Tuesday, 9 April 2024

TUESDAY, 9 APRIL 2024

TUESDAY, 9 APRIL 2024

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

Visitors

Samoa—Speaker of the Legislative Assembly

SPEAKER: I’m sure members would wish to welcome the Hon Papāli’i Li’o Oloipola Ta’eu Masipa’u, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Samoa, who is on my left, and his delegation, who are present in the gallery.

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

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

SPEAKER: Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk.

CLERK:

Petition of Deb Hayes requesting that the House inquire into the Midwifery Council’s decision to use the word “whānau” and not the words “women” or “baby” in the Scope of Practice of a midwife, and whether the Midwifery Council is discharging its Regulatory Authority duties appropriately

petition of Christian van der Pump requesting that the House introduce a bill that amends section 182 of the Building Act, so that a person can commence proceedings to challenge the administrative decision of a council without first applying for a determination

petition of Veronica Turketo on behalf of the Kensington Development Group requesting that the House urge the Government to halt all proposed Kāinga Ora social housing for Kensington, Whangārei in order to review scale and density

petition of Lucy Mullinger requesting that the House urge the Government to provide funding to Pharmac for the medication Pemigatinib.

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

CLERK: Government responses to the interim report of the Environment Committee briefing on Environmental Outcomes Freshwater, and to the report of the Petitions Committee on the petition of Eye Health Aotearoa.

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Select committee papers have been delivered for presentation. There is a long list of them. I just ask for members’ indulgence as their own work is referred to the Parliament.

CLERK:

Reports of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the 2022-23 annual reviews of:

AgResearch Ltd, Landcare Research New Zealand Ltd, the New Zealand Forest Research Institute Ltd, and the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd

Commerce Commission and the Financial Markets Authority

Broadcasting Standards Authority, the External Reporting Board, Kordia Group Ltd, and New Zealand Post

Crown Regional Holdings Ltd, the Accreditation Council, the Real Estate Agents Authority, and the Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd

Institute of Environmental Science and Research Ltd, the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Ltd, and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd

New Zealand Capital Growth Partners Ltd, the Retirement Commissioner, and the Takeovers Panel

report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the 2022-23 annual review of the labour sector

reports of the Environment Committee on the 2022-23 annual reviews of:

Predator Free 2050 Ltd

Climate Change Chief Executives Board

Climate Change Commission

Department of Conservation

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority

Ministry for the Environment

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment

Spatial Planning Board

reports of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the 2022-23 annual review of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

reports of the Governance and Administration Committee on the 2022-23 annual reviews of:

Department of Internal Affairs, Digital Executive Board, Office of Film and Literature Classification, and Taumata Arowai

Fire and Emergency New Zealand Ltd

Statistics New Zealand

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

National Emergency Management Agency

Office of the Ombudsman

report of the Health Committee on the 2022-23 annual review of Health New Zealand - Te Whatu Ora

reports of the Justice Committee on the

2022-23 annual reviews of the Department of Corrections and of the Ministry of Justice

Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill

reports of the Māori Affairs Committee on the

2022-23 annual reviews of Te Puni Kōkiri and the Office for Māori Crown Relations - Te Arawhiti

Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Ranginui Claims Settlement Bill

Tauranga Moana Iwi Collective Redress Bill

reports of the Primary Production Committee on the 2022-23 annual reviews of:

AsureQuality Ltd

Crown Irrigation Investments Ltd

Outdoor Access Commission

Land Information New Zealand

Landcorp Farming Ltd

Ministry for Primary Industries

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the Parliamentary Counsel Office Annual Report on Legislative Practices 2022/2023

reports of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the 2022-23 annual reviews of:

Genesis Energy Limited, Mercury NZ Ltd, and Meridian Energy Ltd

Crown Infrastructure Partners Ltd

Ministry of Transport

New Zealand Infrastructure Commission

Waka Kotahi

Electricity Authority and Transpower New Zealand Ltd

transport, energy, and infrastructure entities.

Hon Member: Well done.

SPEAKER: Yeah, good work. The bills are set down for second reading. No bills have been introduced.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes, and especially my announcement yesterday of nine ambitious Public Service targets to help get New Zealand back on track. This Government owes it to Kiwis to focus on delivering on the things that matter most to them, like shorter wait times for emergency care and elective treatments, safer communities with less violent crime, and more kids at school and achieving the skills they need to live a better life. This is an ambitious Government that wants the very best for all New Zealanders. We’re not here to manage decline; we’re here to get things done and deliver better outcomes. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just wait.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Kia ora. What is his response to the Iwi Chairs Forum withdrawal from the national plan of action against racism due to what they view as this current Government’s commitment to “colonial racism and in particular, targeted racism against Māori”?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, I’d completely disagree with that question. We want to see Māori do much better in this country, and that’s what this Government is working hard to do.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What is he doing to regain the trust of the Iwi Chairs Forum, following their withdrawal from the national plan of action against racism?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, what we are doing is we’re making sure we rebuild this economy, we restore law and order, and we deliver better health and education for Māori and non-Māori.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What is his view on the impact that policies such as the Fast-track Approvals Bill, the Treaty principles bill, the removal of section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act, as well as the dismantling of Māori wards and the Māori Health Authority have had on our iwi authority’s mistrust of this Government?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I disagree completely. We may disagree with the previous administration and the way they went about things, but we are here to make sure we improve outcomes for Māori, because you can talk about it, as the previous Government did, but outcomes for Māori went backwards under the last six years across a range of measures. We’re saying enough is enough, and I look forward to that member’s support for many of the programmes that we have.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What will he do to alleviate the concerns of the acting Race Relations Commissioner, who has stated that his justice Minister’s attempt to remove some Māori experiences from the action plan would deny many Māori’s lived experiences with racism, which studies show occur daily for 93 percent of Māori?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I disagree completely. We don’t stand for racism in any form in this country.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does he agree with the justice Minister that focusing on colonial racism is unfair to migrant communities, or does he agree with the documented experiences of migrant communities in the Ki te whaiao, ki te ao Mārama report, who overwhelmingly affirm that the experiences of racism in Aotearoa stem from the fact that Aotearoa is a colonised country?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, what I’d say to you is there is no place for racism in New Zealand—period—and whether you are a new New Zealander or you’ve been here for some time, the same standard holds for everybody.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

2. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes, and especially the target that I announced yesterday to reduce violent crime and to make our communities safer. One of this Government’s key priorities is to reverse the increase in violent crime, making Kiwis feel safer in their own homes, their businesses, and their communities. We’ve already made progress to return the rights of victims instead of criminals to the centre of our justice system, and we look forward to implementing many, many more actions to restore law and order.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Is the Prime Minister aware that there is already a legally required independent expert review of the methane target among all emissions targets, and, if so, why has his Government announced that they will do their own new independent secondary review?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, it’s something that we’ve talked about in Opposition for some time, it’s something that we’ve campaigned on, and all we’re saying is we’re making sure we’ve got complementary work going on to make sure we have the latest knowledge around methane science. From there, we can set targets. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just before the member—interjections are fair; nothing wrong with that, but it’s getting pretty loud, so just keep it as rare and, as an Assistant Speaker once said, as witty as possible.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Is the Prime Minister aware that the Climate Change Commission appointments are legally required to be consulted across political parties, and, if so, is he concerned that his Government’s second review is therefore inherently less politically independent and more politicised?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes, I agree with the first part of the question.

Chlöe Swarbrick: What does—and I quote—“consistency with no additional warming” from agricultural methane emissions mean in the context of the National-ACT coalition agreement?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, what I’d say is that we want farmers to have to play their part in driving our emissions down. We can’t just shut down the world’s best farmers and send agricultural production offshore, making global greenhouse gas emissions worse in the process. We believe “no additional warming” is a fair basis for methane targets in particular. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: I might just say to the Government side that if the Prime Minister is giving an answer, it’s not particularly helped by the added comment from his own team.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does he agree with the Climate Change Commission, who yesterday said—and I quote—“Changing the biogenic methane target from the current range to ‘no additional warming’ and keeping the [current] net zero component of the … [targets] as [it] is would mean higher emissions and an increased amount of warming than the current target.”?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, what I’d say to you is that is speculation, because we haven’t had a discussion around—

Chlöe Swarbrick: It’s science!

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: No, no—would you like to listen to my answer? Let me finish my answer. What I’m saying to you is you’re jumping to targets. What we’re saying here is we want to update the science base and make sure that we have the latest methane science in place.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Prime Minister agree with the Climate Change Commission that if the Government seeks to reduce methane emissions targets, it would be requiring households and businesses across this country to do more?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: That’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is we’re reviewing the science base on methane to make sure we do that. I’d just say to the member I really look forward to her adjusting the Green Party website to come out in support of our GE policy so that we can actually drive emissions down.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes, I do, and I’m particularly proud about what we announced around getting our kids back into school and also driving up academic achievement. It is an absolute travesty that only 47 percent of our kids go to school regularly in this country—a legacy of the previous Government. And the consequence of that is kids are missing a year’s worth of school. We’re proud of our target of making sure we have 80 percent of our kids ready to go, at high school, so they can actually live the lives and the dreams that they want to have.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Were all aspects of this morning’s announcement on truancy approved by Cabinet; if not, which parts have yet to be approved?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, as I said, we have an ambitious Government, and that is fantastic because what we observed over the last six years was a Government that spent more, borrowed more, taxed more, and delivered worse outcomes. Your Government had six years. You did very little; you failed at it. What we’re doing is declaring nine key targets—two in the education space—we’re marching hard towards it, and every quarter, we’re going to be doing things to make sure we make progress on it.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It was a pretty straight and simple question.

SPEAKER: I’ll call you for the point of order.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: What was that?

SPEAKER: Point of order?

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Oh—point of order, Mr Speaker. It was a pretty straight and simple question, and the Prime Minister has given a diatribe on the previous Government’s record. He hasn’t actually either answered or addressed the question that I asked him.

SPEAKER: I think he could probably say something more, but I think he had addressed it—the Prime Minister.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Sorry, I didn’t hear the—would you like to ask the question again?

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: I’m happy to repeat the question.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yes, please do.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Were all aspects of this morning’s announcement on truancy approved by Cabinet; if not, which parts have yet to be approved?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: As we said, the announcements that we made today have been approved by Cabinet.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Have the details of the traffic light system he announced this morning been approved by Cabinet?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: No. Again, what the Minister announced was that was our proposal, and there’s more work to be done on that, and that will come towards Cabinet in due course. But what is exciting is that we are a Government that is actually wanting to do something about attendance rates. We care deeply about our kids being in school so they can learn, so they can achieve more.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: So how come Penny Simmonds was reprimanded—

SPEAKER: Wait on, wait on—wait on. Sorry. Supplementary, the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: How come Penny Simmonds was reprimanded for a decision being announced that wasn’t approved by Cabinet but David Seymour was allowed to make decisions that haven’t been approved by Cabinet?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I mean, I reject the premise of the question. We have a fantastic plan to tackle school attendance in New Zealand—something the previous administration, the previous Minister for 5½ years, didn’t seem to care about. We care about it. We’re getting our kids back to school, period.

Hon David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister trust his capable Ministers enough to announce details—such as, the colours of the traffic light will be green, yellow, and red, and that each colour will have differing consequences, differing in severity—as I did just this morning?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Can I just say, well, I think we have a fantastic Associate Minister of Education, who is very fixated and bringing thoughtful leadership to how we get attendance up in this country, so I want to thank him for his great efforts.

Hon David Seymour: Point of order. Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a small correction: I’d actually said the colour was orange.

SPEAKER: Yeah, I’m sure that’s incredibly helpful to the House.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Was either the Minister of Health or the Minister for Mental Health consulted on the proposed cuts to the Suicide Prevention Office?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, again, that’s not happening. What has happened is that you had the Ministry of Health say they didn’t adequately brief the Minister. In a very quick period of time, the Minister said that he wants the functions of the Suicide Prevention Office to continue. And I can tell you I have great faith in that Minister to deliver and to continue to make sure what is an absolutely tragic record here in New Zealand is continuing to improve.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Was either the Minister of Health or the Minister for Mental Health consulted on the proposed cuts to the Suicide Prevention Office?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, you heard the public comments where the Ministry of Health said that they did not adequately brief the Minister. The Minister directed very clearly that he expects that function of the Suicide Prevention Office to continue, and it will.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, does he agree with Matt Doocey, “I’m responsible for the $2.5 billion that we spend for mental health and addiction ring-fenced funding—I’m going line by line, by line, by line, through that”, and, if so, how did the Suicide Prevention Office almost close without its Minister even noticing?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Again, I’ve addressed the question. The Ministry of Health said that they did not adequately brief the Minister. And the Minister made it very clear that he expects the functions of the Suicide Prevention Office to continue.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Is the reason that the Suicide Prevention Office was being considered for closure because his Government is requiring the Ministry of Health to cut 6.5 percent of its funding?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We’re going to see a further increase in spending on healthcare. But what we are not tolerating is what that member did with his Government for six years, which is he didn’t actually—

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: We’re moving money from the back office—

SPEAKER: I note the point of order—point of order.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Mr Speaker, almost every question that I’ve asked the Prime Minister today, he’s resorted to an attack on the previous Government without actually answering what are relatively direct questions on his Government’s current announcements and decisions. The cutting of the Suicide Prevention Office is not a non-controversial matter. The questions that I’ve asked have been very straight questions; I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the Prime Minister takes them seriously and gives serious answers to them.

SPEAKER: Well, I think he has given serious answers—if I’m listening to them. But I would also say to you that it is not inappropriate for Ministers to refer to programmes of a previous Government. The difficulty comes where that reference becomes an attack, and I’d ask that all Ministers, including the Prime Minister, think carefully about those comments in an answer. Prime Minister. Oh—are you finished?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’m finished, yeah.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, I’m waiting for him to answer that question.

SPEAKER: Yeah—ask the question again.

Rt Hon Chris Hipkins: Is the reason the Suicide Prevention Office is being considered for closure that his Government is requiring the Ministry of Health to cut 6.5 percent of its spending?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: The Suicide Prevention Office is not being considered for closure.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) to the Minister of Finance: What recent announcements has she made about the Government’s fiscal policy?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Two weeks ago, I released the Budget Policy Statement, where the Government sets out its short-term intentions and long-term fiscal objectives for fiscal policy.

Hon Rachel Brooking: How many pages?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: In summary—Mr Speaker, isn’t it funny that we have members opposite us who interject to ask us how long the statement was, as if the definition of success is how many pages you can put in your document.

SPEAKER: Yeah, good. Just—

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, here on this side of the House—

SPEAKER: No—that’s enough. Don’t talk while I am. Just go back to your answer.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: What our fiscal intentions and objectives are, are to return to surplus; to get debt heading down as a percentage of GDP, rather than going up, as it has been over the past five years; and to reduce Government spending as a proportion of the overall economy.

Hon Scott Simpson: What is Government spending as a proportion of GDP?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, the half-year update, in December, forecast that core Crown spending in the current 2023-24 financial year will be 33.4 percent of GDP. Now, to put that in context, core Crown spending in 2018-19—just five years ago—was only 28 percent of GDP. Now, clearly, COVID disruptions were a factor in this increase, but the crucial thing is that unlike in other countries, there was no attempt to bring Government spending back down again after the temporary disruption passed. Spending was deliberately kept high, and this Government is committed to bringing it down to ensure it is effective, targeted, and within our means.

Hon Scott Simpson: What is the Government’s objective for spending?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: New Zealand currently has a structural deficit, and there are only three broad options to deal with that: borrowing to cover that deficit, which is unsustainable; taxing New Zealanders more, which most of the members opposite think’s a great idea, but which we’re not big fans of; or reining back on spending. We will do the last of these. We intend to control growth in core Crown spending so that it reduces as a percentage of GDP, and, over time, our objective is to bring spending down towards 30 percent of GDP.

SPEAKER: It helps, for order in the House, if general statements about everyone’s views are not made; only those of the Government who is being held to account here.

Hon Scott Simpson: How does the Government intend to reach that objective?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, this right-sizing of the Government’s footprint will be achieved through ongoing restraint and reprioritisation across multiple Budgets. We cannot, on this side of the House, undo in one Budget what was created in six. The Government will be charting a medium-term course of fiscal consolidation and not overreacting to movements up or down in economic forecasts. We are ending the approach of recent years which confused spending money with achieving results and which doesn’t believe that money can ever be saved within the public sector—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order.

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: —or ever be put to better uses.

SPEAKER: You’re probably only slightly ahead of me, but point of order, the Hon Kieran McAnulty.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Well, Mr Speaker, you’ll note that this side of the House stayed silent for the majority of that exchange. We left it to you, and you responded appropriately, but the Minister appears to have ignored your advice and continued with her intent regardless.

SPEAKER: Well, only from the point of view that it was an incredibly lengthy answer—too long—and, secondly, as I said before, it’s not inappropriate for Ministers to refer to situations that they have inherited, but I am watching very carefully for the attack aspect.

Question No. 5—Prime Minister

5. Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s policies and statements?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Prime Minister): Yes, and especially the target that I announced yesterday for 75 percent fewer households in emergency housing. Too many children are being raised in motels, and my Government is focused on reversing the huge growth seen under the previous Government and its homelessness Minister.

Hon Marama Davidson: Will he guarantee to the representatives of Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Mutunga, Taranaki Iwi, Te Atiawa, Ngāti Maru, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Ruanui, and Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi in Parliament today that the Trans-Tasman Resources seabed mining project will not be included in the listed projects in the Fast-track Approvals Bill?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I’d just say to you that the Government supports mining on a responsible basis, and there’s a process under way.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he share the concern of Ngāti Ruanui that the Fast-track Approvals Bill will be used as a “backdoor to gain consent for the mining operation” after Trans-Tasman Resources withdrew from the process to determine whether its application for seabed mining is environmentally safe?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: No, I’m proud of the fast-track process that we’re bringing.

Hon Marama Davidson: Is it appropriate for the Government to enable mining companies to bypass court-directed consenting processes through which iwi, environmental experts, local government, local communities, and the fishing industry have been fighting for 10 years to prevent extractive industries destroying our marine environment?

SPEAKER: Just make them questions, not speeches. The Prime Minister may respond.

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Well, to be honest, I struggled to find what the question was.

Hon Marama Davidson: Does he have confidence in the impartiality of Minister Shane Jones and his ability to balance responsibilities under different portfolios, including resources, regional development, and fisheries, in relation to decision making under the proposed fast-track legislation?

Rt Hon CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Absolutely. That is a Minister that is determined to grow this country, to do the right thing by this country, who thinks deeply about where it’s going, and he has my total backing.

Question No. 6—Social Development and Employment

6. SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: Why has the Government set a target to have 50,000 fewer people receiving the jobseeker support benefit by 2030?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Because the coalition Government wants to help New Zealanders live better lives and reach their full potential, and the best way to do this is through work. There needs to be a greater focus on supporting people off welfare and into work, because the previous Government failed to capitalise on long periods where employers were crying out for staff—and when they left office, there were 70,000 more people on the jobseeker benefit. We now have almost 190,000 people in New Zealand receiving the jobseeker benefit, and that’s approximately the size of Hamilton. We aren’t prepared to sit back and let people become dependent on welfare, because we know that having a job is the pathway to a better life for them and for their children. While the welfare system will always support people in need, our Government will do more to ensure New Zealanders can reap the rewards and opportunities that having a job brings.

SPEAKER: That was a very, very long answer, so I’d ask people preparing questions to keep them a little more concise. They’re getting very long.

Suze Redmayne: How long are people predicted to spend on benefits if we continue with the previous approach to welfare?

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: It’s not the previous approach; it’s the economic forecast.

SPEAKER: Just going to—[Interruption] When we get a moment—just going to ask the member to re-ask that question. It is, effectively, setting the battlefield for an attack, and it’s not on. So ask it in a different way.

Suze Redmayne: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Ask in a different way, did you say, Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: Well, this is a think-on-your-feet moment. [Interruption] Yeah, just a minute. A question is being asked. Just wait till there’s a bit of quiet.

Suze Redmayne: How long are people predicted to spend on benefits?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The previous Government’s approach saw a substantial increase in the amount of time people would spend—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, no. No, sorry. Sit down. Sorry, take your seat. You can’t start an answer like that. You could perhaps mention a date and a time and a figure, but you can’t start with an answer like that.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The Taylor Fry report that was published in December last year showed the forecast of the future years expected that people would spend on welfare. For a jobseeker benefit, they are estimated to spend, on average, 13 future years on welfare. For those who move on to welfare under the age of 25, they are forecast to spend 19 future years on main benefit. No one would want this outcome for their child, and we’re unwilling to sit back and watch it happen.

Suze Redmayne: Supplementary, Mr Speaker? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Hold on. OK.

Suze Redmayne: What actions has the coalition Government already taken to reduce welfare dependency?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: In February, we announced the first two actions to reset the welfare system. Firstly, work check-ins will begin for people who’ve been on the jobseeker benefit for more than six months to ensure that they are taking action to find work and getting the support they need. Secondly, we reversed Labour’s light-touch approach to benefit sanctions and made our expectation clear: those who can work should work, and job seekers have responsibilities to become work-ready and find a job. Our Government is committed to giving beneficiaries the help they need to find work, but there will be consequences for those who don’t fulfil their responsibilities.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Will she commit to ensuring the 50,000 people who she wants to get off income support get into employment that pays at least a living wage and matches their skills and aspirations?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Our Government is focused on reducing the number of job seekers by 50,000, and we believe that a job is better than no job and that a job is a path to a better job.

Suze Redmayne: What are the forecasts for jobseeker benefit numbers in the short term?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: The number of people on the jobseeker benefit is, unfortunately, expected to increase in the coming months due to the challenging economic circumstances: jobseeker benefit recipients are expected to peak at 198,500 in January 2025. That means it will be difficult to reduce the number of people on the jobseeker benefit immediately, but we owe it to those New Zealanders who find themselves without a job to do all we can to help them to get back into work.

Question No. 7—Finance

7. Hon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: Fa’afetai lava lou afioga. Does she stand by all of her statements and actions?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS (Minister of Finance): Yes, in the context in which they were made. I particularly stand by my statement that hard-working Kiwis deserve personal income tax relief. Given that they’ve been waiting 14 years for it, the coalition Government will be delighted to deliver it to them in the Budget in May.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Does she stand by her statement, in the context of her fiscal savings programme, “Ministers will then consider those proposals. We might reject some of them, we might ask some of them to go a bit further and then we’ll take all of those together and assess the implications for headcount from there.”?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Is it her expectation that vote Ministers will review and approval cost-saving plans prior to Cabinet considering the full Budget package?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Has she sought or received advice from Treasury on the implications of the fiscal savings made in each agency?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Yes.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Why, then, is she and her ministerial colleagues claiming to be surprised by the impacts of her savings targets, when she has confirmed that Ministers will approve these proposals?

Hon NICOLA WILLIS: Well, if the member had actually looked at her own questions, she asked whether all of this would be subject to final Cabinet approval. Well, Cabinet has not given final approval to the Budget yet.

Question No. 8—Building and Construction

8. RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) to the Minister for Building and Construction: What announcements has the Government made around making it easier and more affordable to build in New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS PENK (Minister for Building and Construction): This Government has a plan to rebuild the economy and lower the cost of living. A crucial part of this is making it easier and more affordable for Kiwi families to build homes. That’s why the Government is amending the Building Act to remove artificial barriers to the use of building products from overseas by recognising overseas building product standards from trusted jurisdictions and requiring building consent authorities to accept products that are equivalent to, or better than, those already in use in New Zealand.

Ryan Hamilton: Why are these changes required?

Hon CHRIS PENK: What a constructive exchange. It is too difficult and expensive to build in New Zealand. The cost of building a house has increased by 41 percent in the last five years, and it is around 50 percent more expensive to build a stand-alone house in New Zealand than Australia. It is almost impossible to use new building products in New Zealand without facing huge delays and compliance costs. This entrenches the use of well-known products, thereby lowering competition, increasing the risk of supply chain disruptions, such as during the recent Gib shortage, and, ultimately, makes it more expensive to build anything.

Ryan Hamilton: What feedback has he received on these changes?

Hon CHRIS PENK: The feedback has been extremely positive. The chair of the New Zealand Construction Industry Council, Malcolm Fleming, said that he is “really pleased” and that this is “the industry’s biggest issue starving demand for new construction.” Julien Leys, CEO of the New Zealand Building Industry Federation, meanwhile, agreed that this policy is a game-changer that will allow more building products into New Zealand, bringing down costs. While, finally, Shane Brealey, managing director of Simplicity Living, said, “what’s good in Australia or Japan or Korea should be good here. They should have done this years ago.”

SPEAKER: I’ll just ask the speaker to speak into the mike if he asks a question. Thanks.

