used well.

The other one that’s going to be really interesting to watch is flipping the onus on the proceeds of crime. I recently got to have a trip to check out all those things that are seized by the group that does all that work and some very high-value vehicles, some very-high value goods are regularly seized as part of that process, and so when those items are sold, that actually puts money back into some really good community initiatives that are then able to prevent crime.

So what the change in the legislation will mean—and those working in those positions that take on that work are really looking forward to—is the onus changing. So instead of it being incumbent on police to demonstrate that a gold-plated Harley was illicitly or illegally obtained and having to go through the extensive work and use forensic accountants to be able to identify that that was not legally obtained, instead the onus will now be on the accused to demonstrate how they got that high-value item legally, and if they are unable to demonstrate that, then that item is able to be restrained under the proceeds of crime Act.

So I’m looking forward to, hopefully, seeing a whole lot more organised crime assets and money coming into that account so that we can continue to fund some really excellent community initiatives, including a lot of the youth programmes that we see going on. I think it’s a good example of a smart way of operating to take money off gangs and target it into areas, in particular, to discourage young people from ever wanting to join those gangs in the first place.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I want to refer to a statement that was made by the member Emily Henderson in the opening remarks, where she made the statement that Police had said most firearms that are found by criminals have come from the licensed firearmsowning community. That’s something that this side of the House absolutely disputes. We don’t believe that most of the firearms found by criminals come from there, and have seen no evidence presented at all that actually stacks up with that claim.

So, Minister, I’m asking what part of the firearms budget for New Zealand Police will be looking at the illegal importation of firearms to New Zealand; perhaps the illegal manufacturing such as 3D printing? Also, I wonder what the Minister’s aspirations are for criminals to be able to register their firearms in the new firearms authority’s registry.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): I’m hoping that the Minister will stand and take a call and let us know that this email here talking about cuts in time off in lieu and leave is something that we shouldn’t be worried about; it’s just a Clayton’s report and it’s just business as usual. So I’m hoping that she will get up and she will reconfirm that.

In terms of numbers, what is the police Minister’s plan now with the additional numbers—and, by the way, most front-line police officers’ eyes glaze over when they hear us debating in this place about additional numbers; they don’t feel like they’ve been reinforced at all. I was recently in Ōpōtiki meeting with the mayor there, David Moore. Ōpōtiki is meant to have—or he’s telling me—a full strength of 15, and they have got seven. There’s 68 stations around the country that have lost police officers and there’s over 100 that have had no additional numbers.

So rather than sending emails out from Police National Headquarters (PNHQ) saying we’re going to have to cut numbers—and by the way, I hope that when that email comes out, there’s a clear focus on cutting numbers at PNHQ and not the districts. Again, I’ve asked the Minister to stand and actually give us a sense of confidence that the districts are not going to be impacted by the fiscal restraints that are supposedly being applied.

But what is her answer to the fact that you’ve got the Police Association president—who’s pretty well in touch with the front-line members—saying they’ve been overwhelmed when her only response in this House when asked, “Do Kiwis feel safer?” is to say, “Yes, they should feel safer because we have delivered additional officers.” when clearly Kiwis don’t feel safer, by her own admission? What is the plan now?

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Briefly, before I begin, my comment regarding the passage of firearms to offenders through the hands of licensed buyers was straight from the report, which, of course, my friend across the way actually sat on and approved. It was advice given to us by the police, who said that unlicensed offenders usually get their firearms which have passed at some point through licensed buyers—and thus through the hands of people who are licensed.

But my question to the Minister is actually about when we are looking at the 1,800 more police officers that we have now and looking toward the future. Where is she looking for the police to be interested in terms of the increasing of diversity? Is that still something that she is concerned with? I’d also actually like to hear more—and I think this is probably my primary thing—about the impact of Circuit Breaker compared to other initiatives such as, oh, I don’t know, boot camps.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Thank you to the member. In relation to the firearms question, the value of having the registry and having a map of where all firearms are in New Zealand will take five years to establish. But we will have a better picture on if there is a burglary and a weapon is taken and if someone is purchasing a weapon legally and then passing it on illegally. While we can do that a bit now, when we have the full map and the full picture, that will enable faster tracing of a weapon that’s been used in an illegal setting.

My hope is that now that that targeting will be risk based, the lives of those law-abiding legal hunters, recreational firearms users—those who present as having a low risk to the community—are made, I really hope, easier and smoother. If you’ve had a licence for 10 years and you’re good with a gun, then you should be low-risk and not treated. It is in those instances that touch on family violence or other issues that are raising flags for police that that information will be able to be used.

In terms of importing, I’d need to get some additional information. But, from my understanding, police do work really closely with customs and are using intel they receive to identify people who are illegally bringing weapons into New Zealand. I know that there is always, in terms of national intelligence and in terms of what the NIC does—the National Intelligence Centre within police—there’s always more work being done to identify risks such as 3D printing, where that technology is evolving, and identifying potential risks that police need to be staying abreast of here in New Zealand. So just the fact that we are establishing a firearms registry does not detract from the fact that there is always good police work going on to identify particular risks within the community and to be able to put in place ways of preventing those from causing harm within our community.

I’ll go back to the email again. I feel like I’ve read out the email, Mr Mitchell, and then you asked me: what does it mean? Well, I read it. So if I read it and you still don’t know what it means, I don’t know what else to say.

Hon Mark Mitchell: No, you didn’t read the whole email; you read part of it.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I did read the email out. So just to reiterate, the email sent by the deputy commissioner does not mean cuts to districts; does not mean cuts to the front line. I’ve said that five times now. I’m happy to say it again—and if you ask the question again, I’ll even say it again if you want me to.

So in terms of the point made in relation to police losing numbers, every single police district in New Zealand has received additional police staff as a result of the 1,800 additional police that are now on the front line. That means that we do have more police in districts. If the member wants to—as I think he’s hinting at—break it down by station, we do have new hubs like in Auckland where you have Eagle, where you have tactical being run out of there. So if he wants to make sure that those districts—it is up for the district commander and the area commander where they wish to deploy to demand. They have been given additional staff, and it is for those front-line officers to be able to determine where best placed their staff are put. That is not a call for the Minister of Police.

In terms of Circuit Breaker, 80 percent is the mark, which is an interesting mark for Circuit Breaker, and also Kotahi te Whakaaro. So that 80 percent is roughly the number that do not reoffend. Those youth offenders who have been involved in crimes such as ram raids, when they go through those programmes, the indicators demonstrate that approximately 80 percent of those are not reoffending. It depends on the age group, but we’ve seen between about 72 and 80 percent.

Flip the number if you’re looking at boot camps—about 80 percent do reoffend. I think that was even picked up on by the Chief Science Advisor appointed under the previous National Government. Peter Gluckman actually highlighted the fact that boot camps really don’t work.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Just in relation to the boot camps, it amazes me that I cannot find one Labour member—and I challenge the Minister, because I don’t think she has either. It’s deeply insulting to our defence personnel, to our police mentors, to our Ministry of Social Development (MSD) staff, to the community organisations that are supporting and running our Limited Service Volunteers (LSV) programme out of Whenuapai, Trentham, and Burnham, and who take young people from 17 through into their 20s that have been in trouble with the law—sometimes they’ve been in jail. They get an eight-week intensive programme, and they’re running on a 70 percent success rate. So who’s challenging that on the other side?

Marja Lubeck: It’s not a boot camp.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Because I would invite them—Marja Lubeck; no surprise. Go along to the LSV. Front up to the LSV and actually—they’re all shaking their heads. You of all people should know how successful this programme is. ’

Hon Member: It’s not a boot camp.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh, it’s not a boot camp? Well, that’s your term. You’re the one that uses “boot camp”. It’s a military academy to us.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): No, Mr Mitchell; I don’t use any term.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry, Mr Chair. This is the ignorance: they just fired back at us, “It’s not a boot camp.” You’re right. It’s not a boot camp; it’s a military academy. So thank you very much to the Labour member that just highlighted the fact that it’s not a boot camp; it’s the LSV programme and it works. And I want to challenge—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Tell you what; that whole back row’s all gone.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Absolutely. I totally agree with you, Mr Brownlee. It just shows the absolute ignorance that’s generated from the other side.

So, Minister, I would ask you—I would make a genuine plea to you: go along and visit the LSV programme—the Limited Service Volunteers programme that’s run out of Whenuapai and Trentham and in Burnham. I’d like you to go and meet the soldiers, the men and women of our Defence Force that run that. I’d like you to meet with our police mentors. I’d like you to meet with the MSD staff that are deeply passionate about it and who are delivering the 70 percent success rate. Then I’d like you to come back to this House—all of you—and say that it doesn’t work and the work that they’ve been doing for the last 14 years is a failure, because it’s not; it’s hugely successful. We believe passionately that it’s the best way to invest in our young people that are off the rails and to prevent them from going into the adult criminal justice system.

Minister, I’m pleased that you have stood and you have said publicly that the fiscal restraint that has been applied to the police is going to have no negative impact on the districts—they are not going to lose any staff, they are not going to lose any resource, and they’re not going to have Police National Headquarters staff telling their staff how to and when they can take their time off in lieu and their annual leave. Thank you, Minister, for clarifying that.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): I’d just like to thank the member for that contribution and note that he really backs the Limited Service Volunteers courses, because I just had a quick look, and he might want to look himself, just to bring himself up to speed. But if he googles Limited Service Volunteers courses at Trentham, in 2015 a cut was made under the then National Government, funding from 15 to 1,800 places. It was cut under National, and it was a real loss. So I just would like to point out that if he thought it was such a successful programme, then why was it cut?

So what the investment has been from this Government is into programmes like Kotahi Te Whakaaro and also like the Circuit Breaker programme, because that happens at the first time that people are presenting, and it’s an intervention that, when the research is backed up, we know that it works. We know that those return rates of young people that go through those courses do turn their lives around and it’s the best way of getting them younger. So I suggest that maybe the reason his own Government cut that course was maybe they read their own research.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The Minister’s time in the chair has come to an end.

Finance

INGRID LEARY (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a privilege to lead off with a summary of what happened at the Estimates hearing recently held with the Minister of Finance. As is usual, the Minister gave a brief overview of the aims of the Budget and the committee, made of members from different political stripes, asked questions.

I’d note that the system we have in New Zealand in an election year is a pre-election fiscal update gets produced, the Treasury and Inland Revenue do their best to try and forecast what it looks like, and the Minister prepares a Budget based on that information. Of course, since the Budget Policy Statement in December, there have been significant unanticipated costs associated with the weather events that occurred—the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle—with estimates between $9 billion and $14.5 billion, and those events represent the second-largest natural disaster that New Zealand has ever faced. There was damage to communities, the economy’s productive capacity, and damage to assets like infrastructure, orchards, horticulture and so on. So the Minister told us at the outset of the hearing he needed to pivot, that while recovery and resilience was one of the four priorities of Budget 2023, the focus on recovery needed to be much greater. He said he needed to provide certainty to affected regions for recovery and rebuild and hence there was a billion-dollar cyclone recovery package. He said it was a first response package and it was stitched together through savings and reprioritisation. So a net change of $300 million in the Budget operating allowance compared to the Budget Policy Statement and that was a Budget allowance of $4.8 billion.

He also talked about priorities for the cost of living, delivering services to New Zealand that had both short- and long-term policy objectives, especially with the cost of living. He referenced $5 copayments on the prescription charges; removing those, which would be instant cost relief as well as preventing chronic or more severe ill health due to delayed medication, and he also referenced transport charges. There were references to the resilience theme in some of the Budget allocations.

The select committee asked about specific income tax measures. These were ruled out of order. Since then, of course, the Government has proactively released tax papers and there has been considerable water under the bridge regarding taxation in these House debates.

Other members asked whether the Minister could provide better value for money in the context of a 30 percent, long-run average of spending as a percentage of GDP in terms of health, safety, school attendance, education outcomes, and so on. The Minister told us that rebuilding after natural disaster meant trade-offs and hard decisions. He would have liked to have done more, but that would not be fiscally responsible. This was against Treasury forecasts highlighting the Budget priority of fiscal sustainability and a projected return to surplus in the 2025 to 2026 year, which is the same time frame as after the global financial crisis (GFC) and Canterbury quakes. The Minister also said it compared favourably below the 30 percent GDP ceiling and internationally with comparators like Australia, the US, and the UK.

Members asked about value for money, given what one member, according to their maths, described as “A 25 percent increase in costs per head of Government spend over the course of this term.” The Minister spoke about free lunches and the contribution that had to lifting 77,000 children out of poverty on the after-housing cost measure that’s used, that school attendance was improving but there was more work to do, and that measures supporting small business were also important—hence apprenticeships, free trades training, and other initiatives.

There was a discussion about the increase in taxation as a proportion of the economy and debt ratios. The Minister responded, referencing a 34 percent Government spend after the GFC. He said the level of spend or restraint was a political question and he wasn’t prepared to cut services.

There were a number of other discussions and questions about interest costs, about the tax excise projections on the Government’s smoke-free goals, and why New Zealand would not achieve surplus until next year. The Minister said New Zealand had been on track to until the weather events and that had delayed things by about a year.

There was also discussion about climate change, with the Minister saying that a comprehensive review was under way on the emissions trading scheme to better understand the market in which it operated. The Minister also told us this was the first full Budget that had a fully costed gender analysis done to ensure equity for women.

I think it’s fair to say it was a feisty meeting. We covered a lot of territory. There was an opportunity for written questions, but none were forthcoming. I’d like to thank the Minister for his appearance and for members’ participation in this important democratic process.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Just to the Minister in the chair— so I do want to talk a little bit about the disaster funding, etc. But also in the foreign affairs portfolio, there’s a substantial increase due to the climate change funding, and in my own head, those two aren’t disconnected.

Of course, we’ll also want to ask some questions about your tax and tax intentions. I note that the member Ingrid Leary, who just resumed her seat, seems to have gone away from the often-stated position from the Government of “Nothing to see here, move on.” to the good old-fashioned “Water under the bridge, don’t worry about it.” But we will be making some effort to discuss that with the Minister.

So maybe as a starting point, it would be useful to know how that large increase in Vote Foreign Affairs is expected to be used. It’s a substantial amount that is, essentially, the climate change fund, and I suppose the question is why it’s in that Vote when there are so many potentially pressing climate change issues that might need to be dealt with here in New Zealand.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for his contribution. He’ll be aware as a longstanding member that the way the Estimates debate works is Vote by Vote, and so specific questions about Vote Foreign Affairs need to be addressed in the Estimates debate in that space. But he did ask the question about why that Vote and why not other Votes, which is quite a clever way of trying to shoehorn it into the finance Minister’s responsibilities, so given that I’m giving him credit for that, I’ll answer that particular bit of the question.

He’s right that there is obviously an enormous domestic element to this and an international one, and given his background, the member will be well aware that our Pacific neighbours, in particular, are under enormous stress when it comes to climate change. The additional funding is in Vote Foreign Affairs because that is the appropriate Vote to be able to deliver to those countries, particularly within our region. These matters arise in part to do with New Zealand’s internationally determined contribution, which we take seriously as a Government. That requires significant additional resourcing, and we have decided to target a significant part of that resourcing to the Pacific, hence why it appears in Vote Foreign Affairs.

In terms of the domestic side of that, I thank the member for the opportunity to mention the National Resilience Plan, which was a new feature of this year’s Budget. That’s a $6 billion fund, initially, to be able to get New Zealand into a position of greater resilience and to get ahead on issues to do with, particularly, adaptation to the climate events that that member is indicating. When we began working on this idea, it was before the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, and we had the idea that this would be an opportunity to get beyond business-as-usual on infrastructure and get ourselves to somewhere where we’re starting to get ahead on the deficit.

The truth is—and I said this on Budget day—that the reality now will be that at least the first couple of years of that plan will be dedicated to the rebuild of those regions because there is now so much to do in the form of adaptation and resilience. It is a commitment to build back better in those regions because—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Ha! Joe Biden’s in the room.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That’s a slogan that many use, Mr Woodhouse, around the world, but giving it reality means actually putting some resource behind it. So we are working our way through, and the member will be aware of some announcements already made about the kinds of resilience initiatives we’re doing in the transport area, for example, which mean that we don’t just build the road or the bridge back where it was, but we actually look to do it in a way that is more resilient, and similarly with investment in the broader regional recovery plan.

So while—yes—the member is right that there is a big boost in the Vote Foreign Affairs area in this space, equally, there is a significant lift in funding more broadly.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): So on that Vote—that very large Vote—which now comes under the whole title of foreign aid, effectively, was his department at all concerned about the $147 million administrative cost for that fund, given that that represents about 20 percent of the foreign aid budget, exclusive of the climate change funding that’s been added to that fund?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): We are now getting into the position where we are debating Vote Foreign Affairs, and that is not the way in which this particular proceeding works. What I can say to the member more generally is that—yes—the Treasury and myself take seriously making sure that administrative costs are kept to a minimum. When it comes to administering large amounts of money in the foreign affairs budget, that’s certainly something that we would expect, but the member does need to take those matters up in the appropriate Estimates debate.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Point of order, Madam Chairperson. With all due respect to the Minister, he’s responsible for the State’s spending, and I asked a question—

Hon Dr David Clark: Ha, ha! Ha, ha!

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Oh, is he not?

Hon Dr David Clark: No—the long bow.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

Hon Dr David Clark: It’s the long bow.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Shush!

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Yeah—point of order, Madam Chairperson. Someone should go.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Has the member finished his point of order?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: No, I haven’t. I haven’t made it yet.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK—all right. Thank you.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I’ve been interrupted.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. I’ve—

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: May I make the point of order?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh, point of order—

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Yeah—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): —the Hon Gerry Brownlee.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —the point of order is that the Minister is saying to take it up with foreign affairs. The whole Budget is the responsibility of the Minister of Finance, and it seems to me that asking a question like: was his department concerned about the extremely large amount of money that is going to administer a budget—an administrative cost that in any other circumstance would be completely unacceptable.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK, thank you. I will take some advice.

Hon Members: Madam Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): No, I’ll just deal with this matter, thank you. OK—

Hon Grant Robertson: Point of order.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Well, I’m actually just about to rule on it, and, as you can see, I have taken advice. I am advised that it is in order for any member to ask a Minister any question in the Estimates debate. However, if the Minister advises that that is not their area of expertise, then that is the answer.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: So Treasury are happy to give it away, but they don’t care where.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Does the member want the call?

DAMIEN SMITH: Yes, it’s just Mr Brownlee was speaking.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Does the member want the call?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I was talking to a colleague—sorry, Damien.

DAMIEN SMITH: Oh, sorry—OK. So a quick three questions to the Minister, one around debt servicing, the second one around super, and the third one around funds.

So in 2017, the Vote Finance debt servicing cost was $3.4 billion. In 2023-24, it’s now $5.8 billion, which is over $3,000 per household. So the taxpayers are paying more than $2.4 billion on interest payments. The operating balance, excluding gains and losses, is expected to record a deficit of $7 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year and a deficit of $7.6 billion in 2023-24. So the first question is: what is the likely debt servicing in future years?

In 2023-24, there will be $21 billion on payments of New Zealand superannuation. The previous year was $19 billion—an extra $2.1 billion—and before that, New Zealand superannuation costs increased by $1.8 billion. So the cost of superannuation is increasing, and increasing by a huge amount: is setting aside $1.6 billion as a New Zealand Superannuation Fund contribution going to cover the annual increase in future years, and what is the interest paid on the Superannuation Fund in the past two years, and what is the interest being paid by the Government on its debt in the past two years?

I will ignore shovel-ready projects and the loan to Air New Zealand because they are, hopefully, going to get some return. But on the Green Investment Finance Scheme, since 2019, the $500 million was intended to both invest into reducing emissions and invest in a commercial basis. The question is: what are the projected returns on the investment? In 2022, it was 5.89 percent—so was it actually an OK investment in 2022? And on the venture capital fund there was an appropriation of $300 million, so what has been the return on that fund?

Finally, from the ACT perspective, the $6 million for the Productivity Commission: has it proved to be worth it in value for money when its reports have veered from a focus on economic productivity to all sorts of fashionable itches that the Labour Government wanted scratched. So those are our questions on the appropriation.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): A veritable potpourri of questions from Mr Smith there, which I will endeavour to cover off. On the cost of borrowing, clearly, the member will be aware that interest rates have been increasing globally and so it is a statement of fact that the cost of New Zealand’s borrowing will have increased. I don’t have the number right there in front of me, but I’m sure I can grab it for the member before we finish up this particular debate. As a percentage of GDP, the cost of borrowing has remained, you know, around 1 percent, a little under 1 percent—it will maybe go a little over that now. In cash terms, obviously it’s significantly higher than it was several years ago, it is a function of the markets and a function of where we’re borrowing our money from.

The debate about how much we have borrowed is one the member and I have had before, and I appreciate the fact that we hold different views on that, but from my perspective that borrowing was what New Zealand needed to do to get through COVID, and of course there is a cost for it, and that is the cost that we are now facing. But it is not unreasonably larger than it has been in the past, in terms of the percentage of GDP, particularly in the face of a natural disaster.

On the question of the Superannuation Fund, it’s always been the case that the contributions that the Government makes to the Superannuation Fund and the growth of the Superannuation Fund was never going to meet the full costs of superannuation. The ideal has been that it would start paying out in around 2033, and play its part in defraying the costs of superannuation when we have an ageing population. It ultimately does become a policy choice as to whether or not a Government decides that investing the amount of money required in order to keep the current settings of superannuation is a good investment. The Superannuation Fund’s role is to support that, but it’s never been—ever—the idea that that would be sufficient in order to actually pay out, it’s merely to defray those future costs.

In terms of the member’s question around the returns, again I can get the specific number, but it’s outperformed the kind of core Government bond and core portfolios that it measures itself against, and in fact over the years has done significantly better—I’ve got the number around sort of 10 percent growth in my head, but I’ll get the specific number for the member. So yes, the Superannuation Fund continues to be a well performing fund and it continues to be worthwhile for New Zealanders that it’s there, and that it will contribute, in the future, to paying out.

The final—oh no, two more. The venture investment fund. Look, I can’t give the member that number, but I can say for sure that it has been investing over a period in a number of quite significant potential growth areas. The nature of venture investment is that not every investment will succeed, and that some of them have quite long runs in terms of being able to get to a point where they’re making big returns. So I’m happy to get some numbers for the member on that. But as a fund, as a concept, we endorse its role in supporting early stage companies and making sure we get ourselves, New Zealand companies, to grow and be productive and profitable.

On the question of the Productivity Commission, I note the member’s comments and would say that we did take some decisions when we came into office that we wanted the Productivity Commission to take a broader view. Having read a lot of Productivity Commission reports over the years, we wanted to make sure that we were capturing a broad set of topics around what is productivity. And again, I acknowledge that this is not necessarily something the member and I would agree on, but again, if we’re going to have a wellbeing approach—which we do—then we do need to be analysing other things beyond just really very, very traditional measures of productivity.

Having said that, I note that a couple of the recent reports have been well received, certainly by the Government and by others outside. One of those was around frontier firms, and actually gave us some very good recommendations that as a Government we’ve been trying to enact—working with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, but also looking at Māori businesses, for example, and how they’re going. So those reports, I think, have been useful. We’ve had a more recent one which is more about questions of social mobility which are significant in other parts of productivity, not just kind of that core economic side. So we believe the Productivity Commission still fulfils an important role, but obviously we should continue to monitor that and continue to assure ourselves of that as we go on.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): This Estimates debate is very well-timed. Today, some very serious reports have emerged about New Zealand’s allegedly rapidly deteriorating financial position. We have been led to understand that the Labour Government is now in financial panic mode; that today, public servant leaders have been belatedly, far too late, told to batten down the hatches and desperately dig up some majorly needed savings in order to cover up a crevasse in the Government books.

What we have here is a set of Estimates which show us that the books were already teetering on the edge, with net debt having grown from $5.4 billion in 2019 to $71 billion today, with very little to show for it. We knew that surplus had been delayed until 2026, we knew the credit rating agencies were watching us carefully, and, yet, the finance Minister’s refrain has been: “Every dollar is well spoken for.”

Again and again, while we on the side of the House have said, “Look, the house is burning. Inflation is running at record levels, and yet still you spray that money hose around. You are spending with wild abandon, show some restraint.” The finance Minister has neglected to bring in any fiscal rectitude and claimed that all of his spending is appropriate.

Yet today, we are told public servant heads have been told that the situation has become so desperate that now he is finally reaching for restraint and has finally, far too late, demanded that they offer up savings or else the hole will be too large and all of us will be at risk.

So my question is a very simple one, Minister. This is your opportunity to front-up in Parliament and to come clean about just how much worse New Zealand’s financial position is today, than at the time your Budget was published. This is vital information in the public interest, and I would ask that you front-up about exactly what’s going on.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Well, that was quite the moment, wasn’t it? I want to perhaps take the member back a couple of steps just so we can have a conversation about the Estimates and about the questions that she’s asked.

The first of those, as the member well knows, in the Estimates and the process of putting the Budget together, the Government sought a savings exercise—a similar exercise to ones that we’ve done in the past, but we definitely put the foot to the floor this time because we are aware that it is important, having had the period of time through COVID where we did need to invest significantly in the New Zealand economy—to support our households and our families and our businesses through COVID—that the time had come for us to be able to say, “We now need to begin that journey back to a more sustainable fiscal position.” So we clearly made those decisions.

We also, obviously, were faced with the situation around the Cyclone Gabrielle event and the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods. That also put further pressure on the Government’s books and the Government’s accounts, making that savings exercise that we did during the Budget very important. It gave us around $4 billion worth of savings which we were able to use to offset many of the other expenses that were required in the Budget that we’re talking about here.

It is obvious to anybody who is following along that the global economy continues to provide challenges to us. Just within the last few weeks, we’ve had the IMF sound a warning about China’s economy and the impact that its slowdown would have. Our exporters will be able to tell you that as well.

So, yes, this is a very challenging environment. I’m not sure quite about the breathless tone—I could point the member to my media release from 5 July this year when we did get an update postBudget of the Government’s accounts, and, as the Member well knows, in that we did see that revenue was not as high as we had hoped or had been forecast by the Treasury at the Budget. I made the comment in that particular media release that we would indeed need to look at tough decisions and trade-offs on Government spending.

That’s the reality of being in Government. That is the reality of being responsible with the way we manage the Government’s accounts.

So the member, I’m sure, in her past life—in working here in the building—and in her current life, is aware that that needs to be a constant process. We are facing difficult and challenging economic times. We have made savings as we’ve moved through this Budget process. We will need to continue to look, as I said, in July at tough choices and decisions about how we go forward from here.

In the member’s comments, she made a reference to ratings agencies. I do just want to highlight for the member a report that actually came out overnight from Moody’s, which talks again about the fact that they have a stable outlook for the New Zealand economy. It goes through in some considerable depth, actually, around why that is and the fact that they do believe that New Zealand both has the economic strength, also the way in which our governance and our institutions work that are all strong and that all contribute to solid credit ratings for New Zealand, our fiscal strength—all of these things are factors that the ratings agencies take into account. That was produced overnight, reinforcing their view of the stability of our system here.

So I don’t think the members should scaremonger about what the ratings agencies are doing. I do think the member should acknowledge that throughout the last period we have been looking for savings. During my Budget presentations, I think, across the country, I’ve talked about the need for that, and I believe actually in the Budget document on page 64 we talk about the importance of a fiscal sustainability and effectiveness programme.

In order to make that happen, it is of course necessary to work with the Public Service to do that, just as we did in arriving at the savings that we have. The members should be very careful about believing everything that she hears on the radio.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): How big is the hole that has emerged in the Crown’s books? What, specifically, precipitated the meeting with public heads today? Does the Minister ever take a moment for pause or reflection to think that perhaps last year’s decision to embark on the biggest-spending Budget in New Zealand history, with an operating allowance of $6 billion, was, in retrospect, rather reckless, given the inflation position and the position that the books are now in? Has he had a moment to think that his late-life discovery, that efficiency and care with public finances should be ongoing, is something that perhaps he should have listened to a little earlier? Wouldn’t it be nice for the finance Minister to give us some honest answers to these questions given the alternative is that New Zealanders will have to wait until September to find out what’s really going on?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): As the member well knows, and as I said in my answer to her just a few moments ago, we have been driving for savings and efficiencies across all the Budgets that we’ve done, and, in this Budget, we had $4 billion of that.

It is, of course, important to keep doing that. That’s why on Budget day, when we released the documents, we talked about a fiscal sustainability and effectiveness programme. We have to keep doing that if we are going to meet the fiscal goals that the Government has.

It is important to me also to note that ongoing conversations of the public sector are an integral part of being the Minister of Finance. They occur regularly. Those sorts of meetings are significant and important to making sure that the Public Service understands what the Government wants from it, and they occur throughout the time that somebody is Minister of Finance.

The pre-election fiscal update is Treasury’s update. It will be done when it is done. None of that takes away from the importance of us making sure that we do keep the foot to the floor on finding savings and finding efficiencies in, as I have said numerous times in this House—just about every day in this House—what is a deteriorating economic environment. That is the truth. We saw in the accounts at the end of May that they had not matched with the Treasury’s forecast from earlier in the year. That is the reality.

What I think the problem is here is that the member does not know how she’s going to pay for the promises that she’s making. That’s actually the issue that is at play right now, because the member is sitting here saying, “I haven’t been following along when the Government accounts came out in May. I haven’t been thinking about that. I’ve just been promising things that I cannot pay for.” And so, Madam Chair, that is actually what’s going on right here, right now: the only panic that you are seeing is from the member asking the questions, because she knows that she can’t pay for what she’s promising.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): Does the finance Minister think his so-called drive for savings and efficiencies—two words that when used by former finance Minister Bill English or Steven Joyce, he would refer to, in Opposition, as “cuts”. But does he think that that latter drive for savings and for efficiencies has been sufficient, given—according to the Treasury’s own analysis in this document—every operating allowance, that is Budget, he has ever set for himself he has broken, on average, by $600 million? Which is to say, he says the year before, “I’ll only spend this much; I promise I will, I will.”, and then he goes on to spend $600 million more. Given those facts, does he really think it’s plausible to say he’s been good at driving savings and efficiency?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): As I have said, it is a part of what we do when we put Budgets together. The other parts of that includes making sure that we adequately fund public services. The member, in her earlier contribution, referenced the Budget allowance for the previous set of Budgets, not the Estimates we’re debating here. The member well knows that includes multi-year funding—for example, for the health sector but also for the justice sector and natural resources—as we attempt to make sure that we do drive efficiencies by making sure we give people the ability to plan for the long term. That’s just one example of the way in which we have done that.

The measurement of whether a Government is succeeding or not is in the macro indicators. We have managed, over a long period of time, to ensure that net debt remains one of the lowest in the developed world. We have been able to see that the economy has grown. We have set ourselves fiscal rules and we are aiming to make sure that we achieve those.

We have faced significant challenges, as I hope the member would recognise, when it comes to, for example, COVID. Pre-COVID, we were able to be in a position where we had surpluses and we were going to move forward from there. Post-COVID, just as the previous Government discovered when it was dealing with a large shock through the global financial crisis, it takes some time to get back to a level of fiscal surplus. Clicking one’s fingers and saying, “We’re just going to do that.” does mean significant cuts to public services.

I’ve acknowledged it in the House before, our colleagues from the ACT Party: I might think that their fiscal plan is completely barmy, but at least it’s out there; at least they’ve said how they’re going to do it. It means enormous cuts to public services and provisions of programmes, but at least it’s there.

So it is a balance when one is putting a Budget together. Events do occur in between different parts of the Budget process—that is the reality of being in Government. But from my perspective, putting a Budget like this together—the one that’s being debated in the Estimates here right now—requires a careful balance. There are savings in here, they are offsetting some of the cost pressures we’ve got which have been caused by inflation. While inflation does add somewhat to the Government’s income, it also adds to the costs that the Government faces. Those kinds of costs have to be met, and then along comes a cyclone that requires billions of dollars from the Government to actually help communities rebuild and recover.

Again, I haven’t heard much from the Opposition about what they would do there. It would seem they don’t think that there’s any costs there and that they just simply wouldn’t be helping those communities. Well, that’ll be an interesting debate to have over the next few weeks.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have several questions—and I think things that I would like to see on record, if the Minister will indulge me. First, can I congratulate him for his balanced approach in the Budget and for the maintenance of that low debt that successive Governments have sought to achieve. And indeed, I think actually Labour Governments have a far better track record than other Governments. I do note the irony in the member opposite commenting on ratings agencies, when perhaps her fear is that the ratings might drop to what they were under the last National Government, when this Minister of Finance has actually seen some of those ratings rise. But let’s put that to one side—

Nicola Willis: Oh, the next National Government: it’s on its way!

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: It’s a long way away, we all hope. The reprioritisation in the Budget: I wonder if the Minister could tell us how much that’s been this time, because I know significant effort went into that reprioritisation exercise and it was larger than—I don’t know, perhaps just about any that I’m familiar with. And could the Minister also confirm that the economy is actually bigger now than it was prior to COVID? Because we’ve had questions about debt servicing, which seem to be ignorant, or not addressing the fact that the economy has grown and therefore that we can continue to invest in infrastructure to address the infrastructure deficit through the effect of having a larger economy—an economy that’s actually grown, as I understand it, under this Government, if the Minister can confirm that.

