Tuesday, 29 August 2023

TUESDAY, 29 AUGUST 2023

TUESDAY, 29 AUGUST 2023

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

SPEAKER: Members, today I’ve asked Dr James McDowall to say the prayer in the Ukrainian language.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Всемогутній Боже, ми дякуємо за благословення, які були даровані нам. Відкидаючи всі особисті інтереси, ми визнаємо Короля і молимося за керівництво у наших обговореннях, щоб ми могли вести справи цієї палати з мудрістю, справедливістю, милосердям та смиренням для благополуччя та миру Нової Зеландії. Слава Україні! Амінь.

Obituaries

Thomas de Vere (Pat) Hunt

David Graham McGee CNZM, KC

SPEAKER: Members, I regret to inform the House of the death, on 24 July 2023, of Thomas de Vere (Pat) Hunt, who represented the electorate of Pakuranga from 1978 to 1984. During his membership of the House, he was a member of a number of select committees, including the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Labour and Education Committee, and the Public Expenditure Committee.

I also regret to inform the House of the death, on 27 August 2023, of David Graham McGee CNZM, KC, who was Clerk of the House of Representatives from 1985 to 2007. He was the author of the first three editions of Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand and was held in high esteem throughout the Commonwealth as an expert on parliamentary procedure.

I desire, on behalf of the House, to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the late former member and Clerk. I now ask members to stand with me and observe a period of silence as a mark of respect to their memories.

Members stood as a mark of respect.

Privilege

Speaker’s Ruling—Allegation of a Breach of Suppression Order Imposed by a Court

SPEAKER: Members, I have been considering how to respond to allegations that, during oral questions last week, Rawiri Waititi may have breached a suppression order imposed by a court.

In 2009, the Privileges Committee reported to the House on the exercise of the privilege of freedom of speech by members in the context of court orders. This led to Standing Order 116 being adopted in its current form in 2011. It balances the House’s privilege of free speech with the relationship between the House and the judiciary. Standing Order 116 gives the Speaker responsibility for balancing these important interests. To allow the Speaker to exercise discretion, it requires a member who intends to refer to a matter that is subject to a suppression order to give written notice to the Speaker. Mr Waititi did not give notice but then referred to a matter that apparently is suppressed by a court. I do not know whether his failure to give notice is because he chose not to or because there is no such order.

I do not intend to inquire further into matters that may be suppressed, as my doing so may itself be inconsistent with the principle of comity. Standing Order 418(y) is clear that it is a contempt of this House to knowingly make reference to a matter suppressed by an order of a court, contrary to the Standing Orders. In this case, the difficulty is that investigating whether Mr Waititi has done so risks compounding the harm caused by the original breach by confirming the existence of a suppression order and possibly identifying the subject of it.

So I have decided to deal with this matter in two ways. First, I will refer a general question of privilege to the Privileges Committee asking to consider how the House should deal with cases such as this, where a member may have made reference to a matter in breach of a suppression order but where investigating it could be inconsistent with the order if one exists.

Second, I intend to deal with Mr Waititi’s comments as a matter of order. The words Mr Waititi used in the House indicate that he believed that the matter concerned was subject to a suppression order, and, yet, he raised it without first notifying the Speaker. Parliament’s relationship with the courts is of utmost constitutional importance. Reckless use of the freedom of speech enjoyed by the House damages that relationship and undermines the standing of this Parliament and the privileges on which it depends.

Naming and Suspension of Member

Naming and Suspension of Member

SPEAKER: I consider that, in his comments, Mr Waititi’s conduct was grossly disorderly. Therefore, I name Rawiri Waititi and call on the House to judge his conduct. The question is, That Rawiri Waititi be suspended from the service of the House.

Motion agreed to.

Visitors

Malaysia—Special Select Committee for Women, Children and Community Development

SPEAKER: I’m sure that members would wish to welcome members from the Malaysian Parliamentary Special Select Committee for Women, Children and Community Development, led by the Hon Hajah Rodziah binti Ismail.

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

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

SPEAKER: Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Anita Ye requesting that the House urge the Government to review sections 49A to 49E of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986

petition of Barry-John Murphy requesting that the House urge the Government to stop Kāinga Ora and the Ruapehu District Council building a State housing development at Teitei Drive, Ōhākune.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

Government responses to the:

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the complaint about the Consumer Information Standards (Origin of Food) Regulations 2021

petition of Roman Kashpir

report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill

2022-23 annual reports for the:

Judicial Conduct Commissioner

Office of the Māori Trustee

New Zealand Parole Board

2023-28 statement of strategic intentions of Stats NZ

2023-27 statements of intent for the

Climate Change Chief Executives Board

Ministry of Justice

2023-24 statement of performance expectations for the Māori Language Commission.

SPEAKER: I present the Report of the Controller and Auditor-General, entitled Commentary on Te Tai Waiora: Wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand. Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Reports of the Education and Workforce Committee on the:

2021-22 annual review of Te Pūkenga—New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology

international treaty examination of the UNESCO Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; Ministry of Social Development; Ministry for Women; Ministry of Education: Long-term Insights Briefing 2023

petition of Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network

report of the Environment Committee on the briefing into golden clam incursion in the Waikato

reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the:

Controller and Auditor-General, annual plan 2023-24

report of the Controller and Auditor-General Observations from our central government audits: 2021/22 and briefing on public sector non-compliance with the Holidays Act 2003

Reserve Bank of New Zealand Monetary Policy Statement, August 2023.

reports of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the:

international treaty examination of the Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the European Union

international treaty examination of the Protocol on the Accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

international treaty examination of the Protocol to the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement

report of the Controller and Auditor-General New Zealand Defence Force: Resetting efforts to reduce harmful behaviour

reports of the Governance and Administration Committee on the:

briefing on long-term insights briefings

briefing on public governance

report of the Controller and Auditor-General Improving value through better Crown entity monitoring

reports of the Health Committee on the:

briefing on Pharmac’s review of Rule 8.1b

Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill (second interim report)

petition of Jane Ludemann

petition of The Hashtags

reports of the Justice Committee on the:

inquiry into the 2022 local elections

petition of Layba Zubair

reports of the Controller and Auditor-General on family and sexual violence

reports of the Ombudsman on Official Information Act compliance in the Ministry of Justice and Department of Corrections

report of the Māori Affairs Committee on the reports of the Controller and Auditor-General How well public organisations are supporting Whānau Ora and whānau-centred approaches and Four initiatives supporting improved outcomes for Māori

reports of the Petitions Committee on the:

briefing into ministerial and Government responses to petitions

briefing into petition platforms and citizen engagement

petition of Bernard Schofield

petition of Christian Cosgrove

petition of Claire Dale

petition of the Hon Judith Collins

reports of the Primary Production Committee on the:

briefing on the pork industry

briefing on the risks posed to New Zealand by foot-and-mouth disease

Ministry for Primary Industries, Long-term Insights Briefing 2023

petition of Melody Willis

petition of Tara Jackson

reports of the Privileges Committee on the:

question of privilege arising from Registrar’s inquiry into a member’s compliance with the requirements of Appendix B of the Standing Orders

question of privilege concerning a member’s conduct toward the chairperson of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the complaint about Health and Safety at Work (Hazardous Substances) Regulations 2017

report of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the 2021-22 annual review of the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading. The reports on long-term insights briefing and internal treaty examinations; the reports of the Privileges, Governance and Administration, Environment, and Regulations Review Committees; the inquiry into the 2022 local elections; briefings on public governance, the pork industry, foot-and-mouth disease; Pharmac’s review; ministerial and government responses to petitions, petition platforms and citizens engagements; and reports of Officers of Parliament and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand are set for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK: Te Korowai o Wainuiārua Claims Settlement Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: That bill is set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Cyclone Recovery

1. TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) to the Minister for Cyclone Recovery: What progress has been made on agreements with councils in severely affected areas following Cyclone Gabrielle?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister for Cyclone Recovery): The Government has reached cost-sharing agreements with Hawke’s Bay’s five councils, Auckland Council, and Gisborne District Council to support their region’s recovery from the impact of flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle. These agreements, in total, will see the Government contributing up to $1.7 billion from the national resilience plan to support a locally led recovery. I am pleased that we’ve reached an agreement, and I’d like to thank the mayors and councillors for their collaborative approach in planning the recovery of these regions.

Anna Lorck: What agreement has been reached with Hawke’s Bay’s five councils?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, the cost-sharing agreement with Hawke’s Bay’s councils may be worth up to $556 million. The Government will contribute half the net cost to purchase category 3 residential properties. The net cost is the agreed buy-out value, less any insurance proceeds received, plus legal and transactional costs. The Government will also contribute $203.5 million for flood protection projects, including $70 million ring-fenced for a flood protection scheme in Wairoa. Alongside that, $260 million will be invested in roading improvements and the building of new transport infrastructure, including funding the estimated costs of the Redclyffe Bridge replacement, the Puketapu, Matawhero, and Aropaoanui bridges works in Hastings, critical roading projects for Central Hawke’s Bay, and Te Reinga bridge works in Wairoa.

Tāmati Coffey: What agreement has been reached with Gisborne District Council?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Government and Gisborne District Council have agreed to a cost-sharing package to further support the Tairāwhiti region’s recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle. The package includes supporting the council to purchase category 3 homes, with the Government’s contribution of half the net costs expected to be up to $15 million. We will also contribute $64 million for flood protection work and $125 million to rebuild roads and increase regional resilience. As with all of these agreements, this is subject to community consultation. The Government will also facilitate a zero-interest 10-year $30 million loan for the Gisborne District Council in recognition of the cashflow challenges facing the council.

Lemauga Lydia Sosene: What agreement has been reached with Auckland Council?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: A cost-sharing agreement between the Government and Auckland Council will see the Crown contribute $877 million towards Auckland’s recovery. In addition, the council is applying for further recovery funding through Waka Kotahi, which would bring the total Crown funding Auckland may receive up to $1.1 billion. The Government will contribute half the expected net costs of up to $387 million to support Auckland Council to purchase category 3 residential properties. We will also contribute $380 million for investment in flood protection works to mitigate the flood risks in the category 2 damaged in the events, and $110 million for local transport networks affected by the weather events.

Tāmati Coffey: Has an agreement been reached with iwi in affected regions?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We have a parallel pathway for dealing with whenua Māori in category 3. This pathway recognises that there are unique legal provisions governing Māori land, and duties that sit with the Crown rather than with councils. We are continuing to engage with whānau, hapū, and iwi on these issues. I expect to be able to make announcements on this in the coming weeks. The Government is committed to working together with affected communities to find solutions for the recovery and rebuild. We are making significant investments to provide certainty to those affected by the weather events, and support these regions to become more resilient as we all adapt to changing weather patterns as a result of climate change.

Hon Meka Whaitiri: What reports, if any, has he heard from whenua Māori owners in affected areas following Cyclone Gabrielle?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There’s been a number of consultation meetings and hui taking place across Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay in particular. There are a range of different concerns in different places. That ranges from the place of marae, also what happens in things like urupā, what happens in terms of communities that live in and around those areas. We’re working through that, and, as I said in answer to my last supplementary question, I hope we will be able to make announcements about that in the coming weeks.

Hon Meka Whaitiri: What promises can he give to whenua Māori owners in Ōmahu, Waiōhiki, Pētane, Tāngoio, Wairoa, Te Karaka, and the East Coast affected by Gabrielle that there will be money left in the kitty because his officials are still trying to work out the special characteristics of whenua Māori six months on?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I can absolutely assure those communities who have been the places where the hui have been held that we remain committed to supporting them and that resources will be available for that.

Question No. 2—Transport

2. Hon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister of Transport: Will the Government commit to building light rail in our three major centres in a cost-effective way that reduces emissions?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): The Government supports building a light rail connection from the Auckland city centre to the airport and is progressing mass transit for Wellington and developing a rapid transport network in Christchurch. The Government’s also committed to developing the north-western busway and completing the City Rail Link (CRL) in Auckland. The Government expects all transport projects such as these to be designed and built in a cost-effective way that gives citizens affordable and convenient transport choices which reduce traffic congestion and transport emissions.

Hon James Shaw: What advice, if any, did he provide to the Minister of Finance for the recent rapid savings exercise on potential savings from doing Auckland light rail at street level rather than tunnelled?

Simeon Brown: You haven’t even started it.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Those matters will be addressed by Auckland light rail in their costbenefit analysis.

Hon James Shaw: I beg your pardon, Mr Speaker; I was having trouble hearing that answer over Simeon Brown.

SPEAKER: I’ll ask the Minister to repeat his answer, and can we have this in silence, please.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Those matters will be addressed by Auckland light rail in their costbenefit analysis.

Hon James Shaw: Did he, as part of the Government’s recent rapid savings exercise, recommend replacing the $45 billion six-lane road tunnel across the Waitematā with a cheaper, more effective rapid transit option?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No.

Hon James Shaw: Why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER: All of the proposed options for the second Waitematā crossing include, from the very first stage, increases in public transport connectivity.

Hon James Shaw: Has he, following advice from officials that his draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport would result in an emissions increase, received any advice on other transport options to reduce emissions?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I think it’s notable that the Government Policy Statement for Auckland, our largest metro area, includes funding for the north-western busway, triple and quadruple railway line improvements coming into Auckland, and also a priority on securing the points of connection between the CRL and busway so as to maximise the value of those investments that have already been made by central government.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. 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 our careful economic management and the actions that we have taken to support businesses and to protect jobs during global instability, resulting in an economy that is 2.9 percent larger than it was a year ago and more than 6 percent larger than it was before COVID-19; unemployment below 4 percent for 24 consecutive months—that’s only happened once before in the last 30 years, and that was between 2004 and 2008; coincidentally, also under a Labour Government—wages have increased by 7.1 percent in the year to June and by 29 percent since we took office; more New Zealanders in work than ever before, with labour force participation increasing to 72.4 percent and the employment rate increasing to 69.8 percent, with both being the highest on record; increased numbers of people in apprenticeships; a 44 percent increase in the minimum wage; record levels of R & D investment, up 67 percent since we became Government; the delivery of new free-trade agreements that mean almost three-quarters of our exports are now covered by a free-trade agreement; we have cleared Mycoplasma bovis infections from 280 farms with no active M. bovis infections in New Zealand; and we’ve seen record high food and fibre revenue, up 50 percent from 2017. But I also particularly stand by my comments that the member was proposing unaffordable tax cuts, and I welcome his admission that they are unaffordable, judged by the fact that they’re proposing now to introduce four new taxes in order to pay for them.

Christopher Luxon: Why, if everything is going so swimmingly well, is he now ready to admit that there’s billions of dollars of waste, and why didn’t he start reining it in over the last six years, instead of leaving it just for the last six weeks before the election?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It may come as a surprise to the member that every Budget cycle, Governments look for savings, and we indicated on Budget day that we would continue to look for savings, and that is what we set out yesterday. What I can say is that every commitment that we are putting before the electorate in this election is fully costed and it’s fully paid for. The member can’t say that, and that’s why his finance spokesperson and co-leader is proposing new taxes in order to pay for them.

Christopher Luxon: Isn’t it pathetic that, after scaremongering over National’s plans for responsible fiscal management for months, he’s now making spending cuts at the eleventh hour in a very desperate attempt to make New Zealanders think that his Government hasn’t been engaged in reckless economic vandalism on a scale we’ve never seen before?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’ll tell the member what’s desperate: spending two years saying that tax cuts are affordable, and now desperately trying to scrabble together four new taxes in order to pay for them. But we should not be surprised because the National Party have past form. They said that tax cuts were affordable last time they came into Government, and then they increased GST in order to pay for them, meaning New Zealanders paid more every time they went to the supermarket, more every time they paid the power bill, more every time they filled up the car—all because National promised unaffordable tax cuts, which is history repeating itself here.

Christopher Luxon: Oh, my goodness! Why should New Zealanders believe this last-minute promise to rein in wasteful spending when this Government has spent more than it promised at every single Budget it has delivered over the last six years?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We’ve been very clear through the course of the year that we would look for savings and make sure that New Zealanders are getting value for money from their public services. That is ongoing work that we have been doing across the entire six years we have been in Government. But I am very proud of the fact that our teachers have had record pay increases and our nurses have had record pay increases. Unlike the last National Government, we’ve invested in our health system and our education system. We are spending record levels on road maintenance because we don’t think that running down the roads in the way the last National Government did was an acceptable way to manage the economy. The National Party are trying to tell New Zealanders that they can have all of the promises National is making and no one needs to pay for them. Well, now the mask starts to slip and we see that there are at least four new taxes on the drawing board in order to pay for his unaffordable promises.

Christopher Luxon: Isn’t the real reason he has announced last-minute spending cuts that he’s just trying to paper over the fact that his Government’s reckless spending has left our country’s economy and finances in ruin?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The only person that’s trying to paper over anything at the moment is Nicola Willis, who is desperately trying to paper over the fact that the National Party’s promises simply don’t add up.

Christopher Luxon: Can he confirm, then, that under his Government, spending is up almost 80 percent, inflation has increased by more than 22 percent, tax has increased by 65 percent, the national debt has tripled, and we’re the only country in our region in a recession?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: What I can confirm is the IMF has reported this morning that since the global pandemic—since the second quarter of 2020—the New Zealand economy has experienced cumulative growth of 10.2 percent, and when I compare that with the IMF’s stated growth for Australia of 8.8 percent, for the US of 7.6 percent, for the euro area of 7.1 percent, or 6.1 percent for the UK, that shows that we’ve actually been managing the economy pretty well.

Christopher Luxon: Oh, no, no, it doesn’t. It doesn’t show that. Isn’t it extraordinary that after months of accusing everyone else of cutting public services, it turns out that he was the one planning millions of dollars in cuts to health and education to fill his fiscal hole?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh, the member can’t have it both ways, because, presumably, they’re going to announce more cuts themselves tomorrow, in addition to the fact that they are now saying that they’re going to add four new taxes in order to pay for the tax cuts that they’re proposing that will disproportionately benefit those on the highest incomes—millionaires, amongst others—and property owners. I think we’ve got our priorities about right. We are focused on supporting working New Zealanders through the current cost of living challenge with targeted cost of living measures that will make a meaningful difference for them. We’re not focused on delivering tax cuts to those who need the money the least.

Christopher Luxon: Why is it that every time a Labour Government is put in charge of the public finances, they leave a complete and utter mess for a National Government to come in and clean it up?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member should have quit while he was behind a couple of questions ago, because I’m very proud of our economic track record, and when we compare that with the last National Government, despite the fact that—

Simeon Brown: You’ve cooked the books.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —we have faced a global pandemic, our economy—

SPEAKER: Order! Sorry. Simeon Brown, that interjection is completely out of order. [Interruption] No, I haven’t decided if you’re staying. Can you stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Simeon Brown: I withdraw and apologise.

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I am very proud of the fact that under our Government, despite the fact that we faced a global pandemic, our economy, year on year, has had stronger growth, on average, than it did under the entire nine years that National was in Government.

Question No. 4—Housing

4. TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki) to the Minister of Housing: How is the Government’s record public housing build programme increasing the supply of homes in regional New Zealand?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): The Government is undertaking the largest State house building programme since the Walter Nash Government of the 1950s, adding over more than 13,000 net new public homes since 2017—including over 11,000 brand new builds. One in six new homes have been added in the last six years. This is a significant achievement when you consider that the first homes started to be built in 1937. For the first time in many years, we are building back public housing in the regions, such as Wairarapa, Rotorua, Gisborne, and Invercargill.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: How is Wairarapa and the Tararua District benefiting from the Government’s record social housing build?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Last month, I opened 21 new public homes in Masterton, with two new homes in Dannevirke. These mark the first State houses built in over two decades in this area. A further 100 new homes are also currently in the pipeline and due to be completed in the next few years across the Wairarapa and Tararua regions. This is in no small part due to the result of wonderful advocacy on the part of a tenacious and determined local MP.

Tāmati Coffey: How many of the Government’s new public homes are in Gisborne?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The Government has added 82 additional public homes in Gisborne since 2017. This is in stark contrast with the 2008 to 2017 period, where the number of Housing New Zealand homes fell by 33 houses—but I am happy to report that approximately 300 new homes are currently in the pipeline and due to be completed in the next few years.

Jamie Strange: How is the Waikato region benefiting from the Government’s new public homes?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I’m pleased to report that our Government is making great progress rebuilding public housing in the mighty Waikato. We’ve delivered 850 additional public homes in the region over the past five years, with over a thousand in the pipeline. When you compare this to a net loss of 172 homes under the previous Government between 2008 and 2017, it’s clear that we are not only rebuilding but adding hundreds more homes.

Chris Bishop: How many of the promised 100,000 KiwiBuild houses have been built in regional New Zealand, and is the number larger or smaller than the number of extra Kāinga Ora staff added to the public housing supply in the last six years?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The primary question was, of course, about public housing, something I’m sure that member—coming from a party with his party’s record on public housing—wouldn’t want to ask a question about. But I’m happy to confirm to that member: the number of KiwiBuild or affordable first homes, in New Zealand, is far larger by many magnitudes than his Government achieved—100 affordable homes over nine years in Government; we have over 3,000 homes delivered.

Dr Liz Craig: How many of the Government’s new public homes are in Invercargill?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The Government has added 30 additional public homes in Invercargill since 2017, with an additional 57 new homes in the pipeline. Though this is great progress, it’s unfortunate that we’re just making up for the 2008 to 2017 period, where the number of Housing New Zealand homes fell by 77 houses. Our public housing homes in Southland are some of the oldest in the country, so it is important that we continue to deliver new housing. An example of this is the recent completion of 13 two-bedroom homes in Appleby, Invercargill.

Question No. 5—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Prime Minister): Yes, and I am particularly proud of our work to improve outcomes for Māori. I am proud of our work to establish Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority; the 145 percent increase in funding for Whānau Ora since 2017; the 71 percent increase in the number of Māori apprentices under our Government; the doubling of the number of ākonga studying Māori language immersion at levels 3 and 4, and the more than 32 percent increase in schools offering it; the number of Māori preschool tamariki enrolled with an oral health service, which has increased from 64 percent in September 2015 to 80 percent in September 2022; Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga, which has helped us to approve or contract 1,018 new homes, 483 home repairs, and infrastructure for 1,618 sites; the nearly doubling of the number of scholarships and bursaries provided each year for Māori students pursuing a career to work in mental health and addiction services since 2019, among other things.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What will the Prime Minister do to protect these important Māori kaupapa, such as Māori wards, and the Māori Health Authority, given other parties have committed to remove them?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Win the election.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What message is your Government sending to rangatahi, when on the one hand, you are putting forward legislation to allow 16-year-olds to vote in local elections, while on the other hand, you are passing legislation to lower the age in which children can be charged for ram raids to 12 years old?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It’s important to note that the law change that we’re proposing before Parliament will allow the Youth Court to intervene in more cases of serious repeat offending, such as ram raiding for young people. We believe that that will ensure that we can get the wraparound support around those young people that they need, so that we can break the cycle of offending. Nobody wants to see those young children, some as young as 12 years old, going on to a lifetime of criminal offending, which is the pathway that they will find themselves on unless we intervene to support them more. The member has mischaracterised the legislation that is before the House; this is about making sure that we are intervening earlier and more effectively to stop these kids repeat offending.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What will your Government do to protect rangatahi Māori from profiling given that last year, an investigation by the Independent Police Conduct Authority and the Office of Privacy Commissioner found the police to have racially profiled rangatahi Māori, and illegally photographed them without consent?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think that is exactly why those two organisations exist, to make sure that there is an evidence base to identify where those sorts of practices happen. I know that the police have taken the findings of both of those organisations very seriously, and there is work going on within the police force to ensure that they are more aware of these issues, and that they aren’t policing in a way that is discriminatory.

Question No. 6—Finance

6. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: What concerns, if any, does he have about the performance of the New Zealand economy, and what impact is the performance of the New Zealand economy having on New Zealanders?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The New Zealand economy has strong fundamentals, with the IMF, this week, noting that New Zealand had experienced cumulative growth of 10.2 percent since the second quarter of 2020, compared to 8.8 percent for Australia, 7.6 percent for the United States, 7.1 percent for the euro area, and 6.1 percent for the United Kingdom. The impact of the strong underlying performance of the economy means that more Kiwis are in work than ever before, with Stats New Zealand data showing that another 6,000 people entered the workforce in July. I do have concerns, though, which is why the Government is acting to mitigate them. As a small, open economy, New Zealand is at risk from changes in the global economy. We’ve seen over the past few weeks the impact of a deteriorating outlook in China—for example, on our domestic milk prices here. This makes it all the more important that we signed the free-trade agreements with the European Union and the United Kingdom as part of diversifying our export markets. We do see impacts in New Zealand from global interest rates feeding through into higher mortgage rates for New Zealanders, even though the official cash rate has remained steady. As a Government, we are doing our bit to help protect our economy from this global fallout—this includes supporting jobs through new investment in infrastructure, and rebuilding communities devastated by recent weather events. But it does also include cutting our cloth to take pressure off inflation and ensure that the Government’s books remain in a sustainable position, all the while balanced by investments in critical public services, like health, education, and housing.

Nicola Willis: Is he concerned that during his time as Minister of Finance, New Zealand’s inflation rate has been out of control for 27 months so far, leaving New Zealanders to struggle through a cost of living crisis seemingly without end?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As has been noted many times in this House, this is a global inflation crisis. Here in New Zealand, what I can say is that I’m proud of an economy that’s 6.7 percent larger than before COVID. I’m proud that employment has risen in 15 of the past 16 months. I’m proud about the fact that ASB’s economist said, today, that New Zealand’s fiscal metrics remain world class. Throughout this period, we have looked after New Zealanders by supporting them through increases in the family tax credit, childcare assistance, main benefits. All of the things we did to support people through that period of time—opposed by the National Party.

Nicola Willis: Is he concerned that during his time as Minister of Finance, the official cash rate has risen quicker than at any other time during its history, leaving New Zealand mortgage holders scrambling to meet super-sized mortgage payments, as commercial rates, effectively, double?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: And, indeed, this, again, is a global trend. I do note for the member that when the Reserve Bank, who are responsible for decisions about the official cash rate, began increasing the official cash rate in, I think it was, October 2021, just days later, the leader of the National Party proposed more spending to increase what would happen with inflation.

Nicola Willis: If high inflation and interest rates are simply a global phenomenon, then why does America have so much lower inflation than New Zealand, and why is it that our domestic inflation rate is higher than our imported inflation rate?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the member knows, by referring to something that doesn’t exist, called the “domestic inflation rate”, she’s not actually representing the facts on that accurately. The New Zealand economy has recovered earlier than many other countries. That affects the different rates of growth and the different rates of inflation that we see. But what I know 100 percent is that if we had followed the advice of the member and her co-leader, we would have had inflationary tax cuts in the last Budget that would be making things far, far worse for New Zealanders when it comes to inflation.

Nicola Willis: Is he concerned that after six years of him managing the economy, our country is now the slowest-growing in the Asia-Pacific region, in recession, and predicted to be one of the slowest-growing countries in the world next year?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: If the member cared to look at the particular table that that number comes from, she would discover that, actually, if you look at the period of time through 2020, through 2021, and through 2022, New Zealand grew above average compared to the countries within that survey. As I said before, our economy began to recover earlier. But now we have the prospect of a member who has told us, time and time again, that she can afford the tax cut that she wants to deliver, now delivering those via four new taxes. The thing that will really cause problems for the New Zealand economy is unfunded tax cuts, a fiscal plan that doesn’t add up, and more inflationary pressure on New Zealanders.

Nicola Willis: Speaking of fiscal plans that don’t add up, can he confirm that under his stewardship of the New Zealand economy, net Crown debt has risen from $5.4 billion in 2019 to $73.3 billion today, and can he guarantee to the New Zealanders that every dollar he has borrowed has been put to good use?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I congratulate the member on her graduation to professor of hindsight economics! Throughout the period of COVID, I stood in this House, sometimes with the support of members opposite, to say “We need to look after New Zealand households, businesses, and the health system”. Sometimes, members opposite asked us to spend even more on that. I’m proud of the fact that New Zealanders emerged from COVID with one of the lowest excess mortality rates in the world, and I’m proud of the money that we spent on things like the wage subsidy, which members opposite went around the country supporting, asking me, writing to me, saying “Why aren’t you spending more?”. The member cannot now look back and change that position. We stood by New Zealanders through the difficulties of the pandemic, and we continue to stand by New Zealanders.

Nicola Willis: Well, is he proud that under his economic management, New Zealand has the largest current account deficit in the developed world, and does he have another excuse for that one too?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member will be well aware that New Zealand, as an economy that relies, for example, on the foreign exchange earnings from tourism, has suffered during a period of time when tourists couldn’t come here. Our net international investment position is improving. The current account deficit is coming down. But, again, all of the credibility that’s been built up in the New Zealand economy that means that Moody’s have endorsed what we’re doing, that means that the IMF have supported what we’re doing—all of that credibility would be frittered away by unfunded tax cuts for millionaires; that’s what the member’s promising.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Does the Minister of Finance believe that more tourists might come here if we didn’t have prominent politicians travelling around the world, describing New Zealand as wet, whiney, and miserable?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely that would help—and, in fact, generally speaking, I think it would help if politicians such as that didn’t travel overseas at all.

Nicola Willis: Isn’t it the case that despite his many attempts to blame others, in fact his legacy to the New Zealand economy is a cost of living crisis, recession, deficit, and debt, and is it the case that he is simply carrying on Labour’s proud tradition of leaving the New Zealand economy in tatters?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member might want to reflect on the level of unemployment when we came into office, which, if I recall, was around 4.8 percent, and the fact that, as the Prime Minister’s already said, we’ve had record low unemployment over a long period of time. We prioritise having people in work. We prioritise making sure that we look after the most vulnerable in our society, that we lift kids out of poverty, that we get people into skills and into training. All of that is at risk from a potential Government obsessed with making sure that they deliver tax cuts for millionaires.

Question No. 7—Education

7. Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini) to the Minister of Education: Mālō 'aupito, Mr Speaker. What feedback has she received on the Government’s free healthy school lunches programme?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): Last week, the Government reached the milestone of 100 million free and healthy school lunches delivered. Every school I visit that has the Healthy School Lunches programme tells me what a huge difference it makes to their kids’ wellbeing, learning, and engagement. Much of this sentiment is reflected in public reports. For example, a principal from Nelson has said, “We’re having 325 lunches provided every day, and everyone has exactly the same lunch, we know it’s nutritious, we know it meets the health standards, it has benefits in terms of concentration levels and to learning outcomes for our tamariki.” This is a sentiment shared across 996 schools who are eligible for the programme.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: Why is this a worthwhile investment?

Hon JAN TINETTI: This Government believes in barrier-free access to education. When we came to office, many students were turning up hungry or not turning up at all. The attendance challenges we currently face started in 2015, were worsened during COVID-19, and are now starting to turn around. Schools tell me that having free, healthy lunches at school is a critical part of the plan to turn around attendance and meet our national targets. Teachers, school trustees, and whānau acknowledge the difference the programme makes in the classroom and to the behaviour of students. They know how hard it is for hungry kids to learn.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: What would it mean for families if this programme was no longer available?

Hon JAN TINETTI: With the current cost of living pressures that families are experiencing, knowing their kids will get a free, healthy school lunch provides peace of mind, and it’s one less thing to put pressure on the family budget. The programme is estimated to save a family with two kids around $66 per week and $2,500 per year, on average. While the programme is targeted to 25 percent of schools with the highest need, many have spoken about the importance of universality for eligible schools. By providing lunch to every student in the school, it reduces any stigma that can be associated with singling out kids who don’t have lunch that day. Approximately 230,000 students receive a healthy school lunch every day, and we know that if the programme wasn’t in place, there would be many children who would go without.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: What other benefits does the Government’s Healthy School Lunches deliver for communities?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The programme also supports over 2,300 jobs in communities across New Zealand. As the Minister of Education, I have travelled across the country and spoken to the wonderful Kiwis delivering these meals for our tamariki and the joy it brings them to know they are preparing a meal for a child to support their wellbeing and learning. Just last week, while I was helping prepare the lunches at Alfriston College in the Takanini electorate, one of the kitchen workers was telling me how much the programme had changed her life. We currently have 254 schools using an internal delivery model where the lunches are prepared on site, often by students, to provide educational benefit in food preparation, nutrition, and time management.

Question No. 8—Prime Minister

8. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and policies?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly our actions to pass the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act, reform the emissions trading scheme, and the actions we’ve undertaken to ensure we are on track to achieve New Zealand’s first emissions budget. We’ve achieved record levels of renewable electricity generation and the lowest level of coal imports since 2013. We’re investing in 81 significant industrial decarbonisation projects that are set for completion by December 2027, with two significant partnerships that reduce 1.6 million tonnes of emissions. We’ve increased the number of electric vehicles entering the New Zealand fleet from just 2 percent in June 2017 to 37 percent in June 2023. We’ve co-funded more than 1,300 electric-vehicle chargers across New Zealand. We’ve supported 110,000 Kiwi households to be healthier and to have cheaper power bills, through Warmer Kiwi Homes. We’ve banned new coal boilers and removed 50 coal boilers from 46 schools. We’ve provided discounted public transport that has benefited thousands of New Zealanders. Climate pollution fell in 2020, 2021, and 2022, with the December 2022 quarter delivering the lowest figure in at least nine years. There is more to do and some big decisions to be made in the next term, but, on our side of the House, we’re committed to making progress to tackling climate change rather than taking the giant leap backwards the member is proposing.

David Seymour: What does the Prime Minister say to the people of Auckland, Coromandel, Tairāwhiti, and Hawke’s Bay when they realise this Government has failed to pass the climate adaptation Act, and, of the $4.5 billion in the Climate Emergency Response Fund, all of it went on trying to reduce emissions but not one cent went on adapting people and preparing them for the impacts of climate change?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I say we’ve just given those communities $1.7 billion of support.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister miss the point that that occurred after the event, because he spent not one cent from the $4.5 billion Climate Emergency Response Fund on adaptation and preparing people for the impacts of climate change, and the finance Minister, who’s whispering in his ear, admitted that in select committee at the time?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member seems to be arguing we should simply give up on mitigating climate change and just focus on adaptation. In fact, we need to do both of those things. I am not willing to give up and say that these extreme weather events can continue to get worse and we should just try and adapt to that. Actually, we need to support communities to adapt, and we are, but we also need to continue our focus on mitigation.

David Seymour: Is he aware that the International Monetary Fund regional economic outlooks say New Zealand is projected to be the second slowest growing economy in the entire world in 2024, beating only Equatorial Guinea, and who, except his own Government, is responsible for New Zealand’s economic performance, compared with the rest of the world, after six years in power?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, I’m happy to quote directly from the IMF report, who said that New Zealand had experienced cumulative growth of 10.2 percent since the second quarter of 2020, compared to 8.8 percent for Australia, 7.6 percent for the US, 7.1 percent for the euro area, and 6.1 percent for the UK. I think our economic track record’s pretty good.

David Seymour: If the Government’s done such a good job, why is he now reduced to avoiding the fact that we will be the second worst in the world, ahead of only Equatorial Guinea next year, after six years of his Government in power?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I mentioned before—I’ll run through the numbers again for the member in case he missed them. Since the global pandemic began in the second quarter of 2022—sorry—2020, New Zealand’s had cumulative economic growth of 10.2 percent, compared to Australia at 8.8 percent, 7.6 percent for the US, 7.1 percent for the euro area, and 6.1 percent for the UK. The member can look at any given point in time, and each of those economies will be at a different point in the economic cycle. But, cumulatively, across time, New Zealand’s economy is performing very well. It’s a testament to the hard work of New Zealanders and the hard work of our businesses, who we are backing to get through tough economic times.

David Seymour: Is he aware that the Ministry of Justice reports that victimisations per 100 adults have risen 29 percent, from 60 victimisations per 100 adults to 76 victimisations per 100 adults, since 2018, and will he accept his Government has failed to keep the public safe over the past six years?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the last part of the question, no, I will not accept that. Our Government has been working very hard to ensure that our police have the resources that they need to fight crime; 1,800 more police on the beat compared to a reduction, in real terms, of the number of police on the beat when National and ACT were last in Government, imposing austerity on New Zealand in the way that they were. We have been focused on making sure that we’re making it easier to report crime—for example, by putting new systems in place so that our retailers can better report retail crime. We’ve been focused on tackling gang offending. We have also been unrelentingly focused on making sure that firearms aren’t getting into the hands of potential offenders. And I note the member’s policy announced over the weekend—it shouldn’t be about putting it on their website and not talking about it—that they want to reintroduce semi-automatic weapons that were banned in New Zealand after the March 15 terror attacks.

David Seymour: Is the Prime Minister aware that term 1 regular school attendance has fallen from 73 percent four years ago to 60 percent this year, while chronic absence from school has doubled from 4 percent to 8 percent over the same period—what responsibility will he accept as a Prime Minister, and, for five years, Minister of Education, for the fact fewer kids are going to school and learning less under his Government?

Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I absolutely accept the fact that in term 1 of this year we still had a mandatory seven-day isolation period for COVID-19, and that will be reflected in the school attendance figures.

Question No. 9—Immigration

9. INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) to the Minister of Immigration: What recent announcement has he made regarding a residence pathway for Special Ukraine Visa holders who are settled in New Zealand?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Immigration): On Saturday, I announced a new residence pathway for Special Ukraine Visa holders. The Special Ukraine Visa originally allowed Ukrainians with close relatives who are New Zealand citizens or residents to come to New Zealand to shelter for two years. Latterly, conditions were amended to allow non-family to sponsor Special Ukraine Visa holders. Most of the Ukrainians who took up the visa hoped they could return home quickly, but that hasn’t been possible with the ongoing war. Special Ukraine Visa holders in New Zealand up to 14 March 2024 will now be able to apply for residency. The Ukrainians who are coming here to New Zealand are contributing to our country. Their kids are becoming more Kiwi by the day and it’s important that they have the security of certainty that they can stay and make New Zealand home.

Ingrid Leary: What has been the uptake of the Special Ukraine Visa?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As at 20 August 2023, around 1,510 Special Ukraine Visas have been granted. Around 720 people have travelled to New Zealand on this visa, including those who’ve left New Zealand and re-entered on one or more occasions. Right now, around 340 special category visa holders are in New Zealand. The residence pathway announced on Saturday will be available to Special Ukraine Visa holders where the principal applicant was granted a visa and travelled to New Zealand before 15 March next year.

Ingrid Leary: What will be the requirements for residents on the new pathway?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: We are striking a balance between making the pathway easy to access on one hand, and prudent protection of our borders on the other. Normal character checks and identity requirements will apply, however, only a limited medical certificate will have to be provided. Applicants will not need a sponsor and do not have to sit English language tests. While a $1,200 residence visa application fee will apply, we have decided to waive the immigration levy.

Ingrid Leary: What response has he seen to the announcement?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’ve seen feedback from the community advocacy group Mahi for Ukraine, which, along with Ukrainian associations and World Vision, has done so much to raise the plight of Ukrainians seeking shelter in New Zealand. Mahi for Ukraine has said the new residence pathway provides much-needed certainty and is, as they say, “a beacon of hope” and that “New Zealand’s actions speak volumes about its commitment to humanitarian values, and we are thankful to be a part of a nation that stands by those in need.”

Ingrid Leary: What else has the Government done to support Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s invasion?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: This Government has stood resolutely with Ukraine against Russia’s illegal and immoral war. We provided more than $4 million of diplomatic support to the International Criminal Court, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and for nuclear safety and security. We’ve provided almost $20 million of economic and humanitarian assistance. And we’ve contributed more than $58 million of military assistance, including deploying New Zealand Defence Force personnel to the UK to train Ukrainian troops. I can tell you that my colleague the Minister of Defence saw when he attended the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Ramstein in Germany, that the democratic world is enormously grateful for the contributions New Zealand has made to the defence of a faraway democracy. Слава Україні!

Question No. 10—Health

10. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: Why are there 16 fewer psychiatrist FTEs employed in 2023 than when this Government came into office in 2017, and does she think that this is an acceptable outcome from the $1.9 billion announced for mental health in Budget 2019?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): I am advised that there are 465.3 fulltimeequivalent psychiatrists working for Te Whatu Ora across New Zealand. There are a number of vacancies. New Zealand is experiencing pressure across all areas of the mental health and addiction workforce, particularly the clinical workforce. These pressures are longstanding and felt across the world. Growing our specialist workforce is tough because highly specialised people take a long time to train. The effectiveness of that $1.9 billion should be judged according to what we said we’d spend it on. The flagship health initiative was Access and Choice, a programme for mild to moderate mental health conditions. This programme has been scaled to over 600 sites and has had over 1 million visits. For that programme, we have created over 1,000 new mental health workers—

Hon Member: Psychiatrists?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: —none of whom are psychiatrists. This Government has built a primary mental health system from the ground up. None of that existed when we came into Government. I am sure that member did not mean to imply that the Budget ’19 funding was for psychiatrists.

Matt Doocey: Does she think it is acceptable that after the Government promised to transform the mental health system in 2017, there are now 16 fewer psychiatrists in 2023?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: This Government has done what it intended to do, based on the review at the beginning of this work. We have created Access and Choice, which is providing mild to moderate mental health care in the community. We have launched the Wellbeing Support website to connect people with those services. We are funding methamphetamine harm-reduction services. We have adapted services for rangatahi, kaupapa Māori, and Pasifika. We are making sure mental health workers are competent in dealing with rainbow communities. We have taken innovative approaches to funding the 1737 health line, Youthline, and digital service apps like Groov and Headstrong. This is hard work, but our transformation is well under way.

Matt Doocey: How can she defend that after announcing $1.9 billion for mental health and promising to transform the mental health system, there are 16 fewer psychiatrists today than six years ago?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: As I said, the Government should be assessed on what it said it would do. We have created a thousand additional workers in Access and Choice. We have increased places for New Entry to Specialist Practice for nurses to 282 annually. We have grown the role of peer support workers in mental health. We have increased the number of occupational therapists and social workers going through the New Entry to Specialist Practice programme. And we have increased the number of psychologists by 713 and tripled the number of psychology internships.

Matt Doocey: Was it her Government’s intention, after announcing $1.9 billion for mental health and promising to transform the mental health system, that there would be 16 fewer psychiatrists today than six years ago?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: That money has been spent on what it was intended to be spent on, and we are delivering the results. I don’t know why that member is interested in a sleight of hand of pretending it was intended for some other purpose, unless he’s buttering the public up for the cuts we know are coming under a National Government.

Matt Doocey: Is the failure of delivering 16 fewer psychiatrists an example of what the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission stated: “There are persistent workforce shortages. We are yet to see a clear strategy and a roadmap to grow and develop the workforce we so desperately need.”; and why have you failed to deliver to vulnerable New Zealanders after you promised them six years ago?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: It’s great to see that member quoting the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. I am so pleased that our Government brought back the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission after they cut it. I have already spoken to the huge amount of work to increase our workforce, which is evidence of a plan, and I will repeat it: 1,000 additional workers in the Access and Choice programme; new programme for nurses, with 282 going through per year; increased role for peer support workers; increased specialist training for occupational therapists and social workers; and a tripling of the number of internships for psychologists.

Question No. 11—Justice

11. VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour) to the Minister of Justice: What progress has the Government made in cracking down on youth offending?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Justice): The current level of youth offending is unacceptable. While the actions we’ve taken to date are working for the majority of young people, we know there is more work to do with a small group of repeat offenders. The bill I introduced last week, which will be read for the first time today, will introduce a new offence for ram raids. It also introduces new aggravating factors for adults who use young people to commit crimes and those posting their crimes on social media. It’s completely unacceptable that a victim of a crime may be retraumatised by seeing it posted online. This also sends a strong message to those who post their crimes online in a bid to gain notoriety that they can now face tougher consequences.

Vanushi Walters: What impact is the Government’s policies having on ram raid offending?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: One ram raid is one ram raid too many, but I am encouraged that ram raids are down by two-thirds since their peak in August last year and have more than halved since the first full month after I became Minister of Police in March. Interventions like Kotahi te Whakaaro have been working. Nearly 80 percent of children going through the Government’s fast-track programme for children who have committed serious offences have not reoffended. That’s a stark contrast to other parties’ proposals, such as boot camps, which have an 80 percent reoffending rate and which the former Chief Science Advisor simply said don’t work.

Vanushi Walters: How does the bill provide tools to the justice system to deal with young offenders?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: The new ram raid offence enables 12- and 13-year-olds alleged to have committed a ram raid to be charged now in the Youth Court, like other serious offences such as aggravated burglary. Other measures that have been effective in breaking the cycle of offending include the Better Pathways Package to improve education, employment opportunities; and the fast-track programmes, which respond to serious offending by children and young people. This new offence will not be the first port of call for first-time ram-raiders. This is for a small group of repeat offenders where earlier interventions simply have not been working. This bill closes that gap.

Vanushi Walters: What other steps is the Government taking to support communities affected by ram raid offending?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: The Government is committed to improving the safety for small retailers through the Retail Crime Prevention Programme, which has seen more than 2,266 security interventions installed around 586 retailers such as bollards, CCTV upgrades, alarms, and roller doors. We’ve also supported businesses through the fog cannon subsidy scheme, which has seen 1,995 installations completed, and even more approved and in progress. We know that ram raid offending causes significant property damage and harm to victims and their livelihoods. I am determined to get on top of this destructive behaviour and ensure young offenders face the consequences of their actions.

Question No. 12—Police

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

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Police): I stand by my full statement at the time it was given, or, to quote Radio New Zealand’s summary, “Mark Mitchell has been dredging for that lustre of funny in the repetition mine for four months now. … Finding the gag less humorous is the Minister of Police Ginny Andersen, who has been adding context to the same partial quote for four straight months [now].”

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does the Minister of Police think that public safety is funny?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: No.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does she think that “New Zealanders feel safer”, given that a leaked Police report says that there are over 100 offenders on electronic monitoring for offences like homicide and kidnapping and that public safety has been “compromised”.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: It is correct that there has been an increase in the number of people on electronic monitoring, which is something that the previous National Government sought to encourage towards the end of its days in office in 2016. As the Prime Minister has stated, there are already a number of reviews into the tragic events in Auckland that are ongoing, and we will await the findings of those reports before making any decisions about further action to trends in electronic monitoring (EM). Police advise me that the new national bail coordinator role, which will focus on EM bail, will be embedded within Corrections from early September.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Given her single focus on community safety, are communities safer now than when she became police Minister?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: There is always more work to do, but let’s not forget that it was the previous National Government that passed legislation in 2016 to expand the use of electronic monitoring. Now they say, “We want to massively limit its use”. If the National Party are now walking back, they need to explain how they’ll pay for American-style mega-prisons needed to accommodate these people.

Appointments

Assistant Speaker

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): I seek leave that the House appoint the Hon Poto Williams as an Assistant Speaker until the end of Thursday, 31 August 2023, despite Standing Order 29.

SPEAKER: Is there objection to that course being followed? There is none. Thank you very much.