Ryan Hamilton: What else is the Government doing to make it easier to build?

Hon CHRIS PENK: This Government has a busy work programme in construction. You could say we are really building building momentum—you could say that, but you probably wouldn’t want to. In addition to improving competition for building products, we are also putting the spotlight on building consent delays by requiring councils to supply building consent time frames, lowering the building levy threshold, meaning Kiwis doing small renovations don’t have to pay it. Finally, we have provided relief to rural New Zealand by exempting dams from under 4 metres from additional compliance costs, and there is still much more to come.

Question No. 9—Education (Partnership Schools)

LAURA TRASK (ACT): My question is to the Associate Minister of Education—

SPEAKER: Yeah, look, I don’t know what’s going on with the mikes, but you might need to just lean into it a little bit. The sound is pretty low today.

LAURA TRASK: Is that better?

SPEAKER: Yeah, it is.

9. LAURA TRASK (ACT) to the Associate Minister of Education (Partnership Schools): What recent announcements has he made regarding school attendance?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education (Partnership Schools)): New Zealand’s shocking student attendance at schools is an absolute priority for this Government. The target that we’ve set, 80 percent of students present more than 90 percent of the time, is ambitious; it’s a full 7.2 percentage points higher than has been achieved at any time in the last decade. Attendance is a complex issue, and it’s critical to use improved data and analysis to understand the reasons people don’t attend so that we can target the interventions effectively. Almost two months to the day since I received the education portfolio delegation, I was proud to stand with the Prime Minister as part of this coalition Government and release an attendance action plan at the—I have to say—wonderful Cardinal McKeefry School here in Wellington this morning.

Laura Trask: What actions will the Government be taking to improve student attendance?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: First of all, we’re going to see a lot more data. This Government’s view is that we should tell the people and trust the people, rather than try and obscure the facts from them. We’ll be rolling out a communications plan to improve awareness of the importance of attendance from term 2 this year onwards. We’ll also be updating the public health guidance to help schools and parents decide if a student is well enough to attend—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: Oh, they don’t trust the parents, eh?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —and we’ll be clarifying the expectations around attendance to school boards. I’ve just heard from Willow-Jean Prime, the member for Northland, that somehow we don’t trust the parents—this from a member who was in a Government that propagandised and blasted New Zealanders and didn’t trust them even to go outside for weeks at a time. That is not a member who should be heckling about trust.

SPEAKER: Yeah, sometimes interjections so clearly heard will result in that kind of response.

Laura Trask: How will this Government improve reporting and attendance data?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, through a number of medium-term initiatives throughout the rest of this year and next—from the start of next year, we’ll be mandating daily attendance data to be reported by all schools, and, again, reported—

Hon Willow-Jean Prime: And a fun, new back office for that?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —to the people, because we tell the people and we trust the people. Now, Willow-Jean Prime has just said, “Oh, you must need more back office for that.” Well, let me help Willow-Jean Prime: actually, the Ministry of Education has been upgrading its IT software so that the student management systems from the school can automatically push the data each day. This is an object lesson for the Labour Party. You see, we’re actually going to able to do more with less money, using innovation and technology. Anyway, as I was saying, we’ll also be developing a traffic light system to set out the requirements and expectations for students and parents at each level of attendance. We’ll be making attendance a strategic priority for school boards so they have clear expectations, but we will also be sharing best practice from schools that are effective in order that they don’t have additional burden, but rather better information about how to get kids to school.

SPEAKER: That will do.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Speaker, I could go on—

SPEAKER: Yeah, you could but you’re not going to.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —but needless to say, we’ve got quite a lot of policy to get kids back to school.

Laura Trask: Supplementary?

SPEAKER: Yeah, we might just end that question right there. Thank you very much.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It would seem a terrible thing to penalise a hard-working member like Laura Trask for the heckling of Willow-Jean Prime and my response to it.

SPEAKER: No, that’s not for her; it’s for what was an excessively long argument that strayed well away from the point that was originally being asked. That’s quite a reasonable decision on my part.

Question No. 10—Climate Change

10. Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) to the Minister of Climate Change: Has he received advice that the science of biogenic methane’s impact on climate change is already settled; if so, does he agree with that advice?

Hon SIMON WATTS (Minister of Climate Change): As the Minister of Climate Change, I have not received advice from officials saying the science of methane’s impact on climate change is settled. However, I do meet with a wide range of stakeholders, including the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who shares their reports with me on a regular basis. This Government has commissioned a review to ensure that we have the latest science as part of our coalition agreement. I look forward to seeing the results of that review.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Does he agree, then, with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s chief economist when he said the “real debate was not [about] the science but what was fair for farmers to do—and that was a question for politicians to solve”; furthermore, and “If the government is looking to save money, the science is done and was done pretty comprehensively, so they should be looking at our work before commissioning anything new. They’ll just be dealing with all the same scientists, again.”?

SPEAKER: Well, that question rivals the answer just given by the Hon David Seymour for its length and its relevance to the initial question. However, the Minister may choose to respond.

Hon SIMON WATTS: The review that the member is citing was undertaken nearly five years ago. It is an imperative for this coalition Government to use the latest science available, and that’s what our review will undertake.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Is he aware that the rest of the economy will pay a higher price than otherwise if agricultural methane emissions are not required to assist with reducing the rise in global temperatures—a price that one report has estimated equates to a 1 percent change in our methane targets and will require 40 megatons of extra reductions or removals in long-lived gases, and that will put an undue strain on our economy?

Hon SIMON WATTS: What I can say is that I’m acutely aware of the significant role that our primary sector plays in driving our economy, and, on this side of our House, the coalition Government is wanting to work with that sector, not against them, to ensure that the review of methane that they undertake in their part of it is based on the best available science.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Will he guarantee this House that if he were to make any changes to targets or the Act, he will continue the previous Government’s approach and do this via cross-party consensus?

Hon SIMON WATTS: I’m not going to pre-empt a review that hasn’t actually started yet, but what I can be clear about is this review will be comprehensive, it will have integrity, and the results, once received, will be in addition to the work undertaken by the Climate Change Commission, and we’ll go from there.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The point of that question—of what I asked the member, and it was a straight question—is whether he will commit, once receiving that report, if there are to be changes, to do that in a cross-party manner as the previous Government had done.

SPEAKER: Yes, but you asked him if he would guarantee something that he said is not yet even a decision, and I think that’s quite a reasonable answer on his part.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Will he rule out using the findings of the review as a justification for his Government making a choice to have less ambitious reduction targets than those signed up to in the Paris climate change agreement in 2016?

Hon SIMON WATTS: Once again, the review hasn’t actually been started yet, so I am unable to make comments in regard to what that review will indicate. But what is clear is that all industries within this country need to play their part in order to reduce emissions, to enable us to hit our targets. On this side of the House, we are committed to achieving those targets, and we’re committed to working with the primary sector and the important role they provide with our economy.

Question No. 11—Resources

11. JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First) to the Minister for Resources: What recent announcements has he made?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Resources): Resources will play a critical role in our export-led recovery, and as part of my strategy as the climate-smart mining Minister, I have announced that settings will be developed to enable investors and other stakeholders to explore the potential of naturally occurring hydrogen as a contribution to lessening our reliance on overseas hydrocarbon fuels, boosting our resilience, and ensuring that there is a suitable framework enabling people to find this potential sooner rather than later.

Jamie Arbuckle: What work is he doing on unlocking the potential of critical minerals in New Zealand?

Hon SHANE JONES: Minerals are about to enjoy a resurgence in terms of contributing to our strategy of turning our economic fortunes around. Not only will a critical-minerals list and associated strategies be delivered, not only will studies be completed, but we will ensure, where people want to invest in the minerals sector in New Zealand, there is certainty and no more of this nonsense, such as no more mining on Department of Conservation land.

Jamie Arbuckle: What work is the Government doing to enable regional and national significant mineral exploration to occur in New Zealand?

Chlöe Swarbrick: Tearing up the environment.

Hon SHANE JONES: Led by my colleague—oh, hoihoi; “Jeremiah was a bullfrog”—Minister Bishop, the Government has introduced the fast-track legislation. It is evident that the Resource Management Act, conservation, Crown minerals legislative regime needs refining. This is an opportunity where the bill will facilitate the delivery of infrastructure development and regions will no longer be caught in protracted processes which are causing projects to be not only overcapitalised but for investment to dry up.

Jamie Arbuckle: What are his ambitions for the resource portfolio over the next three years?

Hon SHANE JONES: In keeping with my personality—judicious and modest—but let me elaborate—

SPEAKER: Yeah, it’s probably enough.

Hon SHANE JONES: —we are telling global investors, we are telling Kiwi investors, our country is moving from “cancel economics” to “can-do economics”. We are open for business. We will have a legislative framework that rewards risk taking, rewards investment, and restores the place of the extractive sector to a place of pride that it enjoyed with the development, originally, of the party sitting on the other side of the House.

Question No. 12—Housing (Social Housing)

12. Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing): Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing)): Āna, āna, kei te tino tautoko au i aku kōrero, i aku mahi.

[Yes, yes, I very much support my words, and my actions.]

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does he agree with Tama Potaka that National will build more social houses than the previous Government?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: I te wā i a au e Minita ana, āna, e tika ana aku kōrero, engari tēnā pea koirā te wā a Tama Potaka e mema Pāremata ana mō Kirikiriroa ki te Uru.

[At the time that I have been a Minister, yes, my statements were correct, but perhaps that is the time when Tama Potaka was a member of Parliament for Hamilton West.]

SPEAKER: Do you want to hear that translation?

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Do you?

SPEAKER: Well, I’m OK with it, but there is that delay when you can require—you can use that delay if you want to.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Mr Speaker. My point is that I’m interested in how you can receive that translation at the same time, so that you can deem whether the answer was in line.

SPEAKER: Well, I wasn’t relying on the translation. It’s pretty simple. His body language—it’s really quite—

Hon Willie Jackson: Does the Minister stand by his statement that he will deliver for Māori communities, and, if so, how will he deliver more homes for Māori when his Government disestablished the ministerial Māori associate housing role?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: As you have heard through the last few months, we are ruthlessly focused on delivering on the genuine needs of Māori: education, health, and housing, particularly the over 1,500 Māori whānau who are living in the emergency housing disaster that the malfeasance of the previous Government created.

SPEAKER: No—

Hon Willie Jackson: Point of order—

SPEAKER: Just hang on. I’ll just make that you can’t make that final comment. You can talk about a situation you inherited, but not the attack that’s just been launched. Just watch that—if that’s all right.

Hon Chris Bishop: Point of order. This is a robust place.

SPEAKER: Yes, it is.

Hon Chris Bishop: It has got to be possible for the Government to make commentary about previous Governments, because there has to be a bit of back and forth to contrast and compare records. I accept that supplementary questions should not be used with the sole purpose of attacking the Opposition or the previous Government, but it has got to be possible for the Government to compare and contrast what they are doing with the record of previous Governments, otherwise the place will become so sterile we may as well not bother turning up. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Just when you’re ready. No, no, Willie, I’m responding to that. The point I’d make is that I think it is possible to do exactly what you’re saying without making an accusation of, for example, malfeasance. And I think it is that stepping point between talking about a situation you’re dealing with and an outright attack on another party’s policy. I call the Hon Willie Jackson, who will, of course, keep his question in the same bounds.

Hon Willie Jackson: Will the Minister match the $750 million targeted investment for Māori housing that was delivered under the previous Government, and, if not, why not?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: What we will have are targets that reduce the number of children and whānau in emergency housing. We’ve established that target and announced it yesterday through the Prime Minister, rather than sitting by and talking about how we’re going to help whānau Māori in emergency housing and to see those numbers go up by several hundred.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does he agree with Kāinga Ora that they will continue to increase the number of public housing places as long as it is funded to do so, as stated during the annual review hearing?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: We are absolutely committed to delivering on the genuine needs of all New Zealanders, to ensure that there are sufficient houses to accommodate people, unlike the previous Government, which curated a situation where there are now five times as many whānau on the social housing wait-list as there was when they started.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does he agree with Kāinga Ora interim board chair John Duncan that if the Government doesn’t provide the required funding past 2025, up to 10,000 houses may need to be sold?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: As we are all aware, we have inherited a significant fiscal cliff, left behind for us by the previous Government. But we are absolutely committed to actually delivering on the housing needs of Māori and all New Zealanders, unlike the development aspirations of the previous Ministers.

Hon Nicola Willis: Can the Minister confirm that despite having borrowed billions upon billions of dollars for Kāinga Ora, the last Government managed to quadruple the State house waiting list?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: I can absolutely confirm—

SPEAKER: Yeah, sorry, that question could easily be in order but for one particular phrasing in it, and I’d ask the Minister to—because we’re in a learning situation here—

Hon Nicola Willis: Yeah, I’ll try again. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Wait a minute—wait on. Ask the question, but keep it in bounds.

Hon Nicola Willis: Can the Minister confirm that between 2017 and today, billions upon billions of dollars have been borrowed to put into Kāinga Ora and, despite that, the number of New Zealanders waiting for a State house today is four times as many as it was in 2017?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Āna, I can confirm that. Kia ora tātou.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Does he agree with the Salvation Army’s Greg Foster, who said that they are having to pause future social housing developments because “we’ve been told that there’s no funding for us to build”?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: I cannot confirm that I have heard or seen that quote, but what I can—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: It was on the 6 o’clock news last Sunday.

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Well, some of us are working very hard on our ministerial portfolios at 6 o’clock. But what I can confirm is that we are committed to ensuring that the housing that we tautoko—support—both public and private housing, will accommodate Māori and all New Zealanders. Tihei mauri ora!

Hon Chris Bishop: Can he confirm that advice provided to the incoming Government in December 2023 from Treasury said that on the current track, Kāinga Ora is forecast to sell over 10,000 public houses in the next few years?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: I can confirm that, and what a surprise it was for me to read it.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked a question on that exact piece of advice and the Minister refused to respond to it and refused to confirm it. But, lo and behold, he’s happy to confirm it when he’s asked it from his own side, and that’s interesting.

SPEAKER: It is, and it’s—I’ll have a good look at that in the Hansard.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Just when the House goes quiet, you can ask a supplementary.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Why, then, with community housing providers stating they are cancelling or pausing housing developments due to no funding certainty, won’t he simply announce the funding they need so that community housing providers can get on with building the houses that that Minister promised?

Hon TAMA POTAKA: Tēnā pea me pātai koe ki taku hoa nei, tōna minitatanga. Kia ora.

[Perhaps you should ask my colleague here; it is his ministerial responsibility. Thank you.]

Urgent Debates Declined

TVNZ—Loss of Jobs and Removing of Shows

SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon Willie Jackson seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the loss of jobs and removing of shows at TVNZ. Standing Order 399(1) requires that an application be delivered “at least one hour before the time fixed for the House to sit”. The Speaker may allow for a lesser notice period if the matter for debate occurs after that time. In this case, the news of the event at TVNZ was reported before 1 p.m. and the application was received at 1.10 p.m. In addition to the application being late, I do not believe that the programming or staffing decisions of this nature warrant setting aside the business of the House. The application is declined.

Bills

Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill

First Reading

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): I present a legislative statement on Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill.

SPEAKER: Members will respectfully leave the House in silence.

Kua tāngia taua tauākī ā-ture i raro i te mana o te Whare, ā, ka kitea ki te pae tukutuku a te Pāremata—that legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill.

Tihei mauri ora. E te Atua, nōu te korōria. Te Whare e tū nei, tēnā koe. Te papa i waho nei, tēnā koe. Te mana whenua o tēnei rohe, kei te mihi. E ngā mate, haere, haere, haere. Haere ki te wāhi ngaro, haere, haere. E te hunga ora, tēnā tātou katoa.

E Koro Taranaki, tēnā koe. E te Kāhui Tupua, e mihi ana.

[The breath of life. O God, yours is the glory. The House that stands here, I greet you. The land outside, I greet you. The host iwi of this region, I acknowledge you. To the dearly departed, pass on, pass on, rest in peace. Go on to the place of the unseen, pass on, pass on. To the living, greetings to all of us.

Sire Taranaki, greetings. To the Clan of the Powerful, greetings.]

Ngā Iwi o Taranaki, thank you for making the journey from across the motu to join us in Wellington for this significant milestone. I’m honoured to host you here in Parliament, particularly your negotiators, who have worked tirelessly to craft arrangements befitting your tūpuna Taranaki maunga. Welcome.

I acknowledge the members of Ngā Iwi o Taranaki in the gallery this afternoon, and we join them in remembering their leaders and loved ones who have passed on before they were able to bear witness to today’s milestone. The arrangements within the bill are attributed to the dedication of those individuals who have worked so tirelessly to finally see justice after all of these years.

I acknowledge the Hon Chris Finlayson, who signed the terms of negotiation with Ngā Iwi o Taranaki in 2017 and began the process of negotiation. I also acknowledge my immediate predecessor, the Hon Andrew Little, who concluded negotiations last year, after six years of discussion. I acknowledge the previous Ministers of Conservation who have been part of these negotiations since the beginning.

This Parliament will continue a bipartisan effort towards Treaty negotiations. Given the significance of this bill for all New Zealand, it is my honour to begin today’s reading.

Today’s reading marks another milestone for the eight iwi that make up Ngā Iwi o Taranaki in their journey to right the wrongs of the past: Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Tama, Taranaki Iwi, and Te Atiawa. Through the eight individual settlements for the iwi of Taranaki, the Crown promised it would return to negotiate collective redress over their maunga. Today is a key step towards the Crown fulfilling that commitment.

The relationship between Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and the Crown in the past has been characterised by the loss of land, life, and identity. These arrangements acknowledge this hurt. For the Crown, the most solemn part is the apology to Ngā Iwi o Taranaki. The Crown formally and publicly recognises the hardship and heartache it has caused your whānau and hapū, and recognises the resilience of your iwi in the face of such adversity. We must acknowledge the hurt that has been caused by past wrongs so that we can look to the future to support iwi to realise their own aspirations and opportunities.

I understand that Ngā Iwi o Taranaki asked that the Crown apology not be read out at the signing of Te Ruruku Pūtakerongo—the Taranaki Maunga collective redress deed—in September last year. The reading of the Crown’s apology is a significant moment for Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and the Crown. It’s a responsibility I will take very seriously at the point where Ngā Iwi o Taranaki wish for the apology to be read. The apology will not be read today.

The Crown apology builds on the understanding Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and the Crown have reached about our shared history. It will reflect on that history in my speech to support the third reading of the bill.

Today, I will outline the arrangements for the record. At the core, these arrangements will recognise the mountains within the national park as a legal personality, to be named Te Kāhui Tupua. The land of Egmont National Park will also be vested in Te Kāhui Tupua. Once the land is owned by Te Kāhui Tupua, the national park will be renamed Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki—the highly regarded and treasured lands of Taranaki. The highest mountain will also be granted a name change to a sole te reo name, Taranaki maunga.

Importantly, these arrangements preserve the land as a national park, meaning that the public will continue to have freedom of entry and access. This is important, given the number of New Zealanders that respect and enjoy the beauty of the maunga. Scaling the peak has been a rite of passage for many a mountaineer.

Furthermore, the Department of Conservation will continue its operational management role with Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki. However, within the national park, all decision making will be guided by a set of core values known as Ngā Pou Whakatupua, which represent the essence of Te Kāhui Tupua and reflect the cultural, spiritual, ancestral, and historical relationships between Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and Te Kāhui Tupua. These values will sit alongside the core purposes of the National Parks Act.

The arrangements include the establishment of Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi as a statutory body to act as the human face and voice of the legal person. This board will be made up of 50 percent Crown and 50 percent iwi appointees. Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi will also perform key statutory functions in relation to the national park, including development of the national park management plan. The arrangements will include the ability for Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi to establish an asset management company to manage any assets owned by Te Kāhui Tupua other than the national park land. Along with the change of the ownership of the national park land, certain Crown-owned minerals of high cultural significance to Ngā Iwi o Taranaki will be owned by the legal person Te Kāhui Tupua.

The Taranaki Māori Trust Board will also be dissolved as part of these arrangements. A new entity known as Te Tōpuni Ngārahu will instead fulfil statutory functions for these arrangements on behalf of Ngā Iwi o Taranaki. Finally, these arrangements provide for the repeal of the Mount Egmont Vesting Act 1978, which has been a significant source of pain for all uri of Taranaki.

It is the Crown’s wish that through these arrangements, it can restore its honour and atone for the injustices it has inflicted on Ngā Iwi o Taranaki. No settlement can ever compensate for the true measure of what Ngā Iwi o Taranaki have lost; all that they have suffered cannot be remedied. However, through these arrangements, the Crown takes a step closer to lifting the burden of Ngā Iwi o Taranaki’s heartache, and begins to build and reinforce the foundations of a relationship based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We’re here today to advance these arrangements, which will take Ngā Iwi o Taranaki forward while recognising the past.

Ngā Iwi o Taranaki, there are still a few steps left to walk. Today is the first reading of three. I look forward to hosting you here back again to support the passage of your legislation through the House. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ko te pātai kia whakaaetia te mōtini.

[The question is that the motion be agreed to.]

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā hapū, e ngā iwi, tēnā koutou ngā iwi o Taranaki kua tae mai ki roto i te Whare Pāremata i tēnei rā mō te pānuitanga tuatahitanga o tō koutou pire mō te kāhui māunga, ā, mō te tupuna mō Taranaki. He hōnore tēnei mōku te tū ki mua i ō koutou aroaro ki te tautoko i te pānuitanga tuatahi o tēnei pire. Ka hoki ōku mahara ki te wā i a māua ko Andrew Little i te marae o Aotearoa i te marae o Ōwae hoki mō te hāinatanga o tēnei kawenata me tēnei pire kua uru mai ki te Whare Pāremata i tēnei rā. E rongo ana ahau i ngā waiata ngā karanga ngā kōrero i runga i te marae, te poi. Wērā āhuatanga katoa i runga i ērā marae i aua wā. I au e whakarongo ana ki te Minita, e āhua pōuri ana ahau nā te mea kei konei tātou i te rā nei ki te tutuki i tēnei kaupapa mō te maunga, ēngari e rongo ana i te wā o te pātai ngā uiui i tēnei ahiahi, tō koutou moana. Ka waiho tērā ki te taha, nā te mea kei konei mō tēnei, ēngari ko taku wero ki te Minita, ki ngā Minita, whakarongo ki ō ake kōrero i roto i te Whare i tēnei rā e pā ana ki tēnei, nā te mea e takatakahi tonu ana i Te Tiriti o Waitangi, i ngā iwi o Taranaki.

[To the Speaker, thank you. To the mana, to the languages, to the nations, to the people, salutations to the people of Taranaki who have arrived here to the Parliament House today for the first reading of your bill about the mountains, and, in particular, for the formidable Taranaki. This is an honour for me to stand before you to support the bill’s first reading. I reminisce to the times I spent with Andrew Little on the marae of Aotearoa and Ōwae, as well, for the signing of this agreement, and this bill that has been presented here at Parliament House today. I hear the songs, the calls, the speeches, the poi on the marae. All those memories on the marae at that time. As I listened to the Minister, I am quite saddened because we are here today to fulfil this kaupapa about the maunga, but I hear during question time this afternoon queries about your moana. All that aside, because we are here for this, but my challenge to the Minister, to the Ministers, is to be mindful of what you say within the House today in regards to this, because it is violating Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the people of Taranaki.]

Taranaki maunga was first confiscated in 1865 by the Crown as a punishment for the so-called rebellion of Māori during the Land Wars. As I said in my introductory remarks, it was one of the proudest moments for myself to stand alongside Minister Andrew Little at the initialling of the deed as well as the signing at Aotearoa Marae and Owae Marae. So I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the first reading of this bill this afternoon and to offer our support for this.

I want to acknowledge the iwi and the hapū of Taranaki who are in the audience and who are back home, perhaps listening online—some people do tune into Parliament TV. To Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Maru, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Ruanui, Taranaki Iwi, and Te Atiawa—and I want to acknowledge the negotiators, who are here in the gallery this afternoon. I won’t name them in case I leave any out, and I also want to acknowledge those who are not here but who were acknowledged and recognised when we had the ceremonies at Aotearoa Marae and Owae Marae—you know the auntie that I am referring to—as well as the other tūpuna whose photos were displayed.

What we have in the redress today is unique: recognising the maunga as a legal personality having personhood, and setting up a rōpū who will be responsible for its care and its administration. I’m really proud, as the former Minister of Conservation who has put my signature to these redress arrangements. I want to acknowledge the long time it took to negotiate—over six years to get to it—and to come in, I think I said, at the last minute and put a signature on it, but I’m also proud of the work of the negotiators of the iwi and of the Crown to come up with this unique arrangement.