My final question for him is if he would be willing to elaborate a little bit on the Budget themes and how these were arrived at: the focus on the cost of living, things like the free public transport measures. I guess the public’s familiar with the removal of prescription fees on medicines, and so on. If he could talk a little bit about how he arrived at the themes of the cost of living—public services, maintaining public services and how those will support New Zealanders, and, you know, the services they rely on—and how recovery and resilience was added in. I think that has been touched on a wee bit, but I’d appreciate any further elaboration. And fiscal sustainability and whether fiscal sustainability, in his mind, involves striking a balance there and addressing the infrastructure deficit through continual capital investment? Thank you.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member David Clark for the questions, and I think all of them are on topics of importance, so I’ll try to cover all three of them. On the savings point, as noted, there were $4 billion of savings in reprioritisations across this period—

Hon Dr David Clark: $4 billion?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes, $4 billion. And I do actually want to acknowledge that, and just to give a broad breakdown of where they came from. So $1.5 billion of that was a result of what was started by the previous Prime Minister towards the end of 2022, when she asked Ministers to go away and take another look at what we were doing to make sure that it was necessary, it was being delivered well, and it was a priority for us in the face—as we’ve been discussing previously—of needing both to get our expenditure back down to levels that were more sustainable post-COVID, but also an acknowledgment of the overall deteriorating global economy. As a result of that, around $1.5 billion of savings were found, the largest component of which was the ending of the clean car and social leasing schemes that were within there. Colleagues will recall the exercise that went through and the new Prime Minister picked that up from the old Prime Minister and carried through that work.

We then went through, as is done in the March and October baseline updates, which is when on a six-monthly basis, essentially, Government agencies come through and say, “Here’s how we’ve got to with our spending, here’s what we’d like to roll over to the future, here’s what we can bring back to what’s called the centre.”—that represented about $1.1 billion of that, and then another $1.5 billion which we did during the Budget process, where we literally went through each Vote and said, “Are all of these programmes necessary? Can we find ways of saving ourselves money?”, and that was about $1.5 billion. So that brings us to the $4 billion of savings.

The answer is 6 percent—a just on 6 percent larger economy than we had until before COVID. The New Zealand economic story in COVID is one that is worth telling, in the sense that it did require a significant investment from the Government to support businesses and households to get through. But as a result of that, we didn’t experience the levels of unemployment that had been expected. And today we saw unemployment at 3.6 percent, a tick up from where it’s been, but significantly below where it was when we came into Government, and very much below where people thought it would get to. And that’s because of the actions that we took. So, yes, the economy is larger—several sectors have been very challenged through this period of time and it is tough out there for a lot of businesses. It is tough out there for a lot of households, but we have been able to get the economy through at a macro level in a way that I think has been very helpful.

And then briefly, on the themes of the Budget, as the member requested—I mean, quite clearly the cost of living was always going to be one of the main themes in this Budget. What we did was we went looking for things that could support New Zealanders with cost of living pressures, but that would not unnecessarily exacerbate inflation and had other benefits. And so if you think about things like the removal of the $5 prescription charge, that’s an example of where we know that will improve health outcomes. We know that will mean that fewer people will end up presenting, in some cases, to the emergency department. So it removes pressure within the health system while also taking a cost of living pressure off. It’s evidence-based and it remains important to me and in the Budgets that we do. There was a fantastic University of Otago study that identified that about 135,000 New Zealanders weren’t picking up their prescription each year because of the cost; we responded to that with that. So that cost of living theme—and there are many other examples which we don’t have time to go through right now that fitted within that theme as well.

We did also want to make sure we continue to deliver the public services New Zealanders need. You know, it is absolutely clear that in a high-inflation environment, we need to put more money into our health system, more money into our education system to make sure that we are able to keep up with and employ people and pay people, and so that was clearly a big theme.

Recovery and resilience, as the member has noted: there was a significant investment in making sure the regions of New Zealand could recover from the weather event, but also to make sure that we’re making our economy more resilient, with a big investment in infrastructure, support for skills and training, apprenticeships and so on—the core kind of building blocks of that strong economy. And then the final theme was around fiscal sustainability, because we do need that journey back to those more sustainable levels of spending, and so that’s why the savings programme that we talked about before was so important. So those broad themes were the themes of the Budget. They were the right themes for the Budget that we were dealing with. They are a balanced approach; they are a part of a long-running approach that we’ve had that we support people to get through difficult times, but we also are making sure that we do that in a way that looks after future generations’ financial stability.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. Thank you. I wanted to ask the Minister if he thinks it’s fair and responsible to be asking New Zealanders and our public services to be making savings, to be scratching around, looking for all opportunities to cut costs, when we’re not asking a few sectors that have had sustained supernormal profits, like the four big banks, to contribute more to New Zealand’s infrastructure. Those companies are only able to make excess profits because of the investments that New Zealanders make collectively in infrastructure and our people.

It seems not right to me that a few big companies should be allowed to essentially make what even Treasury has dubbed “supernormal” profits, and not contribute more to our infrastructure and recovery, and support for people during times like the COVID pandemic, or in the wake of severe weather events, which we’re going to see more and more of.

So I’d just like him to speak to the fact that he—you know, that if we’re looking for savings, why aren’t we also looking for revenue from private sector areas that are profiteering at the expense of New Zealanders?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for the question. As the member will be aware, having seen the Budget proactive release as it’s come out, one of the things we did look at was whether or not there was a case and the need for us to be able to, to use the members language, look at supernormal profits of banks. We did quite an amount of work on that, and I would recommend to people to have a look at the work that was done because it does throw up some interesting issues. The decision was made in the end that we didn’t actually need that money because we could manage the cost of the recovery and the rebuild through the resources of Government, through some reprioritisation, and indeed through using our balance sheet to be able to do some of the long-term rebuilds.

However, what did emerge out of that discussion was the need to take a closer look at our banks, and to make sure that we believe that New Zealanders are being treated fairly. That’s why the decision has been made to do the market study, to have the Commerce Commission take a close look at the way banks are treating New Zealanders and their customers, and to whether or not, among other things, their profits are fair.

There is, as I said, in that material some quite interesting studies. The member didn’t use the phrase windfall profits, so I don’t want to put words into her mouth, but the question of whether there was a windfall per se from COVID is, you know, in that documentation, not a proven case. Are the profits of New Zealand banks higher than some comparable jurisdictions? Yes, they are. So, therefore, what is the reason for that? That is most definitely a debatable proposition. But equally, as I’ve said on many occasions, New Zealand banks need to justify to their customers that level of profit. What you see in the documentation that’s been released is, for example, that the revenue that has been brought in by banks through things like bank fees and so forth and so on isn’t that much proportionately higher than other countries. What you do see is that the cost profile of the New Zealand banks are lower than other countries, seeing that much—that higher profit.

Digging into that, understanding why that is, is exactly why we’ve set the inquiry in place. So I absolutely appreciate that the member thinks that the case is done, and that we should simply do that. We believe that we actually do need to do the work properly. We’ve made a start on it in the work that we did during the Budget, but that’s why the case was made for us to do the Commerce Commission.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): My question for the finance Minister is: does he actually understand what public spending restraint is? Because he has claimed that is something he has required on an ongoing basis, and the figures in this Budget shouldn’t lie. What they show us is that Crown expenses, as a proportion of the economy, have exploded under that finance Minister’s watch from 27.7 percent in 2017 to 33 percent next year. So my first question is: how is that explosion in Government spending consistent with his road to Damascus description of a culture of restraint?

My second question is: has he taken pause to reflect that maybe the decision to, as a first gesture, remove the Better Public Service targets which ensured a focus on delivery against patient waiting times, NCEA achievement, and the like, might have been quite a good device given—despite spending literally a billion dollars more every week—last night there were 12 ambulances ramping at Waikato Hospital because it can’t deliver the services needed.

My next question is this: is it actually the case that he has asked for a culture of restraint and it exists, or is it in fact the case that, as I stand here today, the IRD is merrily going on its programme to spend more than $30 million refurbishing and redecorating its offices even while superannuitants go hungry? Isn’t it the case that he’s allowing his Ministers to collectively spend $1.8 billion on consultancy reports just to help prop up all of the information they already get from the additional 14,000 public servants? And isn’t it, in fact, the case that the Minister has quite happily overseen an explosion in Government spending with the smallest results to show for it of any Government in recent history? And could he please, as I say, come back to that first question: what exactly does he understand “restraint” to be?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I just want to note for the member that in the forecasts—and she was reading off the same page I am in the Budget documents—it would see core Crown expenses peak at around 34.6 percent of GDP. If we took the table just back a little bit further, that’s in here, we would see the impact of both the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes on the previous Government. And it is what a responsible Government does when something happens: we use the balance sheet to look after New Zealanders; we invest, we make sure that we’re putting the money in where it’s needed.

I stood in this House and responded to members of the Opposition throughout the COVID period saying, “Spend more.” Do you know what? As we started to get ourselves in a position where the Reserve Bank was getting a bit nervous and wanted to start increasing rates, the Leader of the Opposition—the current Leader of the Opposition—put out a programme to spend vastly more, in the face of that. So it is what a responsible Government does, to invest. We have been careful with the way we’ve done that. We’ve been balanced with the way we have done that, and we have a plan to bring that back down.

The kinds of things that the member’s approach would require would be mass cuts in the spending of education and of health and of housing. So the member has to, herself, front up with what it is that gets cut, because it’s not just the expenses that are here; it’s the extra things that the member is proposing—the tax cuts that the member is proposing that have to be paid for somehow. So I stand by the decisions we’ve made, yes, but it’s there in black and white—it’s led to an increase in the percentage, just as it did when the previous Government was doing what it did.

The member asked me to comment on things that haven’t got much to do with what’s in here, but her party’s previous Better Public Service targets—I vividly remember one of them around NCEA achievement when they set it and they suddenly realised after they set it that it was actually below where people were currently achieving. So they had to quickly rush back and change it.

The danger with those targets, which we saw and I remember raising questions about it in the House, was that it’s the classic kind of “teach to the test” thing that, actually, you set those targets, you set them in such a way, in some cases, that you can just achieve them without—as I say, in fact you already were there, or you end up with a situation where people end up chasing those targets. We are investing significantly in the resources and the services that we need.

Then finally, on the question of consultants, you know it is true that pre-COVID we’d managed to get expenditure on consultants and contractors down to I think it was 10 percent of Government personnel spending, and it’s crept back up. A big chunk of that is to do with the response to COVID. But I do think the member needs to be a little bit careful about who it is who’s going to be planning the roading, and who it is that’s going to be delivering the IT changes that might be needed by a Government, because they’re sectors which are dominated by consultants. Unless the member is proposing to recreate the Ministry of Works—which some members in the House might appreciate to do—that would be one way to do it but in the absence of that, consultancy expenditure is required. We all agree in this House we want to limit that to the greatest extent possible but it sounds like what the member’s telling us is that she isn’t going to have any of that and that will be another cost that the member will need to fund from somewhere.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, first of all, for recognising ACT’s alternative Budget, Minister Robertson. I’m happy to have a lamington and a cup of tea with you tomorrow to share how we constructed that with no cut to front-line services at all. So, you’ve added a new portfolio tonight, which is “Minister of Fiscal Misinformation”. I also can show you how to save $38 billion over four years, if some cross-party decisions could be made.

But now it makes sense to me, because the ex - Deputy Prime Minister—and I’ll ask this question: is it a $20 billion revenue shortfall or is it $10 billion? Because these appropriations, since the Budget, have moved and moved and moved, and now today it’s the first time I’ve heard you ever saying we have a deteriorating economy. Usually when people come here at question time, there’s patsy questions saying, you know, “Tell us what reports into the New Zealand economy you’ve got.”, and I think what’s happened now in Cabinet, unless I’m mistaken, is that the Hon Mr Parker came and said, “Houston, we have a problem, and we need more taxes or we’re going to have a massive shortfall in revenue.”, and the Prime Minister’s gone, “Hey, don’t worry about it. We’ll use debt.” So we have to prepare ourselves now either for a debt-driven strategy to get us out of this or a revenue shortfall. So the question is: is that $20 billion figure that you said today not accurate, or is it $10 billion? What can we do to help?

Secondly, with regards to this misconception about ACT cutting services, I’d like that stopped, please, because we just want value for money. We’re not promoting austerity, we’re not promoting anything other than a responsible fiscal attitude. So is that $20 billion figure from the outside world accurate, and will it be adding to the debt servicing cost if there is a shortfall in revenue?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Thank you, Madam Chair. Because I said I would, I want to go back to the member’s earlier contribution around the returns from the Super Fund. I was nearly right—it was 9.65 percent, so that does compare very well; the average New Zealand Treasury bill return was 3.37. Obviously, returns are volatile over a period of time, but I do think the Super Fund has performed relatively well.

In terms of finance costs, if you look across New Zealand’s history, we’ve seen finance costs as high as 6.3 percent of GDP in 1990 and a fairly consistent move around the 11.5 percent. It did come down under 1 percent in 2021 and 2022 and it’s popped back up again, and according to the Treasury’s estimates, out to the end of the forecast period it’ll be about 1.8 percent of GDP. So I accept the fact that the raw numbers have increased, but I just wanted the member to have those percentages.

In terms of what he’s saying here, I just do want to repeat—and I’ve already done this for the member Nicola Willis, but when the Crown accounts came out in July, I made it clear at that time that those numbers were not what had been predicted in the Budget in May. Now, the Treasury do their forecasts; they do those independently of the Government. They finalise them somewhat in advance of the Budget, but, you know, not miles in advance of the Budget. By the time we got the Crown accounts for the month ending 31 May in July, there had been a deterioration, and I said—I said it at that time, and I have said it a number of other times—it’s the reason why we do need to continue to be careful, prudent, balanced, look for the things that we can do more efficiently and where we can find savings. So that is the situation that we’re in.

I don’t want to prick the member’s fantasy bubble that he has in his head about what might or might not have happened at Cabinet with Minister Parker, but suffice to say the documentation that’s been released would show to the member that what was being considered was a tax switch—nothing to do with just creating extra revenue; it was revenue that was coming in and then going out. So the member is not accurate in that regard.

Where we end up will be the subject of the Treasury’s forecast at the pre-election fiscal update. Everybody will get to see those, everybody will be able to make their own decisions about that and their own judgments about that, but it fits within a framework where all political parties will have to say how they’re able to pay for what they do. I don’t want to get into an elongated debate tonight with the member about the ACT Party’s alternative Budget, but I think even he would have to concede that some of the things in it would mean that services, things the Government currently does, wouldn’t be done anymore. That’s actually kind of part of what the member is proposing. I don’t agree with those, but as I said, the ACT Party’s at least had a decent go at working out what cuts they will need to make to fund the things that they believe are important for New Zealanders. We’re never going to agree on that, but a cup of tea with the member before he leaves this place would be a very pleasant occasion.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I want to ask the finance Minister about the fiscal bomb that went off today, the little land mine in the Budget. There are a lot, I’m told, and that was the one relating to the teacher pay settlement. How is it that the Government so under-provisioned the funding available in this Budget for the teacher pay settlement that, today, we are told that the finance Minister has resorted to raiding future Budgets in order to fund a settlement that should have happened last year? How is it that so much money has gone into backroom bureaucracy and wasteful money that the finance Minister hadn’t provisioned enough for a decent teacher pay settlement? And would he care to explain to this committee why it is only today that the education Minister saw fit to say, “Oh, well, look, you know, there’s $300 or $400 million worth of savings we can find overnight down the back of the Ministry of Education’s couch.” So wasteful are they that it’s just that easy to find it. And where exactly does the Minister think the sacrifice will come in relation to the rating of future Budgets that has had to go on to fund that settlement? Could he outline for us his thoughts on that? And could he rule out for the committee that there aren’t any other ticking time bombs in this Budget that will go off the way the teacher settlement one did today?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): So, to answer the member’s question about the arbitration process delivered to the Government and the need to find about another $660 million, around $3 billion had been provisioned for the teacher and principal bargaining. I think that was a reasonable provision at the beginning of that exercise, and we continued to monitor where it was. It’s a negotiation. So we continued to negotiate in good faith, but we reached a point—and this I think is a very interesting question for the member—where we, along with parents, students, and teachers themselves, felt like we were at an impasse. I did not want to see another day of children’s education lost. Through COVID, we had seen enough disruption—

Nicola Willis: You locked down Auckland.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Ho! There it is, the great, ultimate revisionist history from the National Party! Suddenly the lockdowns were wrong. All the hindsight starts coming out now, doesn’t it? Well, here’s the thing: what we have managed to deliver in terms of teacher pay vastly—vastly—outsizes what the National Party did over 9 years. Once again, we are making up for the failure of the National Government to invest properly in our education system and to invest properly in our teachers. What I said when I met with teachers was that the offer that was on the table was the extent of the money that we had. So, therefore, arbitration happens, and we have to go and find more. And we did. We went, and we went back, and there are things now that won’t happen that had been set to happen—some of those around what’s called the bank staffing hours that schools are able to draw on; some of that is around further work on the public-private partnerships that we—

Nicola Willis: Taking from the front line.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, not at all, because that’s the point. The front line are the teachers. And, once again, what we’re hearing from Nicola Willis is, “Don’t care about them, don’t care about the parents, don’t care about education.” That’s the record of National. Today, we have managed to find ourselves in a position where we can do this. It will cause some issues in the broader delivery of our education sector. Some of that means the Ministry of Education will have to cut back, and some of it, yes, comes from looking at Budget 2024. In every Budget there is an allocation for cost pressures into the future, and we have said this is the priority for that—in education. This will lead to some tough conversations at Budget 2024, but the judgment we have made that our kids getting into the classroom, learning, and having teachers who are paid well and paid properly is the priority—clearly not for the National Party.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break, and the House will resume in committee at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Mr Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity. Minister, I wanted to cover three key areas in regards to building on some of the conversation we had before the break. And in particular the area, firstly, is in regards to the significant increase in Government debt, but more in particular around that, looking at the Crown financing costs of that debt profile—and, as you’ll know, in 2022 per our accounts, we’re looking in the region of $2.8 billion of finance costs. The actual 2023 forecast goes up to in the region of $6.3 billion and 2024 up to $7.5 billion.

My questions are, in terms of those proportionate costs of Crown finance against total Government expenditure—Government expenditure sitting at around 125 going up to 130, so not a significant increase there, but the finance cost obviously, as a proportion of total cost line, represents in 2024 the fourth largest Government expenditure line, above welfare, health, and education, and then finance, and dwarfing law and order and other underlying issues. So I’m interested, from the finance Minister, in regards to how much of a factor is the, in effect, $4.5 billion difference in interest costs between 2022 and 2023 in regards to dealing with what is in effect this growing fiscal hole, and the considerations around what role the Minister foresees that playing as we go forward. Because the interest rate environment definitely looks probably more sticky than what it was, you know, even three to six months ago.

The other is in regards to the Climate Emergency Response Fund, and I’m interested in the Minister’s observations in regards to the fact that two of those auctions have subsequently failed—the quite significant, nearly a billion dollar, shortfall in funding in regards to that fund. And I’m interested, from the Minister’s perspective, how he sees that that gap is going to be filled and whether he’s confident the changes announced recently actually are going to be orders required in order to provide certainty there.

And the last aspect is around the climate adaptation and the fiscal consequences on the Crown balance sheet in regards to this liability—and the Minister’s observations in regards to the fact that in reality we have absence of a clear framework for decision making in regards to compensation for loss, or at least a mechanism that I think we should have. Particularly to deal with not only the shortterm implications, which we are dealing with post Auckland floods and other aspects, but, if we think about the fiscal liability on the Crown’s balance sheet in the next five, 10, 15 years from now, how and what are the mechanisms that we’re going to have in play in order to be able to determine and drive the capital decision-making required in regards to that? But also I think, more importantly, where is the line drawn between the compensation for loss conversation, and on what side of the line does central government sit on that versus local government and, of course, other players in the market? Thank you.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): As the member noted, we did cover a little bit of ground around the question of finance costs earlier on, before the dinner break. But just to reiterate, the member’s correct in terms of the levels of core Crown finance costs and where they go, where they are, and where they are projected to go. Obviously, there’s a very significant lift in there, and, as we discussed before the dinner break, we are in a period of particularly high interest rates, and that is across the world and that’s bearing out in the finance costs.

As I did note before the dinner break, where we are in terms of the 2023 final projected number, forecast number, it’s 1.6 percent of GDP. I can at random pick out other years where it’s been at that level, 2002 being one of those. As I say, we had it around that 1 percent level running into COVID. And, unfortunately, the high global interest rate environment means it does pick up. According to the Treasury’s forecast, that is to 1.8 percent of GDP. So it’s a much higher number or much higher percentage and much higher number than it has been, but it is reflective of the borrowing that was done during the COVID period. As, again, we’ve discussed a number of times in the House and at the committee, that was necessary, it was an important part of getting New Zealanders through, but now we do have to do as we always knew we would do, and manage the costs of that whilst also looking long term to steady our level of debt and bring it down as well. So it is what it is. It is where we are, and those are the numbers.

On the Climate Emergency Response Fund, the member is right to pick out some of the volatility of the carbon price. I used his question to quickly google up where it had got to by the end of today. It’s just sitting a little under $60 now. It had been up above $65, I think, even on Wednesday of last week, and it’s settling just around that $60 mark, as a result, largely, as the member points out, of the announcements that the Government made in response to the decisions of the courts.

Simon Court: Which is that, the Government of Argentina?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It’s a market mechanism. I know Mr Court’s a big fan of those and therefore that is what will dictate what will be available in terms of the Climate Emergency Response Fund. What we did in the Budget that we’re dealing with here, in these Estimates, is top up the fund somewhat, because we did recognise that on the projections we would need to do that. It’s important for us that we continue with the climate action that’s needed and the investments that we need to make to reduce emissions and develop that more sustainable economy. But I’m confident, given where we are now, that we will come back and we will have further resources in there on top of the $1.5 billion that was left.

I think the member’s last question is a really interesting one, around adaptation and the costs of adaptation, and I would be the first to say—and I’ve said a number of times publicly, particularly in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle—that I think the ad hoc approach that we’ve been, effectively, forced into now is not good. I think as a country we do need a framework that can give people much more certainty that can be rolled out much quicker.

And I think it would be fair to say—and this is not a criticism of any political party at all—that there’s been a lot of attention around mitigation of climate emissions reductions, which there should be, but not so much on adaptation. And when I met—myself and James Shaw—with our Australian equivalents earlier in June, this was one of the topics we had, because they similarly were saying, “We don’t know that we’ve got the metrics. We don’t think we’ve got the framework, the measurement, the common language even to talk about adaptation.”

The Government has the national adaptation plan, which is out there and everybody can see it, and the adaptation Act that will be coming through the system shortly; they’ll provide some of that framework. But when it gets to the crunch of what happens when people do need to leave where they live or there needs to be significant investment in creating a situation where they can stay there—flood protection, stop banks, etc., etc.—how do we resource that well and adequately? I believe that is a challenge that future Governments will need to address rapidly. And certainly we’ve been giving some thought to that and what that might look like as well.

It’s not reflected in these Estimates. What’s reflected here is the National Resilience Plan—the $6 billion we put aside to look at creating a more resilient and adaptive infrastructure. Most of the first couple of years of that will now be spent looking out and rebuilding for those who’ve been affected. But I think it’s an area where I’d like to see some cross-party work over time, because it’s definitely a long-term issue for New Zealand.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): There has been growing speculation about just how bad the financial situation is for New Zealand, and that is emerging in these Crown accounts. In these Budget documents we are discussing, after six years of deficit, it is forecast that New Zealand would, under this Labour Government, return to a wafer-thin surplus in 2026. My question is very specific: does the Minister have reason to believe that surplus date is now in doubt?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The ability to know that will only come when the pre-election fiscal update (PREFU) is produced. As the member knows, that pre-election fiscal update is the Treasury’s document, and they will produce that and we’ll all be able to make our judgments.

What we were discussing earlier, before the dinner break, is that anyone who’s been taking notice of the Government’s accounts as they’ve been released in recent times will notice that the revenue forecasts that are in this Budget haven’t been met in the Crown accounts to the end of May. On 5 July, I put out a press release about that exact subject, and noted that the Government’s spending was in fact coming in under what had been forecast but the revenue that the Treasury forecast was also down. So, from the Government’s point of view, when you look at measures like real Government consumption, when we look at the GDP figures or through the monthly account, the Government’s doing its bit to make sure that our spending is being careful and being managed and is in fact under what is forecast. But, unfortunately, in those Crown accounts to the end of May, you saw revenue coming in lower.

What Treasury will be doing is working out over time what that looks like, how baked in that is, and so that will be something that, as we come towards PREFU, there will need to be discussions about. From the Government’s perspective, we’ve made really clear that our fiscal rules are that we keep net debt below 30 percent of GDP and that we achieve an operating balance before gains and losses surplus across the forecast period. So that’s what guides me in my consideration of what happens. But as we’ve seen over the course of the last little while, there can be a lot of volatility when it comes to the Government accounts, to the global economic environment—but, as I noted in July, challenging times; and the Government, as it announced at the Budget it would do, needs to keep looking for efficiencies and savings.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): Now that the finance Minister has acknowledged that—I would characterise them as emergency meetings; he may characterise them differently—significant meetings have occurred today with Public Service heads in which they have been asked to find savings, can he please outline for the committee what precipitated those meetings? Is it simply a declining revenue position, which is already known, as the Crown accounts have shown the recession has driven down tax take, or is it also a combination of emerging fiscal risks?

Today, we had one bomb go off, which was that the Government had not provisioned enough funding for the teacher settlement and is now having to raid future Budgets in order to reach that settlement. Is the Minister aware of any other risks of that sort that have now come to pass that have contributed to the need for the meetings today, which we are told are responding to a multibillion-dollar hole in the Government accounts as compared to what was set out in this Budget?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The member’s imagination is most definitely getting away on her here. What the Government does and what the Government has said it will do, both at this Budget—and in these Estimates—and in previous ones, is that we will continue to look for savings and efficiencies. We actually outlined—we gave it a name. We said it’s a sustainability and efficiency programme that we wanted to develop. That requires us—

Nicola Willis: Why don’t you call it KiwiBuild, or “SavingBuild”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, because the member, if she was reading all of the Budget documents and had made it all the way to page 64 of the Budget documents, she would’ve seen it there: the “fiscal sustainability and effectiveness programme.” That is to drive better value for money; that is to look for how we can be more sustainable. So there will always be ongoing discussions with Public Service chief executives and others about how we do that.

I’ve already answered the member and referred her back to 5 July, where I was talking about this in response to the May accounts. I repeat again that the Government’s expenditure is actually running under where it was forecast, so we will see where that gets to, but it does behove everybody to be able to be very, very clear about how they’re paying for what they’re committing to.

Which brings me to the second part of the member’s question, which we’ve actually already covered in a previous question around the teacher settlement. Just to say that, quite clearly, once one gets into an arbitration process, that means you have to take seriously what happens there. We told the teachers when we met with them that we had exhausted the allocation we had, which is now being utilised, but we prioritised making sure our kids get back into the classroom, making sure that parents have certainty about that, making sure that our teachers actually do get pay increases that will be, I think, very attractive for people. We’re doing that by finding some further savings within the education area and also by looking at the cost pressures that would’ve gone to education in the next Budget. That will make for some challenging discussions in Budget 2024, but we have prioritised that. It is not the hyperbolic way that the member has described it.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): So is it the Minister’s position that the savings drive outlined today is simply on par with the incredibly weak efforts that have been driven in the past, and are our public servant heads therefore wrong to interpret that there is, in fact, a stepping up in concern and anxiety about the state of the Crown accounts? Because has the Minister realised he can’t have it both ways? He can’t, on the one hand, say to the Public Service “It’s really, really bad now, we’ve genuinely spent the cupboard bare”, and then also turn around to this House and say “Oh look, this is all just in line with what we’ve done previously,” because the efforts previously to deliver any kind of backroom savings have been extremely poor. So which is it? Has something changed, or hasn’t it?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin): I just want to bring the debate back to the Estimates hearing and some of the questions that were asked in the hearing when we met as the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and just ask about some of the new productive economy initiatives in the Budget, because I think that was one of the things that we covered off in the committee and came away quite impressed with. I think, for the benefit of the House, it would be good to hear a little bit more about some of the funding—all private and personal interests aside—around game development, also around some of the science initiatives, and apprenticeship development, and also the green initiatives in the Budget. I think all of those things point to a higher-value economy in the future—and even Opposition members, I think, in the committee were impressed with some of those initiatives—and they have not been discussed in this debate. I wonder if the Minister would make a contribution on that.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Thank you, Dr Clark, for that question, and noting his acknowledgment of the important role that these initiatives play in creating the kind of economic growth that I think we all want, and that is economic growth that is sustainable, that is low emissions, and that actually does create those high-paying jobs that we’re all after.

I’ll just quickly highlight a couple of those. The first of those—and we’ve talked about that infrastructure, we talked a little bit about skills in this debate. I do think the investment in the game development sector is a really good example of that, and it’s not coming from nowhere. The member who asked the question may be familiar with the concept of the Centre of Digital Excellence that has been developed in Dunedin. That is starting to bear fruit. We have seen investment across the country in the digital economy.

What we did in this Budget and in these Estimates is actually step in, particularly to the game development sector. Now, in part, that has been driven by the fact that this is a very competitive sector, and one where, particularly in Australia, subsidies have been provided, and we were at risk of losing some of the talent that we have been developing. So a 20 percent rebate, that’s something that’s been asked for over many years. There were Ministers, previously, who’ve done the work—I know how modest the member is, he wouldn’t want me to mention his role in doing that. I do want to acknowledge Ginny Andersen for her role, however, in doing that work. It’s a really important investment, one that will create and retain jobs here, and a good example of the kind of thing the Government can do.

The second one I will briefly mention is around the question of what’s called the—colloquially, the “science city” initiative. The three big investments in new multi-research hubs—multi-institution research hubs to bring together the best of our private researchers, our Crown research institutes, our universities, to actually find those opportunities both for big scientific breakthroughs, but also for commercial opportunities. So three of them, one in the area of health, one in the area of oceans and climate, and one in the area of advanced manufacturing nanotechnology—new technologies. Really big opportunities there for us to harness the benefit of all of that work across many parts of our science and innovation sector. So I thank the member for raising that.

Also, referring back to the last intervention from Nicola Willis, I think it’s really important for everybody to remember here that the Government, any Government, relies on the forecasts that are given to it by the Treasury. We have to make sure that we put together Budgets that are in line with those forecasts. That’s exactly what you see here. It is a responsible Government that makes sure that it continues to work towards, as we are, our fiscal rules, and to make sure that we do everything we can to support that.

As I’ve noted three times now for the member, anyone who is paying attention when the May Government accounts came out would have been able to see what was happening there. There is work to be done in response to that, and work to be done to understand what the trend of that looks like. But the problem here is for people who are promising things that they don’t know how to fund. If you’re doing that, and you’re doing that in a situation as we are now with the global economy deteriorating—the IMF concerned about China, issues that are still there for many New Zealand businesses and exporters. If, like the National Party, you don’t know how you’re going to pay for your promises, then these sorts of situations are tricky. For us, and from our point of view, as we did in this Budget, and as we will do into the future, we will carefully balance, we will look at what is there, and we will respond to that in the context of the fiscal rules we have.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): Have there, Minister, been recent changes in the Crown borrowing programme?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Not beyond those that were signalled at the Budget.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, have there been changes in Treasury’s forecasts that have led the Minister to believe that there is a declining fiscal position?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Treasury’s forecasts are updated at the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update, at the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update, and at the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): Has the Minister received any information or indications in advance of the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update which would lead him to believe the Crown’s fiscal position has deteriorated beyond that updated in the last set of Crown accounts?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The Crown accounts to the end of May have been discussed. They show a picture of the New Zealand economy and a picture of the revenue side of the forecast from Budget that has not kept pace. We all await the next set of those, but the job of the Minister of Finance is to look across the forecast period, to look across the macro-economic indicators, and to do the right thing by the New Zealand economy. From my perspective, we’ve done that by getting the balance right. We will always continue to work towards our fiscal rules while supporting and providing what we need to do. These are challenging times for many New Zealanders, for many households, and indeed for the world as we look at the global economic environment. We need to react and respond to that responsibly and in a balanced way, and that’s what I intend to continue doing.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): What was the purpose of the meeting with the Public Service Commissioner and Public Service heads today?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I don’t go around talking about every detail of my diary. What I do do, as I’ve done throughout my time as Minister of Finance, is meet regularly with the heads of Public Service agencies to talk about the way in which our programme develops. The member will be well aware that if the Government wants to achieve its goals, it needs the Public Service to be working alongside it, so all the contact that I have with the Public Service is in that context.

But I repeat what I said earlier: we do here have a situation where people like the National Party are promising all kinds of things to the electorate with no idea how they are going to pay for them. As a Government, what we are showing is that, actually, our expenditure is coming in under where it has been forecast. There are challenges to the revenue side of the ledger, as outlined in the May accounts. We will continue to monitor that and deal with it, as appropriate.

NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National): Why, when the spending picture has been out of control for several years—as measured by Government expenditure to GDP, as measured by increases in operating allowances, as measured by increases in deficit, as measured by increases in debt—why, against that backdrop, has the finance Minister continued to add spending fuel to the fire, has watched the House burn, and is only now reaching for the savings hose?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The member is just wrong. What we have done consistently, over the Budgets that I have been here, is respond to the circumstances that are in front of us. When we got to Budget 2019, we saw ourselves with a level of debt—using the old measure—around 19 percent of GDP, under the target that we’d set for us. We had the books in surplus.

COVID came along. Now, the member might want to write that out of history. But quite simply, she can’t. The Government responded; we did what we had to do to get New Zealanders through the situation, and now we’re returning ourselves to a more sustainable fiscal position while balancing that against the needs of public services. I believe that in these Estimates—in the documents in front of us—we have done what we needed to do to keep that balance.

CAMILLA BELICH (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the committee report progress presently and move to consider the Spatial Planning Bill.

Motion agreed to.

Progress to be reported.

Bills

Spatial Planning Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 1 August.

Part 2 Regional spatial strategies

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, we come now to the Spatial Planning Bill. When were last considering this bill, we had concluded the debate on Part 1. We now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 12 to 57, “Regional spatial strategies”, and Schedules 3 and 4. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well thank you, Mr Chair. It’s good to be picking up this committee of the whole House debate again on the Spatial Planning Bill, which is, of course, the second leg of the three-part trifecta of the Government’s proposed plans to reform our resource management legislative regime.

Now, the Spatial Planning Bill, effectively, sets out the process by which regional planning committees will be established and also what will be in the regional spatial strategies. Now, that’s Part 2 of this piece of legislation and I want to talk, at this juncture, about subpart 1—clause 12 of the bill on the Table. Clause 12 is quite simple. It says, “Every region must have regional spatial strategy”. Then clause 12(1) says, “There must at all times be a regional spatial strategy for each region.”

So my question, initially, to the Minister in the chair is: what happens if there isn’t? What guarantees or what assurances can the Minister give that there will be, at all times, a regional spatial strategy for each region?

SIMON COURT (ACT): Mr Chair, I’m assuming—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): We like a voice appeal. Thank you, Mr Court.

SIMON COURT: Thank you Mr. Chair. I’m assuming the Minister is just gathering her thoughts. Further to that question, Minister, I have a question on clause 14, “Geographical boundaries of regional spatial strategies”. Now, the Minister, the Hon David Parker, has told us that there will be, I understand, 15 regional spatial strategies to replace the potentially 67 district and city council plans and the 12 or so—maybe 14 or so—regional council plans. But the geographical boundaries of regional spatial strategies don’t always line up with some of the other provisions in the bill—in particular, the provisions that apply to the water services entities, Minister.

So, Minister, would you be able to explain for the committee, and for those people who might be listening at home, fascinated about how this will work, where we have a Natural and Built Environment Bill, or Act, assuming it’s enacted, which establishes a national planning framework; and then a Spatial Planning Bill, or Act, which provides for regional spatial strategies; and where all types of other infrastructure providers—transport through the Land Transport Act, water serviced entities, local government—where those regional boundaries don’t align?

So, Minister, would you please be able to provide us with your understanding about how regional spatial strategies will apply across geographical boundaries where they do not align between different asset operators and different local government areas?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you. I’ll go first to the Hon Scott Simpson’s question. Good to see you’re not sitting next to Stuart Smith tonight! The answer there is, in part, at clause 62, whereby the Minister—

Hon Scott Simpson: Sorry, what was that? Clause 52—

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Clause 62. So the Minister has the powers to direct action. Of course, there are the transitional provisions as well with the three years to have these up and operational, and they can be staggered as well.

Going to Simon Court’s question about the geographical boundaries, he makes the point that the regions that we use for regional government—which are well established in New Zealand—are different from some of the other regions that other parts of central government, in particular, uses. He references the water entities. Also, of course, we see that the making of a spatial plan interacts with a lot of other Government agencies. Of course, the Government policy statement on land transport is one of the documents that is looked at, and that also has differing boundaries from local government, regional council, boundaries. That is something that local government is used to working with central government—having a range of different boundaries for different agencies.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. I know that my colleague from the ACT Party, Simon Court, will have some questions as a result of the Minister’s answers but I want to turn now to clause 15 because it’s quite a pivotal part of the proposed legislation, which we will, of course, be repealing should we have the opportunity to lead a new Government after the October elections.

However, notwithstanding that very real prospect, clause 15 relates to the scope of regional spatial strategies and it’s quite extensive, broad, and comprehensive. So, 15(1) says that a regional spatial strategy must—and I emphasise the word “must”—“(a) set the strategic direction for the use, development, protection, restoration, and enhancement of the environment of the region for a time span of not less than 30 years”. That’s an extensive period of time, and the requirement that the spatial strategy must set the strategic direction for the use, development, protection, restoration, and enhancement of the environment is extremely broad. It has the potential—in fact, not only the potential, the reality—of impacting on the private property rights of every single landowner in the country because it will be that broad strategic direction that will, essentially, decide what can be done, where, on what property, and in what time frame.

So my initial question to the Minister on this is: what consideration was given by her, as Minister in the chair, and her officials, for the use of those broad-ranging words and descriptions, and why was 30 years nominated as the minimum period of time that a spatial strategy must provide for? Then, following that, what is to stop a regional spatial strategy extending well beyond 30 years? What, say, for instance, a regional planning committee decides that they want to put in place a spatial strategy that might be for 40, 50 or 100 years? Are there any bounds or limits on the upper end of the capacity for such a spatial strategy to extend beyond 30 years? Would that be something where, as Minister, she would consider having to use those discretionary intervention powers that were mentioned in, I think, clause 52, from memory. Would that be the backstop? Would that be the backstop for what could potentially become, in the eyes of some people, an abuse of power and authority in terms of the impact of a regional spatial strategy?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): So, as the member knows—and I think most members in the House will agree—New Zealand has not been great—all Government stripes—at doing long-term planning for infrastructure, and the idea here is that we are looking at a strategy; it is a strategic direction. It is not a regulatory plan, so it is not the same as the Natural and Built Environment Bill’s plan which, you know, can have an impact on property rights. This is different; this is at the strategic level.

The idea of 30 years aligns with a lot of other documents that are required in Government such as the council infrastructure strategies, and in terms of not less than 30 years, if the group thinks that there is a good reason to go for longer than 30 years, then that is a possibility. But, in terms of how wide it is, I’m advised that we should also read it in conjunction with clause 23A.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just along the lines of those recent regional spatial strategies and the 30-year time frame, I guess it’s reasonable to assume that, within that 30-year time frame, this is a live strategy; so it’s not something that is set on the day that it’s set and nothing could happen to it between that date and the 30-year time frame—it’s a live, moving document.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Firstly I just want to acknowledge the contribution of Barbara Kuriger. Let’s assume it is a live planning document and that we will need to respond to changes in demand at some point in the future. These things cannot possibly be fixed in stone. But I am speaking on behalf of the Minister, so why don’t I just ask the Minister some basic questions.

Minister, how is a regional spatial strategy to be developed with regard to a general policy statement (GPS) for land transport when there is no GPS for land transport? Because in November of 2022, the former transport Minister, the Hon Michael Wood—

Hon Scott Simpson: Who?

SIMON COURT: The Hon Michael Wood—the Hon Scott Simpson, MP for Coromandel—released a very important document, a general policy statement for land transport that set out some objectives that turned out to be unfeasible. That was to apply the maintenance budget for the years 2024 to 2027 to funding removal of car parks, taking road corridor space allocated to private vehicles, heavy vehicles, and buses and reallocating it to walking and cycling. Now, when that was released as a draft for consultation, local government transport entities like Auckland Transport, all of those regional land transport bodies around the country, councils around the country, said, “You must be joking, Minister, we can’t work with this. We can’t have you transferring a proportion of the maintenance budget to walking, cycling, and public transport at a time when—Minister, didn’t you see even on the TV news that there are potholes and sinkholes developing all over the country, we have cyclones and floods and storms, we have rockfalls, we have slips degrading the State highway network on a local road network. Minister, if the GPS for land transport tells us to take a whole lot of funding that should go into roading, resilience, maintenance, and operations and put it into walking, cycling and bus lanes, we’re not going to be able to do that.”

Now, that GPS has since been binned. Since then, there’s been a change of Prime Minister, a whole bunch of Ministers have been memory holed by the Labour Party. But the GPS on land transport, which should have landed for consultation with local government in the early part of this year—that’s right, crickets. We haven’t seen it. Local government needs a GPS, a general policy statement, for land transport in order to know what funding, what activity classes they’re eligible for from Waka Kotahi—or New Zealand Transport Agency—what they should be budgeting for for the next three years, 2024 to 2027.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Court, it’s good to use this stuff for context, but don’t let it become the whole speech. Come back to what you’re actually talking about.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate your direction. So, Minister, in the absence of a GPS for land transport, in the absence of any national direction, how is a region meant to develop a regional spatial strategy that takes account of the transport infrastructure needed to enable growth, to enable communities to develop according to a regional spatial strategy where there is no transport component?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Going back to Barbara Kuriger’s point about, I guess, how have much of a living document these spatial plans are, of course they can be reviewed and that’s at clause 46A. And then also if we go to clause 23A, which I referred to before in the answer to the Hon Scott Simpson’s question, this is the clause which really talks about the evidence that’s needed, and the scale and level of detail that should be appropriate to the issues at hand. So I think those are good, useful sections.

I’m going to the member Simon Court’s points. In Schedule 3 there are, of course, the different general policy statements that are relevant, but the whole point of this piece of legislation is to get that joined-up thinking between central and local government. The committee can get information from any Government department, and that’s a really important part of this—that information has to be free. And so there are many ways that the committee can get the relevant information and do that strategic thinking for the 30-year period.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to come back to clause 15, because the scope and breadth of these spatial strategies is quite incredible, and I don’t know that many people will have quite yet grasped how wide-ranging they are. So we had a little bit of a chat previously about clause 15(1)(a) and the 30-year time span, of these strategies not being less than 30 years, but paragraph (b) of clause 15(1) goes into some detail about the breadth. So these spatial strategies “must—(b) provide for the integrated management of the environment, including by providing strategic direction for the instruments in the planning system that are referred to in Section 4”—and we’ve already discussed that—“(c) support the efficient and effective management of the environment; and (d) give effect to the national planning framework to the extent that the framework directs; and (e) otherwise be consistent with the national planning framework”. This requirement to provide for an integrated management of the environment, including by providing strategic direction, is very broad.

It goes on in some detail, right through to paragraph (g), which relates to consistency with water conservation orders, but when we get to clause 16, “General contents and form of regional spatial strategies”, again we find that there is an incredibly wide purview for these strategies to contain: clause 16(1)(a) says that “A regional spatial strategy must”——and, again, I emphasise the word “must”—“set out a vision and objectives for how to use, develop, protect, restore, and enhance the region’s environment in a way that achieves the purposes of this Act;”. Well, that’s all very fine and dandy, and setting out a vision and setting out objectives is fine in theory, but the question I have is: whose vision and whose objectives?

The regional planning committees will have enormous power to, effectively, put their stamp on what the vision and the objectives for the regional spatial strategy in their region are going to be. I contend that what that may mean is that depending on the makeup, the history, the background, and the sort of geography and regional aspects that may differ from region to region, that vision and objectives could be dramatically different in one part of the country to the next.

So my question to the Minister around the “General contents and form of regional spatial strategies” in clause 16 is: how is the Minister going to provide assurance that these strategies are going to have a nationwide consistency that in practice is going to be largely the same and predictable for citizens, for local government, for business, and for community groups so that they can with some certainty and some surety provide an understanding that what happens in one part of the country is going to be essentially the same as another part of the country.

Or is it that the Minister sees that, actually, there will be very dramatic and wide-ranging differences from one region to another about what is a vision and an objective for how to use, develop, protect, restore, and enhance the region’s environment? I suspect that regions are going to differ from area to area, and I think it’s only fair that New Zealanders can have some degree of certainty about what the broad vision will be, not only for the country but for each region.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Well, yes, I do not disagree that it is wide at clause 15, and, of course, that is the purpose, that we want the joined-up thinking of these issues in the spatial strategies. I would point the member as well—the first question was: who gets to decide? Of course, at clause 32A there’s wide public consultation, and in terms of consistency throughout the nation, at clause 15(1) it has to “(d) give effect to the national planning framework to the extent that that framework directs;”—so the framework can direct how these are to look—“and (e) otherwise be consistent with the national planning framework;”.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): So just carrying on that point—and I thank the Minister for her interactions; it is helpful to this debate. So if we carry on to clause 16 and we get past the “vision and objectives” and the broad requirement to “develop, protect, restore, and enhance the region’s environment in a way that achieves the purpose of this Act”, and if we then go to clause 16(1)(b), it says “support the vision and objectives by applying and otherwise providing for—(i) the key matters listed in section 17”.

So if we then flip over to question clause 17, again we have incredibly wide-ranging parameters. So clause 17 says, “The key matters referred to in section 16(1)(b)(i) are as follows: (a) areas that require or may require protection, restoration, or enhancement:”. Now, again, that’s incredibly wide: “areas that require or may require protection, restoration, or enhancement”. I put it to the Minister, actually, that that’s probably all land—surely, isn’t it that every piece of land in the country at some point is going to “require or may require protection, restoration, or enhancement” of some form or other?

Is it the intention of the Minister’s legislation that the key matters that are contained in a regional spatial strategy must actually apply to every square centimetre of New Zealand’s landscape?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Sorry, could those members just take their conversation a little bit lower? It’s echoing around the Chamber. Thank you.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Minister, I’d like to have a conversation about clause 17(1)(jb). So as we went through the bill—and the fact that the cyclones were progressing at the time, there were often times when we looked at each other and thought, “Gee, if we knew some of the things we know now we might not have put some of those same things in those places.”

So in paragraph (jb) it talks about “matters relating to risks arising from natural hazards and the effects of climate change,”. I just would like a comment around this. I mean, I know none of us is ever going to outwit Mother Nature, but if I look at subparagraphs (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) of paragraph (jb), is this some way of mitigating at least some of those factors that we were confronted with through the committee process?

And given that I know that, as late as about 24 hours ago, we were just looking at some, perhaps, options around removing people from where they are and putting them somewhere else, I just wanted a comment around that provision—we can never be 100 percent foolproof—and get the Minister’s view on how this could enhance that in the future?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): So we’re focused on clause 17 here. To the Hon Scott Simpson’s point, I’d say that you read “areas that require or may require protection, restoration, or enhancement” in the context of the legislation and the clause, and, in fact, as Barbara Kuriger has said, there are some more specifics in clause 17 with that hazards section that you’ve just referred to, a climate change one, and also one particularly relating to infrastructure that the select committee worked on as well.

Yes, to Barbara Kuriger’s question, that is my understanding: that the select committee worked hard on these provisions to report back—to strengthen, really—the natural hazards provision so that we can enable better planning and responsiveness to those natural hazards.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I just want to come back to clause 15(1)(a), which states that “(1) A regional spatial strategy must—(a) set the strategic direction for use, development, protection, restoration, and enhancement of the environment of the region for a time-span of not less than 30 years”. Minister, I want to focus specifically on use of land for ports, roads, and rail.

Now, I think it would be fair to say that any resource consent issued under the Resource Management Act 1991 has required developers of roads, rail, and ports to avoid, remedy, or mitigate adverse effects on the environment. If you drive along any motorway corridor built after 1991, you’ll see restorative planting along the berms on the road corridor. You’ll see stormwater detention ponds designed to receive runoff from the road corridor and to provide for filtering of any hydrocarbon residues or any sediment or any spills that might occur on the road corridor. If you look at any ports that have had to obtain a resource consent since 1991, they have had to address their effects on the environment, tidal flows, existing users of harbours, and so on.

Yet this clause would require spatial plans to set the strategic direction for the protection, restoration, and enhancement of the environment in areas which have existing consents. Now, if there’s a port like Port of Auckland, which has been there since Auckland was first established, since our colonial forefathers pulled up their ships on the hard to scrub the barnacles off after a long journey across the Pacific—then the founders of Auckland built wharves and jetties, which were then filled in well beyond the foreshore to create the built environment that we know now. The Port of Auckland, the Viaduct Harbour, Wynyard wharf, Victoria Park even—all infilled land that was the harbour.

Then we have a working port in Auckland, a container terminal which serves about 800,000 containers a year out of the between 3 and 4 million a year that come in out of New Zealand. They handle general cargo that goes to and from the Pacific. They handle bulk cargo, scrap steel, all kinds of materials. They handle roll-on, roll-off ships that deliver trucks, diggers, tractors, every kind of machine on tracks and wheels that comes into Port of Auckland. How on earth is the Port of Auckland, within the strategic direction of a regional spatial strategy, supposed to restore and enhance the environment? They are a port. They have wharves. They have hardstands. They have cranes. Are they seriously expected to be restoring or enhancing the natural environment back to some pre-European or pre-human state? What is this target for the environment they’re supposed to restore and enhance back to?

This makes no sense. This shouldn’t be in the bill. This belongs in a different bill, maybe an environmental protection Act, which says if we’re going to have a port, maybe that port should have sediment detention ponds, hydrocarbon interceptors so we don’t get oil spills going to the harbour. But you know what, Minister? They already do. They already do.

So, Minister, would you care to explain how on earth a port which exists because we need the port to do what ports do—and apart from some woolly thinkers, people chasing rainbows or hunting unicorns, no one would ever expect a port to move—is supposed to restore and enhance the land it sits on? This is the crux of this legislation. Nothing is more important. This could be the ultimate flaw in this legislation. Minister, would you care to explain how a port might enhance and restore the environment?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you. As I’ve already noted in relation to clause 15(1), we need to read it in context, and also it is a strategic direction, and it’s not saying exactly what needs to happen. I point the member back to, with his examples of ports, roads, and rails, clause 17, “Contents of regional spatial strategy: key matters”, and to subclause (1)(h) “relating to infrastructure including—(iaaa) existing, planned, or potential infrastructure that is or may be required to meet current and future needs:”, and going to his point about the existing port “(i) opportunities to make better use of existing infrastructure”. Those are useful provisions for a piece of legislation that is trying to do integrated long-term management.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. Now, Part 2 is actually quite a long part, and there are lots of clauses that take us right through to clause 57, so I’m anticipating that there will be quite a lot of debate yet on the clauses that go beyond 17—which is the one I want to come back to and focus on now. Because this is the really nitty-gritty part of what is going to be included as key matters in a regional spatial strategy. So we’ve already had a talk about the areas of land that may or may not be included, but then we get to clause 17(1)(c), which says, “areas that are appropriate for urban development and change, including existing, planned, or potential urban centres of scale”—so that’s cities—and then paragraph (d) refers to “areas that are appropriate for developing, using, or extracting natural resources, including generating energy:”. So that’s energy, electricity generation, and, of course, mining, mineral extraction as well. And then paragraph (e) covers “areas that are appropriate to be reserved for rural use”—so that’s farming, agriculture, horticulture. And then paragraph (f) relates to “areas of the coastal marine area that are appropriate for development or change in use.” So the marine environment as well.

Those are very broad-ranging definitions in the regional spatial strategies that are going to define for periods of time of not less than 30 years—but maybe a lot longer than 30 years—where urban development in cities will go, to what extent their boundaries will be moved outward or inward from where those boundaries of urban development are right now; where areas of mining and mineral extraction can occur; where farming, horticultural, and other primary production activity can occur; and what can be done in the marine coastal area and what can’t be done.

Now, if we go down to clause 17(h)(iaaa), it says “existing, planned, and potential infrastructure that that is or may be required to meet current and future needs:”. So to have the crystal ball that is required, the foresight, the vision, the imagination to know where cities, mineral extraction, farming, marine activity—all those things—are going to be 30 years out, is going to require, I suspect, the wisdom of Solomon, and almost certainly some of that is going to be wrong. Some of it’s not going to be accurate. Some of it’s going to, over the period of that 30 years, be proved to be inappropriate or changed or whatever. And it may be as a result of things like, for instance, the Canterbury earthquakes, where big swathes of what we now know as the red zone around urban Christchurch were prior to the Canterbury earthquakes areas which were considered perfectly suitable and adequate for residential development but are suddenly, because of an intervention or of an act of God like an earthquake, rendered not appropriate for residential urban development any more.

So, Minister, notwithstanding the broad depth of the vision and the aspirational goals of this mighty planning for 30 years—and what to include in a spatial strategy—my concern is that there’s going to be an awful lot of crystal ball gazing that may or may not prove accurate. And the reason that the crystal ball gazing is important is because it’s 30 years at a time, maybe longer, and that then has an impact on property values, on human activity, business activity, and commercial activity. And that can have wide-ranging impacts on the lives and wellbeing of citizens up and down the countryside. So I’m interested to know what it is that gives the Minister confidence that the insightful people who will be creating the spatial strategies and then are given a brief to include these key matters that are so broad, so wide, and so important for the wellbeing of individuals—and actually so potentially beneficial or potentially devastating, depending on where lines are drawn and whether key matters are included or not included. How can the Minister be sure that those people are going to have wisdom of Solomon and the ability to look into a crystal ball?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Yes, the point of this legislation is for better long-term planning, and, of course, as I’ve noted in other answers, it can be reviewed where it needs to be. We want integrated planning.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I want to come back to your response to my question about ports and restoring and enhancing the environment. My question is: ports were issued 35-year consents in 1991. These consents will expire under the existing Resource Management Act (RMA) in 2026. Unless these ports are somehow going to be told to suck in their guts, do less porting, limit their decks, take some cranes away, turn some part of their port over into some kind of wetland, maybe a mussel farm, maybe some kind of, I don’t know, cultural centre, how is a port seeking consent under this legislation meant to demonstrate restoration and enhancement of the environment on a 30-year time frame when what they need to be doing is providing for efficiency, potential expansion, occupying more of the seabed, building sea walls and other defences to harden them from climate change and storms?

How are they supposed to do these things while demonstrating they’re restoring and enhancing an environment from some unknown time in the past? What is this environment? Are we going back to, say, the 1950s or World War II when half the reclamation was built in Auckland? Are we going back to, I don’t know, pre - World War II in Wellington when the Kaiwharawhara fill was under way, and the motorway or the highway into Wellington was being built? What is this time frame that they are intending to go back in time and restore it to, Minister? Because this legislation could potentially set us on a course for good. This legislation could say, “Spatial planning should tell us, based on how many people we assume are coming”—and in Auckland it’s between half a million and a million between now and 2050. We know we’ll have to make so much land available for housing. We know we’ll have to build stormwater treatment ponds. We’ll have to build waste water infrastructure. Oh, and, by the way, we’ll have to upgrade our ports.

Camilla Belich: Point of order. Mr Chair, this contribution is repetitive and not related to the part at hand.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Ms Belich, sit down. That’s the job of the Chair, and please don’t interrupt members mid-speech with similar—it’s the job of the Chair.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to that member, Camilla Belich, for raising this issue that my contribution about ports and how you restore the natural environment of a port back to some unknown state in the past is repetitive, because this matter came up time and time again at select committee—not just ports; organisations, companies that deliver hydroelectricity, that operate dams, railway, roading infrastructure. They said, “How on earth are we supposed to restore the natural environment back to some unknown state at some unknown time through the Spatial Planning Bill?”

That’s completely the opposite of what the Minister told us his environmental reforms are going to deliver: cheaper, better, faster. It’s the opposite of what the Infrastructure Commission said any reform of the RMA should do—which is reduce the cost of consenting. How on earth is this clause, Minister, meant to help us deliver cheaper, better, faster infrastructure for a port that needs to apply for a consent in 2026 to re-consent a port activity after the RMA has been apparently killed off by this bill? How are they supposed to do that and give confidence to their customers, to the transport sector, to KiwiRail, who might want to build a new rail line or spend hundreds of millions of dollars investing in new hard infrastructure and networks into a port? How are they supposed to give confidence to the stevedores, to the unions, the people who work there, Minister? This works against all of that. Explain it, Minister.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you. It may come as a surprise to some people watching this debate that I actually agree with a lot of what the member Simon Court just said in terms of the importance of our existing infrastructure and that we don’t want to accidentally ruin it and do the various different examples that the member gave. These regional spatial strategies can be useful to things like ports and allow them to have that long-term planning and to avoid the reverse sensitivity that’s been a huge problem under the Resource Management Act. But I would then remind the member that, of course, you’re not getting consents under this Act. This is not the regulatory plan. That is in the natural and built environment plan. And so this clause-by-clause “How do we get a consent under this particular clause?” is not useful.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. We’re moving through Part 2, which extends right through to clause 57, so there’s still a lot to do. I want to turn now to clause 23A, which is relating to the considerations that must be taken into account when preparing regional spatial strategies. Now, clause 23A is headed “General requirements: use and presentation of information”, and it’s on that subject that I want to spend a couple of minutes, if I may.

Clause 23A(1) says “A regional planning committee must ensure that its regional spatial strategy is, (a) as far as practicable, based on robust and reliable evidence and other information,”, and so forth, and then it goes on—and that’s fair enough; I think it would be perfectly logical and safe to assume that, of course, a spatial strategy should be based on robust and reliable evidence. But the question then is, well, what if there isn’t reliable science and robust knowledge and reliable evidence?

That is kind of answered in clause 23A(2), where it says “The regional planning committee must not use an uncertainty or inadequacy in the available information as a reason to omit content from its regional spatial strategy if the committee considers that including the content is necessary to achieve the purpose of this Act.”

So, on one hand, we have clause 23A(1) saying a regional planning committee must “(a) as far as practicable, [base their plan or their strategy] on robust and reliable evidence”. But then it says that they can’t use a lack of evidence or uncertainty or inadequacy to omit content. So we’ve got an area where we’re straddling between robust, evidence-based information that is available versus unknown knowledge, but just a seat-of-the-pants kind of expectation that something should be included. I’m confused about how a regional planning committee has to try and juggle those two conflicting priorities between getting practical-based science, knowledge, and information to base their strategy on versus just a sense or a whim as to what may or may not be included because they don’t have that information.

Then I want to ask the Minister, subsequent to that, upon whose decision is it made that something is robust or reliable in terms of evidence? Is it the personal views of the members of the regional planning committee? Is it the views of their advisers? If it is the view of their advisers, whose advice do they take? What advice is admissible? What advice isn’t? Who are the arbiters of what is robust and reliable evidence? It’s been my experience in this place and also in life in general that reliable and robust evidence is a bit like beauty; it’s kind of in the eye of the beholder. One person’s robust and reliable evidence can be another person’s conspiracy or rabbit-hole. So I’m keen to know who’s going to make the decision about what is robust and reliable, and in the absence of agreed robust and reliable evidence, how they are going to determine what matters should go into a spatial strategy where there is uncertainty or inadequacy as required under clause 23A(2).

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just wanted to have a question around local voice, which was something that was very consistent in the submissions as they came through the Environment Committee. I want to go from clause 23A(6), and then go back to clause 23A(4). So subclause (6) says that “The regional planning committee must consider how to set out its regional spatial strategy in a way that’s easy for interested parties and other members of the public to use and understand, including through the appropriate use of maps,” etc. Then in subclause (4) it says “The regional planning committee must be satisfied that each matter covered in its regional spatial strategy is provided for at a spatial scale that is appropriate to the matter.”

So a lot of submitters were asking about things that were at place or in their local community. So does that require when they’re wanting to have some input into the spatial plan that it’s OK for them just to interact with their piece at place and not feel overwhelmed by the whole spatial plan in general? Because a lot of their queries were around their ability, their resource, their lack of resource and funding to be able to make submissions. So I just wanted to satisfy them on that case, that they were able to interact at place without having to go further than that. Thank you.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Yeah, thank you very much to the member for that question. I think it’s a very good and fair point, and I’m pleased that she referred to clause 23A(6), which, of course, uses the word “maps”—very pleased that the bill now refers to them. Yes, that would be my interpretation as well, that of course you’ve got the spatial strategy across the region, and some areas of that region will need a whole lot more detail than other areas, and it would be my expectation that community members that want to get involved in the process would be able to look at the part of the region that they are interested in.

To the previous member’s question, the Hon Scott Simpson, I’d point out, of course, that there can be regulations about that evidence. So this is still clause 23A(1)(b). And then in clause 23A(2), the rest of the sentence does say “if the committee considers that including the content is necessary to achieve the purpose of this Act.”—so that’s one of the tests. Then in clause 23A(3) it goes through what that committee must have regard to.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, I just want to come back to clause 17(1)(c) and (d). Minister, these paragraphs state that the key matters referred to in the contents of regional spatial strategies are (c) “areas that are appropriate for urban development and change,” and (d), “areas that are appropriate for developing, using, or extracting natural resources, including generating energy:”.

Now, Minister, if the objective of these complementary pieces of legislation—the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill—were to protect the environment, wouldn’t it be more appropriate that, instead of designating the areas that are appropriate for urban development, a spatial strategy identified areas such as weather and natural hazards from flooding, tsunami, sea-level rise, landslides, volcanoes—places where it’s not appropriate for urban development?

Potentially, in terms of paragraph (d), wouldn’t a spatial strategy be more helpful if, instead of limiting the areas where developers, quarry operators, constructors might seek quarry resources, for example, Minister—aggregates are often only found in relation to the underlying geology; in other words, around Auckland hard blue rock suitable for roading and concrete making is found around Hunua, Drury, South Auckland, associated with andesite volcanics, which are a suitable material for making concrete and building roads out of. And a spatial planner might not have perfect information and might not know that over the hill or the next hill, there might be the next opportunity for quarrying resources. So would it not be more appropriate, Minister, instead of saying where it’s appropriate to go and extract those resources, that a planner would identify those very special places? They might be areas of regenerating native bush. They might be a wetland where a threatened species like the kōtuku, the white heron, lives. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate, Minister, that those places are specifically excluded from development rather than have planners who must claim to have perfect knowledge if they’re colouring in a plan and claiming they know where the best place or the only appropriate place for developing, using, or extracting natural resources is, to colour in that part of the map where that activity is able to be consented?

That seems to work at cross purposes with the, “Hey, why don’t we get on with building stuff? Make it cheaper, better, faster; protect our most special places.” Here, this appears to be working at cross purposes. Minister, will you explain why 17(1)(c) and (d) use the terms “appropriate for urban development” instead of that much more helpful “not appropriate for urban development and resource development”?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): I’ll just make the point again that this is about good integrated planning. So as the member said—and I agree with him—you should be looking at those areas that are vulnerable to risks and that may, in fact, lead you to find where some areas are appropriate for urban development. But there are other reasons why something might be appropriate for urban development, not just it being inappropriate, and that is that it may already have the existing infrastructure and can hold more people and more houses.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you. I’d like to turn to—I’ve been waiting that long, I’ve forgotten now—clause 24. Subclause (2) states that the “regional planning committee must have particular regard to the following, to the extent relevant to the regional spatial strategy:”—and it goes and lists a number of things—(a) the Government policy statements listed in Schedule 3; (b) any statement of regional environmental outcomes or statement of community outcomes that is provided to the committee within the period specified in subsection (2A); and (c) any planning document that is—(i) “recognised by an iwi authority or a group that represents hapū;” and it goes on to a number of others.

But I don’t see anything there about Forest & Bird. I don’t see anything there about tramping clubs or the Deerstalkers Association or other interested environmental groups—just simply iwi or hapū. Now, why is that list incomplete? If you’re going to have a list at all, why is it not complete? Because all those people have interests in land and in spaces and how they might be used. It seems to me that that’s an omission. Perhaps that’s a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), an urgent SOP that’s needed. So I’m interested to hear what you have to say about that, Minister.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m coming into this late and I apologise if I am not quite getting the right place in the legislation, in the bill, but I wonder if the Minister could help me. I’ve had an email from a constituent today and it’s about an area that I’ve been very passionate in—the aquaculture developments in Southland. The email informs me that there was a disappointing decision from the Environmental Protection Authority expert panel today on an application from Ngāi Tahu for deep-sea salmon farming. Of course, a lot of work has been done in Southland around the potential of turning aquaculture into a billion-dollar industry in Southland and they have, unfortunately, been turned down with this application. The comment is that we need specific aquaculture legislation because the changes in the bills that we are considering are going to take probably 10 years to be brought into reality and they are still clunky and time-consuming.

Minister, I wonder if you can give me some assurances—and, in fact, assurances for Ngāi Tahu and those in Southland who were looking forward to being able to develop an aquaculture industry—as to just how this is going to be made possible through the bills before us.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Well, I would note, first of all, to that member, Penny Simmonds, that we are just considering one bill at the moment and we are considering Part 2 of that and we’ve already considered the Natural and Built Environment Bill, which does have more to say on aquaculture. I acknowledge the issue that she is talking about, with a different hat on, really, but for this bill—the regulatory framework is in the other bill; this is the larger spatial scale which, of course, can look at the coastal marine environment. Yeah, but I think it’s safest not to talk too much about that now, given it’s the other bill.