Privilege

Consideration of Privileges Committee Report—

Member’s Compliance with Appendix B of the Standing Orders

Hon DAVID PARKER (Chairperson of the Privileges Committee): I move, That the report of the Privileges Committee concerning a member’s compliance with the requirements of Appendix B of the Standing Orders be noted.

I will, as chair of the Privileges Committee, give a summary of the report from the committee. This report relates to the failure by the Hon Michael Wood to properly declare his interests in two companies: Auckland International Airport Limited and Contact Energy. As the report shows, Mr Wood had these interests at the time he entered into Parliament, but he had acquired those shares quite a long time ago, around 1998, and he didn’t declare them until 2022 and 2023. He first entered Parliament in 2017, and, as the report explains—and as Mr Wood explained to the committee—he forgot that he owned those shares. He was, at one time, also confused between the shares in his personal name and shares held by a trust. But in any event, the committee found that his actions in respect of the period between 2017 and 2022 when he did declare the shares, was essentially negligent in that he was in breach of his duties to the House to make a proper disclosure of those shares.

There was also an allegation that shares that were owned by a trust in which he had an interest—also in Auckland International Airport—should have been disclosed. The committee went through in some detail, the—oh, no. Sorry. Before I cover that, I should note that there are a number of members who on occasions make mistakes in their returns on shares or other assets, and those mistakes are not to be taken lightly. But when a mistake is noted, it is a duty upon the member not just to fix the error going forward by making a correct disclosure in a later year, but to cause the registrar to be aware of the error or the omission in earlier returns, and to correct that error by causing the earlier returns to be corrected. And that’s the mistake that Mr Wood made here: both not declaring the shares in Auckland International Airport and Contact Energy in those first five years, but then, once he did become aware that he had made those mistakes, not correcting the earlier returns—instead, he just made correct returns in the years that followed.

The other allegation that was made against him was in respect of shares owned by the JM Fairey Family Trust, and there the committee quite carefully sets out the rules that are in Standing Orders. Those rules say that pecuniary interests that are held by a member in a company or business entity are meant to be disclosed to the extent that the rules require them to be disclosed. The rules, then, make it clear that company interests that are owned by a trust, or indeed another company, don’t have to be disclosed. And that’s made clear by clause 5(2) of the relevant rules, which says that “a member does not have a pecuniary interest in a company … merely because the member has a pecuniary interest in another … business entity”—in this case a trust—“that has a pecuniary interest in [that company]”. And it’s on that issue that the Privileges Committee makes it clear that on our reading of the rules, it’s actually quite clear that interests owned by a trust in a company don’t currently have to be disclosed.

That’s also made clear in the relevant form that members have to fill in, Form 4, which sets out beneficial interests and trusteeships of trust, and the form says “Do not include the pecuniary interests that the trust itself may have, (e.g. the assets of the trust). The exception to [which] is real property held in a trust, which you should declare in Form 6.” Now, the reason that there is a different rule for real property is because the Standing Orders make it clear, with a specific rule covering that, that real interests in land held by a trust do have to be disclosed, but the opposite is the case in respect of shares held by a trust. So one of the recommendations of the Privileges Committee is that if the Standing Orders Committee indeed thinks that interests of a trust in a company should be declared, then the Standing Orders should be changed to make that clear. But at the moment, the opposite is true: it is clear that they don’t have to be. So to that extent, we disagreed with the reference that had been made to us by the Registrar of Pecuniary Interests, because we thought it was clear unanimously across the committee on the face of the rules that those other interests did not need to be declared, i.e., an interest of a trust in a company is not caught by the disclosure rules.

It remains the case, however, that the Hon Michael Wood should have disclosed the interests that he held in his personal name between 2017 and 2022, and that he didn’t—and that once he became aware of that error, he shouldn’t have just corrected the matter going forward, he should have corrected it looking backwards. I would also note that the committee found that this didn’t amount to a contempt. It was a serious breach of the rules that the committee drew to the attention of the House, and our recommendation was that the member be required to apologise.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I acknowledge the chair of the Privileges Committee, who did a good job chairing what was actually—it’s been a busy committee—quite a tricky issue that we had to deal with. I think that the chair has done a pretty good job, actually, of traversing the facts which are actually not that contested—including by the member concerned—and in the public domain as it played out over many days and weeks. Feels like it was last year, but it was actually only a few weeks ago. So he’s done a good job.

I just wanted to pick up on a couple of points. The first is just to make the obvious one, which is that it was and is a serious breach. Members are required to take their obligations to disclose their interests through the pecuniary interests seriously, and there’s a whole lot of guidance from the registrar but also Standing Orders about that. I think the relevant paragraph is at page 7 of the committee report: “It is difficult to conclude that he made a genuine attempt to identify his interests or that he sufficiently turned his mind to them when making his annual return over this five-year period. We therefore find that Mr Wood was neglectful of his duties over significant period of time.”

It’s just worth highlighting that, as I think Mr Wood himself concedes, there was essentially a negligence over quite a long period of time and the appropriate punishment as recommended by the committee is an apology. It’s not contempt. Members do make mistakes when they are submitting their returns. I think almost every pecuniary interest return has had late filings and subsequent amendments. But in this case, Mr Wood did not make—or it’s difficult to conclude he made a genuine attempt to identify his interests. So I think that’s the first point.

If I could just comment on the second point that Mr Parker raised, which is what became known in the committee as the “trust” issue, which was this quite vexing issue of when do you have to disclose interests in trusts? I hated trust law at law school, and I thought when I became an MP I’d never have to deal with it ever again. Then I found myself on the Justice Committee doing the Trust Act review for about three years, and now I’m on the Privileges Committee. We dealt with that, so anyway, here we are.

But I think I will freely admit I—like many members, I suspect—assumed that shares held in trusts had to be disclosed. I think, actually, there’s a bit of a widespread assumption around that: that if you were a beneficiary of a trust that had listed shares in it, that they would have to be disclosed. As it transpires, as Mr Parker has pointed out, that is not the case. We actually went through each of the guidance documents issued by the registrar, and Form 4 is the relevant form as Mr Parker says. It explicitly says, “Do not include the pecuniary interests that the trust itself may have (e.g. the assets of the trust). The exception to this is real property held on a trust, which you should declare on Form 6.” So I think the assumption that many hold—and I suspect many members have, up until now, held—in the House is actually incorrect.

The Privileges Committee has recommended—and rightly so—that this is an issue that needs some more work. This Privileges Committee is very busy, but it’s clearly going to be an issue for the Standing Orders Committee of the next Parliament, and we’ll wait and see who’s on that. But as page 9 notes, “It is crucial the rules are clear and members have a consistent understanding of their obligations.” It’s a fundamental rule of law issue for members of Parliament: we need to know what the rules are so that we can comply with them. So no doubt the Standing Orders Committee of the next Parliament will be having a look at that.

Can I just conclude by saying that we were slightly—perturbed is perhaps too strong a word but we were we were a little bit alarmed at some of the tenor of the language mentioned by the registrar in his report to us. I think the general consensus of the committee—and this is reflected in the report of the committee to the House—is that it’s for the committee and then the House to determine the gravity of the offending and decide upon the way in which the issue of privilege will be dealt with.

Some of the commentary in the registrar’s report to us—well, it was expansive, shall we say, in its commentary on what had happened. Actually, it’s a pretty fundamentally simple matter. Mr Wood was required to disclose a series of shares that he held for quite a long time. He didn’t disclose them. The facts are actually relatively uncontested. There’s a niche issue around the trusts aspect of it, but the actual facts are relatively uncontested, and that’s perhaps not apparent from the quite lengthy discursive commentary that was provided to the committee from the registrar.

So anyway, with those remarks, the National Party and myself endorse the report of the Privileges Committee.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise to join with other members of the Privileges Committee who have spoken so far to endorse this report back from the committee. I think that the chair and other members worked very constructively through what turned out to be more complex and technical matters than perhaps we might have thought at first. I agree with the comments that have been made so far. If I could put a bit more context around it, because people watching this may wonder what the matter actually is, members of Parliament are required to declare their interests, employment, and things that they own that might be seen to somehow influence their decision making as MPs, and I completely endorse that idea. I think it’s important in an open democracy that people can see where political parties get their donations from, if members of Parliament are receiving benefits from any individual, or if members of Parliament have specific pecuniary or other interests in a particular thing or person that might influence the decisions they have made, or at least be seen to. I think that’s really important.

I think it’s also important to distinguish, for people who may look at this, and recognise that it’s actually quite a separate matter from the declaration made by Ministers in the Beehive. That’s a totally different thing where Ministers have to declare their conflicts of interest. That got a lot of publicity in the guise of Michael Wood—actually, for the same shares. But so much for that. I just think it’s important to put the purpose and the exact matter in a bit of context here.

I agree with what’s been said that it’s pretty much cut and dried. Michael Wood owned shares in Contact Energy and Auckland Airport. Some of us remarked that he was much more of a capitalist than we would have guessed, and some of us admire him for that, to some extent, but nevertheless he had an obligation to report those shares, in as much as he owned them personally. That’s what the Standing Orders require. He did do so from about 2021 onwards, but he failed to follow one of the rules, which is that if you do that, you’ve got to actually update all previous returns while you’re a member of Parliament, so you’ve got to correct everything. I’ve done that. For interest, I’d forgotten to declare—I suspect there wouldn’t be a lot of people here who haven’t either done it, or would be foolish to throw stones from glass houses in case they one day discover they have to as well. But Michael Wood, once he became aware of these shares, he started reporting them in his subsequent returns, but didn’t update his previous ones. So that’s the first issue.

The second issue that arose was perhaps the one that’s been discussed the most, is was he also obliged to report on shares that were held in trust. I think this gets us to quite an interesting point, particularly with regard to the way the registrar has conducted himself through this inquiry. You see, it turns out, and it’s quite clear from reading the Standing Orders, although as Chris Bishop has said, one could easily be confused. It’s quite clear that you do not have to declare shares that are held in a trust. It’s clear because the Standing Orders explicitly say you must declare physical property or land or buildings or houses that you hold in a trust—real property—but it makes no such reference to shares in a company.

Of course, the Standing Orders Committee in the past has tried to be clear that you don’t have to share everything in in a chain of ownership, for example. You know, a farmer might own a farm which might have attached to it co-op shares in a farm supply business. Now, would that, for example, be something they had to report, and what about the land the business is on? So clearly, there has to be a stoppage at some point. They’ve said that you don’t have to declare an interest in shares that you held in a trust, and yet that would seem to be at odds with the purpose of the register, which is to show what sort of entities a person might have an interest in. They could certainly know that they had the interest, it’s just the ownership structure that exempts them from reporting it, and, of course, the same exemption is not made for real property, so there does seem to be quite an inconsistency here.

None the less, Michael Wood was not in any way guilty, because he was not obliged to report shares that he held in a trust, and he was backed up by the notes that are circulated to MPs that say that you don’t have to report shares issued in a trust. However, that was actually contradicted by the registrar, the guy who’s supposed to be responsible for overseeing all of this, who said that members must, under circumstances, declare shareholdings in trust, and, as the committee has found, says that we disagree with that.

I think that points to something I’d like to close my remarks with, which is a certain zealousness on the part of the registrar where, in my view, he’s really overstepped the mark. Chris Bishop mentioned the report into his investigation into Michael Wood, and I just found it was incredibly unprofessional. It, for example, gave blow by blow accounts of playing Michael Wood a video and asking if he could remember saying that. You know, if we want drama, we can go to the cinema; we don’t need it in reports to the Privileges Committee. The Privileges Committee, and I’d like to read this in, says “By way of guidance for future inquiries, we suggest that our committee would benefit from reports on inquiries that contain a clear summary of the facts, as the Registrar has determined them, without passing judgement on them beyond the prima facie test of whether a question of privilege is involved. This would be more consistent with the approach taken by the Speaker in determining whether a question of privilege arises under Standing Order 412. The Registrar’s report contained comments passing judgement on Mr Wood’s actions in critical terms. We consider that passing judgement on members’ actions is a matter for this committee rather than for inquiries conducted by the Registrar.”

I thought that the committee was incredibly reserved and polite in making those comments. I think the committee could have justified going further, given the report we were given, given the, I guess, overzealous assumption that something must be reported when actually the Standing Orders and the registrar’s own guidance show that it doesn’t need to be reported. I think it raises a question about the accountability of that person in this process that perhaps some future Standing Orders Committee or Privileges Committee might like to consider. Because while it’s clear that accountability is important, it’s clear that Michael Wood has done wrong in this instance, I don’t think that that process was becoming of the office of the registrar or of this House, and I’d like that to be recorded.

Without any more to say on that, you know, Michael Woods has made a mistake. He has been asked to apologise to the House, having already apologised to the registrar, and I think that is about where the matter should lie. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as another member of the Privileges Committee to speak in support of this report. There isn’t much to say on the facts that hasn’t already been traversed in the report and by others who’ve spoken this afternoon, but I would like to thank you, Mr Speaker, for sending the matter to us, and for sending us so many matters recently. We do appreciate, as the Privileges Committee, the highlighting of our role in this House’s proceedings, and also in the conduct of open democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand.

It is the case that we have rules as members of Parliament that we abide by, and some of those rules that this report touches upon are to do with open democracy. The interests that members may have in financial institutions and real property and in other aspects of their lives are of interest to the public, and I think we all do agree that it’s important that we uphold those rules in both open and efficient reporting that is required of us. But, also, and equally important for the public, is to know that where there have been breaches of those rules, where open democracy or any other of our rules have been breached, where we have fallen short, that there is recourse. That there is a committee, a cross-party—cross-House committee that will take these matters seriously, that will look into the facts, and will make findings that are consistent with the intent of those rules, which I think has been done in this case.

There was no contempt of the House found, but I do want to hold that in terms of the negative findings contained in this report, that they were serious. That it may have been only negligence rather than contempt, but it was negligence of undertaking a duty that’s important, for some time. So we did highlight that, and it was appropriate that that finding, that negative finding highlighted that breach, and in a way a type of misconduct though be it not deliberate in terms of what we found. Looking back and updating those forms was important and it and it did amount to negligence that we wouldn’t want to see repeated regularly by other members.

Then we come to the trust issue, and again, like others have done, without going into too much detail, it is important to send a message, I think, to a future Standing Orders Committee that that is an area that we desperately need clarification on. If these rules, in terms of declaring our interests, are for the benefit of the public, I think we can all agree that out there people would see a beneficiary of a trust that has financial interest and a profit that they may gain from being a beneficiary of a trust that holds shares in various institutions, that that person would be seen as having an interest, a financial interest, that falls under the auspices of these declarations, just as they would if they directly held shares or those interests in property.

We, in fact, in the last Budget, the Government rightly fixed what we what we might call a loophole in our tax system whereby if people hold interests, financial interests, that garner them in income in trust should in fact be taxed. So it’s exactly along those lines that we say financial interests of beneficiaries of trusts come under the same category and should be open to inquiry by the public when they’re held by MPs, or when MPs are the beneficiaries of those trust interests.

So that is something that surprised all of us. It was not something that Mr Wood was in breach of in any way, but it concerns me that that still remains a hole in our system. So again, I want to commend the work of our committee, and I want to commend you, Mr Speaker, for taking matters of privilege seriously enough to busy our schedules in that committee. But I also want to give assurances to the public that we will continue to work together to take the rules that uphold our democracy, in particular where transparency is concerned, seriously, and that this finding was in fact serious, though contempt wasn’t found. So I do commend the report.

Motion agreed to.

Consideration of Privileges Committee Report—Conduct of Member towards Chairperson of Transport and Infrastructure Committee

Hon DAVID PARKER (Chairperson of the Privileges Committee): I move, That the House take note of the report of the Privileges Committee on the question of privilege concerning a member’s conduct toward the chairperson of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

This is the fourth of four references to the Privileges Committee that we’ve had in the last couple of months, after having none in the prior 2½ years. This is an unusual event, and I will address both how the Privileges Committee chose to consider the matter and the allegations that were made. Mr Speaker, the reference to the select committee from you arose from a complaint from a member who was present at a select committee hearing, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, at the end of a meeting of which there was a disagreement between Mr van de Molen and the chair of the committee. The reference to us was to consider whether the actions of Mr van de Molen crossed a line and were inappropriate.

The way in which the committee chose to deal with the issue was to employ the services of an experienced King’s Counsel (KC) to investigate the facts of the matter. The—

Chris Bishop: She’s not a KC.

Hon DAVID PARKER: She’s not a KC? Sorry; Wendy Aldred, a senior barrister. Sorry; thank you for that correction, Mr Bishop. We already knew at the time that she was engaged, as a Privileges Committee, that there were a number of witnesses to this altercation that had taken place, being two members of Parliament in addition to the chair and Mr van de Molen. In addition to that, there were three select committee staff that were also present. We weren’t aware at the time when the reference was made to Wendy Aldred that there was also a backup tape recording of events. When select committees meet and a transcript is taken, there is a primary recording methodology, which had been turned off, but there’s also a backup methodology, which was still running. That became apparent a day or two later, and that was also provided to Wendy Aldred. Wendy Aldred then interviewed Mr van de Molen, Mr Halbert, the MPs present, and the staff, and the report from Wendy Aldred—it runs to about 17 or 18 pages, I think, from memory—is appended to the report.

Before I come to the conclusion, I will emphasise something that that was emphasised by members during our consideration of the matter, and that is that we have to be very careful in this place that we don’t make findings of misconduct too easily. It is a place of robust debate. Sometimes, a number of us, you know, lose our rag a bit. You know, we get a bit angry about how things roll in a select committee, and there are robust exchanges at select committee, quite often when the media are present, and there are complaints made about how the presiding officer chairs meetings of select committees. As the select committee recorded, Parliament is a place of debate. We recognise that this can at times involve conduct that would be unpalatable in other contexts.

We considered carefully whether Mr van de Molen’s conduct could be considered to fit within the bounds of acceptable parliamentary behaviour. For example, it’s not entirely unusual for a member to challenge a select committee chairperson’s management of a hearing or for members to exchange views in a hostile tone. There is, appropriately, a high bar for poor behaviour to attract a contempt finding. None the less, as the reviewer Wendy Aldred reported to us as the Privileges Committee, there was quite a bit of evidence that this particular conduct went too far. That included Mr van de Molen walking close to the chair of the committee, who was seated, and saying, in a way that the reviewer found objectively to be threatening behaviour, “Stand up.”, which concerned not just the other members of Parliament that were in the room but also the select committee staff, all three of whom told the reviewer that they were sufficiently concerned to contemplate calling the security staff on precinct to intervene.

The finding of the committee was that Mr van de Molen’s conduct towards Mr Halbert amounted to both threatening him and impeding him in the discharge of his duties as a member. He felt he couldn’t stand up without provoking perhaps a physical confrontation and therefore was prevented from leaving the select committee and going about his business, which included coming into this House to conduct his duties as a whip. So the committee, having considered the matter, concluded that in terms of Standing Orders, the definition of a contempt includes an act that impedes a member in the House in the discharge of the member’s duties, or “has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such a result.” The fact that Mr Halbert was threatened on account of his conduct as a presiding officer has contributed to our finding of contempt. While threatening behaviour is always a serious matter, it is particularly offensive for a member to be subject to such behaviour because of how they discharge their official parliamentary duties. Select committee chairpersons are not immune from criticism or, in the appropriate manner, challenge, but Mr van de Molen’s conduct in this case was not appropriate.

Accordingly, the committee concluded that Mr van de Molen’s conduct in this case could not be condoned as normal or acceptable, and we found—and it’s quite rare for the committee to do this—that the conduct of Mr van de Molen amounted to a contempt.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and my thanks to the chair of the Privileges Committee, the Hon David Parker, for the well-traversed explanation of what happened and the process we went through. I just want to add a couple more points.

The first is that we found this a troubling matter to deal with as a committee, for obvious reasons. We were placed in the invidious position of, essentially, being asked to find facts, and we considered right at the start of our inquiry how to do that. There were basically two options: one was to ask an independent investigator to do that for us, which is the path we went down, and the other option was to get the relevant member concerned before the committee, ask other members who were there, and, most particularly, because of the somewhat unusual nature of the alleged offending, also get the relevant staff to submit to the committee. We pondered whether or not that would be a good idea, and I think we made the appropriate decision that it would be unfair on the staff, who, at the end of the day, don’t come to work to get involved in political events, as inevitably would happen before a public committee of the Parliament—the so-called highest court in the land. The prefix “powerful” is always appended to the Privileges Committee, and so we felt like that wasn’t going to be an appropriate thing to do. So we asked Wendy Aldred, a barrister of some renown, to find the facts for us, and I commend her work, which was done very quickly, actually. There was quite a desire from members to deal with this quickly and as expeditiously as possible, and Ms Aldred provided us with a fairly comprehensive report.

Having received that report, the next question was: what to do? Basically, we just applied the facts as had been presented to us by the independent reviewer to the relevant Standing Orders, as the chair has gone through. In doing so—and this is the second point I wanted to mention—we were very cognisant of the ability to have robust debate and criticism in this Parliament. I like to play hard but fair; I enjoy the cut and thrust of debate, and I give as good as I get, and all of that. And I think it’s important that we maintain that privilege. That in itself is actually a parliamentary privilege: freedom of speech. I would never want to see this debating chamber, and indeed this Parliament, become a sterile place of non-debate. But there is a line, and the line is that the conduct of the member concerned with this committee—and the Standing Orders are very clear that impeding another member in the course of their duty is a contempt of Parliament. We found, as a committee, that that is what had happened, with the assistance of Wendy Aldred, barrister, and we applied the facts to the law. That is what we have concluded.

I’d also make a final point, which is that we were also conscious of upholding Parliament as a good place to work, as well—of being a place that staff and members of Parliament and all who work in this very important building feel safe at work in. The question before the committee was: if this wasn’t contempt of Parliament, what is? Our view was that, to maintain the integrity of the Privileges Committee and maintain the integrity of Parliament, it is important that behaviour that Mr van de Molen accepts was inappropriate and wrong—it’s important that those facts are laid out cleanly and clearly for all to see and appropriate sanction is meted out. So we considered very carefully the issue of apology versus censure. I think, if you think about the other cases we’ve dealt with in the last few weeks—the issue of Mr Wood and Mr Court—they can be fairly distinguished from this case. Mr Wood and others have been asked to apologise, and they’ve done that. This case is the next rung above and, therefore, our recommendation is Mr van de Molen be censured. We endorse that. It’s a troubling matter. But, ultimately, Mr Speaker, you referred the matter appropriately to us, and we’ve acted in a very collegial and bipartisan and consensual manner and, I think, done the right thing in this instance. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I also rise in support of the earlier comments by my colleagues on the Privileges Committee, and, again, I’d just like to acknowledge the way that people from different parties have come together and worked through something that’s been quite difficult. We’ve been quite constructive and innovative in the way that we’ve done it, and I think that, actually, that’s something that gives a bit of hope for the way that our Parliament can function. None the less, we were forced to deal with quite a difficult issue because, on the one hand, as other speakers have outlined, this is a place of vigorous debate. New Zealanders have issues where they strongly disagree with each other and, for most of human history, most disagreements have been settled by might is right, and violence.

We have a unique system of Government, or at least a very rare system of Government, that hasn’t existed for very long in the wider sweep of human history where we, basically, send some people to settle differences amongst different groups in the community by debate—using words, not violence—under a quite arcane but quite useful set of rules to make laws, and, ultimately, people respect the process enough so that for the most part, people follow the laws that the Parliament makes and pay the taxes that it levies. That’s quite an achievement. But the whole thing doesn’t work if Parliament goes from being a place of reason and enlightened discussion using logic and facts and persuasion and appeals to people’s better angels to try and get a consensus, and it instead becomes a place where might is right and people stand over each other and use violence.

So that was the basic problem that we had to overcome, and the question was—[Interruption] My colleague and constituent Paul Goldsmith just said that it wasn’t violence, and I agree with him. But the question was whether there were aspects of this particular incident that were troubling because they would somehow impede the House or impede a member of the House from performing their duties, and it was very difficult, because on the one hand—as other members have said—because this place is really designed to resolve conflicts between different groups in society and we strongly disagree and do so peacefully, there’s often debate and behaviour that is unlike in any other workplace. It would be unacceptable in any other workplace, and that’s actually healthy for society to have this place as an outlet for those conflicts.

The question is: where is the line crossed so that it becomes unacceptable, even here? I think the committee, through a useful debate—and it’s reflected in the report—got to the point where it wasn’t necessarily the fact that the actions were hostile or that they might be offensive or rude or they made someone feel uncomfortable, necessarily. The two issues that the committee really centred on were that the person in this case—Shanan Halbert—was impeded in doing their duties. Specifically, they couldn’t leave the room, for a couple of reasons. One was that they felt they were being physically obstructed, and, two was that they felt that way because, in the words of the person who we took to do the inquiry, they felt like they were being threatened by some of the words—for example, the words “stand up” were taken as an incitement to stand up and perhaps engage in a physical conflict.

I think it’s really important—and I think the committee’s report does a good job—to be clear that the reason this is a contempt and it’s totally unacceptable is because of those specific threatening behaviours and that physical blocking and impeding of a member from leaving the committee and being able to go and do their duty. It’s important we recognise that, because it means that in the future, when somebody looks at this report from the Privileges Committee and perhaps a forthcoming decision for the House to endorse the committee in a potential censure that the Speaker may end up making, people are clear that it’s not because someone was hostile or because they were abrupt or rude or forceful—we need all of those things—but it’s because they did things that were objectively threatening and because they did things that created a situation where the person got physically unable to leave the situation, even though they wanted to, and that is completely unacceptable. That undermines the purpose of our Parliament as a place where conflicts can be resolved peacefully.

So I just wanted to get those comments on record. Certainly, I share with Chris Bishop the will that Parliament is a place that people want to come to—a wide range of people want to come to—where they feel that they can contribute to New Zealand on behalf of the communities that send them here, and feel that there’s going to be more light than heat and that we leave New Zealand as a better place after our three or however many years of service. In order for Parliament to continue functioning, it really needs to be able to keep doing that. Any actions such as those taken by Tim van de Molen, unfortunately, impede parliamentarians from being able to enjoy their job here, and that’s why I endorse this decision and report by the committee. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is a difficult place—it’s been said before; it is said often. This was a difficult case for the Privileges Committee to consider, for a multitude of reasons. Obviously, we had the job of deciding, first off, how to protect the integrity of the staff members who had become witnesses, how to protect a complainant, two MP witnesses, and also how to fortify due process for the person accused—one of our own. That is always the case when the Privileges Committee meets and considers these matters, but, in this case, because the concerns were so serious and of a nature that we don’t often see, there was some delicate and, at times, really difficult questions to answer.

The finding of the fact-finder was not in any way based on the subjective fear or feeling of threat that was felt by Mr Halbert, although that was very clearly noted. It was informed by a number of witnesses and it’s been traversed by our chair the fact that even staff members had all independently said they were sitting there in their place of work, contemplating how best to contact security. It was, of course, reiterated by those MPs that were in the room.

I do want to note that we have had reports, over and over again, about the culture of this place, including details of bullying and much worse. Those conversations still have to happen; they have to be active; processes have to be in place in a way that we don’t continue to see reports, including from the Privileges Committee. But one of the things that I wanted to highlight is that we have an issue in this place where we are repeatedly faced with allegations of bullying, and that this debate should not only be focused on how to preserve the perceived right that we have to—what has been repeated over and over again—robust debate, but, actually, what impact the scale of aggressive debate, which is, I think, what people mean when they say “robust” sometimes, has on actually silencing other debaters. That is also a huge concern out in society right now. In every forum that political issues are debated, there are concerns that those debates are silenced, that people are excluded, forced out, because the debate is—and we can euphemistically call it “robust”, but it’s aggressive.

In this case, the finding wasn’t that Mr Halbert felt threatened, it wasn’t just that the witnesses in the room saw the behaviour as threatening, but that it was objectively threatening behaviour. That’s what we had to sit with and it does happen that it was at such a high degree of breach that it moved over from aggression—and I don’t even know if “bullying”, as a word, would have gotten us over the line, but “threatening behaviour” did. So I’m glad that that happened and that we had to ask ourselves where the line is drawn. But I hope that we don’t sit back and say, “The line is threatening behaviour; is physically blocking an entrance, is physically standing over a member, is missing the end of the bells”—which happened in this case—“to enter the House.”, but we have a conversation that’s actually about the ways that we treat each other and the ways that this place can be harmful to democracy, to democratic debate, including in select committees, including in this House, but also out there, because people are watching and they do deserve better of us.

So this is a good finding and it’s a good process to have had to go through, but it absolutely should not be the end of how we look at debate, how we define “bullying”, how we define “aggression”, and how we define “democracy” as an inclusive thing. Thank you.

Motion agreed to.

SPEAKER: Mr van de Molen, the House has resolved that you be censured for threatening a member on account of their conduct as a presiding officer and impeding them in the discharge of their duties as a member. Your conduct was unacceptable in Parliament, which is a place of debate and not threatening behaviour.

Motions

Parliamentary Precincts—Amendment to the Definition of Parliamentary Precincts

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Justice) on behalf of the Leader of the House: I move, That, under section 25(1) and (2) of the Parliamentary Service Act 2000 and effective on 1 November 2023, this House—replace clause 3(a) of the Parliamentary Service (Parliamentary Precincts) Resolution 2021 with: the land and buildings at 147 Lambton Quay, Wellington, contained in record title WN53A/210 and leased by the Parliamentary Corporation as at the date of this resolution, comprising levels 2-6 of the building, being 3,354m² more or less, and 9 carparks in the basement of the building.

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

Motion agreed to.

New Zealand Bill of Rights Act Declaration of Inconsistency

Voting Age in the Electoral Act 1993 and the Local Electoral Act 2001

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Justice): I move, That the House take note of the Declaration of inconsistency: Voting age in the Electoral Act 1993 and the Local Electoral Act 2001.

We are here to debate the declaration of inconsistency relating to the voting age for both parliamentary and local elections, the Justice Committee’s report on the declaration, and the Government’s response to the declaration. This is the first time the House has followed the new procedures in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act for responding to a declaration of inconsistency. A declaration of inconsistency is a formal statement by a court or tribunal that an Act is inconsistent with fundamental human rights protected by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. In November 2022, the Supreme Court issued a declaration of inconsistency, stating that the voting age as 18, set out on the Electoral Act 1993 and the Local Electoral Act 2001 is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the inconsistency had not been justified. The inconsistency arises because the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act sets out to be free from discrimination on the basis of age for those aged 16 and older.

I would like to thank the Justice Committee for its report on the declaration. The committee received over 500 submissions and heard from 23 submitters. The committee recommended by majority that the Government amend the Local Electoral Act and investigate lowering the minimum voting age in general elections to 16. The majority said that the right to be free from age discrimination should only be limited by good justifications. Both the majority of the committee and the Supreme Court cited evidence provided by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in its report to the High Court. The evidence cited is that people in their mid-teens are generally able to make deliberative decisions such as voting decisions, even if their ability to make more emotionally charged decisions remains underdeveloped. The majority on the committee also discussed the potential for a younger voting age to instil life-long voting habits.

On 14 August, the Minister of Local Government and I tabled the Government response to the declaration. After considering the declaration of inconsistency and the report produced by the Justice Committee, it is the Government’s view that the inconsistency should be eliminated to the extent possible. As part of the Government response, the Minister of Local Government introduced the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill. This bill will lower the voting age to 16 for local elections only.

There are strong arguments in favour of lowering the voting age: 16- and 17-year-olds are far more likely to be living at home, be connected to their community, and have a stable address than those just a few years older. New Zealand, along with the rest of the world, is facing significant issues such as climate change. Young people need to be involved in conversations about these issues and their views need to be heard, including through the ballot box.

I know there are some concerns about whether 16- and 17-year-olds are old enough for this sort of responsibility, but let’s stop and think about some of the things we already allow 16-year-olds to do. Sixteen-year-olds can be held criminally responsible for breaking the law, they can choose to leave home, they can choose where they want to live, choose to leave school, choose to refuse medical treatment, apply for a driver’s licence, apply for a firearms licence, and get an adult passport, and yet we don’t allow them to vote for their local councillor.

As signalled by the Prime Minister in March of this year, the Government has decided to focus on lowering the voting age for local elections only. The bill reflects the differences between how the voting age is set out in legislation. The provisions of the Electoral Act that set the voting age at 18 for parliamentary elections can only be amended if 75 percent of members in the House agree or there is a majority in a referendum. Preparing and progressing a bill that has no prospect of being passed into law would be a costly and time-consuming exercise that would not lead to any practical change. In contrast, the voting age for local government elections can be amended by a simple majority. That is why the Government has decided to focus on a bill that lowers the voting age to 16 for local elections only. I hope that members will take a rights- and evidence-based approach to the future debate on this bill. We stand here as representatives of all our constituents, not just the ones that are eligible to vote for us.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge Make It 16, the advocacy group that initiated this case in the courts and the many other groups and individuals who have been calling on the voting age to be lowered for some time. The advocacy by youth on this issue shows that young people can lead important conversations about the changes that directly impact upon them and I commend them for this work.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m happy to speak on this debate where we’re debating whether the House should take note of the Supreme Court’s declaration—which we agree the House should note. I do want to start by acknowledging the supporters of Make It 16, who may be here and who may be tuning in to this debate. Good on them for having a go and for making their case and for everything that they threw into it. We fundamentally don’t agree with the proposition being put forward, but in a free and open society they should be able to and they should be able to make their case, and good luck to them.

What we saw through the course of the legal consequences of that was a wide range of opinions, actually, through the court process. In August 2020, the High Court looked at the matter and said that 18 was in the range of reasonable alternatives. It found that there was a reasonable limit on the right to be free from age-related discrimination, and declined to issue a declaration of inconsistency. So that was the High Court.

Then it went to the Court of Appeal in December 2021. The Court of Appeal looked at it. It disagreed with the High Court and said that the Attorney-General had not showed that the inconsistency with the Human Rights Act around freedom from discrimination was justified—i.e., that the Attorney-General hadn’t made the case. But, despite its finding, the Court of Appeal declined to make a declaration, noting the political nature of the issue—i.e., it concluded that it was something that the normal political decision-making processes through Parliament should work out for itself, and it wasn’t for the courts to get involved.

Then, in November 2022, the Supreme Court had its go and it agreed with the Court of Appeal that the Attorney-General hadn’t justified the inconsistency with the discrimination of people aged 16 and 17, and that the case hadn’t been made. But, in contrast to the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court decided to make that declaration of consistency. But, of course, within the Supreme Court, there was a dissenting view from Justice Kós, who had a different interpretation, which is to say that he considered that in section 12 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act it referred to the age of 18, and that trumped section 19, which had the right to freedom from discrimination, such as is outlined in the human rights legislation. And so he thought that it didn’t need to be justified in that way. So anyway, we ended up with the Supreme Court saying that the rights of 16- and 17-year-olds being discriminated against—which is something that’s covered in the human rights legislation—hadn’t been justified.

Then, we got all the media reports and all the commentary, which is to say that the Supreme Court says it’s unjustified—this breach of human rights. And then you got into a bit of a semantics argument, because the Supreme Court, in its decision, was quite clear that it didn’t say that it couldn’t be justified, it’s just that it hadn’t been justified, because the Crown lawyers hadn’t gone out there and tried to make the case as to why 16- and 17-year-olds should be treated differently. It had, in fact, defended the case on a completely different ground, which is to say that it’s none of the court’s business; it’s for Parliament to decide the voting age—that was its view. And so it didn’t even attempt to justify it. So there wasn’t a meeting of minds between the Crown, the Government, and the courts—with the Crown making the argument it’s for Parliament to decide what the voting age is, and the court ultimately deciding that it didn’t actually make the effort to justify the discrimination against 16-and 17-year-olds. So that’s where we’re at.

So what are we left to do with it in Parliament? I think the appropriate thing to do is to take note of that declaration from the Supreme Court. By the way, it’s the first one we’ve had under this new regime. So it is important that we have this debate, we consider it carefully, and it’s absolutely appropriate that we sit down in the Justice Committee, take submissions, and give it proper thought and attention. It’s also appropriate that the Government respond.

Our fundamental view on this side of the House is that, you know, we’re more in the camp of the Court of Appeal, which is to say—well, you can say what you like about whether it was justified or not, but, ultimately, it’s something that should be dealt with within the political arena, as it has been in the past and will be in the future. Ultimately, it’s democratically elected Governments that are accountable to the public, that have to make a decision about this.

When you think about the age of voting, you can make a case for 16-year-olds voting, you can make a case for 18-year-olds voting, you can make a case for 15-year-olds—there’s a wide variety of cases, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. We’ve drawn it at 18. The only point I’d make is that 16- and 17-year-olds are treated extremely differently when it comes to the justice system—in the Youth Court and so forth—and so there is a—

Golriz Ghahraman: Seventeen-year-olds are in adult courts—all of them; every single one, actually.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: And I’m being heckled by the Greens. Well, that’s OK. That’s how it should be in the Parliament. We should be heckled from time to time, and that’s absolutely appropriate. So we think 18 is sufficient.

Look, there’s a wide variety of views. In fact, going around schools, the group of people who are most opposed to 16- and 17-year-olds voting, it seems to me, are the 18-year-olds, who tend to say quite frequently that “No way—no way—should we be voting at 16. Now that I’m 18, we should be voting.”—and that’s appropriate.

So, look, we can have these debates, but the primary point I would be making is that this speaks volumes, ultimately, for where this Government’s headspace is at in the justice area. In the last week of Parliament—as in what we hope will be the dying stages of this Labour Government of six years—where, in the justice space, there are real serious issues around violent crime, around youth crime, and huge backlogs and delays to justice, so that people’s lives are being kept on hold for years, awaiting justice, we have a Government that is focused on things such as reducing the voting age to 16, which, if you look at where public opinion is at and what the public wants the Government focused on, is not a high priority.

Then we come to the Government’s response, where they say, “Well, we basically agree, but we can’t change the constitutional arrangements because there is a high threshold for changing the voting age in general elections.” But, fortunately, they discovered that they could do it at local elections without having a supermajority—hence they are introducing a bill, which we’ll be debating next, on reducing the voting age to 16 for local elections. We can’t see any logic at all for having a different voting age for general elections and local elections. The Minister of Justice was saying something about people being more likely to be living at home when they’re 16, but I couldn’t quite understand the logic behind that argument at all. It makes sense to keep the voting ages aligned. We see no great push on the part of New Zealanders as a whole to reduce the voting age to 16 at this time.

We would wish that the justice Minister and the justice sector and the justice officials would be focused on those pressing issues that we face in the justice space, around violent crime, around youth crime, and around delays to justice in the court system. They’ve got more than enough to deal with there, rather than being distracted with this and banning hate speech, and a whole lot of other things that they have been distracted with over the past few years. So I think this has been a useful exercise that we’ve been through, and it’s absolutely appropriate that in Parliament we take any declaration from the Supreme Court very seriously, and we have. So it is an honour to be part of this debate. Thank you very much.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I want to acknowledge the young people in the gallery today—you might be watching or listening at home—who want to participate in New Zealand’s liberal democracy and who want to have the opportunity to vote. I really, really appreciate your enthusiasm.

However, the law currently says that that franchise is not available until you’re 18 years old. I recognise that, for some of you, you feel you want to make a contribution now, to choose with the vote the political party that best represents your interests. And you may question, given what you feel is your maturity and your ability to make decisions about so many other aspects in your life, why it is that you’re not afforded this particular right. In many ways, voting is the ultimate last rite of passage for New Zealanders, isn’t it? It used to be a 21st birthday party, because 21 was the age where you could legally drink. It used to be 15—15 for some of us—which was the age when we could obtain a driver’s licence. But 18 is the age that Parliament has decided.

Now, even though the various courts have pointed out, quite rightly, that the fact that 16-year-olds are not able to vote is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, I would also point out that that is not uncommon—much legislation is introduced to Parliament that is not consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Where it is inconsistent, the Ministry of Justice provides a report to Parliament, called a “bill of rights assessment”. A New Zealand Bill of Rights Act compliance report is often provided where a piece of legislation infringes on rights that are set out but for good reason, but it’s always up to Parliament to balance what that reason is.

The Ministry of Justice is responsible for scrutinising proposed legislation to look at whether it meets New Zealand Bill of Rights Act requirements. The Ministry of Justice advises the AttorneyGeneral on all bills—so they do this for all bills, with the exception of appropriation bills, which are the ones that the Government uses to legitimise its Budgets. It assesses all legislation to confirm whether it’s consistent with the Act, and if the Attorney-General agrees that there are any issues, then they must notify the House.

Now, the section 7 reports, prepared by the Ministry of Justice, are not binding on the House, they’re not binding on Governments, but they present very clear alternatives. If there are to be laws passed by this House which infringe on people’s rights or treat people differently for any reason, then the bar, the threshold, needs to be very high. But it’s up to Parliament, which is sovereign, to make those decisions.

In this case, ACT’s justice spokesperson, Nicole McKee, who sat on this committee and considered this report, proposed that ACT should not support the conclusions and recommendations that the Government amend the Local Electoral Act 2001 to provide for a minimum voting age of 16 years in local elections. ACT does not agree with that, I’m sorry. And ACT does not agree with the Government investigating lowering the minimum voting age in general elections to 16.

There are a number of reasons for that. It’s because, firstly, 16-year-olds, ACT believes, have a whole lot of other things that they should be focused on with their lives, such as study, work, sport, community life, community work, and that voting in parliamentary elections is something that can reasonably be delayed until you reach the age of 18 without any risk of infringing your rights in any great way.

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Really—really?

SIMON COURT: Yeah, really—really.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: It’s not what the Supreme Court said.

SIMON COURT: Well, ACT disagrees with the Supreme Court. But we do agree with Justice Kós, who explained that section 12 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which specifically states that 18-year-olds have the right to vote, does trump section 19 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as to freedom from discrimination. And it is correct that when a bill is set out, the principles and purpose of the bill are in the early clauses—say, 3, 4, and 5—and that the other matters that explain how a bill works are in subsequent clauses, and there is a hierarchy to assessing those clauses. So ACT would agree with Justice Kós that section 12 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act does trump section 19. But, of course, it’s up to Parliament to decide, and ACT believes that the status quo is acceptable.

We do appreciate your passion and enthusiasm for participating in parliamentary democracy by being able to cast your vote. Eighteen isn’t that long to wait. We hope, when you turn up, you’ll appreciate the reasoned, rational, liberal arguments put forward by the ACT Party and you cast your party vote for ACT when you get a chance. With, that, I’d like to close our submission. Thank you very much.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just want to rise to notice that this is actually a historic debate. It’s a historic day. This is the first time that this Parliament is debating a declaration of inconsistency in legislation with our fundamental rights in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, pursuant to legislation that this same Parliament passed last year unanimously, that we all agreed, that where one of the higher courts in our nation considers our fundamental rights and finds that legislation—even legislation that all supreme method of regulating that has been passed by Parliament, either present or past—that we should stop and take notice.

We shouldn’t just take notice. We should have a select committee process, knowing that that breach is live, receive a report, as we’ve done, and debate that report in this House with the knowledge that we have today that our electoral laws are in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provision on age discrimination. We now get to decide whether we will continue to breach, or whether we will correct that wrong.

To say that someone’s fundamental right to vote—arguably the right that underpins fulfilment of all our other rights—the right to have a say in the way that all of our other interests are governed is something that we can put off for people, that it’s not urgent, that Parliament shouldn’t urgently take note and introduce legislation to correct it, is absolutely wild to me. What if it was happening to one of us? If someone said to one of us, “Your right to vote—which you have, as recognised by the Supreme Court—is going to be suspended for two years while we deal with other stuff.”, we would find that egregious.

So I do commend the Minister for introducing a bill which we will debate after this report has been debated, so I don’t intend to go too far into the merits of local election voting rights for young people. I would only say that I wish it was called “extending” or “expanding” the voting right rather than “lowering” the age. But that’s what we’re debating today. We need to take notice. We’re breaching a fundamental right that for some New Zealanders we get to either fulfil or delay for two years.

Others have talked about the types of other legal rights or obligations—let’s face it—that young people have that sit inconsistently with this breach. So anywhere from the ability to leave school, to drive a car, to have sex, to—and I would say, actually, surprisingly, National and ACT overlooking this is something that should be noted—they work and pay tax, guys. Young people are being taxed without a right to representation. How does that sit with the proponents of taxpayers’ rights?

Well, it doesn’t sit right with the Supreme Court or the Electoral Commission. We’ve had reports over and over again from experts. We know that overseas, where young people can vote, engagement has gone up. We know—and I think this is what the Minister was outlining—that if young people become eligible to vote whilst they’re still all at school, living at home in one place where we can introduce civics education, where we can give them their enrolment packs, that they are much more likely to vote in the first election when they become eligible. There is solid evidence to say that those who do vote in that first election will continue to vote. So you’re creating voters who are not just young but lifetime voters. You’re strengthening our democracy for generations and generations to come.

I will say this about the test that the Supreme Court, and every court, undertakes when we look at fulfilment of our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights: they can be impeded upon only to an extent that’s justifiable in a democratic society. The reason that this test needs to be set at a very, very, very high standard is that our rights are universal—they don’t depend on us showing any merit, moral goodness, knowledge, level of education.

We don’t talk about the classic rights to free speech or to have a fair trial, or even the economic and social rights that this other side of the House may not like—like the right to housing, the right to education—and we certainly don’t talk about the right to vote being subject to a necessary test of education, experience, or understanding. That is a slippery slope, and that is why the Supreme Court has found, has stood together with all of the experts on both electoral law, human rights law, and the young people who, en masse, have worked tirelessly to tell us that they are interested, that they know that they have this right, that they want it, and they won’t stop until we recognise and fulfil that right.

The reason this is limited to local elections is that we need a supermajority for the whole lot. It’s not good enough. We won’t stop working until all young people, 16- and 17-year-olds, are free from age discrimination in their voting rights. But to say that we can do a little bit when we find out that a fundamental right is breached is absolutely the right thing to do.

So I commend the report and we breathe a sigh of relief for this small step, a first step, not only in this House, recognising that the courts get to tell us when we’ve breached, but to meaningfully debate those breaches and do all we can to fulfil the fundamental rights of New Zealanders we are here as lawmakers to protect. Our mandate depends on our ability to protect and fulfil those rights. So I commend it to the House

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on this extremely important constitutional matter as the chair of the Justice Committee, to whom this first declaration of inconsistency was referred. I will make some brief remarks about our report, but first, given the constitutional significance of this debate, I did want to acknowledge two constitutional personalities.

For two glorious months when I was 23, I had the office right opposite Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s, where I worked as a graduate solicitor. For two months while I was there, I probably did the least work that I’ve ever done, because I couldn’t help listening to Sir Geoffrey on the phone. It was pure public law theatre. Sir Geoffrey was, of course, the architect of our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and since its passage, in 1990, he has repeatedly spoken about the need for our constitution to evolve and mature. So it is a great privilege to be able to speak today at a time when we are considering our first declaration of inconsistency.