This national park is the first and only one in Aotearoa to have a full te reo Māori name, and I hope that we will see more of that in the future. I said in my speech at the signing that actions are important, so we now need to take what is in that agreement and put it into action—a great wero for Tama Potaka. Kia ora.

Hon Tama Potaka: Kia ora.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Anā! Tihei mauri ora!

STEVE ABEL (Green): Kia ora. We’d rather have five more minutes of you than five minutes of me.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi, ngā uri o Taranaki.

[Thank you. Greetings, the descendants of Taranaki.]

It was a profound honour for me to stand for my first time in this House for a Treaty settlement, and for it to be Taranaki iwi. The pōwhiri today—thank you for the power of that and the power of your words.

The delay, the delay; the patience, the patience. It blows my mind when I think about the infinite patience of you in this settlement. “Taranaki Maunga, Taranaki Tangata”, as your whakataukī says. Justice delayed is justice denied, and if there is not justice for Māori in this land, there can be no legitimate place for tauiwi.

I speak as tangata Tiriti, and I speak to say that we must have justice for Māori, because none of us can be content here. When we reflect on Taranaki, no one with a heart cannot feel the bitterness of the history of what has befallen the people of Taranaki. We reflect on the raupatu, the force, the violence by which lands were taken, by hook or by crook. It is a terrible injustice. There can never be too many acts to correct that injustice. To paraphrase Matua Ruakere Hond when we visited him at Parihaka, he said, “The winds of war still blow through our minds and through the generations.”, and to recall Dayle Takatimu at the constitutional conference just this weekend, she said, “It is the indigenous people of this land who have kept the peace.” I salute you, Taranaki, for you have kept the peace in the face of unimaginable horror.

It is right that your maunga be recognised for its personhood. The desecration of nature is another pathology of colonisation, and part of that desecration requires that we depersonalise nature, that we cease to see it as the source of all life, and that we cease to recognise it as the thing from which all of us originate. So, for me, my deep hope in this bill is that in recognition of the personhood of the maunga, we begin the reorienting of the world view towards a recognition of what has been understood across traditional cultures across the world in pre-Christian times—that nature is divinity; nature is the God and is the cause—and so this is what we hope can begin to be done.

The desecration of nature is still an ever-present issue in Taranaki. The first oil well was drilled on confiscated land in the 1860s in Taranaki. The fracking and the mining and the drilling and the proposed reopening of seabed mining and of offshore oil and gas drilling by this Government—these are continuations of that desecration of nature that goes against what is in the best interests of the people, and it is certainly what has caused the most harm long term to tangata whenua Māori.

We will continue to stand for that honouring of the integrity of indigenous place in this land, and we will continue to stand in support of those reparations and those corrections and that upholding of te ao Māori and its deep wisdom in its relationship with nature, with the maunga of Taranaki. As Te Pāti Kākāriki, we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

LAURA TRASK (ACT): Kia ora. Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge the eight iwi that make up Ngā Iwi o Taranaki, hapū, whānau, and negotiators present today. I stand in support of this bill. ACT supports historical Treaty settlements and has traditionally supported the personhood of historical and culturally significant bodies such as Te Awa Tupua—the Whanganui River. This bill ensures the finalised settlement.

I want to acknowledge the spiritual, cultural, and historical significance of Te Kāhui Tupua—Taranaki maunga—to Ngā Iwi o Taranaki as a taonga to be treasured and protected. I acknowledge the horrendous injustices when in 1865, the Crown unfairly punished Māori by confiscating 1.2 million acres of Taranaki land, including Taranaki maunga. The Crown further acknowledges the challenges that the Taranaki Māori Trust Board faced in the 1970s when it attempted to negotiate the return of Taranaki maunga, Māori representation on the Egmont National Park Board, and the restoration of the name “Taranaki” to the maunga. The Crown acknowledges a breach in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the immense, long-lasting impact of land confiscation, and the displacement of Ngā Iwi o Taranaki.

This bill will provide an outline for the legal personhood of Te Kāhui Tupua—Taranaki maunga. In doing so, this will acknowledge the injustices, land confiscations, and other historical wrongs suffered by Ngā Iwi o Taranaki.

The Crown’s continued commitment is to working together with Ngā Iwi o Taranaki in partnership to enhance the health and wellbeing of the legal person of Te Kāhui Tupua. Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi will function as a statutory body with the purpose of being the human face and voice of Te Kāhui Tupua, consisting of four members appointed by Te Tōpuni Ngārahu, the collective governance entry for Ngā Iwi o Taranaki, for any matters pertaining to the collective redress and arrangements, and four members appointed by the Department of Conservation. These maunga have existed as ancestors, guides, and central pillars to the iwi, hapū, and whānau of Taranaki maunga.

This bill acknowledges the harm and injustices against Ngā Iwi o Taranaki, protects Te Kāhui Tupua, and fosters a positive future relationship between the Crown and iwi. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Hon TAMA POTAKA (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti): Hikihikitia riaria ki ngā hāpaihanga hapainga rangarangahia. Kāhui tipua, kāhui maunga, kāhui tupuna, kāhui rere, kāhui kaika. Tomo mai ki tēnei Whare. Ki te Whare i whakarurehia te ture raupatu i ōnā wā, me ērā o ngā āhuatanga i pā kino atu ki tō tātou kūrae te ātanga kōhatu e mōhiotia nei i tēnei wā tonu ko Maunga Taranaki. Kāore aku poroporoakī te whakatūpapaku i te ingoa Mount Egmont—haere atu rā. Tō tātou ingoa tō tātou tauheke ko Maunga Taranaki i tēnei wā ākuanei ka rangona e te ao katoa. Ko tā te whakahaere o tō tātou maunga, kei a ia anō.

Kei te kāhui atua, kei te kāhui tupua. Engari kua riro anō mā koutou me kī te tōpuni i Ngarahu te kawe mai te pōtae Rangatira ki te pōtae Karauna kia tū hei pōtae kōkorangi. Tēnā koutou. Tū mai rā tātou tō tātou tauheke kaitiaki i te tōnga o te rā, tēnei rā te tuohu ko te pōtae Karauna, te mihi matakoakoa i ngā take o te wā. E tika ana te kōrero, he rangi mokopuna, he rangi tupuna, he rangi paki tēnei. Ki te rongo ki ngā kōrero a te tangata nei, e whakateuta tō tātou waka ki te whenua. Nā Kiritopa Finlayson hoki i rongo ki ngā kōrero ki te whakamaunu i tēnei waka, ā, ka riro hoki mā tō tātou mareikura a Willow-Jean Prime me tana hoa te tungāne a Anaru Paku ki te whakaputa ki waho moana ki kore e riro ki te koroirangi, ā, kia ariaringā a mohi mā kia hoki mai ki uta, ā, mā Pāora Goldsmith hoki, tō mātou kaihoe o te waka te waka o te Karauna, mahi tahi, hāpai hoki i tēnei ture kei te aroaro o te tangata i tēnei wā.

Nā reira kua kite hoki i ngā takahitanga o tātou mātua tupuna ki te pō, ā, ko te Whiti tērā Te Ua Haumēne, Matakātea, Te Rangitāke, Tohu Kākahi, Tītoko Waru me ōna kōrero, “E kore au e mate, kāore anō au e mate, ka mate anō te mate, ka ora anō ahau.” Tēnei au te uri whakaheke, e ai ki te kōrero a Te Pāhunga Davis “uki whakaheke”, a Kura Mahiao, a Ngāone Pū me Te Rongotoa, a Tarawanake, noho Pāpere Robertson me taku whāene a Sena James ki te tuku i aku roimata ki tēnei kaupapa me te mea nei kua kite i ngā werawera ki te rāe ā tēnā ā tēnā i ngā rau tau i ngā tekau tau ka huri, ā, i tēnei wā ko te baton kua tuku atu ki aku tātarakihi, ki a Jamie ki a Hēmi, ki a Whareoka ki a Liana mā. Koutou te rāngai mātanga i kōkiri nei i tēnei kaupapa mō te takitini, mō ngā iwi e waru ēhia rānei, o te kūrae o Taranaki. Nā reira e aku karanga maha, nau mai hoki mai ki roto ki tō koutou Whare, tēnei au e mau nei i te pōtae Karauna e tuku ana i aku mihi me tēnei āhuatanga hou e kite ana i tēnei wā, tēnei tētahi āhuatanga hou ki Aotearoa nei, te tū, tō tātou tauheke hei tangata, hei tangata i roto i te ture. Engari hei tangata hoki i roto i tō tātou hītori i tō tātou hītori.

Nā reira tēnā koutou me te mānuka takoto a taku hoa a Willow-Jean Prime, kia riro māku hei Minita mō Te Papa Atawhai kia noho, whakarongo, kia noho, titiro, kia noho wānanga hoki i ngā wero me ngā manuka kei mua i a tātou, arā koirā te tiaki, tō tātou maunga me te whaiwhai hoki i tērā kaupapa a kawa ora i tērā kaupapa a Project Maunga Taranaki. Nā reira kore tōroa aku mihi te whakakikī i ngā hū a taku matua tararā kua ngaro i te tirohanga tangata i tēnei wā, ākuanei ia ka hoki mai ki te mihi atu ki a koutou katoa, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Revered deities, formidable rangers, esteemed ancestors, respected forces, salutations. Welcome into this House, the House in which confiscation took place in its time, and all else that negatively impacted our beautiful standing rock known as Mount Taranaki. I will not acknowledge the name Mount Egmont—be gone. Our name, our respect is to Maunga Taranaki which will be seen by the whole world. What our mountain decides to do is up to him.

Dear revered deities, dear revered forces. The responsibility is yours, Tōpuni i Ngarahu, to bring forth your leadership hat and speak with the Crown hat so that we see the enlightened hat. Salutations, stand forth, our formidable guardian at the setting of the sun, I take my Crown hat off to you. I support what has been said about this beautiful day, this flawless day, this day to cherish. It’s a day we have come to listen to the speeches of this person who is berthing our canoe ashore. Christopher Finlayson also is in support to fly this ship, and also our esteemed friend Willow-Jean Prime and the equally well-respected friend of hers Andrew Little, who is in support of flying this ship so that it doesn’t become a ship without sails and ensure that the ship arrives safely in its correct destination. There is also Paul Goldsmith as well, our ship captain for the ship of the Crown, working together to put forth this bill before us here today.

And so we have also seen how our ancestors fought, that was Whiti, Te Ua Haumēne, Matakātea, Te Rangitāke, Tohu Kākahi, Tītoko Waru and his proverb which states, “I will not die, I have not died, death is indeed death, I will live on.” I am the uri—actually, according to Te Pāhunga Davis, it is “uki whakaheke”, of Kura Mahiao, of Ngāone Pū, Te Rongotoa, Tarawanake, Pāpere Robertson, and my aunt Sena James, sharing my sympathies towards this matter at hand, and to also acknowledge the hard efforts made within the last century, and now the baton has been given to Jamie to Hēmi, to Whareoka and Liana, to name a few. You are the experts who set out to make this work on behalf of everyone, for the eight nations or so of the prestigious Taranaki. Therefore, my dear friends, welcome to our House, in which I wear my Crown hat and acknowledge you in my uniform, although this may seem like a first here in Aotearoa, to stand as a part of the law. Despite that, I am firmly a man of our history.

And so, acknowledgments to my good friend Willow-Jean Prime, challenging me as Minister for Te Papa Atawhai, to sit, to listen, to observe, to learn the challenges and difficulties before us in regards to guarding our mountain and pursuing Project Maunga Taranaki. Therefore, I will not speak much longer, I am here to fill the shoes of my father tararā who have passed before me, and will soon return to acknowledge you all, thank you once, thank you twice, thank you thrice.]

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Matua, Tama, Wairua Tapu me ngā Anahera Pono, me te Māngai, āe.

[Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the Faithful Angels, and the Holy Mouthpiece, Amen.]

To our mokopuna of our maunga, from a mokopuna of our maunga, I actually want to speak to our Minita and to this coalition Government on behalf of my humble w’ānau who sit above and who sit at home. This House, time after time, has legislated and made horrific decisions that have impacted on our people, and, as a consequence, in the 1870s, we saw passive resistance.

I want to take you on a journey of who is upstairs and what our maunga has created and what it is that we have before you as a nation. Passive resistance, Parihaka, and the kōrero of “patua te hē ki te rangimārie”, or “let peace combat the errors of our ways”—1.2 million acres were stolen; our language, our marae, our culture. In fact, the land that many of these descendants up here have ownership to as uri contributes to this country’s GDP, and what do we have? Instead, we have the love and the aroha of our people who arrived today. Patua te hē ki te rangimārie—let peace combat the errors of our ways.

The love and the compassion and the generosity that the people above us and the people at home in Taranaki have for this nation is so huge that eight iwi agreed to 1 to 2 percent as settlement in recognition of the hē that the Government had done to them because they wanted this nation to grow, they wanted their mokopuna to prosper, and they wanted to live as one. That is the wairua of the people who arrive here, who were raised by our maunga. Patua te hē ki te rangimārie—let peace combat the errors of our ways.

They love you all so much; even you, David Seymour, who’s not here. But they love you all so much.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You can’t refer to members who are not here.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Sorry—nōku te hē. Generation after generation, our grandparents of the negotiators today have walked across the threshold in Parliament seeking the Crown’s honour, seeking the Crown—even though we had our maunga named after an Englishman who had never set foot in Taranaki. Patua te hē ki te rangimārie—let peace combat the errors of our ways.

Pests populated our maunga. Birds that used to sing—tens of birds came down to three or four. We can see the sky when you walk in. The ngahere that used to exist has gone, but still, in good faith, Taranaki turn up here. Patua te hē ki te rangimārie—let peace combat the errors of our ways. Minister, that is the essence and the wairua of how they have come to you with humility today.

There are so many other ways that things could have been negotiated, but what does Taranaki do? What our maunga tūpuna taught us to do was to stand with humility, to stand with vision, and to practise peace. That is the opportunity that the coalition’s partners are missing with us. We are not the enemy. They have arrived here today to restore your mana; to restore this House’s mana. Our tūpuna never lost mana. Our mokopuna and our w’akapapa never lost mana. The love that they have for you, and for you as a nation out there, is to arrive here and to help you fix your mana and to help you to remember your memory of where our tūpuna and our mokopuna belong: side by side. We never left the table. We never left any of these relationships. Your tūpuna and, today, you risk forgetting who we are. Patua te hē ki te rangimārie.

The generosity of our people continues with the negotiations we have here. I think about all the success and the opportunities we have, and they will be realised, with or without you. Minister, that’s the opportunity. That’s the opportunity afforded to you today. It is to see and appreciate the value of what peace and what relationships, and the connectivity of how Taranaki arrives here today to connect with you. We will love you even when you hate us. When you berate us, we will still love you, because that is the āhua of how we’ve been raised.

Patua te hē ki te rangimārie. Nowhere else will we be Taranaki. We go nowhere else where we’ll be indigenous, and I ask you, Minister, as we go through these relationships and as you take your very first time that you’ve been a Minister in a settlement, that you remember that. Nowhere else can we come and share our love for you, for our nation, and the peace that Taranaki brings today. E te rangatira, it’s good to see you in that seat. You might need to take that seat back again. Nō reira, tēnā koutou katoa.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Taranaki whānui, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. It’s humbling to stand here and to look at the gallery here and to recognise the representatives of the eight iwi of Taranaki whānui, to see you here on this important day. I want to acknowledge not only you who are here today but also those who have gone before. Obviously, this has been the result of many, many years of work, and I particularly want to acknowledge those who have passed on who are not able to be here at this historic day, and to recognise them.

I also want to acknowledge the long and the painful history that has been behind this that goes back more than a century and a half now, to the confiscations of the 1860s, and to recognise generation after generation of Taranaki whānui over that period of time. This is about saying that that was wrong and we are here, as the representatives of the people of this country, to say sorry, that was wrong, and we need to put that right.

That is what this legislation is all about. It is about putting right generations of doing things wrong, and it wasn’t just about the taking of land; it was also, on reading the history, about the preventing of reconnection to the land and reconnection to the maunga. That was wrong. So it wasn’t just that one-off wrong but wrongness over generation after generation after generation, and the connection—I know we all feel that. The connection to our mother Earth, to Papatūānuku, is a powerful thing for all human beings. To be disconnected from that land that you value the most, that you love the most, that you connect with the most—that is a painful thing. So, again, I say on behalf of my party—on behalf of New Zealand First, who stands here to support this legislation—that we are sorry for that disconnection and for that pain that has been caused over so many years.

Look, even as a Pākehā boy, I know that if you talk about the stories of Aotearoa New Zealand, there are some landscapes which are particularly special, which we all know the stories of, and the story of Taranaki is absolutely one of those stories. The idea of personhood for Taranaki is a really, really important one, and it’s the personhood, in a sense, that goes after the personhood and the recognition that was granted to the Whanganui River, because it was Taranaki that made that long journey from the central North Island, down the Whanganui River, to be where Taranaki stands today. So I think it is appropriate that we do that together: the connection between Whanganui River and Taranaki maunga.

It’s a privilege to be able to just say a few words here as we take this important step forward to correct wrongs of the past and to be able to walk forward together on this journey as this bill goes through the House over the next few stages. I don’t think there’s a lot more that I wish to say, other than that I think the summary of the historical background says it very, very, poignantly and pointedly. For generations, Taranaki maunga and its surrounding ranges have been the central pillar for the iwi, the hap ū, and the whānau of Taranaki. The mountain has long been an honoured ancestor, a source of physical, cultural, and spiritual sustenance, and a final resting place. So it is not just a mountain; it is a spiritual ancestor, and I think that makes it so, so important that we come to this point to fix the wrongs of the past and be able to walk forward together. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai. Ko te mihi tuatahi ki te Atua, nāna nei ngā mea katoa. Ko te mihi tuarua ki te Whare e tū nei, tēnā koe.

E te maunga tapu Taranaki, tū tonu. E ngā iwi, e ngā hapū, e ngā mana, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou e huihui mai nei.

Tēnā koutou e Ngā Iwi o Taranaki: Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Mutunga, Taranaki Iwi, Te Atiawa, Ngāti Maru, Ngāruahine, Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi, Ngāti Ruanui, tēnā koutou katoa.

Nā reira kia hiwa rā, kia hiwa rā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Thank you to the Speaker. The first greeting is to God, to whom all things belong. The second greeting is to the House that stands here, greetings.

To the sacred mountain Taranaki, long may you stand. To the iwi, the hapū, the authorities, greetings, greetings to you who have assembled here.

Greetings to the people of Taranaki: Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Mutunga, Taranaki Iwi, Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Maru, Ngā Ruahine, Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi, Ngāti Ruanui, greetings to you all.

And so be alert, take heed, greetings and thanks to us all.]

When I reflect upon the journey that has taken us to this moment in time, it is a long, long road. When I think back upon what has brought us here and the wrongs done by the Crown, particularly the harm caused by raupatu, some of the most severe raupatu in New Zealand’s history occurred in Taranaki for Taranaki iwi. I reflect upon not only the loss of lives but also the devastation caused from separating a people from their land.

I think about the hours and hours, weeks, months, and years of negotiations with all of those different iwi. I think of all of the negotiators. I think of people who I know personally who were rangatahi—Liana Poutu and Jamie Tuuta—when negotiations started. It has been a long road to bring us to this pathway now.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: “Rangatahi”?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I think—I was about their age, so, yeah, I’d say I was a rangatahi. So I think of all of those negotiations and I think how important this bill here today is to bring that all together and to give a legal entity to Taranaki maunga, and how important it is to recognise that and to give it its own autonomy as a legal person. That only seems right and fitting for New Zealand today.

The bill establishes and recognises Te Kāhui Tupua as a legal person, giving it rights, powers, and duties, and giving it the ability for those to be exercised and performed on its behalf and in its name by the joint governance entity Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi. I’d also like to acknowledge the fact that the bill provides that Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi is a statutory body with the purpose of being the human face and voice of that legal person so as to be able to carry out the conservation, governance, and some decision making within the national park. How important it is for that to be able to take place today.

I would like to point out too that this bill in the House today, and its passage—the Treaty relationship does not finish when this bill is passed. It is an ongoing relationship. It is not a switch that we can flick on or off, and, like the words that have been echoed by my colleagues, it is important that when we come into this House and acknowledge the wrongs of the past, we also, rightfully, remember that we do not want to create wrongs going into the future. As part of this bill, we acknowledge the mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and, as all of the parties here today speaking on that bill, we acknowledge that mana. It is my view that that continues a commitment forward in terms of how we work together to make sure that that relationship is kept warm and breathing and alive and that there are clear obligations on both Treaty partners when we do that.

I would like to finish by simply stating that one of my first memories of learning about Māori culture was when my father pulled a book off his shelf and sat me down and taught me about Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and what had happened in Parihaka. I grew up learning the importance of passive resistance, and the lessons that Taranaki iwi have taught to all New Zealand will, I hope, always be remembered. He mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Kia ora e te Māngai. Tihei mauri ora! E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, tēnā koutou katoa. Te Whare e tū nei, tēnā koe. Te papa e takoto nei, tēnā koe. Ngā mate, haere, haere, haere.

Ka mihi ki te iwi kāinga, Ngā Iwi o Taranaki. Nau mai, haere mai, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[It is the breath of life! To those with authority, the representatives, the people, greetings to you all. The House that stands here, greetings. The land that lies here, greetings. To the deceased, rest in peace.

I acknowledge the home people, the people of Taranaki. Welcome, greetings, and thanks to you all.]

It’s a great privilege to rise and make a contribution on this important occasion, and it is a very important occasion for us today because the eight iwi of Taranaki have been waiting 160 years for this moment. It’s a historic moment for the eight iwi, in acknowledging the wrongs that have been done in the past but also in giving legal effect to the maunga and the status of the maunga amongst the tangata whenua and, hopefully, focusing them and the maunga in the future.

It’s also a historic moment because this is the 100th deed that successive Governments have signed as part of the Treaty of Waitangi redress negotiations. I say this in the guise of understanding that there were many wrongs done across those 100 iwi and more, and I think that this is an important occasion to certainly acknowledge all the wrongs done in New Zealand to this date.

The purpose of this bill is to give effect to the Treaty deed that was signed last year, and that signing acknowledged the redress, the land confiscated, the rights of tangata whenua that were ignored, the atonement of injustice, and a formal apology, which the Minister acknowledged will come later on,

There are a number of important provisions in this bill. The most important, of course, is giving legal personhood to the maunga, and it is a beautiful maunga, I must say. Every time I fly past the maunga, I just acknowledge how beautiful it is. It’s probably the best maunga in Aotearoa—I said it here, ladies and gentlemen. The second aspect is to—

Hon Willie Jackson: They’re still not voting for you, though!

DAN BIDOIS: And I’m happy to say that, coming from Tāmaki-makau-rau. It also renames the national park and the maunga. Gone are the days of calling it Mount Egmont. We can put that behind us, and now we’ve got a new name. The third aspect is the protection against commercial mining, which is clearly important to the eight iwi. The fourth area is around the acknowledgment of the historical injustice that has been forced upon these iwi over many generations.

I rise today as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, and I’m looking forward, as part of the select committee process, to hearing submissions on this bill from the eight iwi involved. I’d encourage you to make a submission, and I am particularly looking forward to hearing your aspirations about the future and what that looks like, and to understanding your aspirations. I’m also looking forward to getting more understanding of the significance of this maunga for the eight iwi. So I look forward to that select committee process, as do my colleagues here in the House today.

A lot has been traversed, but this is a great day for the House, it’s a great day for the eight iwi that are here, and I’d like to acknowledge you all for coming down for this occasion today. I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. The next time the member is flying over Taranaki, I’m sure Taranaki would invite you for a stopover.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): It’s about all he’d get, too, Madam Speaker! Engari tuatahi e mihi ana ki a koutou, ngā whanaunga i tae mai nei i tēnei wā, i whakarangatira i te kaupapa. He mihi nui ki a koutou. He hōnore nui ki te kōrero e pā ana ki tēnei kaupapa i tēnei wā, nō reira tēnā koutou. Haramai, haramai, nau mai.

[However, firstly, I acknowledge you, our relations that have arrived here at this time, who have honoured the occasion. Many greetings to you. It is a great honour to speak on this initiative at this time, so greetings to you. Welcome, welcome, welcome.]

Well, we got there, and I know that there’s a lot of shock in the audience there. I was having a bit of a kōrero with my old friend over here: Mahara Okeroa. He said to me—he didn’t want me to say it, but I’m breaching our confidence—“Is everyone supporting this—the katoa? Is everyone?” I said, “You wouldn’t believe it, would you, Mahara. You just wouldn’t believe it.”—and I want to mihi to my old mate. He and I came into Parliament here 25 years ago. He’s a lot older than me, though, as you can see.