Going back to Stuart Smith’s question when he was looking at the different instruments that are to be considered at clause 24, and he asked about other organisations. In Schedule 4 at clause 1(3)(g)—this is the identification of relevant matters and specifically the “non-governmental organisations with an interest in the content of the strategy or its implementation” including community or environmental groups or interests or industry or development sectors are included at that point.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I move, That the question be now put.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I take the next call, can I just say my opinion is that especially Simon Court has been a bit repetitive on some of the issues. I call the Hon Scott Simpson.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to come to clause 34, which relates to the process containing key steps. Now, at the Environment Committee, there was quite a lot of debate about the word “key”—how “key” should be defined, what a key step should be, and whether “key” was the right word at all for use in this legislation. So if we go to clause 34, it says that a process must contain key steps. I was going to read it out, but I’m not going to do that. That then leads us on to clause 54(1), and it says: “For each key action in a regional spatial strategy, an implementation plan must—(a) identify each lead for the key action;”. So that, I would assume, means a nominated individual, perhaps with a title who will be the identified key lead for that specific action. And then paragraph (b) says: “state whether the agreement of any person to being identified as a lead is subject to any conditions or limitations and, if so, what they are;”. So I’m interested to know from the Minister what potentially those conditions or limitations may be, in her view. And then clause 54(1)(c) says: “set out—(i) a summary of the key steps that will be taken to implement or progress the key action; and (ii) the extent to which work on the key action is already under way; and (iii) the extent to which the estimated funding and other resources needed to finish implementing the key action have been secured;”. So this is an area that places quite a lot of onus on a key person, a key individual, a key person with responsibility, whether it be by name or by job description or title.

And so my questions to the Minister relate to this key person who will be monitoring and reporting on the key actions that are required in the statute.

Stuart Smith: John Key.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: No, not John Key. He was a very good Prime Minister.

No, but as I say, this is quite important because there’s not a lot of point in establishing these regional spatial strategies, setting out the requirements of what must be or must not be included, and then not having any accountability for sort of making sure that the key actions and processes that are required in the statute to be identified and then for a nominated person to apply those—I’m just sort of grappling with the practicalities. How is this going to work in practice? What happens, for instance, if halfway through the 30year cycle of lifetime of a spatial strategy, it’s perfectly likely that the person who has been identified as the key person, as the key lead, will change, multiple times, potentially? How is that going to be administered? What are the parameters around responsibility for that key person’s role? How are they going to report on the key action and how is all that going to link and work in practice? So if the Minister could give us—for the benefit of not only those of us in the Chamber this evening but also those that might be listening on their wireless or indeed watching on television—an idea how that key action is going to work. Thank you, Minister.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): So back in Part 1, both lead and key action are defined, and in the Natural and Built Environment Bill a person is defined.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, I have a question about clause 23A, “General requirements: use and presentation of information”. It’s absolutely vital that spatial plans are made with the best information. That could be light detection and ranging data, scanning from aircraft, satellite, hydrogeological data about what happens to groundwater in a region when rain falls.

Minister, clause 23A(1) says: “A regional planning committee must ensure that its regional spatial strategy is,—(a) as far as practicable, based on robust and reliable evidence and other information, including mātauranga Māori,”. Are we to infer, Minister, that robust and reliable evidence and mātauranga Māori are incompatible? One is robust and reliable; one is mātauranga Māori. That’s not how it’s been pitched, but that’s how it’s written.

And, Minister, if we come to clause 25, “General considerations: other matters”—matters that must be considered—it says “(2)(d) any technical evidence and advice, including advice on mātauranga Māori,”. Now, technical evidence may include, based on my participation in resource consent hearings and in planning hearings—and, Minister, I understand that in your former role as a resource management lawyer, a practitioner, you would be familiar with evidence—

Hon Scott Simpson: Eminent practitioner.

SIMON COURT: An eminent practitioner, the Hon Scott Simpson says. So, fortunately, we probably have the most qualified and competent Minister in the chair right now when it comes to resource management law. Minister, “technical evidence” I assume would include geotechnical evidence, evidence about slips, fault lines, soils, erosion; evidence about water quality could include the background chemical composition of soils and the background or natural chemical composition of water—technical evidence and advice.

But, Minister, what advice would a submitter or somebody giving evidence provide about mātauranga Māori? Well, Minister, the ACT Party proposed a definition of mātauranga. We would have been satisfied if that definition meant traditional Māori knowledge—knowledge that was derived or acquired before European settlement in New Zealand; knowledge that might relate to an oral tradition, say, for example, of when a tsunami hit the East Coast of the North Island and what that did to the people who lived there, what that meant; if it wiped out the double-hulled waka that were on the beaches that day; if it killed the navigators and the waka builders. If that information could be correlated to the geological record of when that tsunami hit and how far inland it reached, that might be very useful traditional Māori knowledge. It would be very helpful to have had a definition in this bill and in the Natural and Built Environment Bill of what mātauranga Māori might be so that decision makers and planners could give weight to that knowledge.

Now, one of the problems with the mātauranga Māori is that because it’s an oral tradition, after a number of retellings it becomes unreliable—

Shanan Halbert: Problem?

SIMON COURT: And there are a number of studies that demonstrate that, Mr Shanan Halbert, that it becomes unreliable after a number of retellings over generations.

So, Minister, the ACT Party has proposed—in fact, I proposed in committee to move the following amendment: that we delete reference to including mātauranga Māori and advice on mātauranga Māori, in clauses 23A and 25. Because in the absence of a definition of mātauranga Māori and in the absence of any conditional application of that knowledge—in other words, how it should be weighted given the number of retellings and its degradation in terms of quality of evidence, as you would be aware of, in your role as a resource management practitioner—shouldn’t we, Minister, simply delete it if it can’t be identified as to what it means?

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

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.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the Minister’s tabled amendment to clause 21 and the Minister’s amendment to Part 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 390 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Simon Court’s amendment to Part 2 set out Supplementary Order Paper 395 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 44

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 75

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

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Part 3 General powers, duties, and other matters

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 3. This is the debate on clauses 58 to 70, “General powers, duties, and other matters”, and Schedule 5.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, here we go. This is the sort of the grand wrap up, actually, and all through this legislative sweep that’s been proposed by the current Government in its last few weeks in office. One of the criticisms of this whole change to the Resource Management Act regime is that the proposals given to the Minister for the Environment are incredibly wide-ranging, enormously broad in their breadth and ability for the Minister of the day to intervene.

So Part 3, as the Chair has rightly said, indicates the general powers, duties, and other matters. Subpart 1, “Powers and duties”, clause 58 “Minister may require information”, 58(1) “The Minister may give written and dated notice requiring information to be supplied by the following bodies: a regional planning committee, a local authority, a network utility operator (including an additional utility operator) approved as requiring authority.” Now, that’s a very wide range of organisations. Regional planning committees, local authorities—well, those are arms of local government, but network utility operators often have a stand-alone private investment capacity, or indeed they are partially owned by the Crown, or indeed have public shareholding in some cases.

So the ability for a Minister to require information is quite a high threshold to insist that a Minister can delve into and require from these entities information pretty much of whatever sort that the Minister may deem as being required. Clause 58(2) sets out the kind of information that may be required, and it does say in (c) that it may reasonably be required by the Minister. So there is a reasonableness test, and I guess that at some point an entity, a utility in particular, is probably going to want to test that judicially.

I want to come on to the time frames required. Clause 58(3) requires that “The body must supply the information to the Minister within 20 working days after the date of notice, or a longer time set by the Minister.” So the Minister can set a longer time because as we know, 20 working days when it comes to official information requests can be considerably longer in most cases than 20 working days.

But for me, here’s the kicker. Those entities, the regional planning committees, the local authorities, the network utility operators under clause 58(4), “The body must not charge the Minister for supplying the information.” So that information has to be provided for free to the Minister, at the Minister’s request, as long as there is a an element of reasonableness, and that test of reasonableness will have to be defined—

Stuart Smith: Because of work of the OIA.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —my colleague Stuart Smith makes a very good point about the Official Information Act—but must not charge. So my question to the Minister in the chair is, is that fair and reasonable, particularly in the case of network utility operators who may be, and often are, commercial entities required to report to shareholders and stakeholders in some cases, but that shareholder can be the Crown—

Stuart Smith: Could be a trust.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Could be a trust—all sorts of things.

So can the Minister give us some sense of assurance that requests for information are going to be reasonable, the statute says may reasonably be required, but whereabouts does that reasonableness fit? Given that the Minister is not going to be able to charge—sorry, the entity or the body is not going to be able to charge the Minister for that information, I’m kind of keen to have some certainty or assurance that that’s not going to be an unnecessarily burdensome cost upon those organisations.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you. Well, I would just point that member there—he did sort of point to it himself, to clause 58(2)(a)(iii) regarding that network utility operator, and this is to do with implementation plans. It is about the performance of the operator’s responsibilities under an implementation plan. So that is narrow, and it is in their interest to provide that information.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair. Actually, my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson made the very good point that the Minister is able to intervene to extraordinary lengths within these pieces of legislation, despite all the evidence that suggests that localism is a much better way to go for a more efficient management of resources and spatial areas, whereas this Spatial Planning Bill sets out to allow the Minister to have the wisdom of Solomon, or perhaps the wisdom of Parker, to—

Hon Scott Simpson: Which would be the greater wisdom, do you think?

STUART SMITH: Well, I’m not going to make that judgment; I’ll leave that to the reader to make that decision. But if we look at clause 60, the Minister may direct amendments of spatial strategies, and it goes on to say that “The Minister may direct a regional planning committee to amend its regional spatial strategy if the Minister is satisfied that the amendment is necessary or desirable to ensure that the strategy complies with any of—”, and it goes through a number of things.

But why would you set up committees to make decisions that they have to take to the teacher, like their homework, and then they’ll say, “No, go and rewrite your essay. It’s not good enough.”? It just doesn’t seem to be an efficient way to run a system, and I know this might be a shock to some on the other side, but not all Ministers are great at their job. Sometimes you can get a rogue Minister who’s not doing a very good job, and yet they have the power to step in and—

Hon Scott Simpson: Marian Hobbs was one.

STUART SMITH: Exactly—she was.

Hon Scott Simpson: She went rogue.

STUART SMITH: She went rogue—that’s right. I’m not suggesting anyone is going to go rogue, but you have to have that as part of it.

I mean, the reality is that with human nature being what it is, we are not all equal. Some people make a better job of things than others. Ministers do come and go, and yet we’re setting this up to have one person to control this—one person. I’d like the Minister to explain why.

It doesn’t really seem like there’s a reasonable test in this to say that the Minister has to have reasonable cause to actually come in over the top of the regional committee and make a direction. So I’d like to know some detail about this, and perhaps the Minister could give us an example—that would be really helpful—of when she thinks that in the way this legislation is written, it would be reasonable for a Minister to come in over the top of the regional planning committee and rule over the top of it. Thank you.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Madam Chair. As the members will know, the Resource Management Act (RMA) currently has a lot of ministerial powers and most of these powers in here have been carried over from the RMA with those existing checks and balances. So you’ll see there that the member Stuart Smith was referring to clause 60, and at clause 60(3), there is a whole lot of revisions that the Minister must do if they are using that discretionary power found in subclause (1).

The ministerial powers don’t enable the Minister to get involved in the day-to-day decisions of the regional planning committees or the territorial authorities, and, of course, under this new system the Minister has an appointed member on to those committees, so I would expect that the need for any intervention would be reduced because of that. But, of course, the members have said that not all Ministers are perfect, and, likewise, not all regional committee will always be perfect, or they may not be. So this is why we have these ministerial powers in the bill.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, I just want to go to clause 63, because it’s around the Minister making grants and loans. It says “The Minister may make grants [and] loans to any person to assist in achieving the purpose of this Act.” So if you go back to the purpose around te Oranga o te Taiao—it’s quite broad, and it says, “The Minister may impose terms and conditions on a grant or loan”.

Could you just, please—I don’t know if this is a carryover from the Resource Management Act or not, because I don’t know it as well as you do, but it just seems to me that it’s quite broad. Could the Minister give some examples as to what this potentially could be used for, just in the theoretical sort of way—or maybe some examples of where it may have happened in the past?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): I understand it is a carry-over here. On my version, it says, “compare with the Resource Management Act”. I’ll see if the officials come up with an example, and I’ll give it to you in a minute.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister Brooking, I just want to come to clause 62, that a Minister may direct that any other action be taken where a regional planning committee or a local authority should be exercising or performing a power or a function. If the Minister’s satisfied “the committee or the local authority is not exercising or performing [their] power [or] function, or duty to the extent … the Minister considers [it] necessary to achieve the purpose of [this] Act”—or the Spatial Planning Bill, as it currently is, before it’s amended—and if the Minister’s satisfied the committee has not exercised or performed the power, function, or duty, then the Minister can direct them.

Now, to the Minister in the chair, there is no accountability to voters and to communities through this clause. Currently, when a spatial plan is developed—and I must refer back to Auckland, where I live: the Auckland Unitary Plan is a spatial plan essentially delivering what the plans under this bill would. That spatial plan, Minister, was developed by an Independent Hearings Panel, which then referred the final draft of that plan to the elected Auckland Council. There were objections—most were resolved; some were unresolved—but the Independent Hearings Panel referred the draft Auckland Unitary Plan to the full council, and they voted on it and they voted to accept it, with a few amendments.

Now, if Auckland Council’s plan does not deliver the expected benefits—in other words, it identifies where land should be made available for future urban development, where land should be available for commercial and business purposes or infrastructure—and if the people of Auckland don’t believe that the plan is adequate or that their council is not delivering the infrastructure and the services to give effect to that plan so that more serviced land is made available for housing—because that’s the purpose of planning, right? I mean, planners don’t do a planning degree, spend their life developing competencies in spatial planning, simply to colour in maps and post them on the wall. There is a purpose behind this: it’s to deliver plans that allow communities, the private sector, to build and to live their best lives.

If those communities, made up of voters representing ratepayers and property owners, representing renters, people who live in cities and in regions—if they’re not satisfied with the plan, currently they can vote out the people who approved the plan and they can also ask for new representatives to develop a new plan. In this case, Minister, clause 62 says the Minister in charge may direct action to be taken. It doesn’t say that Minister is accountable back to the people who live in that community, in that region. It might be the thing the Minister wants to do. There’s no accountability. It’s remarkable that after all the submissions that the select committee heard from local government, from regional government, from farmer groups, property developers, people concerned about trees in the urban environment, if a plan’s not working, they won’t have a chance to vote out the people who are failing them; they’ll have to rely on a Minister, but if that Minister’s intentions for their region or district are different, tough luck.

Well, ACT says that’s unacceptable, Minister. There must be democratic accountability for plan makers in each region.

Shanan Halbert: You didn’t do that with Watercare. Auckland Council CCOs.

SIMON COURT: There must be. Well, this gentleman, Mr Shanan Halbert, says that ACT didn’t do that with Watercare. Well, you know what? If the voters of Auckland don’t like the way that Auckland Council is managing their council-controlled organisation Watercare, they can vote out their elected members, Mr Halbert, but they can’t vote out a Minister who’s directing their region to do stuff. Would you please explain, Minister?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you. On this point that Simon Court is raising about the Minister’s powers, I’d note again that it is only if the Minister is satisfied that the local authority or committee isn’t exercising or performing the powers, functions, and that reasonable steps have been taken to assist that group. Then, there are checks and balances at (3) as well.

On his more, I guess, esoteric points around voting in and out people—[Interruption] There’s nothing wrong with being esoteric—of course, Ministers can also be voted out, would be a point I’d make there.

Back to Barbara Kuriger’s point about clause 63, it is confirmed that it is a carry-over from the Resource Management Act, and the officials tell me that it has rarely, if ever, been used, but perhaps the type of thing that it might be used for is a grant for an IT investment that would benefit all of the committees.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the Minister whether clause 64 is a carry-over or not. I suspect it’s not. Clause 64 places a duty of others to assist regional planning committees, and the clause applies to chief executives of departments, Crown entities, local authorities, iwi authorities and groups that represent hapū, network utility operators, and that’s the list. But, again, there is a requirement in clause 64(2) that these persons “must provide information or technical support to a regional planning committee free of charge if—(a) the committee requests the information or support to assist the committee in performing or exercising its powers, functions, or duties under” the legislation.

And so, again, there’s quite a wide-ranging requirement potentially for what could be quite costly levels of information to be provided, and the requirement that it be done free of charge, I think, follows on my previous comments relating to a similar provision. How can the Minister ensure and give us confidence that that is going to be reasonable? There is a reasonableness test, but how can we be sure that that’s not going to be abused, and will that require judicial interpretation at some point? Because I can imagine that the regional planning committees are probably going to require an awful lot of information, because they are effectively setting a strategic plan for a region for 30 years and potentially more than 30 years. So some of the detailed data and information that only a chief executive of a department or a Crown entity or a local authority can provide could potentially be very, very detailed. Now, the regional planning committees of themselves are going to almost certainly create their own secretariat, their own support, their own administrative base, their own datacollecting teams and staff, so I’m interested to know: where’s the balance, what it’s going to be, and how can we be sure that this is going to work as intended? Because notwithstanding what I’m sure is probably a good intent and, probably for reasons that may seem practical, there is a potential, I think, for abuse of this facility that requires information and data to be provided free of charge. So if the Minister can give us some insight into that, that would be very useful, thank you.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to turn to clause 65, “Rights or interests in freshwater and geothermal resources preserved”. This clause really outlines that the bill does not create, transfer, extinguish, or determine rights or interests. So, therefore, we take from that that geothermal interests, in particular, that I want to talk about are not going to be affected by this bill. But I do note that Contact Energy in their submission warned that the bills risk delaying the decarbonisation of the energy sector, putting New Zealand’s emission-reduction goals at risk. So that has to come from a fear about something within these bills. So if the spatial plans, Minister, cannot extinguish the rights of any party to those resources, how might the plans actually effectively extinguish it by not allowing them to access those resources? So, as we often know, geological structures don’t follow lines on maps, and so I imagine spatial plans will be based on the surface area, not in the aquifers beneath. An earthquake may, for example, change the structure of the aquifer underneath, which is the resource for the geothermal plant. Therefore, they have to go somewhere else. Is that affected if horizontal drilling in the geothermal space underneath crosses the spatial plan’s boundary underneath the surface? Is that an allowable activity?

Simon Court: It sparked a war between Iraq and Kuwait.

STUART SMITH: Wow! It’s a very serious question, and I know it might seem a little technical, Minister, but it could be very important. I do note the concern of Contact Energy, and I’m sure they don’t spend their days trying to trip up the Government. They are concerned about their business. So that must come from some real concern. So have you turned your mind to that, Minister? I’d be really interested if that is the sort of thing you think that they might be concerned about in their submission.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): As I’ve noted a couple of times in this debate, these spatial planning plans are not regulatory plans. That is the Natural and Built Environment plan, and these provisions—clauses 66 and 65—are largely carry-overs from the Resource Management Act.

Going back to the Hon Scott Simpson’s points about the different bodies that need to provide information for free under clause 64—of course, this is an important point, and I think the member acknowledged this as well; we are trying to get all the relevant parties involved in the making of this plan and, therefore, we need the information sharing. As he noted as well, there is that practical and reasonable test but also under Schedule 8 of the Natural and Built Environment Bill, if it is costly, it can be paid for.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call on Scott—

Hon Scott Simpson: Simon Court.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Simon Court, sorry.

Hon Scott Simpson: It’s getting late, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): It’s getting too late in the night.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Madam Chair, I do accept the honorific of being compared to the Hon Scott Simpson. What a charming, dapper, and experienced member of the Environment Committee, who I would have to give no small credit to for what I have learnt in my three short years as an MP.

Minister, clause 63, a “Minister may make grants or loans to any person to assist in achieving the purpose of this Act.” Now, it does go on to say that money must be “appropriated by Parliament for [this] purpose.” But Minister, I’m concerned that a Minister of the Crown having all of the powers of a Minister for the Environment conferred by the Natural and Built Environment Act, as it no doubt will become, and the Spatial Planning Bill, or Act, as this will become, will also have the power to hand out some Crown bucks, some green bucks, to any person to assist in achieving the purpose of this Act.

Now that’s a remarkable thing to include in a bill. Minister, would you care to explain, in just a moment, because I’ve got three questions. What are the criteria that a taxpayer might assume are applied to this power for the Minister to make grants and loans?

Hon Scott Simpson: Where do we apply—where do we apply?

SIMON COURT: The Hon Scott Simpson wants to know where does he apply? I’m sure that’s because he’s the member for Coromandel. He has a plan to capture and rehome some Hochstetter’s frogs because he might be a person assisting in achieving the purpose of the Act.

Minister, clause 66. “Interests in land are not taken or injuriously affected by regional spatial [strategy]”. It says here, “An interest in land must be treated as not being taken or injuriously affected by any provision in a regional spatial strategy unless this Act provides otherwise.” Minister, are we to assume that property owners’ interests in land will be injuriously affected by plans made under this bill, or Act when it becomes law?

Will the Minister explain what that clause means? Because many, many submitters at the Environment Committee were concerned at the erosion of property rights—including existing rights—through resource consents to take water, to discharge to the commons from their businesses from their undertakings. Minister, would you explain, in addition to what is the criteria for the handing out of green bucks or planning bucks under clause 63, what is the risk of interest in land being injuriously affected by regional spatial strategies? How’s that to be mitigated?

Then, Minister, we come to clause 67, “System performance”. Now, Minister, I remember that you were on the Randerson panel that identified some of the problems with the Resource Management Act. One of them was—when it came to consenting and land development, making land available for housing, and for making it easier to build infrastructure—that the performance of the Resource Management Act was poor and that this legislation and the corresponding complementary bills were intended to improve system performance.

Yet, rather than the efficiency of the system being up there, maybe in the purpose clause, it’s down here at clause 67. Which doesn’t give it much weight, Minister, compared to all the other things that people making decisions, having powers, giving effect to things under this legislation will have to take account of.

System performance—chief executives are supposed to prepare a monitoring and evaluation report and then to report on it, and local authorities have to prepare a report on it. Well, goodness me. How the ambition to improve the system performance of the resource management, the land management, environmental management process has been eroded. Clause 67, Minister, would you care to explain your answers to those three questions?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): We’re starting at clause 67, “System performance”. Of course, it is the whole scheme of the legislation and having these spatial plans that is one of the ways to achieve the issues identified by the Randerson review there. Clause 67, though, is, of course, helpful. Going backwards, now, to clause 66. This is the same as the Resource Management Act (RMA) and it’s not an erosion of any property rights. As I said before, the same can be said for clause 63.

I do want to, though, turn it back to Stuart Smith’s question. My apologies to Stuart Smith when I said everything was the same as the RMA. There is, in fact, at clause 65—it is the same as clause 814 of the Natural and Built Environment Bill and it’s consistent with a High Court case. The Crown has committed to not preclude options to address freshwater rights and interests, and this clause is to preserve that commitment.

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

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just in terms of the regulations, Minister—the Governor-General, in terms of clause 68, can make regulations providing for anything this Act says may or must be provided for by regulations. I mean, this is a remarkable clause. What’s been clear, Minister, through the development of the legislation: first reading, second reading—in fact, let’s go back to the exposure draft of the Natural and Built Environment Bill, back in 2022. There were a whole lot of conflicts that this legislative process was intending to resolve, or to develop legislation that would allow these conflicts to be resolved, Minister. So conflicts between protecting special places in the environment and “Hey, we need to build things. We need to build homes for people to live in. We need to develop resources like quarries so we can excavate the hard blue rock in the case of South Auckland and North Auckland so that we can build the roads, so that we can make the concrete blocks, so we can build the subdivisions and build our cities.”

In Auckland alone, between half a million and a million people are expected to come to our great city between now and 2050. That’s according to population projections that the Auckland Unitary Plan provides for. So Minister, given that the bills—the Natural and Built Environment Bill and this Spatial Planning Bill—have deferred the resolution of conflicts between the natural environment, between, apparently, the interests of mana whenua in each region, and people who want to build things and get on with life. It’s deferred the resolution of all of those conflicts to a national planning framework and then maybe Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment plans, and then of course, spatial plans made under this bill, where these conflicts appear still not to be resolved; they appear to have been kicked for touch. So Minister, would you care to elaborate on what recommendations of the Minister, made under clause 68(1): “The Governor-General may, by order in council”—“may”. What regulations provide for anything this Act says “may” or “may be” provided for, and how the information might be set out in an implementation plan? Because as with everything that this bill has delivered, it hasn’t appeared to resolve conflicts. It’d be very interesting to hear the Minister’s interpretation of how this clause may be interpreted and how it might help to resolve conflicts.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Well, of course, there is some conflict resolution within the purpose of the Act, which is in a different part, which we’ve had in a different debate. I’d say in terms of the specific question around clause 68(1) and providing for anything in this Act, we’ve already discussed that there can be regulations for the type of evidence used, and I would think that wording is a fairly standard one.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Minister of Conservation): I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the Minister’s tabled amendment to clause 62 and amendments to Part 3 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 390 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 3 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Part 3 as amended agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Schedule 1 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Schedule 2 set out in Supplementary Order Paper 390 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Schedule 2 as amended agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 3 be agreed to.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Schedule 3 agreed to.

That Schedule 4 be agreed to.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Schedule 4 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question,

A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 5 be agreed to.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Schedule 5 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to our final debate. This is the debate on clauses 1 and 2, which is on the title and commencement.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Chair. At clause 1, the title could easily be called “This Act is the Spatial Planning Act (Soon to be Repealed before Christmas) Act.”, because that’s certainly the intention, if we have an opportunity to—with our ACT coalition partners—lead a new Government after the general election in October.

But my question to the Minister is that in its first conceptual stages, this piece of legislation was referred to as the Strategic Planning Bill, and at some point the word “strategic” was replaced with the word “spatial”. Although there was some debate at the time—and I can’t actually recall; I think the Randerson committee’s report called for a Strategic Planning Act, but now we have a Spatial Planning Act.

So I’m keen to know what the rationale, what the reason, what the change was, why it was made, what was the basis of it, and can the Minister give us maybe some historic insight into it. Because she herself was a member of the Randerson panel, and I’m sure that back in the conceptual, formative days of Randerson, there was probably quite a lot of consideration given to it.

The other point that I would like to make in regard to the title is why this bill exists in its entirety. Why couldn’t this bill have actually been incorporated into the Natural and Built Environment Bill? Do we actually need a separate title and a separate piece? Could this piece of legislation have been incorporated into one statute? So if the Minister can give us a bit of an insight into that, I would appreciate it.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you. The member is correct that certainly it was at one point—before it was introduced—referred to as the “Strategic Planning Bill”, and of course it is about strategic planning, but the way many people referred to it and thought about it was as spatial planning. Because that is the term that most people seem to use, and because, as the member knows, I’m pleased that the word “map” is now in the bill—we want to be able to see the plan as well, and so that is the element of spatial.

In terms of whether or not it could be two different bills, I’m not sure that it is to do with the title of this bill, but it is a good question, and I’ll leave it there.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, isn’t it correct that the reason that strategic planning was first advanced as a title for the draft bill, or the proposed bill, was because the problem that the Minister identified—that the Randerson panel, in its report, proposed to solve—was that we need to build a whole lot of infrastructure in New Zealand; it’s become too expensive to build. The Infrastructure Commission identified that consenting alone costs $1.3 billion a year. That’s not taking the consent conditions for erosion and sediment control permits, buying the silt fence, digging the silk pond, setting up the fence, installing the duct. That’s just the consenting, Minister.

And wasn’t the use of the word “strategic” intended to identify that while the planning has already taken place—in fact, regional councils, territorial, and local authorities have already constructed district plans and regional plans, which their communities have voted on or have the ability to vote out councillors who approve those plans, and the provisions of this bill simply duplicate what’s already being carried out. In fact, Auckland Council and Hamilton City Council made just that point.

It’s not spatial planning that they needed, Minister; it’s strategic planning that would help them link up where they’ve already identified people will build and live with the infrastructure needed. Because the strategy to link, “Hey, we know where the land is where people can build or live, but the infrastructure to service that land is missing.”—that was the strategic part. Planning legislation should, in fact, enable that infrastructure to be built as of right by asset owners without having to prove—as they do here—that they’ve complied with esoteric, animist, and spiritualist even conditions around tikanga, kawa, and mātauranga Māori, which we debated last night.

Minister, wouldn’t it be correct to say that spatial planning is already common? It’s already done well in New Zealand. We have community input, we have input from stakeholders, who might say, “Hey, you know, that land by Auckland Airport, that land in Hamilton between the State highway, that fantastic four-lane—in places six-lane—State Highway 1 that trucks can travel on at high speed, 110 kilometre an hour road environment”—Minister, what they need to know is that the infrastructure needed to connect, say, a distribution centre to the motorway, the new town centre to waste-water and stormwater systems—they need a strategic plan, Minister. That’s what local government’s been asking for.

So, Minister, isn’t it correct to say that the title of this bill should, in fact, be a “Strategic Planning Bill”, but not for this bill, because it doesn’t deliver the intent that the Randerson panel, of which you yourself, Minister, were a member at one point—it doesn’t deliver on the intent.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): I’d just remind the member that we’ve already had an extensive conversation about the need for the strategic direction in these plans, and so there is no loss of the strategy by changing the name to “Spatial”; it’s just what people seem to accidentally be referring to the bill as. They are both important elements, and I don’t disagree with the member on that point.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. I will resume the Chair at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. This session is suspended until then. Pō mārie.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 9.59 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)

WEDNESDAY, 2 AUGUST 2023

(continued on Thursday, 3 August 2023)

Bills

Spatial Planning Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Clauses 1 and 2 (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Good morning, members. The committee is resumed on the Spatial Planning Bill. When we suspended the debate last night, we were considering clauses 1 and 2. Once again, the question is that clauses 1 and 2 stand part.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s good to be back this morning. For those people that are watching on their television sets or perhaps listening on their wirelesses or even on their crystal sets, maybe, I want to just give a little bit of a moment’s background about where we are and what we’re doing. So we are considering, at the moment, what’s referred to as the title and commencement phase of the committee of the whole House—that’s clauses 1 and 2 of the Spatial Planning Bill.

Now, the Spatial Planning Bill is the second leg of the Government’s trifecta plan to reform and change the Resource Management Act regime that has been in place since the early 1990s and which is accepted—I think across the Parliament—to have had its day. But when we come to this Spatial Planning Bill and its relationship with the Natural and Built Environment legislation, the two are intimately and fundamentally connected. So when we come to the commencement of this Spatial Planning Bill, it’s a very simple commencement clause; it reads: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Now that stands in stark contrast to the commencement provisions that go in the sister piece of legislation, which is the Natural and Built Environment legislation. Now, in that piece of legislation it was a very long and complicated commencement clause. This one just says, “the day after the date [at] which it receives the Royal assent.” That’s a more traditional, standardised, and familiar commencement clause to members of this House—it’s pretty simple.

But my question to the Minister is: why, in this piece of legislation, does it not necessarily match the quite complicated and convoluted commencement process in the Natural and Built Environment legislation? And does she think that this is actually going to be able to commence a process that will kick off in a way that will be synchronised with the sister piece of legislation? Because it’s very important that we consider these two pieces of legislation as a box set. We do of course not yet have the third part of the legislation, which is the adaptation piece. We’ve been told that that will be introduced to the Parliament before the Parliament rises at the end of August, so we’re running out of time on that and it would be helpful to have some clarity and comment from the Minister in the chair as to how the commencement date of this piece of legislation fits with the sister pieces of legislation—the one that we have seen and considered at length and in detail and also the piece of legislation that we haven’t seen and are yet to consider.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Well, I’m very happy to agree with the Hon Scott Simpson on a number of points there; of course, this bill is very, very closely linked with the Natural and Built Environment Bill, and I also agree that it has a very simple commencement clause. Of course, I would refer to Schedule 1 in the transitional provisions that this bill is about making a plan and that plan must be made within three years after the committee is treated as established under the Natural and Built Environment Bill. So they are clearly linked. In terms of the climate adaptation piece of legislation, that is a discrete and difficult topic as I know the member appreciates, and these two other pieces of legislation can work without it. Of course, it will be a good piece of legislation when it comes through and important for New Zealand dealing with climate change.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Chair. It is a pleasure to be speaking on this bill this morning. I would like to also point out that the people in the Coromandel have moved on from crystal sets, and when I was last there—

Hon Scott Simpson: We’ve still got munted roads.

STUART SMITH: Yes, I know, and the Minister is quite confused about a crystal set and we’ll have a chat about that later. I have to say that neither Scott Simpson nor myself were in Hastings in 1066, but we are aware of what went on then, so having a good sense of history is quite a good thing.

Hon Scott Simpson: David Parker was there.

STUART SMITH: Yeah. But, Mr Chair, I know you’re interested in the title and commencement clauses, and I am focusing on the commencement clause, and I would like to ask the Minister: given that this legislation and its sister bill, the Natural and Built Environment Bill, are so intrinsically linked to the economic activity of New Zealand and will be when they come in, and that we have an election in about 70 days, wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to have a commencement date that was enough time for the incoming Government to assess whether they wanted these bills or not? We are having, effectively, a referendum on, among other things, the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, “RMA 2.0”, and I think that given it is so broad and it covers so much of the activities of New Zealand—in fact, we almost have to have a consent to have a bowl of fruit on the table in—

Hon Scott Simpson: Organic fruit.