The second constitutional personality I’d like to acknowledge are sitting, in part, in the gallery with us today. Can I acknowledge the Make It 16 campaign. Your organisation, your engagement, your intellect, and your grit has demonstrated true campaigning prowess. Not only did you campaign but you took your case through every layer of the hierarchy of our courts, and that was powerful to watch. But it also bolstered your own argument that 16-year-olds’ voices should be heard in the political space. As we heard submissions, there were a lot of different views, but some very powerful views from young people, including those in Make It 16—also some very robust views from the Children’s Commissioner.

The committee ended up making two strong recommendations, which we’ve heard about, one in relation to the Local Electoral Act and the other that the Government investigate lowering the minimum voting age in general elections to 16, taking into consideration the legal consequences, of course, as well. I think it is rather poetic that the very next bill that we will be considering gives effect to the advocacy and the recommendations of the Justice Committee by proposing that change. Because it’s the next bill, I won’t dwell on many of the arguments that others in the House have, because I will, I hope, have the opportunity to speak to that in the next bill. But, given the significance of the constitutional shift that we’re seeing here today, I may make some brief remarks on constitutional process.

In the 18th century, it was the Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu who argued, as the centrepiece for his thinking, that a fair society means that power shouldn’t be over concentrated but should exist, as he called it, in a “trias politica”. His was a concept of government divided into legislative, executive, and judicial branches acting independently of each other. And, while these three branches are fundamental to our democracy, they don’t operate in silos. The change that we made in December last year legislated for the process that we have been going through. It creates a bridge between the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature. It allows important conversations on our constitutional make-up.

Although this is the first time we’ve considered a declaration of inconsistency, the committee, I think, felt that it was an unusual set of decisions through the courts, because it wasn’t so much about the substance of the issue itself. In my reading of the courts’ decisions, what every single layer of the courts did was point their finger squarely back at Parliament. They were saying this is an important issue for Parliament to consider. The first two courts, the High Court and then the Court of Appeal, did that by choosing not to issue a declaration of inconsistency—ironically. The Supreme Court brought it straight to our door. And when they do that, we have an obligation to consider the merits of the substantive issues in front of us, not whether the courts got it right, not the detail of those court decisions. We have to acknowledge the fact that the courts were saying, “It is time. It’s time to consider whether 16-year-olds should be able to vote in local body and in central.” And we did.

Committee members across the House were actually very engaged with the number of submissions that came in front of us. And, for the majority of us, we were persuaded by the arguments made by Make It 16 and people like the Children’s Commissioner, who made sound arguments for a split age restriction on the basis of hot and cold cognition. We are not the first to do this. We were also persuaded by the arguments from Scotland, who already have this in place but, not only that, have engaged in research that demonstrates that if 16-year-olds vote—if they can vote at 16—they are more likely to continue to vote.

I began by talking about the bridge between the arms of government—and today, in many ways, we stand here on the bridge—but this isn’t just about referring a matter back to Parliament for discussion. There is a creation, when the judiciary takes steps like this, of an adjacent possibility. What it does is it creates a spotlight on an issue. It makes us consider what to do next. So I’ll end there by again saying that I think it is so poetic that the very next bill we consider will be a direct result of your advocacy.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well, I love tenacious people, and you have to say that the Make It 16 campaign has been a lesson in tenacity. It’s been one that has gone on for a considerable period of time and went all the way to the Supreme Court.

I don’t intend to repeat the potted history of the court process that has been covered by previous speakers, but I think it’s worth pointing out that, as some have already said, age in law is arbitrary. The Minister of Justice, in moving this motion—which we support, although we don’t support the findings of the report—pointed out all of the things that a 16-year-old can do.

I’ll point out a few things that a 16-year-old can’t do, even after any change in legislation. Now, they may sound flippant, but the purpose is to highlight the arbitrariness of age: can’t get a full driver’s licence; can’t buy a Lotto ticket; can’t enter into contracts, and I’ll come back to that in the context of local council; can’t buy alcohol; can’t buy firecrackers; can’t enter a casino; can’t buy cigarettes.

Now, some would say that’s appropriate, a justified limitation on their human rights; that’s the issue we’re debating. But I would also point out that the age of majority in law in New Zealand, as I understand it, is 20. The Age of Majority Act 1970 is still in force, which says that the age of full majority is 20.

We are going to have these discussions at the boundary, and I was fascinated at the Make It 16 campaign’s submission that “the future affects them more than anybody”—that’s true; they’re going to live longer, on average, than most of us.

But why not 15? Now, I’m not being flippant in saying that, because the very same principle applies and is justified on the basis that a 15-year-old—

Arena Williams: It doesn’t.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, I’m amazed at the reaction over the other side, just to, one day, potentially, a 15-year-old whose birthday is the day after the election can’t vote but a 16year-old can on their 16th birthday. That’s the arbitrary nature of it. But the justification for 15 would be that they would turn 18 in the term of the subsequent Parliament. It’s an easy argument to make, only it wasn’t made.

Now, the really interesting thing about the case that was made was that it was the Electoral Act and the Local Electoral Act that was a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. But if one takes that to its logical conclusion on the grounds that 18 is discriminatory, then we get into this rather odd circular argument that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act itself is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, because section 12 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act sets the age to vote in this country. Well, it doesn’t actually do that—what it says is it gives a right to every citizen over the age of 18. So the counterfactual to that is that it removes that right to every citizen under the age of 18. And so the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is, essentially, inconsistent with itself. Now, that is a legal oddity in my view.

Now, I was a member of the Privileges Committee that had referred to it the question of the declaration of inconsistency with the case of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) and the Attorney-General and Taylor. Now, I happened, long in the tooth that I am, to have also been in Parliament when the legislation that gave rise to that declaration of inconsistency was passed. It was a member’s bill in the name of Paul Quinn, probably back—well, it must have been before 2011, so 2009 or 2010, where the right of prisoners to vote was removed. There is still an arbitrary removal of the right to vote if you’re in prison for longer than three years, but this removed that threshold.

Now, this is relevant because it goes to what we’re actually doing here. The genesis was that case. But the bill itself had a section 7 BORA vet against it anyway, so the House was very mindful that the bill it was considering could be determined by the courts to be a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It is a measure of the sovereignty of this place that it passed that law, notwithstanding that knowledge, and that’s a really important principle.

Now, Vanushi Walters talked glowingly of the court’s decisions, and she has every right to do that. But Parliament remains sovereign on this question, and when we, as a Privileges Committee, considered this particular point, I stressed—and it did kind of get into the report that led to the legislation that was passed unanimously—that it’s a different thing if the courts make a declaration of inconsistency where there has been no BORA vet from one where it has and that a different process should take place, because, actually, what Parliament has done is already considered that. And yes, it’s still appropriate to refer it to the Government, the executive, and for a select committee to have a consideration of that declaration. But the process would be different if the Taylor case was declared inconsistent under this new legislation, because, actually, Parliament already considered that point, and it should be a much more expeditious process.

In this case, that didn’t happen. In fact, the two pieces of legislation that were passed, the Electoral Act and the Local Electoral Act, straddled the BORA—in fact, no, they might both be after it. So they were cognisant of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act when they were passed and there was no vet then, which is really interesting. So it’s appropriate that we do have the select committee process that we’ve gone through. It’s not appropriate that the Crown then roll over to the court’s decisions. This is a sovereign place. This place decides what legislation comes and goes, not the courts, when it comes to anything other than judge-made law.

I’m just a little bit worried about the nature of some of the speeches that we’ve heard this afternoon that seem to be perhaps less than strident in that vital constitutional principle. We may well decide, either by majority with the Local Electoral Act or with the reserved provisions of the Electoral Act, to make a change, but we do so because this House decides that.

Arena Williams: That’s what the Supreme Court said.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, that’s right. And it’s very interesting that the Supreme Court also made the point that the Crown, in its submission, didn’t actually argue the justification; it just said, “Parliament makes laws. Parliament is sovereign.” So it kind of may well have convinced the courts if it sought to do so. So in a way, the declaration made itself, because the Crown didn’t argue against the position that it was justified in the circumstances. It just said, “Well, Parliament’s made the law.” Perhaps the defence in the case could have been different. I’ll just say it in that way.

Now, I’ll finish by coming back to the question of being 18 to borrow money—and the lawyers in the Chamber may correct me. I’m not sure a person under the age of 18 can buy a house, can have real property in their name. Now, that’s a very interesting issue on two counts.

Again, it’s a breach of their human right to own property, real property, but also, ironically, in the local council elections. Ms Walters talks about taxation and representation—and by the way 15-year-olds can work and pay tax as well. But local council elections are generally ratepayer elections. And the irony of putting it to 16 is that those 16-year-olds will never be able to own a property under current law and therefore won’t be ratepayers. Their parents might be, but depending on how many 16- to 18-year-olds are in the household, there may be several more votes than the ratepayer base—some would argue—could justify.

That said, this is an important discussion to have. I’m glad we’re having it, but I think we should be very, very cautious not to undermine the absolute sovereignty of this place to decide important issues like how old one should be when we vote.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am taking a short call to address two, just two, of the points arisen in this debate. The first point is a point made by the Hon Michael Woodhouse when he said that age in law is arbitrary. He took us through his reasoning in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act, and there’s an important point here which we need to note, which is: in the Human Rights Act there is a group—within age—who can be discriminated against. Those are under 16-year-olds. That’s section 21(1)(i)(iii), Mr Woodhouse, that provides for Parliament making decisions about under 16-year-olds which may be different from their counterparts who are 18. That is why, in law, it’s wrong to say that age is arbitrary when we’re looking at the voting rights of 18-year-olds. In fact, in all of the court’s decisions, it was important that this age of 18 was arbitrary, but under 16 one might make a case for a different decision.

The point here is that these decisions, when we do draw a line in the sand in Parliament—which Parliament is perfectly entitled to do, around age—they should be made with reason and backed by evidence. The point Mr Woodhouse made about the Crown not advancing a position that the age of 16 was consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act might have something to do with the absolute lack of a case made by the Opposition benches about why 16-year-olds shouldn’t be able to vote.

There is no case why 16-year-olds shouldn’t be able to vote. The evidence is quite the contrary to that. The Minister made that case in her statement when she said that people in their mid-teens are able to make deliberative decisions but their capacity to make more emotionally charged decisions is limited. That was the evidence heard by the select committee from the Children’s Commissioner in their hot and cold cognitive analysis. The Children’s Commissioner presented to the Justice Committee that the evidence shows that cognitive abilities reach adult levels at different ages for different types of decision making. In this regard, the committee found that the distinction drawn between hot and cold cognition was useful, and voting was cited as an example of decision-making processes that utilise cold cognition. That’s the kind of decisions we young people can make, a decision about the things which affect them in their lives, which affect their futures and the kind of New Zealand that they want to live in.

On this side of the House we believe that young people are perfectly well set up to make those decisions in their lives and for their communities. There is no evidence to the contrary and that’s not being advanced by the Opposition in this debate.

The second point, and there’s only two points because I will be brief, is the point that the Hon Paul Goldsmith raised. When the Green Party was heckling him, he said, “That’s how it should be in Parliament; we should be heckled.” Who’s doing the heckling? When we look around this House, can we say that it is representative of the New Zealand that we seek to serve as parliamentarians? Can we say that the voices here, who we would abrogate their rights, are doing the heckling? Absolutely not, because the 16-year-olds who have made their voices heard—Make It 16 campaign—who have been out there on the streets, petitioning MPs, making their case online, taking it to the schools; they are not here to heckle the Hon Paul Goldsmith, they are not here to participate in this debate, and so I say I support their campaign, and that’s why it’s been a privilege to speak on this debate.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the House take note of the Declaration of inconsistency: Voting age in the Electoral Act 1993 and the Local Electoral Act 2001.

Ayes 106

New Zealand Labour 62; New Zealand National 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kerekere.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 96, Noes 10.

Bills

Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill

First Reading

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Minister of Local Government): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill.

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

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: I move, That the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

In November last year, the Supreme Court granted a declaration of inconsistency with the Electoral Act and the Local Electoral Act. The court declared that the minimum voting age of 18 years was inconsistent with section 19 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act: the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of age. This case was brought to the court by the youth advocacy group Make It 16. I would like to acknowledge this group for their effort and determination to stand up and be the voice of young people in the court proceedings.

In March this year, the Prime Minister confirmed that the Government would introduce legislation this term to lower the voting age for local elections to 16 years of age, and the Government has done just that. This bill amends the Local Electoral Act to give more young people a voice in who represents them and their communities. It gives them the ability to vote or to stand as a candidate but, more than that, it gives them the opportunity to take a greater part in our local democratic system. To do this, the bill will reduce the minimum voting age from 18 to 16 for local elections.

The bill will create a new category of youth electors in the Local Electoral Act. It will also establish a youth electoral roll, which will be maintained by the Electoral Commission to the same high standards of security and integrity as the parliamentary roll. In New Zealand, all voters who are New Zealand citizens can stand as candidates in local elections, so 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to do this too, and, as always, voters will be able to decide who is best to represent them and their communities.

The bill does make one distinction: for participating in elections under the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. These are elections for licensing trusts and community trusts that are included in the triennial elections. In this case, the Government has decided to keep the age at 18 for standing as a candidate or voting in these elections. This lines up with the alcohol purchasing age of 18.

The bill is an answer to a call that has gone on for too long. We have been told time and time again by our young people that they deserve to vote and represent the communities they live in, and have a voice in decisions that will have long-term consequences for them. They’ve made submissions to select committee inquiries, lodged petitions to Parliament, organised protests, and appeared outside this very building. On their fight to vote, they went all the way to our highest court. As we all know, the Make It 16 group won their case in the Supreme Court. The court said that the age discrimination in the Local Electoral Act had not been justified.

There has been, and may continue to be, criticism that young people are not mature enough to vote. I do not agree. In its report to the High Court, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner cited a 2019 study that people in their mid-teens are generally able to make deliberate decisions comparable to voting. From this study, the commissioner reported that when situations call for deliberation in the absence of high levels of emotion such as voting, the ability of an individual to reason and consider alternative courses of action reaches adult levels during the mid-teen years.

The Justice Committee recently completed an inquiry into the Supreme Court’s declaration of inconsistency. The committee recommended by majority that legislation should be introduced to lower the voting age for local elections. The majority on the committee noted that the arguments they found persuasive included that 16- and 17-year-olds are likely to be better connected to their communities than 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds, who often leave home for work or study opportunities; that those who begin voting as soon as they are eligible are more likely to maintain a lifelong habit of voting; and that the evidence shows that when it comes to voting, 16- and 17-year-olds are capable of deliberating, reasoning, and considering options at adult levels.

We already have young people with passion, purpose, and an eagerness to lead that are out and active within their communities. They see opportunities for positive change, a chance for something different—something better.

One may ask why we aren’t looking at lowering the voting age for parliamentary elections as well. While the Government is required to respond to the court’s declaration, as the Prime Minister has said before, we can’t justify work on a bill that we know will not get the support it needs. It’s entrenched, so it needs 75 percent majority support in the House to pass. We know we would not get that level of support in this Parliament, so instead we’re focusing on local elections as part of our response to the court’s declaration.

This is not a simple bill. Changing the minimum voting age for local elections alone is complex. As it currently stands, the Local Electoral Act uses the parliamentary roll as the basis for voter eligibility. It essentially piggybacks off the Electoral Act. With such complexity, there is room for change and improvements, if needed. I look forward to and welcome submissions on these during the full select committee phase. I know we have some great minds across New Zealand, and we will certainly have some passionate young people that should be heard.

The bill has a commencement date of 1 March 2028, in time for the 2028 local elections. I know that some will be disappointed that this change cannot be implemented sooner. Local electoral changes are always challenging to implement, because they need to fit within two electoral cycles: local and parliamentary. That’s particularly the case for this bill, because the bulk of the implementation responsibility falls to the Electoral Commission. The complexity of the system changes needed for a local elections - only model and the timing of the electoral cycle means that the Electoral Commission would not be able to design and implement system changes in time for the 2025 local elections, but the bill also includes the ability to bring the commencement date forward by up to a year if the changes can be put in place earlier. We have much work to do. But I am confident that we can work to address the issue of human rights raised in the court’s declaration.

In conclusion, the Government was required to respond to the Supreme Court’s declaration of inconsistency. This bill forms part of that response. It will go through a full select committee process, where New Zealanders will have the opportunity to have their say. The question of allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to participate in local elections will be for the next Parliament to determine, and I look forward to that discussion. But for the time being, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Here we are; we’re in the final week of this Parliament sitting in this Chamber. We’re about to go to the election. We’ve got a Government that’s been in power for six years, and in the final week, what are they doing? They’re worried about lowering the voting age in local body elections, so that tells you what you need to know about the headspace of this Government and where its priorities lie.

We don’t agree with this bill and we won’t be supporting it—not because we’ve got anything against 16- and 17-year-olds. We love 16- and 17-year-olds and we want them to thrive and do the best, but, ultimately, we have an 18-year-old voting age and we have for a very long time now, and the argument for changing it is based on some very weak foundations. One is that we’ve had this declaration of inconsistency from the Supreme Court which we’ve just debated, and the Supreme Court said that the voting age at 18 breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in relation to discriminating against 16- and 17-year-olds, and that that discrimination had not been justified.

Now, most people looking at that will say, “Oh, it’s an unjustified breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—isn’t that a terrible thing?” But that’s not exactly what they meant. What they meant is that it simply had not been justified, because the Crown, on the side of the Government when it was arguing the case, did not make the case. The Crown simply said, “Actually, we don’t think it’s anything for the courts to decide. Parliament decides the voting age, and we’re not going to argue that point.” So the Supreme Court didn’t say that the voting age of 18 couldn’t be justified; it simply said that it hadn’t been justified by the Government of the day.

Now, we firmly believe it could be justified and it is justified, simply by the fact that the line has to be drawn somewhere, and the line of 16-year-olds’ rights and 18-year-olds’ rights and 20yearolds’ rights varies across the spectrum. It’s made quite explicit in this bill, actually, because when we come to the local council voting rules where they want to reduce the voting age to 16, they also exclude voting on local alcohol bills, because the alcohol age is 18, and that is discriminating against 16- and 17-year-olds not being able to buy alcohol, but we do that because Parliament and society as a whole, for a very long time, has decided that’s the appropriate age.

So there are lines to be drawn. You can argue about it. There will be some 16-year-olds who will be fantastically interested in politics and fully equipped. I have no criticisms of the ability of some 16-year-olds to vote, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and that’s for Parliament to decide, and that’s perfectly appropriate. So if we’ve got a voting age of 18 for general elections, I can’t see any logic in changing the voting age for local elections, because as the Minister himself has pointed out, that very much complicates the system and creates a vast and expensive apparatus being developed specifically for local elections.

One of the arguments that’s sort of put forward is that at local elections we’ve got a problem with not enough people turning out to vote and if we get a few 16- and 17-year-old voters, we might get a few more people voting. Well, I think that’s a very long bow, and I have a very simple view in terms of voter turnout: it is the job of candidates to persuade people to come out and vote for them—nobody else. That’s right—if you can’t get anybody to come out and vote for you, it’s not anybody else’s fault but your own. So if you’re standing for Parliament, that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to get out and persuade people to vote, and if you’re standing for a local council or a local board, it’s your job to get out there and persuade people to vote for you—that’s your job. So changing the voting age is not going to fix it in particular.

My second objection to all this is around the Government’s priorities and what it says of the Government’s priorities, because this is broadly in the justice space. It also integrates with the local government space. And the point I’ve been making is: one week, the final week of Parliament, when in the broader justice sector, we’ve got real problems with violent crime. We’ve got real problems with youth crime, and the ram-raiders running amok up and down the country, terrorising the retail sector and being of great concern to people.

Thirdly, you’ve got very long delays to justice wherever you look, and people’s lives have been on hold for years. There are real, massive challenges, and instead of focusing on that, effectively, this Government wants to have all these officials working away on the complicated arrangements in electoral law and spending the next few months trying to figure out how to effectively reduce the voting age and hearing the thousands of submissions. The reality is that every Government has to work out what its priorities are, because you cannot do everything, and so you’ve got to work out what your priorities are. If this is their priority, what I would say to you is that they’ve got their priorities wrong. They need to be focused on the things that people really worry about. I’m a very hard-working candidate in Epsom at the moment and I go out doorknocking all the time, and when I’m at those doors and I knock, there are two things that people raise time and time again. They say, “We’re worried about the cost of living and we’re worried about the law and order.” I’ve never knocked on any door where anyone says, “The number one issue for me is that we’ve got to reduce the voting age to 16.” I haven’t heard it—I haven’t heard it.

So that’s what we need to be focused on, and this is a Government that has always had very strange priorities, like I say, in the justice sector around electoral law. It’s on violent crime, it’s on youth crime, it’s around extending the courts, and if you want to get into electoral law, the one useful thing the Government could do is repeal its own Act which moved away from equal voting rights. If you’re worried about human rights and you’re worried about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, removing the basic right of New Zealanders to have equal voting rights and an equal say in who governs them has been taken away in the Canterbury Regional Council bill and they should be repealing that if they’re concerned about voting rights, not this bill.

So this is a muddled and confused Government when it comes to its priorities, and that is why I think we’re finding that people are hanging up the hook on this Government and waiting with bated breath over the next few weeks for a change, because they want a Government that is focused on the things that really concern the community. What really concerns the community in the justice and the electoral sector is dealing more effectively with the real, serious violent crime that we see in our community, dealing effectively with the ram-raiders and the youth crime and dealing effectively with the long delays to justice that we’re seeing. These are very difficult problems and we should have our officials over in justice and in the Electoral Commission and all those people focused on those issues. The Electoral Commission, rather, should be focused on ensuring that we have equal voting rights in this country, not on this issue that they have given to them today.

So on that basis, now my final words will be to the Make It 16 group that started this off. Yep, they’ll be looking and saying, “Well, this guy’s not agreeing with us. Well, that’s no good.” That’s unfortunately how politics works; you don’t win every argument. Good luck to them for the efforts that they’ve made and good luck to them for the campaigning, and keep trying, and no criticism whatsoever—go for it. Go for gold. You’ve raised some very good arguments, it’s just that we think, when we’re dealing with the priorities of New Zealand as we face them today, that this is not the number one issue. Actually, most New Zealanders, if you ask them, are comfortable with the voting age that we’ve have had for a long time, which is 18. On that basis, Madam Speaker, we will be voting against this bill.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Just responding to the previous speaker—God forbid the House of Representatives should be focused on constitutional governance in this country. Very surprising. The member also referred to what else we’re doing in the justice space. I hope that member sticks around for the remainder of the week where about half of what we are doing in this week relates to the justice area.

It is a pleasure to take a call in relation to this bill. I’m going to use some of my brief time, actually, just to challenge some of what Michael Woodhouse said in his previous speech on the declaration, because it is important. Because for those young people who did raise the issue of Make It 16—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I’m having a bit of trouble with this, because we are now not addressing the previous item of business; we are addressing the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill. So as the member continues with her speech, can she be very careful that the comments she makes fall within the scope of bill.

VANUSHI WALTERS: Thank you, Madam Speaker, for that clarification. Yes, I believe I will address this issue, which is that this bill has arisen because of a declaration of inconsistency that came from the Justice Committee where we made a specific recommendation that the voting age be lowered.

There has been comment in this House that if Parliament is supreme and has already considered a section 7 report, why should courts be able to send a declaration back to the House? It is because we don’t always receive the section 7 report at the end of the process. It comes to select committee. The bill that passes through the House may not be relevant in terms of that report.

The other is the passage of time. In terms of the setting of age, in 1974, the age of voting was changed for general elections to 18. Nobody is arguing that Parliament is not supreme, but there is a point of difference between legality and inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is not America, where, if there is an inconsistency, the courts can strike down. The courts have simply said, “reconsider this”, which we have.

I would say to the Make It 16 campaigners: the fact of your challenge is equally as important as what’s proposed in the bill. I look forward to reading your submissions as they make their way into the next Parliament. Kia ora.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Here we are, three days to go, in the dying days of this Government, and we are talking about the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill. Wow, isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that an interesting topic?

As the local government spokesperson, I tell you what: as I travel round this country, talking to local governments and talking to local councils and talking to local communities, do I hear continuously that this is the fundamental issue that this House should be taking through as legislation today? Well, I’ll tell you what, Madam Speaker, I’ll give you a little bit of a hint: the answer is no. There is no way that this is a priority for local government; they are drowning under a significant barrage by the “Minister of Reform” that is impacting them significantly.

Lowering the voting age is just another piece of electoral burden by this Government on that sector, which is not going to deal with the fundamental issues that they face. The fundamental issues that local government face are not the voting age and the people who can vote in local elections; it’s actually around funding and finance, and dealing with climate adaptation and dealing with infrastructure as a result of the disasters and the weather events that we’ve had in the last seven months—those are the priorities. Yet only in the last 48 hours have we seen the Government actually respond to that; yet they’ve had officials and other members of their caucus looking at and putting together this bill. Well, what a distraction; what a sideshow.

But Kiwis can see through this, can’t they, Madam Speaker. They can see through this. They know that this is not a priority. As a result, we’ve got a Government that’s ramming this legislation through the House today, as it does, using its parliamentary majority. But I’ll give you a little bit of an insight into what I can expect to occur with this bill under a National-led Government, Madam Speaker: it will not see the light of day. It will not see the light of day, because this is not a priority.

This is not an issue in regards to something that’s against those who are 16 or 17. I’ve got young boys coming up; they’ll be in this age band before long. It’s nothing about that aspect, but it is the fact that the age of 18 is widely accepted as the age which is appropriate in terms of those who should be voting, the age at which they enter into adulthood, and the age which is appropriate for people to be voting.

You’ve got a Government that has recognised the fact that they cannot get this over the line at an overall general election point of view—they can’t get that over the line because they need a 75 percent majority. They think, “Oh well, since we can’t get that over the line, let’s just actually try and ram this through local government.” Well, I think that’s disrespectful to local government, because what they are, in effect, saying is that they’re going to experiment on local government through a reform on the voting age which they are not able to carry through at an overall national level. Well, I’m sorry; local government are not there to be able to just be pushed upon by such changes that a Government does not have the mandate in order to do across the country. It is inconsistent, and inconsistent in electoral reform is no good for anyone. That is why, on this side of the House, we will be continuing to oppose this legislation as we go through.

I don’t think that we need to really discuss anything more in regards to this bill. It is a bill which is not a priority. It is a bill that this Government is ramming through in their dying days. I think, when we reflect back on this Labour-led Government in time to come, we will reflect on, say: why did they not use the opportunity that was afforded to them to pass legislation that would have genuine impact for those Kiwis across this country who are dealing with significant and massive issues in their lives? Primarily those issues relate to the cost of living crisis and the impact of law and order. That is a great disappoint. But this Government have a choice; they are accountable for the decisions that they pass through this House and they have made a conscious decision in order to prioritise legislation such as this over and above legislation that will make a fundamental and positive impact for all Kiwis.

The good thing is that Kiwis will have the choice in 35 days from now—35; not that long away. Five weeks from now, they’ll have the choice. Go to the polls, make your decision, and the future Government will have a mandate in order to execute that. I think that is appropriate and that is appropriate for our democracy. National will be opposing this bill.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. This is a bill—it’s simple—about who our democracy should be for, whose voices should be represented on the national and local stage when we make decisions about Aotearoa New Zealand’s future—issues like climate change mitigation and adaptation; issues like whether out economy delivers for everyone. And on those decisions I say—and my Labour colleagues say—that 16-year-olds should be in that conversation, that they should have their voices heard if they want to participate, and that they’re ready to be heard in that conversation right now.

I want to thank the people who have been involved both in the Justice Committee’s consideration of the declaration of inconsistency and in who will be involved in this bill: the Justice Committee, under the chairmanship of the Hon Ginny Andersen and Vanushi Walters, as well as the Ministry of Justice and Department of Internal Affairs advisers, the clerk of the committee, Anna Platten, and deputy clerk, Jonathan Harris, but also those campaigners who have made their voices heard, who are representing young people at the table: the Make It 16 campaign, Caeden Tipler, Sanat Singh, Thomas, Dan, Ralph—one of my favourite people in the world—and all of those young people who have written to me as a local MP to say that they want to be involved and that their voices matter. I say to them: your voice does matter and that’s why I’m voting in favour of this bill.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party won’t be supporting this bill, the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill. I think what’s important to examine is what the basis for this legislation is. What is the problem statement? Because, although Parliament is here to pass legislation, debate legislation, explore it, it’s always on the basis that there’s a problem that’s been defined that only legislation can solve. What I haven’t heard here today or from the Minister of Local Government is what is the problem this is designed to solve and how it does solve it.

Now, the Minister has talked about if we can increase representation and if we can encourage younger people to vote, then that will increase turnout in local body elections. Well, it may well increase the turnout for people aged between 16 and 18, but the Minister doesn’t offer any solution as to why so many people have lost confidence in local government that in some places around New Zealand, turnout at local government elections is between 30 to 40 percent of electors. The Minister doesn’t offer any link between this legislation proposing to increase the suffrage to 16 and 17yearolds and how that will restore confidence in local government, although he has made a number of statements in public and in the House at different times that lowering the voting age for local governments to 16 will restore confidence and increase turnout. Well, the ACT Party doesn’t believe the Minister’s assertions, and there’s actually nothing in this bill that clearly defines the problem statement. There’s nothing in the explanatory notes. It simply says what it does, as if that explains what the clauses are. What we want to know—what the ACT Party wants to know, what people sitting at home want to know—is: what’s the problem this is trying to solve? Because the bill does not explain that.

We have heard repeatedly that New Zealanders have lost confidence in local government and that has resulted in lower turnouts at elections. There’s been concerns that the quality of candidates offering themselves to represent electors at local government level—whether it’s at full council or local board or community board—is not sufficient to deal with the complexity of the problems that we face in our communities, whether it’s about how we respond and adapt to climate change, how we fund and finance infrastructure so that more land can be made available for high-density housing, so that better public transport services can be offered in a way that meets the needs of communities and groups within communities. None of these problems that local government faces that they are unable to solve, either because they don’t have the tools or the funding and financing or potentially they don’t have representatives, elected members, with the competencies and the experience to solve these problems—none of that is described in this bill. It’s not described in the problem statement; it’s certainly not described in the legislation which follows.

So why is it that these problems have developed with councils? Well, councils haven’t delivered for their communities in many cases. Councils have said, “Look, we need more sports fields, we need more swimming pools to meet demands that our population growth has put on communities, but we don’t have the money to do it.” But they keep signing consents and more and more people keep coming to live in communities. That’s what I personally experienced in West Auckland. We have one swimming pool for 250,000 people. When that swimming pool was built for the 1990 Commonwealth Games, played in West Auckland, there were only 150,000 people living in West Auckland. So, again, community services, community facilities, have not kept up with population growth. That’s one reason why councils are not seen by many communities as actually worthwhile turning out to vote for.

Then we have activist policy makers within local government who have taken on the role in many ways that elected members should, by insisting, for example, that if we’re going to get more people walking and cycling—rather than making the big calls about where do we build high-quality walking and cycling infrastructure that caters for people at all ages and stages of life, what they’ve done is they’ve said, “Well, we just want to run a cycleway through your local town centre, which means taking out all the car parks outside small business, and we don’t care. We’ll conduct some average consultation and then we’ll take out the car parks and paint cycle lanes on the road, and we don’t really care what the community thinks.” All of these things act to undermine confidence that people have that even turning out to vote for local government is worth their while.

And you say, “Well, how on earth could local government get away with doing this for so long?” Well, that’s where central government has a role. Central government has been imposing unfunded obligations on to local government in the form of red tape and regulations. All kinds of things like even checking buildings’ warrants of fitness. It turns out that when they had the terrible fire in a boarding house in Wellington recently, Wellington City Council hadn’t even fulfilled its own obligations to check that building’s warrant of fitness, even though there were people who depended on the safety of that building when they went to sleep at night—to check that the sprinklers worked, for example. But Governments imposed these unfunded obligations on to councils, whether they should be doing them or not, whether they should be funded centrally to do them or not.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’ve been listening very carefully to the member’s speech, and while I appreciate he is traversing matters to do with local government, this bill has a slightly different focus, and that is the voting arrangements under the Local Electoral Act. In his three minutes 33 seconds, I will invite Simon Court to come closer to the bill at hand.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Always appreciate your guidance and it will be missed when you are no longer a member of Parliament, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Are you sure, though? Are you sure?

SIMON COURT: Yes, it will definitely be missed. This bill, while it lowers the voting age to 16 for local elections and polls, doesn’t change the age for elected members to an alcohol licensing trust, for example, or the trustee of the community trust, or serving as a juror. So it’s unclear why the mandate is extended to only voting in local government elections for 16-year-olds, although these other mandates are not. Again, it’s incoherent legislation that doesn’t address a policy problem that itself is not adequately explained.

But I do want to offer some hope and encouragement to young people who are not just aged 16 or 17 but potentially even younger who want to become involved in politics. There are plenty of opportunities to join a political party, to join a youth wing, to become a volunteer, to attend debates, to support candidates, to come here and to learn how the parliamentary process works, to make submissions to select committee—as so many young people have when it comes to this bill, not just on a matter of electoral franchise but also on other matters that affect young people. Of course, there is an election coming up. In just a couple of days, Parliament will rise. Many of the MPs here who are seeking re-election will muster teams which include many, many young people to go around their electorates, standing up hoardings and signs, handing out flyers, attending all kinds of events, and asking people would they give their party vote to the party of their choice. And the ACT Party’s not alone. We’re also continuing to seek young people to join our youth wing, to come along to our events, to hear our MPs speak and share policy ideas, but most importantly to get questions from young people about matters that affect them.

So while ACT won’t be supporting this bill, we do encourage young people who want to get involved in the political process: you don’t have to wait until you’re 18; you can join the ACT Party youth wing. You can come along to our debates. We’d be happy to have you in our team. Thank you.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise for the second time this afternoon to say that this is a historic day in our Parliament. It was a historic moment an hour or so ago when we, for the first time ever, debated a higher court’s finding of inconsistency in legislation with our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. And it was on this very issue: the discrimination faced by 16- and 17-year-olds in our nation, where they are banned from exercising their fundamental right to vote. The court found that discrimination was not justified, and I do commend the Minister, the Hon Kieran McAnulty, for trying to alleviate immediately that breach in some ways through this bill.

Democracy is a fundamental human right. I’ve said this before, but I will say it again: it’s one of the ones that really underpins the whole system. Without a voice in the way that all of our rights, all of our interests, are governed, arguably we can’t truly have a fulfilment of any of those rights. It’s also important to notice, as the court found, and I think any declaration of inconsistency does, that our rights are universal and inalienable. We hear again and again—we’ve heard it today in this House—that young people should wait; young people lack the experience, the expertise; they should be doing other things. They should be making tea for the ACT Party while they campaign! Or they should be gaining the life experience that you need to exercise your fundamental rights—whatever else they’ve been told to do before they get their right to vote. That is a slippery slope.

None of us in this House has been elected because we first ticked a box of requisite experience or expertise. Eighteen-year-olds don’t need to show a certain level of expertise or experience, and I want us to notice that being young in New Zealand today is expertise. None of us know what it’s like for a 16- or 17-year-old today in Aotearoa, trying to access the mental health system, dealing with public transport, dealing with schools, dealing with the justice system. Our decisions in this House are informed by all of our life experience and expertise. They are stronger because we take into account that range of experience, of challenge or privilege, and that is what democracy seeks to bring to all our decision making. That is what young people have fought for.

We’ve got a pretty strong democracy. We celebrate New Zealand as the first nation to give women suffrage. And I do want us to remember that the same arguments were raised against women’s suffrage: women lacked expertise; women could busy themselves doing something else that would benefit democracy. In the end, it was only when we could truly vote that Governments and Parliaments became accountable to us as women. Our experiences in all of those systems came to the fore. That is how we update and strengthen our democracy: to notice where there are gaps, to listen to report writers, the Electoral Commission, the Supreme Court, the experts, the select committees, and those who are most impacted. That’s the problem statement that this bill seeks to fix. Not one of us would stand for a delay on our fundamental rights, not least to vote, for two years after a Government or a Parliament was put on notice that they were breaching that fundamental right.

We’ve said all of this already, but I’m going to count through it again: 16-year-olds can leave school, they can have sex, they can drive cars, and, yes, they can work and pay tax without representation. That’s inconsistent with a lot of values on this side of the House. But, for the Green Party, this is about democracy. We fought for MMP, we fought for disabled persons’ engagement in democracy, for Māori, and we stand and have always stood against discrimination against 16- and 17-year-olds from the moment it became clear. I could not be more proud to stand with every young person who has led this movement. It has been them who have led it, and we know that they’re ready, because we heard from them by the tens of thousands outside this House when they came to tell us that we need to take action on the climate crisis. We hear from them all the time in our select committees on mental health, on education, on the roads, and the systems that, let’s face it, are going to impact their lives the longest. So I could not be more proud to have stood with this movement for so long.

I want to say that, as much as we’ve been celebrating this bill, I know that until 2028 is too long to wait. It’s not OK that the Government is putting off implementing this and giving those young people their right to vote for so long. It’s a clerical change. It would be amazing to the life force of school-age kids right now to be able to engage properly with the next local body election, in 2025—to get to enrol while they’re together in school before they disperse, go off to uni, get jobs, have kids maybe. And what we know, what we absolutely know from those reports from the Electoral Commission, from the Justice Committee, from all the experts is that the engagement of people in democracy goes up and becomes a lifetime habit if they enrol and vote in the first election in which they become eligible. That evidence—that data—is really clear, and the data is really clear coming from overseas jurisdictions who have extended the right to vote to 16- and 17-year-olds. It’s not that new a concept. They’ve been doing it for a decade elsewhere in the world. And we know that, if local body elections have lower voter turnout, and if young people have lower voter turnout in our general elections, one way of actually fixing that, of creating voters of all ages for generations to come, is to engage young people by providing them their right to vote while they’re still at school. We know that. So we’re ignoring a moral, legal, and practical imperative to change the law before 2028.

Gen Z deserves to get their right to vote now, and, in fact, all young people in New Zealand deserve to have their right to vote in general elections and in local elections. That’s their right. I understand that right now this is all we can do. But I do implore parties across the House to take party politics out of democracy, to read those expert reports, to read and engage with the submissions of young people, of experts, of the Children’s Commissioner, and say actually—and this is what I’m really excited about with this bill—decisions of those local institutions will be stronger; they will be more enduring, more sustainable, and solve many more of the problems that face their localities, and that that is what should happen here. With the voices of young people; with accountability of lawmakers at every level, to everyone who has a right to vote; with engagement being built into our elections; with those young people who’ve called on us to give them their right to vote; but, more than that, with every young person while they’re still at school—that’s what democracy is about, and that’s why I’m so, so, so proud of us today, of the whole movement, and to have stood with you, with the Green movement, together for so long.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a short call on the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill. I also wanted to add my voice to the speaker who just resumed her seat, Golriz Ghahraman, that this is indeed a significant day. It’s a significant day in the sense that these young people have bravely campaigned for this and are here today—and I congratulate all of you for all of your hard work, and shame to the Opposition MPs who talk down this bill.

Simon Court—no, Simon Watts, actually—no, Paul Goldsmith said that when he went doorknocking in Epsom, he couldn’t find anyone that could tell him that this is an issue. He doesn’t need to look for them in Epsom; they are here. He just needs to notice them.

This is a very important bill, because the Supreme Court made it clear that preventing these brave young people from having their voting rights is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. For us, on this side of the House, we are very proud that we are supporting this. This is a good bill; I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Simon O’Connor, five minutes.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. One of the striking things is, if this is such a brave, amazing moment in time for the Government, why they are taking such short calls? I would have thought that such passion would’ve required a much deeper explanation, but it doesn’t. I’ll come back to one of the reasons why I think that’s the case.

But I do want to echo what others have said. As I move about the electorate of Tāmaki, as I doorknock, or do my coffee meetings, about to do street corner meetings over the coming weekend—people are not talking to me about a voting age. Some do, some of my younger constituents—if I push the issue—will raise and discuss it with me. That’s exceptionally welcome. People are much more worried about the gun crime, the breaking into their premises, and just the general cost of living. Why that’s important, as we consider this bill tonight, is: why, with all the issues which this country faces, is the Government focused on this?

I want to be really clear, particularly to young people: it’s not that this is not an important issue. I think it’s one that’s welcome to be discussed and debated. But we have less than two days left in this Parliament. Of all the things, as I say, that we could be discussing—crime, cost of living, our relationship with other countries around the world, agriculture, you name it—we’re not; instead we’re discussing this. Something was actually pointed out by my honourable colleague Vanushi Walters: this is something of constitutional import. Normally, when we’re dealing with electoral changes, there’s comity or agreement across the House, but there’s not, because this has been rammed through. I want to drive home that point. We have less than two days of this Parliament, and we have—what I would describe as—a very pyrrhic dynamic coming through from this Government. Not only will this not actually pass through; it’ll pass tonight, I’m sure, but it’s only first reading—this actually isn’t going to make a notable difference. Secondly, they’re not taking proper and full calls to actually—I would suggest—respect those who’ve spent a lot of time putting in their submissions and so forth.

Turning to the court’s decision. The court’s allowed to make its decisions. Personally, I think it’s—and I’ve done this once before in Parliament—to remind the court and the courts of this land that Parliament is sovereign. I acknowledge that they see that this is something about discrimination—well, that’s perfectly fine as well. Of course, one doesn’t need to be a genius to say that the courts themselves are continuing discrimination by making it 16. The Make it 15 crowd are probably feeling a bit upset at the moment. Without being too flippant, this is one of those things that always drives me mad. A lot of people talk about human rights. I’m all for human rights. I think they’re really important. But the hint about human rights is in those two words: the rights are for humans, all humans. Again, I’m being slightly flippant to illustrate the point, but where are the rights of three-, five-, 10-, 12-, and 15-year-olds in this decree?

So if people are going to start including the judges, throwing around the words like “discrimination”, they better have good, rather than arbitrary, reasons to set the line at where they see fit. Because, quite rightly, as other colleagues in the House have pointed out, there are massive inconsistencies around where the age of consent, purchasing property, voting, driving, joining the military, getting married—all of these things are all over the place. Going to a casino—I think you have to be 20. It’s all over the place. This doesn’t solve that; it just further makes it arbitrary, and I just think that that’s unhelpful. So, obviously, I’m not supportive of dropping it down, for those reasons.

The other two—and I pointed it out when I had some wonderful debates with younger ones in my electorate—is, of course, 16- and 17-year-olds are treated differently in the criminal justice space. Now, I don’t want to get into a long discussion into that per se, but if we’re going to be—as some are—arguing for the rights to vote because it’s a human right, well, there’s also a human right to justice. That one’s, you know, a bit of a humdinger, really. Justice is a human right; it’s one of the most fundamental human rights. Perhaps the court and others might want to consider that that should be applied to all humans, without discrimination.

The last thing I want to point out, as some others have done as well, is that there are many ways that people can express their voices to this Parliament. I said to a group of young people recently—not around age—that you don’t have to be an MP to actually effect change in this country. It’s probably on that note that I want to end. There are so many ways to lobby, to change, to cajole, to contribute to this great realm and to this great democracy.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe, otirā ngā mema katoa, otirā tātou katoa.

[To the Speaker, I greet you and all the members, indeed all of us.]

I’m pleased to take a call on the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill. Our Māori history tells us that tamariki and rangatahi were always part of wānanga and important conversations that impacted our people—tamariki and rangatahi were taught from a very early age to be critical thinkers. Their presence, contribution, and freedom to observe was integral to succession planning.

Tamariki and rangatahi are indeed the vessel of our tīpuna’s wildest dreams and they are activators for our future. It was the imposition of colonisation—the western education system that reframed the way we viewed our rangatahi, and instead of seeing them as the bastion of our Aotearoa home, we were conditioned by a Pākehā rhetoric that tamariki and rangatahi are to be seen and not heard.

The Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill before the House today is the first step towards acknowledging the very real value our rangatahi have in building our Aotearoa home. On every kapa haka stage across this country, our rangatahi are using their voice to raise awareness about political issues that impact on them. They use that voice to call out political parties and politicians for reckless political decisions. Our Aotearoa hau demands that we believe in our rangatahi and that we empower them to lead, and that we have the courage to begin our succession planning.

It is not acceptable that we sit here making hugely impactful decisions on people and about people when they aren’t even in the room to contribute to what that looks like. We sit here with the audacity to believe that it’s that this House and the people in it that are the saviours of our world’s problems. E kī rā! [Really!] This Parliament does it to Māori, they do it to takatāpui, and they do it to whānau hoa and/or minority communities.

The argument that our rangatahi do not engage or participate in voting lacks intellect, and purposely forgets to highlight the fact that the system has been designed in a way to keep people out. The Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill begins to address that. With that said, it is all well to lower the voting age, but the Government must commit to further wrapping the right systems around our rangatahi so that they can access education and understanding about civics in Aotearoa.

Rangatahi will not engage in any system where they don’t see themselves. This is why Te Paati Māori is walking its talk by elevating rangatahi on its list. There is a saying in te reo Māori, “Ko ngā rangatahi ngā rangatira mō āpōpō”. [“Our youth are our leaders of tomorrow.”]

Te Paati Māori says: kāo, ko ngā rangatahi ngā rangatira o ināianei [no, our youth are our leaders of today].

Te Paati Māori and I support this bill with the preface that we need to pack around specific education and civics, particularly for our youth. I commend this bill to the House.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill. This bill has come about, partly, because of the declaration of inconsistency in the courts that was found regarding the voting age with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

“Inconsistency” is one of those things we’ve heard from the Opposition in the House today. I want to point out a few things that young people, 16- and 17-year-olds, care about. As Mr O’Connor mentioned, there are many things that New Zealanders care about. Well, 16- and 17-year-olds care about the cost of living, 16- and 17-year-olds care about crime, 16- and 17-year-olds care about climate change and our environment. All of those important things that matter to New Zealanders—that many of us out on the doorsteps today are hearing from New Zealanders—16- and 17-year-olds care about those things too.

I particularly want to point out some comments from Simon Court, who said he wasn’t sure why this bill came about. Well, it came about because there was a declaration in the court. I just want to note that the ACT Party thinks it’s OK to give semi-automatic weapons to 16-year-olds, but they don’t want to let 16-year-olds vote. Now, that’s the definition of “inconsistency” in this House tonight. This is an excellent bill, and I commend it to the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well, there are a number of ironies emerging out of this debate.

Let’s start with the first one. We’ve spent the afternoon debating the importance of the human rights of our young. We debated the select committee report, and now we’re debating this bill at first reading. The next bill is a bill that completely undermines the human rights of 12- and 13-year-olds. The Attorney-General has issued a vet saying that that bill is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So while these members crow about how fond they are of the rights of young people, let’s just bear that in mind when we come to that bill after dinner.

The other inconsistency and irony is in—I think it was Golriz Ghahraman who implored us to listen to the voices of the young people. Well, I have been here for six years in Opposition while that Government completely ignored the voices on the bills that they were putting through—sitting in select committee after select committee, listening to submitter after submitter saying the bills that they were passing were a really bad idea. The previous speaker, Rachel Boyack’s, Plain Language Bill is a really good example of that. There wasn’t a single submission that wasn’t a friend of Rachel Boyack’s who said it was a good idea. They said don’t pass it. What did the Government do? They passed it. So when we’re talking about listening to the voices of the people, how about we get a little bit more consistent?