We came here 25 years ago, in 1999, and here we are, Maha, supporting our whanaunga, our relations. Lovely to have you here—mihi nui ki a koe. We know the mahi you’ve done for your people, and I don’t say that lightly, because there was a lot of angst amongst our whanaunga and people who are here.

I just want to be clear to the National Government here: when this coalition came in, there was you know, huge angst. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer over here was one of the most vocal kaikōrero for her people in terms of what was happening—you know, the kōrero about white supremacy and all that. It wasn’t just Debbie Ngarewa-Packer; it was a number of our people here who were saying, “Jeez, is this going to go through?”

So it’s ironic today—and I mihi to National. I mihi to everyone today, and to Minister Goldsmith, because you wouldn’t have put any money on it. You wouldn’t have put any money on it, not when you hear that they wanted to get rid of the reo in Government departments. Not when you hear that you’re not going to reward kaiako for their work in terms of te reo Māori. But—

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Milk mother Nature.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, that’s another kaupapa, isn’t it? That’s another kaupapa.

We think, “What happened to the old National? The Doug Grahams, the David”—I was going to say “David Seymour”, but, you know, that was one of the problems, I think. But I’ll say to him and to his party that they’re all supporting this, which is, I think, terrific because we need to come together. He should know better than anyone else that we need to whakakotahi for kaupapa like this. We need to stop our wars and whatnot, and realise how wonderful this is for our people.

But our people, they were very worried. As I said, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Wharehoka Wano—Whare, up there, was worried. Mind you, he’s a pretty worrying sort of bloke, but Whare is up there. Jamie Tuuta—even Jamie Tuuta, the “Chairman of Everything”, he was worried. He’ll probably get a few more jobs under this Government. I haven’t had a phone call from him since the campaign finished and I haven’t been invited to anything. Oh no, move on, Jamie, move on—yes.

But, you know, Jamie’s working with the Minister—ka pai. That’s what we want, because, as Māori, the reality for our people is we have to play a couple of games—that’s the reality. One game is we have to hammer the Government, and then the other game is you’ve got to tono to the Government and find a way to strategise and work with the Government. That is the reality for our people. I support our people with those types of strategies, even though some days we want to strangle the Government. You know, that is the reality.

But to have a Government who recognises what we recognise in terms of the maunga having a legal identity is, I think, wonderful. I think it’s wonderful to have those types of things be recognised as a legal personality—Taranaki maunga—with a similar legal personality being delivered in Treaty settlements. Ngāi Tūhoe with Te Urewera, and Whanganui River—you know, that stands out.

So I want to mihi to this House, to everyone here, for supporting this—seriously. This is what it’s all about. To the ACT Party, to New Zealand First, to National, and to ourselves: this is the way to go. This is the Aotearoa we want, where we come together and whakakotahi for kaupapa like this. The overwhelming message we’re getting from our people is to stop using us and stop abusing us when it comes to everyday things, and whakakotahi for kaupapa like this more often. That has to be the way forward. Kia ora anō tātou katoa. Kia ora.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think the Hon Willie Jackson would welcome a stopover as well at some stage in the future, following that speech.

GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie): Ko te kupu mutunga [This is the last speech]—I get the final word.

He tino hōnore te tū ki tēnei Whare ki tō koutou aroaro ki te whakahōnore te Maunga Taranaki. I whangāia au e ngā iwi o Taranaki, ngā marae o Taranaki, te kōrero o Taranaki, ngā pūrakau o Taranaki. Hoki mahara ki te wā tuatahi e noho ana au ki te marae o Ōwae Whaitara ki te taha o taku hoa Te Waka McLeod. Ka kite koe ki reira. Whakakī ōku moemoeā mā ngā pūrakau o tō koutou tupuna. Ka kite ō rātou mata ki roto ōku moemoeā, nōreira koirā te tūāpapa o tēnei hōnore nui te tū ki konei.

[It is a huge honour to stand in this House before you to honour the formidable Mt Taranaki. I was raised by the people of Taranaki, the marae of Taranaki, and the history and stories of Taranaki. I reminisce to when I first sat at the marae of Ōwae Whaitara with my dear friend Te Waka McLeod. I see you there. My dreams were nourished listening to the stories of your ancestors. I see their faces in my dreams, therefore, that sets as a foundation for why I stand here in honour.]

I remember also when Te Waka invited me to her home marae near Waitara to receive her moko kauae, and my thoughts and my dreams often return to that time. The way in which I, an outsider, was welcomed; the way I, an outsider, was fed; and the way I, an outsider, was shown nothing but aroha noa—grace—that is the āhuatanga o tō koutou iwi [way your people do things.]

Jamie Tuuta said i waenganui te mihi whakatau i mua tēnei taupatupatu [during the formal welcome prior to this debate]—although it’s not really much of a taupatupatu, is it? It’s great. He kōrero kotahitanga. [A speech of unity.]

Jamie said that this process is not about restoring or giving mana to Maunga Taranaki. He said that his mana is secure and always has been. This is about the Government—this unified Government—recognising in statute that which has always been, and we have spoken about it already this afternoon, about the sense that we all have when we have the privilege of flying over or walking past or driving past your mountain. His honour, his strength, his pride—it speaks to us all. Whenever I’m flying over, I always snap a little pikitia, and then, on landing, I send it to Te Waka and I say, “He ataahua a Taranaki i tēnei rā. I tēnei rangi, i ngā rangi katoa.” [Taranaki is beautiful today, tomorrow, and every day.] And he is. He stands tall, he stands strong, he stands proud, as do you all.

As has also been said, this is the beginning of a process that will go through this House over the coming weeks and months. This entire process is about recognising the mana of Ngā Iwi o Taranaki about ngā mana o Maunga Taranaki [the spiritual forces of Mt Taranaki.]

It is my absolute privilege to stand in support. Tino tautoko i te whakaetanga o tēnei pire. [I very much do support the approval of this bill.] Kia ora koutou.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill be considered by the Māori Affairs Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Permission has been granted for a waiata.

Waiata—“He Pikinga Poupou”

Haka

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Beautiful—thank you. Perhaps we’ll just wait for a couple of moments just to give the group in the gallery a chance to move. It might be helpful for the next speaker. I’m happy for you to retain your seat, Minister—you won’t lose your call.

Hon David Seymour: Madam Speaker, the microphones only pick up who is speaking right in front. I’m happy to start.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, no—that’s fine. It’s for the benefit of those others in the House—just making sure we can all hear. Right, I think we’re all good to go. I call on the Hon David Seymour.

Bills

Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Health (Pharmac)): I move, That the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I want to first of all start just by acknowledging the group that have been here for the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill. These bills are something that I’m proud ACT has always supported as our country moves to heal any past wrongs, and this particular redress bill in the Taranaki region is a very fine example of that.

However, we’re now here to talk about pseudoephedrine. In particular, as winter comes—and it feels like it’s been approaching at an accelerating rate in recent weeks, wherever you’ve been in New Zealand—people are going to get those winter ills and chills, and I’m very proud that our Government is taking action to rapidly liberalise the supply of pseudoephedrine-based cough and cold medicines.

The background to this is that over a decade ago, the then National-led Government banned pseudoephedrine-based cough medicines on the basis that if only we did so, we would cut off, or at least severely constrain, the supply of P, which at that time was being manufactured in clan labs by criminal agents who were buying up the pseudoephedrine and then using that to manufacture P. So, as logic went, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world to cut off the P supply of source, given the absolutely horrific harm that P does to so many people in New Zealand and continues to do today, and that is the sad clue—“it continues to do today”—because what happened when pseudoephedrine cough and cold medicines were banned was not that we ended the P epidemic and it’s not that we reduced the consumption of P. What actually happened was that those people in the business of selling it started to connect with criminal elements offshore and created more sophisticated ways of sourcing P from bigger, badder criminals and managed to bring it in at a lower price and make it more available to P addicts than ever before.

That is a real tragedy, but it has a couple of implications for us here in New Zealand today. The first is I’m proud to be part of a Government—even though some people in the Government were associated with the ban—that says that if something isn’t working, we’ll stop doing it and do something better. We actually need more of that in New Zealand politics. There is far too much of people refusing to change course when the facts change, and, as Sir John Maynard Keynes once said—an economist more popular on that side of the House, I’d have to say—“When the facts change, they change my mind. What do you do?” Here, the facts are not as hoped, and so we’re changing the policy.

But the second implication of these facts is that we still have an enormous problem with P, but it is incredibly unlikely that those people sourcing it cheaper and faster and purer than you could ever get it when it was manufactured from buying up pseudoephedrine tablets are going to return to a less efficient, more expensive way of manufacturing P that involves going around pharmacies and buying up as many tablets as you can. That is the second fact.

The third thing that I think is important is that for a long time, New Zealanders who—to quote the old advertisement—try to soldier on through the winter find that one of the most valuable pieces of medication that is available on the market has been denied them. Yes, in theory, right now, before this law passes, you are able to get pseudoephedrine-based cough medicine if you go to your GP and get a prescription. The sad reality is that due to the running down of primary healthcare in recent years, you’re much more likely to recover sooner than you get a GP appointment in order to get the prescription and get it, and because of that, no pharmacy I’m aware of in New Zealand stocks pseudoephedrine-based cough and cold medication because no one’s actually going to get a prescription to have it. That means that New Zealanders have been left worse off.

This is something I think we need to talk more about. In a lot of parts of the world you travel today, you kind of get the feeling that they’re there to make life easier and more enjoyable wherever it’s possible to do that without harming others, and when you come back to New Zealand—particularly the way it’s been in the last few years—you get the feeling that the Government is there to regulate and spite you and to make life harder just because it can. That is a fundamental change that is needed in New Zealand if we are to get our mojo as a country back. It’s initiatives like this, while I freely admit it’s not the biggest thing that the Government is doing—it’s not the most important thing that the Government is doing, but it is a gesture towards making life easier and more enjoyable for New Zealanders where it’s possible to do so without harming others.

So if and when this bill is passed by the House in an hour or two’s time, it will eventually get the Royal assent from the Governor-General, and we will reach a stage in this country where we can honestly say that we’re on the path to getting pseudoephedrine medication back on the shelves. It will no longer be a class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act; it will be a class C drug, which is legal to have, but it’s still illegal to import large amounts without a licence. So we’re still maintaining controls around anything that might be turned into P manufacture perhaps.

We will then—as the Minister responsible for Medsafe—be seeking applications from pharmaceutical companies who would like to send pseudoephedrine-based cough and cold medicines to New Zealand and sell to New Zealanders, and I suspect that we’ll have good news to deliver about that quite shortly. Once those applications have been made, it will be up to New Zealand’s businesses—for the pharmacies and for the retailers—to actually decide if they want to be part of this business.

If they do want to be part of it, then they will be able to import any particular types of pseudoephedrine-based cough and cold medicines that have been consented by Medsafe and sell them to the customers, and what that ultimately means is that for those people who have battled through about 14 tough winters with no decent cough and cold medicine in this country, we will now have rules that put us in the same place as in Australia, Canada, the United States, and Britain. They are other countries that don’t seem to have a massive problem emanating from their cough and cold remedies, but, none the less, people are allowed to do things that don’t harm anyone else, and yet are beneficial to them.

I hope that as this Government goes about deregulating rules that don’t make sense and that seeks to put the ability of a person to flourish and make a difference in their own lives, no matter what their background or where they’re from, we will gradually see people start to just open up a little bit and see the world as being a little bit sunnier, because we no longer have a Government that regulates in haste and repents at leisure. That is what the project of this Government is ultimately about: getting our mojo back and, in the case of pseudoephedrine-based cough and cold medicines, getting our bounce back just a little bit sooner if we happen to be afflicted by one of those terrible illnesses this winter.

For all those who do get sick this winter, I’m sorry to hear it. I hope you get well soon, and I hope you remember that this Government has actually done just a little bit to make a difference to make life easier and more enjoyable for you in those difficult times. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

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

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, Labour supports this bill. But I would just like to put on record some of the work that Labour has done to improve the management of winter ailments over the last several years, because I thought the remarks of the previous speaker, the Hon David Seymour, were perhaps casting far too negative a gloss on the availability of effective medicines for winter ailments in New Zealand, and I would like to remind the member that that Government over there has reduced the access to the flu vaccine this winter for New Zealanders, which is a shame because that actually prevents winter illnesses, unlike one that just treats the symptoms. I’d also like to remind that member of the extensive work done by the last Government to increase the role of pharmacies in providing medicines and treatments over winter.

We in the Labour Party support the opportunities for New Zealanders to have greater access to medicines, and that’s why we will be voting for this bill, but I also think it is worth noting in this third reading some of the concerns that we have about it that we have sought to raise throughout the truncated process this bill has been through in the House. We have had a shortened select committee process, with only approximately a week for submitters to submit, and a very short period of hearings. We also heard from Ministry of Health officials that advice from pharmacists on how this would be implemented in the real world was only really from a handful of pharmacy representatives. So it is worth bearing that in mind when we consider the Minister’s reassurances on the safety of this approach.

I feel the risks that we have raised have not been taken seriously, and I guess, at one level, it comes down to a disagreement on the economic framing that the Minister puts. Fundamentally, while it might be that rational actors in the drug market can secure cheaper methamphetamine from overseas suppliers, I can tell you that one reality from working in the health system is that drugs make you act irrationally, and that is the is the challenge. There will be desperate people who will now have a new opportunity for how to procure meth via cooking it from P, and we have introduced a new risk for addiction into our community.

Now, we are not puritans about this. There would be safe ways to mitigate that, and, unfortunately, our proposals for those mitigations have not been taken seriously. I’m particularly disappointed that the proposal that pseudoephedrine be treated like codeine and be required to be kept in a locked safe in pharmacies has not made its way into the bill in its final form.

At the Health Committee, we also discussed multiple other mitigations: the importance of providing treatment for meth addiction and scaling up those services, the importance of improving treatment pathways for ADHD—because many people who have untreated ADHD may find their way into illicit drug use, as well—and also the opportunity to improve monitoring of sales so that there could be faster recognition and investigation of people doing so-called smurfing, where they shop around to get pseudoephedrine from multiple different stores so that they can then cook up methamphetamine. So these are the risks that we have identified. We as the Labour Party believe that we have proposed pragmatic solutions to mitigate these risks.

The Government could have had the benefit of a more fulsome select committee process. It could have shown greater respect to the concerns that were raised. Instead, at committee stage, the Minister described these proposals as “paralysis by analysis”. I suppose he’s got no one to blame but himself if some of these risks eventuate.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Greens stand in support of this legislation today, as we have consistently throughout every reading. The reason for that is that this is relatively consistent in the direction towards a more evidence-based approach to drug policy in this country.

However, in this third reading speech, I’d like to draw some attention to some of the commentary that Minister David Seymour has given in his third reading speech and, actually, throughout each reading of this bill, because I believe that it very strongly applies—if we were to be logically or evidentially consistent in this place—to a complete overhaul of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. I’d also like to make the point and refer to some of the statements by the former Minister of Health the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall with regard to ADHD, and also speak to some of the other interventions that are available to us when it comes to reducing methamphetamine harm in this country.

One of the first things that the Minister said just before—and I wrote it down—is “If it’s not working, we should change it.”—absolutely. The Green Party agrees with that. We should change it in an evidence-based manner, and that logic applies to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. We have seen consistently that for decades and decades, drug harm has consistently gone up; meanwhile, we have continued to ratchet up criminal penalties associated to those substances, and one of the logical inconsistencies that we’ve attempted to tease out in the debates on this legislation—particularly at first and second reading, and also at committee of the whole House with the Minister—is the fact that inherent within the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 is the way in which it self-perpetuates in an anti-evidence manner.

One key example of this is the fact that if you are to introduce a new substance for classification and, therefore, with penalties associated to it, or if you are to increase the classification for a substance within the Misuse of Drugs Act and, therefore, ratchet up the penalties associated to that substance, all you need to do is pass an Order in Council, which, in this place, tends to happen within the blink of an eye. It’s a relatively rubber-stamping approach. But if you are to down classify a substance or to declassify it entirely—and down-classification is the point of this legislation with regard to pseudoephedrine—you need an entire amendment bill, and that, typically, takes in the order of nine to 12 months. However, of course, we know that with this legislation today, the Minister has sought and the Government has sought to push it through with relative urgency and, therefore, to curtail the usual select committee process. The point I’m making here is that there are inherent within the primary legislation that this bill seeks to amend inequities in the approach that it takes, let alone a deeply baked - in anti-evidence type of approach.

We also heard from the Minister that he and the Government will be seeking to be—and I quote—“deregulating rules that don’t make sense”, and I’d say that that same logic applies to other substances that are currently classified within the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. Actually, other substances that this Parliament relatively recently has recognised can be used for medicinal purposes, such as the likes of, for example, medicinal cannabis. To that effect, we have some of the most strict rules and regulations and legal frameworks in the world when it comes to medicinal cannabis, and I’d note, in relation to parliamentary written questions that I’ve put to Dr Shane Reti, now the Minister of Health, that there is a work programme from the former Government that has been, apparently, completely thinned.

But to the broader point of methamphetamine, with which, of course, pseudoephedrine, has frequently been discussed, given that this is a precursor and it can be used in the cooking up of methamphetamine, there are interventions that have worked very, very well in this country which we have a plethora of evidence upon. The likes of Te Ara Oranga, for example, is a collaboration started in Northland between the DHB and police several years ago now, and there has been an immense amount of work in trying to unpack from a research and academic basis just how effective this has been if you don’t trust the anecdotes from the people whose lives have been changed. What it does in practice is, effectively, decriminalise those who are found with small amounts of methamphetamine and work on proactively improving their lives, and guess what! The programme’s research has shown that, for every dollar invested, there is a return of $3 to $7 and an approximate, I believe, off the top of my head, 34 percent reduction in interactions with the criminal justice system from those whānau who are involved within it.

So I guess the key point here from the Greens is that, yep, this legislation is good. It’s more in the direction of evidence-based drug law, but why are we not applying that same logic when it comes to the entirety of the primary legislation, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, because it seems as though we are just unwilling to do it when we’re looking at cannabis or alcohol or even tobacco on this Government’s agenda. So we support this bill, but, once again, we see it as a massive lost opportunity.

SAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to support this reading of this bill, the third reading of the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill. This is a relatively simple change. It is a reclassification of pseudoephedrine from a class B2 to a class C3 controlled drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975.

What it will, effectively, do is reverse the blanket ban on pseudoephedrine that came into effect following the National Government’s decision in 2011 to remove the sale of pseudoephedrine. That’s had a lot of issues for people, and I think that the previous speaker and, in fact, the Minister in charge of this bill, the Hon David Seymour, talked about how Kiwis have struggled over numerous winters with the impacts of colds and flu without having any useful medication—or anything as useful as pseudoephedrine—to help manage those symptoms, alleviate their cold and flu conditions, and then allow them just to get back to living their lives and going to work and going about their daily business. So we are very supportive of this bill and the availability it will give to people to use pseudoephedrine when they most need it.

At the moment, you can’t get it over the counter. There are no alternative medicines that work as well as pseudoephedrine does, and it’s been noted that there are some other options there in the market, but their impact on reducing cold and flu symptoms isn’t as effective.

We also note that there are other jurisdictions out there. When you look at, say, the United States or when you look at the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, there are a range of other countries similar to New Zealand that do allow the over-the-counter sale of cold and flu medications such as pseudoephedrine.

It’s not without any controls at all, and I think that we’ve heard a bit of commentary that there are significant risks around that. Look, pharmacies don’t have to opt in to selling pseudoephedrine—they don’t have to. It is their choice. As a business, they get to make that decision on whether they want to stock and sell pseudoephedrine. So the risk that the pharmacies may then be raided—look, if they don’t want that risk, then they don’t have to stock pseudoephedrine, and that is quite simple.

If pharmacies do choose to sell it, people will have to buy it face to face, and we have it in here that the pharmacist will need to note down the names and the details of people that are purchasing pseudoephedrine and talk to them about it. It’s not going to be something where you can just submit your orders online and it turns up in your house. You have to go in there, and your information and what you’re purchasing will be collected because you do need to have some safeguards in place around that.

I did hear the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall talk about her desire for pseudoephedrine to be stored, such as codeine is today, in locked safes, and the feedback—I mean, that’s a nice thing for her to want. But the pharmacists have come back and said, “Look, that just isn’t practical. We don’t have the ability to store pseudoephedrine supply in locked safes.”, because the quantities would be considerably larger than what they hold of codeine. Therefore, it just isn’t a practical measure, and that takes me back to that point I made a minute or so ago. Look, if the pharmacies don’t want to wear the risk of storing pseudoephedrine, then, simply, they don’t have to store it.

There has been some commentary too around the impact this will have on methamphetamine use, supply, and consumption. That’s why we’re in this situation, because the National Government back in 2011—quite rightly, on the evidence that they had before them at the time—thought that if we wanted to reduce the P epidemic in New Zealand, then a good way to do that would be to stop the sale of pseudoephedrine over the counter in pharmacies, because that was being used a precursor in the manufacture of methamphetamine. We are here now, 13 years later, and the sale and supply of methamphetamine is up, the price of methamphetamine is down, and so, in effect, it hasn’t made any difference.

In fact, the people and criminal organisations who want to procure methamphetamine have found different ways to do it. Instead of cooking it up at home, they are tapping into international drug markets and black markets and importing it into New Zealand, which is effective in getting the supply of meth that they need into the New Zealand market.

So to say that this is going to lead to real problems around the availability of meth isn’t true. It is already quite readily available for those people who want to go out there and seek it, and the advice that we received back from the numerous people that we talked to throughout this process said just that. Yes, it was noted that there will be some small-scale use of pseudoephedrine to manufacture methamphetamine. It is likely to be on a non-commercial basis, with very small quantities for personal use, and manufacturing meth does have a lot of risks attached, as people in this House are probably aware.

So we went through this. It is a relatively simple bill, as the Minister has said, and it was quite pleasing—and I’d like to take a moment to thank members on the Health Committee who are present—

Dan Bidois: Hard-working committee.

SAM UFFINDELL: —hard-working select committee—including those who have left the House, including the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, who I found very easy—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You’re not allowed to mention a member who is not here.

SAM UFFINDELL: Apologies, Madam Speaker. I thank all members, whether they are here or not, for being supportive. The committee did not recommend any changes to this bill, which reflects the relatively straightforward policy we are discussing.

We received submissions from 169 individuals and nine organisations, and most of the organisations were supportive of this. That included the pharmaceutical industry bodies and it included the drug harm prevention groups, and they indicated their support for the bill in their submissions.

Now, I want to read you some notes here from some of the submitters that were noted in the select committee process. They said that “pseudoephedrine products are of little value to people interested in commercially supplying methamphetamine, as there are now cheaper and easier ways to manufacture it.”, and another quote here—I’ll only read two—“This position was supported by advice we received from the Ministry of Health, which consulted with the New Zealand Police, the New Zealand Customs Service, and the National Drug Intelligence Bureau.” So what we are getting back here is that the major agencies—the New Zealand Police, Customs, the Drug Intelligence Bureau, and the Ministry of Health, in consultation with those bodies, saw that the risk of meth manufacture and supply as a result of this bill was fairly minimal.

The channels for getting P into New Zealand and supplying it to the local market are already well-established and the consumption of P in New Zealand has continued to trend up, which is incredibly unfortunate. As a society, we need to continue to be doing all that we can to make sure that we get on top of these criminal organisations that are supplying methamphetamine—we really need to—and we need to make sure that there are treatment options available for people who are addicted to methamphetamine. We need to tackle it from both sides—that is, making sure that we get people who are addicted to meth off through treating the addiction that they face, and also making sure that we make it increasingly harder for criminal organisations to supply it into the domestic market.

But, all in all, we see this bill as a very good bill, which is why we have supported it throughout, and we are happy that the members in this House have supported it, and have supported through select committee without any amendment. I can feel myself having a bit of a sore throat and a cold coming on.

Tom Rutherford: Do you need some—do you want some?

SAM UFFINDELL: I don’t know if it’s available yet, Tom. We need to get through this third reading first. But I know that there will be a lot of New Zealanders out there who have not been able to get through winter or get to work or enjoy life to their potential because they have been hit down by the cold and flu symptoms that go through New Zealand communities during the winter. Well, good news for all of them: help is on the way, and with the passing of the third reading of the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill, we come one step closer to having pseudoephedrine available to New Zealanders over the counter from pharmacies. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. Now, I’m just going to say to the Hon Casey Costello that the debate is going to be interrupted at 4.30 for a local issues debate. The member is welcome to start and have 10 minutes, but the remainder of the speech would be after the dinner break. If the member—

Hon Casey Costello: I’ll be guided by you, Madam Speaker, as to how you want to do it. I’m happy to—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I think—it’s actually 4.29. If the member is available after the dinner break, we may—actually, it might be a better idea to let you have your full speech then.