STUART SMITH: Organic fruit—yes, maybe. So it would seem appropriate to let New Zealanders have their say on it rather than try to rush it in. The National Party has the position that we will repeal it. So it seems pointless to try and just ram it through in the dying days of the Government to try and usurp the democratic process.

I’d really like to know, Minister, if you personally considered this when you were working on that, and when you were on the Randerson review panel—I know that you weren’t the Minister then—but surely it would have been—

Hon Scott Simpson: Would’ve had aspirations, though.

STUART SMITH: Would have had aspirations. But would you have considered this has such an effect on our democracy that it actually should have been put up for the community to have a say? If you’ve got confidence in this as being a good piece of legislation, surely you’d have confidence that the public would vote accordingly in favour of that and therefore you would have a commencement date of, say, 1 January—I don’t know what day of the week that is—2024 or some period after the election which would give time for an incoming Government to consider whether they wanted to run with this or not and therefore save New Zealand a whole lot of time and expense. When this bill receives the Royal assent, no doubt there’ll be a whole lot of officials beavering away with the implementation of these bills. So I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to say that this legislation and its sister legislation—I like it that the legislation is female today—is good for the economy. It reduces red tape. National says they don’t like the Resource Management Act and they don’t like this, so who knows what they will do. But if it was in partnership with ACT, then it’s pretty terrifying.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, the Minister need not fear. ACT has prepared our alternative solutions for building New Zealand and conserving nature. But, Minister, I just want to come back to the commencement. Only a short time ago, this current Government passed the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act, which required councils—the major metros, including Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, for example—to go through a planning exercise to provide for three units of three storeys on their entire metro area. And councils like Hamilton and Auckland, which has consulted on plan change 78, that would require that policy of this Government to be implemented by a certain time frame—they are delivering that; it’s costing them a lot of money, it’s costing submitters a lot of money and time—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Court, get to the point of your question, please, and not concentrate on too much context.

SIMON COURT: Yes, Mr Chair. The concern, for the Minister, is that while all of that planning activity is going on under the existing Resource Management Act, a parallel planning activity will have to commence once this Spatial Planning Bill becomes law, which will, essentially, duplicate a whole lot of planning work undertaken by Auckland Council, by Hamilton, Christchurch—these other metros.

So, Minister, wouldn’t it be helpful to delay the implementation of the Spatial Planning Act—if it becomes law—say, to 12 months from the time that this is passed, and give it an implementation date similar to that of the Natural and Built Environment Bill, so that these councils, who are already carrying out significant plan changes as a result of the last piece of legislation this Government passed, can at least complete that process or have a landing on it so they’re not trying to carry out the implementation of the Spatial Planning Bill at the same time as they’re still carrying out the plan changes directed through the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and other Matters) Amendment) Act. Minister?

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve just got a question around—there’s been a bit of talk about sister bills this morning, and obviously there’s a third one that we haven’t seen yet in a little place I represent called Tongapōrutu. We actually have a rock structure called Three Sisters, and the tide and the climate actually came in at one point and washed one of them away. And, fortuitously, the climate actually came in again and formulated another one, so we’re back to Three Sisters.

So what this has to do with the commencement clause, Mr Chair, is I just wanted to ask the Minister, in as much as she is able to tell us, about the third sister in this set of bills. In respect of the commencement of that bill, are the clauses in that bill to be constructed in a way that the commencement of that bill will nicely align with the commencement of the two bills that we’ve already previously discussed, so that when it comes into force it’s all working in tandem and we have three sisters again?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. Very good and pertinent points raised by my colleague Barbara Kuriger. I want to focus again on the title, and then I want to come back to the commencement.

Earlier in this debate, we discussed briefly—I was going to say “at length”, but it was actually quite a brief discussion—why the bill’s name had been changed from its original, conceptual name of the “Strategic Planning Bill” and then it got changed to being the “Spatial Planning Act”. We had a little bit of a debate about that, and the Minister answered some questions. But my further thinking on it, given that the words “spatial” and “strategic” are not synonyms that are perfectly aligned—they do have different meanings, different contexts, different words—I’m wondering whether the Minister considered at any stage, either she or her officials, the possibility of perhaps changing the name of this piece of legislation to the “Spatial and Strategic Planning Bill”. That would have then covered off both bases and actually been a kind of a compromise that would have potentially fulfilled both ambitions that are contained in the words “strategic” and also “spatial”. The Minister, I’m sure, would maybe want to comment just briefly on that.

The naming of legislation is quite important, because it does send a tonal sort of cultural, overarching perspective about what the legislation is supposed to be. It, effectively, is the name on the tin, and if, potentially, we could have had the “Spatial and Strategic Planning Bill”, maybe that would have been a way to allay the concerns of some people who felt that the change of name from “concept” to “implementation” has been one that’s worthy of significant comment.

I want to just pick up, secondly, in relation to the commencement—and I’m following up on a point that my colleague Stuart Smith made about the timing of this package of legislation—the suite of these two bills and the third one that we are yet to see is, effectively, a referendum. I want to cast the Minister in the chair’s mind back to the original implementation of the Resource Management Act in the early 1990s. The reason I’m traversing that is because I think that that methodology could have been a template pathway for something similar in terms of the commencement of this legislation.

Back in that day, there was a Labour Government in power. Sir Geoffrey Palmer had done quite a lot of work in formulating the Resource Management Act that we know today. It had gone to a select committee, there had been submissions, it had come back to the House, it had actually concluded a second reading, and then all that was needed to pass that legislation was a third reading. It had got to that point, but before a third reading took place, an election—the 1990 election—intervened and there was a change of Government. Jim Bolger’s Government came into Government. Jim Bolger appointed Simon Upton to be his Minister for the Environment. The bill was picked up by the new Parliament—the Bolger-led Parliament—and then sent back to select committee. It was quite an unusual process, but it was a process that was effective, and it straddled a political timing landscape that is not dissimilar to the one that we currently confront.

So, with that background and the second sending back to select committee, I’m wondering whether the Minister had given consideration to a similar timing process that would have the potential to allow the next Parliament to have a look at this, potentially make some tweaks, some changes, some modifications that would have allowed a process not dissimilar to that that occurred with the implementation and timing and commencement of the of the Resource Management Act that we currently have today. That resulted in, effectively, a cross-party, bipartisan approach that gave, I think, a greater degree of certainty not only to citizens but also to officials, who, up and down the countryside, will be looking at this commencement date. This is likely to be passed using the Government’s—[Time expired]

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Mr Chair. Touching on a number of those points, I’ll start with the Hon Scott Simpson’s point about the name, which is, of course, actually part of the debate—

Hon Scott Simpson: The title.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —the title—that’s right, of the Spatial Planning Bill, and he asked if there was some discussion there about that the word strategic is not a synonym for spatial, and I totally agree with that; they are different things. That is why, particularly at clause 15 there is a lot of focus on the strategic plan—on the strategic nature of the spatial plan. You could call it either a spatial plan or a strategic plan, and you could have called it a strategic spatial planning bill as well, because the plan needs to be both spatial, and of course strategic. That is quite a mouthful if you put two Ss in there as the member knows—my issues with two names with two Ss—

Hon Scott Simpson: There’s nothing wrong with two Ss.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: That’s right. So that is the reason there. Of course, spatial planning is an internationally recognised term as well.

Going into some other commentary, Simon Court was talking about the enabling housing legislation and the work of councils. Of course, the transition provisions here mean that a spatial plan isn’t required until that three years from once the committee is set up, so the timing is quite different. In terms of the three sisters, the rocks that have come and gone, due to climate change. You know, that third piece of legislation, that is discrete, and it is really difficult to work at how as a country we are going to deal with climate adaptation, how we do that in a fair manner, and that requires a lot of thought, particularly around existing activities. The thinking is that that is a separate piece of legislation because it does deal with these issues that aren’t about the normal day to day planning that the Natural and Built Environment Bill is about, and of course the Spatial Planning Bill is about more than day to day planning—you’re looking out there 30 years. So, of course, you’re looking at areas that are going to be affected by climate change, but then that is for your future planning, rather than the existing issues that we have as a country with many of our communities that will be affected at some stage—we don’t know when—by sea level rise, and that are already being affected by stronger weather events, as the member knows. So when that piece of legislation does arrive, it will have its own commencement section, and of course it will have to interact with these pieces of legislation, these sister bills, but also a number of other pieces as well.

Then the Hon Scott Simpson gave us a history lesson, again, and suggested that—as we’ve heard already in these debates on this bill—we might be wanting to send this back to select committee in another Parliament for tweaks and modifications. Which is very different from the National Party statements that I’ve heard throughout these debates, that in fact the whole thing needs to be repealed, and very different from ACT’s position as well. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise.

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

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 47

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

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 70

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 7; Kerekere.

Noes 47

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

Clause 1 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 70

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 7; Kerekere.

Noes 47

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

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

Report of Committee of the whole House

Report of Committee of the whole House

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Appropriation (2023/24 Estimates) Bill and reports progress. The committee also considered the Spatial Planning Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Voting

Correction—House Sitting

SPEAKER: Members, earlier in today’s sitting—which was yesterday—when the House was considering the motion for the extended sitting, the result of the vote on the question was incorrectly recorded as Aye 73, Noes 44. The correct result is Ayes 74, Noes 44. The record will be corrected accordingly.

Amended Answers to Oral Questions

Question No. 3 to Minister

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Associate Minister of Health): Point of order. I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct an answer to an oral question.

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

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I would like to correct an answer I gave in relation to oral question No. 3, supplementary No. 3 yesterday. While I was speaking about the Best Start Kōwae assessment tool and it being available to all, I wasn’t clear that the incentive payments that are paid to the practitioner are paid when they use the assessment with individuals who identify as Māori.

Bills

Water Services Entities Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries) on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: I present a legislative statement on the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill.

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

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I move, That the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill will implement the decisions made by this Government to refocus its reform of water services. Everyone on this side of the room understands our water infrastructure deficit needs to be addressed now. The cost of meeting the upgrades that our water infrastructure is projected to cost is up to $185 billion over the next 30 years. That level of required investment is outside the reach of most individual councils. They can’t do it by themselves. If we do nothing, it means households face increased water costs and ratepayers will be faced with an unaffordable cost burden.

Throughout this process, we have not changed our bottom lines. These include public ownership of water services entities, balance sheet separation on operational and financial independence to allow the entities to make much needed investment, joint oversight of the entities by their local authority owners and mana whenua, and strong regulation of the water services entities to ensure fair prices for consumers and quality of services.

Councils across New Zealand accepted the need for change on how we run our water services. There was feedback about how the reforms could be refocused, particularly around localism. This Government has listened to these concerns and will implement new arrangements for 10 water services entities, changes to their boundaries, and ensuring that every council has a seat on its entity’s regional representative group.

New Zealanders can agree on the basics for water in this country. However, these basics have not been met under the status quo. Proper investment in water infrastructure will also result in long-term significant cost savings for households compared to the status quo model.

The recent extreme weather events we have witnessed have demonstrated how vulnerable our water infrastructure is. As the climate continues to change, more communities and assets are at risk. The window to taking action to avoid the worst impacts of climate change is closing fast. Long-term thinking is needed to set a strategic and integrated approach for water services, and I believe this reform achieves that.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who made a submission on this bill, particularly local government and iwi, who have been engaged throughout the course of water services reform. I do want to acknowledge that it was a short select committee process with a limited time for submissions. However, this Government has been clear that it will implement its reforms before this Parliament rises. Alongside this, legislative certainty around the reform programme is needed for water sector planning and employment, and to provide clarity for ongoing transition and implementation activities.

I would also like to thank the Governance and Administration Committee, which considered the submissions and made more than 60 amendments to enhance the bill’s workability. Let’s look at some of the key changes.

Many councils were concerned that the legislation did not provide clarity around entity establishment dates. They submitted that greater certainty about go-live dates for the entities was crucial to enabling them to meet their planning obligations and providing assurance to affected staff. The committee has recommended that the entity establishment dates be set by Order in Council within six months of the enactment of this bill. This would allow a period of consultation with territorial authorities and mana whenua before setting establishment dates before, at latest, the first quarter of 2024. The process of determining when entities should go live will require the input and perspectives of many, including the councils, mana whenua, and the National Transition Unit. Ultimately, entities will be established when territorial authorities and mana whenua are ready, to ensure the best outcomes for their communities.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge staff working in the water sector. I understand that this is a time of uncertainty. The committee heard from councils and union representatives on this area and in response made several key changes to staff transfer provisions. The bill now enables collective bargaining to occur with a designated representative prior to the establishment of all entities. This will enable unions to have input on the collective employment arrangements that will apply across all water services entities. This is a significant step forward for employees.

The bill also ensures that retention payments are to be paid to employees who transfer from their council to a water services entity. This will help councils by encouraging staff to stay employed with them until their role is transferred. It will also incentivise staff to stay in the water sector. We acknowledge that skilled staff are key to delivering ongoing mahi and driving innovation. Retaining water services staff in Aotearoa is critical to the success of the reforms.

There were also changes to make sure the small group of Watercare staff based within the Waikato water services entity boundary will have employment continuity when the Northland and Auckland entity goes live. While initially being transferred to the Northland and Auckland entity, they will be offered a position in the Waikato entity when it’s established.

Some submitters sought clarity about the purpose of community priority statements. The committee recognised that these are an important mechanism for ensuring local voices and perspectives are heard, but considered the bill was unclear on who is eligible to submit a community priority statement. Incorporating a definition of “eligible person” will ensure individuals or organisations making statements have a clear connection to the entity service area and their organisational purpose relates to a water body.

The bill contains provisions that allow locally led volunteer merger of water services entities to occur if the communities served by their entities want this to happen. The committee heard concerns from some councils about the 50 percent threshold for a merger where it was initiated by a Crown intervention body appointed to a water services entity because of significant financial stress, irreparable governance difficulties, or inability to deliver minimum levels of service to consumers. The committee has agreed that all merger proposals must have 75 percent agreement. This aligns with other voting and decision-making thresholds across the water services legislation. The committee also agreed to include a comprehensive list of factors that must be considered when a decision on a merger is made by an entity’s regional representative group. This is to safeguard good decision making around a merger and will help ensure consensus before a decision is made.

Some submitters raised concerns about the ministerial powers to direct entities to share services together as being too broad. In response to this, the committee tightened the purpose for which the Minister can direct entities to share services. Ministerial directions must now be consistent with the operating principles of an entity and consider input or feedback back from stakeholders relating to the proposed direction. Directions that are made after the establishment period cannot direct the entities on how they should implement the direction.

I want to acknowledge the hard work of the committee, committee staff, and Parliamentary Counsel Office on this bill. They have worked tirelessly in a short time frame to improve the resilience and efficiency of New Zealand water services infrastructure. I consider the proposed amendments will help strengthen the legislation governing the delivery of our water services and ensure it is workable for water services entities and communities.

This bill shows how we have listened to concerns of New Zealanders and it will make sure we can all enjoy safe, reliable, and affordable water services. This is a reform that will benefit our communities, our children, and our children’s children for generations to come. For that reason, I commend the bill to the House.

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

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to be standing here talking on the second reading of the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill, but with nine days left of this Parliament sitting in the 53rd Parliament, this Government is bringing the third of a trilogy of bills that are destined to make our water infrastructure and our water industry and water provision in this country worse, not better, for Kiwis across this country. That is a great shame, because the opportunity has on many, many occasions, in regards to this legislation, been there for the taking.

The opportunity to listen to New Zealanders across this country, to take on board their feedback and their ideas on how to solve a problem which all people in this House agree exists—but that opportunity to listen to Kiwis has not been taken up. A select number of individuals have had the ability to contribute to this legislation, and as a result it does not reflect the views of all New Zealanders and that is a great shame.

The process in which this bill has gone through—and I do want to acknowledge the work of the Governance and Administration Committee, the select committee under the auspicious chair of Ian McKelvie, who led what was a hugely challenging process. Thirty-four days was how many days that committee was given, in a truncated process, in order to consider this bill—34 days. The standard in this House, as a baseline, is six months—six months is the baseline standard for any bill. Why? To ensure the voices of New Zealanders in our democracy can be fairly heard in regards to the changes of legislation that go through this House.

Thirty-four days is a travesty in regards to the way in which our democracy works, and is an insult to New Zealanders in regards to complex and comprehensive legislation that affects an asset and a commodity which is fundamental to all of our lives—water. That is disappointing; 1,997 people or individuals or organisations made submissions—nearly 2,000 people. Don’t forget the last bill before this, leading up, had 86,000 submissions—that is a huge number—but the select committee heard 58 of those submissions, and of the 58, 28 individual submissions were heard—around 1.4 percent of that 1,997.

We heard in those submissions that many of those individuals were people that were not listened to or had the opportunity to contribute at other stages of this bill. That’s what they told us. They said their voices were not able to be heard—they were not able to participate in our democracy—and that is after the Minister, in his first reading speech in relation to this bill, said that “this bill represents important changes”. The Minister articulated clearly and recognised and acknowledged the pressure which councils across this country are under, but only gave those councils 34 days to be able to prepare submissions, make submissions, and make consideration.

Well, I tell you what: that’s pretty hypocritical, isn’t it? Because on one hand, and you heard it this morning in terms of the opening address around this bill, how hard it is for councils around this country, how difficult it is. We know that; we’ve had natural disasters of massive and significant scale. Our councils, our volunteers, our communities have been absolutely hammered this side of Christmas. Tairāwhiti, Gisborne; in Hawke’s Bay; in my home patch of Auckland—significant impacts, and councillors and mayors and individuals have stepped up to the plate. They’ve done more than would be expected and under difficult circumstances. Yet, at the very same time, the Minister has said, “You know what? We’re going to push this piece of legislation through, making important changes, but we’re only going to give you 34 days.”

So I think what that evidences and substantiates is a Government that does not listen, a Government that does not keep its word, a Government that Kiwis cannot trust and do not trust, and that is the reality of what we have seen.

National, if given the opportunity to govern, will repeal this legislation. We will repeal this and the two other elements of legislation that come before it. Why? Because that is what New Zealanders have clearly said is what they require, and that’s what we will do. Because Kiwis are the people in whom we represent in this House. They are the people which this House represents, and National will listen to Kiwis and make sure that reform in this area is comprehensive and will deal with the issues that they face.

Hon Poto Williams: So—status quo.

SIMON WATTS: The other aspect in regards to this legislation—

Hon Poto Williams: So we go back to the old Resource Management Act, do we?

SIMON WATTS: —which was talked about a lot leading up to that, was in regards to these regional representative groups.

Hon Poto Williams: Because you can’t have a vacuum.

SIMON WATTS: You can hear on the other side, can’t you, Mr Speaker? You can hear the narrative of a Government under pressure, and I don’t blame them. I understand that. You know, they’ve got a Minister that is looking after this bill that yesterday is quoting that he’s going to put a bet on winning the election. That is what the Minister of this bill is focused on, making bets about winning an election. Are we serious? Are we serious that that is fundamentally the biggest issue that our country faces? No, Kiwis see through that. Kiwis are sensible and can see through that this is a Government that is distracted.

But I want to get back to the elements of the bill in regards to the regional representative groups, the groups that are meant to, in effect, represent stakeholders in regards to these mega-bureaucratic entities which this Government has created. One of the biggest entities is in Canterbury-Westland—15 councils will form part of that entity. So under the governance model, there will be a minimum of 15 representatives from the territorial authorities and 15 members from local iwi—so 30 people sitting around that regional representative group.

Excuse me, Mr Speaker, for sort of having a little bit of a laugh or a joke, a bit of a cough there, because when you think about the effectiveness of having 30 people around the table—think about the family Christmas. We have many people at the family Christmas, how often around that big table of 30 extended family, whānau, are they all going to agree, right? Let’s be realistic. Sometimes, with respect, even if you’ve got two people at the table—and maybe it’s only in my own position—you don’t agree. But 30 is absolutely, hopelessly impractical and going to be ineffective. Yet these representatives are going to be the ones that represent and reflect the views of the communities which will be implicated by this legislation.

Don’t forget those individuals aren’t democratically elected onto that governance group either—not even the council representatives need to be democratically elected. So what hope do New Zealanders in our communities have to be able to influence the decision making that affects one of the most important assets and one of the most important aspects of their life—the provision of water? Well, they don’t have any. It is a façade, and this Government have failed to listen to that feedback through the select committee process to make the changes that would, in effect, make the improvements required.

I’m out of time, and you know, I think the points are clearly made in regards to this. This is a bill that this Government will ram through in the next nine days of this Parliament, irrespective of the opposition, irrespective of the public view that says this bill will not deliver better outcomes for New Zealanders. National will repeal this legislation and replace it with “local water done well”, comprehensive policy that will restore local ownership of assets and water assets, implement strong regulation, and, importantly, ensure there is financial sustainability. We oppose this bill.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m proud to be able to take a call on this bill that my select committee, the Governance and Administration Committee, has now presented to back to the House. I do want to thank our chairperson, Ian McKelvie, for handling this process and for enabling us to have robust debates across—I think all parties, almost, were represented on that select committee during this process and able to hear the voices of submitters and of experts.

I wanted to thank our independent advisor as well, and, of course, all of the Government officials who have worked on this bill, who had tirelessly been through all those discussions with us and advised us and debated against us—because I think that’s the best decision making; we can have robust debates and discussions on details—and also to Parliamentary Counsel Office as well for really being able to put your expertise and your experience into the drafting of this bill.

The Water Services Entities Amendment Bill is a bill where we’ve now gone through the initial process at the beginning of our term and landed in a place where we’ve listened to the voices of local councils, we’ve listened to the voices of New Zealanders. As we went up and down the country when the Hon Kieran McAnulty became Minister of Local Government, he knew that local councils wanted more representation and wanted more say on their local water services entity. We balance that want and that desire against balance sheet separation. We want to make sure that we still address the problem that we had to address here with all of our affordable water legislation, which is to make sure that the Government, using its balance sheet, can actually go and fund the water infrastructures, the pipes.

I can say here, probably on the Hansard—I don’t know if I’ll be the first person—but it’s not sexy funding the pipes. But we will make sure that the infrastructure under the ground actually gets it right: so making sure that when there is balance sheet separation, when local government has actually hit their debt ceiling, when they’re no longer enabled to be able to fund them by themselves, and, also, then, to balance that against the benefits of economies of scale.

I think nothing hits home more for me than when we had the discussion about the IT systems. Currently, we have about 30 different IT systems governing our water entities throughout the country. So being able to go and procure a single system—we’re only 5 million people, here in New Zealand, and having different sets of IT systems throughout our country seems almost ridiculous. If we were to compare ourselves to overseas—to the city of Sydney or even to a district in Shanghai—then we would be able to compare ourselves. Why would we have 30 or so different systems to govern our water services? So as we balance all of those things—so we balance the participation, the control, and the voice that we want our local governments to have in our water entities; as we balance the need for balance sheet separation and as we balance the need for economies of scale—we’ve landed it here with 10 entities.

I also just wanted to touch on some of those details that we’ve discussed in the select committee process. One of them is to be able to give reassurance to our local government bodies when the establishment date is. So we’ve promised, here in this legislation, that it would be within six months of the commencement date—to give reassurance to the entities, to council, but also be able to give reassurance to the workforce as well. We do know that the water workforce is quite a specialised one, and we have experts being in some of those existing councils and entities at the moment. We want to be able to hold them over so that they can continue to be in that space for the new entities as well, because it is a really specialised workforce and I would call it even a community amongst themselves and they all know each other really well. We want to be able to retain that, especially when we have a labour market shortage at this moment as well.

We wanted to make sure that there were provisions and clear guidelines for mergers. We had explored whether or not we would allow mergers to happen before the establishment date, and we had actually seriously contemplated all those different ones, having heard from some mayors in particular who had that desire. But we landed on that we would give one just to make sure that there was one clear guideline, and just to make sure that the legislation, which we have now presented to the House, is a tidy one. We made sure that there were consumer forms, that there was a voice for consumers’ voice to be heard—for them to be embedded in this. We also made sure that there were provisions for collective bargaining together, as all of the workforce of the water entities that we honour and that we treasure so dearly, knowing that they are the ones who will have to actually do the mahi.

So this is a great bill. We’ve given it a lot of consideration, term by term, so that’s why I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, that was a heroic rewriting of history for the member who’s just resumed their seat, Naisi Chen. I shout out to her for the hutzpah that she demonstrated. She’s a diligent and hardworking member, but goodness gracious me—some of the stuff she was saying: “Long consideration”, “We’ve really worked hard on this”.

This bill is the Government back-down bill, that’s what it is. It’s an embarrassing bill, and members on the Government side know it’s embarrassing because it’s worth remembering that this is yet another piece of water services legislation. But this is the legislation that changes the four - mega-entity model into the 10-entity model, which was forced on the Government by the National Party and by communities up and down the country who said, “Actually, you have stuffed this up from the start.” We went through this rigmarole last year with the former Minister of Local Government refusing adamantly to make any changes. Under the Ardern regime, we were told that the Government had it all fine, they’d sorted it all through—and then, as it turns out, they hadn’t.

We finally, at the start of this year, had the changeover to the 10-entity model, and this is the bill that gives effect to it. So what was apparently all done and dusted, perfect piece of legislative architecture and reform of local government, was all fine; and now, of course, the Government accepts the problems.

But the problem is the Government has stuffed this issue from the start. There is actually consensus, I think, around Parliament that we need water infrastructure reform. But the Government has gone out of its way to insult and belittle local democracy and local councils and local communities.

It all goes back to the absurd ad campaign that the Government ran right at the start back in 2020, I think it was—Simon Watts is nodding—2020, in which we had these absurd ads on television run by the Department of Internal Affairs that really got the backs up of local councils, who said, “Well hang on a minute, you’re tarring us all with the same brush. You’re insulting us by implying we can’t do things better. Why don’t you work with us rather than against us?” The Government said, basically, “Talk to the hand,” from Nanaia Mahuta, “I know best.” Well, as it turns out, she doesn’t know best and that’s why she ultimately lost her job as Minister of Local Government.

So it all goes back to that, and now this is the tail end of what’s been a pretty dire process run by the Government. So we are up for water infrastructure reform and we’ve laid out a comprehensive plan to do it. The major difference between us and the Labour Government on this issue is that we will work with local councils and in partnership with them, rather than basically by dictating to them what they should do.

Three points of disagreement with the Government on this bill. The first is the confiscation, and that is really important. Members can kind of belittle it or dance around the issue or obfuscate as much as they would like, but this bill confiscates the assets of local councils. There’s just no doubt about that. That’s what the legislation does; that’s the point of it all. What it does is take all of those water assets and bundle them all up into—it used to be four and now it’s 10. So changing the number might make the Government feel a little bit better about life. It doesn’t actually change the underlying fundamentals, which is that this is confiscation of local assets.

Local communities and local councils have not been given the ability to figure out for themselves how they reconstitute their asset and their ownership structures in order to give effect to what I think everyone agrees is the right thing to do, which is balance sheet separation so that you get borrowing over the long term to make the required investments. Our view is that that should be done, in the first instance, by local councils and by local communities. So that’s the first issue.

The second issue is the mandatory co-governance that is imposed on these 10 new entities. The Government has just refused to listen on this point. So these regional representative groups that impose 50:50 co-governance on the groups—the regional representative bodies—the bill continues and strengthens. We oppose that provision. We do accept that Māori have rights and interests in water—that’s an important thing to give effect to—but there is no need for 50:50 mandatory cogovernance, and the Government has never made the case properly for it.

In fact, we had this absurd scenario of the new-ish Minister of Local Government, the Hon Kieran McAnulty, going on Q+A and basically saying that democracy was one thing in the academic textbooks but New Zealand had a different version of it—which I think was news to most New Zealanders. Then the other absurdist claim that he made is that the 50:50 co-governance provisions help with the balance sheet separation, which again doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. So I don’t think he even really knew what he was arguing, it’s just ridiculous. It’s basically a continuation of what the Government had before, and they’ve never properly made the case as to why Māori interests in water have to be given effect to through mandatory co-governance; they’ve never made that case. Our view is it’s not required.

The third issue is something that has escaped a little bit of attention but is actually, I think, the most significant part of the reforms—which is the Te Mana o te Wai statements that the bill gives effect to. Here’s the key distinction. Under the water services legislation proposed by the Government, relevant iwi and hapū will be able to issue Te Mana o te Wai statements to the water services bodies, these new entities. The water service entities must respond to them. They must.

Now, the Government quite rightly has been criticised for this and their way through this to make sure everyone feels equal—or at least has the appearance of equality—is to invent this new concept called community priority statements. The difference is this: community priority statements only have to “may be considered” by the water services entities. So Te Mana o te Wai statements “must be considered”—that’s mandatory—but community priority statements “may be considered” by the new entities.

So we’re going to end up with the situation where the only groups and the only people who can issue Te Mana o te Wai statements are hapū and iwi. A whole bunch of interest groups—I’m thinking of, say Federated Farmers, for example—or there may be a whole bunch of different groups in a particular local area. They might issue their own statement to the water services entity, and the water services entity can just go, “Well, that’s cool. Thanks very much for that, but we’re not paying any attention to it. Because the law only says we ‘may’ consider it, but we’re not going to.” It’s discretionary. It’s flexibility. It’s discretionary. So they may do it, but they also may not. But when it comes to the Te Mana o te Wai statements, that’s mandatory; those bodies are in breach of the law if they do not respond and take them into account. Our view is that is grossly inappropriate and wrong.

Then we get to the breadth of the Te Mana o te Wai statements, because there is no guidance, there are no parameters—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Bishop, this is an amendment bill.

CHRIS BISHOP: That’s right.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You’re now talking to the substantive bill, so in the time left to you, just how it relates to the amendment.

CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah, clause 145C is the relevant clause. The key point is this: that the bill doesn’t amend the Te Mana o te Wai and statement of community priority nexus and framework, and that’s the point. The committee had an opportunity to change it and they chose not to, and that is wrong. Our view is that the breadth and the length of the Te Mana o te Wai statements is going to cause potential chaos when it comes to these water services entities’ conduct and behaviour as they go forward.

So this is an embarrassing back-down bill by the Government. We are opposed to the confiscation, we are opposed to the mandatory co-governance, and we are opposed to the inequality of Te Mana o te Wai statements versus community priority statements. National will properly reform water infrastructure governance and regulation and funding and financing in Government. New Zealand needs it, but they do not need this retrograde bill.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour): Well, Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s been interesting listening to the member who has just resumed his seat, Chris Bishop, making a number of statements with regards to this bill—and, Mr Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity. Kia orana.

Mr Speaker, I support the second reading of this bill. The Government, as you heard the Minister this morning, talks about the reforms of the water services entity, because it is a better bill. Although the member previous to me had made a number of statements regarding our Ministers of Government, I can tell you now that, coming from South Auckland and visiting the Māngere waste-water plant, the infrastructure reforms are really, really important, particularly for iwi and hapū and for communities who need the support of Government in terms of water infrastructure. Water is a taonga to iwi and hapū and New Zealanders. It is really important that that side gets what this bill is talking about.

I want to highlight that this bill creates dedicated water service entities, and it will have regional representation. Although we’ve heard other speakers from across the House speak about why regional representation is important, I can tell you now, Mr Speaker, that, as a local elected council member, we saw quite intimately why infrastructure reform is required: so that the Government can support—because councils can’t afford it, they really can’t. We worked, as elected council representatives, going around, having a view of the waste-water plants in South Auckland and the requirements. So this bill helps creates that infrastructure.

I want to commend the select committee; I am not a member. I also thank the submitters who gave varying views on this bill.

National left us with no credibility in terms of water infrastructure. The status quo was unsustainable. Councils and CEOs needed to raise enough money to invest in water infrastructure; it is a requirement. People need clean water.

What I want to highlight is that local councils just cannot afford it. This bill, as you’ve heard, our Minister of Local Government, Minister McAnulty, went around the motu and had a kōrero with many communities. The bill fits into our larger plan, and it will invest its estimation of billions of dollars over the next 30 years, because, without these changes, Kiwis across the motu would see unaffordable increases to their rates for the investment that is needed.

Whilst I’ve heard that the Minister went around and heard from communities, and then I also heard that the words in the legislation “may” or “can”, I can tell you now that the Government has been listening and is serious about investing in water infrastructure, because that clean water needs to get to our communities wherever they are—urban or rural across the motu.

So, Mr Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution. I commend the bill to the House.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. ACT engaged constructively with the Government and with officials at the Department of Internal Affairs when the three waters reforms were first proposed, because ACT agrees there is a problem with the condition of existing water infrastructure at many councils in many regions around the country. It’s been run down through a lack of investment, a lack of maintenance, and there is a huge demand for growth, particularly in the major metros like Auckland, where the need to service land for future urban development and the lack of infrastructure services mean that land cannot be offered for housing. That is inducing an upward pressure on land prices and making housing unaffordable. These reforms, as proposed by Labour, will not address that.