The last irony—and I think it was touched on by Paul Goldsmith in his first reading speech on this bill—was the priorities of the Government in respect of the justice portfolio. How many things could the Government be doing right now to protect people in their own homes, street violence, retail crime, ram raids—and what are we doing? We’re talking about the age to vote. Important issue, but as, I think, Simon O’Connor said, on the doorsteps of Tāmaki—and right around the country—not a single National member has had this raised as an issue.

Actually, in the context of civics education—which I think is a really good idea, albeit that the New Zealand education curriculum makes it perfectly possible for schools to teach civics education and democracy. In fact, in our primary and intermediate schools, there’s some really good election material that I hope will be rolled out again in the 2023 election, where primary school kids can participate in their own elections: they can form manifestos, they can campaign, and then their classmates get to vote. That’s a really good thing to be doing. But two things about that. We’re not going to give an eight-year-old the vote—that’s fine. But the number one priority in civics education is getting our young people back to school in the first place. Because there are woefully low turnouts even in education, much less in voting.

I want to turn to that as the last key point on this. Because as a member of Parliament based in Dunedin and with the University of Otago in the electorate that I stand in, the question of 16- and 17year-olds being eligible to vote has come up on a number of occasions. I have been very clear that while I think that’s a conversation worth having, surely the goal for political engagement right now is to make sure greater numbers of people who are currently, presently eligible to vote actually do so. Because a robust democracy actually relies on active participation.

Unfortunately, the rate of turnout in our general elections has gone down and down. So my response to anybody who says, “Well, shouldn’t we give 16-year-olds the vote?” is, “How about we actually make sure our 18- to 24-year-olds—and our 25- to 29-year-olds—form sustainable and regular voting habits?” Because, as has been pointed out in this debate, if a person doesn’t have those voting habits by the time they are about 25 or 26, they are unlikely to have regular voting habits through the rest of their adult lives.

Now, I will note, in the 2020 election there was a rather pleasing uptick both in the overall voter turnout and in the turnout by 18- to 24-year-olds. But it’s too early to say whether or not that is a pattern—a sort of a Canute-like turning back of the tide of ambivalence that has pervaded our electorate right across. Certainly it’s ambivalence when it comes to local elections.

When I tried to find out the voting propensity of our 18- to 24-year-olds in local council elections, rather surprisingly, the Department of Internal Affairs doesn’t actually keep that data; they don’t provide an age breakdown of turnout. But there’s no doubt that since the local government reforms of 1989, there has been a consistent and inexorable drop in overall turnout in city councils from 52 percent in 1989. The last election—in, what was it, 2022, I think?—had just 39 percent of eligible voters turning out. In our regional councils, just 43 percent turning out. In our district councils, a little bit greater, but still fewer than half—45 percent. So, surely, if we want to have an active, interested, engaged electorate, let’s look at the turnout for those people who are currently eligible to vote before we can contemplate extending the age range down to 16.

There is merit in this, and I’ll come back to—I was going to say that was my last point, but there is one more point to make and that is why we’re not doing this for the Electoral Act. The Government’s been very upfront about that. They’ve done it because they don’t think they’ll get it through. By majority, they’ll get this bill passed at first reading. But that is highly inconsistent. If it’s a good idea, let’s have the debate, the discussion, and make it a good idea for both central and local elections and not cherry-pick just because this isn’t entrenched legislation. Frankly, it should be, in my view. It should be both entrenched for local and central elections.

Nobody on this side of the House is afraid of the conversation. But let’s have it in a proper and orderly fashion, and this isn’t that.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Point of order, Madam Speaker. I’d like to raise the point that Rachel Boyack just said, that ACT wants to give 16-year-olds AR-15s—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No, no, no.

DAMIEN SMITH: She’s incorrect.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No. the member will sit. The member will sit down. That is not a point of order. Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

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

Voting

Correction—Declaration of Inconsistency, Voting Age

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the result of the vote on the question that the House take note of the Declaration of inconsistency: Voting age in the Electoral Act 1993 and the Local Electoral Act 2001 was incorrectly recorded as Ayes 96, Noes, 10. The correct result is Ayes 106, Noes 10.

Bills

Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It gives me immense pride to be able to take a call on this bill. Here we are finally at the first reading of making it 16 for local government elections. There is a wealth of knowledge that has been dispersed onto the internet about why we should be making it 16. I think the Make It 16 campaign should have the final say on this first reading.

The first reason why we need to make it 16: the current voting age of 18 is in breach of 16- and 17-year-olds’ fundamental human right to vote. Number two: lowering the voting age is a catalyst for better civics education. Number three: 16- and 17-year-olds already hold big responsibilities and make big life decisions. Number four: 16- and 17-year-olds paid $92 million in income tax in 2022. Number five: lowering the voting age has improved voter turnout in other countries. Number six: there’s already a growing list of countries that have lowered the voting age to 16. Number seven: the earlier you vote, the more likely you are to vote for the rest of your life. And, finally, number eight: lowering the voting age will allow more young people to vote and more voices to be heard.

I think there is plenty of reason why we should make it 16, and a special shout-out to Young Labour, who’ve been advocating for this since the early 2000s. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 74

New Zealand Labour 62; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 1; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Noes 44

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Electoral (Lowering Voting Age for Local Elections and Polls) Legislation Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Bills

Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I move, That the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

In the last few years, we have seen an unacceptable increase in retail crime. Particularly in the last year, we have seen a spike in ram raid and smash-and-grab - type offending, which is hugely concerning for communities across New Zealand. To me, as a Minister, and to this Government, this is unacceptable. Ram raids harm business owners, and they harm families and the wider communities that they occur in. Ram raiding causes significant property damage and threatens the sense of security and livelihoods of victims. People deserve to feel safe in their communities, and shop owners and their employees should be able to go to work or lock up for the evening without the fear that their shop will be raided at night.

The Government has been taking action to address this offending. Many of these offenders are children and young people, and we have put in place a range of programmes to re-engage these children and young people in education, in employment, and into our society as well. These programmes are working. More than three-quarters of children and young people going through the fast-track programmes we rolled out in December last year have not gone on to reoffend.

On top of these programmes, as a Government, we have taken a number of steps to reduce offending and prevent harm to our communities and small businesses right across New Zealand: the retail crime prevention funding to better protect small businesses from the risk of ram raids, with tools like fog cannons, bollards, roller doors, and CCTV upgrades; the Better Pathways Package we introduced in September 2022 to improve education and employment opportunities for young people; the enhanced fast-track model we announced in July to increase the immediacy, the intensity, and the duration of support for the small number of children and young people we see engaging in serious and persisting offending behaviour; and the additional 1,800 front-line officers delivered in June, which is a 21 percent increase from 2017, and it makes the police workforce the largest it has ever been. These actions have been effective in reducing the rate of ram raids, which have declined by two-thirds since their peak in August of 2022. However, the number of ram raids has remained unacceptably high, and it is my view that one ram raid in New Zealand is one ram raid too many.

We know there has been a gap in the system for a small group of young offenders where our interventions have not been working and the system does not have the tools to respond adequately. As I have said, the system is working for three-quarters of young people, but for this small group we need to do more, and we need to focus in on the current gap in our system. This bill closes that gap and it provides a better range of tools to respond to the 12- and 13-year-olds with the most serious and persistent reoffending behaviour.

Let me be clear: it is already against the law to commit a ram raid. People can be charged and convicted with existing offences of burglary or intentional property damage. This bill adds a new offence for ram raiding to the Crimes Act 1961, with a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. This offence recognises the specific harms caused by ram raids and distinguishes it from other forms of burglary. There is the significant property damage from driving a vehicle front on into a building, along with the intent to commit an offence such as stealing goods from that shop, both of which seriously impact the livelihoods and, potentially, the lives of those victims inside that shop. This offence will capture not just the driver but it will also apply to passengers within that offending vehicle and the hangers-on waiting outside the building who share the criminal intent of participating in the ram raid. This means that the police will have to prove the offenders knew that the vehicle would be used to gain entry and that they intended to commit an offence once inside the building, such as theft.

Because we know there is a particular gap for children who commit multiple ram raids, the bill also amends the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 to allow 12- and 13-year-olds to be proceeded against in the Youth Court jurisdiction for the new ram raid offence without their having to be a previous offender. This does not mean that a child will receive a sentence of imprisonment for this offence. The maximum penalty our Youth Court can impose for 12- and 13-year-olds is six months’ custody in a youth justice facility, and supervision for up to 12 months in the community.

I want to emphasise that this is not about sending our children to prison, but, rather, recognising the serious impact that ram raids are having in our communities. The aim of this change is to give the police and Oranga Tamariki the tools they need in the tool box to properly respond to the high levels of youth offending we are now seeing in New Zealand.

Our goal is to break that cycle of reoffending, which we are doing by holding those offenders accountable for their actions and by resourcing our police with the additional cops and also the tools they need to get on top of this destructive behaviour. This will ensure that children who ram-raid face greater accountability for their actions and that the system can respond quickly. It gives our courts the options to impose bail conditions, including non-association, curfew, and residing at a specific address; detention in Oranga Tamariki custody where there is a risk of a child reoffending; intention to charge family group conference plan, with escalation available to Youth Court if the plan is not agreed to or fails to be completed; and Youth Court orders, including residential orders of up to six months being available if the charge is proven, and supervision of up to 12 months.

The bill also creates two new aggravating factors in the Sentencing Act 2002 to provide greater accountability for those who encourage offending by children or young people, or who post offending online. These will be considered by judges when determining the appropriate penalty at sentencing.

The first factor covers people who aid or abet the child or a young person to offend. This will apply if an adult is convicted as a party to an offence committed by a child or a young person. This further holds to account anyone who exploits the vulnerability of children or young people by encouraging them to offend, potentially leading them into a life of crime.

The second factor applies when an offender live streams or posts their offending online, such as ram raiding. With the rise in the use of social media glorifying this kind of behaviour, it can encourage copycat offending and create further harms to the victims, who see themselves broadcast. This factor will also apply in the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989.

This bill is targeted to close the gaps in responses available to children with serious and persistent offending behaviour, and to hold them accountable when they commit a ram raid. This is the latest in a series of actions that the Government has taken to crack down on offending, particularly youth offending, which is at an unacceptable level in New Zealand right now. It provides interventions that help to break that cycle and to build a justice system that ensures less offending and fewer victims of ram raids. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party will be supporting this bill, the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill, insofar as it gives the justice system, in the broader sense, more tools to deal with the real problem of ram raids. But we do make the point that here we are in the last week of Parliament and finally the Government has woken up to the issue.

I want to start with the rhetoric shift. So we had a couple of questions today asking the Minister of Justice about her “crackdown on crime” from this Government. It was only a year or so ago that the previous justice Minister would be getting stuck into us for “knee-jerk reactions to crimes”, she would say—knee-jerk reactions to crime. Then, she’d say, “You don’t want to be doing all this stuff, because they’d just end up in prison—the university of crime—and that’s just what the gangs want.” So there was all the rhetoric about how any criticism of the Government being soft on crime was a “knee-jerk reaction.” Now, the Government Ministers are talking about a “crackdown on crime.” It is interesting. Six years ago, of course, they were only interested in reducing the prison population, come what may. So we’ve had that change over a period of time, leading to this bill.

Then, we had a period where they denied the problem. So this is about ram raids. When we were raising the issue of ram raids, about a year ago or 18 months ago, when people were worried about the very serious crime of people stealing cars, smashing them into businesses, costing tens of thousands of dollars, frightening the business owners, the small mum and dad shopkeepers trying to make a living, putting up their insurance costs, making it so difficult to do their business—Mark Mitchell, myself, and Chris Luxon, we’ve all been visiting those businesses. We’ve seen the tears in the eyes of these New Zealanders who are terrified and so frustrated that they’re doing everything they can to build a business, give customers what they want, to grasp the Kiwi Dream, and it’s getting smashed in front of them, and there are no consequences for the young children. That is the repeated message that we get, time and time again: no consequences.

Now, when we put this to the Government, about a year ago or 18 months ago, they denied there’s a problem: “No, no, no. Crime is coming down”, the Minister would say. “Crime is coming down.” Well, of course, if you only do half the number of drink-driving tests, you’re going to get fewer convictions of drink driving—that stands to reason. And that’s what’s happened. There’s been a massive reduction in basic sort of testing for those sorts of things. And if you change your mind around drug enforcement policy and say you’re not going to prosecute people for possession of drugs, well, there’s going to be a massive drop in prosecution for drugs. That does not mean that crime has come down. But they would say, “Oh, crime is coming down. There’s nothing to worry about here. These guys are just fearmongering.” And now, about a few months later, they decided, “Well, actually, maybe there is something going on in our streets.” They heard the choppers overhead every night in Auckland and they realised, “Yes, there is maybe something that we need to deal with.” So Chris Hipkins’ police Minister started to talk tough about a year ago.

The problem is they talked tough about a year ago, and that was at the time when Chris Hipkins announced the “circuit breakers” that we were going to have. We were going to deal with this about a year ago, and still we’ve got two ram raids a day on average. The problem is not solved; the problem is getting worse. So here we are, one week before we close the Parliament, and the Government is piling in all these bills at the last moment—a flood of bills in the last week. The last gasp of a dying Government, in order to look like they are trying to do something on this issue.

They would be much better to have picked up the National Party’s suggestion, way back in October last year, around youth crime, which is about creating a new category: the young serious offenders. That would have been a useful thing they could have done about a year ago in order to deal with serious repeat youth offenders. Because everybody agrees that for most young people that have an encounter with the justice system—it’s that they do it, they do something stupid, they make a mistake, they get involved with the system, and a light touch is a good idea, because you don’t want to get them drawn into the maw of the justice system. A light touch, a rehabilitation focus, works. But that works for most; but it doesn’t work for everybody. For that small group of very serious repeat offenders—people doing things like ram raids and aggravated robberies—we need something more. We need extra tools. And that’s why we suggested the young serious offender category. That’s why we suggested the youth military academies, which was pooh-poohed on the other side of the House. What have they come up with—what have they come up with? Nothing, really. They’ve just, sort of—a lot of talk.

Then, finally—finally—in the last week of Parliament, they come up with a suggestion around making it an aggravating factor if you take a video of a ram raid. Well, we agree with that. That’s something that the National Party announced a month or so earlier. And yes, yep, we agree with it—good; great. And they’re going to allow 12- and 13-year-olds to be proceeded against for a ram raid offence, in the Youth Court, without being a previous offender—good, we agree with that. So yes, big tick, we’ll support this piece of legislation. If we’re in Government, it will form a part of the much wider and much more comprehensive process that we’ll have to restore law and order in this country, which is what we need in this country, right here, right now.

When we’re out on the doorsteps and when I’m out on the doorsteps of Epsom, doorknocking, there are two issues that people raise, time and time again: they raise the cost of living, and they raise law and order. Cost of living because everybody’s struggling to make ends meet; law and order because they know what’s going on in the community. They never believed when Kiri Allan and Chris Hipkins and Ginny Andersen and Poto Williams and Kelvin Davis and—who was other guy?—Stuart Nash—are there any others?—Kris Faafoi and Andrew Little, the whole kaleidoscope of these people over the years, tried to tell them that were talking nonsense when they said that they were worried about crime. They tried to downplay it. The Government said, “No, no, no. Crime is falling. There’s nothing to see here”, even though the police were only doing half the number of checks—and there was all sorts of reasons behind that. People saw it on the streets. They felt it. They saw the ram raids. They saw the violent attacks. They saw the knife crime. They saw the shootings. They hear the helicopter overhead. They hear the roaring of the bikie gangs in the distance everywhere. They know that they feel less safe in their communities, and they want a response.

So after years of denial and years of focus solely on the target of reducing the prison population irrespective of what’s going on in the community, the Government’s finally woken up. But, I’m sorry, it’s too little, too late. They should have got their act together a lot earlier and actually come up with a comprehensive bill. They should have listened to what the National Party was talking about and maybe we could have done something together some time ago. Having said all that, this bill will go some way. On that basis, we support it.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can I begin my contribution just by acknowledging all the businesses who have been affected by ram raids. I know there are a number in north-west Auckland, including in Westgate, Unsworth Heights, and Greenhithe. It’s not acceptable. It’s never acceptable, which is why our Government has implemented a suite of measures to break that cycle of offending, including the Better Pathways Package, including fast-tracking local teams to address youth offending, and including the “circuit-breaker” programme, which has demonstrated some real success, but also in targeting organised crime.

But the Minister is correct that one ram raid is one too many, which is why we are introducing this bill. There’s one aspect of this bill which a number of big and small retailers have spoken to me about that this bill addresses. This bill introduces measures to penalise people who commission or reward children and young people to offend or who post offending online, and creates a new aggregating factor in the Sentencing Act, which will apply when an adult encourages or incites a person under 18 to carry out an offence.

This is an issue that’s been raised with me by a number of people. This is part of a suite of changes the Government has introduced. We are focused on community safety. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. If I can rewind back to 2019, and then I’ll link it back to this bill, the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. If we go back to 2019, the National Party tried as hard as we could to draw the attention of the Labour Party to the fact that we were having a developing gang problem in New Zealand. As part of our package, as part of our law and order discussion document that we put out, we said that we were going to use the highly successful, highly respected gang task force Raptor that the Australians had used. And the response that we got from the Labour Party was the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway jumping around in his seat pretending to be a raptor, and the entire Labour caucus thinking it’s a great joke. Well, it’s not such a joke now, is it? When we had a 70 percent increase in gang numbers in this country; when we’ve had an enormous increase in drive-by shootings and gun violence in this country; when the gangs are recruiting faster than we can recruit, train, and deploy our front-line police offices. So it’s not so funny now, is it, Labour? Five years on, when the country is suffering and you at the time thought that it was a joke. Everyone’s looking down now. There was a lot of heckling going on before; they’ve gone very quiet.

And now let’s fast forward—let’s fast forward to today, when I asked the fourth police Minister in the last 12 months about Kiwis’ safety—about public safety. And what did she do? She cracked another joke. She thought it was funny, with the entire Labour caucus laughing at it again. And that is exactly why we find ourselves in this position with this bill that we’re supporting because we’ve taken the position, on this side of the House, that we will support any bill that might go some way to somehow making a shopkeeper or a retailer or their worker or their customer or a member of the public and a Kiwi safer. But this is ridiculous. You’re bringing this in the last week of Parliament as the House rises.

They keep using this language around a spike. Let me tell you how long you’ve been talking about a spike for—sorry, Madam Speaker. The Labour Party have been talking about spikes for over two years. This so-called spike has been growing over the last six years—an over 500 percent increase in ram raids and aggravated robberies. A 33 percent increase in violent crime. Not so funny now is it, Labour caucus? It’s not so funny now. And I notice that—

Angela Roberts: Just get on with it.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry, what was that? What was that? If you’re going to say something, say it loud enough so I can actually respond.

Angela Roberts: Get on with it.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh, get on with it. Don’t worry—don’t worry—I’m getting on with it all right.

I notice that you’ve got your senior whip in the chair tonight. I’ve just visited his town of Palmerston North with our outstanding National Party candidate there, Ankit, who is working extremely hard. While I was there for the day, let me tell you what I did. I met with six shopkeepers. I went to six businesses who haven’t seen their local MP. And it might be nice for him to go and actually visit them. The first one—a female that owns a shop by herself—she’s so fearful of what might happen that she uses access control. She keeps the door locked. And when she sees a customer, she checks to see who they are, she checks to make sure that she thinks that she’s going to be safe, and she’ll open the door.

They think it’s funny again—they think it’s funny again—they’re joking again. You are a disgrace—you are a disgrace—because you do not understand. Sorry, Madam Speaker. It is a disgrace to see Labour Party members huddling and laughing when I’m talking about a woman that is fearful in the shop that she works.

Anna Lorck: Who’s laughing? No one’s laughing.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Take a call—take a call and respond to that, because it is a disgrace.

So then I went to the next shop—I went to the next shop—

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Which business? You haven’t told us the business.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: This is on the main street of Palmerston North. Very happy to give you the details.

Tangi Utikere: Broadway. Oh, I know already.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: So we went down to the—oh, he says he knows. He says he knows the shops. He says he knows who they are. That’s good. I went to the next shop. It was two ladies there that said they won’t walk through the town at night—they won’t walk through the town square at night because they are scared, because they’re fearful.

I went and saw another business owner in Palmerston North who had boy racers—

Anna Lorck: Talk about the bill.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: No, I will address the issues that the Minister raised. We’re a first reading, you’re not the Speaker, and I will address the issues that the Minister raised.

So I went to another business. Guess what happened there. Boy racers turning up in a cul-de-sac, tearing up the paddocks, tearing up the grass, tearing up the tar seal and the seal in the cul-de-sac. So guess what happened. They called the police and a brave policewoman on her own came down that cul-de-sac to try and stop one of the vehicles that was tearing it up. Guess what happened to her. I’m sure the member knows—I’m sure the member knows this. I’m sure he would have done a welfare check. The boy racers surrounded the police car. They surrounded her so she could not leave. Guess what else they did. They tried to interfere with her brakes and they urinated on her vehicle.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Is this about ram raids?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh, don’t worry, I’ll get to the ram raids—don’t worry about that. The member doesn’t want me to talk about this; it’s a bit uncomfortable. The truth is a bit uncomfortable for them.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! I think all members can leave it up to the Speaker to determine what is and is not—

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Including that member, thank you. All members can leave it up to the Speaker to determine what is or isn’t within the scope of this debate.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: So let’s move on to a couple of the dairies that were in there. You want to talk about ram raids, let’s move on to a couple of the dairies in Palmerston North, with one owner that has not only built a cage around him and his wife that run the dairy, but he’s also put automatic access control at the door so he’s got bars that go across the door, he checks to see who it is, he presses a button and the bars slide back.

We had the Minister stand in this House and say as if it was a matter of pride that we’ve delivered bollards and we’ve delivered fog canons and you can put garage doors on the front of your shops. What? We want our country to look like Mogadishu—because that’s where we’re going. I don’t want our shopkeepers to have to come to work each day and have to lock themselves away in a cage to be safe. That is not the New Zealand that I grew up in. That is not the New Zealand that we’re going to accept. But that is the New Zealand that this Labour Party—this Labour caucus that continues to laugh and mock and carry on, that’s the New Zealand that this Labour Party has delivered for New Zealand. You can look around, Mr Bennett, but the best thing you may do is just tell the members around you that it’s actually a serious matter. These are real lives. There is a massive human cost to what is going on in this country at the moment. By the way, there’s a massive economic cost too.

So it would have been nice—the police Minister has been a bit mystified about the fact that I’ve been standing in this House and asking the Minister the entire time she’s been the Minister about her incoming statement about the fact that Kiwis feel safer, because I can promise her that the majority of Kiwis and New Zealanders in this country at the moment do not safer. I think that it was lost on her that she stood up 17 times in this House. She’s never bothered to correct that. She has continued to say that Kiwis feel safer.

She raised the 1,800 police officers. Let me tell you now that if you can find one police officer in this country that says to you that we can feel the positive effects of being reinforced by 1,800 police officers, they’d be very hard to find. By the way, it’s not 1,800. This Government’s been very good at being deceptive and trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. It’s actually 530 sworn police officers with the power of arrest. We’ve had over 60 stations in this country that have lost police officers. We’ve had well over 100 that have had no additional numbers. And when our front-line police officers are trying to deal with a 33 percent increase in violent crime, a 500 percent increase in ram raids, a 41 percent increase in victimisations, when they’re trying to attend to a 60 percent increase in mental health callouts because this Government’s failed on that as well, they don’t feel reinforced. The demand side of their work has well and truly overwhelmed them, and they are fighting to keep their heads above water. And they’ve had to deal with and serve under a Government that came in and prioritised two things: reduce the prison muster by 30 percent and repeal the only tough piece of sentencing law that we have on our books. That is why, as a country, we find ourselves in the dire situation that we are in today.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): It saddens me to hear the playing of politics that I just heard for the last 10 minutes. My history in work has been in places like restorative justice and working with young victims and offenders of crime, so I know it firsthand—I’ve seen it and experienced it. We’ve been fortunate, but, sadly, many communities around Aotearoa New Zealand haven’t. We haven’t had ram raids or the issues of it in New Plymouth, but we did have one drive-by smash-and-grab several months ago at one of our jewellery stores, and it was tragic. I went and met with the victims of that and I understand what they were going through, but I looked into and followed up in terms of who these people were who perpetrated these offences, and in conversations around where they came from in terms of their offending, we could see a decade earlier—a decade earlier—that these young people had been let through the gaps, had been dropped and ignored by Government policy. Yes, they offended and what they did is wrong and they should not have done it, but the system failed them.

This kind of legislation isn’t the silver bullet to fix it all, but it is something that’s going to go some way to ensure that we make sure there are stopgap measures in place. Yes, we need to be tough on crime. We also need to be relentless in finding solutions to the causes of crime, ensuring we work with young people and their whānau to ensure that victims don’t have to go through this. That’s why this is a step forward. I commend it to the House.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak to the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. At the first reading, ACT will support this bill, and we’re just so rapt that this Government has finally accepted that there is a crime problem. It’s especially concerning that it’s not just a crime problem; it’s mainly a youth crime problem going on at the moment. The bill has four main parts: there’s a new offence created targeting ram-raiding specifically; you can enable bodily samples to be taken, including from 12- to 13-year-olds; digital streaming can be a factor in sentencing, as well as other aggravating factors; and the change to enable 12- and 13-year-olds alleged to have committed the new offence to be charged in the Youth Court. It all sounds pretty sensible but a long time coming.

On 9 August last year, at question time, I asked the then Minister of Police: “Is there a specific offence code for ram raids; if not, will he commit to creating one so that the Government’s progress on this issue can be measured over time?” The response was: “How [police] code offences for their purposes is a matter for the police—it’s an operational matter.” Anyone would think there’s an election coming up! The statistics for ram raids are really quite shocking: 1,953 ram raids in the last four years, which is an average of 40 a month. In 2017, there were 119; 55 of those, no offender identified. Five years on—2022—899 ram raids; 429, no offender identified. So far this year: 412 ram raid and 193 offenders have not yet been identified. The number of victims created, the people directly affected by these ram raids, really amounts to the tens of thousands. It’s a shocking statistic.

The police are doing a great job, but the reality is that they shouldn’t have to be dealing with this crime explosion. It’s the result of soft-on-crime policies that just don’t work. The Government has constantly been told by people with more experience and knowledge than them that this would be the result. Six years on, the blind ideology has proven even more damaging than anyone thought would happen. Fog cannons were never the answer, and the dairy owners’ group said that a couple of years ago. Bollards are a sad indictment on this Government’s ability to keep New Zealanders safe, and it’s certainly not the New Zealand I grew up in.

The rhetoric we’ve listened to over the last three years—that harsher penalties don’t work and we need a wraparound approach, and that all ACT wants to do is lock them up—seems to be forgotten with this bill. Again, is there an election coming up? I realise how difficult this bill must be for Labour, the party of no consequences or accountability, and the public should always remember that this Government’s allies are even worse. The Greens want to defund the police. They refer to police dogs as “attack dogs”. And the Māori Party are openly hostile to police, with one leader stating that more police on the street means more dead Māori. The other one stated that young people can’t commit crime, they don’t understand what they’re doing. They’re despicable and naive comments, and they’re good reasons they should never be in power.

This bill is a great example of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but things should never have got this bad. There will be some interesting debates regarding this, with the Attorney-General chiming in today on technicalities that are going to need sorting, but it’s a start. The irony of this Government being comfortable with these changes after being so critical of any suggestion of harsher sentences and ensuring accountability is not lost. ACT looks forwards to really stopping the crime wave and lawlessness that, unfortunately, has become all too familiar in New Zealand. Until that happens on 14 October, we will support this bill.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s with a heavy heart that I stand to speak on this bill. It’s a disappointing turnabout from the Labour Party Government away from evidence-based policy on justice; away from framing that policy within not only evidence, but what we know to be true of what happens in our communities and what we know to keep them safe. It’s not often that I agree with an ACT Party member—and I don’t think that he meant it in the way that I do—but Chris Baillie is right, this seems like knee-jerk reaction to an election. It feels like moving toward the Opposition, in the worst possible way.

We, none of us in this House, stand here without compassion for victims of crime. We feel that fear, that is valid, as communities face violence or property offending—a crossroads of which is captured in this new term that we use, “ram raids”. Nobody here is saying that they stand for crime; that they lack that compassion for those communities; what we disagree on are the solutions. But the thing that breaks my heart about youth crime in particular is that it is where we have the most data, the most reports, the most evidence of who these young kids are, what works and what doesn’t. And what we actually also have is a fulsome child rights framework that we can work within to bring kids that come into conflict with the law out into healthy, thriving lives. We actually have that evidence—we don’t need to debate it anymore. We don’t need to talk about a “tough on crime” approach when we’re talking about something that’s tough on human persons involved, and actually really making it easier for crime to grow and propagate in our communities. Because what we do know, if we step into the child rights framework, it is where New Zealand’s most clear breaches of any international human rights law sit—in our age of criminal responsibility which is 10 rather than 14 years, age-mixing in places of detention, and laws like this one.

If we actually step away from the National and ACT Party frame—because New Zealand voted for a Labour Government—and we look at the child rights framework, we would see that children who are bought into formal criminal justice mechanisms and in this law, 12- and 13-year-olds to be proceeded against in the youth court without being previous offenders, there was that little bar already existing in our already breaching laws and we’re removing that. Bodily samples being taken from 12- and 13- year olds who are proceeded against; specific criminalisation of ram raids, which is already contained in other crimes. When we look at how far this proposal works to bring very young children into extremely invasive formal criminal justice processes and we ignore the evidence that says that is what creates recidivist young offenders, we are not being tough on crime; we’re actually being reckless; I’d say callous. We are choosing the taglines that make politicians look tough on crime rather than keeping our communities safe. It’s not even about just compassion for these kids that we are damaging—because that’s what all of the data and the evidence says. It’s not just about these kids that we are actively sending towards a life of crime and a life of gangs. Let’s just focus on the victim communities: more crime means more victims, so we’re letting everyone down.

And I am so disappointed in my Labour Party colleagues, that leaving the story of what actually resolves the upsurge in crime; leaving aside the equity frame of everyone having a life where they can go to sleep in a warm, dry home, can get access to mental health care and addiction treatment, can have jobs that pay for the lives that they need—and if they don’t have those jobs, that they have the social safety net that will lift them. Leaving aside the fact that they have failed to tell that story for three years, for right now, right before an election, to pivot towards the frame of punishment and away from what we know actually works—you’re not going to “out - Paul Goldsmith” Paul Goldsmith or Mark Mitchell. You’re not going to do it. We have to hold the line for what we know our communities need, rather than just the rhetoric.

So this bill is not only disappointing because it will not manage crime; it is not tough on crime—it’s actively harmful, generationally harmful, and it degrades our system of justice. It degrades our ability to fulfil those rights for young people and children. We know who those young children will be, we know they’ll be Māori and Pacific kids. We know they are kids with a history of trauma. If they’re girls—because all of the data is there—we know that they will have had very recent trauma. We know that they are kids with neurodiversity. In under-19-year-olds, around 89 percent of those we bring into formal justice processes will be then diagnosed with a serious learning disability. We know that the ball is dropped in education, in health, in incomes, and in housing. And now, with this bill, we’re going to harm them long term. We’re going to raise the rate of youth crime because we failed to tell those stories, to have the courage of our convictions to rely on the evidence and keep telling those stories in the face of the likes of Paul Goldsmith and Mark Mitchell. So I don’t commend this bill to the House.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. It’s a bill which amends the Crimes Act 1961 by creating a new offence of ram raiding with a maximum penalty of 10 years.

When I’ve been reflecting on the contributions in this House, I have been thinking about the shop owners in my electorate of Manurewa. Their experiences very much inform the way I’ve approached this bill. Quite simply, I believe that they deserve to go to work every day feeling safe in their work, and the workers who work in their shops, who are often family members, deserve to know that they will be able to go home at night unharmed.

This bill goes alongside a suite of Government work in this area. These are legislative measures which sit alongside those programmes which keep young people from offending in this way in the first place—things like the Better Pathways Package, the fast-track programmes, and the enhanced fast track, which I’ve seen for myself. It’s a group of agencies sitting around the table dealing with each young person’s case as it comes through the night before, working out what is the best way to wrap around support and get these kids back engaged in school or in work or in something positive in their lives.

We’re talking about a really small group of young people and when I think of the experience of one of the local shop owners in my area—he’s just around the corner from me, Kharag Singh—he said to me that nobody who runs their shop thinks that the only answer to this is that there has to be harsher consequences. That is a big part of it for him and the people that he talks to, but he wants to make sure that these things don’t happen in the first place. That is what the Better Pathways Package does. That’s what Kotahi te Whakaaro, which reengages these kids into something positive, does. It’s why we need to do all of these things together and that’s why I’m happy to commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Simon O’Connor—a five-minute call.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. What’s quite striking is the very short, exceptionally fast calls which the Government side are taking, which is striking because after six years of a ram-raid situation which has got out of control and a left-wing Labour Government that has done absolutely nothing—let’s underline that; absolutely nothing—here in the last, dying days of their Government, the last hours are ramming this law through; all puns intended. We’re going to support it because like other justice bills, it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s a case of a little too little and a little too late.

So when I think of my own electorate to do with ram raids, we’ve had I think over 50—five zero—in the last year, and I’ve tried to visit as many of those businesses as I can. So in the likes of Glen Innes we’ve had our literal gas station ram-raided multiple times. In Glendowie, we’ve had a dairy owner who’s so sick of what’s been happening he closed up. We had another area in Glendowie where the dairy and takeaway store were ram-raided with such ingenuity that those involved built a ramp to get over the concrete ramparts. In St Heliers where my family and I live, various stores, including the liquor store, have been hit with tens of thousands of dollars of damage. Only a few months ago in Kohimārama, three of our stores in Melanesia Road again ram-raided, smashed into—very little taken, but, again, tens of thousands of dollars of damage done. In Mission Bay, one of the dairies: six times—six times—has been ram-raided. And just up the road, a liquor store run by an amazing young woman who lives in fear for what is to happen. In Ōrākei, one of our dairies there: four times they’ve been hit. They’ve sold up and retired. The liquor store was also hit, and if you drive into Ōrākei you’ll find that the plywood is still up. Stonefields: multiple times the little shops there have been hit. Meadowbank: only a couple of weeks ago, three stores on Dorchester Street, all ram-raided and broken into. Let alone—do I mention—the wonderful people of St Johns where their butcher, their fruiterer, and their cafe were also broken into, with one of those owners now sleeping on the floor to protect themselves.

Why? Because ram raids are out of control, and the Labour Government has had absolutely no answer—no answer. To give a little bit of credit, they have put together a fund, and, actually, I’ve been grateful for that in terms of bollards and fog cannons and the like. I’ve actually spent a lot of time with these business owners making sure they can access that, and, look, bouquets where required. That’s a good step, but that’s the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and it’s a failure—a failure to address some of the most fundamental causes, including, I might add, poverty and all those issues. This is a left-wing Labour Government that’s supposed to have cared for people, but we’re seeing those on welfare, child poverty targets, all of that get out of control, and these are some of the consequences.

The other aspect, too, is that there are not enough consequences, and anyone who knows me knows that consequences always have two aspects or two faces. One is, if you will, the direct consequence—there is a punishment, a consequence. I am repeating the words there, but there is a punishment, for want of a better term, but there are also consequences of helping when these young people are involved in crimes. What are we doing to assist people? The answer, unfortunately, again under this Government, is not much, which is why these young ones, in particular, are continuing their crimes. Look, there’s a multiplicity of reasons, there’s a multiplicity of factors, but they are not being addressed. Yes, this bill will do something; it’s not bad, but it’s hardly the great step forward.

But the little caveat I might put at the end, and it’s a challenge to all of us in this House, and it still upsets me for reasons I don’t fully understand, but it’s the story of that seven-year-old who was involved in a ram raid in Hamilton stealing a plushie toy. I just find that immensely sad. I want to make it really clear to the House: this is not an excuse, by any means, to criminalise someone like that, but I think it’s a challenge to me. It’s a challenge to all of us regardless of our political stripes of how we actually address this problem when we have seven-year-old kids involved with ram raids stealing plushie toys. I think it’s just utterly, utterly tragic. So we will support this bill, but we have a great challenge ahead of us.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Debbie Ngarewa-Packer—five minutes.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Kia ora. It’s not good to see something of this significance being rushed through the House. Te Paati Māori notes the irony isn’t lost on us: the same day our Government is seeking to lower the voting age for local elections to 16, they’re also looking to lower the age for our tamariki who can be charged and locked up for burglary to 12 years old. I mean, with your left hand you are giving a voice to our rangatahi, but with your right hand you are taking the voice away for those who are in need the most.

So what I would like to warn this Government is that you cannot have it both ways. When you reach a crossroads, especially involving the rights of our mokopuna, of our tamariki, you need to be really careful which path you choose because you may find yourselves walking alone in October. Our rangatahi are not a problem waiting to be punished. They should not be pushed aside and rushed through; they are solutions waiting to happen, and this bill is not a solution. I put to you, sadly, it’s a knee-jerk little response to the fearmongering which the parties on the right have been doing for the last year plus.

Now look, we’ve got a situation where even the Police Association agrees: creating a separate crime for burglary is a superficial virtual signalling, and we’ve also known for decades that a punitive approach—you’ve said it numerous times in the House—to crime doesn’t work. But if this is indeed proposed as a suite of tools, and if you’re serious about supporting rangatahi to make better choices, then we need to actually give them some choices. Instead of alienating young people for committing crimes of poverty, we should be aiming to eradicate poverty. I know it’s not the easy road, but we’ve said numerous times in this House that it’s the right road. Where are the rights of our tamariki—collecting bodily fluids, unreasonable search and seizure—even the Attorney-General says the ram raids legislation violates the rights of children. We have existing law which you haven’t acknowledged which already deals with burglary. So we’re really, really compromised by the fact that you of all parties are here today saying that this is the right way forward for our tamariki and our rangatahi.

Now we’ve got a population here of rangatahi that make up more than half of Aotearoa’s homeless—more than half of Aotearoa’s homeless. They deal with mental health pressures. They’re a generation that we can’t begin to ever understand. They carry the trauma of every other generation before them, but most importantly, they’ve also had their natural development interrupted by numerous things, starting from at the least, COVID. Politicians and media need to look at what we could do across parties to stop this continual alienation and reacting to treating our rangatahi, again, like they are the problem waiting to be punished. We’ve seen—and I’ve mentioned this earlier today—the Independent Police Conduct Authority and the Children’s Commission found that police were guilty of racially profiling and illegally photographing rangitahi without their consent. Children as young as 15 in Whanganui were approached in broad daylight and threatened with arrest if they refused to have their photo taken. All for the crime of looking “out of place.”

This is not policing with consent. This is bullying, it’s predatory behaviour, a total abuse of power, and it worries us that here today, instead of standing up for our rangatahi—as our police Minister, who is actually now the Prime Minister, said at the time—that we’re continuing down this path. It’s medieval. It’s a medieval approach to criminal justice that we know just doesn’t work. We need to start talking to rangatahi and to our youth about what it is that we could be doing better, because I’m sure as hell our tūpuna did not sign this Te Tiriti o Waitangi for our mokopuna to be in care, incarcerated, and continually traumatised.

We must do better, all of us, across this House, and if there’s anything we say in the eleventh hour before we all depart in a couple of days: we cannot be tough on crime when collectively we were allowing the soft on poverty. And we cannot continue arresting inequality out of society and ignore the state of our tamariki and our rangatahi. We will not be supporting this bill. Kia ora rā.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just want to pick up one particular aspect of this bill. I don’t know, maybe being an educator and working with young people, I’m always looking for opportunities to be optimistic. There are parts of this bill that I want to talk about with regards to making restorative practices (RP) more accessible to young people.

RP, for those of us in the education sector, doesn’t mean that accountability and consequences are not there; it just has a different way of addressing it. It invites everyone present into positions of responsibility. I’d like to think that the next stage of this bill, when this goes to select committee, that everybody—victims, the perpetrators, and the entire community—take the opportunity to step up to positions of responsibility.

I’d like to reflect on the fact that we have talked about “making it 16”, and this is an opportunity—every young person can make a contribution to the select committee, regardless of their age. We need to hear your voice if we are going to fix this. So, please, stand up and be heard. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. It’s been an interesting debate. I’ve followed it as closely as I was able. I’ve missed a few minutes here and there of various contributions, but I think I’ve had the gist of it in terms of most of the respective parties’ positions.

I’ll take a slightly different tack in terms of some of the analysis that I think’s really interesting in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Actually on a very day in the House—if I can just place that in context, Madam Speaker, without obviously testing your patience in terms of straying too far from the hill—but we’ve had an interesting discussion earlier today about the implications of a declaration of inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act by the Supreme Court, ultimately, and prior to the High Court and Court of Appeal making different decisions along the way. But that was the basis of a report that was made to the House, as required by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZ BORA) now, and the House’s Standing Orders.

Of course, we heard all the arguments and, actually, to be fair, I didn’t listen to a lot of that debate. Again, I wasn’t able, but I presume that a lot of the reasoning in favour of amending the local electoral age of eligibility to vote was around that idea of inconsistency or possible inconsistency with NZ BORA, and it’s right, as far as it goes, that we should debate and discuss that. I’m, obviously, not going to get into that substantive issue now, but from a constitutional point of view, it’s interesting because we have in front of us tonight a very detailed and interesting and helpful report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in relation to this legislation. Actually, passing reference was made to it by Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, which I think was commendable on her part. I haven’t heard much other discussion of this aspect of the debate, although of course the purpose of that requirement for an assessment under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is to bring to the House’s attention the matters that are raised in it.

So perhaps I can start by noting that the Hon David Parker has concluded that this bill is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act on three different bases, in terms of the sections of that, and then, obviously, we talk about how that relates to this legislation: the right of a child to be dealt with in a manner that takes account of their age, the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure, and the right to freedom of expression.

I’ll just pause there, lest it should appear as though I’m arguing against the bill. I’m not. My position is consistent with that of other National Party colleagues, but I’m approaching the debate from a point of view that recognises that these are fundamental rights that are in play, that I’m sure we all would wish to have the outside world know that we’ve considered and turned our mind to. And of course, for the avoidance of any doubt from anyone who’s listening or following this debate or perhaps even considering it later—it may even be that the courts are called upon to consider this debate later, and it will be very interesting to know what they make of the positions taken by various parties around the House.

But, of course, it’s right that Parliament should be able to pass the law, even though it’d be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That’s the case for two reasons. One is constitutional. This House, at least theoretically, is responsive to the requirements of New Zealanders, and we have some form of electoral mandate or democratic mandate. It’s not the perfect system, of course, but famously it’s said to be better than all the others that have been tried and are even less perfect. So it’s constitutionally appropriate that we can make laws despite a judgment of inconsistency against the BORA yardstick.

But also of course, an inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is subjective to some extent. I don’t mean that in a way that is dismissive of any assessment that’s been made by any Attorney-General, but when we see, for example, in the analysis of this bill by the current Attorney-General, which I think—as I say, I emphasise that it is actually a very good piece of analysis. Their policy considerations—I won’t say “political” but certainly their “policy” considerations and it’s a judgment along those lines as much as a legal one—have led him to conclude that the bill is not consistent with the fundamental rights that he’s mentioned.

So in terms of what actually is done by the Act, we’ve got the case of 12- and 13-year-olds able to be subject to criminal proceedings in the Youth Court in respect of first-time offending, and that’s a bit of a change from the current regime. So section 25 of NZ BORA concerns itself with minimum standards of criminal procedure and mentions specifically at subsection (i) that a child’s age is to be taken into account in the way that they’re treated by the criminal justice system. In fact, I think again it was Debbie Ngarewa-Packer who has referred to the fact that that debate previously in relation to where the line is drawn, be it 16 or 18 in terms of eligibility for voting in local government, is an interesting juxtaposition with the debate that we’re having now in the House whereby it seems there’s agreement between both the major parties and, I presume, our ACT colleague that 12- and 13-year-olds can be treated in the criminal justice system in the way that’s described in the bill.

We’ve also got a mechanism in the bill, whereby bodily samples can be ordered by the court to be taken from 12- and 13-year-olds. This is a pretty serious matter. It is, in fact, for any human being at any age to be ordered to give up a bodily sample even for the legitimate purposes of determining the way that offending might be ultimately avoided in the future—one would hope. And of course that’s the ultimate aim and I think we should give credit to the Government for putting forward a bill that is designed to do that. As I say, we support it for that reason as well. But nevertheless, this is a serious step. So when I read the bill quite recently and realised that that was an aspect of it, it did occur me to see what the Attorney-General had had to say in the matter and I wasn’t disappointed to see that he’d turned his mind to it and, as I say, analysed it along the lines of inconsistency.

Then, finally, there’s a mechanism within the bill to do with posting content online; that’s to say recording the offence, this new offence of a ram raid so-called—and that’s the colloquial term that we’re all using; in fact it’s in the name of the bill. But I think the new offence itself is something along the lines of ram raiding—I don’t have the wording in front of me, but you know, it’s quite a specific description of a thing that happens with what we know as ram raids. Oh, there we go: “Using motor vehicle to damage building and enter it with intent to commit imprisonable offence.” So an aggravating factor to film and to post that online, and, of course, that’s, at least on the face of it, inconsistent with, or a possible breach, or a limit on the right to freedom of expression at section 14 of NZ BORA.

These are worthwhile considerations. It’s good that the Attorney-General has turned his mind to them, and he sets out in a pretty classical kind of fashion the way that this analysis takes place, starting with the policy background, the clear public interest in addressing the rise in ram raid offending, and then considering whether these measures are a justified limitation under those various rights. Of course, section 5 of NZ BORA allows that kind of weighing exercise—that calculation, if you will—on whether the aims of the policy are worthwhile, whether there is a logical connection between the measures that have been taken and whether the aims can be met. And then whether there is a proportionate connection between the aims and whether, for example, there are other methods that could have been taken that would have achieved the same result in a less intrusive or less rightslimiting way.

So, as I say, I think it’s good analysis. It’s helpful. For what it’s worth, I would agree with most of it. I’m less certain on the freedom of expression aspect in section 14, relative to the element of posting the footage online, whereas the bodily samples element, certainly from such young people as 12- and 13-year-olds, I think I can quite readily concur with from an NZ BORA perspective.

But, as I say, as a lawmaker more generally and as a member of the National Party caucus who’s considered this bill, considered the awful effects of such offending in the community, including not least of all, actually, on the young people themselves and the life into which they are getting themselves, I will just say—and others have made comment already—that it’s unfortunate that it’s taken this long for the Government to realise, in the words of the explanatory note, that “a wider range of options to deal with child offenders”, “a greater range of interventions that could make a more significant difference to stop repeat offending” is actually a worthwhile aim. We’ve been talking about consequences in that sort of quite broad, holistic kind of way for a while. We’re glad the Government has joined us on that journey. And so with that care and attention to all the relevant background factors, we commend the bill to the House.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): In listening to the debates tonight, I believe we’ve got a whole younger generation growing up with no relationship to police outside of seeing them in a car or when they’re in trouble. We’ve heard from the National Party about all the things that are wrong, and, yet, no acknowledgment that the National Government froze police numbers, closed our community police stations, and continued to close down and stop community policing.