Hon Casey Costello: Yep, that would be fine. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, OK. Thank you. For the House’s purposes, I’m just going to wait until the designated time of 4.30—thank you.

Debate interrupted.

Special Debates

Local Issues

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, we now come to the debate about local issues arranged by the Business Committee under Standing Order 80. Would some honourable member care to move that the House take note of local issues.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I so move. Thank you, Madam Speaker. The issue I’m going to speak about today is very local, although members in this House will be very aware of it. I come here representing the Ōhāriu electorate, which members who fly in and out of Wellington pass through on a weekly basis. In fact, those on planes contribute to the noise which is an issue there, which I’ve spoken about here before. A very good group, Plane Sense, have brought that—since there has been a change to the airport flight path, that has actually become quite an issue, where the gentle hum of air traffic, which is part of the urban noise, has actually become a cacophony of noise. But that’s another issue.

There’s actually been another issue—and it’s a very community-minded electorate. Just in the weekend, we had a great community meeting over saving the local pool, which is very nicely situated at the base of Mount Kaukau and is well worth saving. I’m hoping as a result of the turnout of the councillors and the community, we can save that. But, no, that’s not the issue I’m here to speak about.

A much bigger issue—very local—is the Johnsonville Shopping Centre. Now, any member here who has any relations or friends living in the area will be well aware of this. During the recent campaign, when I’d knock on doors and say, “What’s the issue?”, people would blankly look at me and say, “Well, of course it’s the mall. Of course it’s the shopping centre.” Even the local Salvation Army did a survey expecting to be told that there were social issues—and there were some—but, no, the first issue that arose was the local shopping centre.

It’s more than somewhere where people just shop; it’s somewhere where they gather. It’s something of a dormitory electorate, where most people live and work around this area—in fact, many of the very officials that come to this House are privileged to live in the mighty Ōhāriu electorate. So what is lacking there is a place, a centre point, that people can be proud of.

The Johnsonville Mall was once that place. In 1969, it was one of the very first shopping malls in New Zealand. You couldn’t get a car park there, but slowly, and it’s probably its demise, it’s been—and I’m not here to blame any Government or to blame any council. This is something that is actually very much a private sector issue. It is owned by a company called Stride Property Group, listed on the stock exchange. They have shareholders. One of them is a very big Australian shareholder, HESTA, which is a big superannuation fund. It’s the medical superannuation fund over there, who, unfortunately, have quite a big say in where and what money will be spent there, and I don’t think the Australians are as focused on Johnsonville or on Ōhāriu as they could be.

I’ve been working closely with the mall owners, Stride, and I know that over the years they’ve had plans to actually do something about the place. But many of those plans have come to nothing, to the extent that it’s almost become part of local legend—“Oh, the mall.” Generations have grown up hearing their grandparents talking about the mall, and they too will roll their eyes at any thought of the mall.

There’s some very good businesses in there and there’s some very good people who are doing their best to keep the place alive. They’re places like the local coffee shops. Scheckter’s Deli is a great recent addition. But slowly, many of the national providers—many of the chains—have gone, the banks have gone, and we’re left with something that really is something of a disgrace. I mean, Tripadvisor have called it the worst mall in New Zealand.

Of course, it’s not just a matter of standing here and being critical; it’s asking what can be done about it. What can be done about it is actually the newest proposal, and the council, after initially having been a little bit reluctant to provide for the traffic flow around there because they were worried about the “golden mile” out here and that it might do what, say, Christchurch has done, where the suburban shopping malls might suck the life out of the city centres—they’ve actually been on board recently. The proposal—and the council have been very good with this—is to allow the developers to go higher and to have a mixed model: to have offices, and to have accommodation, retail, movie theatres.

Again, this is what the community is screaming out for, crying out for. But, again, every time a proposal comes up—and there have been things like the Kaikōura earthquake, the global financial crisis, and the change in the retail environment. But every time the community has been ready, thinking they’re going to have a centre they can be proud of, their hopes are dashed.

So it’s time now for Stride Property to put up or sell, because it is just now unacceptable. The impact that it has on my local community, on the whole of the northern suburbs, by having this pretty ugly sort of edifice in the middle of it, non-functioning—it’s time to go. It’s time for Stride to sell.

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki): Can I start by just taking a moment to wish the Rev. Hector Davis a happy 100th birthday today, resident in my hometown, Waikanae. To you, Rev. Davis, happy 100th birthday.

It was 2 January 2008 and most Kiwis were relaxing on the beach, maybe recovering from New Year celebrations. In East Timor, for the 35 of us with the Air Force’s peacekeeping contingent, the call came in midafternoon: a UN police station in a small town called Ermera was under attack. Over the next few minutes, I watched as the men and women around me leapt into action, ripping off the covers, fitting door guns, servicing the aircraft. By the time I strapped in, the copilot had the rotors turning, the maintenance chief had the technical log ready for me to sign at the door, and the boss was running over with the approval to go flying. We were airborne 12 minutes after that call first came in, Australian soldiers from Bravo Company of 2 RAR in the back, and able to hold off the attack until further help arrived on the ground.

I tell that story for two reasons. Firstly, for me, it puts into perspective the service and the sacrifice of those who left these shores 110 years ago. And that was, in 2008, about as exciting as East Timor got. But I also tell that story because it reminds us that the indelible Anzac spirit lives on today, and that Anzac spirit is a unique and defining quality, one that sets us apart, I believe, from the rest of the world, and something that we should all be justifiably proud of. I saw it in East Timor as a dozen Kiwis scrambled over a helicopter to get it airborne in record time to stop a riot. I saw it in Afghanistan as a dozen Kiwi special forces soldiers rolled out of the gates to stop a terrorist attack on a local hotel. And I saw it here in New Zealand as helicopter crews raced to get airborne to winch to safety people from rooftops in Hawke’s Bay.

I’m proud that, no matter what the challenge, our Defence Force is always willing and able to respond. Be it a cyclone in Fiji, a volcanic eruption on White Island, a humanitarian evacuation in Kabul, or training soldiers to fight in Ukraine, that same Anzac spirit that saw 100,000 Kiwis march off to Europe in 1914 lives on in the women and men who serve today. They do not seek conflict, but they are ready to serve in conflict zones around the world if that’s the only way to bring about a lasting peace, to be a light in the darkness and a beacon of hope in a hurting world. That same Anzac spirit lives on today, and today I want to honour the selfless service of all those who put on a uniform, whether in our military, our police, or our emergency services, to serve at home or abroad as we lead up to Anzac Day this year.

But if I’m really honest, I always feel a little bit inadequate on Anzac Day as I line up with my medals on. I wasn’t brave enough to wear them today. I feel a bit inadequate as I think about my grandparents’ war service and what all our servicemen and women went through in World War I, World War II, conflicts like Vietnam. How can I compare my time in Afghanistan or peacekeeping around the world to what many of them must have gone through? I am in awe of their service, humbled by the price that so many paid, and grateful for all those who served and returned, most with scars, some with visible scars, none of them ever to be the same again.

We also must remember those who have lost their lives in more recent times. Two of those who were racing to get that helicopter airborne with me in 2008 lost their life a couple of years later, a third seriously injured. So this Anzac Day, as we approach it, we do not celebrate war but rather we honour the service and the sacrifice of those who went to war, those who went in the hope of saving our country, and indeed the world, for future generations. To quote my late father, we must remember the mateship, agony, courage, and compassion of war service, but save us from ever glorifying the horror and the tragedy of war. You know, to me, Dad has captured the very essence of Anzac Day. It’s a day to celebrate service and sacrifice, not the wars and the conflicts in which those sacrifices were made.

I will for ever be proud to have served and immensely proud of those who served alongside me, but I will always be in awe of the service and sacrifice of those who went before me, and in particular those who never returned home. Ka maumahara tonu tātou ki a rātou—lest we forget.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Co-Leader—Green): E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. A lot of people think about Auckland Central as just Auckland central city and the surrounding suburbs, but I do have a story for you. The electorate extends far beyond that amazing place across the Hauraki Gulf, all the way out across Waiheke Island to Aotea Great Barrier Island.

That’s where this story starts, because that is where in mid-2021, a pair of kayakers first discovered Caulerpa brachypus. I’m a little bit gutted that there has been a changeover of Speakers in the Chair just now—not to, in any way, intimate your skills, Mr Speaker, but I did want to shout out to the former Speaker in the Chair, the honourable Barbara Kuriger, for the work that she and I did in trying to get cross-party understanding on Caulerpa brachypus and the potential threat that that posed to our particularly marine ecosystems. Caulerpa brachypus looks like this—[Holds up a photograph] to those who are unfamiliar or uninitiated with it. It is an invasive seaweed that grows at approximately 3 centimetres every single day and is posing a massive threat to the smothering of our seafloor in the Hauraki Gulf.

Now, there’s been an immense amount of work by a number of local champions, and I just want to list a few here today in this very brief speech: Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai ki Aotea; Aotea/Great Barrier Local Board, particularly the chair there, Izzy Fordham, who’s been phenomenal in leading some cross-agency work here; as well as the Waiheke Local Board, and the chair, Cath Handley, there. I also need to put on the record a shout-out to deputy chair Bianca Ranson, who also wears a hat with Mauri o te Moana and is quite heavily involved in the Waiheke Marine Project. I need to shout out to Ngāti Pāoa, as well, on Waiheke Island; to the Hauraki Gulf Forum; particularly to Kate Waterhouse of the Aotea Great Barrier Environmental Trust, who has been doing a lot of the work in driving policy understanding behind the scenes here; also to the likes of Revive Our Gulf; and even to the rec fishers LegaSea and NZ sport fishing, who have been trying to ensure that there is greater political understanding of the threat that this invasive seaweed poses to our marine ecosystems.

We could talk about a lot of the threats that are facing the Hauraki Gulf—namely, bottom trawling, which, of course, the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has put abundantly clear on the record that we support the full ban of in the Hauraki; as well as the need for greater marine protected areas, and, of course, there’s a piece of legislation making its way through select committee at present, but the Greens support that marine protection extending to at least 30 percent of the Hauraki Gulf.

We also have massive challenges with regards to biosecurity. Just to give a sense of the threat here: in the Mediterranean, where Caulerpa brachypus was studied, it was found that there was a, I believe, 30 to 60 percent reduction in biomass of fish as impacted by the smothering of the seafloor.

We are having this discussion at a point in time when the Government is not only slashing jobs across the Public Service but also in Biosecurity New Zealand and in the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd—two agencies that have been at the forefront of trying to get a handle on this kaupapa.

But particularly to that connection or lack of parallel approach that we’ve seen with other biosecurity hazards and issues in this country, I just wanted to create the parallel to Mycoplasma bovis, which, of course, posed huge issues with regard to agriculture particularly. There we saw that there was cross-party support for the better part of a billion dollars to be invested in eradicating Mycoplasma bovis—heck, we saw the same kind of approach when it came to a fruit fly in the outer Auckland Central suburbs. But we have not seen that same impetus and that same political galvanisation on the issue of Caulerpa brachypus, and that is the plea that I am making to the House today. In conversations that I’ve already had with the Minister the Hon Tama Potaka, obviously with his conservation hat on, I’ve made this plea. But we need to see far greater resourcing.

There are three key things here that this Government—and, I would hope, with the cross-party support of this Parliament—can do. The first is for a whole-of-agency, whole-of-Government strategy for the eradication of Caulerpa brachypus; the second is to resource a team specifically dedicated to eradicating Caulerpa brachypus within the Ministry for Primary Industries, Biosecurity New Zealand, or, actually, potentially, even a cross-agency piece of work; and the third is the pūtea, the funding, and the resourcing to make this happen. So far, all we’ve seen is approximately $5 million—a drop in the bucket—and this invasive seaweed continues to expand, smothering the seafloor and actually a posing massive threat across the entire East Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate on local issues. I am based in Pakuranga, which is east of Auckland, and there is this issue that is causing a huge amount of concern not only to local people but people who go through that electorate or that suburb as well. I want to talk about the issue of speed limit reductions. Speed limit reductions were imposed by the previous Labour Government. Since those speed limit reductions, people are feeling really frustrated and this is for several reasons.

I want to, at the start, acknowledge that nobody wants to see any kind of harm or injury or fatal accidents happening on our roads. But speed is just one contributing factor. One would sit and think “Well, how do we reduce those incidents happening on our roads? Well, reduce speeds.”—yep, one might think that is a logical thing to do. But it is not a logical thing to do if we do not consider other factors that contribute to these incidents that happen on our roads. So that is a very lazy approach, I would say, to just reduce speed and not look at the condition of the road. We also need to keep in mind that other contributing factors—as I said, condition of the road, weather conditions, condition of people’s cars that they are driving, and also drivers’ behaviours contribute to accidents that happen on our roads. So we need a comprehensive solution when we are trying to target incidents that happen on our roads.

We want to do things which actually improve efficiency. To improve efficiency, of course, we need to look at our systems, structures, and infrastructure—but can I say that this line applies only to this side of the House, because we are keen to improve efficiency, not that side. What they did—they slowed everybody down and, obviously, there is a flow-on effect on the economy of not just the local area but Auckland and the whole of our country.

Time is precious. What happened because of the change by the previous Labour Government? People are stuck in traffic. They’re just looking at their clock ticking, ticking, ticking—15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes added to one-way traffic. That is hurting people at so many levels—people’s personal lives, people’s work lives, are being hurt.

I’m really glad that we campaigned to reverse those speed limit reductions, and the coalition Government has already announced that those speed limit reductions will be reversed. Because of that, the main roads—which are Pakuranga Road, which has been dropped from 60 kilometres per hour to 50 kilometres per hour; part of Ti Rakau Drive dropped from 60 kilometres per hour to 50 kilometres per hour; Botany Road, parts of that have been dropped from 60 kilometres per hour to 50 kilometres; and Te Irirangi Drive, which is again a very busy and important road, there are three speed limits now, from 60 kilometres per hour to 50 kilometres per hour, 80 kilometres per hour to 50 kilometres per hour, and one part is from 80 kilometres per hour to 60 kilometres per hour.

So with these roads becoming slow, what is happening is, obviously, during peak time there is more traffic, and people follow GPS, so there is more traffic going on to small roads, the residential roads, creating a lot of anxiety for these people who live locally, because of the traffic congestion that they are seeing—and off-peak. What this is leading to is inefficient use of road capacity, because people see there is so much space but they cannot use those roads to its efficient capacity. We need to see that the speed is optimal—optimal according to road conditions. But, instead of looking at what other conditions can be improved, they just decided to slow everybody down.

We know that, in East Auckland, we have had this issue of street races. When people do those kind of things—and, yes, there was media coverage as well, and my heart goes out to those victims and the families of that victim. But when people adopt this kind of behaviour, they are not going to change that behaviour just because the speed limit has been reduced. So if somebody is racing at 160 kilometres per hour when the speed limit is 80 kilometres per hour, it’s not like if you reduce the speed limit to 50 kilometres per hour, somehow those people will start speeding at 120 kilometres per hour, because that is not how they are thinking.

So, on this side, we want to see that things are done in efficient manner. We want to see that things are done in a speedy and also safe manner. We want to see progress, not, like them, slow everything down. And that is why I’m really glad that this coalition Government has announced that we will reverse those speed limit reductions that were imposed by the previous Labour Government. Thank you.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Good local government is a beautiful thing. I know that because I’ve been there and done it, and sometimes it’s been beautiful and sometimes a little bit less so. Good local councillors—and I look at Cameron Brewer there—should be deeply connected to their communities, really know their issues and their people, listen to their people’s diverse viewpoints and be responsive, show wisdom, show that sort of calm, measured decision-making, and be balanced and thoughtful. Now, of course, this is not about being a councillor; this is about being a list MP, and we’re talking about constituencies, and our constituency, as list MPs, starts somewhere up around North Cape and ends somewhere down Stewart Island way—and that is all of our constituency. And let’s not forget the Chatham Islands and the offshore islands as well.

Look, that doesn’t stop me from being interested in local issues. I have to say that every day I get people from the local community around Wellington asking me about various different local issues and about making observations about the local council. But I’m not going to talk about Wellington, because what I did recently, as a list MP, was to visit the beautiful top of the South Island, talking to councils, businesses, educators, infrastructure providers, developers, tourism organisations, and so on. I just want to make a few observations about that visit, because I think there’s some useful things to mention there.

First of all, there were many different Provincial Growth Fund projects that I heard about. So Blenheim’s beautiful new library—a fantastic facility, two-thirds of which was funded by the Provincial Growth Fund, one-third by the local council. And I might make a point that Wellington often feels left out by some of these things: it’s “neither a Provincial Growth Fund; never got any money from start-up projects either”—and so that was a little bit of a sore point there. So I’ve got to bring Wellington in. But Blenheim’s new library is beautiful; Wellington’s got a $250-odd million-dollar library, and it would be nice to have a little bit of support for that—anyway!

Also, it was great to visit water treatment plants in Motueka, water storage reservoirs for the Māpua-Moutere area, and stopbank refurbishments. Together those projects are less than $15 million; huge value for those local communities. They look like outstanding projects. I also heard about the Waimea Dam, which has probably now been commissioned—it was about to be commissioned when I was there—and the benefits that that will bring both to the urban community and resilience of water supply but also to the rural community in terms of productivity and the ability to grow all sorts of products that of course we need.

I really wanted to say that there are huge opportunities. These things illustrate huge opportunities to partner between local government, local communities, and central government. For example, all three of the councils that I talked to across the top of the South mentioned a report called Before the Deluge, which has been put together by all the regional councils and the unitary councils of the country. They’ve identified the areas where we could get the best bang for bucks by putting stopbanks there to protect our property, to protect businesses. I would encourage the Parliament to have a look at that report and to consider whether there is a co-investment opportunity there, because, clearly, that is what they are looking for.

We hear a lot about an infrastructure deficit, and when chairing the Transport and Infrastructure Committee we began our annual reviews hearing from the Infrastructure Commission. I have to say they are a breath of fresh air, thinking about the really big picture. The key point that they made is that we’re actually investing enough in infrastructure; what we’re not doing is investing in the right way. We’re investing in dumb things sometimes and our processes are really expensive and slow, and we need to do something about that. That would probably save us at least 4 percent on GDP just like that, if we were to do that.

Hon Mark Patterson: Fast track—fast track.

ANDY FOSTER: Fast tracking is part of that. When we visited, one of the examples was the example of marine farms. The cost of being able to re-consent what is already there is really, really expensive, and that’s not just marine farms; it’s dams, it’s sewage treatment plants, and so on. When they need to be re-consented, it is really expensive, and two of the councils also raised those issues as well.

They also raised issues around the consenting of tiny houses, which, of course, this Government is moving on—or small houses, I should say. Because what’s happening in those jurisdictions is that instead of going for small houses, they’re actually going for tiny houses because you don’t have to go through the consent process—and, of course, they don’t pay rates either. So there are ways in which we can make the boat go faster in those areas.

It was also really, really great to visit some community facilities and operations as well, particularly the Kaipūpū Sanctuary in Picton and to hear about the support that they’ve had from the Jobs for Nature programme. I would say that that, I think, has given us some real value and I think we should think very, very carefully about its future and be able to share the experience—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Yeah, don’t cut it!

ANDY FOSTER: I’m making these points because it’s worth making these points, Chlöe, and I have the opportunity to do so—and share the opportunity or the experience that I’ve had from Zealandia, which of course is the mothership of all of these sorts of facilities.

So all I would say is that there are a lot of great things that you can learn from visiting communities, from listening to communities, and if we work together—Government, local government, and communities—we can make our boat go faster.

SPEAKER: That would have made a great general debate speech, but it’s a local issues debate and I’d ask members to stick to that.

Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai TokerauMARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI (): Tēnā koe, e te Māngai, tēnā tātou katoa. I stand here to debate the absolute necessity to have Māori wards, to have Māori representation within the political sphere—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is that local?

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: —of this country at a local and regional level. And I’ll leave the cheerleaders for later. Excuse me, Mr Speaker.

Tai Tokerau is home to one of the largest populations of Māori within the country. Over one-third of our demographic identifies as Māori and, fortunately, so do I. I’ve been a Māori for a while, so I’m good for this debate. So it is vital that our community is represented at the decision-making table. Māori wards ensure that we as Māori and us in Te Tai Tokerau, and even Grant for that matter, are represented in local government decision-making processes; not just to stand up and have a little karakia and a waiata.

For Te Tai Tokerau, Māori wards have only recently been introduced. And much like any of these other initiatives, they just don’t get the opportunity to give it a real go. They’ve barely had the opportunity to flourish. The current Government has attempted to withdraw or cut what is both essential and necessary for us—and I mean the Māori “us”, and I mean the Treaty partner “us”. What is most important right now is that Māori maintain the absolute right to actively participate in decision-making processes when it comes to both local and regional government.

Given the historical barriers such as Māori continuing to negotiate intergenerational harm, which is oppression, colonisation, and de-culturation, Māori engagement with political institutions is limited and hard and difficult to break through. This often leaves Māori under-represented in political spaces and, by extension, vulnerable to racism—the misconstrued perspectives that those in decision-making positions hold toward Māori. Māori wards are designed to bridge the gap between Māori and bring our own voices into that debate and into that discussion, and particularly into the decision-making spaces. So, dang, it’s a good idea and it’s going to be chucked out, but, again, that’s not surprising, given the current climate that we’re having to deal with.

These wards are therefore designed to support Māori in their—and I really want to be clear on this one—tino rangatiratanga, as guaranteed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It won’t be the last time that I’ll ever use those words. This Government has shamefully voted to uphold Pākehā dominance and undermine Māori rights to representation in local government. Once again, we have a Pākehā majority deciding that they know what’s better for me and Māori and Māori in Te Tai Tokerau, and not even Grant can support that.

This type of thinking is outdated and systemically racist. Far North District Council—getting to the good bit—illustrates just how outdated this thinking is. In March 2021, they collected the community’s feedback on Māori wards in their representation review. Of those who submitted responses, 81.76 percent supported Māori wards. Please let that sink in, tātou mā, kei tērā taha o te Whare. [all of us, and that side of the House.] Please, let that sink in, and comprehend is probably the other thing.

So the Far North district councillors voted to establish Māori wards for the 2022 and 2025 local body elections. Moko Tepania—if you don’t know him, great guy, perfect mayor, and knows exactly what his people in Far North District Council are about. The mayor for Far North has openly expressed his contempt towards the ridiculous actions this Government has taken.

And much like our policing community in their responses to Government actions, we hear the same rhetoric from local government: “We don’t need Wellington to tell us what to do.” Additionally, to hold these referendums, it will cost communities. It’ll cost Far North District Council more than it absolutely should, given there’s not a lot of funding and investment in the Far North in any case. This type of expenditure is incredibly wasteful for vulnerable communities.

A lack of education inspires a lack of understanding and, by extension, creates fear. This is exactly what our current Government illustrates to us is, that their lack of education in issues regarding our people inspires the lack of understanding and creates their fear of us being equal with them. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou e te Whare.

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to rise and speak in the House on the local issues debate. I thought I’d take a slightly different approach to this: my local issue is that we need to change the dial. We want to change our media narrative—if you like—from the negative events and the tragic and awful circumstances that parts of my electorate have been subject to over the past year or two. So we’re about to go on a whistle-stop tour around the East Coast electorate to talk about some of the great things that are happening.

So let’s start. I can’t go past it without mentioning the cyclone, of course, but the cyclone has done something for us: it’s created a catalyst. A catalyst for change and a catalyst for positivity, and we are about that. The East Coast is ready to go. We are tired of being called “resilient” and tired of being in clean-up mode, so it’s time to get cracking. We’re going to start in Ōpōtiki, the wonderful town which we visited not that long ago—and the Whakatōhea mussel factory, the harbour entrance, and the marina development: a group of projects that will absolutely change the way Ōpōtiki is and will be into the future. The brainchild of Whakatōhea and the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), bringing in jobs—they currently employ about 200 people—and the income diversity and the changing of how that will focus them into the future is a fantastic opportunity, and one that we look forward to. Whakatōhea, just recently, were also a finalist in the Ahuwhenua farming awards, so they will be heading to the dinner on 17 May in Hamilton and we wish them all the very best for that.

Raukokore, a little place way up at the top of the East Cape—just went up there this week. They just opened a $10 million freshwater storage project, which will unlock the potential for 300 hectares of horticultural land and provide ongoing diversified income for that iwi, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, and jobs for the future. No mean feat by them and a sensational project.