I’d just like to come back to the comments of some of the Labour members. The member Naisi Chen sat on the committee for the 34 days of the hearing and claimed that the committee had offered consideration for those 34 days and that the bill that’s been beaten into shape somehow addresses the concerns of most of the submitters who were opposed to this amendment. I would disagree with that.

I want to offer a perspective on the previous Labour speaker’s commentary, particularly around water as a taonga. Now, water is important. Water sustains life on earth as we know it. But if we’re going to confuse water having a spiritual dimension with the metaphysical, with the biophysical, then we’re never going to solve this country’s problems; we’re never going to be able to build the infrastructure we need, deliver water for communities, for businesses, for farmers, in the places that we need it, because there will always be a cultural veto based on this concept of water and its spiritual dimensions, expressed through Te Mana o te Wai, which is the principal way of allocating water resources to find through the hierarchy of water legislation this Government has passed.

Now, I want to come to some specific problems with this bill. This bill reforms the Water Services Entities Act passed in 2022, which established four water services entities. After listening to the Opposition, ACT, and all those communities which said, “Hey, you shouldn’t take our assets and put them in four water entities.”, the Government announced, “OK, we’ll do 10. We’ll do 10.” Well, taking local community assets and putting them in either four or 10 entities, and removing control from democratically elected councils and their ratepayers, is unacceptable. The High Court agreed with the Water Users’ Group, that took an action, that it amounts to confiscation, and confiscation without compensation is expropriation. That’s called theft, Labour—theft of these assets.

That’s what the court ruled. But, of course, Labour has a majority. They can pass any laws they like that confiscate private property, and that’s what they’ve done through the Water Services Entities Act. This bill only continues that expropriation.

Now, there are other problems apart from the theft of local assets. Ten entities—well, officials and the Minister accepted that the economic efficiencies gained by having four entities are significantly diluted by having to stand up ten entities, all of the back office, all of the chief executives, and all of the overheads required to stand up ten entities.

ACT does not agree that this cost is warranted. Local councils who own the existing assets could be supported in other ways, such as by encouraging them to form council-controlled trading organisations, like Auckland’s Watercare. They could be encouraged to form alliances, programme alliances, voluntary associations. They could be encouraged and facilitated to carry out joint procurement of major capital programmes and maintenance operations contracts. They don’t have to be or shouldn’t have to be water services that have adjoining regional boundaries, which is required by this bill.

I mean, we only have to look at Christchurch’s Citycare, a council-controlled organisation, to see that they are able to undertake water maintenance contracting all around the country, not just in Christchurch. So the rationale that Labour has applied to this to support this contention that water service entities must have regional boundaries adjoining them is a fallacy.

Now, I want to come to the regional representative groups. If this bill was focused on water infrastructure, better management, raising the funds, financing these big projects, creating a regulatory system that puts some rules in place so that local government and asset owners were actually meeting their community needs, providing for depreciation and funding growth, then ACT could probably have supported the intention of this legislation, But introducing co-governance entities—regional representative groups made up of a dozen or more councils, a dozen or more 50:50 iwi and hapū representatives—actually wrecks the entire outcome of this policy.

There is no justification for it. I will remind the Labour members of this House what the former Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta stated in answer to a written question from ACT: Simon Court to the Minister of Local Government: “Does the Minister believe that Māori have rights and interests in three waters assets built after 1840; if so, why?” The Minister replied, “To my knowledge, Māori have not expressed rights and interests in three waters assets over and above those or ratepayers in their respective community of interest.” There you go. Take co-governance, take allocating seats on boards based on ethnicity out of this reform agenda, because it’s not necessary. It’s not needed. There’s no legal need. There’s no Waitangi claim which insists that it be in there. The former Minister of Local Government herself stated there is no interest above that of members of a community. That is why ACT says we can do three waters reform without co-governance.

ACT agrees that councils and their trading organisations should have much greater access to many more different types of funding and financing arrangements. Currently, the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act provides for councils, for example, to access funding by standing up a special purpose vehicle—an off-the-balance-sheet fund to build infrastructure. In fact, Wellington Water is in the process of gaining approval through that very Act—the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act—to stand up a special purpose vehicle to fund the upgrade of the Moa Point waste-water treatment plant. The legislation already exists. ACT believes it could be improved but that the funding and financing and the balance sheet separation is already available to local government.

I want to come to the implementation. The cost of implementing these reforms has ballooned from $2 billion initially estimated to now $3 billion. For the cost of procuring a single information system, over $500 million has been budgeted, plus maybe $100 million more in contingency. It turns out that every council in New Zealand already has an asset management system. I worked in Auckland Council—there’s a large international provider that has allocated an asset ID number to every manhole, every manhole lid, and you can go on Auckland Council’s geographic information system right now, and you can click on a manhole and a pipe anywhere in the city and you can get the asset information about it.

But this Government reckons spending $500 million on a new compulsory IT system for councils is necessary. Not only that—this Government is keeping on three redundant chief executives on a pay of between $600,000 and $800,000 a year just in case a few spare chief executives are needed, who will be made redundant by the passing of this legislation.

ACT does not support this bill passing. We will repeal it and replace it with ACT’s infrastructure policy should we have the opportunity.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I’m pleased to take a call on the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill. Can I acknowledge the value of the change in Standing Orders which allows members of parties who don’t have a permanent representative on a select committee to attend. I really appreciated being engaged with the Governance and Administration Committee and acknowledge the chair, Ian McKelvie, and the deputy, Rachel Boyack, for quite constructive discussions.

It was a really truncated consideration period, of just over a month, which did lead to challenges, particularly for submitters, with the limited time that they had to analyse and comment on the bill. But the committee did the best job it could, and I would also like to acknowledge the work of officials from the Department of Internal Affairs, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and select committee staff for the work that they did as well. It was a lot of work to get done in a very constrained period.

The Green Party had opposed the principal Act, and we continue to oppose the corporatisation ethos that’s at the heart of this, but we recognise that there do need to be significant changes in the provision of three waters and that this bill does take on board the concerns of local councils and many members of the public in ensuring that there is much stronger local representation and that the entities are better connected to local communities by increasing the number of entities from four to 10. So we will be supporting the bill.

We also continue to oppose having stormwater connected with drinking and waste water and passing to the entities. Because stormwater is so related to planning, to the way our cities and towns grow, to the provision of green space, recreational areas, to ensuring that nature can absorb stormwater, this is a major problem in the principal Act: that it has stormwater passed to the entities.

But, turning to the bill, there were quite a lot of submissions about the start date, the go-live date for the entities, and quite a lot of concern about the uncertainty that having Orders in Council to establish the go-live date created, not least from the unions—the PSA and E tū, in particular—because of the uncertainty that that created for staff and councils who will be transferring or going across to the entities. We heard quite a lot of submissions on this, and Entity A—Northland and Auckland councils—is the only entity that has its establishment date in the legislation. But the committee stuck with having the Order in Council process because there wasn’t enough time in our truncated consideration to reach a consensus across councils, mana whenua, and stakeholders over what the golive date for each entity should be.

There was certainly useful feedback from the representatives of the National Transition Unit on what they had been hearing on the roadshow. There is some discussions about that, but there were changes in relation to requiring consultation before the Order in Council established a go-live date, and ensuring that those Orders in Council are released six months after the bill becomes law. So there is increased certainty there.

The staff retention issue, which others have commented on, was quite a big one. The committee did consider whether there should be specific provision for the nature of retention payments in the bill, but local authorities already have an ability to offer retention payments for staff. There are some 7,500 staff working on three waters across councils and council-controlled organisations around Aotearoa—people with a lot of expertise, a lot of knowledge—and it’s really critical that they stay in this water service space, because otherwise there’s potential disruption to council services and also a loss of expertise going across into the entities.

So the provision that the committee inserted around collective bargaining and enabling collective bargaining to occur through the Department of Internal Affairs, or representatives that they nominate, before the entities are established should assist there in ensuring that the importance of those employees in councils and their expertise is really well recognised. There was the issue of potential loss of staff from the entities that are established first poaching others. We did understand, too, that, while retention payments in the private sector could be between 10 and 25 percent of salary, it’s likely to be much smaller in this space.

Going on to another issue of representation, because we’ve now got 10 entities and there is now in the bill no minimum or maximum in terms of the representation from councils—in terms of their numbers—it’s up to the councils to really negotiate that amongst themselves in the entity areas and to establish that through their constitution; other than Northland and Auckland, where the numbers of representatives from the contributing councils are set out in the bill. There’s one issue here: in terms of Canterbury - West Coast, that will have 30 members on the regional representative group, and big metros, like Christchurch City Council, are potentially then underrepresented, because they may be able to negotiate with other councils that they should have more than one representative but the principal Act ensures that votes cannot be weighted; that they’re all equal. So there is a real issue, in terms of that formation of the entities, about the number of representatives that goes to the metropolitan councils, so that they are truly representing their communities and the populations in those communities.

There are other factors in the bill, in terms of the scale of infrastructure and delivery needs, the relative urban growth and development, which can contribute to that process of determining how many representatives each territorial authority gets on the regional representative group, but groups that are 30 in size, I think, will find it quite challenging in terms of how they operate, just because of the sheer number of mana whenua and territorial authority representatives that are there. Again, the issue of balance sheet separation was really what was driving this issue of ensuring that councils are distant from key decisions. We seem to be being informed by what Standard & Poor’s wants to ensure that you get that balance sheet separation, and that is influencing the representation arrangements. So I don’t think they’re as democratic as they could be.

One other issue that the select committee spent quite a lot of time on was shared services, because of the desire with 10 entities to retain the efficiencies that you theoretically get with four entities—so the ability of the Minister to provide quite a lot of direction around what services should be shared. I understand that the Department of Internal Affairs, through the National Transition Unit, is wanting to establish a digital shared service, which will be jointly owned and controlled by all 11 entities once they are established, to operate the corporate systems, technology, how people access and store documents, how they receive emails, how they interact with customers, and also the system of record in terms of asset management.

The costs of this are going to be significant. The previous member, Simon Court, talked about $500 million. The regulatory impact statement estimates that $150 million has been budgeted for the shared services work. Particularly in the IT sector, when a number of councils already have their own IT systems, just combining these or just having one multinational provide one system across the country might sound efficient, but I remember Novopay. This whole area of IT needs to have a very robust business case and very close ministerial scrutiny and accountability to ensure that we don’t get some of the IT disasters that we’ve seen in the past when you’re going to just one system. I think it creates almost a monopoly, so it would actually be better potentially to have a couple of providers so that there is no monopoly situation with just one provider.

The committee did amend some of the provisions to put a check on the Minister’s power of directions and, as the Hon Rachel Brooking in making the first speech in the second reading noted, there is now no ability for the Minister to provide direction around shared services after that 1 July 2026 debate, and there were some other constraints put on the Minister’s power there. The bill has been improved—as bills always are—through the select committee process, and it’s unfortunate there wasn’t more time.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. New Zealand is a relatively small city compared to the rest of the world. We are a long, narrow city, yes, but compared to many other nations and states around the world, New Zealand is a relatively small city. Therefore, there are things I think we have done for so long—and we look back at the reforms of the 1980s in local government, we look at reforms that have gone on with the super-city in Auckland in the 2010s, we look at reforms that go on constantly throughout our nation, and in this House. We are always looking for ways and means to ensure that we care, and make sure that we do have affordable water, we do have affordable services to serve all people. This is what the Water Services Entity Amendment Bill participates in. It’s listening, looking, and finding ways that we can actually do right by our communities. So therefore, I’m supporting this bill today.

Now, yesterday was a significant day in Taranaki. It was a very significant day for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was significant because it was the first time the New Plymouth District Council had their council meeting at Ōwae marae in Waitara. The first time they actually went and left the chamber and actually sat face to face with local iwi, and with local hapū.

Yesterday was also a significant day because on their agenda yesterday at Ōwae marae in Waitara they were discussing the Taranaki Position Statement that has been put out around the water services entities amendment—around becoming an entity in Taranaki. So South Taranaki District Council, Stratford District Council, New Plymouth District Council, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Mutunga, Te Ati Awa, Taranaki Iwi, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Ruanui, and Ngā Rauru are all on this document looking at what this legislation is posing to implement, and to amend.

Speaking in favour of what it looks like for us in Taranaki as a combined group—not only of councils, of regional council but also of iwi and hapū groups—saying, yes, we see our future. I want to comment on our mayor, Neil Holdom, from New Plymouth, who—let’s be honest, I’ve had many robust conversations in his office, out and about, around the work that we’re doing on three waters. We haven’t always agreed, but we have agreed on many things as well. He talked yesterday—and he’s talked many times—about the fact that change is coming, that councils in Taranaki, that iwi in Taranaki could put their heads in the sand; they could put their heads in their hands; they could ignore it; they could fight it; or they could get ahead of it. They are getting ahead of it.

Yesterday, the New Plymouth District Council signed up to the Taranaki Position Statement supporting the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill to ensure that an entity is established in Taranaki working together with everyone. That really encourages me, because this place—and we’ve heard earlier in the conversation, in the debate today, and in select committee, that it’s about a contest of ideas and challenges, but it’s kind of hard when there’s only one side with the ideas.

So it’s sort of hard to have a contest of ideas when it’s the ideas that we have—proposing, and we hear shouting and screaming from the other side, but I don’t see ideas coming from the National Party; I don’t see ideas coming around how we can actually reform, and ensure that us a small city compared to the rest of the world can actually make change that actually will serve our people here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

So this is simple legislation; this is legislation that is going to ensure better community voice. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I had the pleasure of sitting on the committee on this bill. It is probably the most terrible bill I’ve seen in my 18 years in this Parliament. It was a complete and utter farce. It was done so quickly and there was not one inkling of taking on board what people actually submitted about the bill. It was purely done for procedural, process reasons, and the Labour committee members loved every moment of it. It was a complete waste of time.

There is no need for this reform. The essence of what the Government is saying is that they’re going to put everybody together and suddenly we’re going to have this big value increase that we can fund all these great projects from. Well, that doesn’t make sense when the really big communities like Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, and all that, are really struggling around water issues. You look at the Auckland one, for example: Auckland’s in big trouble around water. If you looked at doing stormwater for the coast so that those beaches you can actually swim in—and some of the Labour members there, the North Shore beaches, you know, even the ones on the east coast of the city, if you could actually do that—it’s going to cost billions and billions of dollars. The only place they’re getting money for from this bill is poor old Whangarei District Council that’s actually got a surplus. They’re using Whangārei’s assets to try and rebuild Auckland’s water, and that was replicated all through the country—all these councils that had done a great job in managing their water are now going to be subsumed for the benefit of those that haven’t.

It doesn’t add up. So the only thing that happens is there must be a cost blowout on ratepayers. Ratepayers are going to have to pay big money once this bill goes through. The other thing is that all the costs around this bill—every single cost that came up, with IT, and all that—have all been pushed off until after the entities are created so that those entities have to foot the bill. There’s no cost on the Government—amazing, that, isn’t it? This is something that’s going to make a massive change—IT and everything is going to cost millions if not billions, and the ACT members said $2 billion or $3 billion—and it’s all put off to the new entity, with no liability on this Government.

Now, we had council after council come in and say, “We oppose this because they’re basically asset stripping us and taking those assets away.” I said to them: “Well, didn’t the Minister come and see you on his grand tour and engage with you?”, and they said, “Yes, he did. But then he told us at the end, ‘I’m just going to do it anyway.’ ” There was no consultation; there was no actual regard for their views and what their communities had built up over many years, so you wonder why they are doing this.

There’s no economic imperative because the numbers just don’t stack up. There’s no way that they can deliver what they’re talking about from the numbers that come from council waters across the country. There’s no community recognition that it needs to have this happen. The councils were opposed. So why are they doing it? The only reason is they want to enshrine co-governance of water at this stage. That’s the only reason the Labour Government is doing this: they know, in their heart of hearts, this will not work, but it does enshrine co-governance of water. That is what they know and they’ve been all told to be quiet, to just do what they’re told to do, and pass this bill through the House. That’s the reality of what we’re dealing with here today.

The best part of it was when Rachel Boyack decided she would become the union vanguard and put these new clauses in around how the unions would, basically, be doing negotiations, and it floundered for two or three days on this issue. It was probably the most discussion that the Labour Party had, and I’m sure the Minister would have had a few calls to her at night, going, “What the hell are you doing putting that in the bill?” But the Labour Party members were told what to do.

Hon Scott Simpson: Who by?

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well, the Minister, completely. The Minister had no direction—there’s no economic reason, there’s no social reason; the only reason is to enshrine co-governance. That’s what we’re doing here today—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! The member’s time is up.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much, Madam Speaker. Golly, that was an interesting speech. That was completely divorced from any form of reality.

It gives me great pleasure to stand in support of the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill. I didn’t have the privilege of sitting on the Governance and Administration Committee, but I commend them—I nearly accidentally said “condemn”; I do mean commend. I commend them for their diligent work. Look, this bill is yet another bill that has been subject to significant mis- and disinformation, and I’m not going to be pointing any fingers here.

So what I thought would be helpful would be if I just have a little revisit of what this bill actually does do.

Angie Warren-Clark: Some facts would be great.

SARAH PALLETT: This bill—facts, thank you. Facts: it creates 10 dedicated water services entities, and the reason why this amendment is being made to the Water Services Entities Act, to replace four water services entities with 10, is basically because we listened. We listened to communities, and what moving from four to 10 water services entities allows for is greater community ownership of water entities. This bill also guarantees that every district is represented on a regional representative group. That voice is critically important: it establishes community priority statements that can be submitted to a regional representative group and staggers establishment dates through to 2026.

Quite frankly, Madam Speaker, you’d have to be living under a rock not to understand that these are critically needed reforms, and you would have to—I beg your pardon, Madam Speaker; not you. One would have to be financially illiterate to think that councils could afford the $185 billion that was absolutely critically important—

Angie Warren-Clark: How much?

SARAH PALLETT: —$185 billion, Ms Warren-Clark; absolutely unaffordable.

The bottom lines on this bill: public ownership of water services entities will continue. Balance sheet separation, which provides for operational and financial independence, is absolutely critical to allow the entities to make investments—although I have to say that the phrase “balance sheet separation” is one that I have to make really slowly; it’s quite a tricky one, quite a tricky phrase, quite an important concept—joint oversight of the entities, and strong regulation of the entities to ensure fair prices for consumers and quality of service. All entities will be publicly owned and regionally led and everybody will be financially better off.

Speaking to Canterbury - West Coast entity, Christchurch city ratepayers will be better off by $2,860, but the Grey District Council residents, $18,760 would have to be found under National’s non-plan, uncosted, as per every single policy that they have put forward it is simply unaffordable. For that reason, I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour): Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to speak on the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill. I just want to thank the Hon Kieran McAnulty for bringing this important bill before the House. I also want to thank my colleagues on the select committee for their work on the bill.

This bill continues on the work done by this Labour Government to improve the water infrastructure across New Zealand for the long term. Decades of patchy management and underfunding has left our water infrastructure in a situation that’s not delivering the best outcomes for our communities. This bill represents a concrete plan to improve the standard of our water infrastructure and allow New Zealanders access to efficient and functioning water for the coming decades.

Last year, a million New Zealanders received tap water that did not meet minimum drinking water standards. In 2020, 40,000 Kiwis had to boil their tap water. This subpar quality of our water infrastructure represents a real danger to all New Zealanders, and it is a burden on the health of many and represents a big inequality between those with access to clean tap water and those who do not. On this side of the House, we believe that this situation is unacceptable and we see it as our responsibility to ensure that all Kiwis have access to clean, safe drinking water.

However, funding for all of this work represents a huge investment. Local councils will need to find up to $185 billion over the next 30 years to finance all the work that’s needed to bring our infrastructure up to that acceptable level. That will need—you know, we’ll need to finance that replacement—hundreds of kilometres of pipes across the country; that’s what’s needed to upgrade the drinking water and waste-water treatment plants and to prevent waste water overflows. We’ve seen a lot of that across flood-affected regions across the North Island.

As things stand now, this cost falls on local councils. Clearly, they are unable to bear this burden. Many councils cannot borrow enough money, and they are also not in a position to increase rates in their districts. So if we don’t do anything, councils will be stuck spending more money to take care of their water infrastructure that is only getting worse.

This is an important bill. It’s taking bold and decisive leadership. I commend it to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ve just got this dreadful feeling of foreboding. This is Groundhog Day and it’s just continual repetitive rhetoric from this Government, because here we are for the fourth time, using the time of Parliament for this Government to rush through a bill that nobody in New Zealand wants.

Yes, we’re here to discuss the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill and, embarrassingly for the Government, this is amending a bill that was passed just six months ago. But there was such blow-back from the public and these guys saw what their polls were doing as a reflection of that, and Minister McAnulty was assigned the unenviable task of travelling around the country trying to drum up some support. He took on some bit of feedback. He’s made a couple of tweaks around the edges, which is what we have in this bill here in front of us today, but, actually, it is still a dog. As the saying goes: you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I submit to the House that the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill is a pig. If enacted, this will become the final piece of legislation aimed at the so-called reforming of the delivery of water services in New Zealand. But it is the death knell for democracy in New Zealand.

When we go to the polls in October, New Zealanders are going to remember that every single piece of reform in this four-part piece of water reform has been passed under urgency or via a truncated select committee process. New Zealanders are going to remember that. So here we have in front of us a bill that’s been through a select committee, but, as Simon Watts—who’s leading the charge from our side of the House—said, the committee was given just 34 days to consider it. Ordinarily the committee would get six months. They got over 1,900 submissions; they heard just 1.4 percent of those submissions. That is in no way, shape, or form a democratic way to pass law in this country.

No matter what Labour calls it—three waters, 10 waters, affordable water reform—this is still the outright theft of ratepayer-owned water services and water services infrastructure. This is just another example of a command, control, and centralise operation that this Government likes to enforce and foist upon New Zealanders. We’ve got a number of issues remaining with this bill. That is why we continue to oppose it, but primarily it’s the functional system.

We do not believe in merging locally owned water assets into these mega-entities, and I take, for example, what was once called Entity D, now Entity I, the South Island. I want to talk about my home patch in Selwyn. Under the Canterbury - West Coast merger, that includes—according to this map I’m holding, which has come via the select committee—14 different councils. Now, if you calculate out roughly, on average, about 12 elected members per council, we’re looking at about 176 elected members that we, the ratepayers of Canterbury, have elected to represent us, to manage our locally owned ratepayer assets, yet those reps are going to get boiled down to about 14.

As Eugene Sage pointed out, this does not account for weighting either, and that is fundamentally unfair. Christchurch City Council has a ratepayer base of close to 600,000 residents. Selwyn’s is about 85,000 residents. But nowhere on this do we get weighted representation.

It also begs the question that strong, stable councils like Selwyn, with good, strong asset bases and good, strong finances are inevitably going to end up cross-subsidising councils with lesser ratepayer bases and older infrastructure. Selwyn’s infrastructure is, at a maximum, 20 years old. It’s brand new. We the ratepayers have spent $600 million over the last 20 years in building those assets. We the ratepayers own those assets. Wellington, the Labour Government, does not own those assets. It has no right to take these assets. The people of Selwyn are furious about this. As my colleague Scott Simpson has eloquently stated, it is State-sanctioned theft.

We also have an issue with the weighting of the elected representatives on these regional representative bodies with mana whenua. Now, we have always been very clear—we absolutely acknowledge and appreciate mana whenua has a very important role to play in the management of water in New Zealand. But, again, you have to ask yourself—looking to this example in CanterburyWestland, where we have about 14 elected members, we’re also going to have about 14 representatives from mana whenua. They have not been elected to this body. The ratepayers across Canterbury and Westland are not going to be electing these people to manage their assets.

The major issue we have, speaking of fundamentally unfair aspects of this bill, is also the weighting between the community priority statement and the Te Mana o Te Wai statement. Again, within this bill, the legislation will actually say that the regional representative body must take into account Te Mana o Te Wai statement, yet it may consider community statements. Now, how is that possibly fair? No right-minded New Zealander will accept this. You have to look at the discrepancies in every single aspect of this bill. There are inequities all through it. Co-governance is baked into it. New Zealanders have not been consulted on it. The Labour Government has not, in any way, put up any defence or at least any description of what co-governance should and will look like. It has just baked it into the legislation.

On this side of the House, we do understand that in parts of New Zealand there is a fundamental need to fix our infrastructure problems. We all saw the Havelock North disaster. National was in Government; National brought in the royal commission of inquiry; National started to implement the findings of that commission of inquiry. But this bill goes too far. Yes, there are councils around the country that need support in rebuilding their infrastructure. We do support the likes of the water regulator and we also want to impose an infrastructure regulator. We want councils to bring their proposal to us, to our Minister, who will be able to sign off as to the financial sustainability of what that council’s asset plan looks like.

But returning very briefly to the bill in the last moments I have left, when Kiwis go to the polls in October, as I’ve outlined, they’re going to look at bills like this. They’re going to take into account the first part of this bill that attracted 86,000 submissions that were roundly ignored and another 1,900 submissions that were roundly ignored. They’re not going to forget that. They know, when they go to the polls, that this piece of legislation does nothing to provide safe quality water to their homes and to their families. We continue to oppose this bill and we will repeal and replace it if we form a Government in October.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Nicola Grigg is one of the most respected members in the House, in my view. I appreciate her contribution, usually. One thing that Nicola Grigg also knows is that the pipes below the ground in the water infrastructure in Selwyn are absolutely shocking, and that National has no plan—no plan—whatsoever on how they are going to upgrade the water infrastructure in Selwyn, across New Zealand, and in Auckland. [Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! I do actually want to hear the contribution from the member. Thank you.

SHANAN HALBERT: Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a wonderful contribution because the question in the House today, of course, is: how is our country going to upgrade our water infrastructure deficit? It’s $185 billion—

Angie Warren-Clark: How much?

SHANAN HALBERT: It’s going to cost New Zealanders $185 billion—minimum, it’s going to cost—to upgrade our water infrastructure across New Zealand to get it to the place where New Zealanders actually expect it to be, and that is a lot of money. That is a huge investment.

Of course, when we look at National’s track record on investment in infrastructure, that’s also shocking because they don’t invest in transport infrastructure. They didn’t invest in housing, and now they’re saying that they don’t want to invest in water infrastructure. These are basic fundamentals of a good New Zealand that we want to be a part of.

I want to turn my attention to Tāmaki-makau-rau, Auckland. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting, when this bill was originally at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, listening to New Zealanders and listening to submissions. When we look at this piece, actually, it strengthens—it strengthens—the opportunities and the representation for Aucklanders.

If we look at it—and if I go back to the point of the Government of the day that established Auckland Council—a National and an ACT Government established Auckland Council as a supercity and established a council-controlled organisation called Watercare that actually doesn’t have elected members on their representative body now. Can I say that again: it does not have elected members on their representative body, a representative body that now includes elected members and mana whenua from across the region. So my argument is that it’s a better representative model for Aucklanders.

Aucklanders know. They saw back in last July a 9 percent increase in their water rates—9 percent Aucklanders are facing—and yet, while National doesn’t support this bill, what they haven’t told New Zealanders and Aucklanders is how they are going to actually fund the upgrade of water infrastructure. They’ve talked about the lack of infrastructure in this House. Simon Watts, the MP for North Shore, has talked about Wairau Valley, which had a shocking impact in the Auckland floods at the start of the year, and there is the need to upgrade that and support local businesses. I often talk about the paru—the dirty—beaches, and how Aucklanders on the North Shore had to close their beaches and not have access to them. This fundamentally comes back to the need for better water infrastructure for Aucklanders.

The conversation is: how are we going to invest the $185 billion that we need to? National doesn’t have a plan because they don’t invest in infrastructure. The Labour Party is the party for the investment in water infrastructure, the investment in transport, and, of course—that old chestnut that we love—the big investment in housing that they didn’t do.

I’m proud to be part of this side of the House. I’m proud that we’re getting on in difficult times and difficult issues and that we are happy to front up and put solutions forward. The difference between this side of the House and that side is we’ve got the ideas, we’ve got the plans, and we’re getting on with it.

That the amendments recommended by Governance and Administration Committee by majority be agreed to.

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

Ayes 70

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 7; Kerekere.

Noes 47

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

Amendments agreed to.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is,

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Water Services Entities Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 70

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 7; Kerekere.

Noes 47

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3)

Second Reading

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3).

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

Hon JAN TINETTI: I move, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a second time.

This bill makes a number of amendments to the Education and Training Act 2020. Most significantly, it creates an enabling legislative and governance framework for wānanga. I want to thank the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their careful consideration of this bill and for their suggestions to strengthen this bill. I also want to thank all those who took the time to make submissions and share their thoughts and suggestions on the proposals. The committee received 1,124 written submissions and heard 55 oral submissions, and it is clear from the submissions made that people care very strongly about the education system and the outcomes it is delivering for learners, families, and the broader community. I want to draw particular attention to the significance of this bill for wānanga. Their oral submissions were considered and I know the changes in this bill have been a long time coming for them. I know the committee carefully considered their oral and written submissions.

The committee has proposed changes to the bill that mainly refine and clarify the original provisions, and I am pleased to report that the committee’s amendments were agreed to by a majority of members. My colleague, the Hon Kelvin Davis, Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education) will speak to the changes proposed for the wānanga governance framework in detail, and I want to take this House through the other changes proposed by the committee.

One of the proposals in the bill which generated a lot of interest throughout the select committee process is to modernise and expand the language of criteria that school boards use to co-opt or appoint members to a board. Co-option is an optional tool that boards can use to supplement their elected membership. When boards choose to co-opt or appoint a person they have to be guided by the cooption criteria as far as is reasonably practical. We know from self-reported data that only about 5 percent of all board members in 2020 were co-opted members. The bill proposes to ensure that the genders, sexualities, sexes, and disabilities of their students and school community must also be taken into account as part of the co-option or appointment decision. I want to recognise that this is a sensitive issue and that many submitters did not support this proposal. I want to take some time to now speak to some of the key issues raised.

A key issue raised by submitters is that this proposal would take away from schools’ and their communities’ choice about who sits on their school boards. Some people preferred that instead of adding new criteria, all of the existing criteria should be replaced with a general requirement that when co-opting or appointing members, boards need to consider the diversity of their students and school community. I want to reiterate that co-option is an optional tool to help boards get a good balance of skills and perspective around the board table. The choice to co-op rests with the board or in the case of State integrated schools, the proprietors of the school. The changes provide helpful prompts to the school board to ensure that they are thinking about the diverse perspectives of their school community that will support great educational outcomes for the learners within their school. Submitters were concerned that this proposal could lead to schools having to collect sensitive information about the genders, sexualities, and disabilities of their students and school community members for the purpose of co-option. None of the existing co-option and appointment criteria require or expect boards or anyone else to collect and store information. In practice, co-option is often progressed informally, based on the relationships and networks between whānau in the school community, such as the board reaching out to someone they know in that community who has property development or management experience—as the case has been, and I’ve been in that case before—who can help with an upcoming property redevelopment project for the school. I believe that these new criteria, along with the existing criteria, will support boards to think about and reach out to their LGBTIQA+ and disabled school communities for any additional support they need to create a school culture that supports all of their diverse learners.

Some people suggested that the bill should include definitions for terms like “genders” and “sexualities”. Currently, definitions are not included for any of the existing co-option and appointment criteria. To be consistent with this approach, the bill does not propose to define the terms in the new criteria. I also do not consider that further specifying what the terms “genders” and “sexualities” mean would be appropriate, responsive, or at least enduring. Society’s understanding about gender and sexuality is evolving, and the broad terms used in this bill will ensure that the criteria can be inclusive of the diverse range of perspectives that people hold within these communities.

The committee made two minor changes to this proposal to clarify the language in the bill. For consistency, the committee made a change to ensure that the co-option and appointment criteria relating to ethnic and socio-economic diversity and the genders, sexualities, and sexes apply to both the student body of the school and the school’s community as defined in the Act. The new criterion relating to disability already included a reference to the school’s disabled community. The committee also made a change to separate the existing criterion of the ethnic and socio-economic diversity into two criteria. This is to respond to a point a submitter raised that ethnicity and socio-economic status are not always linked.

I want now to turn to the other changes that the select committee proposed. For the proposal to allow the Ministry of Education to access data from Statistics New Zealand relating to early childhood education services. The committee has recommended a change to the drafting to clarify that the disclosed data can only be at the level of an early childhood service and cannot include personal information within the meaning of the Privacy Act 2020. The only exception is for an early childhood service that is operated by an individual, such as a sole trader, where the data would be considered personal information. These service providers must consent to the publication or disclosure of their information before it can be disclosed. For police vetting, the committee made a change to include a requirement that when undertaking the risk assessment based on police vets, early childhood education services and schools must take into account any guidelines on risk assessments issued by the Ministry of Education.

The university and wānanga remuneration reporting: the committee recommended that a university or wānanga will also report the compensation and other benefits of an employee or former employee, including the chief executive, if the total remuneration is $100,000 or above.

And finally, for the proposal to broaden the regulation-making powers in the Act in respect of school opening hours, the committee received advice from the Regulations Review Committee with suggestions to make the policy intent clearer. The Education and Workforce Committee has recommended a small change to this proposal to insert standard text into the Act specifying that a notice issued by the Minister of Education to set school opening hours as secondary legislation.