I actually think that that has had a huge, huge repercussion on why we are seeing a whole generation grow up with no relationship. I listened about the seven-year-old involved in a ram raid; you have to wonder, has there ever been anything worse than taking our community cops off the beat? I think that is an acknowledgment that the National Party should really think about.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 106

New Zealand Labour 62; New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 12

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 1; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Urgency

Urgency

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Leader of the House): Oh, jeepers—knocking the water over. I move, That urgency be accorded for the committee stage and third reading of the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill and the first readings and referral to a select committee of the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill, the Residential Property Managers Bill, the Victims of Family Violence—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No. Read that one again.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —the Victims of Family Violence—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No. Order! That’s not what I have here.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Sorry, that’s what’s on my notes, Madam Speaker. Just one moment—the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill, and the victims of family violence strengthening legislation protection bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No. Do the victims of family violence one again.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Should I begin it again, Madam Speaker?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Just the victims of family violence.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —and the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

The reasons for moving this urgency motion are partly technical. Urgency allows the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill to conclude its committee stage and then move straight to third reading. This motion also overcomes an anomaly in Standing Orders so as to allow the Residential Property Managers Bill to be considered today. Though the bill was introduced before three other bills before the House today, it would not otherwise be eligible for debate. Urgency will give the House extra time to refer bills on important issues, such as the protection of the Hauraki Gulf, the strengthening of legal protections for the victims of violence, and the future of news media in the digital age to be referred to select committees and for submissions to be called so that those bills are ready to be considered without delay by select committees in the new Parliament. Urgency will be completed by 1 p.m. tomorrow, so question time and a member’s bill day will be able to proceed as normal. I thank the House for the consideration of the motion.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded the committee stage and third reading of the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill, the first readings and referral to a select committee of the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill, the Residential Property Managers Bill, the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill, the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill, and the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

Ayes 72

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

Noes 44

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 22 August.

Parts 1 to 3, Schedule 1, and clauses 1 and 2 (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Members, the House is in committee for further consideration of the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. When we were last debating the bill, the question was that Parts 1 to 3, Schedule 1, and clauses 1 and 2 stand part.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. When we left this debate, we were particularly concerned around the average-speed cameras. This bill—just to recap for people who are tuning into this debate—was introduced by Kiri Allan as justice Minister some time ago, and it was mainly around fleeing drivers and giving officers the ability to seize and impound vehicles for 28 days if the driver doesn’t provide information, and disqualification. All of that is of interest, and we broadly supported that, because we all know we’ve got a real issue on that front. But also they took the opportunity, when doing this bill, to sneak through a couple of other things in relation to the Government’s focus on speeding and, in particular, point-to-point speed cameras.

I was making the point, before we ran out of time, of how this operates in conjunction with what we’ve seen as a rapid roll-out of 30-kilometre-an-hour speed limits all around the countryside and our cities, much to the annoyance of people who have got places to go and things to do. They look at the fact that their cars have never been safer, they’ve never had more technology, and yet we have to crawl around at 30 kilometres an hour, and it’s very irritating. So the thought of having a point-to-point camera for a kilometre on a 30-kilometre-an-hour road—and I’d like the Minister to give us the answer to the calculation, which is “d times 3.6 divided by t”, in relation to distance being a kilometre and the speed being 30 kilometres an hour, and just what the answer is. If he could give us that answer, that would be useful.

But the point we’re making is: what advice has he had when it comes to—this is all about safety, ultimately. Why hasn’t the Government focused on all the other many factors involved in serious crashes and injuries and death, such as drink-driving? We know that there has been a huge reduction in the number of drink-driving tests around the country, so why don’t they focus on that? Why don’t they focus on drug-driving, where they still haven’t got round to actually bringing in an effective drug-driving test? Why don’t they focus on seatbelts, which are critical? Why don’t they focus on driver distraction around cellphones and fatigue, and all the many other things—and, of course, the quality of the roads and dealing with the potholes and actually building safer roads? But instead of focusing on all those issues, the only thing they focus on when it comes to safety is speed limit reductions and driving people crazy. So we don’t think that they’ve got the balance right at all. In fact, the suspicion is that, really, the real reason why they focus on speed is that they don’t really like people driving cars full stop and they want to make it as difficult as possible and as frustrating as possible for people to get around, particularly in cities.

So what I’m keen to hear from the Minister is: why the focus is so much on making us crawl around at 30 kilometres an hour, particularly in relation to schools, where they’ve adopted the approach—and it’s filtered through to all the little councils around town—that there should be a 30kilometre speed limit anywhere near a school, 24 hours a day? I don’t know, maybe I’ve missed something. I’ve got 4 kids, who have been to school, and I’ve never dropped them to school at 2 o’clock in the morning. I’ve never dropped them to school at 5 o’clock in the morning. I’ve never picked them up at 8 o’clock at night. There’s actually about a 10-minute—

Simon Court: Maybe if they’d been on a rowing crew, you might have dropped them off at 5 a.m.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Maybe. They’re not focusing on their school work as much as they should—maybe. But maybe they’re just lackadaisical about the whole thing. But, in general, there’s about a 20-minute window at around 8 o’clock in the morning and another 20-minute window at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon where maybe it might make sense to have a 30-kilometre-an-hour speed limit within about 100 metres of a school. But, no, we’ve got about a kilometre, 24 hours a day, and it’s all about, again—and I just want to test this proposition also with the Minister: was it not his purpose, when he came into Government, when he came into Parliament, to try and make life easier for New Zealanders? And, if it was his goal when he came into Parliament to make life easier for New Zealanders, why is he bringing in point-to-point cameras and 30-kilometre-an-hour speed limits everywhere? Because that’s not making people’s lives easier; it’s just making them annoyed and irritated. We don’t support this element of the bill.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): The member Paul Goldsmith asked why we’re not focusing on road surface repairs; we are. After a period of about five years—of the last five years of the National Government—when, because they were spending so much on their roads of national significance and froze road funding for maintenance, the number of kilometres of road being repaired for surface or surface replacement halved roughly. You need to do about 9 percent per annum; it dropped to 5 or 6 percent per annum, and we’ve restored that. But we need to do more, and indeed the latest draft Government Policy Statement on land transport proposes a further 50 percent increase in funding on maintenance. So that’s certainly within the bill.

In terms of cellphones, drunk-driving, drug-driving, and more safety measures like safety barriers, I agree with the member that they are all important, but also speed is relevant. Tragically, last year, 377 people were killed on our roads in New Zealand. That’s 7.3 deaths—7.3 people—per 100,000. By comparison, Australia’s average across all states is 4.6 deaths per 100,000, whilst, in Europe, it’s significantly lower, with two deaths per 100,000 people. It’s not all related to—

Simeon Brown: You’re just reading the talking points.

Hon DAVID PARKER: “Reading the talking points”, did the member say? It would help if he read his, rather than just blathering on, as he often does. Some of the—

Simeon Brown: It’s the nasty party.

Hon DAVID PARKER: The nasty party? Speed is a factor. And, in terms of the member’s concern that these cameras are going to be used on 30-kilometre areas, I’m advised that that’s not the intention; they’re going to be deployed on high-risk roads.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, thank you for responding to questions about the problems this bill’s trying to solve.

Minister, it’s true that many New Zealand roads are unsafe. They’re unsafe at any speed, not just the posted speed limit. Minister, the Government Policy Statement—the GPS—for land transport recognises more money needs to be invested in maintenance, potholes, vehicles swerving to avoid a pothole entering oncoming traffic, or drivers being distracted because they’re trying to work out what it is on the road they need to avoid. Clearly that’s a hazard.

Minister, many of New Zealand’s older roads, their speed environment—the speed limit—is based on designs from decades past, last century. You can drive all over New Zealand on rural State highways where they were essentially designed to allow bullock carts and then maybe the Model T Ford to follow the contours of the land on a road hand-cut with picks and shovels. Even though those roads are now tarmacked, they’re marked with paint, they’ve got speed limit warning signs all over them, Minister, many of those roads are completely unsuited for the 21st century and for the needs of people in communities who just need to get places—whether it’s dropping kids off at school or taking them to footy practice on a weekend—

Dr James McDowall: Rowing practice.

SIMON COURT: —getting to the shops. Rowing practice, as Dr James McDowall points out. Even at 5 a.m. in the morning, there are Kiwis trying to get their kids to sports practices. Dr McDowall, that’s right.

Angela Roberts: Forestry trucks.

SIMON COURT: Oh, and as Angela Roberts points out, forestry trucks on the road all the time. Assuming that cutting trees is economically viable, even with all of the restrictions and red tape this Government wants to put on them.

So Minister, when it comes to safe speeds, safer roads, a lot of our roads are designed and built essentially for bullock carts and built with picks and shovels. It’s perfectly justified they have lower speed limits. But Minister, many of our new roads are designed to 110-kilometre-an-hour speed environments and some people—including the radio announcer Mike Hosking—suggest that the Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway could be driven at 140 or 150 kilometres an hour.

Now, while that’s not allowed, many roads around New Zealand are designed for 110kilometrean-hour speed limits. The Transmission Gully highway, Minister—27 kilometres of some of the best infrastructure ever built in New Zealand—currently has a speed limit of 100 kilometres an hour, even though it’s designed for 110. So Minister, will this Government commit to increasing the speed limit to the designed speed limit on roads which are designed to run at a safer speed, like Transmission Gully, to at least 110, which is, of course, safe given that modern vehicles have airbags—they have all kinds of detection systems to tell you when you’re leaving your lane or when you’re over-speeding?

Minister, will this Government commit to raising the speed limit on Transmission Gully to 110 kilometres an hour? Or will this Government insist that speed cameras are deployed on Transmission Gully—over 27 kilometres of Transmission Gully from start to finish—to identify if someone’s doing 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109 kilometres an hour, even though the road’s designed for 110? Because a lot of Kiwis are like “All we want to do is get around at a decent clip.” Our motors are designed for it. We’re driving the latest kit, even used cars imported from Japan and Europe—10 years old—have airbags and all kinds of detection systems. Minister, will we be allowed to drive at 110 on Transmission Gully or will these speed cameras be deployed on Transmission Gully first to catch people doing 101?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Just before I call the Minister—OK, I’ve been quite lenient here. We’ve gone a long way and I let you go. We are hearing the bill as all parts. However, now we’ve all had our fun we’re all going to talk about the bill from now on—including you, Minister. So the floor is yours.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I can confirm that the bill doesn’t increase or alter speed limits. All it provides for is the use of point-to-point average speed for traffic cameras. In respect of the Transmission Gully question, funnily enough, I signed out a paper on that this week authorising consultation on raising the limit.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Chair, and I appreciate your indulgence as I have my opportunity—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): No, you actually don’t, Mr Brown. We’ve been very even, to date, so we’re going to talk about the bill.

SIMEON BROWN: Yes, I was going to talk about the bill too, Mr Chair. So thank you.

One of the questions I’ve got in relation to this bill is—and the Minister, in his response to my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith, said that the point-to-point cameras would only apply to high-risk roads—can the Minister of Transport please identify where in the bill it limits the criteria as to which roads average speed check cameras can be applied to? My read of the bill is that it does not include a limitation for these average speed checks to only high-risk roads. I’m happy to be proven incorrect. But I think there is concern from a large number of New Zealanders—who have seen the blanket speed limit reductions being imposed upon New Zealanders and new 30-kilometre-per-hour speed limits being put on vast swathes of suburban roads—that these speed checks will be used on those 30-kilometre-per-hour roads.

The second question I’ve got is in relation to the clause which deals with traffic control devices informing drivers of the system. This clause is in relation to the requirement that there must be an average speed—or, basically, signage to inform people of the average speed system being in operation. This, effectively, changes the requirement to no longer have to be that the signage is—well, basically, it means that there now has to be a certificate to prove that there has been—well, there’s a Supplementary Order Paper—signage at some point in the last year. This is, effectively, my understanding of what that new clause requires it to be, which has, obviously, changed. But there’s no description of what the sign size needs to be.

Now, I was driving into the city, in Auckland, the other day, and I drove off the motorway—the Spaghetti Junction—you get off at Nelson St, and you get to the traffic lights, and in the very corner, on the left, on one of the traffic lights, is a little sign, and it’s probably not much bigger than an A4 piece of paper, and it says “Average speed check ahead”. Now, I’m not sure—

Simon Court: Was there reo Māori or just English?

SIMEON BROWN: It was in English, Mr Court. But the question I’ve got in relation to that is: it’s such a small sign, you could barely tell, and so when you’re putting in place signage to warn people of average speed checks, surely that needs to be visible so that motorists who are travelling at potentially 40, 50, 60, if it’s high risk, 80 kilometres per hour, are actually able to notice the signage and be able to see it? I don’t see any particular description of what that sign is. But I’m happy to take the Minister down there at some point and show him this sign. It is very, very small. My point there is: a lot of motorists would be very concerned, if we’re going to have average speed checks put in place with very limited signage, I think that would not be the intent of the clause, which is actually requiring the signage so people have fair warning.

The other point I’d make is—I’m not sure if the Minister’s aware of that average speed check; I think it’s just a trial that Auckland Transport’s doing. It would be interesting to know if that’s just a trial, what they’re using that for. But also I would just note that that is a stretch of road which has just had its speed limit reduced from 50 to 40. So, again, that raises questions back to my first question, around where the limitation is to prove that this must only be used on high-risk roads. That road’s got a speed limit of 40 kilometres per hour. Is that a high-risk road? How is that going to be determined? Who’s determining what a high-risk road is or what’s not? I have those questions; I look forward to those answers.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): In respect of where they’re deployed, that’s an operational decision that will be handled by—

Simeon Brown: What about high-risk roads? What’s a high-risk road?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, I’m advised that that is their intention, but it is an operational decision that’s not prescribed by the legislation.

In respect of where they are, I’m also advised that, in practice, they have to be used in corridors where there are not—the impracticality of doing it on roads where there are lots of points of entry and exit at a short point, essentially, means that they have to be done on a State highway.

In respect of the signage, that’s not dealt with under this legislation, but other rules enable the prescription and land transport rules of what a sign should be like so that it is of a fair size to warn people.

The policy objective here is that these cameras aren’t designed to gather revenue; they’re actually in place in order to improve driver behaviour, and that’s why you put a warning up, rather than just use them to maximise revenue.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d just like to query the Minister regarding Supplementary Order Paper 421 and the definition in clause 4 of a “moving vehicle offence”, particularly around paragraph (a)(iii): “any offence against regulations made under this Act or the Transport (Vehicle and Driver Registration and Licensing) Act 1986” with regard to these point-to-point average speed cameras. So my question is: can the Minister confirm that these automated systems, for every single car that’s passing through there, are going to be picking up people with expired warrants of fitness (WoFs) and expired registrations, which means, basically, not just an incredible revenue-raising exercise—but will the picking up of this information and pinging these drivers disproportionately affect those on lower incomes?

There are those families that are perhaps a little bit out with their WoFs and their regos, often by accident, but maybe it’s just another cost in this current cost of living crisis that they haven’t got around to it. Will the system sit there all day and night pinging those drivers, many of whom can ill afford it? So if the Minister could just provide clarification on that, that would be helpful.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): I’m happy to. No, the automated infringement system will not apply to the lack of a registration sticker or an expired warrant. It only applies to moving vehicle offences. There’s a Supplementary Order Paper dated 29 August which slightly changes the wording of that, and it reads that a “moving vehicle offence” means “(a) an offence detected by approved vehicle surveillance equipment that is—(i) a speeding offence; or (ii) an offence in respect of the failure to comply with the directions given by a traffic signal or a traffic sign that is a variable traffic or land control sign; or (iii) any offence against [certain regulations made under the Transport Act]; or (iv) a toll offence; or (b) a speeding offence detected by a point-to-point average speed system”.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Chair. I think the point which the Minister made earlier, which was that this would be the role of an operational decision as to what was a high-risk road, doesn’t leave motorists with much comfort around the operation of these systems. I again use the example of what’s happening in Nelson Street in Auckland, which, as the Minister will know, is not a State highway. It is a local road which has many entrances and exits. Now, I’m not sure whether that’s a trial or whether that is something which is being used by Auckland Transport for other purposes.

But the question I’ve got is why is that being trialled, for what purpose, and if the Minister’s intent and the Government’s intent in this legislation is for these point-to-point cameras to be used on State highways or on roads which don’t have many entrances or exits, why is that not more clearly defined in the legislation to actually give motorists more confidence that this is not just a revenue-raising tool, or a tool to simply try and now force these much slower speed limits, which many people are frustrated about—why is the Minister not actually providing that clarity in the primary legislation, rather than leaving it up to road control authorities? I’ve just given an example of a road controlling authority which is doing average speed checks on a non - State highway with many, many intersections on that particular stretch of road. So surely there needs to be some clarity around that in the legislation.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): I’m advised that that is purely a trial to test systems and look at data and that there is no intention to use it on a road like that, which has got multiple entrances and exits; indeed, their intention is to use it in the sorts of corridors that I’ve previously described. The Government disagrees that all of these things need to be specified in the legislation, and is willing to trust the road control authorities to make sensible decisions as to their deployment.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Minister, just coming back to the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 421, in new section (2)(1)(a)(iii), inserted by clause 4, “any offence against regulations … under this Act or the Transport (Vehicle and Driver Registration and Licensing) Act … that is declared by regulations under this Act to be a moving vehicle offence”. Minister, it appears to Dr McDowall and I, and no doubt to anybody else who had the opportunity to scrutinise this legislation which is being pushed through the House under urgency, that this appears to allow speed cameras—average speed cameras; camera detection equipment—to issue offence notices and tickets to people because their registration or their warrant of fitness or some other matter associated with their vehicle condition is out of order.

Minister, would you please confirm to the committee and to those listening or watching at home that the Government proposes tonight, under urgency, in a Supplementary Order Paper amending a bill which has been tabled months ago, to include ticketing Kiwis if they haven’t kept their warrant and registration up to date, whether it’s a car or a trailer, that if they pass a camera that’s going to be authorised by this legislation that they’ll get a ticket if their warrant and registration is out of date. Minister, please confirm that.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): No; in fact, I said the opposite. They can’t get a ticket for that. The only change that is made by that Supplementary Order Paper to the definition of a moving vehicle offence is the addition of paragraph (b), which is a speeding offence detected by the point-to-point average speed system.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): In new sections 139AAA to 139AAC, inserted by clause 26, there are new powers which the Minister of Transport will have to approve an automated infringement system. Can I ask the Minister, in relation to the system, is that relating to each individual area where these average speed checks will be used, or is that a particular type of technology which may or may not be approved?

If it is in relation to either of those, can the Minister give any assurances to the committee as to whether or not officials have already started the process to, effectively, put together any proposals around these types of systems, and what advice has the Minister received regarding this?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): In fact, neither. New section 139AAA is about the ticketing system—the automated infringement system—not about the speed camera system.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister Parker, the concept of average speed monitoring across the transport network sounds fantastic in principle. Across the Auckland, Wellington, and other metro networks, average speed monitoring would reveal that, off peak, it’s possible to drive on the State highway network, in particular, at the posted speed limit, whether it’s 80 or 100 or, in very, very special cases, 110 kilometres an hour.

Now, Dr McDowall, I don’t know—have you ever looked at your dashboard, have you looked at—

Dr James McDowall: Oh, all the time.

SIMON COURT: He looks at it all the time, as part of his safe operation of a motor vehicle. I think my speedo goes up to 280 kilometres an hour. Dr McDowall, what does yours go up to?

Dr James McDowall: More than that.

SIMON COURT: Even more than that. But 110, Minister, we would accept—we would accept. This is not Germany; we don’t have autobahns. This is not Italy; we don’t have the autostrada or, in France, l’autoroute. But what we do have are motorways designed to 100 in the urban environment or 110—those new motorways designed to 110 which are actually outside the urban environment. Who knew? Building motorways to a much higher standard the further you get from town—it’s almost counterintuitive, Minister.

But let’s assume that average speed monitoring is a good idea. Minister, imagine that not just monitoring average speeds for compliance, or for the purpose of identifying who is infringing against the speed limit, but to determine whether average speeds are acceptable from an efficiency point of view. All of these roads which are currently subject to policing enforcement, of course—what day is it, Dr McDowall, what’s the date?

Dr James McDowall: I believe it’s still Tuesday.

SIMON COURT: It’s Tuesday, 29 August. I think because it’s getting towards the end of the calendar month, just about every traffic enforcement officer is out there on the network trying to issue tickets in the last few days of the month. So, clearly, the time of the month, the time of day matters. But it matters more to motorists who want to get around the network at a decent clip when roads designed for 100, 110, 80, 60, whatever it is, are congested, Minister.

So will this equipment, Minister, be used to monitor congestion? Will it be used to identify where roads are overloaded with traffic and, potentially, where congestion charging or new capacity is warranted? Where motorists who fully expect to enter the road network and travel at the posted speed limit to get to their destination—whether they’re taking their kids to sport or school, whether they’re a truck driver with a load of aggregate or a load of sand in the back going to a construction job—will these cameras, Minister, help the road corridor operators, the road controlling authorities, identify where congestion is occurring and therefore what measures are necessary to alleviate that congestion so motorists who want to travel at the posted speed limit, who are prepared to pay a congestion charge—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): I think we’re drifting a little bit here, Mr Court, if you’ll excuse the pun.

SIMON COURT: Well, I mean, Mr Chair, to be honest, how this appears to the average punter is that the Minister’s proposing to tax people or fine people driving over the speed limit even though a whole lot of Kiwis would be prepared to pay a congestion charge simply to travel at the posted speed limit. I mean, if someone said, “Oh, you might get ticketed 100 or 200 bucks for travelling over the limit, but you could pay 100 or 200 a month to travel at the speed limit all the time.”, Minister, that sounds like nirvana to a whole lot of Kiwis who might have driven on l’autoroute or the autostrada or “fahren, fahren, fahren down the autobahn”. Minister, tell us: will these cameras help Kiwis get around, or are they simply another revenue-gathering tool?

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): I move, That the question be now put.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Chair. My question is in relation to new section 146B, “Weighted average speed limit between two detection points”. It says, “This section applies if more than 1 speed limit applies between 2 detection points on a length of road along which the average speed of a vehicle is to be calculated for the purposes of section 146A … The speed limit for this purpose”—and then there’s a calculation for how that speed limit is going to be checked. Now, the question I’ve got in relation to this clause: the Minister has been adamant in trying to tell the House that this will be used on State highways and not on local roads; it’s basically the argument that the Minister’s been trying to say—that Kiwis shouldn’t have to worry about these being used where there’s 30-kilometre-per-hour speed limits, which have been blanketed through our suburbs.

But now we’ve got to a point where it says here that, effectively, there could be multiple speed limits on a section of road, and now we’re going to have a weighted average speed limit which will apply. Now, most parts of our State highway network generally have the same consistent speed limit along those parts. For instance, if you travel out of Auckland, between Auckland and Hamilton, it’s 110 most of the way. There is, of course, a portion where it is 100, then it goes to 110. So is the purpose of this section to put one at the Bombay Hills and then another one at Cambridge and then, of course, to weight it according to those? Or is it, effectively, to allow for this to be applied in more suburban environments, where, in that example, you only have two speed limits, 100 and 110, but in a more urban environment you may have 50, you might have a 60, then you might have 40—you might then have a 30. What is the intent of this clause? Because it is now appearing to the committee that it is actually more about actually just being able to be used everywhere rather than actually being limited, as the Minister said, to State highways. Now, if it’s to be limited to State highways—if that’s the intent—why doesn’t the Minister just put it in the bill and give New Zealanders that clarity? If the intention is to have it for every single road, well then, be honest with the public that that’s the intention, because the Minister from the chair said, “It’s predominantly for state highways”. The legislation basically gives tools for these average weighted speed limits to basically be able to be used on any type of road.

And the final question I’ve got is to understand how this then interacts with variable speed limits, because of course, some sections of State highway, you drive past a school, and occasionally—under the land transport setting of speed limit rule, it requires all schools to have reduced speed limits; rural schools can obviously have a variable speed limit. Well, if you’re driving past a school, is that going to take into account the variable speed limit by the average speed limit check? Will that take into account the time of day that the person is driving past the school, and how will it know what time of day they actually drove past the school, particularly if the average speed check is over a hundred or 200 kilometre length of distance? These issues matter, and I look forward to the Minister’s response to those questions.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport): I’ve already addressed the issue as to it being an operational matter for the transport authority, but I have repeated advice from officials that this will be predominantly State highways. In respect of the averaging system, it is set out in clauses 146B, 146C, and 146D, which includes publication of matters relating to the point-to-point average speed system, were an average to be used.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): 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 44

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Supplementary Order Paper 420, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 422, be agreed to

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

Ayes 62

New Zealand Labour 62.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 34; ACT New Zealand 10; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 1; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Amendments to the amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the Minister’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 420, as amended, and Supplementary Order Paper 421 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 106

New Zealand Labour 62; New Zealand National 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Kerekere.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Amendments as amended agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Parts 1 to 3, Schedule 1, and clauses 1 and 2 as amended stand part.

Ayes 96

New Zealand Labour 62; New Zealand National 34.

Noes 22

ACT New Zealand 10; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 1; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Parts 1 to 3, Schedule 1, and clauses 1 and 2 as amended agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Transport) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Transport: I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I move, That the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

As I indicated at the committee stage, New Zealand’s record when it comes to the number of deaths on our roads—per kilometre—is not as good as countries that we might compare ourselves with. Last year, 377 people tragically died on our roads, which is equivalent to 7.3 deaths per 100,000 people. In comparison, in Australia, the average across all states is 4.6 deaths per 100,000 people. The bestperforming countries in Europe reported a significantly lower two deaths per 100,000 people. It’s true that some of those deaths can be accounted for by way of population size and public transport and the better motorways that you can have across most of your country than in a smaller spread-out country like New Zealand. None the less, we can much improve our safety record. The Government’s 202030 Road to Zero Strategy sets what we believe is an achievable target of reducing annual deaths and serious injuries, with the intention that there is a 40 percent reduction by 2030. The current situation isn’t good enough. The Government is trying to crack down on dangerous driving, and ensuring that our roads are safer for everyone to use and get around on. This bill will reduce unsafe driving by providing new tools to respond to fleeing drivers, and by addressing other safety matters within the transport system.

I’ll deal firstly with drivers fleeing from the police. A fleeing driver is a driver who has been signalled to stop by the police but fails to stop or remain stopped until the officer has completed their duties. This bill will complement a refreshed Police fleeing-driver policy. That revised policy came into effect in May this year. This policy is designed to ensure that the police can hold offenders to account for their actions whilst appropriately managing fleeing-driver events as safely as possible. Both the Police’s new fleeing-driver policy and this bill respond to a steadily increasing number of fleeing-driver events since 2010. While the number of fleeing-driver events has been growing, it is pleasing that the number of resulting deaths has decreased substantially. This was in part due to the 2020 iteration of the Police’s fleeing-driver policy, which saw more emphasis on post-event investigations rather than in-the-moment pursuits. However, a downside of that policy and a difficulty for the police in identification of drivers after the event is evidenced by the fact that the identification rate dropped from 52 percent—already low—to around 34 percent following that 2020 policy change.

So, while it’s critical we maintain the road safety gains, we can’t sit back and allow lawbreakers who flee the police to get off scot-free, which is why we’re introducing a new power for the police to seize and impound a vehicle for 28 days if the vehicle’s owner, or registered owner, fails to provide information or misleads the police about the fleeing driver who was driving their vehicle. This will help police identify the driver and incentivise owners to be, perhaps, more responsible with who they lend their vehicles to. The bill also enables the police—

Simon Court: What if it’s a finance company?

Hon DAVID PARKER: If it’s a finance company, the finance company interest is provided for in the legislation. The bill also enables police to seize and impound a vehicle involving a fleeing driver for up to six months, an increase on the current 28 days. The six-month impoundment is discretionary. Police use discretions like this quite frequently, and they will apply their discretion as to when the six-month impoundment rule should be used. It can only be used to prevent a serious threat to road safety.

Fleeing drivers often exhibit other unsafe behaviours, such as reckless driving or excessive speed. They could be fleeing from a checkpoint because they’re over the alcohol limit, or evading police because they’ve been involved in a crime. These situations, where the fleeing driver is driving at a high speed, involve—

Simon Court: It’s already a legal one, am I right?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Already a high number of vehicles are abandoned under the current 28day impoundment regime—

Simon Court: You’re making something illegal that’s already illegal.

Hon DAVID PARKER: —and this will expect the figure to—well, if it was already illegal, why is that member so fixated with the three-strikes legislation? The inconsistency of the ACT Party’s arguments knows no bounds.

We have introduced a 38-day abandonment provision to provide early financial assurance to towage and storage operating. The bill provides that, within 38 days of seizure and impoundments, a vehicle’s owner, or the registered person, must either pay the fees in full to the towage and storage operator or enter into a payment arrangement. If neither of these conditions are met, the vehicle will be deemed abandoned and can be sold by the operator to recoup costs. The registered person whose vehicle is impounded for six months will be given clear notice of the consequences, including the 38day rule, along with clear information about how to appeal the impoundment to Police and how to do so.

In respect of the penalties imposed by the court, the driver’s licence disqualification after a second conviction for a failing-to-stop offence is increased from a year to between one and two years, and that sentence will be at the court’s discretion. A person who has fled from the police not once but twice should, in the view of the Government, face more serious consequences before being allowed behind the wheel again.

Lastly, to tackle the problem of fleeing drivers, a new sentencing option has been created, enabling the courts to exercise a discretionary power to order that a vehicle be forfeited either on first or second conviction for failing to stop. In these cases, not only will the offender lose their car but they’ll lose out on the proceeds of sale. Confiscation is currently used sparingly by the court, and we expect forfeiture orders will be relatively rare as well. None the less, it is an important tool for the court to use to improve road safety.

The package of legislative changes will both deter people from fleeing the police and reduce opportunities for reoffending. There are also other provisions in there that were discussed at the committee of the whole House stage, relating to point-to-point speed cameras, and they will have notices to warn people that they’re in operation, because the intention is to moderate speeds and to discourage people from speeding, which is dangerous, rather than being to collect revenue.

Can I thank the Justice Committee for the time they spent considering the bill. Their recommendations strengthened the legislation. The 33 submissions from organisations and individuals were also valuable. Can I also thank the officials from the Ministry of Transport, who assisted not only the select committee but this House. Lastly, can I thank members around the House for their contributions in the debate.

The purpose of the bill is clear: to crack down on dangerous driving and reduce unsafe behaviour on New Zealand roads. Accordingly, I commend the bill to the House.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It was very good to listen to one of the last senior Ministers standing in the Labour Party—David Parker. He did have a bit of a nasty crack at a member of the Opposition for sort of slight inconsistencies, and it did occur to me as we heard him talk about the fact that this new, tougher legislation he’s bringing in is going to deter fleeing drivers from doing it. But for the last year, they’ve been yelling at us, saying that all these tougher sentences that we’re proposing, like three strikes, are not going to deter people because, when they’re in the act of committing a crime, they’re not thinking about the consequences, so deterrence is a mirage—it’s a dream. But when it comes to this bill, apparently it’s important. So I can’t quite work that out: if, when the 14-year-old is deciding whether to put the foot down when he sees the police or not, this bill is going to deter it. I think it will, but that’s certainly not been the argument that Labour has proposed for every other proposal that we’ve made around tougher sentencing over the last two years.

So it’s been a wonderful and very agile backflip from David Parker that I didn’t think he was capable of, but there you go. In the last week of Parliament, having derided the National Party for years for being tough on crime and so-called knee-jerk reactions to crime, we heard David Parker, on his way out the door, after six years, saying that we need to crack down on crime—again, another backflip from the Minister on this topic. But here we are; we’re on this bill.

The National Party’s in a slightly tricky position in the sense that we agree with half of it and we disagree with the other half—in the sense that we agree with the proposed changes around fleeing drivers. Everybody knows that the police decision that they’ll never chase has been a bit of a mistake. And—surprise, surprise!—people worked out relatively quickly that, if they put their foot down and took off and are safe that they’ll never be chased, well, the probability of being caught drops very substantially. So—surprise, surprise!—more people do it. That has been one of the contributing factors to the explosion in ram raids that we’ve seen in this country.

If you think that this is a global problem, go and talk to Michael Hill Jewellers, who have got places in Australia and Canada, and neither of those countries have anything like the level of violent crime and ram raids and smash and grabs that they are seeing. So that was a mistake, and they are slowly getting around to fixing it in this bill—in the sense that it toughens up the consequences for fleeing drivers by allowing their cars to be impounded for longer. Allowing the owners of the cars, if they can’t provide information, to have their cars impounded will make some difference. And it is something that we broadly support, in the sense of taking this issue of ram raiding seriously. Bearing in mind that only 18 months or so ago the Labour Government was downplaying this issue, pretending it didn’t exist, but now it does exist and they’re finally doing something about it, and we support them in that.

What we don’t support is the obsession with making everybody crawl around at 30 kilometres an hour and putting point-to-point speed cameras in that context. We’re not keen on that. We agree that public road safety is important, but we would prefer that the Government focus on all the many other factors leading to road deaths. We asked the officials what number of road fatalities and serious injuries were caused by speeding as compared with other things. It’s about 10 percent—10 percent. But when it comes to actually having checkpoints for drink-driving, or actually coming up with a decent solution to drug-driving, or dealing with people wearing their seatbelts, or actually providing safe roads and building safe new roads, and the whole plethora of other elements around safety, not much has happened.

But the one thing that the Government has been vigorous on under Michael Wood—and, before him, Phil Twyford—is cracking down on speeding everywhere. Well, yes, that might be appropriate, but not if, at the same time, you’re making people crawl around at 30 kilometres an hour—24 hours a day if they happen to be anywhere near a school and in our cities. And then on roads where you used to be able to drive at 70 kilometres an hour, suddenly, with the safest cars in the world, you have to crawl around at 50 kilometres an hour, and everywhere you look, you’re having to go slower. So putting point-to-point cameras in that context is just an irritation. We don’t agree with it, and we don’t support it. We’re sort of left thinking, “Well, do we support a bill that we sort of half support and half don’t like? Or do we oppose a bill because we half don’t like it and half support it?”

On balance, as a caucus, we thought it is sending a clear message to the ram-raiders that we’re not going to expect their vote but we do take what’s going on in our communities very seriously and there should be tougher penalties for them, and we’ve got to do something to try and restore some law and order in this country. So, on balance, we support it, but we don’t like this element of it and we’ll be dealing with that if we get a chance in Government. But on that basis, we will be supporting this bill in the third reading.

The only final point I’d make is that we’re in the last sitting week of Parliament. If you step right back into the justice sector, what have we seen over the past six years? What we’ve seen is a Government that has set one priority, clearly articulated, which is to reduce the prison population, irrespective of what’s going on in our communities—and that’s driven everything.

We’ve seen a rise in serious crime and in youth crime over the six years, and we’ve also seen huge delays in the courts. There’s been a lot of denial about that; a lot of saying, “No, no, no, no—crime’s coming down; these are not issues.” Then a lot of claims that the National Party’s been fear-mongering, a lot of talk about knee-jerk reactions and all that sort of stuff. Now, right at the very end—just as the finish line is in view—as the end of a six-year period comes into view, we now, all of a sudden, hear Ginny Andersen and David Parker talking about cracking down on youth crime and ram-raiders, and all of a sudden there’s this mad flurry in the last week of Parliament, with a whole bunch of justice bills, to try and demonstrate that they take things seriously.

I think New Zealanders are not stupid. They see what the Government’s doing. Yes, this bill will be useful—half of it—but they know that the Government’s heart isn’t really in it and they are only doing it because they know they’re so badly out of touch with public sentiment on this issue. So my simple message to people tuning in: if you want the real thing and you want to have law and order restored in this country, well, then, you’ve got an opportunity in two months’ time to give your vote to National. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Responding to Mr Goldsmith’s objection to the point-to-point cameras, at the second reading—thank you to the Hansard team—he said, “I live in Auckland … I, of course, stick to the speed limit. I’m very careful to do that, but I’m the only person in the place who does.” Now, Mr Goldsmith, that’s a bit of an unfair indictment on the good people of Epsom for a start, but then he continued to be very concerned about the 30 kilometre speed limits and was repeatedly told by the Minister that the cameras would be inserted on the areas of high risk—clear answer.

But he may want to talk to his colleague in ACT, who, it appears, would want the cameras everywhere to monitor congestion. So they may want to have a little bit of a conversation about the consistency. I can understand how listeners would be very perplexed about the Opposition’s view: are they objecting to point-to-point speed cameras—

Simon Court: Yes.

VANUSHI WALTERS: —being put in in the highest-risk areas, where there is death, where there is serious injury—say that one more time, Mr Court. Are they objecting to police monitoring compliance with the law? Or are they objecting to the use of modern technology to free our front-line police up to free their capacity to address more serious offending?

It is very confusing on the other side of the House tonight. I would suggest they get out their Magic 8 Ball of decision making, give it a little shake, and try again for the second half of their responses this evening. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Well, I learnt absolutely nothing about the Labour Party’s position on this bill from that speech. In fact, all that speech was saying was, “Look, we’re trying to pass something; this is something, so we’re going to vote for it.” That’s basically the Labour Party’s position on everything at the moment: “We’re going to address crime; this bill’s about crime, so it’s good. Please vote for it.” That’s about the depth of this Government’s position when it comes to these issues at the moment. They have lost this country when it comes to law and order. They have lost the country when it comes to these actually very serious issues. And now they’re trying, in the last week of this Parliament, to give the perception that they actually take these issues seriously, when they’ve had six long years to actually try and fix some of the problems facing our country.

Then, when they come and they actually put a fleeing drivers bill to Parliament to try and make a difference, they have to chuck something at the back to have a go at people who might go 31 kilometres per hour down a 30 kilometre street in Auckland. That is absolutely shameful. But that just shows this Government: they can’t even just pass a bill about fleeing drivers; they have to try and stick some of their agenda into that piece of legislation as well. That’s the bit that the National Party objects to. We don’t have a problem with what this bill’s trying to do around fleeing drivers, trying to crack down on fleeing drivers. We’ve seen the problems that they’ve caused in Auckland and around New Zealand. But what this bill also does is allow for average-speed checks to be put in place around our country to try to enforce the slower speed limits that this Government is ramming down New Zealanders’ throats. That’s not going to stop a fleeing driver, but what it will do is be used by road-controlling authorities up and down our country to enforce the blanket speed-limit reductions that we’re seeing put in place.

I asked the Minister in the committee of the whole House about an example on Nelson Street in Auckland, a street which has just had its speed limit drop from 50 to 40 and there’s a trial happening on that street there. I asked the Minister, “Why is that happening on that street?”, because the Minister told the House, “No, we’re only going to see these happen on high-risk stretches of State highway.” Well, there’s actually a trial happening on a non - State highway: Nelson Street in Auckland. It’s not a State highway; it’s a local road, and it’s just gone from 50 kilometres an hour down to 40 kilometres per hour. Then we heard the Minister say, “Well, it’s not going to be used on roads where there’s lots of intersections.” Well, I’m not sure if David Parker’s actually been down Nelson Street in Auckland, but there’s lots and lots and lots and lots of intersections down Nelson Street.

So, whilst the Minister might get up in this House and say this is only going to be used on highrisk stretches of State highways, this bill has no criteria around what types of roads these averagespeed checks can be put on. It doesn’t include the term “high-risk”—and I just heard from the member who just took her seat, Vanushi Walters, that this will be about high-risk stretches of road. There’s no criteria in this piece of legislation that limits the ability for these to be put on just high-risk roads—there’s no definition of “high-risk” included in the legislation. I take Mr Court’s point: if we’ve got some high-risk stretches of road, why don’t we go and fix them?

Under this Government, what have they done on transport? They cancelled the entire roads of national significance programme that National put in place to fix some of the most dangerous stretches of road. Ōtaki to Levin: over 50 deaths and serious injuries in the last five years, and that’s a road that this Government cancelled. They cancelled it as soon as they came into office—one of the most dangerous stretches of State highway in New Zealand, and instead of fixing that road, what this Government would rather do is put an average-speed check in place. That’s their solution to road safety: an average-speed check on Ōtaki to north of Levin, one of the most dangerous stretches of road in our country, the most high-risk stretches of road—“Instead of trying to fix the road, we’ll cancel the fix and we’ll put in an average-speed check.”

What about the Tauranga Northern Link? This Government cancelled the Tauranga Northern Link. It was going out for tender when this Government came to office back in 2017, but they couldn’t wait to chop up those tender documents, which construction firms were tendering, spending their own money putting tender documents together to tender to fix one of the most dangerous roads in New Zealand. They cancelled the tender documents, and instead what did they do? Well, we’ll just put an average-speed check in place on that road. I could go through example after example. Cambridge to Piarere—another incredibly dangerous stretch of road. What’s this Government’s solution there? An average-speed check on that piece of road too. So the National Party opposes this part of the bill because not only is it not going to be used appropriately on our State highways, we also know it’s going to be used inappropriately on local roads.

In Auckland, Auckland Transport has just finished consulting on more blanket speed limits for something like 26 percent of the local roads in Auckland, which they’re now going to be reducing to 30 kilometres per hour—30 kilometres per hour on almost a quarter of the roads in Auckland.

Simon Court: Walking speed.

SIMEON BROWN: Well, I mean, some kids can bike to school faster than that. Are they going to get caught by the average-speed checks, too? Well, that’s the reality of these ridiculous blanket speed-limit rules that have been forced on to people up and down this country—

Simon Court: National and ACT will repeal them, won’t they?

SIMEON BROWN: —in suburbs across New Zealand. We will repeal the land transport setting of speed-limit rule—absolutely, Mr Court—because we don’t agree with those blanket speed-limit reductions that are being imposed on our suburbs up and down our country.

Because there’s no criteria, there’s no definition of “high-risk”, and there’s no limitation to just being on State highways, what this bill does is it will now allow road-controlling authorities up and down this country to put average-speed checks on 30-kilometre-per-hour stretches of our roads up and down our country. That is revenue raising. That is slowing people down. That is not actually about road safety.

The evidence through the Justice Committee was very, very clear: if this Government was serious about road safety, they would be focused on things which they have failed to do, like making sure that the police are doing the 3 million breath tests that they are required to do every year. They’ve been doing only half the breath tests that they’re meant to be doing—half the breath tests. Alcohol and drugs are the number one contributor to deaths and serious injuries on our roads, and all this Government is focused on is speed—reducing speed limits, slowing people down.

Here’s another example of that: whilst our police have not been doing the required number of breath tests, this Government was dragged kicking and screaming to pass legislation to allow the police to do random oral roadside drug testing. Then they finally passed it, and the legislation doesn’t work. They promised two weeks ago—they promised two weeks ago—“Oh no, we’ll fix it; we’ll fix it after Christmas.” “Fix it after Christmas.”—that’s the approach this Government takes to the real issues. Drugs and alcohol are killing people on our roads. This Government has been soft and slow when it comes to addressing those issues. They’ve kicked the can down the road, but here, in the dying hours of this Parliament, instead of fixing the broken legislation around drug testing on the side of our roads, which they know needs to be fixed—they’ve even announced they think it needs to be fixed—they’ve announced their intention to bring legislation to this Parliament. Instead of us using urgency and the end of this Parliament to try and save lives through random oral roadside drug testing, something which we know will work to drive down our road toll, they’re ramming through legislation to be able to enforce average-speed checks on 30 kilometre per hour speed limits on Auckland roads and roads across New Zealand. That is shameful. The National Party opposes that part of the bill.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a very short call on this bill, which is a very simple bill. It sends a clear message to drivers: if you flee from police, you will lose your ride. That’s all it does. Very little to do with speeding and drug testing, like we’ve heard on that side of the House. They can’t find a reason to oppose it, so they’ve found the broader picture. But this is a good bill and that’s why I commend it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House stands suspended until 9 a.m. in the morning.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 9.57 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)

TUESDAY, 29 AUGUST 2023

(continued on Wednesday, 30 August 2023)

Bills

Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The House is resumed. Good morning. When the House rose last night, we were on the third reading of the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. We are up to speaker No. 6—Dr James McDowall.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and good morning to the House. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to speak at the third reading of the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. For what it’s worth, ACT is taking a more straightforward approach in how we’re voting for this bill. It was interesting to listen to the speeches yesterday and last night from the National Party friends over there, but also from other parties in this House. Our more straightforward approach is simply that on balance, there is more that we dislike about this bill than we like, so we are opposing it at third reading.

We had some more questions that we would have liked to ask in committee stage, but none the less that was concluded, and our concerns for this bill are around the unintended consequences—what we see as potentially disproportionate penalties that can be applied which could severely impact people and their property, particularly in the event where that person or business that owns a vehicle is, effectively, punished despite having nothing to do with the situation. We understand there are recourses, there are ways to repossess vehicles, and it’s just a lot of red tape and a lot of additional cost.

The bill itself, while on the whole having good intentions, is too broad. It raises too many questions, and I reflect on some of the scenarios and situations that other members have highlighted, particularly those where we have a fleeing driver who flees police and commits a raft of offences in the process, if not leading up to the event, often injuring someone or worse, destroying property and so on. The reality is the measures introduced in this bill will be the least of their legal problems, and the disincentive isn’t necessarily there—they are already committing a range of offences.

The comparisons to other countries, particularly in Europe, is quite interesting—countries with much lower road deaths per capita. Most of those countries have much higher speed limits than New Zealand does. I’ve lived overseas for a while and obviously it varies from country to country, but you can go from the Netherlands and go to Germany and a lot of their autobahns still have no speed limits, and those that do sit around 120 and in some cases 130. So it’s an interesting comparison.

We do not feel the point-to-point or average speed camera should be a feature of this bill. It is a potentially significant, punitive revenue-gathering exercise that targets the masses, not fleeing drivers—not just those committing specific offences.

We question how this technology would operate alongside traditional ambush tactics at present. How would those enforcement tools interact? Would they overlap, meaning someone in theory could get fined twice for a single speeding offence? Perhaps an option is to have one system of either ambush tactics in a certain area or the speed cameras, but not both. But that’s obviously not a feature of this bill, and I suspect the Government has little appetite for getting rid of speed traps.

The consultation for this bill was insufficient, being from only 19 May to 4 June, which is about the time it takes to get a stock standard, overdue written question back. The majority of the submissions to the committee disagreed with the bill and we hear those concerns, and one of those concerns is that it may not make the roads actually safer, especially from those who have absolutely no regard for the law in the first place. We’ve heard in contributions that with fatalities sitting around 10 percent as a result of speed alone, this may not be actually targeting quite the right thing.