Let’s just go down the road a little bit to Kawerau. In Kawerau, the mayoral task force is doing incredible work getting our rangatahi and young people into work: 260 placements in three years of young people into jobs. This year’s target was 38 people. They tell me they’ll double that, and yet their funding has been reduced every year for three years. Heartland, Eastbay REAP—Gloria and her team—are feeding people, setting up courses, rattling people’s cages, and getting things done. They’re a fantastic bunch of people in there providing access to services and support for their community. Kawerau is the industrial heartland of the country, and we look forward to the new development from Forrester: $300 million investment into geothermal and renewable energy sources. Fossil-free fuel to replace coal, so we look forward to seeing what they can do for us.

Then we’ll move on—we’ll go around the way a little bit to Murupara, where Jamie and JD are giving their all for the rangatahi of the region and are now working on a project to get all the families in Murupara to get a vegetable garden, to learn to grow their vegetables, and for the pakeke they are raised vegetable gardens so they don’t have to bend down and get that. They believe that getting down there and getting into that dirt and that soil is great for them.

A little further south in Minginui, a movement is afoot to get the remotest parts of the region connected to the internet. They did some work in Kawerau, where they connected more than 1,630 students, and the whānau there paid for 1,110 devices themselves with no-default payments. The students from Te Whata Tau o Putauaki in Kawerau taught themselves to build robots and won regional and national competitions, and just recently placed second in an international competition where they built robots. And all due to being able to be connected to the internet.

In Gisborne, of course, the Toha Network and the East Coast Exchange—if you don’t know about them, look them up; they are fantastic. These people are the future of climate change action and our communities—born out of the cyclone crisis and self-funded with significant private investment. Mr Speaker, if you eat salad in this country, it most likely came from LeaderBrand in Gisborne, a fantastic organisation and just about to open their 11.5 hectare environmentally sustainable covered crop production with help from the PGF. And, of course, the Mātai research world-leading MRI scanning is leading the world in brain injury or concussion treatment.

The East Coast has much to offer, but I can’t go past Whakatāne, voted best small town for 2023; and Ōhope Beach, the best beach in New Zealand. It’s official; it is absolutely the best electorate in the country [Interruption] and I won’t take any argument from you lot on that one. Can I go past the parliamentary game just to finish off: the parliamentary game in Gisborne, Tairāwhiti, on 25 May where the parliamentary rugby and netball teams will compete against Federated Farmers at the wonderful institution of the Ngatapa Rugby and Associated Sports Club.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to take a moment to talk about a truly local issue in Christchurch, in Christchurch Central in particular. I mean, it’s one that’s actually hit the news, and I’ll take this opportunity to advocate for the Christchurch Cathedral. You know, I was there, and, in my maiden speech, actually, I spoke about looking out of the window of the office I then occupied and, out of one window, one building collapsed—the PGC building—and out of the other I saw the spire of that cathedral topple. It’s worth just thinking about the reality of earthquakes here. You know, the last member Dana Kirkpatrick talked about the disasters in the North, and I recognise that as well.

The cathedral’s arguably the last significant building that remains as, essentially, an indication that things aren’t finished. I’d invite every member here to come to Christchurch and look at the amazing—and I can’t help, I must mention that the current Speaker had something to do with the planning of the city rebuild, and I acknowledge that and the work that the prior Government before the Labour Government did there, and the further delivery that people like Megan Woods did as well. But the cathedral remains a problem. It’s fundamentally a private building—it is a part of the Anglican Church—but public funds have gone into it already. In my view, the church will hold it on trust for the people of Christchurch, and when it is rebuilt, because it will be rebuilt, it needs to be an open and community space. But the problem that we are facing now—and it’s a problem that’s been faced with a lot of earthquake repairs and rebuilds, especially of heritage buildings—is the fact that it’s clearly going to cost a lot more than was initially anticipated.

The trust entity, the cathedral entity, has, essentially, gone cap in hand to the public, to the ratepayer, to the taxpayer, to the church, to philanthropists, and said, “Look, we need to get together because leaving it there in the current state is really not an option. We’ve come too far to turn back now.” I absolutely endorse those people who, in the public arena and on social media and elsewhere, say, “We can’t just tip public money into projects like this, willy-nilly.”—there absolutely has to be a limit. But I know the Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage—I think he’s nodding because he has received a plaintive email from me saying, “Will you look at this?”

I hope that all of the members of Parliament who are in Christchurch will do that. And I absolutely hope that the members of Parliament who are part of the National Party and in Christchurch electorates will be speaking loudly in their caucus to say, “We need to look at this, we need to advocate for this.” Leeann Watson, who might not be a likely ally, who is the CEO of the chamber of commerce, has said, “We do not want this building to remain as a symbol of the past of Christchurch.” Christchurch, for a long time, was kind of branded by the cathedral, and there was nothing wrong with that. But the brand of Christchurch now is the amazing vibrancy that the Avon River / Ōtakaro River makes, the amazing things that go on in our university and in our wider city.

We do need to tidy up the cathedral. We absolutely need to engage with the wider community and have a mandate to do that. But my case today is that Government also has a part to play. It has put money into it. The Government, under my predecessor the MP for Christchurch Central and Megan Woods, have put $25 million into this project, which is now going to cost $248 million. The city’s put $10 million into it as well, the church has put in their insurance funds, and there are philanthropists out there who have put their hand in their own pocket for tens of millions of dollars as well. Now, I’m not suggesting that the Government should bear the lion’s share of that burden, but I think the funding ratios that have gone on in the past are a good way to look forward.

I hear the naysayers, that this is a church and we shouldn’t be funding religion, or it’s just a quaint—I’ve seen better buildings in English villages. But, at the end of the day, it’s a landmark in the centre of Christchurch and we need to see it restored and we need to see it open and a public and community space for all. I hope that this Government will consider that carefully. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Thank you to yourself and the House for the opportunity to pisser—to participate in this local debate—and it’s not even after the dinner break yet! So I want to talk about a local issue in my beautiful electorate of the Coromandel. Members and people watching this debate at home will know that we are coming to the end of what’s been a pretty good summer around the country, but it’s been a particularly good summer in the beautiful Coromandel. It’s the first summer in four seasons where we have had an uninterrupted opportunity to explore, enjoy, and make the most of everything that the beautiful Coromandel has to offer, and particularly so for our visitors.

We had two summers that were ruined by COVID and then, of course, the summer of Cyclone Hale and Cyclone Gabrielle, which impacted not only the Coromandel but many other parts of the country. We thought that when State Highway 25A was closed for almost a year and reopened quickly, thanks to the great work of the New Zealand Transport Agency’s (NZTA) contractors ahead of the time frame that NZTA had set and under budget, it would be the end of our major issues from Cyclone Hale and Cyclone Gabrielle. But, sadly, it’s not. Here we are almost 15 months after those devastating cyclones, and one of New Zealand’s most iconic tourist destinations—Cathedral Cove in the beautiful Coromandel at Hāhei—remains closed. Now, yes, there was some cyclone damage to the pathway that takes people down to the beach from the lookout, down quite a long and windy walk, and some damage has occurred, but, by engineering standards and by any other measure, it’s not that big a job to get it fixed.

I want to talk today about why it is that the Department of Conservation, in my view, has been so slack, so slow to get that track open. It’s a—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Talk to your Minister: Tama Potaka.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —well, the member for Christchurch Central talks about Tama Potaka. I want to talk about Tama Potaka, because he is the new Minister of Conservation, who is as good as his word. When I was in his ear before Christmas, saying, “Minister, you’re the new conservation Minister; you need to come and have a look at Cathedral Cove and see for yourself.”, he said, “Yes, Scott, I’ll be there early in the new year.” Well, I got a call from him on 1 January, saying, “I’m in your rohe. Would you like to have me visit tomorrow on 2 January?” So, as good as his word, he was there, early in the new year on 2 January, and he came and had a look for himself. We went and had a look and then about a week or so later, also as good as his word, we had the Minister for tourism, the Hon Matt Doocey, come to visit and have a look for himself. Those Ministers understand how important that track is not only to locals in the Coromandel, in Hāhei, but how important it is to our international tourist reputation and our total international tourist package. There are literally tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who want to come and walk that track and experience the beautiful Cathedral Cove experience, who currently cannot do it.

Well, the Department of Conservation had a very slow timetable. It wasn’t going to be until September of this year that they were even going to make a decision about what might eventually happen at the cove. Well, thanks to the good work of Tama Potaka, the new Minister of Conservation, I was delighted, on behalf of local businesses, tourist operators, and also the hundreds of thousands of visitors who want to come and see Cathedral Cove, that he has now committed to ensuring that his Department of Conservation officials have on his desk, in June, their plan for getting the track reopened for the coming summer season. Why is that important? Well, it’s important because many of those local businesses have to do sometimes up to about 80 percent of their annual turnover over a summer period. When we don’t have a good summer period, there isn’t an opportunity for those businesses to make that revenue up any other way. So having the track closed is a real problem.

I want to, in this debate, also make the point that this is land that was gifted to New Zealand, to all New Zealanders, by the Harsant family at Hāhei generously for the benefit of all New Zealanders. I think it’s beholden upon the Department of Conservation to actually get their act together, to pull finger, and to actually get ahead of the Minister’s timetable and see if we can get the track open sooner.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Mr Speaker, is Invercargill the most dangerous place in New Zealand or is it actually an opportunity for collaboration, community development, investment, and youth leadership?

SPEAKER: I don’t know. Would you like me to speak on that?

INGRID LEARY: Well, Mr Speaker, if you’ll indulge me, I will help you unlock that. If you have been reading the Southland Times or the Otago Daily Times or listening to Radio New Zealand, you might be left with the impression that Invercargill is a very dangerous city; that there are kids running rampant; that they burn cars and they have standover tactics and they hang around in the mall, some of them as young as 10 or 11. We’ve seen headlines, actually, from the Mayor of Invercargill wanting these children to be treated as adult criminals, and, actually, he called a public meeting, which I attended on Saturday night as the buddy MP.

I wasn’t sure what I was walking into, because my electorate of Taieri is up the road, and I was really concerned that I was going to walk into a massive problem of this huge youth problem. And, indeed, when people stood up, there was a whole parade of people appointed from the panel, handpicked in the audience, to vindicate the mayor’s stance that this is a very dangerous city and that these youth need real consequences. There were some harrowing stories. There were people who had had cars stolen, set fire to, and so on. And I don’t want to diminish their angst. But the one good thing that happened at this meeting—apart from the fact that there were about 150 people, so we had to move from a small room upstairs to downstairs, where it was fuller—was that the mayor did let every single person that wanted to address the audience speak. And there was some incredibly rich and authentic and generous sharing that went on.

What transpired was that there are many community groups there working with youth; that the Invercargill Initiative has shown that 23 percent of youth in Invercargill live in deprivation, which is much higher than the national average; that there are parents who work multiple jobs who find it very difficult to be at home; and that there are intergenerational issues around parenting, around violence, around poverty. There are sports interventions where kids can go and play sport to keep busy, but they happen to happen in the north of the city, and where the kids in the south who are wanting to play sport would love to join in, they can’t afford the transport to get up there.

There was only one youth voice in the room, and that was a really brave young woman called Paige. She was challenged about what she said, and she made the point that youth don’t feel safe to speak in those spaces. Now, I don’t know if that’s a general observation or if that’s particular to that meeting and to the way it was set up by the conveners of the meeting, but Paige insisted on evidence-based solutions. She talked about the link between the small number of people who commit youth crime and the high incidence of domestic violence and family violence. People spoke about the need for resourcing, about making sure that we tackle family violence. There were issues raised around public cuts: how is this investment going to happen? How are we going to prevent youth offending when there are cuts to the Public Service? The point was made that the earlier children are put into the criminal justice system the more likely it is they will go on to become recidivist offenders.

So as much as the council and the mayor and the local MP, Penny Simmonds, would love to have had a silver bullet to resolve this issue, it is multifaceted. The impression I was left with was that this is a community that really, deeply cares about the issue. It was such a shame that there wasn’t a safe space for youth to come in and contribute. But there are really active groups working there. There are churches. There were security guards. The council has said it is spending $2.2 million on security cameras. Paige made the point, “Why don’t you put that into prevention? Why don’t you put that into youth development?”

It was a 3½-hour meeting in Invercargill. I got to learn a lot about the community. I got to learn about the diversity there, the fact that people have families that have lived there for generations, and that they are a community that deeply care. I’m so proud to be the buddy MP, and I do hope that the next time this issue is reported on, the reporters do listen to all the voices and not just take the easy line, which is making the youth the fall guys for a problem that really belongs to the whole of our communities. This is a problem that’s not going to go away quickly. I can feel the passion and the commitment from the community. I am there to work alongside them, and I really look forward to seeing what steps we can make to ensure that everybody knows that Invercargill is a fantastic little city. Thank you.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I rise as the member for Southland. Just to quickly put it in a framework, Southland is the size—well, it’s bigger than Belgium. It covers a region which has five district councils covering different parts of it and two regional councils, so a huge area that stretches from Queenstown down to Ōwaka, Pounawea, Papatowai at the bottom and has much of Fiordland National Park in it and a good chunk of Central Otago.

With that, I have the Queenstown Lakes District—a good chunk of it is in my electorate, including the city of Queenstown. The Queenstown Lakes District, between 1996 and 2020, had an average annual population growth of 5.3 percent. That’s an annual average growth of 5.3 percent. To put that in perspective, that means the population doubles in just over 13 years. Not only that, in addition to the resident population, we have one of the highest numbers of visitors in New Zealand. In fact, in January this year the numbers at the airport hit record numbers, so more than we had in 2020. What that means, in real terms, is that the Queensland Lakes District is growing incredibly rapidly and has a lot of growing challenges that come with that. I was very proud to see the Minister Simeon Brown down in Queenstown last week to announce a $250 million transport package, that the coalition Government had agreed, to up the funding by $120 million to address some of those needs, although I would say that there is a lot more that needs to be done in that region, but I appreciate that we are in a challenging fiscal time.

With that growth, I also have a good chunk of Central Otago. If we look at the combined population of Central Lakes, that’s a resident population of 79,000, which is nearing the size of Palmerston North city. The peak day population—that’s resident and visitor—is 177,746, which is near equivalent to Hamilton city. So this is a very big population that we have that has rapidly grown and will continue to rapidly grow into the future, and, with that, we need a lot more roading infrastructure, we need three waters infrastructure, and we need a lot more housing and energy.

I’m going to, in the short time available to me, touch on farming. Farming is an incredibly important part of my region. I have sheep and beef farming, dairy farming, grain, and a lot more. I’m just going to touch on sheep and beef farming, because I’m hearing repeatedly from very experienced farmers that this is the toughest time they’ve seen in their sector since the 1980s. That has been confirmed by the latest Beef + Lamb report, which said the updated forecasts for profits will be down 54 percent, to an average of $62,600 per farm. That’s a 67 percent fall in farm profits from the 2021-22 year to levels not seen since the 1980s, except for the global financial crisis.

There has been no real recovery from China in terms of our demand for our products and the exports of red meat out of Australia have been bigger than forecast. On top of that, the on-farm costs as well as the inflationary impact of interest rates have been significant, so this is a very, very challenging time.

I’m proud to be part of the coalition Government that is working hard to reduce the red tape on farmers, that is working hard to develop its relationships around the world for alternative markets that we can sell our goods into.

I will also, in the time available, touch briefly on Southland roads. So Southland has the second-biggest roading network in New Zealand. We have a roading network that is a total of 4,969 kilometres in length. Just under 2,000 kilometres of those are sealed, and just under 3,000 kilometres are unsealed. We have 1,121 bridges, and, of those, at present, 68 bridges are either closed or weight restricted, and 134 of those bridges will require replacing by 2034. Again, recognising that there are big roading challenges across the country, there have been, obviously, big weather events, but I just want to signal that we do have some significant challenges with our bridges, which is also reflected in the Central Otago District Council, which has at least 30 bridges—17 percent of the network—that will be near the end of their useful life within the next 10 years, and roading costs have increased 10 to 20 percent within those years.

The last thing I’ll just touch on is Department of Conservation concessions—an incredibly important issue and I’m proud to have a conservation Minister who is focusing deeply on and has already been to Milford Sound to address our issues.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to take this opportunity to talk about my electorate Pōneke, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington Central, and the housing emergency that has become far too common here in our capital city.

Wellington’s rents are among the highest in the country. The average house price in Wellington is about $1 million, far out of reach for most people who live here. We have 2,395 people waiting for a home on the public housing wait-list, and homelessness is increasing, particularly at both ends of the age spectrum where you see more young people, more rangatahi sleeping on our streets, on Lambton Quay and Courtenay Place. But we’re also seeing more kaumātua and more older people represented in homelessness, sleeping in cars, overcrowding. That, to me, is a deeply shameful thing for our city.

The experience that renters in Wellington have of being too sick to work or study because of the old, mouldy, heritage-protected flats that we have to live in is far too common in Wellington. The experience of waiting in line with 100 others at every single flat viewing that you go to is far too common in Wellington. Having your landlord or property manager suck every single cent out of you that they can for supposed damages, not being able to do something as simple as use Blu Tack on the wall in your rental home without inciting absolute fury and rage from your landlord, having your rent put up despite no improvements to the home that you live in; these experiences are far too common in Wellington.

That can be attributed to the lack of public housing that we have here in Wellington. It’s been a long and fast abandonment and degradation of public housing here in Wellington, and the provision of public housing by our council and by Kāinga Ora has been an important part of the whakapapa of this city, acknowledging how important it is to have mixed communities where people from all different backgrounds are represented. We have the Gordon Wilson Flats sitting derelict and empty on The Terrace, which we can’t do anything about because they’re heritage protected. We have the Dixon Street Flats, home to over 100 public housing tenants, that has been closed and emptied due to its designation as an earthquake-prone building. We have the Granville Flats, owned by council and operated by Kāinga Ora, home to 144 tenants; that has been closed and soon to be demolished.

Our supply of public housing in Wellington has been in decline for a long time, and that means that all of the whānau and all of the children who are just waiting for the opportunity to start their lives and have a good life, with that home as the foundation to that start of their life, will be waiting even longer. So I want to use my five minutes today to encourage the Minister of Housing, who has paused the Arlington development in Mount Cook, which is 350 new public homes to be delivered—we desperately need those public houses, and my plea to Minister Bishop is that he will make sure that project is delivered, because there are high expectations from the city’s MPs, from the city council, from the regional council, and from our communities that that project will be delivered—and I will be focusing my energy and attention on making sure that is delivered.

We are a city that embraces public housing, which is a big flex given many communities around the country often oppose the presence of public housing in their neighbourhood. But we are a city that embraces the presence of public housing in our community. But we realise that there is money to be made in the absence of public housing, which is why there has been such a degradation of our public housing offering here in Wellington.

We can be the first city to end homelessness and to not have it in our streets, but, in order to do that, we need more public housing, we need to have the wraparound care that people need to live the best lives possible, and that is something that I know we’ll be very proud of into the future. Kia ora.

SPEAKER: I call Dan Bidois.

Dan Bidois: Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: Oh, hang on, sorry, my apologies.

Dan Bidois: No, it’s Cameron Luxton.

SPEAKER: I call Cameron Luxton, sorry, who was calling when Dan Bidois was sitting there quietly not calling.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): I appreciate that—thank you very much.

SPEAKER: I think the two of you look alike; that’s all!

CAMERON LUXTON: Both handsome gentlemen, I hope you mean! Mr Speaker, I appreciate you giving me this call because this speech has been a long time coming. I’m based in the Bay of Plenty electorate, and a large part of that electorate is in the Tauranga City Council area. We have gone a long time without democracy at our local government level. Government is better when decision makers are close to the ground and accountable to the public. And the decisions that have been made in Tauranga to the people living in the beautiful area Tauranga Moana do not feel like they have had accountable government. There have been many issues raised; in a five-minute call, I couldn’t possibly traverse them all, but it has been a great relief of mine to be part of a Government that is going to restore democracy to Tauranga—full democracy—on 20 July 2024.

Democracy was denied to Tauranga. In February 2021, the previous Minister of Local Government—oh, a few ago—was Nanaia Mahuta. She installed four commissioners. These commissioners were given a mandate—and I’m going to get to whether they achieved some of their terms of reference or not. But she extended their term, cancelling local government elections in 2022 for the people of Tauranga. We had no democracy. We watched the rest of the country vote. We wondered when we were going to get a chance to actually have a say.

I took part in a by-election, and this by-election for Tauranga was a great experience. I met many people of the Bay, and I talked to so many people who had each had a different concern, but the concern was growing about what the commission was up to. And it has come to pass that we have now got huge debt loads. We have got—you might like this one, Mr Speaker. The people of Christchurch, God bless them—a highly indebted council, unfortunately; I think it’s about $9,300 per ratepayer. Well, in Tauranga, we’re at $17,000 per ratepayer. We have the highest city rates for residential property and our commercial rates are growing rapidly. We have now, under the auspices and the decisions of the commissioners, agreed to hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure which is a “nice-to-have”, not a must-have. We have got a long-term plan which has got—you know, you can love and hate either part of it, but people didn’t feel like they were properly consulted, that they had a chance to put in what they thought should be done in their city. This is the sort of thing that happens when you don’t have decision makers close to the ground.

We saw this go to the head of some of the commissioners. Now, what happened recently is the chair of the commission—

Arena Williams: Great commissioner!

CAMERON LUXTON: Yeah, well, you might say that, Arena, but she also thought hybrid democracy was something that the people of Tauranga would want—unelected commissioners governing in a co-governance between unelected and elected decision-makers. Now, I would have to say that is an admission of failure. One of the terms of reference was to work with council to encourage quality candidates to stand. Now, that piece of media that the chair gave goes—and to prove that she felt that they hadn’t achieved that. On top of that, they were tasked with taking any other necessary steps to maintain confidence from the community in the council. I would say to you that that has not happened.

Democracy is coming back, but because we have got an out-of-cycle electoral system for our local government in Tauranga, there has been a change which has been asked for in the general election. My colleague on the other side of the House spoke about what she sees is the benefit of Māori wards. I see them as a divisive and very unfortunate thing in a 21st century democracy. We in this Government have voted to give councils the chance to repeal or have a referendum on local government having a Māori ward. Well, unfortunately for Tauranga, we’re going to have to wait, because of this out-of-cycle electoral system that has been put in place by the last Government.

With 10 seconds on the clock, I would just like to say that it is a relief to have democracy back in Tauranga. We shouldn’t have waited this long, but like my neighbours, I will be relishing casting my vote in July.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): The issue with which I wish to speak about in some seriousness in my community of Northcote is about crime. Nothing typifies the impact that this has had on my community more than the tragic killing of Joshua Tasi, a 28-year-old, 13 months ago and the impact that that had on his family, his loved ones, the first responders that had to deal with him, and those who knew him in our community and the wider community. Crime has had a devastating impact in the Northcote electorate. In addition to this incident, we’ve had kidnappings, assaults, shopliftings, break-ins, ram raids, and more.

Now, I want to speak with some seriousness about the positives that are going on in our community with respect to crime prevention. There’s some great initiatives in my community. For example, the Kaipātiki Youth Development Trust looks at identifying at-risk kids, or kids that have offended, and trying to provide mentorship and other types of wraparound services to keep these kids on a solid footing. There’s initiatives like Steps to Success, that the Kaipātiki Communities Facilities Trust organises, that provides youth with some skills and motivation to get out there and apply for jobs.

There’s truancy services that do a wonderful job in our community in making sure our kids turn up to school on a daily basis. There’s initiatives like Community Patrol—which I’m a member of, or try to be—that do a fantastic job volunteering in our community and patrolling the streets, often at night, to make sure our communities are kept safe. And not just in my community but there’s some great initiatives throughout Auckland. For example, the Vanguard Military School, which looks at offering youth who aren’t succeeding in mainstream and may end up actually offending, a way of engaging in education and training and getting ahead in life.

Now, I’m extremely happy that we’ve started down the pathway in our 100-day plan to address rising crime to make our community safer. For example, two initiatives I wish to speak about: the young offender military academy programme, which is going to start later on this year and it’s going to be trialled in Auckland. That is based off the Limited Services Volunteer programme that is actually in my colleague the Hon Chris Penk’s electorate up in Whenuapai. That is a great initiative and I look forward to that being established.

We’ve also looked at giving police more powers, which is a great start. But I do want to speak to where we need more support. What we need more support to address rising crime and make our communities safe is in two key areas. The first is the reactive actions and the second is in the proactive actions. Reactive ones include restoring consequences for crime, making sure there are, in fact, tougher sentences—we’ve got the Minister of Justice here who will be introducing laws to limit the amount judges can deduct from offenders when they’re sentenced. Those are great initiatives which I think will go a long way to reducing crime in our community.