I am certain that this bill will support a more enduring and responsive education system, benefiting learners and whānau across New Zealand. I am pleased to commend the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) to the House.

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

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Speaker. So I rise on behalf of the National Party to speak to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) and to advise that we will be opposing this bill, even though there are a lot of things—in fact, the majority of the things in it we support, but there are a couple of points that we oppose for different reasons.

So the bill has a number of parts to it: the school board election process; the child protection for early childhood education changes; some changes in the tertiary area, specifically a new framework for wānanga; and also the annual report requirements for universities, and some other bits and pieces. But the key messages are really that we don’t support the changes in the criteria for the appointment of school boards. We believe that it’s absolutely important that the school boards reflect the community in which they serve, but the most important thing for school boards is that they have the expertise to effectively run schools so that they can lift the outcomes of Kiwi kids so that they can get excellent and world-class education. That must be first and foremost in the school board’s mind.

The current law already allows that as far as reasonably practicable, every school board should reflect the character, gender, and the ethnic and social diversity of the school community. Our differing view in the summation of this bill was that the make-up of the school boards should be skills-based and reflect their community and that should be set out in legislation, however, attempting to list every possible characteristic, as this bill tries, is not appropriate, and, in fact, can be limiting and problematic.

So the legislation, we believe, should simply state that as far as is reasonably practicable, every board should reflect the diversity of their students and school community. So we will be, in the committee of the whole House, putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to seek to change this to simply “as far as reasonably practicable, every board should reflect the diversity of their students and school community.”

The other area that we have some concerns about—and I’ll start by saying that we absolutely agree with the changes to enable wānanga to elect to be Crown or non-Crown entities, but we believe there were two further parts to this where it should have gone further, and that was around the protection of the term “wānanga”, and also the names for Crown or non-Crown entities. As it stands, they will be called “A wānanga”, “B wānanga”, or “C wānanga”. Quite frankly, I think for the point of a few more weeks of consultation, the wānanga would have come together themselves and come up with alternative terms. It just feels wrong to be saying “A wānanga”, “B wānanga”, and “C wānanga”.

I think, perhaps, a lot of people won’t know of the very proud history of our three incredibly important wānanga, and the reason why this Crown or non-Crown entity categorisation is really important. Most of our tertiary institutions—particularly our polytechnics—came from things like technical colleges, so they were born out of Crown entities. But the wānanga most definitely weren’t, and they have incredibly proud histories of how they developed.

The first wānanga was in 1981, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, and they arose from their very strong iwi base, who wanted to ensure that tikanga and te reo Māori were protected. So they have that very strong iwi history to them.

Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, which I had the privilege of working alongside as a partner for over two decades, they have a different history again. They are pan-iwi, but they started from one single, very passionate, focused man, my respected friend Rongo Wetere, who mortgaged his own dairy farm to be able to start up the wānanga in Te Awamutu because he was concerned at the number of young Māori that were being excluded from their schools, and that wānanga now is an extremely large entity. At one stage, they had over 30,000 equivalent full-time students and were the biggest tertiary entity in this country. I think they’ve settled at around about 19,000 or 20,000, but still a very large tertiary institution that is run by my friend Nepia Winiata.

Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi has another proud history to it that it was started by the wellrespected Sir Hirini Moko Mead, who decided in the late 1980s that they should establish a whare wānanga, and for five or six years he was passionate and the group around him were passionate about pushing this concept. They opened in Whakatāne with a very modest campus in 1992—just a couple of transportable classrooms—but I can tell you that campus is no longer modest. It’s a beautiful campus in Whakatāne, which I have had the privilege of being welcomed into, and that wānanga is extremely well run by, again, my friend and colleague Wiremu Doherty.

So that’s why this is such an important amendment for the wānanga. They didn’t start from a Crown entity; they started from the passion and the vision of their iwi or individuals who knew the importance of education, and I feel that we haven’t done enough in this legislation to recognise that.

Now, again, people mightn’t understand that the term “polytechnic” and “university” are protected terms, but we haven’t been able to protect the term “wānanga”. Now, it’s complex. It’s a difficult thing to do, because “wānanga” is a very distinctly Māori term. There isn’t an English equivalent of it. It’s about open discussion and people gathering together and bringing different thoughts and opinions and experiences together. So it’s very specific to Māori, and so it is used as a verb as well as to describe these three tertiary institutions.

But because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we should have shied away from it, because I believe this legislation will be more the poorer for not having that consultation, for not allowing Māori to decide how they wanted that protection of the term “wānanga” to play out. So that concerns us that for the sake of a few weeks of extra consultation—and it would have been something that Māori would have worked together over both getting terms for a Crown or non-Crown entity, rather than being called “A wānanga”, “B wānanga”, or “C wānanga”, and also come up with a methodology in which we could give the term “wānanga” the protection that it deserves alongside universities and polytechnics. So they are the reasons why we oppose this bill. They are things that perhaps could be fixed as we go through the process, but our key concern is around those two matters.

I suppose the other concern is that the bill doesn’t address any of the major issues facing the education system in New Zealand that’s failing to provide world-class education for our Kiwi kids. It seems to be bizarre to be in the House discussing an education bill that doesn’t even mention that we are declining in world terms, in fact, around our maths and our English and how we are getting young people prepared for work. It doesn’t say anything about the fact that half of the students are not able to get to the right level for reading, writing, and maths, and that fewer students are leaving school with NCEA level 2, which the OECD says is the minimum required to be able to meaningfully engage with the labour market.

So with all those sort of catastrophic things that are occurring in our education space at the moment, it seems slightly bizarre to be worrying about the terminology of the make-up of school boards, when, in fact, we want school boards to be the best people there possible, to run the best possible schools, to give our students the best possible education and opportunities in life, and yet it’s completely silent on how to get kids back to school, how to ensure that our schools are giving worldclass education.

So we are opposing this bill, but, as I said, there are an awful lot of things in it that we support, but we think it could be a much better bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). It was a pleasure to be a part of the Education and Workforce Committee when this bill was considered. I want to thank all members of the committee and all the submitters that came to the committee—I think, actually, reflecting the tone of the last member’s speech: that on most issues we worked really well together and there was quite a significant part of common ground in relation to what we sought to be achieved by this bill.

Now, although this is an amendment bill, it does cover a number of different areas, and it would be literally impossible to cover all of those areas, because there are so many distinct areas, in the short time that we have available. The Minister of Education has covered off, I believe, very well, the issue of representation of boards, and so I won’t seek to repeat that, but I affirm the comments that she’s made.

I would just like to touch on some of the main parts of this bill, which I do think are important, and that’s the new governance framework in relation to wānanga. There was, as I said, a lot of agreement between members of the committee on this issue, and I think the main difference was how we went about achieving that.

We were very impressed and very grateful to the wānanga that submitted to us on this bill. I have to say, it was probably one of the most impactful submissions that I’ve seen in my time in Parliament on a select committee. They spoke very eloquently, and the entire committee was very impressed by their advocacy.

They had been very supportive of this bill. The reason that we were unable to move forward with the protected term matter in relation to “wānanga” that all of us saw on the committee saw as an issue, is because there is a little bit of work that needs to be done because there are some entities that use the word “wānanga”. It is a Māori word with a specific term, and it has been used by other entities, and so protecting that term is not as straightforward as you might think.

That doesn’t mean that we didn’t see that there was a large issue with the fact that we had protected terms for “polytechnics” and for “universities”, but not for “wānanga”; we saw that as an inequity, and for that reason we made a very strong recommendation on our select committee report and recommended as a matter of priority that the Government undertake full consultation of policy work with the aim of legally protecting the term “wānanga”.

So it was something that we saw as important. We were unable to, in the time that was available, do that consultation, and that was also at the direction of the wānanga who said they would prefer the governance arrangements to be in place, and they didn’t want this bill to be delayed. So that’s, that’s the reason for that, but it is something that, as I said, the committee as a whole was very supportive of.

The other thing I just want to touch on briefly is the use of the terms “category A wānanga” and “category B wānanga”. Those are placeholder terms which allow for more appropriate terms to be put in place by Order in Council at a later date. The reason that we did that was because of the strong advocacy that we heard from the wānanga when they came to talk to us. We were unable to find agreement after their submission on the exact terms to be used, and it is a big decision, so it was decided that this term would be used. It has, in fact, I think, been used in another similar situation: naming of Te Pūkenga—as I understand, an Order in Council to put into the legislation a more appropriate term.

Those are the two issues that I wanted to highlight in what is a very important bill. There’s also some important matters which haven’t been traversed that much on police vetting for non-child workers, and there are guidelines to strengthen having the people possibly in contact or near children to make sure they go through an appropriate police vets. So that’s another important aspect of this bill. I commend it to the House.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Following on from my colleague Penny Simmonds, who with my colleague Erica Stanford both sat on the Education and Workforce Committee for this Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). As has been declared and disclosed, the National Party opposes this bill for a number of reasons. I think the most important and pressing reason is that it’s noted that this is a debate under urgency, and as is the case “under urgency” means that there is often a truncated process and that due process does not occur in terms of that level of engagement with our New Zealand public.

I turn to the gallery and I acknowledge members from Te Whare Wānanga o Raukawa, who are present here—Robin Hape with others—who have come and travelled down for this important debate. Kia ora.

I have noted I didn’t sit on the select committee and that I’ve been called in as a member of the National Party to address this House under urgency on this debate. Therefore, the knowledge that I have is somewhat limited, not being a member of that committee, but it’s not limited in terms of where we have legislation trying to define Māori concepts and Māori ways in existence of who we are, what we are, and our level of engagement. And therefore, I understand that this bill is attempting to confine and limit what the concept of wānanga is.

I’m aware from having read the select committee report that this bill was referred to the select committee on 28 March this year. Submissions were called for with a closing date of 1 May 2023, and my colleague Penny Simmonds has indicated to me and also to the House that extensive submissions in that truncated short time were heard from the representatives from the three whare wānanga throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. There were written submissions from 1,124 interested groups. Oral evidence was heard from 55 of those submitters.

As I’ve often referenced in the House, I speak premised from associations of my lifetime and experience. And although I don’t come from an educationalist background, my background is around child welfare and protection. An element of this bill that addresses child protection is around the improvement of safety for children at schools and early childhood education centres.

National supports the intent of the bill insofar as every child should be safe whilst attending school, every parent deserves to know, as guardians, and every caregiver that their child will be safe and that everything is done to ensure a child’s safety whilst under the ambit of that protection and umbrella at school. So the National Party does support changes to automatically change the eligibility criteria of school boards so that everyone convicted of an offence, as is outlined in Schedule 2 of the bill, is automatically ineligible to serve on a board unless exempted by the Secretary of Education. So as spokesperson for children and Oranga Tamariki, that background in terms of child welfare, safety, and protection, I’ve always advocated as being front and foremost of mind for me. So it’s important to declare the National Party intent is in support of this element of the bill.

As I’ve indicated, the differing view is around that in terms of the composition and make-up of school boards, that should be premised on skills based and competency, and to reflect the community that the representation of those members of the board come from. So the National Party takes the view that it’s not deemed significant or relevant within this bill to identify the diversity of the school in that community that they come from. That is for the community and for the board members to do so, not for this Government in the very paternalistic approach and stance that it takes.

The members also believe that the bill should have been delayed in order for the whare wānanga and those persons who come from that wānanga and also the concept in terms of mātauranga Māori—what that is and for those persons to agree on alternative terms for Crown entity wānanga and non-Crown entity wānanga. These are intellectual property issues. Should this Government again be dictating what the construct of that is? That is for our people, te ao Māori, and those working in this specialist area to define, not for legislation to confine. And that’s what the National Party stance and view is that this legislation is doing.

It’s also noted, in the differing view within the select committee report, that the proposed Order in Council mechanism that would be used to replace the placeholder terms of wānanga is not being protected under this bill. So my contribution is somewhat limited in terms of time, at this point in time, but I’ve referenced that again I speak from a premised association and relationship. I’ve mentioned that my service has been around child welfare protection and the law. I do not come from an educational background or that sector, but the relationships that I have, and I refer to Te Whare Wānanga o Raukawa and Matua—and Professor—Whatarangi Winiata, in terms of having led and been a guiding light still with the establishment of Te Whare Wānanga o Raukawa; and many of my whānau from Whanganui travel through still on a regular and daily basis to attend for their learnings and the contributions that we take home from Ōtaki Raukawa back to where we come from.

So in terms of relationships, again the association and correlation, Professor Whatarangi Winiata, in terms of his learnings, he shared with me at one stage that as a young man, when he was a university student here at Victoria University, he learnt from my koro Hori Hipango in his earlier days. And I refer to the words that Matua Whatarangi referenced and said that in his student days, back in the 1960s, he would travel through to Te Pūtiki, Whanganui to wānanga with my koro in terms of the reo and in terms of as a young man learning from one of the kaumātua.

So the concept of wānanga isn’t something that should be legally defined and constrained within such a short period of time, when we’ve had the representatives from the three whare wānanga through our Aotearoa make submissions. The point of concern is that this is something that is the intellectual property and construct and concept that comes from te ao Māori, should it be confined and defined at short notice within this legislation.

So that is the contribution that I make at this point in time. This is the second reading, I believe. The bill will come back to the House. The National Party has indicated that it will be presenting a Supplementary Order Paper for improvement of this legislation that is being rushed through in such a short time. And on the basis of the contributions that have been made, the National Party does not support this legislation as it attempts to construct and define something that really should be left to those who know better than the Government.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). As the Minister of Education said, this bill makes a number of amendments in education. It contains policies and minor and technical amendments to existing provisions in the Education and Training Act 2020. These changes progress the education work programme, and contribute to the continuous improvement of education.

The bill focuses on three main things: establishing a governance framework for wānaga, changes to school board ineligibility criteria, and changes to school board election processes. As the Minister stated, we heard from a range of submitters: 1,124 in total, 55 oral submitters. I had the privilege of chairing the Education and Workforce Committee meetings while our capable chair was away and I was in charge of the meeting while submitters expressed their strong views—some strongly in favour of the bill and some obviously in opposition to some parts of the bill—but one thing is that the leaders of wānanga submitted to us and they clearly and loudly recommended that the bill passes.

As a Government, our job is to hear from people and that we are acting on recommendations that they strongly make. Now, when I hear speakers on the other side of the House saying that we are not listening to people and leaders of wānanga, it kind of confuses me. But I’d like to make a point that we appreciate very conflicting views—people who strongly opposed some parts of the bill and vice versa—but the point is this bill is going to amend the education system itself. It’s a part of the continuous work that’s being done by the Minister to improve our education system.

I’d like to commend the committee for their hard work. We didn’t agree on things, but nonetheless, we had respectful discussions around the table, and I’d like to thank people that who took the time to submit to our committee. As a result of the submissions, the committee made a range of recommendations and amendments. As a result, the bill came out at the rest of the day looking better than it was at the beginning of our deliberations. Finally, it’s a good bill. I commend it to the House.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of ACT to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). I like to also thank all the submitters—almost 1,200 submitters—who often submitted with a lot of passion and personal contributions. There were many parts to the bill, covering all sorts of areas of the education system. And there were a number of the parts of the bill that ACT initially did oppose that have been clarified and improved.

Looking at just a couple of parts of the bill that have been already mentioned, the eligibility criteria of school board members all sounds good—if you are convicted of a specified offence, you’re ineligible to serve on a school board unless an exemption has been approved. That sounds pretty reasonable. There is a potential for abuse of that clause, I think, and we sort of have to ask whether we believe in rehabilitation or not, but for the safety of the kids we certainly agree with that addition.

The early childhood education equity index data, which will enable the ministry to collect accurate information to make further recommendations, sounds a great idea. Police vets for non-teaching employees and contractors—that just really makes sense; nothing can be more important than the safety of our kids. Certainly it’s paramount, and as long as common sense is used with that.

There has been clarification around the accountability with changes to the wānanga, and it’s been explained a bit further this morning already. Well, the structures and funding—both have been strengthened and are a bit more transparent. We think that all education facilities should be under the same umbrella and accountable to the taxpayers who fund them, and we do still think that a number of the changes aren’t necessary.

I listened to the wānanga submitters, and fully understand the reasons they gave for the changes that they supported, and I think the advent of the wānanga was very well explained by Penny Simmonds earlier on. But the success of the wānanga is undeniable, and if it ain’t broke, why fix it? They are a great entity and you just wonder whether all of these changes are necessary.

Listening to a number of the submitters did also make me feel a little bit sad: the idea that young people are identified first by their race and then as individual people capable of doing what they want and being who they want to be sort of seems to come a distant second. I just think that’s wrong. In my 22 years of classroom teaching, coaching school sport, taking school orchestras, the idea of treating students differently because of their race never crossed my mind. And my 14 years of being a police officer, with many of those years working in youth aid, dealing with all sorts of young people and their whānau—the idea of treating those kids differently I find abhorrent, and that may be laughable to those people across the other side. Culture is, of course, always important, but it always has been, and it’s not just suddenly been invented by this Government, and separatism, we don’t believe, is the way forward; it’ll only end in more divisiveness.

But the reason we cannot support the bill is the proposed change to the school board election process, and the clause that reads, “updating the criteria for co-opting and appointing board members to reflect today’s school communities, by adding the genders, sexualities and sexes of the school’s students and of the school community, and disabled students at the school and the school’s disability community.” Once again, we have the desire of this Government for more control over how a school is governed, and it’s just not right. The lack of trust in principals and boards of trustees is a common thread in most of this Government’s thinking. ACT trusts principals and boards because they are the ones that know their community, know the people they’re dealing with. Submitters overwhelmingly rejected this proposed change, and their concerns must be listened to. That’s what happens in a democracy. The inclusion of this clause is unnecessary virtue-signalling and it’s one we cannot support.

The bill has some parts that are good, some that are unnecessary, and some that are controversial—certainly not scared of the controversial ones. There are many other things in education we should be working on, and this is more about ideologies and agendas where we should be thinking about the kids we teach. This isn’t best for our kids and we cannot support the bill.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I come to this bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3), to express the support of the Green Party of Aotearoa, not as the education spokesperson but having been—

Hon Member: To school?

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: —the education spokesperson—and to school—last term, I know that this is a dense sector. There is a lot to be considered at every level, from early childhood right up to the end of high school and tertiary. There are unions, there are teachers, principals, and young people and their families, all with a great stake in the way that we run our education system. I do want to commend the Education and Workforce Committee, who heard submissions on this bill. I know that that would have been hard work, there would have been a lot to consider, and it sounds like they have done that work and they listened carefully to what came. But I also know that, in terms of making any system fair, there is a need sometimes to lift the voices and interests of those who are more systemically marginalised to give effect to what we want in terms of substantive equality.

I think that that’s where the division has occurred in this House today: the idea that the majority rules or that at some point we will stop and we will recognise that there are groups that have been underrepresented and that underrepresentation actually makes our decisions weaker. Any governance body’s decisions will be weaker if that governance body does not have the benefit of the lived experiences, perspectives, and challenges of groups who are not the majority, who are experiencing particular challenges that would not come to the minds of a majority member of that community—a status quo member of that community; someone who’s not facing those challenges. And that’s what comes to mind with the decision to require school boards to be more representative of their communities.

Of course, principals and other board members will want to be fair and just to a disabled young person attending their school, but the idea that they would automatically know what that looks like is just wrong. We know that; we are a House of Representatives. We know that, when people fought for representation of women in here, for example, it wasn’t the case that we thought men were going to deliberately make decisions that were poor for women, but the fact remains that only a woman in New Zealand will know what the challenges look like for us as we access the healthcare system, the roads, the justice system, and, in this case, the education system.

So whether that is to say that a community who has a constituent who is from a migrant background, migrants of colour, will experience the school system differently—Māori will experience the school system differently; girls will experience the school system differently; queer students and their whānau will experience the school system differently; and, of course, so will disabled and chronically ill students and their whānau. To say that we will just take care of that, we’ll just automatically know what that looks like, well, that’s been dispelled, surely, many years ago, in particular for a House such as this, a House of Representatives. That’s why we hear submissions, actually, because we know that we don’t know everything. So, to have a decision-making body, a governing body, be more representative can only mean that its decisions will be far more sustainable, far more cognisant of not only challenges but also the benefits that may come to different groups in different ways. It’s something that should be commended and replicated across New Zealand. So, for that reason, I do commend the bill.

But I do also want to just touch on a couple of other things. I’m surprised that, in the early childhood index data area of this bill, that wasn’t already the case. I think it’s also commendable to say that the ministry will be able to form better policy—again, more sustainable policy; more representative policy—for having more reliable, substantive data in that early childhood sector. We know that early childhood education is of absolute, paramount importance, and it hasn’t always received the type of attention and emphasis that it deserves. I say that both in terms of the pay grade of those who work in that sector but also in terms of, it seems, as this bill highlights, collecting actual data of what’s happening in that sector, what we need to invest in, and the decisions that will come down the line will absolutely be stronger for having that data.

I won’t go on for much longer, having not sat in that select committee process, but I do believe that any time this House comes together to actually share what we know will strengthen governance bodies, will strengthen representative decision-making, and to ensure that we don’t just leave it up to chance that those voices are heard and those interests are protected in public policy, but that we make sure of that, is good lawmaking. So I do commend this bill to the House.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise as a member of the Education and Workforce Committee that considered the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). I just want to reflect a little bit about the select committee process. For me, I think what was really unique was the collaboration, the care and consideration that meant that, especially when it came to the part of the bill about the new governance framework for wānanga, it was something that we were confident was what was needed. Te ao Māori, it’s not my world, and I know a little bit about what I don’t know. So I’m very grateful for the very clear guidance, and the collaboration that brought the bill to where it was, and helped us to navigate those two really tricky issues which I really appreciate being brought to the House today from the other side about the term, the name, the concept, to use clunky English words about wānanga and those placeholder terms.

I think we we’ve got clear guidance that that is the work that needs to go into that. The consideration and care that must go into that work, that unfinished business, needs to continue and not be truncated, and that was the whole point. Let’s do this that has been asked of us by wānanga so they can get on with doing the amazing things that they do, enable them, and at the same time enable the very important mahi that has to happen around that consideration.

Actually, from this process will grow wonderful things, because that conversation, for those of us who don’t innately know what wānanga means, is given so much by being able to participate and hear and learn. So it is because of that that I’m grateful for the process that we’ve been through so far, and I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Hon Michael Woodhouse—a five-minute call.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m paraphrasing, but I’m pretty sure I heard the Minister of Education, when she moved this bill at second reading, something to the effect of “This bill will contribute to great educational outcomes for our children.” That kind of surprised me, because, in my travels, I’m sure—and members can correct me if I’m wrong—I haven’t heard a single pupil, parent, or teacher say to me, “I really wish the criteria for coopting and appointing school board members would be expanded, and I really wish those great wānanga were Crown entities rather than independent. And I really want to know, in brackets of $10,000, how many of their staff are earning $100,000 or more so that they can be aligned with other Crown entities.”

That is not what teachers, parents, and pupils are telling us about the education system, and it does feel like Minister Tinetti is Nero, fiddling once again with the education Act while the educational Rome is burning.

We could be doing so much more to improve the educational outcomes that we all want for the children and the young people, the rangatahi, in our tertiary and secondary and primary facilities. But instead, we focus on identity and structure.

I was very grateful to Penny Simmonds for her contribution in the second reading, who gave an excellent summary of the history and origins of wānanga. That’s continued a pattern this week, where she was in the Education and Workforce Committee yesterday, quizzing Te Pūkenga, who finally—finally—eight months later, furnished their financial report, their annual report, and highlighted what a shambles that merger has been for tertiary education in this country.

Yet, faced with the disaster of the merger of very good polytechs, a lot of them, Southern Institute of Technology, not the least of them—and not the least of which was the reason being that Penny Simmonds was their chief executive for over 20 years. They continue to restructure and rearrange and centralise and increase control and tell boards what to do and how to be appointed rather than the central goal, which is “Let’s improve educational outcomes.”, because that, after all, is the purpose of the Education and Training Act 2020. We have lost an opportunity to focus on the burning bridge—the burning bridge of the woeful educational outcomes under this Government.

It is really important the low-decile NCEA 2 outcome data that was released this week is scandalous. It is so important, because, by my recollection, a previous Minister has highlighted that by 2050, half of young New Zealanders will identify as Māori or Pasifika. Unless the educational outcomes for that growing cohort are made equal to the rest of the population more generally, this country is going to have a real problem. It’s emerging now, and the Government is worried more about the identity of the board members on our schools than the educational outcomes for our schools.

So while there are some things in here that may have been necessary and appropriate, the central point is that this Government cannot resist tinkering around the edges of a system rather than—and the activity that is the substitute for performance, rather than expecting and guiding and influencing better outcomes for our children and our young people in wānanga.

That is a deep, deep disappointment to the National Party. Help is on the way. I think we’re down to 72 days. I look forward to a time when a Government focuses on the things that matter: outcomes, not activity.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour): Kia orana, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate, with regards to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). May I please take the time, firstly, to thank the members of the Education and Workforce Committee and also the submitters and also the officials. The submitters came and provided to the committee many, many views on this bill. I also want to acknowledge iwi and hapū who also came along and provided their views, whether written or oral.

This is a second reading of the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3), which contains new policies and minor technical amendments in the existing provisions. The bill establishes a governance framework for wānanga and also an eligibility criteria on school boards and also election processes. We heard wānanga who came to the select committee, and we listened to their kōrero, and we listened also to their mana and their wairua when they presented to the select committee. As a select commission member, I was very grateful to hear their kōrero and pātai.

I have heard other members across the House mention that the terms of “wānanga A” and “wānanga B”, and I disagree with the point that the member on the other side has made: that the select committee were limiting wānanga. Actually, it was the opposite. It was to hear the kōrero, see the wairua, and really feel it—that they have a strong, strong wairua to include those values in this kaupapa.

I move now to the school board ineligibility criteria. That is listed in terms of if you have committed or you are convicted under Schedule 2 of the Children’s Act 2014, you are ineligible to become a member unless you have a special pass.

For the last two decades, I served school committees and school boards. The chair of that committee and the chair of that school board worked very hard with the members. Even though there were Ministry of Education guidelines and specific rules, I know that the members that I worked with on those school committees and the school board—it was in their strong interest to keep our tamariki safe. This bill does that. This bill enhances what the current rules are and strengthens the school board election processes.

Just to finish, one of the school boards that I served on—it was very important to hear rangatahi voices. We did not have that lever at the time. If we’re going to talk about rangatahi, if we’re going to talk about our young people, we need to have them at the table. This bill will enhance that. I commend this bill to the House.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour): This bill will make a range of small but very comprehensive changes to the Education and Training Act 2020 to improve our education sector. It’s been great to hear the contributions from other members on this side of the House, particularly those who have worked in the coalface and know how much of a difference this bill will make.

The first change that this bill makes is that it will establish a robust governance framework for wānanga. The wānanga are tertiary institutions that assist in the application of knowledge regarding Māori tradition and tikanga Māori. They have a unique role to play in our tertiary education system, and this bill acknowledges that and will establish a framework to support them in the transmission of Māori knowledge, which is very important for our rangatahi. It is also important to recognise these institutions and to allow Māori education to develop and thrive, and it’s imperative that their mana and rangatiratanga are recognised and respected.

This bill enables existing wānanga to either reconstitute themselves as a Crown entity wānanga or convert to a non-Crown entity wānanga—and the former to have a bespoke purpose, function, and governance arrangement. While the latter will primarily be accountable to iwi, hapū, and other Māori organisations, they will retain some accountability to the Crown. The Education and Workforce Committee has made multiple important additions to this framework, and it now specifies the financial reporting requirements and better defines the responsibilities of each stakeholder in this new framework. So it’s an important bill and I commend it to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Like my colleagues, I rise to oppose the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) at the second reading. And we do that with some consideration because there certainly are parts of the bill that we do support. I think it goes without saying that child protection should be one of the number one issues in this country and that there are provisions in this bill that that do seek to enhance, where possible, child protection. Particularly we do support the provision that changes the criteria for school boards regarding convicted offenders. We support any change that will automatically change the eligibility criteria of school boards so that anyone convicted of an offence under Schedule 2 of the Children’s Act is automatically ineligible to serve on a board. That’s very practical, very pragmatic, very sensible decision to have made, and I think any right-thinking New Zealander would absolutely agree with that.

When children go to school, the place where they are learning and the place that often steers the course for them for the rest of their lives, they need to be safe, and, equally, the parents and caregivers of those children should absolutely expect—they really shouldn’t even have to think about it, quite frankly—that their children will be safe in such an environment. But, unfortunately, the majority of the proposed changes in this amendment bill we don’t actually agree with. Hence, we have decided to oppose the bill in its entirety.

Primarily, as has been canvassed already by members on our side of the House, our fundamental opposition is around the criteria for the appointment of school board members regarding sort of picking and choosing different kinds of people that should be selected to board representation. It is important, obviously, that boards reflect the communities that they serve and it’s really important particularly for schools to have boards that have wide-ranging expertise and wide-ranging community backgrounds, because they are effectively running the school and they are listing the outcomes of those kids in that school. And, obviously, anyone should expect that these people are chosen on their merit. Hence, we do oppose the inclusion of starting to look at people for different reasons that don’t necessarily mean they bring a particular merit to a school.

The current law actually already states that as far as reasonably practicable, every school board should reflect the character, gender, ethnic, and social diversity of that school or community. It is interesting—I spoke on a bill earlier and I made the comment that it’s just such a waste of Parliament’s time to bring bills like this to the House when actually this is already enshrined in law.

You have to look back at these things as to how the Education and Workforce Committee considered the legislation that is passing through the House, and, of course, more importantly, look to the submissions made by members of the public. This particular select committee, I understand, considered about 1,100 submissions—

Simeon Brown: We’re listening to the public. We’re listening to the people.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! I’m trying to listen to this member’s speech, so I just ask members who are not giving a speech to hold their fire. Thank you.

NICOLA GRIGG: Well, it’s very topical, Madam Speaker, the debate going on across the House about listening to the people, because in fact the select committee did receive 1,124 submissions and heard evidence from about 55 of those. But, very interestingly, like the members on this side of the House, most of the submitters also opposed the inclusion about board appointment provisions. So we do feel very strongly that we as elected representatives of the people of New Zealand, serving in the House of Representatives, should be passing legislation through this House that is representative of those people and their views and their desires.

As has been covered by colleagues who have spoken before me, it is such a wasted opportunity when we could be bringing in an education and training amendment bill that actually looked to restore the discipline of the student outcomes and student achievement. Indeed, the previous National Government certainly had targets in place for the director-general of education and indeed the Minister—targets around achievement and attainment. That is the most important and crucial role of schools and the education sector in New Zealand. We don’t think we should be using Parliament’s time to pass law like this bill that is about dictating who should be appointed or seconded to school boards. We actually think we should be using Parliament’s time to set about achievement and attainment for the students and the children of New Zealand. So on that, as I have outlined, National will oppose this bill.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll make a short contribution to wrap up this debate on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3).

Firstly, can I acknowledge my colleagues that are with us today from the wānanga and particularly my former colleagues from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. I remember very fondly the stories shared with me by Rongo Wetere and Aunty Ma in her time, who talked about the start of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa as the Waipā Kōkiri Arts Centre that established itself in a garage in Te Awamutu. The story started there to be now the third-largest tertiary organisation in the country.

What this bill does is it establishes a governance framework for our wānanga. That is an important part, that they are recognised as a Crown entity, that they are funded appropriately, of course, or the framework enables them to be recognised from a lens of tino rangatiratanga, from a lens of mana, and the contribution that not only that they make to the tauira, the students that they teach, but also the greater economic and social contributions that they make to some of our most vulnerable communities, as well as the contribution that they make to te reo me ōna tikanga in this country of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Secondly, I just want to push back on some of the narrative that’s come back from Opposition in regards to better representative boards in our schools. The point is, absolutely, we can have representation and skill sets too. Just because we are elevating more representative groups in this instance, for our kids that are LGBTI+, from our rainbow community, that they are more included in their school, that they are feeling safer. That doesn’t mean that we compromise the skill set at a governance level.

One of the Opposition members made a suggestion that our Government’s not focused on learning outcomes—we’re focused on boards today. Well, actually leadership does start from the top. If you’ve got a good representative, quality board of trustees in place, then absolutely the school will run better and achievement will be attained also.

I also want to acknowledge that in that representation, when I go back to the point about representation and skill—look what we’ve done for women. As we’ve increased the number of wāhine representatives across governance groups, that doesn’t mean we’ve compromised on skill. It means, actually, we’ve achieved a better outcome for all people involved. When it comes to representation in our schools, that is particularly our children and young people and their achievements.

So, I’ll conclude my speech there. This is a wonderful piece of legislation that amends some critical issues in our education sector. Long may it continue, because as we continue to build an education sector that is representative of everybody, in this instance, whether it be wānanga Māori or whether it be our LGBTIQ+ community, it’s a very, very good thing that raises achievement, outcome, and benefits for all involved.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a second time.

Ayes 74

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Te Paati Māori 2; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Noes 41

New Zealand National 31; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Is there an honourable member that would move this bill?