There are aspects and elements of this bill that we can get on board with, and we’ve spoken to that, but there is too much there. Property will be destroyed or seized without sufficient notice, and there are concerns around the insurance companies and the finance companies, and yet here we are in the dying days of this Parliament, on the second to last day, having to see this through, along with a whole raft of other pieces of legislation that were consulted at some stage, some time ago, or had very little consultation at all and were left to the last minute.

The costs of the scheme are unknown, which in this current fiscal environment is a hard sell, and more unknown are the costs to third parties, to sectors like the insurance sector and the finance sector. It will be a costly implementation, getting these cameras up and all the systems in line with that and all the extra staff. As my colleague Simon Court discussed during the committee stage, if we’re going to be putting cameras up on our roads, wouldn’t it be better to look at congestion charging so that we can actually fund our roads better and make our roads safer, because, at the end of the day, a lot of the issues with fatal crashes and accidents come down to bad roads.

Yes, we agree that crime is out of control. Fleeing drivers are part of that problem, but a bill that focuses too heavily on property and issuing speeding tickets is not a solution to mitigate random criminal activity. It is a band-aid at best and one that will generate a fair share of paperwork and court time. We’d also caution the Government, as a last note, to keep an eye on this regime and how it rolls out, because the punitive measures in this bill will undoubtedly cause considerable financial hardship for many, not only those that have fallen foul of it themselves, directly, but those who are indirectly connected to a situation and bear no criminal responsibility.

On the whole, we don’t believe this bill is tough or smart on crime. It’s quite a rough approach and ACT is opposing it.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. When it comes to road safety, the evidence is very clear: countries like Sweden, Ireland, Canada, and Norway had comparable rates of death and serious injuries per capita to New Zealand just 20 years ago—in the case of Ireland and Canada, only about 10 or 15 years ago—and they embarked on a programme called Vision Zero, which was a safe systems approach to road safety and they demonstrated that you can significantly reduce deaths and serious injuries on the road, which is what we should all be aiming to do. In Sweden, where this approach was pioneered, they had cross-party support, after a particularly devastating accident took the lives of many young children.

Now, in some places they’ve actually achieved this. In cities like Oslo, there hasn’t been a single person killed who was on foot, on a bike, or a young person who has died in a car crash. So the Vision Zero approach, while you could say, “Yeah, you never get to zero.”—that’s true. But by taking this approach where we say it’s not an acceptable side effect of our transport system, we’re going to put safety first, like we have done in workplaces, because, ultimately, human life is the most important thing to us—the lives of our friends and whānau and our children—we can have a transport system that’s much safer.

So the provisions in this bill around the point-to-point safety cameras are a positive step, the best way to approach speed. I’ve heard some misleading statistics used in this House about speed not being the cause of most crashes; it is the major factor, though, that decides whether the crash results in a death or serious injury. So you can have minor crashes that are not caused by speed, but if speed is involved—high speed—it’s much more likely to result in death and serious injury, and that’s why appropriate speed limits are so important, and the point-to-point safety cameras can give you a better, accurate reading of what the average speeds were doing in a particular point on the road. So, rather than just that one point, they take the average along a stretch of road.

The whole approach with the safety cameras was meant to be changing behaviour and not penalising people and raising revenue. So the idea is that you have a lot of cameras—this is what Sweden’s done. You have a lot of cameras—you’re using point-to-point safety cameras—but we’re signposting them well and we’re using them in the areas where people would tend to travel higher than the safe speed, and people know that. So they change their behaviour and so you have fewer deaths and serious injuries. In no way should this be seen as a way of raising revenue. In an ideal scenario, you’re losing money on it, because people are changing their behaviour. They’re taking the speed that is appropriate for the road and there’s much less likely to be a death or serious injury as a consequence.

Even in the state of Victoria, we can see the success of this road safety approach, and I think it’s a shame that it’s become a political football, thanks to parties like the ACT Party and the National Party, who will jump on any change and find any reason to defend the status quo rather than achieve an outcome that most New Zealanders truly want, in their hearts. So that’s the situation we’re in.

But the rest of the bill, unfortunately, we cannot support because the issue around confiscation of vehicles from fleeing drivers, unfortunately, I think, crosses the line. It’s unlikely to solve the problem of fleeing drivers. We do absolutely agree with the approach the police took to stop pursuing when it was leading to fatal crashes—an incredibly dangerous situation for people when that happens. So that was a really good approach, but we need to do more to address the drivers of crime, and until we have a transport system where people aren’t so reliant on private vehicles, it’s punitive to take away the vehicle.

Now, we could have transport that’s less reliant on private vehicles, and that would be good for equity and many other things, and that’s something the Green Party is definitely advocating for—giving people more options to get where they need to go without having to own and run a car all the time to get there. But the provisions in this bill that then say that vehicles can be confiscated even if it’s not necessarily the owner of the vehicle who was the one fleeing the police are, we think, too problematic. So the Green Party cannot support this bill.

STEPH LEWIS (Labour—Whanganui): Good morning, Mr Speaker. Thank you. It’s my pleasure to stand and take a short call on the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. I’m just going to start by noting that this Government’s got a real vision, and I start with that because we’re hearing from the Opposition benches a lot of moaning about the fact that this is the second to last sitting day of Parliament for the term and how dare we have the audacity to be in here passing legislation, progressing our agenda, and taking New Zealand forward?

Here we have a bill that increases penalties for fleeing drivers, and then we’ve got the ACT Party—“the tough on crime party”, as their billboards say—saying that they can’t support this bill that gets tougher on crime. So I find that quite interesting.

But one thing I also want to pick up on from comments made by the Opposition is that they’re concerned about the point-to-point cameras because they might be too complicated for us to put in here, in New Zealand. There’s plenty of evidence, as my colleague from the Green Party mentioned before, showing that they do work to ensure that drivers drive at safe conditions. So it’s my privilege to commend this bill to the House.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to this third reading of the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. It was interesting to hear about that vision of the Labour Party, and it’s useful to know that that vision will be a rear vision in Kowhai Park and the Dublin Street McDonald’s by the previous member who just spoke, Steph Lewis, as National returns to Government in a couple of months’ time.

Now, safety is the focus of this bill, and I wanted to mention a couple that actually died driving in Dunedin in the last couple of days. It was noted in the New Zealand Herald that the children survived but this couple didn’t—very sad story.

This bill is one that we are happy to support, although there are a couple of pot-holes in this bill that I wanted to comment on.

Barbara Kuriger: Only two?

TAMA POTAKA: Three. The public need safety on the roads, and this situation we have with fleeing drivers—double the number of fleeing drivers recorded between 2021 and 2022 compared to the previous year—is something that the bill seeks to address and seeks to attend to. Fleeing drivers have been a problem not only in Whanganui, where the previous member mentioned, but also in places like Hamilton—Hamilton West down Ulster Street—and other places in that great city of ours.

So enabling more enforcement tools for fleeing drivers, we absolutely support. Seizing and impounding various waka if they fail to stop—that’s something that we’re happy to support as well, but the enforcement tools around point-to-point cameras, that’s something that we don’t support. We don’t support that part of the legislation, primarily because, you know, less than 10 percent of the crashes that cause fatal injuries are caused by speed. What we think the Government should be focused on, and this legislation should have addressed along the way, is more effort around drink driving, drug driving—kombucha driving is OK—wearing seatbelts, and other tools and mechanisms that the police can use to ensure that people are driving safely. So that’s the big focus for the National Party.

Now, we will help restore and encourage greater safety on the roads by doing things at an infrastructure end, by building that great highway between Kahikatea Drive and the Waikato Expressway, by widening roads, by fixing pot-holes, and by doing other things, and we think that more effort should have been put into that space, into that area, rather than the narrow focus that’s enabled by this bill.

In our thinking, there’s broader infrastructure issues that can enable public safety on the roads in a better manner. This bill focuses on two or three things that are caught up in the promises of the current Government to the electorate, but reducing the fleeing of cars is something that we’re absolutely supportive of.

There are some broader issues around crime that intersect with this legislation, such as the absolute focus of the current Government on reducing the prison population. The Government says, “Well, all is well in that space.”, but we actually think that the fleeing drivers and some of the public safety concerns intersect with the criminal justice system.

So what we’re saying today is, yes, we support this bill, it’s heading in the right direction, we know it’s at the third reading; no, we don’t support everything, but we’re happy to see it through to the next stage. Kia ora tātou.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill at its third reading. I just want to note that the overall objectives of this bill are to improve road safety and improve accountability for those who break the rules in important matters of road safety—so, in short, encouraging more public safety. There are three primary changes that will be introduced by this bill: firstly, lengthening the time that a vehicle can be impounded when a driver fails to stop; a new power to impound a vehicle when there’s information a fleeing driver has not provided; and also increasing the disqualification period for a failure to stop. These are sensible, pragmatic solutions that deliver answers to real safety concerns that New Zealanders face, and I commend it to the House.

SORAYA PEKE-MASON (Labour): Tēnā koe te Mana Whakawā. Mihi ana ki a koutou. Ata mārie. I’m pleased to take a short call on the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. I want to first of all acknowledge the 377 people who lost their lives tragically in this way. One is one too many and there’s nothing worse than getting that knock on the door to hear such tragic news. So I just wanted to spare a thought for them.

I welcome this bill and I welcome what it means. In particular, I just want to acknowledge the impoundment of the fleeing vehicles. I think six months is reasonable. It gives those drivers time to reflect and to think about their behaviour, and hopefully in a way that is going to make some changes in their lives. I am also supportive of the vehicle impoundment for failing to provide that information. This is very, very important. It’s just unfortunate with the world today that this sort of behaviour happens. So here we are—we have to do what we have to do to help protect our communities.

Also the vehicle forfeiture—yes, absolutely. Support the idea of having to seize these vehicles and to retain those proceeds by the Crown for purposes that I’m sure we can always find. Also the pointto-point cameras and the automated infringements.

Our heart is fully in this bill. It needs to happen. Yes, this is the right direction. I commend this to the House. Kia ora.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Oh thanks, Mr Speaker. I come late to the party on this, but we are supporting the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. I was expecting to speak on this last night and I was going through reading the bill, and I couldn’t help but think, well, it’s about time. How has it taken six years for this Government to give the police some backing and some support and to empower them to actually go about doing their jobs of helping to make New Zealand roads safer? Of course, the objective of the bill is to reduce unsafe behaviour on our roads by increasing the speed and severity of enforcement, but one would argue that this could’ve happened a very long time ago, and one has to scratch one’s head at the very fact that the decision was even made to prevent police from pursuing fleeing vehicles in the first place.

So here we are, anyway. We’re having to fix up a mistake that was made, and we’re happy to support that, because on this side of the House we do support legislation that supports our police. Nobody will disagree with the provisions within the bill, and, indeed, National won’t, but we will support legislation that gets tough on crime and, indeed, makes New Zealanders safer.

It does give new powers to the police when it comes to fleeing drivers. They’ll be able to seize and impound vehicles for up to six months, licence removal will go from 12 months to 24, and vehicles can also be apparently “forfeited [upon] conviction for … failing-to-stop” on that new offence.

It is a shame that it’s had to come to this. As I said earlier, it really never should have come to this in the first place, particularly when you look at the data. The number of fleeing drivers between December 2020 and 2021 was 4,846, but that same data showed the number of fleeing drivers between November 2021 and November 2022 was 9,499. That’s an extraordinary increase in people who realised they weren’t going to be pursued by police so they were going to take full advantage of it. Of course, as we’ve seen, particularly on motorways around the bigger cities like Auckland, there have been unfortunate consequences of those fleeing drivers when they’ve been involved in fatal accidents. As Soraya Peke-Mason did very gracefully point out, we should all take a moment to remember those people who lost their lives, and, indeed, their families, who will still be grieving.

We’re looking forward to hopefully, if we get over the line in October, having the opportunity to take a more holistic look rather than these sorts of belts and braces approaches. We believe that road safety in New Zealand begins, fundamentally, with improving the state of our roads but, of course, as well empowering our police to get tough on these offenders who up till now have had a pretty free rein. Indeed, we do know, particularly with reference to the likes of ram-raiders, nine out of 10 of those people involved in ram raids should actually be at school, and, indeed, they’ve also got a huge amount of gang influence penetrating into those groups as well. So, with that, I conclude my comments, and we do commend this bill to the House.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise and take the final call on the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill. This bill is about improving accountability and it’s about helping to change behaviour. As somebody who’s worked with young drivers for a very long time, we know that they think differently and they make some very rash decisions, and the opportunity to escape is far too often one that they take. This bill reflects and responds to that.

This is about changing behaviour. It’s really great to hear from the other side of the House the support for the significant investment we’ve made into our roading infrastructure. My local high school down in Stratford—seeing the changes to the roading layout outside the school, just to help to change behaviour and support people driving slower. All those school buses coming in and kids tearing out—rushing to school in the mornings. So it’s great to hear the support for the significant investment we’re making into safety, and this is another thing that will help to improve the safety on our roads, and I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Land Transport (Road Safety) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 96

New Zealand Labour 62; New Zealand National 34.

Noes 22

ACT New Zealand 10; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 1; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill

First Reading

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Minister of Conservation): I present a legislative statement on the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill.

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

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I move, That the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill.

The purpose of this bill is to contribute to the restoration of the health and mauri of the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana. The bill is the product of years of effort from a wide range of people to restore the Hauraki Gulf. It establishes 19 new marine protection areas that, in addition to existing marine reserves in the cable protection zones, will nearly triple the protection in the gulf. These areas are a critical contribution to protecting biodiversity and reversing the decline we have seen in the gulf.

While I am the Minister who has the pleasure of presenting this bill today, many others have contributed to get us to where we are. I would like to acknowledge the work of my colleagues who have previously held both the conservation and oceans and fisheries portfolios in getting us to this point. I would also like to acknowledge the extensive mahi of the Sea Change Stakeholder Working Group for creating an important catalyst for change, with the Sea Change — Tai Timu Tai Pari Marine Spatial Plan. Integral to the development of the wider Revitalising the Gulf package in this bill is the advice, feedback, and contributions from tangata whenua, the members of the ministerial advisory committee, local communities in Auckland, the gulf islands and Coromandel, the Hauraki Gulf Forum, recreational and commercial fishers, and all the individuals whose work has contributed to this moment.

We know how important the gulf is to Aucklanders, and we have heard the call to protect it for future generations. This bill is a huge milestone for much-needed marine protection, and will help to drive a coordinated approach to restoring the health and mauri of our collective taonga, the Hauraki Gulf. Tangata whenua have a long, enduring relationship with Tīkapa Moana - Te Moananui ā Toi and, through mātauranga passed down over centuries, have developed a deep understanding of the ebbs and flows of te taiao, the environment. Our oceans are essential to New Zealanders’ way of life. The Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana is where 1.8 million Kiwis in the region have some of their best experiences, including weekends on the water, exploring rock pools, and picnics on the beach. The gulf is home to a diverse range of habitats and marine life that contributes to the area’s rich biodiversity. This includes corals, dog cockle beds, anemones, and seagrass meadows on the sea floor—supporting the wider food web, including kōura  rock lobster, migratory tuna, dolphins, Bryde’s Whale, and more. It is also an essential and traditional source of food and a vital part of our economy for part of our economy for tourism, sport, and seafood sectors.

It is clear, as highlighted by successive State of our Gulf reports, that the gulf is in trouble and needs our support. Kōura - rock lobster were once abundant and are now considered to be functionally extinct in the gulf. Kina barrens are rapidly expanding as their predators decline in numbers. Sustained action is required to prevent this ongoing decline, and marine protection has a key role to play in this—and that is what this legislation delivers: the new marine protection. This bill will create 19 new marine protection areas, including two marine reserve extensions, five seafloor protection areas, and 12 high protection areas. This bill will extend existing marine reserves: the first is Cape Rodney-Okakari Point Marine Reserve, close to Leigh and commonly known as Goat Island—New Zealand’s first marine reserve that has provided biodiversity benefits for nearly 50 years; so it is extra special that we can extend the protection here. The second is the iconic Te Whanganui-o-Hei / Cathedral Cove Marine Reserve. This extension will encompass the outer edge of the reef, increasing its protection to these important habitats and the biodiversity they support.

The bill also introduces two entirely new types of marine protection. The five seafloor protection areas created by the bill will restrict activities that have impacts on the seafloor, such as mining and bottom trawling. These areas will protect sensitive habitats such as rocky reefs, kelp forests, and black coral assemblages. Activities that do not impact the seafloor, such as purse seining and most recreational fishing, will be able to continue in these areas. The bill will also create 12 high protection areas—or HPAs—that will enable protection of biodiversity while allowing for the customary practices of tangata whenua. These areas are “no-take” and will prohibit activities such as recreational fishing and bottom trawling. The HPAs will provide crucial protection to some of the gulf’s most biologically important ecosystems, as well as contribute to a representative network of protection areas.

We are creating protection that recognises the rights of tangata whenua. The way we manage our oceans must give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and recognise Te Ao Māori perspectives. This is an aspect of the bill of which I’m incredibly proud—particularly proud. The rights of tangata whenua throughout the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana are ensured, supporting cultural practices and kaitiakitanga. The 12 high protection areas created by this bill enable the protection of biodiversity without compromising tangata whenua’s ability to engage in important customary practices. This is protection of the environment which supports protection of culture. Customary fishing, managed by the Fisheries Act 1996, can continue in the high protection areas if it aligns with biodiversity objectives of the sites. The Department of Conservation and tangata whenua will work together to set biodiversity objectives for these areas. These will inform how activities are managed within these areas, so they align with conservation aims.

The new legislation to implement the new tools: the bill enables the creation of a network of marine protection areas and new protection tools to maximise conservation benefits for the gulf. Marine reserves are a critical tool to protect biodiversity, and that is why we have chosen to extend the existing reserves—they are effective for protecting marine biodiversity and remain an important part of the marine management system. The high protection areas and seafloor protection areas are new tools and they do not currently exist in legislation, so this bill is required to establish them as a package with the marine reserves. The seafloor protection areas provide vital protection for seafloor habitats, including seagrass beds and rocky reef systems. These ecosystems can be incredibly sensitive to destructive fishing and industrial processes. This is why activities such as bottom contact trawling, mining, and aquaculture are prohibited. However, seafloor protection areas still allow activities that don’t impact the seafloor, including most recreational fishing—which means that people will still be able to go fishing with their families and friends in these areas. High protection areas, like marine reserves, are designed to safeguard biodiversity, with a high level of restrictions. High protection areas differ in that they allow certain Māori customary practices to take place and for restoration activities to improve the marine area. Restoration activities will be carefully managed through a permitting regime outlined in the bill.

What we are protecting: the areas being protected have been carefully selected to contribute an effective network of marine protection in the gulf while minimising—where possible—the impact on people. These areas will help to care for at-risk, high-value, and representative habitats, which host a range of different plants and animal life. Many act as nurseries to juvenile fish that support a thriving and diverse ecosystem. Some of the most biodiverse regions in the gulf will be protected, including areas such as the coastal waters around Kawau Bay and Te Hautoru-o-Toi / Little Barrier Island, and the deep reefs around Cape Colville at the top of the Coromandel—for example, the high protection area at Slipper Island / Whakahau is one of the few remaining areas that has seagrass in the gulf. Seagrass beds are an important habitat as they support biodiversity, improve water quality, and absorb carbon dioxide. Protecting these areas—they will improve the resilience of ecosystems to other pressures like marine pollution, sedimentation, and climate change.

Protecting our ocean for future generations, this bill will provide relief to the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana and will help us to ensure that our tamariki and mokopuna—and in turn, their mokopuna—will enjoy Tīkapa Moana as we and the generations before us have done. We announced the bill earlier this month. We spoke about how New Zealanders recognised the Hauraki Gulf as a national jewel—treasured for its beauty and biodiversity, its cultural significance, and as a place where so many Kiwis play and work. We noted how health and wellbeing are intrinsically linked to the natural world around us and for a significant number of New Zealanders, they see the Hauraki Gulf as their beautiful blue back yard. I am proud to say that this legislation today signifies a chapter for that special back yard. I look forward to the Environment Committee considering this bill and I want to thank them again and the many people who have already contributed to this process through Sea Change, and Revitalising the Gulf. I commend this bill to the House.

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

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill, because the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana - Te Moananui a Toi—the gulf—is a taonga of natural, economic, recreational, and cultural importance. It covers 1.2 million hectares of coastal area between Mangawhai and Waihi, and is used for aguaculture, fishing, tourism, shipping and transport, amongst other activities. The gulf is valued by manawhenua, as well as others who work, live and recreate there. Due to its national significance, the gulf was designated New Zealand’s first marine park under the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act 2000.

So the National Party is supporting this reading of the bill today. We support the intent of where the Government is wanting to take this piece of legislation. What we’re open to is making sure that we have a very good select committee process. I know there’s been a lot of consultation that’s been held to date, but it is always important.

I’m just going to talk a bit about some of the clauses here and some of the regulated parties. So when we look at the regulated parties, they are the recreational and commercial fishers, there’s manawhenua, there’s marine ecotourism operators, recreational users, further recreational users, community, central government. In the regulatory impact statement, the impact has been assessed for all those groups, and they’ve been assessed in various parts as low, medium-high, low-medium, and a range of other assessments. But what we want to do is hear from those groups coming in the room and we look forward to a full and fulsome select committee process, because this is such an important issue.

But it is really important that we get the balance right between all of the groups while we actually protect the Hauraki Gulf, and it really does need protecting. There are so many things going on in there: the kina barrens, the habitat loss, the local fisheries depletion, and something that Chlöe Swarbrick and Tama Potaka have brought to my attention strongly over recent days is the seaweed species that’s invasive, the Caulerpa brachypus and Caulerpa parvifolia. I didn’t realise until recently just how quickly this awful, invasive seaweed had spread. It has only been there since mid-2021, at Aotea Island - Great Barrier Island and Ahuahu - Great Mercury Island. We’ve got this invasive species that’s spreading like a lot of things we haven’t seen before, so we really do need to take some concern over that because it’s just going to make the gulf way worse than it currently is.

Just going through some of these main provisions of the bill, it’s looking at establishing two new marine reserves, 12 high protection areas, and five seafloor protection areas. These measures seek to significantly enhance the conservation efforts, increasing the protected area from 6.7 percent to slightly above 18 percent of the gulf.

So to some of the clauses in the bill, and I think this is where the select committee will get into its debate about how we—if there are any changes to this—put the different needs of the different community groups in while we protect the gulf at the same time. Clause 10 is the one that establishes marine reserves over the areas that are described in Schedule 2 in the bill, and, in effect, they are really extensions of the existing marine reserves. Clause 14 prohibits various activities in seafloor protection areas, including aquaculture, dumping, dredging, trawling, and contacts with the seabed, and so there’s definitely a need for that to go on in some areas of the gulf. Clause 18 bans various activities in high protection areas, including fishing, aquaculture, material removal, and dumping. So we would understand why there are some areas that are absolutely far more flush with biodiversity than others, and how we really do need to protect those areas.

Clause 19 through to 21 sets out some exemptions from the activities restricted by clauses 14, 15, and 18 within seafloor protection areas and high protection areas, and I would imagine that’s probably going to be one of the topics of conversation that we’re going to get a lot of submissions about when they open and when people come to select committee. The exemption I would imagine would be a highly discussed set of clauses in terms of everyone sees aspects of what’s trying to be done from their own specific situation, and so there’s going to be some, I think, great conversations around how that’s going to work in the future.

Clause 21 provides for other general activities to which the prohibitions do not apply, including actions taken under enactments such as the Biosecurity Act 1993, all the Resource Management (Marine Pollution) Regulations 1998, training activities by the New Zealand Defence Force, emergencies, and transit shipping. So in creating an Act that is affecting something as big as the Hauraki Gulf, there are always other Acts that need to interact with it and everything needs to be built in to alignment, so there will be a bit of work that obviously needs to go on there.

Clauses 27 to 32 set out the process for obtaining a permit authorising a person to undertake a prohibited activity within a protected area, and the key elements of that process are that a person must apply to the Director-General of the Department of Conservation for a permit in a form approved by the director-general. The directorgeneral may seek further information in relation to the application and must consider certain matters, and the director-general may approve the application if certain grounds are met, or decline the application at their discretion if it’s not as they consider it to be. Clauses 35 to 40 relate to the monitoring and enforcement of the prohibitions in the protected areas because obviously whatever is put in place in law is going to have to be monitored.

In terms of the National Party’s messaging around this bill today, it’s that the bill won’t pass in the current Parliament because, as most people know, this current Parliament will have its last day of sitting tomorrow. However, supporting the bill to the first reading gives us a good opportunity to test the stakeholder feedback and better understand the officials’ rationale for implementing further consideration in the new Parliament.

The bill does not ban bottom trawling in the gulf; rather it is limiting trawling to trawl corridors. This is a key point of contention among environment NGOs such as Forest & Bird and Greenpeace. A complete ban in the gulf was viewed to impact the commercial fisheries sector unfairly and would move activity to other areas near the gulf. Many New Zealanders have strong views on bottom trawling, so while there will presumably be many submissions in favour of the bill, there will also be many in favour of a complete ban on bottom trawling, spurred on by the NGOs.

National strongly believes that action will need to be taken to address the environmental decline of the gulf, so we strongly support the intent of the bill. National may want to look at changing the high protection areas—location, amount—based on submissions to the select committee, and any scientific input that has been done or will be done in the future.

So it is our pleasure to stand here in support of the bill, and we look forward to coming back in the next Parliament—hopefully, as Government—and working through this bill, making sure we take the consideration of everyone into account and get some runs on the board when it comes to the Hauraki Gulf and getting rid of some of those awful seaweeds and tidying the place up.

Simon Watts: Tidying up their mess.

BARBARA KURIGER: Yeah, absolutely—and cleaning up the mess. So thank you, Mr Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very happy to be here today talking about the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill, and what a month August has been for the Hauraki Gulf. I know my colleague the Hon WillowJean Prime and I have spent much time there. During that time, we’ve been talking to a range of stakeholders. Of course, tangata whenua have been very involved in the development of the thinking of how to do the best protections for the Hauraki Gulf. So too has the statutory body, the Hauraki Gulf Forum.

I was recently able to attend and speak at the State of our Gulf report, and, of course, it is not good news in the gulf. There needs to be a lot of work in there, and this is one of the many measures that’s happening at the moment to do better in the gulf, and I’ll talk about some of the other ones as well. I want to also acknowledge, of course, the Sea Change group that’s really brought this range of methods that are needed in the Hauraki Gulf to the fore, and then the people involved with Revitalising the Gulf, which is the Government’s response, and, of course, this bill and other measures are related to that.

Then industry: there are, of course, fishers who do fish and make their livelihood in this area. The marine park that’s been around now for over 20 years is very large and extends well beyond Great Barrier Island. I think some people—and maybe I thought this initially—think that the area is really the area that you can see if you’re in the Auckland CBD or around Waiheke Island, but, of course, it’s much more expansive than that and it includes the Coromandel.

Of course, there are all the environmental groups. There are so many people who really care passionately about the gulf—about all of the parts of the gulf—and are doing amazing work. Just for an example there, when I was at the State of our Gulf report launch, I met people who had the word “Caulerpa” shaved into their hair—it was an interesting haircut, but it really goes to the passion of those people—and people were getting their diving licences because they want to see how it is that they can help with the removal of Caulerpa, which is a horrible biosecurity problem.

I’m very proud to be part of the Labour Government, which actually acts on biosecurity challenges, whether they are in the ocean or on our dairy farms. Of course, close to $3 million has been spent on the management of Caulerpa and on understanding and trialling treatments. At one point, whilst we were in the gulf—well, not in the gulf; next to the gulf—we met some of the Californians that have been looking at suction dredging to determine if that’s a useful tool in New Zealand, because it’s complicated but it’s a very important issue.

As well as these marine protected areas that this bill creates, 19 of them—very important. That’s very important because marine protection strengthens biodiversity, and we need that resilience when facing climate change in particular.

I’m here speaking as the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, and it was in 2020 that the title of that ministerial role got changed to include oceans in it, so that the focus is not just on fish stocks; it’s looking more broadly at oceans. In that role, I’ve been very pleased this month to launch the fisheries plan for the Hauraki Gulf, and that is our first really ecosystems-based, location-based fisheries plan for an area. It includes many jobs to be done—they’re in this plan—and it will have an annual report every year that will be more specific about exactly what needs to be done in the gulf, but it looks at a range of things. We’ve heard from the Minister talking about the issue of kina barrens and kina eating the seaweed, and the impacts that not having that seaweed makes for a whole lot of our juveniles in a range of species. So we don’t get fish and other species in the gulf because of those ecological interactions, and it’s really important that we’re thinking about our marine environment in the whole.

Then, from midday today, people can join in the consultation on one of the actions from that fisheries plan that requires a separate statutory process; it requires regulation to be made on the trawl corridors in the gulf. So at the moment, bottom trawling is allowed in the gulf, except for 27 percent of the area, which is really in that inner area that I was talking about before that you can see from within the CBD. In looking to change that, there are four options which would ban trawling from between 74 percent and 89 percent of the gulf. That is a separate process, and I acknowledge the previous speaker Barbara Kuriger, for pointing that out.

So if people are interested in the bottom trawling, that requires regulation-making under the Fisheries Act and that consultation is open today. It’s a significant change. The presumption is reversed from being able to trawl in the gulf except for 27 percent of the area, to not being able to trawl in the gulf, and in up to 89 percent it will be banned.

So I really have enjoyed working with the Minister of Conservation on this range of issues in the Hauraki Gulf. I note that this bill will go to the Environment Committee and that submissions will be over the election period, just as they will be for those trawl corridors as well, and I really ask people to make those thoughtful submissions on both topics. It’s very important, and I commend the bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It is an absolute pleasure to rise to talk about the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. As the member of Parliament for North Shore in Auckland, the Hauraki Gulf is the significant and beautiful asset which my community look out to every day—an asset that sits very much at the heart of the other outer islands, including Waiheke and Great Barrier, then moving out into the beautiful Coromandel.

But many people in the North Shore, and many others that live in Auckland, enjoy the use of that gulf, whether it’s swimming or kayaking or in their waka or recreational fishing or just simply walking on the beaches of the North Shore—my favourite beach, of course: Cheltenham Beach, if anyone’s been there.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Let’s ban bottom trawling, eh?

SIMON WATTS: I’m looking at the member of Auckland Central. I’m sure she’s been around to that beautiful part of the world.

The National Party strongly supports actions and efforts in order to safeguard the Hauraki Gulf. What is frustrating is that this Government has had six years in order to take action, in order to make the improvements—with respect, which have been published in reports, many of which have been published many years ago—and only in the dying hours of this Parliament are we seeing legislation introduced in its final week in order to start making progress.

Well, I’m sorry. The derogation of the Hauraki Gulf is not new. The derogation of the Hauraki Gulf is well known, and the lack of action by this Government, I think, is testament to the fact that that will be one of the factors, when people go to the polls soon and consider, “We want a Government that will deliver true action and actions in this space.”

Chlöe Swarbrick: So let’s ban bottom trawling! Come on, Simon, you can do it!

SIMON WATTS: I think and I expect they will do that. I’m hearing the comments from the Green member who’s actually in party with the Government on this policy. So it’s not one to abdicate responsibility to say that there has been no action, because that party also has a much stronger influence than this side of the House on the current Government around getting legislation through.

But it is critically important that action is taken. This bill, in regards to dealing with some of the underlying issues, also misses a number of key and fundamental issues that are impacting the Hauraki Gulf. Sedimentation is one of the most significant factors that is impacting the Hauraki Gulf, yet that is not mentioned in this legislation in any degree. How can you do a piece of legislation in regards to protecting and enhancing the Hauraki Gulf when sedimentation is not even in your legislation? How can you put in place legislation in regards to one of the most significant issues, which is this Caulerpa seaweed virus found in 2021? We’re nearly at the end of 2023.

This Government has sat on one of the most significant biosecurity issues in this country, one which has nearly decimated California and—in particular if you look at the European impact—decimated the aquacultural sector. Yet two-plus years on, we are still floundering in regards to taking the tangible action at the pace of change and the scale of change required in order to deal with that biosecurity issue. I tell you what, who is going to be responsible for having to tidy up that mess?

Nicola Grigg: That’ll be us.

SIMON WATTS: That will be National because this Government has failed to take the action required on that. So you can talk a big game about protecting and safeguarding the gulf, but on your watch—on your watch, and those Ministers need to take accountability because it is on your watch—you have failed to take the action required. That problem, based on advice from experts, is already nearing a point at which the ability to get it under control is very much against our means. That is significant and should be a huge, significant issue—particularly for those younger generations that need to be able to enjoy that asset. Recently—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Another issue is getting you back on the bill now, Mr Watts. You’ve had a pretty good run.

SIMON WATTS: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The Hauraki Gulf marine protection bill is put in place in order to address the ongoing environmental decline in the gulf. Recently, research has been commissioned and published by the NZ Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) which indicates and calculates that the value and the annual flows of benefit from the gulf is in the region of $5 billion per year—$1.75 billion of that, actually, is included within the GDP of this country.

So the significant value that the gulf provides indicates why the importance of legislation in order to protect the gulf is so critical. If you look at the total asset value of the gulf—and I know it’s difficult to put in, say, “How much is the gulf worth?” but if you were to undertake that analysis—the NZIER report indicated that the asset value of the gulf exceeds $100 billion. And that is in a state in which it is already suffering from significant derogation around all aspects, in terms of the environmental impacts.

If we dealt with the environmental issues that are impacting that gulf, the gulf could be worth $200 billion, couldn’t it? It should be; that should be our ambition. We should be undertaking efforts in order to protect the environmental results of that gulf in order to improve our economy. Because, gee, have we got an issue with our economy? No one talks about that too much, but the economy is in a great state of chaos at the moment, and this gulf situation reinforces that.

We’ve talked a little bit about the release, also, by the Government in regards to bottom trawling. It’s interesting that is something that’s separate. I get that this isn’t a new issue. It’s not like all of a sudden we’re woken up this morning and said, “Oh, maybe bottom trawling might be an issue in the gulf.” No, of course not. It is an issue that has been around for a good amount of time. Again, six years by this Government—six years—and still a failure to deal with one of the underlying issues, or at least provide certainty to the sector and work with the industry in order to put in place the actions required.

I am pleased to see that some steps are being taken in that regard. But the pace of change has been snail pace, right? I’m talking the pace of a tortoise—

Tama Potaka: Sloth pace.

SIMON WATTS: If lucky, a sloth—remind me of that good movie with the sloths at the counter. Remember? It is a bit like that. It’s about the pace, and sadly, though, this is a significant asset. But at least it’s on the radar. But again, we need to move, and move concisely and with the industry and with stakeholders, in order to get certainty in that space.

I remember a little while back—and it wasn’t that long ago—Jono Ridler, who was the swimmer that swam from Great Barrier to Campbell’s Bay in my electorate, nearly a 100-kilometre swim—

Tama Potaka: Legend.

SIMON WATTS: What an absolute legend, as Tama Potaka referred to. I’d be struggling to swim 200 metres. I mean, the guy being able to swim that amount of time through the night, looking at weather conditions, was significant. He did that because he wanted to reinforce the importance of why we need to protect the Hauraki Gulf. He wanted to increase awareness of that in conjunction with Live Ocean Foundation, of the importance that we must take action. I think that should not be lost on us, that there are many, many individuals around this country—and particularly in Auckland and around the Coromandel—who live around the gulf, for whom the gulf is their backyard, it is their playground, it is their blue economy that supports them, that want and need and demand action.

I actually think this House is behind where public sentiment is on this issue. I think the public sentiment in regards to protecting the gulf is actually well in front of where this House is at, in terms of its understanding of the importance of taking action. I think it is incumbent upon this House and the next Government to take that and lead and move with the scale of pace and change required in order to put in place the actions that will protect it for future generations.

That’s pretty much where we—National—are and we’ll be strongly supporting this bill through to the select committee stage. We are obviously keen to see some of the components that we have talked about potentially be brought within the scope of this legislation, because it is important that we deal with all components that are impacting and holding us back from protecting the gulf. We will participate actively in regards to this conversation and we are pleased—on behalf of those communities that live around the gulf—that, at long last, we are starting to see some action. We hope that moves at pace following 14 October. We commend this bill to the House.

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Kia orana Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a brief call on this Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill at first reading. I just want to say a huge thank you to the Minister of Conservation, the Hon Willow-Jean Prime, for bringing this through to the House but also for coming down to South Auckland and seeing the environmental things that we are doing, such as activities for our youth and protecting our environment there.

We know that our health and wellbeing is connected to our moana and it’s connected to our whenua. So this bill helps to do so, in establishing 19 new marine protection areas that will nearly triple the protection in the gulf area from 6.7 percent to just over 18 percent. That’s really good in terms of making sure that we are protected for the generations. We’ve just had a classroom here up in the gallery, and it reminds me of the next generation who go and who are already seeing the Goat Island and the Great Barrier areas. We’ve had my son’s classroom go and visit, and this is all about teaching it for the next generations. So I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party agrees there’s a problem with the state of the Hauraki Gulf, and that’s why we will be supporting this bill to select committee so that we can hear from submitters and the committee can carry out a full inquiry as to the nature of the problem and whether this bill will solve it.

So the nature of the problem, as described in the supporting documents for this bill, is that the gulf has declined significantly. Since the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park was established over 20 years ago, conditions have got worse. I attended a launch of the State of our Gulf report at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron a few weeks ago, and we heard that in addition to overfishing and to reefs being damaged, some stocks like crayfish and snapper in many areas are becoming functionally extinct. There is also a problem of around 4,000 tonnes of additional nutrients entering the gulf from various sources such as rivers that discharge from agricultural land, and pollution from urban environments. Even though more and more money is being spent on wastewater infrastructure and cleaning up discharges, there is still an unacceptable number of wastewater overflows and raw sewage being discharged to the inner gulf on a regular basis.

So what does this bill propose in order to solve those problems? Well, it establishes some additional marine-protected areas and extends marine reserves such as Federal Cove, and you have to say that, OK, that’s a good place to start. But when you actually look into the information in the bill, what does it do and how does it propose to do it? Well, it says there’s a problem to solve with the degradation of the gulf: habitat loss, overfishing, pollution, sedimentation, and poor urban development. Well, when you look at the justification for this legislation, it says, actually, a lot of those problems can be solved with existing legislation, such as the Fisheries Act, which has provisions to make sure that fishing is managed in a sustainable way.

But what it says the Fisheries Act and the other legislation can’t solve is this issue of discharges to the marine environment of marine sediments, mining, and other activities like sand extraction. Well, all of those activities are covered by resource consents. They’re deemed to be necessary. They’ve passed—say, for example, dredging the Port of Auckland and dumping its sediments offshore, essentially on the very, very furthest edge of the Hauraki Gulf, is deemed acceptable because it balances the need to maintain an operating port against the impacts on the receiving environment, and those impacts have been accepted as less than minor. But this bill, potentially, would make it difficult or almost impossible to continue with dredging the North Island’s largest port—most important port—which receives somewhere around 40 percent of all container traffic imported to New Zealand every year. It may very well make it impossible to get consent to do that in the future.

There are also places around the Hauraki Gulf where specialist sand products are extracted by dredging, because—take the City Rail Link tunnel, for example. The concrete used in that project is made from sand extracted from off the north-east coast of Auckland at Pakiri. Now, people might say, “Oh, well why do you need to get sand from the sea floor?” Well, it’s a specific, hard, sharp sand that is excellent in making concrete—highly durable concrete. Unfortunately, because there is no other place where this sand is able to be recovered from—that’s the only place it exists—that is where consents have been issued to carry out that activity. Now, many people might say you shouldn’t carry out that activity; it’s bad for the environment. And yet the Environment Court consenting authorities have accepted that the balance of environmental effects against economic and social benefits—actually, the environmental effects are less than minor. This legislation may well make it more difficult to get permits to do things that are absolutely vital for our economy.

And then I want to come to the supposed benefits that the bill intends to deliver, which is to restore parts of the Hauraki Gulf to a healthier state. There is nothing in the supporting information here which says how long this will take. When will we get these benefits? Because if more areas are excluded from recreational and commercial fishing, if reefs around the Hauraki Gulf are protected—and it may well be that that is the method to achieve a restoration of the Hauraki Gulf’s ecosystem—then, as an environmental scientist, I would want to know: what species are we looking to see recover? In what numbers? What biomass of fish? Where are the outcomes, the outputs, the measurements of when we will know whether this protection approach has been successful? Because otherwise, in the future, someone might say, “Well, you protected all these areas but the gulf hasn’t improved.” That’s one of the problems with this piece of legislation: it doesn’t say what the key performance indicators (KPIs) are, what the measurements are—how will we know?

Chlöe Swarbrick: Ecosystem protection.

SIMON COURT: Apparently, according to the member Chlöe Swarbrick, simply protecting the ecosystem is enough. Well, as far as the ACT Party and most New Zealanders are concerned, passing laws simply so you can say you’ve done something or protected or banned something is insufficient. We must know that the laws that are passed and the regulations that are implemented will actually result in the benefits that are simply assumed by this legislation.

So that is why ACT believes this bill should go to select committee and should be subject to further interrogation. Not only is it unclear when the benefits of a recovered ecosystem might occur, how they’re being measured, there’s also something else that has really, greatly concerned a lot of New Zealanders—that the biodiversity and ecological outcomes actually won’t be negotiated with scientists. But in the supporting information for this bill, it says that while customary rights to fish—which are due to iwi because of Treaty settlements—will be upheld, the ecological objectives and outcomes for these marine protected areas won’t be negotiated with scientists; won’t be negotiated with Auckland Council, for example, which controls land use in a lot of areas around the gulf. They will only be negotiated with Māori, and many New Zealanders would have some concern that if we’re going to focus on scientific and ecological objectives, why is it that only one group in New Zealand will be given the opportunity to say whether they agree with it or not rather than scientists, ecologists, or marine biologists, for example? It doesn’t seem to be, on the face of it, a sensible way to approach marine protection to improve the environment.

The bill also references the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011, and that it’s important that the bill navigates around the rights and interests of iwi and hapū with respect to the foreshore and seabed. Well, that is important. However, the ACT Party would want to point out that while that Act restores rights and interests to Māori that were denied by the Labour Government at the time—in fact, denied in such a way that led to Tariana Turia leaving Labour to form the Māori Party—there are some problems with the way the Takutai Moana Act has been implemented and decisions resulting from it, which are making it harder to build wharves, coastal protection seawalls, because of the need to obtain cultural reports and permissions.

So while this bill proposes to improve the state of the Hauraki Gulf, actually, it now opens up for discussion, through referral to select committee, the opportunity to examine a whole lot of other matters that impact on the Hauraki Gulf, and on Aucklanders’ and the other provinces’, like the Waikato and Northland’s, ability to actually grow our economies and deliver better outcomes for people in those regions. So the ACT Party will support this bill with reservations.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe. E mihi ana, Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku, tēnā kōrua. E mihi ana, Tangaroa, tēnā koe.

[Thank you. I acknowledge Ranginui and Papatūānuku, greetings. I acknowledge Tangaroa, greetings.]

I’m delighted to speak on the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. But can I first acknowledge the passing of kaumātua James Brown, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Pāoa, and Ngati Porou, and send aroha and condolences to Debbie and his wider whānau. James Brown was a true rangatira: charismatic, fierce, and always a champion for Ngai Tai ki Tāmaki. The case that Ngai Tai ki Tāmaki took as far as the Supreme Court is now a landmark for how the Treaty of Waitangi should be implemented under the Conservation Act, by Te Papa Atawhai. That concerned, of course, Motutapu and Rangitoto, and the concessions which were issued there. Moe mai rā, e te rangatira.

[Rest in peace, noble leader.]

So the Hauraki Gulf, Tīkapa Moana, Te Moananui-ā-Toi, is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most valued and heavily used coastal areas. It has sustained people, culture, identity, and mana whenua for generations. He taonga tuku iho—treasure passed down through the generations. It once had flourishing shellfish—kūtai, scallop beds—over thousands of hectares, which helped ensure that the water was clean and provided kai. It was a food basket. It contained some of the earliest areas settled by Māori. It’s critically important to Māori, and it’s critically important to New Zealanders. That’s why the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park was established 23 years ago.

This bill will help restore some of the health to the Hauraki Gulf through marine protection, because it has been a taonga in trouble for some time. We’ve seen the three-yearly reports that the Hauraki Gulf Forum puts out, which have been unflinching in their description of the health of the gulf. The fact that our fish species—fish like snapper, crayfish—kōura—have declined by over 56 percent, and seabirds by some 67 percent; the gulf is not flourishing. On land, there have been enormous efforts to get rid of predators and to safeguard shorebirds and seabird nesting sites, on some dozens of sites in the Hauraki Gulf. But you go beneath the water and it is a very different story. The decline in those big numbers of snapper and of hāpuka—of groper—those big fish with the jaws that can crush kina, has led to the kina barrens.

I really hope that the Environment Committee will be invited by the Neureuter family trust to Ōtata, which my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick and I had the privilege of visiting, to see what has been achieved on land there, where wētāpunga have been reintroduced, where there’s been work to protect the seabirds, but you have the kina barrens just offshore.

I’d really like to acknowledge the work of people like the Neureuter family trust; the Hauraki Gulf Forum, its former chairs Pippa Coom and Moana Tamaariki-Pohe, its current chair, Nicola MacDonald, and its chief executive, Alex Rogers; all of the community organisations and environmental groups, Forest & Bird, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, and LegaSea; mana whenua like Ngāti Pāoa who have put rāhui in place around Waiheke Island, supported by Chlöe Swarbrick, to make an initiative to try and restore the health of the gulf. The work that has been done to reintroduce kūtai—mussels—so that those shellfish beds on the seabed get re-established. And they’ve had to contend with some of the biosecurity issues and obstacles that the Ministry of Primary Industries has in place.

There’s been enormous public and community concern about Tīkapa Moana. This bill is a response to that. As the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, Rachel Brooking—the response there, to limit bottom trawling, is also a response to the public pressure. I do agree with Simon Watts that Government is way behind public opinion here, but this bill is a great step forward. It’s long overdue.

Marine reserves, which are designed to protect our nature from extractive uses to help recovery of fish stocks, as the Cape Rodney-Okakari Point Marine Reserve has shown, have been enormously successful in helping kōura and snapper and other species rebuild. But they only cover less than 1 percent of the gulf. So the extensions of Leigh and Te Whanga-nui-o-Hei / Cathedral Cove, are very welcome; so is the establishment of the new high-protection areas—12 of them—including one around Ōtata, the Noises, and five seafloor protection areas, where some fishing is still allowed.

This bill goes back to Sea Change, which started under a former National Government, admittedly, in 2013, but did not get progressed much until last term, when we took it off the shelf. Sea Change, and the community organisations that were involved in that, wanted to reduce the impact of activities on land—things like subdivision, land development, and farming, so that you reduce the nutrient pollution and you reduce the sediment pollution. It’s interesting that National has criticised but not recognised that it’s been the Resource Management Act and the natural and built environment legislation which are the key tools to reducing the impacts of those activities on land. Sea Change was about recognising and protecting cultural values, restoring depleted fish stocks and benthic habitats, protecting representative marine habitats, and promoting some economic development while ensuring that marine environments are restored.