But there’s also some proactive measures that we can focus on, and I think the biggest one we can focus on a proactive way is offering youth a way out of their current predicament, and that is by encouraging apprenticeships and encouraging further training opportunities. The one issue that I’ve had given to me about the military academies—which I know and I’ve spoken to the Minister of Police about—is making sure that there’s pastoral care once these kids come out of these academies. So it’s all very well for them to go on and get this great training and mentoring, but when they get placed back into their home environment they’re often back reoffending. So we need to make sure that there’s actually good pastoral care to help these kids as well.

We need to drive out the gangs of our communities—which there are in my community as well as others—and also tool up community organisations; organisations like Big Buddy that do a great job of mentorship. So we’ve got a lot to do in law and order, I’m happy with the Government’s approach, and thank you.

HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have the great privilege—and it was a squeaky, lucky privilege—of representing Mt Albert, because I have a very, very slim majority. I’ve lived in that area for 32 years, so you can imagine how incredibly wonderful it is to be the MP for an area that you have such a strong commitment to and know like the back of your hand.

I want to talk today about a couple of things which, really, I’ve thought about in terms of the role that I’ve got, in terms of the value that I can really bring to the area. There’s this interesting role that you’re playing—I sometimes think our role is a bit like an octopus: it’s got all these tentacles, all these places you can go. One of the big disciplines that you have to bring to the job is making sure you’re not just exploring things; you’re bringing it back to the hub of what you’re doing so that you’re actually producing stuff for your community. Because we’re in central government, there are some things which we can have a big influence on and some where we act much more as guides and leaders and encouragers in our community.

So I want to give the House an example of one of the ones where I think that an MP can make a real difference, and that’s the housing policy in an area. Now, one of the things I’ve become increasingly interested in is long-term rental, and that’s happening in my community thanks to Simplicity, which is a KiwiSaver provider. It is building houses that aren’t for ownership; they are for long-term, secure rental. Now, I have relatives who will never be able to afford to buy a house. I don’t come from a family with lots of money, and I was lucky enough to buy a house when they were much cheaper. So I have relatives who’ve never owned a house. If you have long-term rental, you have a possibility if you are one of those people to actually have a home, not have, as my Green colleague was talking about, somebody worrying about where you’re putting the Blu Tack. What Simplicity do so well is they maintain those houses and they provide that kind of secure rental. There’s a huge development going up in Morningside Drive; I think it’s 256 houses going in there, and there’s another one further in the electorate of 56 houses. So this is providing ordinary people with an alternative to ownership.

It’s actually really, really helpful for our economy too, because it is allowing people to spend their money in the productive sector. They can put it into their small businesses, they can put it into the sharemarket, which actually helps us build businesses in New Zealand. Housing is very dubious in terms of what it does if we all invest in housing, so long-term rental is a definite part of the solution. We had a whole lot of things when the Labour Party was part of the Government which were to incentivise this, and I’d urge the new Government to keep on thinking about new incentives, because some of those incentives have been taken away because of recent changes. So it’s really, really important we keep our eye on this ball, because it’s important to communities like mine.

I want to just briefly touch on some of the other things that make a community great, where we might not have the same influence but I certainly recognise the value of them. One is gardens, actually. There’s a garden called Sanctuary Gardens, and there’s a big dispute at the moment about it because its land was promised as a garden and there is an issue about whether the land will be used for that purpose, because it’s in the middle of a housing development. It’s something I can’t influence in the same way, but I can encourage all the parties to think very seriously about the value of that garden to the community, because there are people participating in that community and they bring great joy to lots of people, those gardens. They allow people to get in there and work in the garden, and that’s incredibly good for them. It’s got an archaeological significance, that garden, because I’ve seen some of the things that have come out of it because it’s been a gardening spot for apparently a very, very long time because it’s in perfect soil.

I’d also like to talk about the small businesses in the community. They’re so important. They give Mt Albert, the Mt Albert electorate, some of the best food, I think, in the world. It’s a wonderful place for food. It is reasonable, it makes our city vibrant, and it is punching above its weight. So a shout-out to the small businesses as well. Thank you.

SCOTT WILLIS (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would just like to put it on the record that I am a proud South Islander. I was born in Dunedin Hospital sometime in the 20th century, but now Ōtepoti Dunedin and Otago residents need healthcare facilities for the 21st century.

The deep South is so often forgotten by Wellington, so when the previous Government announced plans for Dunedin Hospital, people were over the moon. That was great news. Here finally was a Government doing more than just talk; Labour and the Greens putting money down for the largest hospital rebuild in New Zealand—for the deep South.

Hon Mark Patterson: The Greens weren’t even part of it. I didn’t see you in that coalition.

SCOTT WILLIS: The old hospital, still in use, has a clinical services building in a parlous state, with leaks, asbestos, and it’s beyond end of life—an actual trigger for the Dunedin Hospital. Yeah, I think New Zealand First might have been involved there, as well.

In the deep South, we need healthcare for the regional population. We need a major tertiary teaching hospital with a space for medical, nursing, and allied healthcare training. We need buildings that can cope with the future pandemic and environmental disasters and be able to continue. My father-in-law, who’d retired from an illustrious career in surgery, was part of a working group looking at final detailed design—how many sinks, how many doors, where they should be placed—right up until Labour began trimming the budget and causing a major redesign. Budget savings; trimmed clinical wards, operating theatres, radiology—promises may win you friends, but failure to deliver will turn them against you. The Dunedin City Council undertook a great campaign called “They save. We pay.” I wonder whether that had some impact on the election result.

During the election campaign, I was so heartened to hear National’s support for fully funding the Dunedin Hospital, for undoing the cuts that Labour had made, and it’s a real pleasure when we find agreement across the House and support for our green commitment to the deep South. So National promised—indeed, committed—to reinstate the PET scanner, to replace the cut aged-care beds, to build the original number of operating theatres. National promised at least an additional $30 million on top of the $1.6 billion. It’s a costly exercise, and it needs to be done right.

This Government has told us repeatedly how bad things were prior to the election. The PM says he’s focused on delivering the things that matter to our communities. I heard that this afternoon. The PM has said that people need to live better lives and that he’s going to get things done and deliver better outcomes, yet I have submitted many questions to Minister Reti seeking a response on whether National will honour its pre-election commitment, and the Minister will not give a straight answer. We have an infrastructure deficit and an information deficit.

Why can’t this Government give the kind of basic reassurance that the whole of Dunedin and Otago is desperate to hear? After all, they have given a massive tax break to the landlords of student flats in north Dunedin. So why can’t they just fund a decent hospital, which they promised in the election campaign? When folks in Dunedin count the cost of this election, what do they see? A Government that has given tax breaks to landlords, that’s mislaid their cast-iron promise to fund our hospital, and that’s repealed three waters, leading to looming massive rises to rates. So we don’t need any more word salads. Is the Minister simply as hollow as the Prime Minister?

It’s tragically true that this Government is all about slogans over action. But for once—for once—it would be wonderful if this Government would simply honour its promise to fully fund the Dunedin Hospital. The deep South is watching. Promises may win you friends, but failure to deliver will turn them against you. So that’s my question to the Government: will you commit to your promise?

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour—Māngere): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am very pleased to take this call, because I want to talk about Māngere. I know that across the House, you all come to Māngere. Why? Because the airports are in Māngere.

My issue is a local issue. I want to zone in on vapes and vaping stores and vape harm. We have 21 schools in our rohe. We have 11 primary schools, three intermediates, and the rest are our high schools and our kura. In a recent meeting that I have had with school principals across the rohe, we have great alarm—year 4, year 5, year 6 in our primary schools.

So I want to help highlight the problem for the members right across the House, because it’s actually quite timely that in today’s Dominion Post, the Minister, Minister Costello, talks about—it’s reported in this article that there has been a reduction of staff who know the business in terms of regulatory and compliance.

In talking to a number of the deputy principals across the rohe, it is alarming that young children of year 4, year 5, year 6 are now bringing these little devices into schools, and school principals are saying that one dedicated head teacher needs to deal with the problems of our young tamariki.

I wanted to highlight this issue today, because I know a lot of people across Tāmaki-makau-rau, across the country—and I’m specifically talking about adults, who have the sound mind to make decisions, but we are talking about our tamariki, the future of this country. In Māngere, we have hundreds if not thousands of our little people in year 4, year 5, year 6 that are being exposed. The principals have told me where they get these devices from and the behavioural problems—schools are not resourced to deal with this type of issue.

So what I wanted to highlight today in my time was how Minister Costello talks about the Government of the day is going to strengthen the regulatory compliance and enforcement regime around vaping and tobacco sales. Really, as a member of Parliament, I’m concerned in my local rohe that our young babies are being exposed to this vaping. We have got far too many vaping shops in Māngere, and I’m sure right across South Auckland, very similar instances.

But when a former senior health ministry staffer says that there’s going to be cuts—and I know that this Government has talked about tax cuts—this Government is making choices that is harming the flow-on effect. Can I say that when you lose dedicated, well-trained, well-evidenced regulatory staff who deal with these types of problems, going around local communities and looking at vaping stores and just checking—because on the Ministry of Health website, it’s really easy to become a specialist vape retailer.

My plea: the Government needs to consider that the policies that you are making, these tax cuts, the flow-on effect to our tamariki in Māngere—this a really serious problem.

In my time that is left, I want to highlight the difference, because in Māngere as well we had some good news. We had some good news that one of our kura is the highest-achieving kura in the country with regards to NCEA results—highest-achieving kura for 2023.

So my plea is that in suburbs like Māngere where you’ve got a number of challenges regarding socio-economics, this is a problem that we do not want. How do we work together across the House? These vaping devices, they’re poison. It’s really poisoning our tamariki’s brain development. I’m not a medical specialist, but I’m highlighting as a parent the dangers when we take our eyes off regulatory and compliance for this poison product that is sold in street corner dairies. We have a massive problem looming before us. So that is my plea to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for my time.

SPEAKER: There’s three minutes left.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I really appreciate the opportunity to take a call on what is a really important local issue for my electorate of Nelson. I want to take the short time I have available to talk about Maitai School.

Maitai School is a school for students with significant learning disabilities, students with intellectual disabilities, but also many of them have significant physical disabilities and they need specialist education provision. The school has been working on a rebuild for nearly 10 years. When I visited the school, you could see exactly why the rebuild of the school was just so necessary. There was a point a few years ago, where the school had to build an off-site toilet block because there wasn’t actually a proper toilet block for students who used a wheelchair. This is the severe nature of the state of the buildings.

The school has three satellites, where they actually provide the education provision to their students but within a mainstream environment. It’s such a fantastic way of the students being able to wear a local school uniform, participate in local activities, but still receive the specialist education that they need. They have three satellites: one is at Henley Primary School in Richmond; one, a new one, which we opened in Tāhunanui School last year; and the other is due to be worked on at Nayland high school, but that rebuild is currently at risk—so too is the full rebuild of the school on another site at Salisbury School location, which is also due for a rebuild.

So, in 2019, the Labour Government announced a rebuild of Salisbury School and Maitai School on the site of Salisbury School. What happened, though, was we had some massive challenges around the schools co-locating and which part of the site they would be on. So the school came to me as the local MP in 2022, pleading for support. So myself and the then Minister Jan Tinetti visited the school and engaged heavily with the Ministry of Education, and we actually got that rebuild back on track. It had gone off the rails a little bit.

Hon Members: Back on track.

RACHEL BOYACK: We got it—the Labour Party got it back on track.

We have been working for the last two years. In November last year, the school submitted a Budget bid. That rebuild is now on hold. That’s appalling. It is about the Government’s choices. Now, you can say what you like about whether we do a review of the rebuild of all the schools that we need to do, but there should have been ring-fencing for students with severe intellectual and physical disabilities. So I’m calling on the Minister to come to the meeting on Thursday in Nelson so that we, instead of tax cuts for landlords, can rebuild Maitai School.

SPEAKER: The time for this debate has concluded. The House will suspend for the dinner break.

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

Bills

Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members, the House is resumed on the interrupted debate on the third reading of the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Health): I rise to speak in support of the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill. I recall, the last time I spoke on this piece of legislation, I had an oncoming cold, which then I was punished significantly by after speaking about the bill, and was considerably congested for several days. So I hope the same does not jinx me again today.

We’ve touched at length regarding the introductions to legislation, which is widely supported across the House. It is a simple and logical step towards providing a solution that is necessary. The reclassification is a small step. It is, as has been reflected in the House, somewhat frustrating that it is such a protracted process to achieve this outcome, but I think it’s important to go back and look at the logic behind why this amendment occurred and why the reclassification occurred in the first instance, to defend those decisions and to demonstrate, largely, that as a House we have an opportunity to continuously review and reflect on what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and to revisit those decisions when it’s necessary.

When methamphetamine first touched on the New Zealand crime scene, we were not prepared for it as a country, and we were not prepared for it across the board in terms of our ability to manage the criminal component, the health risks, and the drug management. It was an unprecedented, addictive drug that methamphetamine brought to New Zealand, and as a result, we reacted as a country in the best way we knew how. At the time, pseudoephedrine was a contributing component to the manufacture of methamphetamine. I know that has been discussed regarding the risk of reintroducing or reclassifying this medicine back into the market, but I think that as we’ve learnt as time has gone by, the manner in which we receive methamphetamine into our criminal elements in New Zealand has changed so markedly and methamphetamine has become so cheap to produce and so prevalently produced that the risk presented by pseudoephedrine bought legitimately or obtained legitimately from the markets to be used to manufacture methamphetamine really isn’t the risk that it would be. As has been reflected on by members on this side of the House, it is not commercially viable to do that. It is also a risky process and a difficult process to do, and the risk that it presents is relatively minimal.

The important thing to recall is that we are not introducing it uncontrolled. We are introducing it, or reclassifying it, with supports around how it will be used, how it will be managed, and how it will be regulated for importation to prevent those large-scale importations getting into the wrong hands. So, again, we have controls and balance in place, and I think the approach that’s been taken is logical and sensible.

The timing could not be more appropriate: we are hitting the flu season. I come from a family heavily afflicted with respiratory issues and asthma and the likes, and a pseudoephedrine decongestant will be a lifesaver to our comfort levels as we hit the winter season. So I think, hopefully, as we reach Royal ascent on this piece of legislation, the timing will be excellent in terms of being able to provide some relief to our suffering communities during the winter season.

I think I’m heartened, to some degree, that we have been able to collectively, across the House, look at this issue and take some consideration that we are heading in the right direction, that logic has prevailed, and that we’re doing something sensible and suitable to reflect. I suppose, to go back, it’s a really small component. We are reclassifying it from one classification to another to enable it to still be regulated and controlled but to be able to be marketed and used as it’s supposed to be, sold and purchased through pharmaceutical premises, and to be ensured that we are maintaining a capture of information as necessary for those who are purchasing it.

The reality is that methamphetamine will remain a significant risk to us, and we have talked largely about crime and criminality in this country and how we are to be able to pivot and respond more sensibly and logically around the prevention and reduction of methamphetamine harm in New Zealand society. But the reality is that pseudoephedrine has long since passed as being a contributor to that criminal component, and I think that we have achieved a logical and sensible response in what we’re achieving. It is a good cold and flu medication. It is a helpful product. It is necessary for us as a society to be able to look back at the decisions we’ve made and applaud ourselves, because I think at the time we did react well and appropriately and it was well timed in terms of what we did. Now we need to move on, and we need to look at focusing our energies where they need to be and focusing our resources where they need to be and ensuring that we are supporting the health of New Zealanders. I hope that this is a demonstration of how we can continue to work effectively to review our position on a range of issues and work cooperatively across the House to come up with sensible solutions.

It seems bizarre that we’ve had to go through such a long process, but I think when it comes to drugs, medicines, and those products that have the potential for creating criminal harm in New Zealand, we do take the time to pause and analyse and reflect on what we’re trying to do, and I think that’s what we’ve done here; we’ve really taken the time to analyse what we’re focusing on, which is the health of New Zealanders, and balancing it with the ability to control crime and the adverse impacts of really dangerous drugs that are being flooded into our market, and that we continue to be able to pivot and respond and react as we move forward, battling what is a significant scourge on our society.

I think that we have the ability to afford protections—and I know there’s been discussion around the ability to secure these drugs in the pharmacies in safes, but the practicality has to win out, and I think, again, the practicality has won out in terms of a logical approach as to how we deal with the sale of these drugs. On the crime element—and we’ve touched on it before—pharmacies have the option to not stock these items if they believe they have a higher risk, but I think that we are moving forward as a society and that we are not going to prevent businesses from trading legitimately for fear of crime. I think we have to be a lot more sensible about putting in protections and ensuring that we have a strong approach to law and order so businesses can do their businesses legitimately and we, for fear of the impacts of crime, are not restricting what they can do. I think that’s another balance that we need to strike as we move forward.

So I think, logically, we have achieved a good outcome here. Generally, looking at the debate we’ve had so far, we are taking a sensible and logical approach. We are producing an answer for the winter season coming ahead. We are reviewing decisions that we’ve made historically, and we have not been constrained by that, so we have the ability to move forward and effectively deliver a practical solution. I think and I hope that we have delivered a solution that demonstrates our ability to work cooperatively, listen to the public, listen to the people of New Zealand, and actually deliver a good solution for New Zealanders with the winter season ahead. So I take great pleasure in commending this bill.

TAKUTAI TARSH KEMP (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I take the last call for Te Pāti Māori on this piece of legislation. What I want to do is actually paint the picture of what this legislation means to us in our communities, our vulnerable communities, our Māori communities, and just share really what it’s truly like to be on the ground with whānau on the daily, experiencing what the impact of this drug has. P destroys our whānau. P is a killer of our māmā, our pāpā, our nannies, our koroua, our brothers, our sisters, our aunties, our uncles, and our cousins. This drug is a killer in our communities, and it’s available on every street corner. If you come to my local community, it’s everywhere. This legislation allows it to be even more accessible and puts it into the hands of our whānau who don’t need this drug. It’s already killing our families.

Te Pāti Māori don’t support this piece of legislation; we oppose it. Why? Because of the harm that it does to our whānau and to our communities right across Aotearoa. So we don’t support this piece of legislation. Why? Because we’re all about protecting our whakapapa. We’re all about ensuring that our mokopuna have the best of their whānau around them for generations and generations to come. And we know that it’s our people that are the ones that are impacted the most by this drug.

Now, it’s hypocritical, really, from this Government—to know that they’re lowering the class of this drug so it’s more accessible for medication during the winter wellness. This is just going to allow more things to come—increased crime. It’s another avenue for the ram raids to happen. Our pharmacists are telling us they don’t want to put it on their on their shelves. It’s not that they don’t want medication out there for our whānau to have access to, but it’s the risk that comes with the safety of their shops and of their staff by having it available.

We don’t need this drug in our communities. We have enough issues amongst our whānau. On the daily, in my mahi, when I was the CEO of Manurewa Marae, a lot of these families visited our marae for help. They need kai. They need housing. They need drug awareness programmes. What we’re not seeing in this piece of legislation are enough solutions on how we help those whānau that need the support now and who are already impacted by this drug.

This drug kills our whānau. This drug breaks down and destroys whānau units. It’s going to increase crime, it’s going to increase youth offending, and it’s all going to be at the forefront and the brunt of Māori communities that have to prop up our whānau that need support in order to have safety for their whānau.

Te Pāti Māori oppose this piece of legislation. We want to ensure that our whānau are kept safe, that we are making mokopuna decisions for future generations. We know that our kaumātua and our tamariki are hit the hardest, but we also need to make sure that they are safe and they are protected. That’s why we will be opposing this piece of legislation. Kia ora.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. This is my first speech on this piece of legislation through the House, the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill. The Green Party has been very consistent and clear in why we are supporting this bill. Firstly, just to get on the Hansard record what this bill is actually doing, it is changing pseudoephedrine to a class C controlled drug instead of a class B—a downgrading, if you like. And so, as a class C controlled drug, pseudoephedrine will then be available without prescription but will have significant restrictions, such as at the import and export control level.

I want to acknowledge that the member Casey Costello has just also run us through some of the controls and, I guess, protections for drug harm that have been wrapped particularly around this piece of legislation. I too am one of the many members of this House whose direct whānau has been very dangerously impacted by, particularly, the use of meth and P—and, clarifying, pseudoephedrine is affiliated to the danger of that drug. What has been really, really clear is that a harm reduction approach, therefore, is the most sensible and evidence-based approach that the Government can be taking, including to pseudoephedrine. We would actually like to see more of this approach from this Government.

I understand, in the speeches from the Government and the honourable member whose bill this is—the speeches have put up and have communicated the driver behind this bill as being more about lessening the restrictions and about accessibility. What the Greens are supporting in this bill is the consistency with taking a harm reduction approach, and consistency with previous positions that we have held.

Where I do agree with Te Pāti Māori, in terms of the harm reduction, is a harm reduction approach absolutely requires that we look at the context of drug harm. It means making sure that our community wellbeing approach is prioritised. Therefore, that does mean we have to make sure that we have got adequate, quality, affordable housing; incomes; health services—at the very least. I do acknowledge Takutai Tarsh Kemp’s speech in terms of the experience and the work that places like Manurewa Marae have, trying to fill those gaps—trying to fill the wellbeing gaps. What we would like to see, alongside a harm reduction approach, which, actually, I neglect—let me be clear: it is not to follow a straight, narrow criminalisation approach, because that does end up impacting on low-income Māori and Pasifika communities, for example. What we would like to see alongside a non-criminalisation approach to drugs is a public health approach providing more addiction supports and more of the wellbeing supports that I’ve just talked about—housing, social supports, income, etc.

So, yes, while we support this bill in opening up access for pseudoephedrine, we have different opinions as to why we are supporting this bill, which are, clearly, about an evidence-based, public health, harm minimisation approach to pseudoephedrine. We look forward to this Government providing more of the environmental supports that need to go around a drug harm support. It has been shown, time and time again, that a criminalisation approach does not support harm reduction and does not support addiction becoming less harmful for people.

So it is my honour to be able to state clearly in the House our position for supporting this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam): It is my great honour to rise and talk about the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill. I just want to commend the Health Committee, of which I’m the deputy chair, for their great work on this bill. I might be a little bit biased!

This bill is, really, quite a simple bill. It’s quite a small change, but it actually promises to have a great enhancement for the wellbeing of the people of New Zealand. I actually think it’s quite ironic, since it’s actually treating the symptoms of a virus, which is so very small but can have such a devastating effect on people. I think we all know what it’s like to have a cold or the flu. I think statistics would tell us we’d have, on average, two to four colds or flus a year, and since it’s been about 10 years since pseudoephedrine was available in New Zealand—I was just doing a bit of rough calculation as some of the previous speakers were speaking—I actually calculated that that would probably put us at about 52 weeks over those 14 years. For one year of those 14 years, we have probably been suffering the effects of cold and flu, so I think it’s about time we actually do have effective medication to treat some of those symptoms. And I will point out that it does just treat the symptoms; it doesn’t treat the underlying cause. But it is a very, very effective medication.

Now, this bill has gone through the select committee process, as I mentioned. We had submissions from 169 individuals and nine organisations. Those were a wide range of submissions—most of them were in favour—and that also included submissions from pharmacists. And we’ve heard some of the concerns that others have mentioned here, but it is important to note that, in that select committee, a lot of those submissions were in favour of this medication. I will also point out, as others have pointed out, that this isn’t like Fisherman’s Friend, where you can go and pick it up from the corner dairy; it is still going to be a classified pharmaceutical drug, and you will need to go to the pharmacist to get it. That does help with the checks and balances.

I know some people would have said that it should possibly be a prescription medication—that that would be a better approach to take—but, actually, technically, that’s what it is currently. Technically, it’s available under prescription, but that has meant there’s a very small market, and so it has been withdrawn pretty much from New Zealand. A lot of the pharmaceutical companies have let their product approval lapse, and so they no longer bring the product into New Zealand; so we can no longer benefit from it. And I think probably some of us that have lived longer than 14 years know the benefits of it. I think it’s part of the human condition to actually know what it’s like to suffer from a cold or flu. I would say that, but, actually, every living thing that we know can be infected by viruses. So maybe it’s not just us humans.

But, look, there’s a number of studies and probably a lot of expert opinion, and actually personal opinion, that this medication is probably one of the most effective medications to release nasal congestion and cold symptoms. And while there are alternative medications out there, I would say they don’t even really come close to actually giving the relief that pseudoephedrine-containing cold and flu medications do. I’d also like to point out that this is not something that’s unique to New Zealand; there’s a number of countries where it is available—the likes of Australia, the UK, Canada. They all have these medications available in a similar sort of regime, and they can manage some of the negative side effects; so I think we can too.