SHANAN HALBERT (Junior Whip—Labour): Point of order, Madam Speaker. We’re just locating the Minister’s speech for this one. My apologies to hold up the House.

CHRIS PENK (Senior Whip—National): Speaking to the point of order, I move that the question be now put.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Let me seek advice from the Clerk. We’ll just take a pause for a moment. One of the Clerks is coming in to give me advice right now. Is there an honourable member that will move this bill?

Hon JO LUXTON (Minister of Customs) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Transport: I move that the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill be read a first time.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: It’s the second reading; so that’s completely wrong as well.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The words have to be precise, Minister.

Tim van de Molen: Point of order. Thank you, Madam Speaker. Clearly, we’re in a situation where the Government is not prepared to continue business, and, on that basis, surely the House must stand adjourned for the rest of this extended sitting and then recommence at 2 p.m. for the conduct of normal business.

Hon JO LUXTON: Madam Speaker, I move that the Land Transport—

Tim van de Molen: Point of order! I had a point of order, Madam Speaker. I just made a point of order suggesting that surely the House must be adjourned, and I’m interested in your insight on that.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The advice that I was being given by the Clerk is that I give one more opportunity for the bill to be moved.

Hon JO LUXTON: I move that the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill be read a second time—I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill, and I move that the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Would the Minister like to speak to the motion of the bill?

Hon JO LUXTON: Yes. I move, That the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): So would you like to make a speech on the bill?

Hon JO LUXTON: Yes, Madam Speaker. This bill is part of this Government’s commitment to stamp out dangerous and reckless behaviour on New Zealand’s roads and, in turn, reduce deaths and serious injuries.

This bill aims to reduce unsafe behaviour on Aotearoa New Zealand roads, and we are tackling this in two ways: firstly, by enabling police to respond more swiftly and effectively to fleeing drivers, whose behaviour poses a serious threat to road safety; secondly, by enabling the use of technologies to identify and automatically issue infringement notices for transport offences, including a pointtopoint average-speed camera system. We sent a message to dangerous and intimidating drivers earlier this year through the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill. The message is the same for drivers who fail to stop for police: this behaviour is unacceptable and could result in you losing your vehicle.

Fleeing drivers undermine the safety of our roads and represent a significant danger not only for our police officers and the people in a fleeing vehicle but for innocent road users who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. After 63 fleeing-driver - related deaths between 2010 and 2020, police changed their pursuit policy to place more emphasis on post-event investigations. While this succeeded at reducing deaths and serious injuries, it also contributed to an increase in fleeing-driver events. There were 9,765 events last year, up from 6,757 the year before, and since December 2020, only 34 percent of fleeing drivers have been identified by police, partly due to insufficient consequences for the vehicle’s owners when they don’t provide police with information about a fleeing driver. The tougher consequences for fleeing drivers in this bill are intended to deter people from failing to stop for the red and blue lights. However, if drivers do choose to flee from police, the legislative tools introduced by the bill will assist police to identify them and hold them to account. The bill will complement a revised police fleeing-driver policy, which came into effect in late May this year, and together the two will strike a balance between improved road safety outcomes and proper punishment for those who break the law and endanger others.

This omnibus bill amends the Land Transport Act 1998 and the Sentencing Act 2002, with consequential amendments to the Summary Proceedings Act 1957, the Privacy Act 2020, and relevant land transport rules and regulations. It will also enable police to seize and empower the vehicle for six months, an increase from the current 28 days, if the police officer believes on reasonable grounds that the person driving the vehicle has failed to stop or remain stopped when signalled. It also creates a new power for police to seize and impound a vehicle for 28 days if the vehicle’s registered owner fails to provide information or misleads police about the fleeing driver. This will assist police to identify the driver, improving the current low identification rate.

The bill increases the period of driver licence disqualification after a second conviction for a failing-to-stop offence from one year to a range of between one and two years—a sentence which will be handed out at the courts’ discretion.

And, lastly, a new sentencing option will be created, enabling the courts to order that a vehicle be forfeited on conviction for a failing-to-stop offence. In these cases, not only will the offender lose their car permanently but they will also lose out on the proceeds from its sale. There is evidence that penalties which emphasise loss, such as a loss of licence or a vehicle, are more likely to influence behaviour than monetary penalties. They also reduce opportunities for reoffending.

As well as increasing the consequences for fleeing drivers, the bill also enables the use of technology to both increase the speed of enforcement and to widen the ability to detect offences as they occur. The bill will allow enforcement agencies to make use of emerging technologies, including point-to-point cameras. Point-to-point cameras calculate the average speed travelled over a distance between two points and have a proven track record overseas at reducing road deaths and serious injuries. The new camera network will play an important role in the Government’s Road to Zero strategy; simply put, it will help to save lives. We are also introducing electronic servicing and automated issuing of infringement notices. These changes will modernise our transport regulatory system through better use of technology. They will help ensure that important and time-sensitive infringement notices, including for speeding offences or revoking of licences on medical grounds, are finding their way to the right person, in the right place, at the right time.

This bill has now been considered by the Justice Committee. Thank you to the committee for their thorough and considered approach, particularly given their extensive work programme, and thank you also to the 33 organisations and individuals who submitted on this bill. The diverse range of expertise shared by these submitters has been integral to getting the bill to this stage today. I’m going to highlight some key changes: the commencement date of the bill has been extended to six weeks following Royal assent, and this will allow Police and Waka Kotahi time for the necessary implementation activities to ensure the new systems are as intended: quick, accurate, and secure.

In some cases, an impounded vehicle will be under a finance arrangement and the registered person may default on their payments during the six-month period, resulting in the car being repossessed by a creditor. The bill now enables a finance company to have a repossessed vehicle released from impoundment without being liable for any towage or storage fees. The robustness of the automated infringement system has been improved by separating responsibility for approving and for maintaining the system. The Minister of Transport will now be responsible for approving the system, while the ongoing quality assurance and audit processes will sit with the enforcement authority.

For the new point-to-point camera system, it is now clear in the legislation that the road-controlling authority must both install and maintain signage for each point-to-point camera on the network. The intent behind this is that a warning sign will encourage drivers to be aware of and reduce their speed. Providing the sign has been appropriately installed and maintained, a driver will still be liable for an infringement notice if the sign is not present or visible at the time at infringement. The safety camera network is designed to improve road safety outcomes, not to fill the coffers; however, if a driver chooses to speed through a point-to-point camera road corridor, they can expect to pay, and we hope it’s from their wallet and not with their life.

To further support the transfer of the safety camera network from Police to Waka Kotahi, the bill will amend the Privacy Act 2020 to enable the transport offence information to be shared between the two organisations as well as the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Services Commissioner. This is an extension of the current system and will ensure a continuity of roadside police activities. This bill is another milestone in this Government’s plan to make New Zealand’s roads safer. Again, I thank the Justice Committee and those who submitted for your valuable input. I would also like to recognise the collaboration that went into this mahi between both the transport and justice ministries, Police, and Waka Kotahi. One person killed or injured by a fleeing or speeding driver is one too many. This bill sends a clear message that these dangerous and harmful behaviours will not be tolerated on our roads. To that point, I commend the bill to the House.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well, this is a bill that seeks to toughen up the consequences for fleeing drivers, which we support. But, of course, I have an image of a fleeing driver in my head, panicked, careering down the road looking left and right over their shoulders, wondering what’s going on. We’ve just had that demonstrated by this Government and underlined how it is a metaphor for this Government itself, because they couldn’t find a Minister to introduce the actual bill. For five minutes we stand here in the House, we’ve got the second reading starting, there’s no Minister here to deliver the speech. They can’t find the speech notes. They’re rattling through the folders trying to find the notes. They come up with an earlier version of it—somebody delivers that—and it’s just an example of a Government that is confused and lost. Of course, it was Kiri Allan who introduced this bill for its first reading a couple of months or so ago. And she, of course, on the record, has been arrested, we understand, 500 metres away from her car.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! The member will come back to this bill.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, she was the one who introduced this bill, and then we have, I think, Ginny Andersen is now responsible for the bill as Minister of Justice, lampooned up and down the country as Minister of both catch and release—both Minister of Police and Minister of Justice. And so we now have this bill, and, look, there are two parts to this bill. One part of it is in relation to firming up the consequences for fleeing drivers. Now, we support that—we support the bill on that part of it. Not only does it bring in tougher consequences for people who flee in a car after a crash or ram raid or whatever, secondly, it introduces tougher consequences for people who own the car and don’t give information about who was driving the car when it was involved in such an incident. And so we support that. We supported it being rushed through the House on that basis because it’s an important issue. Of course, it’s only one element and it will make some difference and that’s why it’s supported.

The broader context of the Government’s justice policies are more concerning because, ultimately, if you’re number one and only clearly expressed priority for the justice system is to reduce the prison population, irrespective of what’s going on to our community, then that will lead to a lowering of law and order and it will lead to the mess that we’re seeing on our streets and in our communities. So this bill will go so far, but if the Government was really serious about bringing back real consequences for serious crime, and if it was serious about having an answer to the countless shopkeepers and retailers that we speak to every day who say, “There are no consequences—we see no consequences for the young people who are doing this.” And in the context of fleeing drivers, the most obvious change that took place three or four years ago under this Government, through the Police Commissioner, was the decision never to chase—never to chase. Surprisingly enough, there’s been a massive increase in the number of fleeing drivers since that. And so the police have undertaken to review that, and I think they should, and they should leave some doubt in the mind of fleeing drivers, and that has to be part of it.

So you’ve got to have a broader sense of understanding of what’s the overall message from the Government about crime. And as I say, at the moment, it’s a very mixed one. It’s a confused one. It’s saying that our only priority is to reduce the prison population, irrespective of what’s going on. And if you’ve got a 33 percent increase in violent crime, if you’ve got 100 percent increase in retail crime, and if you’ve got a 550 percent increase in ram raids, then I struggle to understand why the target still is on reducing the prison population irrespective of what’s happening. So this bill will help in that regard but it won’t solve all the problems in the absence of a real firm policy around consequences for crime.

But I want to talk about the second element of this bill, which is bringing in the regime for pointtopoint cameras. We are opposed to this part of the bill. We don’t support this part of the bill, and when it comes to the committee of the whole House, we will oppose this part of the bill on two grounds.

The first ground is that there is no argument for ramming such a change through under a rushed process, because this bill has been pushed through on a shortened period so there hasn’t actually been a lengthy and full select committee process. It was truncated down to rush it through, and we think this area around bringing in a new regime for point-to-point cameras for speeding tickets should have wider examination. And, fundamentally, we don’t support it because, ultimately, when you look at the causes of a severe injury and death on our roads, speeding accounts for less than 10 percent of the people involved and yet that’s the only thing the Government focuses on. They haven’t focused on dealing with drunk drivers and drug-drivers. There’s been a great reduction in the number of police checkpoints for drunk drivers. They’ve fluffed around and haven’t made any progress on the drugdrivers, which are one of the greatest causes of death and injury on our roads. They haven’t done much around seatbelts, and they certainly haven’t done much on improving the quality of the roads because, you know, this will forever be known as the “pothole Government” given the shambles that the roads are at the moment.

All they do is they focus on slowing us down and I suppose I just want people to think about the consequences. What happens if there was a point-to-point camera in one of the many streets in our city right now where they have insisted that we drive around at 30 kilometres an hour, which most people—and I live in Auckland and I drive along streets and I, of course, stick to the speed limit. I’m very careful to do that, but I’m the only person in the whole place who does because everybody else is shooting past. Nobody can drive at 30 kilometres an hour in a modern car and feel like they’re not going insane. And so if we were to have this point-to-point camera down a 1-kilometre stretch of a 30-kilometre-an-hour road in the middle of Auckland, that would be, I think, an outrageous thing that would drive people crazy.

And that, I don’t think, should be the point of Government policy. I think the point of Government policy should be to make people’s lives easier, to actually help them get around and do what they want to do. Not to drive them nuts by making them crawl around at 30 kilometres an hour, and then, if you put a point-to-point camera, which means that you have to literally crawl along all the way down the road at 30 kilometre an hour in a modern safe car—cars have never been safer, never been better designed to help people avoid crashes, then that is a strange thing to do and we don’t support it.

In fact, we think the Government would be far better focused on transport policy; on (a) fixing the roads so that there are not dangerous potholes everywhere, (b) investing in good quality, modern, safe roads such as the Waikato Expressway which the National Government started and this Government finally finished only a year or so ago, and the beautiful road going north of Auckland which was lampooned and mocked by Labour politicians as the “holiday highway” but which they opened with great fanfare only a few months ago after six years of work started under National, and a third example being the Transmission Gully road—again, mocked and lampooned by this Government but now opened and one of the most beautiful roads.

So building safe, modern roads is the most useful thing you can do for safety. And then, secondly, dealing with the real causes such as drunk driving, drug-driving—we still haven’t made much progress on drug-driving, they’ve fluffed around and still haven’t got it sorted there—and actually have some checkpoints and actually deal with things like, you know, focusing on seatbelts. And those are the sorts of things that would make a real difference rather than the point-to-point cameras.

So in conclusion, we have a Government that’s in a bit of a shambles. They can’t find a Minister to deliver a speech. They can’t find the speech notes. They don’t know what they’re doing. And when they finally get around to bringing in a bill, it’s a bill that on one part we support—and overall we support—because we do see the need to have firmer consequences for fleeing drivers, we just wish that there was a broader, more coherent justice policy that had firmer consequences for crime right across the board rather than the mixed messages that we are getting from this Government. And secondly, when it comes to point-to-point speed cameras in the context of a Government determined to make us crawl around at 30 kilometres an hour, we don’t think that’s a very sensible thing to do, and we don’t support that element of the bill. Thank you very much.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill, a bill that has passed through the very hard-working Justice Committee, who will be meeting during our lunch break today—a reminder for colleagues around the room.

This is a bill that is designed to improve the legislative response to fleeing drivers and to address the public safety issues within the land transport system. I am still a little bit unsure whether the National Party are supporting or opposing the bill. I understood from that speech that they were supporting the first part but not the second. So I’m sure other members will confirm their position for us. I am a bit disappointed in that, though, because the significance of point to point cameras is that they can evidence fleeing drivers as well. So there is a connection between the first and the second part that Mr Goldsmith was speaking to. And we did traverse this within the select committee as well.

Can I thank committee members for engaging on this bill, but also our advisers. This was a fascinating bill to work on, because we did have four sets of advisers with us: Waka Kotahi, the Police, the Ministry of Transport, and the Ministry of Justice, who came back to us on several occasions with additional advice. We also had 33 submissions and eight submitters, who also really did help us make some proposed changes to this bill, some of which the Minister has traversed. They include things that are really practical like changing the commencement date to allow for some public education, but also policies and procedures to be developed to allow Waka Kotahi to make arrangements to collect the fees or the payment of fees from the registered person, because Waka Kotahi would be in the first instance responsible for them.

I think one of the really useful points that submitters made was in the area of financial service providers. So where there’s debt registered against a car that might have been confiscated. And the points that they made resulted in us proposing an insertion, in clause 13, of new section 97A, which meant that we’d be clear that those financial service providers would not be liable for fees associated with impounding the car, but also inserting a provision which means that if the financial service provider became the registered owner, then the vehicle would automatically be released.

I know my colleagues from the ACT Party have a differing view and I do understand their concerns in terms of the rights of people who may not themselves be connected with the actual offending of fleeing. But I do believe that there are sufficient protections within the bill to ensure that there’s a good rights balancing exercise that’s taken place, including amendments to section 102 of the Land Transport Act, which means that those owners can make an appeal in relation to the release of the vehicles.

So I do believe that we have had a really robust process. I thank the Members again and I commend the bill to the House.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Well, thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on this bill, the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. What a car crash of a process at the start of this bill, when the Government couldn’t find the bill notes and then found the wrong ones. This just shows the shambles that this Government is in as they come to the end of their days of this Labour Government. We can’t wait—we can’t wait—in terms of getting rid of this Government, and New Zealanders can’t wait either.

The National Party, we support the bill, but we do not support a component of the bill in relation to point-to-point cameras. The members on the other side might be waving their hands around like some sort of interpretive dance at the moment. I’m struggling to interpret the dance, but I think that’s sort of the exit dance, isn’t it? The exit dance before they leave in four weeks’ time, as New Zealanders will go to the polls and kick them out.

But the point I’d make in regards to point-to-point cameras is very similar to what my colleague Paul Goldsmith made in that this is being rushed through as part of something which I think there is general support for from New Zealanders around tackling fleeing drivers. In fact, under this Government, we have seen a range of different policies around how we tackle fleeing drivers—one where the police stopped pursuing; now they are pursuing again. Here they are providing some more tools around how to tackle that problem, and, of course, we’ve got the ram-raid issue as well.

But what they’ve snuck in here and which New Zealanders would not have paid as close attention to—due to the fact that what’s on the tin is quite different to what’s actually in the bill—is that this Government is also giving new powers to road-controlling authorities to put in place point-to-point speed camera operations across New Zealand. Now, the issue with this is that this Government has also been reducing speed limits blanketly across our country—blanket speed limit reductions right across New Zealand, slowing New Zealanders down everywhere they go. If you go to some suburbs in Auckland, it is now a blanket 30 kilometres per hour on some roads which are actually quite busy and should be operating at much higher speed limits.

But this Government knows best, and they are pushing and enforcing on local authorities blanket 30-kilometre-per-hour speed limits on every single suburban street across New Zealand. When you tie that in with what they’re now proposing here, which is point-to-point speed camera provisions, this will give the opportunity for road-controlling authorities to be able to effectively, potentially, mean that someone could drive from one side of Auckland to the other and lose their licence because they may have been going 35 kilometres per hour down a road. That is what—

Terisa Ngobi: Read the bill.

SIMEON BROWN: —this bill provides for. I’ve read the bill, and that’s exactly what it says. It allows for point-to-point speed camera operations to be put across road-controlling authorities.

Now, that is something which the National Party doesn’t agree with, because, ultimately, this Government has ignored the real issues when it comes to road safety. When it comes to drug-driving, well, the Government passed the law after we said it’s time to deal with this issue back in 2017. They finally passed the bill at the beginning of last year, and it’s unenforceable. It can’t even be implemented. Now, drugs and alcohol are the number one cause of deaths and serious injuries on our roads—the number one cause of death and serious injuries.

But instead of dealing with that issue, we’re here in the House saying, “No, no; we’re going to fine people going an average of 31 kilometres per hour down a suburban street.” I think that’s appalling, but that just shows where this Government is at. They just want to tell people that they need to drive slower rather than dealing with the real issues around road safety on our roads.

So I challenge the Government and say, where is the legislation to actually ensure that our police can test people on the side of the roads for drugs? Where’s the legislation? Where’s the fix? I know the Minister has received advice on how to fix it. I’ve drafted a bill on how to fix it. The Victorian Government, the NSW Government, the Australian states, America, UK—they’ve all got tools on how to do this. Where’s the legislation? But this is all this Government can bring in their dying days, trying to enforce and put fines on people driving 31 kilometres per hour down the road. Shame on this Government.

Again, it says in here: signposting speed cameras. So when they are going to have these new 31kilometre-per-hour speed cameras—because that’s what it will be; people who dare drive 31 kilometres down a street which used to be 50, they’re now going to have to signpost that speed cameras are in place. Well, this Government said, in 2019, “We will make sure that every single fixed speed camera in New Zealand is signposted.” Well, I asked the Minister of Police earlier this year how many fixed speed cameras have been signposted. Well, the answer came back with Michael Wood’s big red zero—zero. I mean, the Minister could have sent the picture. Zero fixed speed cameras have been signposted since 2019 when this Government made a commitment to ensure that every fixed camera—so I don’t believe this will happen at all.

So the National Party does believe that we need to have tougher penalties when it comes to fleeing drivers and more tools for police, but this Draconian approach to now enforce point-to-point cameras to find people who dare drive a speed limit of 31 kilometres per hour down a suburban street is absolute absurdity. It’s Draconianism, it’s “Government knows best”, and the National Party opposes it.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Wasn’t that a perfect metaphor for the National Party’s approach to crime? They like the toughening up of consequences that this Government is implementing, but they don’t like the tools to actually do it. To actually deliver on the toughening up of consequences for fleeing drivers, we need a system which records and issues infringements for speeding, but they don’t like that on that side of the House, they don’t actually like doing it. They don’t actually understand that part of the bill’s place in this enforcement of the law; they just want something in the statute book which says “We’re tough, we don’t like these people who are fleeing drivers”—that’s all they wanted, and we had two speeches from that side of the House which told us and told New Zealanders that more clearly than ever.

Madam Speaker, you can see that I’m riled up about this because the Justice Committee did an incredible amount of work on this bill to improve it and make sure that those powers that police have asked for—which the Government is introducing—are being implemented in a way which is fair, which is appropriate, and which actually delivers these consequences well. And I thank my colleague from the ACT Party, Nicole McKee; I look forward to her contribution, because she engaged with this bill very deeply as well—not so much from the National Party, as we have heard from their speeches today. They are right that there are two points in this bill: the first is that it clarifies that powers the police have to enforce harsher consequences for fleeing drivers. It deals with those things like when vehicles are unregistered: what we do about that situation, and when the registered vehicle owner is not the driver or claims to not be the driver. This is a problem because in those cases, essentially, we might have a situation where that is ungovernable: where somebody claims that they were not the driver, we don’t actually have any way of enforcing a penalty there to do with their property.

Many other jurisdictions have taken different responses to this—say, in Australia, where you have a nominated driver register where the police can get in touch with someone who is the nominated driver of a vehicle; we don’t have that in New Zealand. There is no record of who actually is the owner of a vehicle. There’s only a register of drivers of vehicles, and that’s not the same thing. So in this bill, we’ve gotten around that in a situation which I think actually the law captures what the Government is trying to do here without creating a massive new bureaucracy of sorts, and I’m proud of that work that the Justice Committee did to ensure that that was going to work.

The second point that my colleagues on the other side of the House are so upset about is this point-to-point camera regime, and again, the committee really got stuck into the details to make sure this was a system that was going to work; I have faith that it is, because speed as a factor in these serious accidents—we heard in the committee room—was a major factor. Often it won’t be recorded as the main factor, but in many of the situations, speed is a massive factor which point-to-point cameras can help to identify very clearly. We need to use this new technology, and we need to update our rules so that police can use it, and so there is an infringement system which responds to that new technology. We need to make sure it has safeguards in place, yes. This bill allows for those checks and balances, and that’s why I’m proud to support it.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia orana.

NICOLE McKEE: I stand to speak on behalf of the ACT Party for the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill and have put on notice that the ACT Party will not be supporting this bill going forward. We did support it at first reading and we had reservations, which we pointed out.

I think it’s important, at this point, that I do acknowledge all of the officials that came into the Justice Committee because it was a very complicated bill and they had to go backwards and forwards many times with our many questions, and I do want to acknowledge the hard work that they did there. As well as across the board with the Justice Committee—we had robust discussions there.

But we’ve still come to the conclusion that we cannot support this bill. ACT are not satisfied with the bill and we do firmly believe that this Labour Government is heading further and further in the wrong direction on how to address law and order issues. We also recognise that the point-to-point cameras is merely revenue gathering for the Government trying to rebuild their fiscal hole from the taxpayers’ pockets—the taxpayer who already has to repay this Government’s wasteful spending. What else do you do when your tax take is down by billions of dollars? It’s put more onto the poor old taxpayer.

The consultation period for this bill actually only ran from 19 May to 4 June. It was 16 days in total—we couldn’t even take three weeks, this had to be rushed through so quickly—and there were 33 submissions to the bill, of which only five were regarded as being “generally supportive” of the bill. The majority did not support this bill, and they raised many concerns with us. Those concerns included that the bill wouldn’t achieve making our roads safer; that the fleeing driver proposals are disproportionately severe; there was impounding vehicles for six months; and the use of forfeiture will also have an unnecessary impact on the finance industry, the towage, and the storage operators. There were concerns raised about e-servicing regimes, about the use of average speed to issue infringements, along with the accuracy and approval of the automated infringement systems.

So if we start to work through some of these bill’s details, the objective of the bill is to reduce unsafe driver behaviour. It has claimed that it will do this by lengthening the 28-day impoundments of vehicles to six months for drivers that fail to stop, but also for the drivers that fail to remain stopped—the ones that that take off—and also to create new power for the impoundment of the vehicle if a driver, the owner, or the registered owner fails to provide information and prevent a serious threat to road safety.

So the question—and I guess we could have asked this, but I didn’t think of it at the time—was actually how many times does a fleeing driver commit that offence twice in the same vehicle? Because if they do, the vehicle itself can now be forfeited regardless of whether or not they own it. They would increase disqualification from one to two years, and we don’t have a problem with that one. But it also allows electronic service of notices and automated issue of certain infringement notices, and this is through the enabling of the point-to-point revenue cameras.

The implementation of this bill was meant to be the day after Royal assent, but it’s now six weeks. This is to enable the new empowerment regime to take place and create a new financial assurance regime for the six-month impoundments. Waka Kotahi are going to be liable for all of the costs. What are the ultimate costs of this scheme going to be? We still don’t know. Who pays Waka Kotahi? Well, the taxpayer is paying Waka Kotahi so the taxpayer, ultimately, is going to be the one liable for all of the costs.

We had to amend the bill so that police are responsible for telling Waka Kotahi when a car has been impounded. They hadn’t even thought that far through in the drafting of this bill. Then we had the financial services industry, who came in and said, “Well, if a car is on finance, who’s going to tell us that the car has been impounded?” After the toing and froing with officials, it was actually deemed that it’s going to be up to the person whose car has been impounded to tell the financial services that it has been—that is, the registered owner.

So the finance companies have to change their processes to accommodate unknowns, and Waka Kotahi have to set up a system of payments and debt collections. Owners and registered persons of vehicles will potentially be losing their vehicles for six months and having to pay the towage and storage fees. Yet what of the fleeing driver? What of the fleeing driver? There are so many questions that came out through the select committee. My colleague across the way there, Anahila Kanongata’a-Sui—

Marja Lubeck: That’s all. She dropped the second bit.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That’s all now.

NICOLE McKEE: Thank you. Thank you. She actually brought up a really good point, and it was: what if members of Pacific Islanders’ families go home—the parents go home sometimes for a month, two months, three months—and their vehicle is used and they don’t know that? They come back to find that their vehicle’s been impounded for three months. They did not have the opportunity to be able to address who was actually driving the vehicle.

The hardship that could be imposed on some of our families for events that had nothing to do with them—for events where they had no control—and yet they would be the ones that would be subjected to having to pay for these fees. Some of these fees start at a minimum of $2,500 and that’s not including all of the towage and the ultimate storage fees. That’s just your starting basis.

There are so many questions here. Police can release a vehicle if they’re not prosecuting, but then again, who pays? So if a vehicle’s been in impoundment for three months, who’s actually going to pay that? Is it the taxpayer or is it the owner of the vehicle? What are those expected costs to Waka Kotahi; to the taxpayer?

Also, where are all these vehicles going to go? Where are they going to be stored? I remember during the protest here, we had an issue where the towage companies could not place all of the cars that were blocking the road into a facility. So if we’re going to start impounding cars for six months at a time, where is it that they’re actually going to go?

This bill was so rushed that even Waka Kotahi’s newly added financial responsibility—no one had actually thought about how would Waka Kotahi know a vehicle had been impounded? How would they know whether or not they had to actually be able to get in touch with the finance company, with the registered owner? They don’t. So we had to put a variation within the bill to allow the distribution and sharing of information. This is basic stuff that should have been in there in the first place.

But if you’re a finance company and there is no sharing of information, then it’s tough luck. The only way that the finance company can actually get the vehicle back out is if they themselves become the new registered owner of the vehicle. And who’s liable for the payment of all these fees? The registered owner. So when we look at all of the implementation that needs to be made around this bill, it becomes quite destructive and it’s not achieving the objectives of the bill, which is to make our roads safer and to try and stop the deaths.

Now, I understand 10 percent of road deaths are from speeding. So when we have the pointtopoint cameras, we have to wonder whether or not we are financially making ourselves liable for 10 percent when in fact we could spend that money looking at how we can improve services across the whole of New Zealand on all of our roads to decrease the deaths.

We now have towage, storage, Waka Kotahi, and finance companies all having to make changes to the way that they operate. But what about the fleeing driver? What about the person who’s caused all of the harm in the first place? This bill will confiscate, it will impound, and it will possibly forfeit private property of a person who may not have necessarily committed a crime, putting unreasonable financial pressure on already stressed out community environments struggling under a cost of living burden. And what of the fleeing driver?

We can’t support this bill where the onus is placed on one for the actions of another, and to do so financially and with confiscation is unjust and it’s wrong. Then there’s the automated infringement notices as well. Email addresses having to be provided, when the Heartland Tour showed me we can’t even get Wi-Fi everywhere. So many issues. We can’t support.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia orana. Before I call the next member, just to let you know that you may have to give your speech in two parts, given the time.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Madam Speaker, the Green Party does not have a member on the Justice Committee, so we didn’t have someone hearing it through the committee. I do want to start my contribution by speaking to the parts of the bill that we do support and specifically explaining the importance of speed management in addressing our very high deaths and serious injuries on our roads.

Now, when I was Associate Minister responsible for road safety, we looked at all the data and evidence from around the world on what is an effective way to reduce deaths and serious injuries on our roads. We can look to a couple of countries—they’re actually quite comparable to New Zealand in some ways, like Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and Canada—that have made substantial reductions in deaths and serious injuries over a period of one to two decades. Sweden pioneered the Vision Zero approach: the idea that you don’t tolerate deaths and serious injuries on the roads, you don’t build it in as something that is acceptable. So they have a really good evidence base and they took about 20 years to drop their death and serious injury rate from what was something comparable to New Zealand’s to less than a quarter when you consider the relative population.

Norway has taken Sweden’s lane and done it much faster; Ireland as well. So Ireland is down to less than half what New Zealand is, and one of the key pillars in how they did that was safer speeds and speed management. I feel that both National and ACT Party MPs have cited this really misleading statement about speed being the cause in less than 10 percent of crashes. It doesn’t matter what the cause is, the speed has a massive impact on the severity of the consequences of the crash. So speed is the cause of 10 percent, but it could be the major factor resulting in serious injury or death in 30 percent or more of those crashes.

So I think we just have to distinguish between speed being a cause of the crash itself and speed being a significant factor that means that you’re more likely to have a death or serious injury result from the crash. All of that data is available. I feel like it’s a bit of politicking, really, to kind of claim that speed has nothing to do with our high death and serious injury rate, and it is just absolute denial of the facts. You know, if you have a crash and you’re traveling at a slower speed, you’re much less likely to have a serious injury or death, and having an appropriate speed limit for the road is also important. We know that a bunch of the roads that we currently have—and we’re talking tens of thousands of kilometres of roads, not something that’s going to be fixed overnight—the posted speed limit is unsafe for the design of the road. And so you could say, “Well, they weren’t travelling above the speed limit, but they were still travelling at an unsafe speed for the road, and that was a factor that contributed to it being a serious injury or a death when it could have been a minor injury instead of that.”

So the proposals in the bill that bring in signposting speed cameras and allowing point-to-point cameras I think are really important. This was a key part of the Road to Zero strategy as well, which is we’re not putting up speed cameras and enforcing speed to raise revenue; we’re doing it to change behaviour so fewer people die and have serious injuries on the roads, and that will, in fact, save costs for New Zealand because we’ve got those people able to get on with their lives and we don’t have the emergency services having to respond or the pressure on the hospitals. So there is a benefit to changing that behaviour—a human benefit that’s probably the most important, but there’s also a fiscal and an economic benefit to lowering the number of serious injury and fatal crashes on the roads.

The point-to-point cameras are really important because they pick up the average speed throughout the journey, not just at a particular point. I know I’m running out of time, Madam Speaker, and, I guess, unfortunately, we can’t support the bill because of the proposals around the confiscation of vehicles and the punitive approach. I think that it’s just really recognising that harsher punitive consequences do not deter the behaviour. We want to deter the behaviour. We want people to not be fleeing the police. Obviously, that’s really, really important, but the evidence is that having harsher punishments and confiscating people’s vehicles is not going to help someone in that moment to make a better decision, because they’re already not making a good decision. So they’re not thinking about the consequences in that moment, and those punitive consequences can affect them and their ability to get back on track after whatever incident has led to them fleeing, and it could even punish someone who has nothing to do with the activity because they’re the ones who own the vehicle but somebody else was using the vehicle.

So we can’t support the bill, because it’s not taking an effective approach to getting the outcomes we want. But we do absolutely support all of the proposals around signposting speed cameras and around point-to-point cameras, and I just really want to emphasise that it would be helpful if members on the right side of the House looked at the evidence. If you believe that it’s worthwhile to New Zealand to have fewer people die on our roads, to have fewer people be in serious injury crashes, then please look at the evidence, because right now, they are not. The National Party and the ACT Party are taking a populist approach on road safety that is going to result in more harm on our roads, and it’s really very, very counterproductive to the important debate that we need to have as people who all live in a country together, who all benefit when our fellow countrymen, when people visiting New Zealand, and when our families are less likely to be seriously injured or killed on our roads.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. Ka kite anō.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 1 p.m. (Thursday)