Then, we had Revitalising the Gulf, which the Greens didn’t think went far enough. But that had themes of kaitiakitanga and guardianship, of replenishing mahinga kai—fish stocks—again, of ki uta ki tai—from the mountains to the sea—ensuring that what we did on land was connected with our oceans and ensured healthy oceans, and kotahitanga—everyone working together. I really acknowledge the work of the Hauraki Gulf Forum for promoting that ethos of kotahitanga.

We’ve had a major crash in fish stocks; we’ve had a major decline and loss of seabirds. So the protected areas that this bill provides for are a small step forward. Several of them are located next to the cable protection zone, which, at the moment, is the major protected area in the Hauraki Gulf, because it prevents fishing so that they don’t get tangled up with the submarine cables.

I hope that the Environment Committee is not inundated by submissions from recreational or commercial fishers seeking to reduce the size of those protected areas but, instead, by submissions seeking to extend them. As part of the process of developing this bill, MartinJenkins did a report in August 2022 which showed that fishing in the proposed protected areas accounted for 2 percent to 3.5 percent of the total revenue generated by permit holders across all quota management areas that included the Hauraki Gulf, and that the total impact on GDP for establishing these protected areas would be between $4.2 million and $4.9 million in the October fishing year. That is tiny in terms of the overall value of the gulf. This is the bare minimum, in this bill, of what is needed to establish marine protection. We have seen a separate consultation-exercise around bottom trawling. All four options being proposed by Government provide for bottom trawling to continue. Public opinion and sentiment is that bottom trawling should end so that we can have the restoration of those benthic habitats, which fishing gear damages and destroys.

So we’ve got to go much further. I really hope that Chlöe Swarbrick is re-elected, as a very energetic MP for Auckland Central and the Hauraki Gulf, to continue to work with communities, with the Green Party next term, to champion further mahi and further initiatives to restore this taonga of Tīkapa Moana / Hauraki Gulf - Te Moananui-ā-Toi, to full health. This bill is a start, but I hope, too, that the select committee actually gets to visit places like Ōtata so that they can see for themselves.

Scientists have been hugely involved in all of these efforts for protection. Auckland Museum has a whole team involved in studies around Ōtata. So the ACT Party’s contribution was incoherent in just assuming that science wasn’t involved. And National and ACT are supporting it only to select committee. So we need a Labour - Green - Te Paati Māori Government to ensure that we go further faster, and measures like this don’t get overturned. Kia ora.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): This bill is going to protect three times more of the Hauraki Gulf, and it’s part of a big plan to put in a whole enduring way of managing an area that has not been managed, including when I was a child. I remember going and staying out at Rakino Island, and it had been stripped bare. It didn’t have many trees on it. And what you get in those situations is the sediment from the ground going into the water and destroying the quality of the seabed, so you don’t get the seaweed in those situations. So this piece of legislation fits in with a whole plan around revitalising our gulf. That includes things like the Natural and Built Environment Act, which means that you’re not going to get the same runoff from development as has been the case in the past. My tour visited the Noises, and it is really sad to go out and see the barrenness of that seabed around that area, which is actually next to Rakino Island, which I was speaking about.

This has implications not just for the suburbs of Auckland closest to the sea, and it’s not just for Waiheke islanders; this has implications for Auckland. It means places like Mount Albert will be different because the sea in the inner harbour will be different—but all of Auckland really needs this area. This is our jewel—this is our absolute jewel—and it makes up one of the most beautiful places in the country, and I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. Simon O’Connor—five minutes.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): As long as it’s not a split personality on my behalf, we’ll be doing OK. We are very pleased to support this bill, the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. It’s a good step forward. But there is already public debate on whether it goes far enough, and this is the great thing about the select committee process, which is about—well, it won’t happen this side of the election, but the other side—a really important opportunity for people with a variety of views to be heard. That’s the importance of this democratic process and the select committee that’s about to start. I certainly encourage locals in my electorate of Tāmaki to submit on this bill, because they represent a range of views. Obviously, there are many, many more people than simply my electorate, but already as this bill’s come before the House, it doesn’t matter if it’s those with customary rights or even fishers and even some who have commercial interests—they are already writing to me with their thoughts. So my encouragement to them is to submit to the select committee process.

I’ve referenced my electorate a couple of times and people know it. It’s all the eastern bays, in effect, so everything from Okahu Bay right round to Karaka Bay and so forth. It touches, obviously, only a fraction, a small part, of the gulf but the gulf is such an important part of our electorate. I live in St Heliers, and that’s where I go to swim and to walk. It’s a beautiful place. Mission Bay, of course, is one of the great places that people from all over—not only Auckland but New Zealand—come to visit, and a big part of it is the Hauraki Gulf.

But we also know—and it’s the whole point of this bill—that the gulf is under enormous pressure, and, as the local MP there, it’s something I want to see change. I just realised that was a pun and also a reference to one of the lobby groups. There we go, but we do want to see change. I suppose one of the elements is whether this bill is going far enough. I don’t know. My own personal feeling is I would like to see the likes of bottom trawling and so forth go completely. However, I also understand somewhat where the Government’s coming from. It’s the squeezed balloon concept. If you do stop it, where does it go next? But I am confident that we are smart enough as a Parliament to address that. And one of the things I’ve often wondered about for a while is why we don’t just buy out the quotas of those commercial fishers. I don’t know how much it costs. I think it would be great to flush that out in select committee, but it’s well past time that we protect this incredible asset, and, as I say, I’d like to see bottom trawling and the like go.

But I think there are also some signs of hope. They are small and particular aspects, and I want to be really clear to the House and those listening that I don’t see these local examples as fixing the entire gulf, by any means—there’s just a small hint. I reference St Heliers, where I live. If you go for a swim or you see the tide at low tide you will see the re-flourishing of the seagrasses and so forth. That’s a positive sign. Now, that again is not an argument to not do more but it’s a positive sign of what can happen. But for me the most positive is actually Okahu Bay. One of the things, when I got elected, was that I was so keen to see all those boats moored there removed and that bay returned to the people, and it’s something that particularly Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei wanted. It would be wonderful to see that bay cleared, but really importantly too, through local iwi—I’m not sure what the right word is; it’s not dumping. But they’ve placed hundreds of thousands of mussels back into the bay, and already it’s making a tremendous difference.

So, for me, it’s just a hint of what actually cooperation across all New Zealanders working with mana whenua and others can do. So perhaps it’s not really a message of hope; it’s just a hope of mine that we can take a little bit of inspiration from the good work that is already happening in our communities and we can have that flow through this piece of legislation to see our gulf protected fully, and I know that will be a challenge to all parties across the House but it’s something that we should be aiming for. With that, I’m pleased to support this bill.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour): Talofa, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a short call on the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. There have been, in support of this bill, many speakers who have highlighted the critical work that this bill brings forward, particularly around the restoration and health in Māori in terms of what it proposes, the 19 new marine protection areas. It’s critical to Tāmaki-makau-rau because it’s such a huge taonga that we see every day. So, in particular, I wanted to acknowledge all of those involved in bringing this kaupapa forward, and also the Ministers who have been very passionate in describing and the work that they’ve done on the ground to meet with the environmental groups and also hear the call of mana whenua. It’s important, much-needed marine protection work.

The bill, just very quickly, provides two new marine reserves, five seafloor protection areas, and 12 new high protection areas. I just wanted to acknowledge the thousands who have submitted to get it to this point, because over 60 percent supported the current proposals. It is intended that the Department of Conservation and all of the mana whenua and all of the groups will work together. I commend this bill to the House.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker—I’m delighted to speak on this bill. Those of you in this House will know that I am a mad keen fisherwoman and, in fact, have been fishing all my life. I have fished in, on, and under the Hauraki Gulf, I have taught my child, and my children to snorkel using Goat Island. I have absolutely enjoyed the benefits of this beautiful place.

We need to protect the Hauraki Gulf, we need to take care of this taonga; we need to do it for so many reasons. I am just absolutely delighted that this is the beginning of a significant piece of work that will make the Hauraki Gulf much healthier. I think that across this House people have suggested all sorts of things about the Hauraki Gulf. What I want to say is that our community needs to commit to having a further say. I want to ask all those fishers—the recreational, the cultural, and the commercial fishers—to have a say about this bill. It is so incredibly important that we get it right and that we move to an ecosystems management system. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Look, I’ve been listening with close attention to the speeches in this debate, because there are some things in politics and the body politic of our Parliament and, indeed, our society that are, in many respects, above the mere day-to-day cut and thrust of the rough and tumble of political debate in the Parliament and in society. The way that we care for and look after and protect and enhance, for future generations, the Hauraki Gulf, I think, is one of those areas where there should be more unanimity and commonality of thought and spirit than often there is.

I’ve got the pleasure and honour of being the member of Parliament for Coromandel. It is, I think, the electorate that has the longest coastal boundary around the Hauraki Gulf. It goes from the Auckland side of the Firth of Thames, Miranda, Kaiaua, around the base of the firth, up the Thames coast, around the top at Colville and Port Jackson, Port Charles, down the eastern seaboard of the Coromandel Peninsula, past Whangamatā, down to Waihī. Now, many people have a mental picture of Hauraki Gulf as somehow finishing at the top of the Coromandel Peninsula. It’s a common misconception; it actually moves around the eastern seaboard of the peninsula, and that is an important part of the gulf area.

All the environmental indicators relating to the gulf deteriorating are not in dispute. That is not contested in any way, shape, or form. The science is undeniable, the data is undeniable: the gulf is in a rapidly degrading position. And that’s simply not acceptable to us as current New Zealanders and our current generation; it’s not acceptable for the future that we would want to have for generations that will follow us, both in this place and as users and recreators and people who want to enjoy the beauty of the gulf.

Now, that said, this piece of legislation, as my colleagues in the National Party have already indicated, we’re going to support it. We supported it at first reading. We do so primarily to encourage submitters to let us hear what they have to say. We want to know what the NGOs have to say, and we want to know what the recreational, the cultural, and the commercial fishers have to say about the proposals that are established in this bill, because it’s not perfect: there are some enormous challenges yet to confront, and there are some challenges that are going to mean that there will be angst and conflict and heartache for some people who are used to having done things in the gulf, on the gulf, and under the gulf for generations. But change is required, and that is going to require some give and some take, from pretty much everybody that engages and interacts with the gulf in whatever way, shape, or form that they currently do. But change is required.

So as the member of Parliament for Coromandel, I want to hear, for instance, from recreational fishers, particularly those who are feeling very concerned about the potential for highly protected areas to be established around the Aldermen Islands, for instance, for the extension of marine reserves, and the impacts that might have on what they see as their recreational rights, privileges, and traditional opportunities to fish recreationally on that side of the peninsula. And I know that many of them are very exercised, but I want them to channel that energy into making submissions to the select committee.

Now, this piece of legislation won’t pass in this Parliament. We have only one more day of sitting before the Parliament is dissolved and this Parliament ceases to be, and the new Parliament will be formed after the general election in October, and it will be up to the new Environment Committee and the new Parliament and the new Government to decide what actions are taken in regard to this piece of legislation—whether it’s going to be modified, amended, changed, or whatever. So that is a challenge for the next Parliament and the next Environment Committee to grapple with.

But these are meaty, weighty, heavy, gnarly issues that require considered opinion, that require the use of science and data and information rather than just emotional gut instinctive responses that may not necessarily be well founded in science or data. So this piece of legislation we are supporting—but we want to hear from, and engagement from, as wide a range of people, organisations, stakeholders, and people who are interested in the gulf.

Now, the gulf is acknowledged widely as being the most intensely recreated piece of marine space in our entire marine area, in our exclusive economic zone, for that matter—our entire territorial marine space. It is an emotional piece of water that is held dear to so many New Zealanders, but we want to make sure that this piece of legislation, combined with the announcement that the Government, in its dying, gasping last few days, has made earlier this week in relation to bottom trawling and the various options that are proposed for it—we want to make sure that, actually, they’re not just moving an issue from one part of the gulf to another part of the gulf. And I want to explain a little bit about that. Because of the options that the Government has presented for consultation in terms of bottom trawling, it seems to me, on first glance, that, actually, all that does, potentially, is remove bottom trawling from the inner parts of the gulf and then potentially push out that practice to other areas of the gulf, and that would mean, by definition, particularly around the eastern seaboard of the Coromandel Peninsula. Now, if that’s the case, then that simply is not acceptable. That simply is not acceptable to people from the Coromandel or people who want to visit and take the opportunity to fish around the Coromandel. That is just moving one problem to another part of the gulf, because the law of unintended consequences kicks in and that will be something that I think will actually have a detrimental effect and a negative, perverse outcome, rather than solving anything that is going to be long-term beneficial.

And then, when combined with the potential for more commercial activity in the outer part of the gulf—because the inner part of the gulf has been closed off, so to speak, to bottom trawling, under the options that the Government is proposing—that then adds further interest and weight to issues relating to the marine protected areas; the highly protected areas, the marine reserves that are going to be extended, and so forth. It’s a double whammy for those people who have a particular focus on the eastern seaboard of the Coromandel Peninsula, and I don’t think this Government has really given any due consideration to those aspects, and I don’t think that they have given thought or consideration beyond what happens at the top of the Coromandel Peninsula and what happens on the eastern seaboard. I would urge them to take those views into account carefully, because those people do have opinions, strong opinions, and I’m very happy to represent those opinions in this House, and will continue to do so.

So this is a subject that is complicated and has a myriad of issues to address and confront, many of which, actually, are related to what happens on the land, as much as what happens in the marine space: issues of sedimentation, biodiversity degradation, the diminishing of seabird numbers, whale, and dolphin numbers around the gulf. These are matters that are highly important and valuable to so many New Zealanders and so many people who use and recreate and enjoy the gulf. And to simply push out from the inner gulf to an outer gulf situation—I don’t think solves the problem. I think it requires a far more detailed thought process, and after six years, for this Government to be, finally, in its dying gasping days of administration, just throwing this piece of legislation out, I think is, frankly, a massive cop out. But there you go.

We’re going to support it to select committee, we want to engage with people, we want to hear what they have to say, and my invitation to people not only on the eastern seaboard of the Coromandel Peninsula but other parts of my beautiful electorate—and, indeed, other people who have an interest from wherever they may be in relation to the Hauraki Gulf—is that I want to hear from them and the National Party wants to hear from them. So we endorse this piece of legislation, with reservations.

DAN ROSEWARNE (Labour): It’s a pleasure to take this last call on this important bill. We support this bill because we know that the Hauraki Gulf is unwell and that we need to restore its health and vitality and mauri as well, so our children’s children can continue to enjoy it well into the future. It’s also good for tourism, and Angie Warren-Clark, my colleague, highlighted how she enjoys the Hauraki Gulf. That’s important for our tourism industry so that we can attract those tourists and get them to enjoy the Hauraki Gulf, just like the locals do.

So this is an important bill. It adds to the long-term sustainability of the Hauraki Gulf, and I commend it to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): The question is, That the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill be considered by the Environment Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Environment Committee.

Bills

Residential Property Managers Bill

First Reading

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Associate Minister of Housing): I present a legislative statement on the Residential Property Managers Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: I move, That the Residential Property Managers Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

Madam Speaker, kia orana. As a Government, we’ve worked hard to ensure everyone has access to secure, healthy, and affordable housing. Across New Zealand, nearly one in three households rent, with the residential property management sector responsible for around half of the rental market. Over the past few years, we’ve seen an increase in the use of residential property managers by property owners. Usually, services might include advising owners on compliance with tenancy law, advertising for tenants, lodging bonds, collecting rent, organising repair work, and completing routine inspections. Their role is becoming increasingly important in the function of the overall rental market. As part of that role, residential property managers ensure tenants are treated fairly and have access to secure and safe rental housing. But while many residential property managers abide by professional standards, there’s no current legal requirement for them to do so. I want to acknowledge that several existing industry bodies have implemented voluntary standards for residential property managers in recognition of how vital their service is, but we need to be clear that the sector as a whole isn’t regulated. Therefore, good service and professional conduct isn’t guaranteed.

The Residential Property Managers Bill will protect the interests of property owners and tenants by creating a comprehensive regulatory regime for residential property managers and their businesses. Tenant advocacy groups, real estate and property management companies, and property management industry bodies have all expressed concern about the risk to tenants and property owners from not having a regulated market. While there are a mix of views in some areas of the regime, I acknowledge and welcome the broad stakeholder support for putting a regulatory framework in place for residential property managers. I want to ensure that residential property managers operate in a manner that supports public confidence and the integrity of the residential tenancies market. I want to safeguard the interests of property owners and tenants as well.

What this bill will deliver is an occupational licensing regime that will achieve these outcomes by establishing compulsory licensing of residential property managers and their businesses, setting minimum entry and qualification requirements for residential property managers, ensuring residential property managers meet professional standards of practice, and providing accountability through an effective complaints and disciplinary process that includes complaints assessment committees and a disciplinary tribunal. The bill has been designed as a distinct occupational licensing regime for residential property managers with parallel processes to those established in the Real Estate Agents Act. This is a deliberate choice. With the Real Estate Authority as the regulator, there are significant administrative efficiencies from having similar processes supporting licensing and the complaints and disputes functions.

One matter that I want to raise today is that this bill does not regulate landlords. This also means Kāinga Ora and registered community housing providers are not regulated by this bill. The relationship between landlords and tenants is currently addressed under the Residential Tenancies Act and is the relationship that we’ve worked hard to improve on during our term of Government. We’ve increased enforcement powers and penalties for large-scale landlords in 2021, and we’ve introduced name suppression for parties who are wholly or substantially successful in their case in the tribunal. It is my view and the view of this Government that these changes should have an opportunity to bed in first before we consider further legislation of landlords. These changes to the enforcement powers under the Residential Tenancies Act are in addition to other changes that the Government has made to protect tenants, such as improving security of tenure by removing no-cause terminations and implementing the healthy home standard.

What the bill will do is further amend the Residential Tenancies Act to better empower the Tenancy Tribunal in limited ranges of circumstances—such as, where a private landlord is serially non-compliant, the tribunal will be able to order them to employ the services of a residential property manager. This power for the Tenancy Tribunal will not apply to Kāinga Ora or to registered community housing providers.

The final specific area I want to record today is that the bill amends the Real Estate Agents Act to make changes to the real estate authority board. The authority board will be required to have experience in the residential property management sector. Board members are also to have collective knowledge and experience of Māori perspectives and of the Treaty of Waitangi. I’m confident that this new regulatory regime will improve residential property management services in New Zealand, and, in doing so, improve the renting experience for many. The regulation of residential property managers continues the momentum we’ve built over the last six years to fundamentally improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders through better housing outcomes. It will help provide assurance to property owners and their tenants that all residential property managers are abiding by professional standards, know the law, and manage rental properties well.

As this bill progresses to the select committee stage, I’m also interested in hearing from members of the sector and the public about how this regulatory regime will improve the residential property market and quality of residential property management services. I also look forward to receiving feedback on any improvements that this could be made to the bill as currently drafted, in particular, given several stakeholders have raised the coverage of landlords, I will be interested in the select committee’s views on this issue.

It is a privilege to be able to guide this bill through the House. I thank my colleagues for their support. I’d also like to thank my officials at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development for their advice in drafting this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

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

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Here we are at the tail end of this Parliament considering something that the Government promised in the 2020 election manifesto, and I think we are on the second to last parliamentary sitting day and the Government’s finally got around to this very important change to our housing laws.

Angie Warren-Clark: Nothing like a pandemic.

CHRIS BISHOP: What’s that?

Angie Warren-Clark: Pandemic.

CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, OK yeah, the pandemic is blamed for literally everything—rents are up 175 bucks a week, child poverty’s up, inflation’s up, the economy’s in recession, but it’s all the pandemic! The pandemic is responsible for literally everything. We’re sort of 18 months post the pandemic but there’s nothing Labour won’t blame on either (a) the pandemic or (b) the last National Government. That’s basically what they say—it’s all the response to the pandemic, which was three years ago, or the last National Government.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): Back to the bill, please, Mr Bishop.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I was just responding to the interjection from my colleague and my good friend whose bill is going to be read this afternoon—we’re looking forward to supporting that bill, Angie Warren-Clark.

Anyway, back to the Residential Property Managers Bill. We will be supporting this bill to first reading. But we do so with a degree of scepticism about the necessity of it and whether or not it will actually work in the way the Government intends. But, in the spirit of good faith, and bonhomie at the final two days of Parliament, we will support it to first reading to have a look at it. The Associate Minister of Housing, the Hon Barbara Edmonds, was pretty optimistic about being able to guide it through its parliamentary passage; I’m not sure she will be the Minister of Housing, or the Associate Minister of Housing after the next election.

So this bill will go off to, no doubt, the Social Services Committee where it will be—well, I’m not even sure the committee will have time to call for submissions by the time the House rises because we’re going to lift tomorrow. So we’ll wait and see if the committee calls for submissions but I’m sure the next Parliament—assuming the bill makes its way back on to the Order Paper, of course, which is not a guaranteed either. The new Parliament has to vote, after the election, to reinstate items of business on to the Order Paper. So we’ll just have to wait and see, but assuming the bill makes its way back on to the Order Paper and goes before the committee, then we will have to have a look at that, and we’ll look forward to the submissions.

Let me just canvass a couple of thoughts in supporting this. The first is that we do want to improve life for renters in New Zealand. As the legislative statement notes and the various Government background documents note, about 40 percent of New Zealanders rent—actually, those numbers we would like to see decline over time. We want to see more people owning their own homes. We want to see more first-home buyers. We want to see more property owners, and we want to see more people be able to afford to buy their own home. But we are where we are, and many New Zealanders rent, and renting will always be an option for many people: for young people, for people leaving home for university—going off to university and just for student accommodation—and for people who can’t afford their own home, and also people who move around a lot, and people who do not wish to own property. At the end of the day, we live in a market-based economy and people make their own choices about that. So it is important that renting and renters are looked after.

That said, we have to consider the costs and the benefits of this. I worry that the extra costs of mandatory regulation of property managers will end up flowing through to higher rents. This regulatory regime—this bill—does create quite a complex regulatory regime which the Minister has usefully outlined for the House. The inevitable consequence of that will be to raise costs, and that’s accepted by the Government, and that’s in the departmental disclosure statement, the regulatory impact material. So the real issue, the real danger, is that those costs get passed on, ultimately, to the property owners that the residential property managers are acting on behalf of, and, of course, where will those costs be passed on to? Well, they will potentially be passed on to tenants.

We have a rental housing crisis in New Zealand. Rents are up $175 a week in New Zealand in the last six years. In my own area of Lower Hutt, rents have increased by $257 in the last six years. In many parts of the country, they have increased by similar amounts and so we do need to be cognisant of those costs.

Now, to be fair to the Government, the departmental disclosure statement freely admits there will be costs. So I’m just quoting from the departmental disclosure statement, “The most significant cost components are the costs of becoming licensed … and then ongoing sector compliance costs. Some of these costs will be borne directly by residential property managers. Other costs will be recovered,”—but recovering cost doesn’t mean that no one pays, it just means they’re recovered. It just means that they get passed on to somebody. And “gaining a qualification to be licensed, the requirement to have a Trust account, appropriate insurance … audit requirements,” etc., etc., and some of these will be phased in over time, which, again, you know, is fine. Phasing something in, again, doesn’t mean the cost goes away, it just means it gets phased in over a slower period of time.

Here’s the issue. So they’ve done a cost-benefit and, again, kudos to the Government because so often in this House we impose new regulatory requirements but we never bother to do a benefit-cost analysis. But they’ve done one—well, they didn’t do one, they got MartinJenkins to do one. So one of those consultancies—MartinJenkins has done pretty well under this Government.

So the cost-benefit carried out by MartinJenkins indicates the net present value is $10.9 million over the forecast period of 10 years. Core costs are $159.9 million, and core benefits of $170.8 million. So the benefit-cost ratio is 1.07.

So it’s hardly a slam dunk. I mean, it’s positive, but it’s not really positive; it’s 1.07. So, in other words, for every dollar in cost that this regulatory regime imposes, there is a benefit according to the officials of an extra 7c on top. So it’s positive but it’s hardly a kind of, you know, “for every dollar we spend, we get $5 in benefit down the line”—it’s a very thin benefit-cost ratio.

Here’s the other thing. The officials say in the regulatory impact statement, there is a higher degree of certainty around the estimated costs than there is over the benefits. So, in other words, in plain English, “We’re pretty confident this is going to impose a lot of cost, but we’re not really sure the benefits will flow”. And when the starting point is a benefit-cost ratio of 1.07 and you’re uncertain about the benefits, it doesn’t take much for the benefits to not accrue, and then the costs outweigh the benefits. Then you’re literally vaporising money. You are not creating net benefits. This is why we ask officials to do benefit-cost ratios.

So we’ll vote for the bill to send it to select committee, but we are sceptical, deeply sceptical, that the benefits outweigh the costs. It’s not just me saying that; it’s the Government’s own official analysis that’s sceptical about that. So, as I say, the starting point is a thin degree of benefits, and, as the officials themselves note, real uncertainty over the benefits but quite a degree of certainty over the cost. So, in other words, “We’re up for this conversation and there may well be some benefits to what the Government’s proposing here, but we’re sceptical that it will work”.

The other issue, in my final couple of minutes, is a real risk, and again, the Government’s own material says this. There is a real risk that landlords will shift away from licensed residential property managers and just choose to manage their own properties. So, in other words, it could backfire. So if you’re if you’re a landlord and you currently have a licensed property manager, you may well just say “Well, actually, bugger that, I’ll just do it myself.”, and then that is a real issue, because as the Minister herself just said in her own speech, the bill doesn’t regulate landlords; it regulates licensed property managers. So that’s the issue.

Look, as with many debates in this House around regulatory regimes, the question is: is selfregulation better than mandatory regulation? Actually, we have self-regulation on licensed property managers now. And, again, the Government documents note that there is quite a degree of extensive self-regulation in the system already. The question is: is the Government coming in over the top and, essentially, creating a much more elaborate and comprehensive regulatory regime over the top of the industry’s self-regulation going to be beneficial or not?

So we’re up for the conversation and the debate around it. I’ve said publicly that we’re open to the discussion, but we’re sceptical of the benefits. It’ll go to the committee. We look forward to the submissions and we will consider the matter in due course. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker—pleasure to speak on the Residential Property Managers Bill. Just to advise the member who’s just resumed his seat, Chris Bishop, I notified using my powers today to open for submissions, so this bill, once referred, is open for submissions.

Secondly, I’d just like to say this is a fabulous bill. It’s introducing the compulsory licence training, a code of conduct, and a complaints and disciplinary process for residential property managers. The reason I love this bill is because, as the manager of Tauranga Women’s Refuge, I had to work quite closely with a number of these people doing these services, and the difficulty—they basically said to me, to my face, “We will not have your people in our houses.” So, to Quinovic in Tauranga, this bill is for you. I really look forward to some rights for our renters and some rights for our landlords. So I commend this bill to the House.

TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you for allowing me the great privilege to speak in support of the Residential Property Managers Bill. But I want to start with a little story about Hamilton West—a great place to grow up and grow old in New Zealand. When you land at the Pak ’N Save on the corner of Mill Street and Ulster Street, you have a wonderful gateway to our city, and in that gateway are a number of homes and motels—some of those homes will be subject to rental accommodation and some of them are, essentially, the hotbed of the housing disaster and catastrophe that’s facing our great country. You go along Ulster Street and you see the nearly 750 kids and 750 adults that are housed in emergency accommodation in Hamilton right now, the $25 million that’s used every quarter to pay the motel owners of Hamilton West, every single quarter—

Angela Roberts: We’re building more houses.

TAMA POTAKA: You’re building more houses, but for a billion-dollar commitment under Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga, 70 houses is not enough to me. You take a right, shoot down to Beerescourt Road and you go along to Galbraith Avenue. And out Galbraith Avenue, I want to start my kōrero today with reference to a colleague of mine, a fellow Hamiltonian named Everest, who lives down on Galbraith Avenue. On the other side of the road is an owned property and there are some beautiful blue signs with my furry face on them—no moustache. But in that transitional housing, that State housing, on the fence is a Labour election sign. In that transitional housing, my friend Everest lives, and she’s got three kids. She’s got another one on the way. She’s got very high and complex needs and she’s been bounced and she’s been hurt by having to go through eight motels in two years to get to a transitional house. It’s an absolute catastrophe that her kids have had to change schools. They’re not even going to school half the time because they don’t know what school they’re going to after being bounced around in the housing disaster that’s been curated by this Labour Government—curated.

The 3,500 adults, 3,500 kids, and another 1,000 in Rotorua who live in undermined housing can’t even access this rental accommodation that we are dealing with in this bill, and Kāinga Ora is not going to be subject to the same sorts of expectations that the residential property managers in this bill will be.

One thing that concerns me is that the majority of those people in that housing are actually Māori. This is very distressing for a Māori member of Parliament who represents an electorate where 45 percent of all the kids are Māori. Builders can’t build to a price point that works. Councils are challenged with algorithms and development contributions models and rates models. There are more people and not enough suitable homes, rental or otherwise.

Not everyone wants to own their own home, as my learned colleague Chris Bishop mentioned. Some people want to live in rental accommodation. In fact, a third of Kiwi households live in rental accommodation today, and of that third, 42 percent of that cohort are managed by residential property managers. Some are good, like David and Simon and Simon’s sister Claire Lugton of Lugtons in Hamilton West; David Kneebone, who runs Lodge City Rentals in Hamilton West. They are managing to the best of their abilities.

So landlords and property owners, they contract these residential property managers—good ones, I hope—to look after landlords’ property or properties. That includes a lot of things: turning on the lights; making sure the lawns are mowed; making sure the heat pump is working; following the money and collecting rents, because rent still needs to be paid, and these managers need to ensure that happens; liaising with the tenants around any concerns of the tenant, the landlord, the manager, maybe prospective tenants, if that property is vacant; and resolving concerns that might emerge. I remember a few termite concerns in a rental accommodation that I had when I was a young student down here at Victoria University, Te Herenga Waka.

So this bill, in seeking and desiring to establish a regulatory regime to improve the provision of residential property management services is applaudable. It protects both property owners, tenants, and prospective tenants. To do this, establishing minimum entry requirements for residential property managers—tick. Ensuring professional standards of practice—tick. And providing accountability through an independent, transparent, and effective complaints and disciplinary process that applies to the managers in the delivery of their services—tick.

For some reason, though, I don’t understand why KO—Kāinga Ora—will not have to follow the same sort of standards, even if it is through different legislation. It’s a worry—a real worry—given that Kāinga Ora is actually the biggest property manager in the country.

But back to the bill. The authority, in being the new regulator for this regime—I don’t know how many consultants and bureaucrats will be engaged by the authority, but it will appoint a registrar for licence registration. It will issue licences for residential property managers. And if the legislation goes through, a complaints assessment committee and real estate agents disciplinary tribunal will consider the unsatisfactory conduct or misconduct of managers, and, hopefully, we can also see, through a bolstering of the Tenancy Tribunal processes, the same sort of diligence and professionalism and reciprocity for tenants.

An interesting provision is that the authority will also be enabled to get documents around the management of properties. It’s sort of like a Mareva injunction or Anton Piller order—I think the DHB in the North Shore went through a few of those in their days, Mr Watts. And, finally, the offenses and penalties—there are no offences and penalties in the North Shore DHB—being established to discover the provision of unlicensed property management services.

One provision that I did not see was the Treaty compliance provision. That was a real surprise, especially given the feverish approach of the current Government to put a Te Tiriti o Waitangi provision in every single piece of legislation that comes through this House. I thought we must have a Treaty provision and I was denied, but maybe that’s something that can be raised in the select committee process, if it makes it there this afternoon. I felt for sure that residential property managers would have to implement or at least take into account or have regards to or ensure the consistency of implementation with the principles, but, alas, denied by the drafting goalie, Mr Simpson.

What are our concerns? Yeah, we’ve got a couple of concerns, and Mr Bishop has parleyed those concerns to the Parliament today, but I’ll just amplify them a little bit more. This bill and the regulatory regime will raise costs for residential property managers and, ultimately, tenants, because what we’ve seen before is when you load more and more costs onto the provision or the deployment of property, housing, those costs just get shifted along the chain through the residential property managers to the property owners and then, ultimately, to the tenants. Rents are already up 150 bucks in the last five years in Hamilton. If you need a place, let me know; I’ll introduce you to David Lugton—this is not a standing advertisement for Lugtons, either.

But we’ve seen this before with compliance regimes. It actually might cost more than it’s worth. The analysis showing the benefit-cost ratio of 1.07—sounds like my 1993 statistics grade, actually; university entrance. However, the departmental disclosure statement that master Bishop has kindly read out shows that there is greater certainty around costs than the benefits. I don’t know what the rental situation is like out on the Chatham Islands, but I want to refer to the Chatham Islands, because that rental situation and the property managers out there, that’s something that he will need to do in a future role. It doesn’t matter, because all the properties out there are owned by the Croon whānau.

Another potential concern is that landlords move away from using good, licensed residential property managers, and inhale this themselves. They may say, “Right, I’m going to take that 7.5 percent”—or 8 percent if it’s in the Coromandel—“and inhale that myself and look after this property.” That can have both upsides and downsides, but there definitely is a potential incentive issue to avoid compliance with this regime. When you exempt landlords and Kāinga Ora and others, that pathway becomes lit up in a bright pink light—not the ACT pink or rinky-dink pink.

Finally, the most important concern that I have is the distraction that this provides after six years of waiting, $3 million—sorry, $3 billion, Dr Evil; $3 billion equity. Three billion dollars in debt handed to Kāinga Ora to improve their housing, and still we have 25,000 applicants on the social housing wait-list, 5,000 whānau in transitional housing, and 9,000 people in emergency housing. Whānau, we need change. I acknowledge everyone in the House is trying to do the right thing, but we live under a blue sky, and that’s the way things are going. Kia ora tātou.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Almost one-third of New Zealand households live in rental accommodation. Once people move in, a rental house quickly becomes their home. So a lot of tenants are relying on a property manager for some really basic day-to-day things, like if something breaks down, requesting repairs, requesting maintenance, routine property inspections—but also for managing their rent and bonds. What they need to know is, given that significant a relationship, that their property manager will have agreed professional standards and also there’s a complaint process in place should any issues arise.

From the other perspective, if you’re a property owner, if you choose to use a property manager, what you need to know is that they’ve got basic entry requirements and that they will understand and comply with a code of professional conduct and with client care. So this is an important bill and it will go a long way towards making sure that these things can occur. I commend this bill to the House.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party this morning in opposition to the Residential Property Managers Bill at the first reading. The ACT Party is opposing this bill because further regulation of housing is not going to solve the structural issues that we have with housing in this country. This bill is going to make it more costly for people who are struggling already to afford affordable homes than the status quo. That’s because this bill—it says it seeks to create “a [new] regulatory regime designed to improve the provision of residential property management services in New Zealand … by establishing minimum entry requirements for residential property managers, ensuring that residential property managers meet professional standards of practice, and providing accountability by establishing independent, transparent, and effective complaints and disciplinary process” etc., etc.

But the Government has, I think, acknowledged the real problem at the start of the explanatory note of the bill, and it says that “Almost one third of New Zealand households live in rental accommodation, and housing affordability challenges mean that an increasing proportion of households are expected to need to rent long-term.” But this isn’t going to help people who are needing to rent. They have addressed that more people are needing to rent because housing affordability is a real issue, so let’s address that problem rather than looking at the homes that we already have to rent and try and make them more expensive by regulating them further. So I like the goal overall, but regulating the property managers is not going to have a good outcome for people who are renting.

So how would we actually make it better for people who do want secure, affordable homes? Well, you’ve got to allow more people to be able to build more homes, because if there’s more competition, that drives out bad practice. Now, you take an example of someone currently going along to view a home—maybe it is being managed by a property manager and there are 40 or 50 people queuing up to have a look at this home. Now, that’s a lot of people needing a secure, affordable place to live. But imagine a scenario where you’re turning up and it’s one or two people looking for a place to live; not 40 or 50. That’s because if you have more homes for people to live in, the options are so much wider for people and it drives out bad practice, because if you do get a bad landlord, you can choose not to live in that home anymore and go somewhere else. At the moment, I know a lot of people struggle because there isn’t enough housing supply. So we’ve got to fix the fundamental issue that’s holding us back—and that’s because we’re not actually building enough homes.

Now, the ACT Party has solutions to address this, and we’ve addressed the issue that the housing crisis is an infrastructure crisis. We’re not going to see capacity built at the rate that we need it to be built unless we address infrastructure, and that’s what my Housing Infrastructure (GST-sharing) Bill was supposed to enable—unfortunately, it was shot down by this Labour Government, but I’m hopeful that we can bring it back with National in the next Government. That will help to address the fundamental underlying issue of why we don’t have enough homes; give more people more options. Give students more options for places to live, and give families more homes for them to choose to live in. If landlords are then competing, tenants will be able to move and our standards overall will increase.

But let’s look at the effect of this policy—and it is that you’ll end up with more regulation, which will mean more cost on to a landlord and more cost then on to a tenant. And we know from the regulatory impact disclosure statements that it says that there will be significant cost components, the most significant being the cost of becoming licensed in the first instance, and then ongoing sector compliance costs. Now, we know from a variety of regulation that this Government’s passed through that costs then have flow-on effects, and it’s not borne by just the property manager. The property manager will then increase rents through the landlord, needing to find another way of trying to pass on that cost. We know it from the interest deductibility rules that this means that it will have a flow-on effect: hundreds of dollars every fortnight to a couple who is already struggling with a cost of living crisis. But we’ve got to make sure that we have more access to homes, rather than making it more affordable for the homes that we already have, so let’s address the supply problem.

The other issue that I note—that a range of people that I’ve spoken to in the sector are concerned by—is the ability for this to be extended, not just for property managers but for private landlords in general. I noted from the Cabinet paper from the Minister, it said that in her view, “The increased enforcement powers and penalties for large-scale landlords for those with six or more properties that came into force through the RTA Amendment Act in February last year should be allowed to bed in before further regulation of private landlords is considered.” So they’re not ruling it out completely; they’re just saying “Let’s wait a few years and maybe more people will end up being regulated”—but then we end up with an additional problem. But the Government always seems to think they’re exempt—there’s another standard for property managers than there is for the Government, which has nearly 70,000 homes themselves, and this law has an explicit carve-out and it says that, you know, “If they’re bad property managers that are setting a bad standard, well, it’s different for us”, and it’s because Kāinga Ora, we know, is actually the biggest slumlord around and they want an exemption for themselves.

And I’ll just give you one basic statistic. I found this out through written parliamentary questions—in the last year, 243 of 257 of the Kāinga Ora homes that were tested for meth contamination tested positive. That’s a very, very large percentage of homes that are positive for meth contamination. Now, would you not consider that Kāinga Ora is the largest slumlord? And they know that they could possibly never meet the same standards that they’re expecting of somebody else—so it’s constantly one rule for Kāinga Ora and another for other agencies. We also know that so many people are really struggling, and they can’t even get into one of the Kāinga Ora homes so they’re in emergency housing and they’re in transitional housing. Neither of those even need to meet the healthy home standards. So we have people who will be forced out of a home that they could have afforded with a private rental—maybe into something that’s even worse for them. We’ve got to address the underlying issue of why we don’t have enough homes and why we can’t build to the capacity that we need to allow more competition and more homes for people to live in—whether they’re a student, a family, or just a single woman living in Wellington, or somebody who’s retired but can’t actually afford their own home. Let’s allow for more choice for people at all stages of their lives rather than thinking another ban, another tax, another regulation is going to solve the problem; it’s just a cheap band-aid over a problem. We’ve actually got to look at those structural issues, and that’s what we do in ACT, rather than looking at more regulation.

With the last few moments that I have, I just wanted to point to clause 142, because I know a large number of real estate agents have raised this with me in concern—that we are, once again, seeing the Treaty and the Treaty principles creep into every form of legislation possible. And it says in here that “The joint Ministers must appoint members to [a] board who collectively have knowledge and experience of, and capability and perspectives of, Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi / the Treaty of Waitangi.”—when it’s about real estate agents and about the administration of the Residential Property Managers Act. Is it not more important that people on this board have knowledge of residential property and real estate agents; not the Treaty at the heart of everything? We have to be practical, and this is what people up and down New Zealand are telling us they are so concerned about.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order. The member’s time is completed.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Stoked to hear members of the ACT Party talking about contracts and about the likes of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, because I would have thought that the ostensible libertarian party in this House would be in favour of consistently honouring the founding contract of this country.

But today is a good day, although unfortunately it comes far too little, far too late. So what we have here with the proposals for this register and these regulations around property managers is a really important start.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Epitaph for the Government.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: But it could have come 15 years ago—and I will come to you, Gerry Brownlee—because what we had 15 years ago—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh, please don’t. I’m leaving.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Just wait for it—what we had 15 years ago in the debates around the Real Estate Agents Bill, now Act, was actually some really fascinating propositions from members in the House at that time. So I just want to quote from the committee of the whole House during that debate and I quote here: “This bill is not worth much if it does not address the real issues being faced particularly by young people who have to deal with property managers. The submitters to this bill did not consider that the provisions for property management in the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 (RTA)—which, of course, relate primarily to relationships between parties as tenants, owners, and property managers—are sufficient to ensure that consumers are protected in property management transactions. So what does the Minister propose to do about it? He proposes to conduct a review. Well, that does not provide much comfort to those people who deal on a day-to-day basis with property managers. National’s view is that this bill should include property managers within it, and without doing that the Minister’s fine words about cowboys and land sharks remain very pertinent.” That is a quote from the Hon Jacqui Dean, and, in that same debate, we had exactly the same propositions backed up by none other than the Hon Gerry Brownlee, who was in favour of regulating property managers within the residential or the Real Estate Agents Act. That was 15 years ago.

We had members of the Opposition who then were proposing that we needed to regulate property managers within a regime that we were proposing to regulate real estate agents. Well, guess what! They then got into Government and they put Associate Minister the Hon Nathan Guy, Associate Minister of Justice, in charge of doing that review which they had critiqued at that point in time. And guess what! That review found—and there’s a press release from the Beehive which those who are interested in crawling back through the archives can find—well, the Hon Nathan Guy said, “Don’t worry, nothing to see here because the majority of complaints for property managers tend to be lesser than $15,000. So don’t worry. Nothing to see here, nothing to regulate.” And if that is not a shining example of how we in this country continue to kick the can further and further down the road for those who continue to be the most structurally marginalised and disempowered, then I do not know what is. Because what we’re talking about here is a residential property market in the rental space that caters for 1.5 million New Zealanders: one-third of New Zealanders rent. And we know that those New Zealanders spend more of their income disproportionately on older, colder, and mouldier properties. And in my patch in Auckland Central, it’s more than half of my constituents.

We also know, based on written questions to the Minister, that the average tenancy in this country is approximately 16 months. If you want to talk about people’s capacity to build their community, their physical and their mental health, a sense of hope and security and planning into the future, you need a stable home. This bill goes somewhat of the way to ensuring that we address that imbalance and that power dynamic—that was identified even by the National Party 15 years ago—but it doesn’t go far enough. The reason that it doesn’t go far enough is that in the Government’s own initial consultation documents, they couldn’t identify whether we had 2,000 or 7,000 property managers in this country. It’s quite a big problem when we don’t have meaningful data because we can’t create meaningful evidence-based policy to respond to those issues as outlined in that data and in that evidence.

But we also know that property managers directly manage approximately 40 percent of rentals in this country. That means that the Government knows full well that in excluding private landlords, they are excluding approximately 60 percent of the rental market in this country from those regulations which they themselves identify are critical for ensuring that, for example, there is awareness about the likes of the healthy home standards and other rights and responsibilities under the Residential Tenancies Act.

So it will come as no surprise here that throughout the select committee stage, the Greens will be working incredibly hard in organising with renters across this country to ensure that their voices are heard and that this bill is extended to include those private landlords who operate in the market. Because what we know full well—and, actually, to allude to some of the conversations that I’ve had with property managers, because many in this House already have, including the member of the ACT Party. What I hear time and again is that, actually, those engaged in property management tend to also be associated to real estate agencies and they have a professional standard to uphold. And it’s not always the case that those who are engaged in being private landlords are aware of those legislative responsibilities and liabilities that they may have, and therefore that in practice there potentially tends to be the case that property managers, even while being unregulated, may operate from a more professional starting point than those private landlords. Because the only barrier to entry to being a landlord in this country at present is the capital outlay necessary to do it. There is no necessary expertise, there is no necessary qualification or otherwise. And if we are to impose that on property managers, so too we should impose it on private landlords.

That, again, should come as no surprise to anybody who has been following the campaigning that we have been doing to uphold the rights of renters in this country. We have these forms of registers for property managers and landlords in many countries, including in the UK. I believe that Northern Ireland explains their register for property managers and landlords as “A central repository for landlords and for tenants to know what their rights and responsibilities are and to prevent issues cropping up further down the track.” Imagine the efficiency gains that we could get out of preventing things from escalating to the Tenancy Tribunal by ensuring that everybody knows their rights and responsibilities and what the law actually is.

I just also need to comment on the point that was made by the member of the ACT Party with regards to students. And here I would remind them that section 5B of the Residential Tenancies Act currently excludes student accommodation from meeting any of the standards or responsibilities within the RTA and that is a big problem. We have the student accommodation inquiry which I spearheaded back in 2020, in which the Greens were the minority view, saying that we needed to revoke that section 5B exemption.

But there is so much more to do for those renters, for low-income New Zealanders, for students, and the solutions are really, really clear. This is an important starting point and I want to commend the Minister for bringing the bill to the House. But I say it should come as no surprise to her that the Greens will be pushing for this to go a whole lot further and faster. Because, if this House kicked the can down the road 15 years ago, well now it’s time to grab that can and it’s time to get on with it. We’ve got work to do and we know what those solutions are, we know what the evidence says. And those 1.5 million renters in this country deserve better.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is a really good bill—one that I’ve been looking forward to for a really long time. The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand has asked for this bill. They’ve identified examples of harmful behaviour that damaged their industry and those that we’re all part of and our communities are part of: discrimination against tenants, not complying with the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA), renting out spaces that do not comply with the RTA, and stealing bond and rental money from tenants and property owners. This is a bill that will help to address of that, so I look forward to passing this bill eventually in this House. I commend it to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Five-minute split call—Melissa Lee.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m not quite sure what the rush is in terms of the way that my colleague Naisi Chen actually spoke. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken so fast. I was trying to actually understand what she was saying, but I guess the Government’s very keen to get this done as soon as possible.

This bill, the Residential Property Managers Bill, is one that, as spokesperson Chris Bishop said, the National Party will support to select committee, and in the second to last day of Parliament we are debating this. I understand the passion from different parties in the way that they have actually debated, but I just wanted to bring some of my thoughts to this debate.

I have also been a tenant as well as a landlord, and having a great property manager who actually facilitates that process is, I think, very, very important. In Mount Albert, we have great property managers from both Anne Duncan real estate and Catherine Goodwin real estate, who do amazing jobs and they have very passionate people who want to help tenants as well as landlords manage the process in a very cordial way.

One of the things that the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand - issued paper, “A Call for Change: Better Property Management” gave examples of is some of the issues that are actually faced by property managers in terms of discriminating against tenants and asking for inappropriate personal information. I know for a fact that a lot of people in the migrant community who’ve potentially never actually rented in this country face discrimination if their surnames and their names are not the typical names that New Zealanders are actually used to—if their names are not Smith but potentially Lee, let’s say: Lee and Smith, fairly common in Asia and in European cultures. But, you know, if New Zealand is so used to having Smiths, they’re not very used to Lees, I guess.

I know for a fact that a lot of the migrant community face terrible delays and trouble trying to find tenancy, to actually rent properties, when they’re in in dire need of accommodation. They couldn’t explain, apart from racism, to me—and they come to the office, some of them, crying, and I think that’s really heart-breaking to watch.

Also, when you talk to some of the tenants who are in terrible renting spaces where landlords—I know there are actually a huge shortage of rental properties, but to have 30 people, for example, living in really dire situations, some of them living in garages and made-up spaces that should not be tenanted out, I think we do have a major problem in terms of housing in this country. We do all, I think, in this House, know that we need to build more homes, not just for ownership but also for rentals. Because everybody needs to have a house, whether it’s actually to own or to live or to rent or whatever it is. But we have more people than houses available, and that is something that we all need to actually work towards.

I’ve heard the speech that Chris Bishop gave and he actually gave the cost-benefit analysis in terms of how this bill actually gains 7c, and that sort of made me smile a little bit: that it is really not a huge gain when you spend $1 and only gain 7c as a benefit. But in terms of the cost to the property managers, it will effectively go to the landlords and ultimately will end up in in the tenants’ costs. I hope that we can look, at select committee, as to how we can actually reduce that burden on the tenants. But to actually have responsible tenancy managers, property managers, is something that I support and hence I commend the bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): Thank you. I join my comrades from across the House. I’ve heard some very interesting points by Chlöe Swarbrick and from Melissa Lee. We’re both in Mount Albert, and there’s a really high degree of migrants and there’s also a high degree of renters, and more as time goes on. It’s one of those areas which has been neglected because we’ve come from a culture that has not really had the same degree of rental culture. Rentals are actually really good for the economy. If you have high rental, then the money that would’ve been spent on 25-year mortgages goes into the productive economy. That’s been pointed out by Elizabeth Warren—she’s very keen on moving into much more stable rentals as a result; it allows a lot more flexibility. I’ve got parents at the moment living with me, and I’m looking at rentals for them. This idea that property managers are a problem is an issue, because those people are the nice conduit. They make the relationship professional. They provide stability. I commend the Residential Property Managers Bill to the House.

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Mālō ‘aupito, Mr Speaker. It’s a good opportunity to take a brief call on the Residential Property Managers Bill. I just want to a say fa‘afetai tele lava, lau afioga, to the Associate Minister of Housing, the Hon Barbara Edmonds for bringing this to the House. In our electorate of Takanini, we have 40 percent of our community who rent, and seeing this bill come through to the House definitely helps protect our whānau that live there, especially our Māori and Pacific peoples, who are overly represented in the rental market, as well.

My colleague Naisi Chen has already mentioned some of those things that are happening—that the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand have already said about the claims against tenants. Discrimination is a huge thing, and that’s something I do not want to see in our whānau. We have a large migrant community, as well, in Takanini. Again, when you see these property managers not complying and also doing other things that do not lift up people, that is not good to see. So I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well thank you, Mr Speaker. Here we are, for those people who are listening on the wireless or watching on television, in urgency in the dying, gasping last days of this Labour administration and they’re bringing to the House, under urgency, a piece of legislation called the Residential Property Managers Bill, and we’re debating the first reading.

So what does all this mean? Well, it means that finally, after six long years of having promised this piece of legislation, finally, in the very last minutes of this administration, they’ve decided to bring it to the Parliament, to pass it at first reading, and we’re going to be supporting it at first reading—and I’ll come to that in just a moment; about why we’re supporting it—and they’re going to send it off to a select committee. Possibly the select committee will be able to meet to open a submission process between now and when the House rises tomorrow afternoon, and then people will be able to make submissions on the bill between now and when the new Parliament is formed and a new select committee is formed at some stage after the October elections.

So this is one of a number of pieces of legislation that the current Labour Government has been using urgency to bring to first reading stages. Well, the Residential Property Managers Bill: the concept is relatively simple; it’s been talked about for a long period of time, and what the bill essentially seeks to do is to provide a regime that would set some minimum criteria around professional activities, about the way business is conducted with residential property managers, how they manage their affairs, how they best represent the interests of both landlords and tenants, and how that might be regulated.

Now, what we do know is that for many New Zealanders, renting is a prospect that they either choose or is thrust upon them for a variety of reasons. About a third of New Zealand households live in rental accommodation, we are told as a result of data and statistics. Like my colleague Melissa Lee, over the years I have been both a tenant and a landlord, and I’ve had an opportunity to engage with a number of residential property managers in both those roles over a period of time. It’s been my experience that some are certainly better than others, and that there are a range of skill sets—as there are with pretty much any part of the sectors of the economy. There are good and poor operators and a range in between.

So we need to, I think, understand from submitters, and that’s why we are supporting this piece of legislation, because we want to hear from submitters. We want to understand what people in the sector, what renters, what landlords, and what property managers themselves think about it. We also want to hear from various agencies that might have an interest and be concerned as well. So we are interested in hearing what submitters will have to say, and so we’re endorsing the legislation at first reading for that reason. It’s an opportunity to let people have a say, to let their opinions be heard, and for a future select committee to go through that process. That’s part of the democratic institution that is our Parliament and we support that.

But there are a couple of interesting things about this piece of legislation that’s been introduced in the dying days of this current administration. One is that there is a carveout that specifically creates an exemption for Kāinga Ora (KO)—essentially an exception carve-out for the Government itself. One would have to wonder quite what the rationale for that is and why it is that property managers, residential property managers in the private sector, are going to be within the purview of this piece of legislation but people who act on behalf of Government agencies such as KO are going to have a carve-out exemption that precludes them from falling within the bounds of this legislation.

The legislation itself is designed to create a regime that will improve provisions of residential property management services in New Zealand, and that is a laudable objective. It’s a laudable goal. It’s something that I think that most people would agree is sound, reasonable, and rational. It’s kind of motherhood and apple pie, but there are potentials for perverse outcomes and perverse impacts. I listened very carefully to my colleague Tama Potaka, the very good member of Parliament for Hamilton West, describing some of the issues that relate to his electorate. Many of those, even though his electorate in Hamilton West is an urban electorate—mine in the Coromandel is largely rural and provincial, but rental accommodation, or the lack of residential accommodation, is a significant issue in my electorate just as it is in Hamilton West and in other parts of the country.

Part of the reason that rental accommodation is not as prevalent or as obvious is because this Government has put in place many, many hurdles for landlords. In fact, there are a large number of people that I know in the Coromandel electorate who had previously been landlords—typically they are mum and dad - type investors; they might have one investment property, maybe two. They see that as being part of their superannuation investment package for many of them, and the hurdles that have been put in place by the current Government has actually dissuaded them from being a player in that residential rental market place at all.

Many of them have actually just given up. They’ve actually just sold the property—they’ve said it’s too hard, too much regulation, too much red tape, too much cost, too much ability for poor tenants not to be held accountable for poor tenancy behaviour, and so they’ve just decided to exit the market place. That has, in turn, resulted in fewer rental accommodation properties being available to rent, and in places like Whangamatā, I’m told that sometimes because of the dire shortage of rental accommodation in that particular community, people who are being interviewed for prospective jobs in Whangamatā are sometimes asked as a first question by the potential employer not anything about the job or their experience, whatever—the first question their potential employer will ask is, “Have you got permanent accommodation?”, and in many cases, if they don’t have permanent accommodation, then there’s little point in having a further conversation about the relevant merits of that person being an appropriate candidate for employment within that business. So that’s the kind of issue that is concerning to people in my electorate and, of course, other parts of the country as well.

Now, a regime of the sort that is anticipated by this piece of legislation will create additional costs. There will be additional costs in terms of training, in terms of materiality, in terms of administration, and in terms of the work, paperwork, and time required by the residential property managers. Ultimately, that cost, sooner or later, gets passed on to the tenant. I listened to the very animated contribution by the Green Party member Chlöe Swarbrick, who seemed not to, I think, completely understand the implications of cost and where the costs eventually fall—where they eventually fall. She represents an electorate where there are a high number of residential tenants and it has been very difficult for me to understand why the connection between cost and where the costs fall could not be made.

But, look, I’m aware, as I say, from my personal experience as both a tenant and a landlord, that typically a residential property manager will charge a percentage fee. That percentage fee, almost inevitably, is something that will go up under this piece of legislation, and sooner or later it will be tenants that pay for it. So this is a bill that is well intended but has the potential for perverse outcomes. At a time of a cost of living crisis, there will be extra costs already on tenants who are facing higher rental rates, and those costs will ultimately be passed on to them.

So we support the legislation in terms of it going to a select committee. We want to hear from submitters, we want to hear from advisers, we want to hear from officials, but we do understand the potential implications of the legislation. Thank you.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): It’s my pleasure to rise and take a call on the Residential Property Managers Bill. We’ve heard a lot about the supply issue that has exacerbated the power imbalance between landlords and tenants. As somebody who has often been a reference for young people entering the workforce, going off to university, and entering the rental market for the first time, they are incredibly vulnerable, and they’re going to become more vulnerable. The minimum wage, secure work, and all the other things that these young workers need is under threat if we do not return a Labour Government.

It’s interesting hearing the other side talking about providing a profit and costs being passed on to tenants. We are talking about providing homes, and that is the fundamental difference. We urge submitters to come and speak. Young workers need to turn up, our migrant population, and young families—people who need us to have warm, affordable homes.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Residential Property Managers Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 108

New Zealand Labour 62; New Zealand National 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 1; Kerekere; Whaitiri.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Residential Property Managers Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

Bills

Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill

Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill

First Readings

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Justice): I present legislative statements on the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill and the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Those legislative statements are published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I move, That the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill and the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider these bills.

Improving justice outcomes for victims of family violence and sexual violence has been a top priority for this Government, and I’m very proud to present both of these bills to the House today. Together, these bills are a key element of the three-year victims’ work programme that the Government announced earlier in the year. Since National left office, our Government has tripled the funding for the Victims Assistance Scheme and doubled the funding for Victim Support. We’ve passed the Sexual Violence Legislation Act, established Te Aorerekura to improve access to family violence assistance in the community, and we have established three new pilots in the courts to improve victim safety, ensure they’re heard in bail decisions, and strengthen the support for child victims of sexual violence. We are delivering on our promise to build a justice system that serves all New Zealanders.

These bills address three issues with current legislative settings, and the changes that they will bring are these: addressing problematic lines of questioning and aligning the penalties of sexual offences when the victim is a child, removing barriers to lift victims’ automatic name suppression, and to provide new ways to address litigation abuse in family proceedings. Currently, the law allows for children who are victims of sexual offending to be cross-examined about whether they liked, wanted, or even enjoyed what has happened to them. This is absolutely unacceptable. How can it happen under current settings when an offender is charged with sexual violation because consent is relevant to the offence? It does not need to be like this. The age-specific offence known as sexual connection with a child has a built-in protection that means consent is irrelevant.

However, prosecutors don’t often pursue this charge because the sentence attached to it is 14 years, which is lower than that under the sexual violation offence, which is 20 years. These amendments, therefore, increase the maximum penalty of sexual connection with a child from 14 to 20 years’ imprisonment to align with the penalty for sexual violation. Sexual offending against children should be subject to the same or greater penalty as offending against adults, certainly not a lesser one.

We are also amending the offence of sexual violation so it cannot be charged if the victim is under 12 years old. This takes the question of consent off the table when a young victim is involved. It also ensures that the law leans into those safeguards that already exist for child victims, which, to date, have been underused.

The second issue we’re addressing relates to some of the barriers that victims face when trying to lift their automatic name suppression. The intent behind automatic name suppression for complainants in sexual cases was to protect their privacy during a deeply personal and difficult time in their life. While it is crucial to continue protecting victims of sexual violence, it is also important to recognise that not everyone needs or wants protection in this way. In fact, some people want others to know what has happened to them. In recent years, the Me Too and Let Her Speak movements have played a vital role in empowering victims to speak out, to tell their stories and let others know that they are not alone. Victims of sexual violence can apply to lift their automatic name suppression if they want to, but the system is not currently set up in a way that supports that choice. We’re strengthening these settings by bringing forward changes that better supports victims’ autonomy. This includes a new requirement for the court to consider a victim’s views about their automatic suppression, and minor changes to update the language of the law. These amendments will give victims greater say over their story and help the law better reflect society’s expectations in these areas.

They will also work with separate updates that are progressing to the Criminal Procedure Rules 2012, which will clarify the process for lifting name suppression. Many don’t know this is even an option, and, often, those that do not know, they don’t know where to start. Some have paid thousands of dollars for independent legal advice to help them apply, but this should never happen. Lifting suppression is free of cost. The fact that some victims feel that they need to pay out of their own pocket to get the support they need means the system is failing them. It needs to be simpler, streamlined, and more accessible. Whether a victim wishes to remain anonymous or speak out, we need to make sure our justice system supports the choice of victims.

Finally, we are strengthening the courts’ statutory powers to protect victims of litigation abuse in family proceedings. Litigation abuse is when someone uses the court system to harass, contact, or control their victim rather than to resolve legitimate disputes. I’d like to acknowledge the work and the advocacy of Emily Henderson in this space. She’s been a strong proponent of this change in the law and she’ll be very pleased to see this bill be in the House today. These may present fabricated allegations—this way of being vexatious through the court proceedings. People can file multiple and unnecessary court documents that take time, energy, and money to respond to. They may raise issues to punish, humiliate, or even force the other party to engage with them. It’s, essentially, using the court system against a victim. Using the court system to further cause harm is unacceptable. Family disputes relate to some of the most intimate parts of our lives. They can affect the care of our children, where we live, and what we own. They can impact whether we see our loved ones and whether we feel safe.

Litigation abuse and family proceedings can form part of a wider pattern of violence and abuse against the victim. We are making it particularly harmful. Current protections against litigation abuse focus on the specific number and nature of proceedings rather than the wider patterns of abuse. The threshold which must be met for a victim to access these protections is high and is particularly difficult to meet in family proceedings. The settings can also fail to address patterns of abuse which have developed or been perpetuated over time. The changes we are making address these existing limitations.

These amendments are designed to apply in a court where family proceedings may be heard. They cover cases about care arrangements for children, dividing relationship property following a separation, and also for family violence. Under the new provisions, the court must look at the person’s behaviour, both in and out of the court. If there is evidence of litigation abuse, the court can make an order that requires the court to review any further steps that a person takes in family proceedings or any new family proceedings they start to ensure that they are appropriate before allowing them to proceed. This balances the needs to protect victims with the right to justice and also access to the courts. These rights are of great importance in family proceedings, which affect fundamental aspects of people’s lives. The intention of these changes is to emphasise that the court is there to resolve legitimate disputes and not to perpetuate that abuse.

I’m proud to bring these bills to the House today because of what they mean for New Zealanders. We are delivering on our promise to build a justice system that serves all, and these bills bring us one step closer to providing better outcomes for victims within our justice system. I commend these bills to the House.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party will be supporting these two bills, the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill and the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill, at their first reading and sending them off to a select committee, and it’ll be, obviously, for a future Parliament to decide how and in what way they will be carried forward. The bills, as the Minister, the Hon Ginny Andersen, outlined, cover three things. Given the scale of the challenges that we have as a country, in violence generally and family violence generally, it’s fairly modest legislation, to be honest. It makes two worthy changes, and the third looks, on the surface, to be worthy, but the devil will be in the detail.

The first change, around dealing with children and changing the Crimes Act in relation to the question of consent, or lack of reasonable belief in consent, isn’t an appropriate consideration for children under the age of 12. I think the Minister made the point quite clearly that that’s not something that we should be tolerating, and it shouldn’t be a defence for young children who are victims of crime. So we’ll give that a tick, absolutely.

The second one is around automatic name suppression in criminal procedures. What we have, generally, when a complaint is made or sexual violence has occurred, is that automatic name suppression applies. There are cases where the victims don’t want to have the perpetrator of the crime benefiting from name suppression and they want the world to know, and so they want to waive that name suppression. The process to do that is very cumbersome, so this legislation brings in streamlined procedures to achieve that more swiftly. So we give that a tick as well. These are two things that, yes, are useful, and as to whether it achieves that is something the select committee process will work their way through.

The third area is around victims of family violence, in the extremely vexed area of the Family Court, where, I think, everybody, for a long time, has been dissatisfied with the scope for real, huge damage to be done to families in the course of dealing with the Family Court’s elongated cases. From the outside, it does appear too easy for one party or other to drag proceedings out through a whole host of means, and also to cause mayhem through a whole lot of claims and counterclaims, some of which don’t stack up. Parliament, frankly, on both sides of the House, has made attempts to improve it, and quite often the attempts to improve the system have only made things worse or haven’t solved the problem. So it is a fraught area and one that needs constant attention there. There’s a little bit of a danger of dipping in and out on specifics, as this legislation does, but we are open to considering this. And if it, on the surface, provides for judges to make civil restraint orders limiting future proceedings where someone has filed two or more proceedings that are “totally without merit”, that may have the chance to dial back on the vexatious complaints. So, on that one, yes, on the surface of it, it looks good, and a select committee in the future will have to go through the details and make sure that it actually achieves the desired outcome and doesn’t inadvertently make it more difficult for people to defend their side of the story, but, at the same time, actually achieves the streamlining of the system that we want.

The only point I’d make—you know, we’re two days before the House dissolves before the election—is that the Government has talked at great length over the last six years about being focused on the needs of victims and, frankly, we are quite critical of that. Yes, we’ve seen a big increase in family violence, and the three very modest things that these two bills achieve will make some progress, but, heck, there’s a whole lot more to do. I am conscious that the Minister referred to the various victim support schemes and victim assistance schemes that they’ve increased the funding for, but it was only a couple of years ago when officials let the cat out of the bag and said that that scheme had been deliberately under-promoted for a number of years under this Government because the funding wasn’t available and they were, basically, just keeping their head down so that victims didn’t know that the scheme was available. That was the approach of this Government. I’m glad they’ve tried to amend that. They also announced, with great fanfare, $20 million to help victims of strangulation, and it turned out that nowhere near the number of victims of strangulation have actually been helped by the scheme. It’s been very ineffective and, in fact, it’s helped more perpetrators of strangulation to get access to better defence.

Hon Marama Davidson: Every single victim has been helped in non-fatal strangulation.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, a Minister is coming up with details that haven’t been backed by the written answers that we’ve received, so the only point I’d say is that, yes, you’ve got to back up your statements with achievements. And so, yes, we support this; we just wish they could do a lot more.

Of course, the thing that most victims of crime want is not to have been a victim of crime in the first place. So restoring law and order more generally across our communities is the absolute focus—one of the key focuses—of a future National Government if we get the opportunity to serve in the next couple of months. And that starts right at the top. I mean, the starting point of your whole justice approach has been—for the six years that this Government has been in power, the one sort of clearly articulated goal of reducing the prison population irrespective of what’s going on in our community, irrespective of the level of violent crime—“Just make sure you reduce the prison population.” I think it has been misguided. That has not been in the interests of the victims of crime, and so we’ve seen many cases, many cases—it’s been well recorded in the media—of people being convicted of serious sexual crimes, rapes, multiple rapes in some instances, and receiving home detention sentences. It doesn’t give the victims any sense of justice; it doesn’t denounce the act effectively, which is one of the goals of the Sentencing Act; and it doesn’t keep our community safe. That’s why we think one of the more useful things you could do for victims of crime is to ensure that the perpetrators of crime do receive an appropriate sentence, which is why we’re going to restrict the ability of judges to massively reduce sentences.

So that, I think, would be a more powerful thing to do to address the concerns of the victims of sexual violence. But the Government has not chosen that, and it’s chosen the things in these bills. Like I say, in so far as they make progress, we will support them, but we wish and hope that they could do more. Madam Speaker, thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend Dr Henderson for her staunch advocacy in support of these changes.

But what does this harassment litigation abuse look like? Well, in the case of Khatri v Tomar, the defendant filed 88 applications in the Family Court, most of which the High Court couldn’t consider in deciding whether to make a restraint order because the applications were made within litigation that was initiated by his former wife, who had applied for a protection order and a parenting order. That is what harassment looks like. That is what litigation abuse looks like. These two bills address these horrific processes, and I commend these bills to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Obviously a very serious subject matter in these two bills.

I’ll just start by noting, as I think the Minister did, that there are two bills that are on the Table; they are being joined together as cognate bills, as we say, because they have a broad overarching purpose. I think, considering the aims of these, taken together, as wanting to improve the experience of victims in our court system does allow us to treat them together. They’re both worthy aims. No doubt every member of the House supports them. Obviously we can discuss, you know, the ways in which that best can be achieved and, to some extent, that will be part of the election campaign coming up. But, as far as the measures are concerned that are in front of us today, I reiterate the support that has been assured from our spokesperson, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, namely we do support the aims of the Government in relation to these bills. We will be voting in favour of them once the first reading debate has concluded.

The courts’ operation in this country has been, for many years, quite dysfunctional. The level of dysfunction has only increased in recent years, so backlogs, delays, costs, and other difficulties, including the way in which victims must interact with the justice system—these problems are well known; they’re agreed, to a large extent, including in the political environment, and the difference of opinion, I suppose, tends to be about the measures that we should take and how quickly we should take them and so forth. So, as a starting point, I think it’s positive that the problems of the system are acknowledged; however, there is much that needs to be done. These bills fit within that context but they are not the whole answer by any stretch of the imagination.

In the Family Court environment, particularly, we note that there is a longstanding discussion around the fact that some parties have, at various times—and I mean parties to the litigation; I don’t mean political parties—been accused by the other parties of making spurious allegations in a way that would see them gain tactical advantage in terms of how the proceedings play out. Obviously these are really complex issues. We grapple with the tension of wanting to allow people to bring matters to court, to have their day in front of a judge or a jury, as the case may be, and to be able to have access to justice in that way, but we don’t want, on the other hand, to allow that to be a process by for which they conduct abuse or perpetuate abuse against the other person. So it is genuinely a difficult balance to strike.

When we think about processes that themselves could be described as punishment, I think it’s fair to have the Parliament consider how we can reconcile those two tensions: on the one hand, we want people to be able to state their case in court, for the benefit in a Family Court environment where children are involved, and if there was a real fear and a genuine concern that the young people involved might be subject to emotional or physical abuse, of course it’s appropriate for an order to be sought. We want that discussion to be had; we want the protection to be in place, but, at the same time, we don’t want the process, and therefore the people involved, to be abused with claims not being made in good faith.

The distinction between what currently exists on the law and what is being proposed in relation to the family violence bill, within the cognate bills, as I understand it—and I’m not that au fait with the area of law, but it seems to me that the difference between what we’ve got now and what’s being proposed is that now a proceeding can be refused if the judge considers that it doesn’t have any merit. But, actually, that’s, in a way, a high bar because it might be the case that there is some merit in a case being brought but it is going to be brought in a way that is abusive of the process. So it might be multiple claims being filed as opposed to a single one so that the person who’s on the receiving end might feel bombarded by those and, of course, that might be the point. Sadly, there are those who are in whatever frame of mind that they think it’s appropriate to try to exhaust the other party emotionally or perhaps in a financial way and wear them down and bring them to a negotiating table in a way that reflects the power imbalance—well, almost invariably wouldn’t reflect the best interests of the child. And, of course, that should be a litmus test for many of these types of proceedings and, indeed, our law already says that that must be the case.

So the way that this tension is navigated by the bill is in the proposal that a new section 12B be inserted to the Family Court Act. So it says that the judge can, effectively, refuse that a person be able to bring a matter—that’s not the correct wording but that’s the gist of it—if two different things have happened. One is that the judge must be satisfied, having regard to all of the circumstances that a party to the proceeding has exhibited conduct that is an abuse of the court. Having all the circumstances taken into account, of course, is what we want; we want the judge to be able to decide in his or her discretion or judgment, so to speak, that taking everything together, that it would be an abuse of the court.

I’ll just focus on that for a moment because “abuse of the court” is sort of how we describe things in the way that these matters come up in our judicial system. The fact that it’s an abuse of the people involved is, of course, really the point but we talk about the court process and the system of justice as a whole needing to be protected, so that’s fine as far as it goes. I’d just note that along the way. So that’s the first bit of the test—that all the circumstances indicate that an abuse of the court would be the result of the conduct that’s been exhibited. Then, also, that the party has been given a reasonable opportunity to be heard, and this is to square what would otherwise be a logical gap whereby, if a person wants to have their day in court and thinks that they’ve got a case of merit, how can they make that case without—you know, if someone decides in advance that it’s unmeritorious. So we’ve got to have the opportunity for that to be judged. So the decision maker—the judge, in this case—has the opportunity to say, “Well, these two things have been satisfied.” And that’s basically the kind of analysis that was done.

For example, in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment by the AttorneyGeneral in relation to this matter, he rightly turned his mind to the question of whether access to justice was being unduly impinged and he thought that it was a reasonable limitation on the right because of this kind of test, this kind of balance that’s being achieved. So that’s as far as I can go or need to go, I think, on the subject of the litigation abuse, as it’s called.

Talking, now, sadly, about a different kind of abuse, as is our duty in this Parliament. Unfortunately, we do have to deal with such heavy subject matter as child victims of sexual conduct and other horrors. So it is that the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill deals with the scenario that just seems so illogical that, actually, I for one didn’t understand or didn’t realise that such a gap existed and it just seems bizarre that it did. But kudos to the Government for recognising that and for moving to close that loophole, if you will.

What I refer to is what others have spoken about already which is that if a young person—a child, indeed, as defined—has been subject to behaviour, if proven, that would amount to abuse, that they could be asked about the extent to which they had consented to it or even enjoyed it, and that seems grossly inappropriate not only on a common-sense basis but even just in terms of the way that the law operates, which is to say, if you are young enough such that you could not have consented to the actions—in a way that is sometimes referred to, therefore, as “statutory rape”, for example, or equivalent actions—then it’s an absurdity to be considering the question of whether consent was given because that’s irrelevant. It’s sort of strict liability in that sense; it’s not relevant whether the young person might have been put in a position where they were being encouraged to consent or enjoy etc. such behaviour as that.

So it’s appropriate that the Government is moving to rectify that anomaly. The Minister, I think, gave a pretty good account of how those different parts within the existing law operate. We support that change. We support the other changes. As my colleague and friend the Hon Paul Goldsmith has said, these things also do need to be considered carefully by a select committee. That will happen soon enough. It won’t be during the term of this Parliament, or at least submissions might be called for in the meantime, and, hopefully, those who are interested in such matters will be able to have their say. There’ll be lots of interesting insights, no doubt, from practitioners, legal and otherwise, as well as those who are so deeply affected by these matters.

We welcome all that interaction; we welcome the valuable discussion and, in the meantime, we also welcome the first reading of these bills and commend them to the House.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a very short call on this, because I think that my colleagues around the House have made some very good points on this. I want to underscore what the Minister said, which is that these bills take the question of consent off the table when a young child is involved in sexual offending.

The Crimes Act 1961 is amended by the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill, and it includes sexual crimes against all of the population and specifically around children. Section 132(1) is the section here that the Justice Committee should look carefully at. It makes it an offence to have a sexual connection with a child, defined as a person under the age of 12. Despite that age-specific offence, rape or unlawful sexual connection with a child is often charged as sexual violation under section 128B. As Chris Penk made the point, there is what he called an anomaly there where prosecutors will often choose the offence which carries a lower penalty. Because consent is off the table in that offence, it cannot be argued in court, and nobody wants to put a child through being questioned around whether they consented to this kind of activity.

It’s right for Parliament to consider consent; it’s right for us to consider the value judgments made in our law around consent. It’s no anomaly that these exist, but it’s because Parliaments are squeamish around dealing with these issues. I commend this Minister, Ginny Andersen, for bringing in this bill, and also my colleague Dr Emily Henderson for tackling this head on. That’s why I support this bill.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand on behalf of ACT and support this bill. Whilst I appreciate the intentions of this bill and see how important these changes really are, it’s kind of a disappointment that we’re on the second to last day of Parliament and have waited this long to even get this far.

The victims of sexual violence face many barriers even before they end up in the courts, and I feel that this bill goes a long way to relieving some of the anxieties around sitting on a stand and telling your story to the world about what’s happened to you, without being cross-examined and being ripped apart on the stand. For a 12-year-old, that could be absolutely devastating, and not just for a couple of days but for years to come.

The barrier I talk about when it comes to before even appearing before the court is that these questions can be asked even before they’ve ended up on the stand within court. When they go to lay this complaint, when they go to seek for help, and when there is an investigation into the process before ending up in court, these questions can already be asked of them from the investigators, which is absolutely devastating, as well. So to have to face that on multiple occasions, I feel that’s actually quite disgusting that we’ve allowed this to go on for so long.

There’s also the inconsistencies between the two charges, and I’m glad that this has been cleared up—the unintended consequences of the imprisonment term and the penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment. When you look at the two different charges, you find that the prosecutors are actually using a different charge because it’s easier to prosecute. Rather than using the charge for sexual conduct with a child under 12, they’re charging under sexual violation. So it’s nice to see that we’re aligning the maximum penalty for imprisonment so that we don’t have that anomaly, and so that children don’t have to face absolutely devastating consequences for their mental health, and, for years to come, just asking those questions of themselves. Because if the adults in your life are asking you those questions, you could start questioning yourself and your actions and your behaviours when it’s absolutely not your fault.

Children are not to blame when adults take advantage of a young person. And if we can protect them in any way from those kinds of accusations, I think this is really important and I absolutely thank the Government for bringing this to the table. These are things where politics needs to be taken aside and we need to make sure that we’re doing what’s in the best interests of our young people. And when I see a bill like this, it actually gives me some hope that there will be a better outcome for our young people going through the courts.

The only thing that I would have to say on this, though, is the age for consent for all sexual activity is regarded as 16, and, therefore, I kind of feel that the age of consent for all sexual activity should reflect this. I know that the charge for sexual conduct with a young person under 16 is in a separate section, but, I mean, if you’re not able to give consent, then it should be reflected within law and you shouldn’t be able to be cross-examined and asked, when you’re a 13-, 14-, or 15-year-old, whether you enjoyed someone taking advantage of you either. So I hope that within the select committee process, maybe we can have a bit of a conversation around including under-16-year-olds so that this anomaly between section 128B and section 132 don’t have the same unintended consequences for under-16-year-olds.

The other issue is that we need our young people to feel safe even before they go into court. I talked about the barriers—you know, just even having the courage to sit in court and face your perpetrator and know that sometimes you might be speaking out against somebody that your family knows. It could be a family member, it could be a family friend, and you may not have the support of the people around you. So I feel we need to really, really start looking into more ways that we can protect our young people when it comes to the court system and the way the courts deal with young people under the age of 16. I’m hoping that we have fixed this regulatory failure and the unintended consequences between section 128B and section 132 in order to allow prosecutors to do their job a lot more easily when it comes to dealing with sexual violence victims.

The other issue that I actually applaud is dealing with the Family Court and actually putting our foot down and saying it’s not OK to abuse the court system, especially when it comes to the Family Court. Anybody who knows somebody who has dealt with the Family Court knows that the process can sometimes take years. You can be in a battle for years. Separation is a terrible thing and it’s very emotional, and sometimes it can be taken way too far within our court system. We can have vexatious allegations made and we can have people coming to the courts with issues that they really shouldn’t be coming with and judges are being restricted in being able to stop that.

So I really applaud the fact that we’re going to allow the judges to start making decisions around that so that our young people aren’t being in a tug of war between two parents for years and years. The only people that win are the lawyers in those circumstances, and there are the costs to us as a society with young people being in that environment for so long. Anything that we can do to help within the Family Court system to stop the abuse of the processes within that system is a good thing, in my mind.

Then we also have the issue of when victims don’t want name suppression for their perpetrator. They should be allowed to speak out. We spend a lot of time in this House talking about allowing victims to have a voice and not suppressing a victim’s voice because it’s important, because part of the healing process is to be able to talk about what you’ve been through and actually stand up and not be frightened any more. In the way the court system is set up at the moment—whilst well intended—with having name suppression for the perpetrator to protect the victim, often the victim would like to speak out about the person who has harmed them. But because of this name suppression, they’re not allowed to speak out about what has happened to them, and they’re being revictimised all over again. They’re also seeking lawyers and paying thousands of dollars to try and figure out how to lift that name suppression. Legal aid is not available for that, and I just find that quite unbelievable.

The victim has had that kind of responsibility laid on to them when it shouldn’t be their responsibility to fight the courts, once again, to have a voice. So I think making their voice more important and having judges being able to take their voices into consideration around name suppression is a fantastic thing, because way too many times we have perpetrators hiding behind name suppression and victims are sitting there feeling like they have been silenced once again.

I always stand in Parliament and say victims need to have a voice, and they need to be able to stand up for themselves and say “This is not OK. This person hurt me or harmed me, and we need to do steps one, two, and three so that this doesn’t happen to anybody else.” But if they are under a name suppression order, they’re unable to do that. They are unable to speak out about their situation.

So this, out of all the bills, actually—this I feel is the most empowering piece of legislation that I have spoken to since being an MP in Parliament. I’m proud to support it, and I hope it helps victims to know that your voice matters and we will be listening once you’re allowed to speak. So ACT supports this bill.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence): I want to commend Karen Chhour and the colleagues across the House for being really centred on the problem that we are trying to solve here; indeed, for the vision that I know we all genuinely want, which is an explicit understanding that we can prevent family violence and sexual violence, that we should not have to accept that it is going to be an inevitable reality, that our mokopuna and generations to come deserve only that aspiration from all of us, that we actually can make the changes for everyone to live free from violence, to live their lives with dignity and peace.

These are two pieces of legislation that both relate to victims of sexual violence and victims of family violence that are going to improve their protections in our legal system. I am going to refer to the both of them at a high level, as many others have done. I am actually going to pull up some of the particular points that Karen Chhour made as well and expand on those, because I completely agree with some of the broader work that also still needs to be done.

So, firstly, with the protection that this legislation is wanting to improve for victim survivors, I cannot stand here without highlighting and holding up Te Aorerekura, the first ever nationwide intergenerational strategy to eliminate family violence and sexual violence. These legislative pieces of work—we all know and we all agree, and there’s broad agreement that these are not on their own going to improve the system, but they are part of a very explicit and purposeful direction to finally centre victim survivors’ voices, expertise, experiences and validate them in a way that they should always have been. But, as the Chief Victims Advisor has pointed out on many occasions, the current status quo system is an adversarial one that requires winners and losers. That is not a system that has been able to bring justice, particularly to victims and survivors. However, we still need to fix it up while we continue to do the work to build a far more accountable system of justice, particularly centring victims and survivors, and one that also gets the support and the help for people who use violence to change their behaviour and to be far more accountable for the harm that they have caused.

I think a trigger warning stands, and I’m glad that that stands for the entirety of this particular debate. It’s really important that we are clear on the extent of the harm that has been happening, particularly for victim survivors across our justice system. The protections for children that are included in the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill—as a prevention of violence Minister coming into this space, I was disturbed and greatly disgusted that our system has been able to allow such repugnant questioning of young children as to whether they have consented or even invited in any way harmful sexual violence, rape, and sexual violent behaviour. That has been driven by the incentive within these laws. And I’m so relieved to see, and wish it didn’t take so long, that we are going to remove the incentives that have, unfortunately, encouraged prosecutors to reach for a consent defence, which has been allowed for in the legislation that we are trying to change.

I do really want to emphasise and thank the sector advocates, victim/survivors themselves, the NGOs, and experts who have for decades been yelling really clearly for this very change—also the Chief Victims Advisor, whose work has been a part of this legislation coming to the fore, and many others like those experts in this field. I think it’s really important that we understand the extent of the harm in the example that Dr Kim McGregor used in one of her research reports. It was when a nine-year-old was being questioned about whether she invited or even enjoyed sexual violence. That simply has to change. It seems like there’s broad agreement across the House for these changes. I think we can all agree that that is unacceptable and I’m really pleased to see those changes.

I want to again be clear that were it not for the decades of deep hard work that the prevention of violence sector—for example, the Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children, backbone organisations, and many, many, many others have been doing such incredible work that we have benefited from, to really understand what are the changes and the levers that need to be pulled. So I’m pleased to be able to highlight their expertise and leadership in this space for these legislative changes.

Of course, we also all want to prevent the violence from happening in the first place. That is intergenerational change. I’m pleased that Te Aorerekura is an intergenerational strategy and action plan, but the drivers of violence are so deeply rooted, including in our system, that we know this is not overnight work. However, we can hold the hope of survivors and the communities when they can see us making solid, concrete changes, exemplified by the changes we are making today.

I want to also touch on name suppression. Now, what is important in prevention and response work to violence is the agency, the mana motuhake, the sovereignty, if you like, of victims/survivors. That has come through in exemplar practices that have been researched and reported on time after time after time about what is successful. Maintaining that agency and being validated, as Karen Chhour said, is part of the approach that we all have to adopt across all of our systems. So allowing for victims to wish to opt out, without the financial and administrative burden, of name suppression and upholding their right to automatic name suppression is a much-needed change.

I just really quickly want to mention that of course we—actually for this and for the litigation of abuse part. So we’re going to be far more explicit in not allowing the court systems to be used to continually harass victims and survivors. That’s been going on for far too long. But I do want to mention, of course, we, at the same time, want to protect fair process. I do think it’s right that this goes to a proper select committee process. I’m glad because a fair justice process is good for everyone. And I want to make it really clear that when we are speaking for victims, we are wanting to uphold fair justice and fair process, not destroy it, because it is victims who will benefit from us holding on to those principles of justice as well. So we’ll give that a good rough and tumble. We’ll give that a good tearing apart to make sure we’ve got the balance right to make sure we are maintaining fair process. But I think it has been really obvious from the examples where it’s just using the court in a hōhā way, being explicitly hōhā in the court, for no real justice or purpose. So we’ll cut that out and we’ll make sure we are cautious when we’re doing it.

Look, Karen Chhour also picked up about providing support for particularly children supporters, and this legislation is part of the overall victim-centred justice changes that are happening, including the pilot at the Counties Manukau court and site, which is we are, basically, affirming what they’ve already been doing, which is co-located, collaborative agencies on site with NGOs and experts providing proper support, particularly around children victims of sexual violence and through the court process. So we need to keep that momentum for the good stuff that works, and I’m pleased that we are supporting that.

My final mention is we do actually want to see—because Paul Goldsmith mentioned it—an increase in reporting. Most violence is not reported. Nearly all of sexual violence is not reported at all. So we want to see the reporting go up, but the prevalence go down. Taking the prevalence of violence down is the harder, gruntier work, but it’s worth having that goal, and I’m pleased there is a path for us to all support that. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is extremely pleasing to see such broad support across the House for these two bills. It is so important for Parliament to do whatever we can. The more we can do to make it simpler, streamlined, and provide protection that supports the choice of victims, the better. I look forward to seeing this go to select committee and I commend this to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Simon Watts for a five-minute call.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and I’m glad to rise to speak on the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill and the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill. As we’ve heard from speakers that have come before, we are aware, acutely, that the implications around the increase of both family harm but also family violence have significantly increased during and post the period of COVID. I think it is fair to say that many commentators have referred to this as the shadow pandemic, in which we’ve seen family harm actually increase more than 60 percent under this Government’s watch.

Those statistics are horrifying at one level, but the reality is that one in three women in this country, based on some of the latest statistics, will experience physical or sexual violence within the household. And when one increases that to include psychological and economic abuse, then that is one in two women in this country. That is something that we should be hanging our heads in shame in regards to. Those statistics are catastrophic in the context of our community and our society. What’s also interesting is that one in eight men are also reporting family violence being experienced or being victims of family violence.

So this is the backdrop of the environment and our communities in which we currently are part of. It is clear that the National Party support any efforts in regards to reducing and mitigating the implications and effects of both family violence but also in regards to sexual violence. This must be done with a degree of priority and a need to increase the pace of change and the pace of resolution to what is a growing issue, because it is not the New Zealand that I believe any of us envisages—to have that degree of proportionality of our population that is subject to such violence and abuse. The implications of that for future generations are wide ranging and are much broader than within the criminal justice section.

We know that many of these examples go unreported. As a volunteer ambulance officer and someone who still, occasionally, is out on the road, sadly, I have seen, and do see the implications often, and it’s probably—based on the number of people reporting—a very small wedge of those that actually are reported. The reality is that this is going on. It is going on within our communities and it is going on within our cities, regions, and provinces. And we need, as a House, to be very acutely aware that we need to do everything within our power in order to mitigate and reduce this and clearly send the signal that this has no place in our society, and has no tolerance, and we should be deploying all means and mechanisms in order to deal with that.

So I am hopeful in regards to this piece, or these two pieces of legislation, that once they move through to the select committee process that we get a wide range of feedback from those that understand the sector and provide recommendations in order to ensure the thoroughness of this legislation is appropriate. We must ensure that the legislation lessens the trauma on children, in particular those under the age of 12, who are completely vulnerable in this regard. We have an obligation to protect them and do everything within our power to protect them because they are our future.

National will be strongly supporting this bill. We will be strongly supporting any initiatives in order to minimise and mitigate and remove this risk and issue from society, and we will be commending this bill and looking forward to seeing it passed through in the next Parliament. Thank you.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Kia ora. I stand to speak to the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill and the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill, and I emphasise the necessity of the trigger warning before I start the kōrero. There is no duty, no responsibility, more important to me as a mama, a whaea, and a nan, than to protect our tamariki and our whānau. Te Paati Māori must do, and we will all do, what we can to protect our tamariki from predators and those who protect predators. There is no good reason why a child under 12 years old should be questioned in a courtroom about whether they wanted or asked for or even enjoyed a sexual activity. There is no way a child under 12 can consent to a sexual activity, and anyone who suggests that is not worth listening to.

The changes to name suppression law in this will also support whānau, particularly young people, to protect them from the stories becoming public without their consent. This is a common-sense approach, and name suppression should protect victims more than it does perpetrators. We should never protect predators more than victims, no matter what their backgrounds and affiliations. So we acknowledge these bills; we acknowledge our Government—that these bills will strengthen safeguards to enhance protection for victims of sexual violence and family violence, and seek to ensure that the court process is aligned with the victims’ needs while preserving the fairness and, indeed, the integrity of the court system.

So, again, to be clear, we acknowledge the amendments reduce the risk of child victims of sexual violence being questioned about consent to sexual activity. This means that the tamariki are no longer going to be subjected to questions in the court, which are deplorable. Victims can be disempowered by the lack of streamlined processes, and we’ve seen that they don’t come readily forward because of the way that the system has previously been designed.

What we want to also acknowledge is that complainants need to know that their privacy or, indeed, their intent to speak out about the experience is completely at their determination. So we acknowledge that the amendments will help to ensure that the court system responds appropriately and efficiently.

We know Māori are disproportionately affected by sexual violence—particularly wāhine Māori, who are more likely to become assault victims than anyone else in Aotearoa. So these changes will likely enable more Māori to come forward and get justice.

We know that to protect our w’akapapa—our mokopuna Māori are twice as likely to experience abuse as non-Māori tamariki. This bill will help protect our mokopuna who are abused, by reducing the risk that they will have to be questioned in court. We know, too, that we must do more to detraumatise and to stop violence as a society.

The changes in this bill are important to help reduce the trauma that contributes to Aotearoa’s low prosecution and conviction rates for sexual violence. It helps give effect to the Sexual Violence Legislation Act 2021 and to Te Aorerekura, the national strategy and action plan, which has done so much mahi. We must continue to make a strong stand in support of stamping out sexual abuse and family violence in Aotearoa, and supporting these bills aligns with that kaupapa. We stand in support. Kia ora rā.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. This has been my life’s work and I am delighted to be standing here speaking on these two bills. For those of us who have worked in this space and for those out in the community who continue to work in this space, I want to mihi to you. We carry the stories of heartbreak and grief and pain, and these bills are the kinds of bills that the community has been asking for. I commend this bill to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I, like my colleagues of the National Party, rise to support these two bills at the first reading. I think Simon Watts very eloquently touched on the backdrop to the need for legislative amendments such as these. We often talk about the very damning indictment on New Zealand society—extraordinarily high rates of violence towards both women and children—and it really is something that is a national shame to this country. We, as parliamentarians and, indeed, legislators, must take any and all opportunities that we can to strengthen judicial and court systems to particularly protect victims, and especially the most vulnerable victims in society, which are, of course, our children.

We have seen a 15 percent increase in sexual assault offences and a 23 percent increase in sexual offences against children in recent years, but, despite that, we’ve only seen a 5 percent drop in the number of people charged for these types of crimes. Similarly, we have seen family violence instances escalate in recent years. We have seen a dramatic 35 percent increase in family violence episodes, yet just a 31 percent drop in charges and, indeed, convictions. So that is why, as I said in my opening statement, we must, as parliamentarians, take any opportunity we have to strengthen the provisions within our court. And I speak specifically to the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill, whereby we will look to make amendments within the legislation. But I think that the topic that most participants in the House today have spoken to is around strengthening provisions for victims of sexual violence, and, of course, most focus is rightly on changing provisions relating to consent for children who have been impacted by these crimes.

It is, of course, an omnibus bill. We do know that because of current provisions, just 6 percent of sexual assaults are reported. And I think we owe a duty in this House to make the necessary changes to ensure that we can enable more victims of these types of violence to get the justice that they deserve.

This new bill will insert a new subclause that means the proof that defence are allowed to prosecute for, that children will no longer need to be questioned around their understanding or, indeed, when they have given consent—we’re looking for any and all opportunities where we can reduce trauma to these kinds of victims.

A number of members have also talked about the removal of automatic name suppression. While we do understand the provisions have been kept there primarily for victims that have been offended by members of their own family, that the lifting of that name of that offender may obviously be related to the victim—in some instances, as we’ve seen very recently in Christchurch with the Mama Hooch case, that we all know about, it has become something of an empowerment for the women who have been impacted by the horrific offending that took place in that bar over a number of years. Some of them have chosen to lift that automatic name suppression so that they too can begin their journey towards healing. So we do support any amendment to this bill that will allow a streamlining for the courts to be able to remove that automatic suppression.

So, with those brief comments, I will conclude my contribution to the House this afternoon and we do look forward to watching the passage of this bill through select committee and, indeed, the work that that select committee will do on that. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): This is significant and important legislation. It’s not lost on me and on this House that this has cross-party support, and that is significant. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bills read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Victims of Sexual Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill and the Victims of Family Violence (Strengthening Legal Protections) Legislation Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bills referred to the Justice Committee.

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

Sitting suspended from 12.57 p.m. to 2 p.m.