Now, cold and flu, people might kind of scoff at it, but it is a huge cost to us as a country and also for our quality of life. I remember just a few years back—I have two young daughters—when they started going to childcare, the number of colds and flus that just seemed to come one after the other. There’s nothing worse than trying to look after two toddlers when you yourself are actually heavily affected by a cold. So this is going to be great, great news for parents who have toddlers who are going through that cold and flu season and who have just started childcare—and it’s going to be cold after cold after cold. So this is going to be great news for them.

Of course, I appreciate people will say, “Well, if you’re sick, you should stay at home”, and that is true. But if you’re a young parent, if you’re a sole trader, often you don’t have the choice just to stay at home. We do have a lot more knowledge now, in the general public, about viruses and the ways to protect ourselves with washing our hands, wearing masks, and things like that, but I appreciate that certain members of our society actually can’t just sit down and do nothing just because they’ve got a cold.

Now, of course, the best way to actually treat a cold is actually prevention. I will just bring the House’s attention to a press release by the Minister of Health that came out on 2 April—it was a week ago today—and that was reinforcing the importance of vaccination against flus. In that press release, the Minister of Health highlighted the massive impact that these have on our health system over winter and that we need to take preventative measures to try and protect the most vulnerable people from getting colds. And so that, of course, is now available to people that are over the age of 65, pregnant, those who have mental illness or addiction, and for children and adults likely to get very sick with flu because of a health condition. So it is very important that we try to protect our communities from cold and flu, but we’re never really going to properly, effectively eliminate cold and flu. So then we need suitable medications so that we can actually have a productive economy and also have that quality of life.

Now, I do just want to mention that there is the concern that some people might use this to turn it into other drugs, methamphetamines in particular, and that was probably really the big thing that we heard in the select committee against this medication. But I think, as we clearly heard, gangs in New Zealand have actually come up with alternative sources for methamphetamines. And I think, in one of the previous readings, we heard about the many hundreds of tonnes that have been intercepted coming to Australia and New Zealand over the last couple of years. That has really changed the way that drugs have been taken in New Zealand. Since the ban of pseudoephedrine, we’ve actually seen the availability of methamphetamines increase. We’ve seen the price absolutely decrease, making it kind of not an economically viable approach to make drugs from pseudoephedrine. So, while it is a concern, and there may be small groups that do use it, I think we need to be mindful of that and try and minimise the harm which has already been talked about.

Also we’ve talked about crime and the safety of pharmacists. Once again, I will just point out that, in the select committee, there was a number of bodies representing pharmacists that were in approval of it. Pharmacists don’t need to stock it if they don’t think it is suitable for their stores. There was also talk about lock and key. We have heard that that is not practical for this medication, and, really, it was the regulations that blocked this medication. It wasn’t completely banned. It could have been used, but the regulation stopped it being easily accessible. And I think, really, when we talk about this drug, it’s actually about making sure that New Zealanders can have access to a really effective drug during those horrible cold and flu seasons. And, as I said earlier, in the last 14 years, we’ve probably had a year of our lives that have been affected by it.

So, while we do need to keep an eye on the negative side of things, I do think this is striking a very good balance between safety and having an effective drug. It’s not just going to be the free-for-all that some may suggest; there are still rules and regulations, whether it be the import of it or the selling of it. It’s going to be in a pharmacy. It’s not going to be in your corner dairy. It’s not going to be in a supermarket. And I think this kind of does make a very good balance between the two, and I look forward to cold and flu medications that have pseudoephedrine being available in New Zealand, because it is really known as the good stuff. So I am really happy to commend this bill to the House.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): It’s great to hear that the previous member, Dr Hamish Campbell, has so much concern for all New Zealanders about cold and flu symptoms. I really have to question, though: which New Zealanders is he concerned for? He mentioned 2 April as a date when the flu vaccine would be available to New Zealanders; actually, under the previous Labour Government, the most vulnerable group—Māori aged 55 to 64—were able to get that flu vaccine for free. This is no longer available. I’m raising this because the previous speaker mentioned it. So I have to ask the question: which New Zealanders does this Government care about? Clearly they care about cold and flu symptoms. And I’m pleased that previous speakers have recognised that, actually, what pseudoephedrine does is mask the symptoms, and that is useful. On the balance of looking at the benefits and the risks, we are supporting this.

But I have to say to the Government members: please, watch this space, because there are issues around the risks of stocking pseudoephedrine, that we had solutions for that we workshopped in the Health Committee, that we provided an Amendment Paper for, and that had been rejected, to do with the safe storage. The Government has rejected it, and I just say watch this space, because I think it’s going to be interesting to see what happens with that. We have codeine stored under safe storage, under lock and key, and there are pharmacies that will make decisions about whether they want to stock pseudoephedrine, but the staff who work there don’t have a choice about that. So, really, our belief, on this side of the House, while we cautiously support this, is that there should have been safeguards to keep them safe.

When the previous speaker and others referred to pharmacists saying it wasn’t practical to keep these medications under lock and key, when we drilled down, as Opposition members, to who was consulted, there was a focus group of less than 10 medical health professionals, and some of those were pharmacists. We had a revelation from one of the officials that that could be any number between two and 10. So I don’t think that’s indicative of the whole pharmacy profession.

I’m a little concerned at the cavalier approach of the Minister. The select committee time to be able to hear submissions was very short. We heard a dismissive response about people shopping around to buy pseudoephedrine in an orchestrated way to make it for communities that might be wanting to make methamphetamine; he said, “Oh, I’m going to keep a close eye on it.” But there is no mechanism by which to do that, unless there is a register, so that was nonsensical. And he did not want to investigate more into the communities that are impacted by this. I really want to tautoko to the fact that there are communities who are heavily impacted by methamphetamine, and the consequences are very real, and also to the New Zealand Drug Foundation for the excellent submission it made. That helped Opposition members, I think—certainly in the Labour Party—on the balance, support this bill.

The other unease I have is just the assumptions that are being made, particularly from the member the Hon Casey Costello about the ease of methamphetamine at the border. If that is the case, we should not be cutting the Government expenditure for Customs officers by 7.5 percent, making it easier for methamphetamine to come in, as has been reported by the Public Service Association, who are saying that this puts New Zealand at risk. There were assumptions about the rationality of drug users, and there were assumptions about the evidence of binders that, as a select committee, we didn’t really get the opportunity to interrogate, because the officials were under so much time pressure.

My final comments are that Associate Minister Seymour, basically, admitted in the select committee that this was a political decision, to change the classification. So be it. I would say to him that the storage question and the question of safety of pharmacies and pharmacists and the people who work there is also a political decision. So I would urge him to watch this space. I don’t wish for any harm to come to anyone, but if there are ram raids, then that is on his shoulders.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): Thank you. This is my third and final contribution to this bill, and I rise to support it. Make no mistake: the National-led coalition Government is committed to improving the health outcomes of all New Zealanders. We recently announced five health targets: a focus on faster cancer treatment, improved immunisation rates, shorter stays in emergency departments, shorter wait times for first specialist assessments, and shorter times for elective treatment. These targets will support the delivery of better health outcomes of all New Zealanders and improve the performance of our health service throughout the country.

Today, reclassifying pseudoephedrine from a class B2 to a class C3 controlled drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 is another example that our Government is working hard to improve the health outcomes of all New Zealanders. This allows cold and flu products containing pseudoephedrine to be sold without a prescription.

Sleep is like a medicine for the immune system, ultimately helping you to make a full recovery from an illness. Too often, New Zealanders suffer with cold and flu symptoms, such as a runny and blocked nose, leading to loss of sleep, and they can feel exhausted for almost up to two weeks. Impairment of sleep can lead to serious cold symptoms, and cold symptoms can actually impair sleep—a cycle developed that must be broken in order to permit fast and efficient recovery. Pseudoephedrine is a tried and tested medication with a number of uses, including as an effective decongestant, so it stops running noses or resolves blocked noses.

For me, personally—and, I believe, for a lot of New Zealanders—the current alternative medicines in the market are either less effective or they have certain side effects. For example, some of the medicine for cold and flu treatment is not suitable for patients with high blood pressure. So, for that, pseudoephedrine will be a very effective medicine for them, and patients should have the option to use the medicine that suits them best.

Furthermore, during a cost of living crisis, many employees actually face sick-leave anxiety once their accumulated sick leave has been used, and any future sick leave is often taken as unpaid leave. Rent, mortgage, and bills still need to be paid. Enabling employees to recover faster from cold and flu will reduce the numbers of sick days required and allow New Zealanders to go to work, pay their bills, and get our country back on track.

Furthermore, I’ve been doing a little bit of an extra mile, talking to a lot of pharmacists and also a lot of pharmacy owners regarding this bill. The feedback that comes back is telling me that pseudoephedrine was a very effective drug against cold and flu, compared to other drugs in the market, and it was in high demand prior to being banned in 2011.

Enabling New Zealanders to purchase effective over-the-counter cold and flu medication will not only benefit the patient but also reduce the pressure on front-line GPs in our healthcare service, especially as we approach winter, when demand on our healthcare system peaks.

GPs have long waiting lists. In the past few months, I have been visiting medical centres, having a chat, having a conversation with a lot of GPs, especially in Mount Roskill. The common feedback I receive is that they are reaching their maximum capacity and are no longer taking any new patients. So this bill means that New Zealanders will have an effective option, rather than picking up the phone to their overloaded GP. Therefore, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you, all the pharmacists who will be at the front line for this winter, supplying pseudoephedrine to the patient.

So why was such an effective medicine banned in 2011 by the last National Government? This was, in the best of intentions, to target unlawful manufacture of P. As our colleague from New Zealand First just mentioned, at that time, we were not ready. However, the unintended consequence has seen a surge in imported P, whilst leaving ordinary New Zealanders without an effective over-the-counter cold and flu medication.

Also, we got more feedback during the select committee stage as well, with 169 submissions received from individuals and nine from organisations. Here, I would like to give a thankyou to all the submitters for all their time and their contributions in this bill. Most organisations, including the pharmaceutical industry bodies and drug-harm prevention groups, indicated support for this bill in their submissions. One of the submitters actually told the committee that pseudoephedrine products are of little value for people interested in commercially supplied meth, as there are now cheaper and easier ways to manufacture it.

The price of meth or P dropped by 28 percent from $563 per gram in 2017 to, now, $406 in 2022-23. Massey University drug research team leader Associate Professor Chris Wilkins concludes that this reflects increasingly large scales of production of meth in South-east Asia, East Asia, and America. However, make no mistake, meth or P is still a destructive drug which has ruined lives and torn families apart right across New Zealand for decades. However, this Government is committed to tackling gangs and organised crime, including banning gang patches and seizing unlawfully obtained assets, so the concern that it will be used in unlawful drugs will be minimised.

Furthermore, according to this bill, pseudoephedrine will remain as a controlled drug, as a class 3 controlled drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. According to this bill, importation of pseudoephedrine by mail or online shopping will also rightly remain unlawful.

This bill strikes the right balance between access and protecting the public against improper use. This Government will continue to progress amendments to the Medicines Regulations 1984, reclassifying pseudoephedrine-containing cold and flu products as restricted medicine. This classification means consumers can purchase the products at the pharmacy but will need to do so by way of a face-to-face transaction with a pharmacist. The pharmacist must record information and give advice as appropriate, including people who would not take pseudoephedrine for clinical reasons.

Therefore, as I said, again, this bill actually strikes the right balance between access and protecting the public against improper use. The bill actually reflects international best practice and matches similar settings in the range of other countries we like to compare ourselves to, including the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia. However, even though we have such effective drugs, your health—oh, not your health, but our people’s, New Zealanders’, health—is this Government’s priority. I wish everyone a healthy and happy winter, and keep warm. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the chance to say a few words. It feels like we’ve been talking about pseudoephedrine for quite some time, but we haven’t, because this has been quite a short process. It’s just that it feels a little bit more dense, because it’s come back to the House a lot more quicker than would have been ideal when we think about the potential risks that are involved with this bill.

As has been said, we will be supporting this bill because we do think it’s important to do things to remove barriers so that people can have access to effective medications. But, as have many people said tonight, I think it’s a real shame that we weren’t able to ventilate some of the concerns a little bit more robustly and to look at those risks.

I think the theme of this third reading really has been that the Government has certainly, I think, overstated the protections that are in this bill, because none of the things that have been talked about as protective factors tonight is actually in the legislation, in the bill. They are just things that people have, essentially, said are down to logical thinking or common sense or things that apparently we’ll just keep an eye on. So that doesn’t give me a huge amount of confidence.

I think we’ve also underestimated the risks. I think some of the risks that we have raised during this process—even though it was a truncated process, even though it was a process where the public really didn’t have a chance to have a good say, and as we’ve heard on several occasions, we know that the pharmacy profession really wasn’t well represented during this process. It was just a small handful of people and certainly not a robust sample of all of the considerations that should have been taken into account.

So that is a shame, and I think the risks not being taken seriously could have—there’s just no rush for this bill. So we did have the opportunity to take those risks a little bit more seriously, and those risks were particularly related to storage and particularly related to the real-time monitoring that could have been in place to better gauge, and better keep track of, not only the safety to what could have been a controlled substance but also the worker safety in those pharmacies.

As I said, it has been a truncated process. I think a lot of it has been based on assumptions that we’ve heard from the public—suitably—and from pharmacies, which I don’t think we have. I keep sort of circling back to that concept—that the Minister mentioned at the very beginning of this process, which really wasn’t that long ago—of rational actors. I really still think that that’s a bit of a red flag for me. It may be that the market forces in play within the illicit drug trade market up at the higher echelons may be subjected to some rationality, but I think that the risks for people who are heavily addicted to a substance that can be manufactured should have been something that we should have looked at a little bit closer. But, as I said, Madam Speaker, we will support this bill, and thank you.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very proud to be able to speak in support of this bill in its third reading. In my previous contribution, I spoke about some of the evidence for pseudoephedrine as being the only effective treatment that is available, which, in the context of nasal congestion or sinus congestion, prevents barotrauma of the tympanic membrane. The other medications that we have to treat cold and flu congestion, such as nasal sprays, are actually not effective for that outcome.

So when you have a cold and your nose is blocked, often your eustachian tube, which drains the inner ear, is also blocked. What can happen in environments that change the barometric pressure, like going up and down in an aircraft, is that the tympanic membrane, the eardrum, gets pulled or pushed out, depending on the pressure change. That can lead to injury of the eardrum and can be quite severe. In fact, it can lead to a rupture of the tympanic membrane. Nasal sprays don’t prevent that, but they give very temporary relief, and it can help for a small amount of time.

However, anything that is effective often has a side effect as well, and, unfortunately, with nasal sprays, the overuse of nasal sprays has actually led to a problem that we have—something else that can be a complication. It’s called rhinitis medicamentosa—good luck to Hansard for that! So this is a condition where you get inflammation and overgrowth of the mucosal membranes of the nose, causing narrowing of the nasal passages, which is very uncomfortable. It is also very difficult to treat and often requires surgical intervention. So, basically, what they have to do is go in there and ream out all of the nasal passages and get rid of all that mucosal lining so that people can breathe better.

So pseudoephedrine will reduce, I think, the need for all of those nasal sprays, and, hopefully, we’ll reduce the incidence of rhinitis medicamentosa. So this is one of those things where there are real clinical implications of changes. I talked previously about the fact that this is a very important medication for those who are in the aviation industry, and so I’m looking forward to seeing this change when it comes in.

We have talked about all of the problems with P in the community. Pseudoephedrine is not P. It’s really important to understand that there is a difference between the two. So, when we talk about this medication, there are steps that need to be gone through for it to become methamphetamine or P. So the market drivers for people to do that, we believe, are probably not going to be a huge factor in increasing the supply of P in the community.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done, both within the health sector but also within justice, around methamphetamine, and this is not necessarily addressing that. We’re simply changing the classification of this medication, and it is a very sensible and useful thing that we’re doing, and I commend the bill to the House.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana. Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can I just thank the member Dr Vanessa Weenink for what was a very descriptive analysis of the bill.

Tom Rutherford: Your turn.

TANGI UTIKERE: Oh, don’t you worry; my turn is here, all right, and adjectives are part of the game.

As colleagues have already said, on this side of the House, we will be supporting this piece of legislation this evening at third reading. I concur with the comments that have been expressed by colleagues around the fact the that there is no rush around this, although, given that members opposite seem to be taking lengthy calls, well, they wouldn’t seem to be in any hurry to actually get this piece of legislation passed this evening. So that is a change in tack and a contradiction of fact.

So this is a piece of legislation that, effectively, will change the classification of pseudoephedrine but will still maintain some oversight at a pharmacy level. What this means, in practice, is that there will still be easy access, or easier access, to pseudoephedrine, but there would still be some regulation in terms of how it is accessed.

I’m aware of the comments of the Associate Minister of Health (Pharmac) in introducing this bill at third reading, and he’s very negative, actually, about some of the steps that have been taken in this space by the previous Government. I think about the cutting exercise, that the current Government seems to be under, around reducing access to the flu vaccine as we head into a time of winter months and winter ailments, and I challenge members opposite to align that fact with the comments that the Minister had made.

I want to acknowledge the work that pharmacists actually undertake all around the country in communities all around Aotearoa New Zealand. There has been an increased expectation on the work that they do, and this will assist with that.

Colleagues have already mentioned the fact that Labour does support greater access to medications, and so it will come as no surprise that that’s one of the bases on which we are supporting this bill.

My final contribution is around the sense of disappointment that Government members have allowed this bill to go through a rather truncated process. There are some concerns that have been raised, such as the safe care and custody of any controlled or restricted medication, that don’t seem to have been addressed through the committee stage and don’t seem to have been addressed in what is the final part of the bill, and that is only because of the rushed nature that this piece of legislation seems to be following through, in terms of its passage this evening. So this is a piece of legislation that the Labour Party is very happy to support, and, on that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty): Strap in. This is going to be a worthwhile contribution to wrap up the third reading of this bill. And the reason I say that is, firstly, this is my first contribution to the bill in the House, but also, to be following some of my colleagues, particularly on this side, who are esteemed in this field, brings about some challenges for me.

If I think about it, just previously we had Dr Vanessa Weenink, who gave us a very descriptive and incisive look into the detail of this bill and the work that happens in this space. Prior to her, there was my colleague sitting next to me, the MP for Mt Roskill, Dr Carlos Cheung—again, another relevant and very, very knowledgeable man in this space. And then, oh, I was listening diligently through all the contributions of this debate—this being the final, strap in. But prior to Dr Carlos Cheung was the MP for Ilam, Dr Hamish Campbell—again, a specialist in his field—who really knows what he’s talking about—

Ingrid Leary: What about the women?

TOM RUTHERFORD: What about the bill? Back in the corner—well, I didn’t hear Dr Reti give a contribution to this debate so far, but he’s got a body of work that he’s really working on. He’s got a lot of priorities that he’s focused on delivering, and he’s leaving it to the other doctors in our caucus to really take the charge with this bill, and I appreciate what he’s been doing in that space.

So three previous speakers, all doctors, and now you get a Mr Rutherford, rather than a doctor or anything.

Dr Hamish Campbell: Mr or master?

TOM RUTHERFORD: Yeah, “master”, my colleague says. But the National Party is really proud to support this bill, led by the Hon David Seymour. We support it because the change of classification for pseudoephedrine as a controlled drug—this bill reclassifies it from a class B2, which it was changed to in 2011, to a class C3 controlled drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 so that cold and flu products containing pseudoephedrine can be sold in pharmacies without a prescription.

That’s quite a logical decision that this bill is bringing about change to. Patients are currently unable to access over-the-counter medicines containing pseudoephedrine medicines for the self-treatment of cold symptoms in New Zealand. Pseudoephedrine is an effective medicine. Allowing New Zealanders access to effective cold and flu medicine will help to improve people’s welfare when they are unwell.

We note Labour’s support for the policy intent of this bill, and we appreciate their support for it through the House.

Tangi Utikere: Let’s get on with it, then.

TOM RUTHERFORD: “Let’s get on with it”. Oh, colleagues across the House are telling me to get on with it and rush. That’s a change of tune—that’s a change of tune from the other side. But I would say to them, allowing New Zealanders access to this will improve people’s welfare when they are unwell.

I had a look through the regulatory impact statement that was prepared for the bill. You’ve got to be diligent when you stand to speak. I thought, “Aye, let’s have a look at access to pseudoephedrine in other jurisdictions.” Australia, prescription required? No. Canada, prescription required? No. United Kingdom, prescription required? No. What about the United States? No. So this is simply bringing New Zealand back into line with many other countries that we compare and contrast ourselves to across the world.

Just to relay some of the comments made earlier in this debate, relief is on the way for those New Zealanders who have battled through 14 winters without strong cold and flu medicine. Help is on the way, and I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill

Second Reading

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): I present a legislative statement on the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill be now read a second time.

Tihei mauri ora! E te Whare Mīere, tēnā koe. Te papa i waho nei, tēnā koe. Te mana whenua o tēnei rohe, tēnā koutou. Te hunga mate, haere, haere, haere. Haere ki te whenua o ngā tūpuna. Ki te hunga ora, tēnā tātou katoa. Ka mihi ki ngā maunga kōrero, ki ngā awa rangatira, ki te whenua taurikura o Ngāti Hei. E ngā kāwai rangatira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[To the Beehive building, greetings to you. To the land outside, greetings to you. The people of this region, greetings to you. Our loved ones who have passed, farewell. Farewell back to your ancestors. To the living, salutations. I acknowledge the many speaking mountains, the formidable rivers, and the homeland of the Ngāti Hei people. To your esteemed leaders, thank you, thank you, thank you.]

This bill gives effect to the deed of settlement signed by Ngāti Hei and the Crown in August 2017. The deed settles all the remaining historical Treaty of Waitangi claims of Ngāti Hei. Ngāti Hei are an iwi associated on the eastern seaboard of the Coromandel Peninsula, from Onemana to Whangapoua. Their rohe is centred around Tairua and Ahuahu, and includes offshore islands extending north to Cuvier Island.

The historical claims of Ngāti Hei relate to the cumulative effect of the Crown’s actions and omissions. This includes land acquisition and the operation and impact of native land laws that rendered Ngāti Hei virtually landless. The Crown prejudiced Ngāti Hei by promoting laws and policies which led to the loss of their whenua, damaged their environment, and severely undermined the wellbeing and ability of Ngāti Hei to pass on matauranga Māori to their mokopuna.

The bill comprises four parts detailing cultural redress, commercial redress, and the Crown’s apology redress. Ngāti Hei have established the Hei o Wharekaho Settlement Trust, a post-settlement governance entity that will receive the settlement assets on behalf of Ngāti Hei and will represent the iwi in its future dealings with the Crown.

We remember and pay tribute to the tūpuna and many generations of Ngāti Hei who have suffered from historical Crown acts and omissions who are not here in the House, and, of course, this is the second reading. We fully expect that we’ll have many representatives from Ngāti Hei in the third reading, but I’m sure there will be many tuning in on their computer screens and maybe listening in on the radio to this speech. So we do want to acknowledge those who were part of the negotiations early on and who are not here today with us and whose grievances are addressed through this settlement. I acknowledge the many members of Ngāti Hei who have passed away over the course of this settlement and for whom justice did not come soon enough.

I acknowledge the contribution of the negotiators for Ngāti Hei, the late Peter Tiki Johnston, Peter Matai Johnson, and Joe Davis. And on the Crown side, I acknowledge the chief Crown negotiators, Micheal Dreaver and the Hon Rick Barker. I also acknowledge my predecessors, the Hon Chris Finlayson and the Hon Andrew Little, for their contributions to this settlement, and I thank my ministerial colleagues, Crown agencies, and counsel for their support to progress this settlement.

The bill was referred to the Māori Affairs Committee on 20 June 2023. The committee received and considered 11 written submissions and heard oral evidence from two submitters. There was one submission opposed to the bill, but that did not relate to the bill itself. Based on the submissions and advice received, the committee does not recommend any significant changes, though the committee recommends some minor and technical amendments to ensure consistency with other Hauraki iwi settlements and to reflect the result of property surveys and updated property interests. I’d like to thank the committee for their diligent work and consideration of this bill. I’m satisfied with the committee’s recommendations as they will ensure that the redress agreed in the Ngāti Hei deed of settlement can be properly implemented through this bill.

The second reading is part of the last stage of the settlement process that seeks to provide redress to Ngāti Hei for the Crown’s historical breaches of the Treaty. This is a move towards acknowledgment, recognition, and reconciliation, and I hope that this settlement not only allows for Ngāti Hei to increase confidence in their own future but in their future relationship with the Crown.

I do look forward to speaking more about this bill when it is read a third time, and I do look forward to hosting Ngāti Hei here, in Parliament, for that important occasion. I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Labour): Reo Māori, e te Māngai o te Whare. Tuatahi, ka tautoko ake ahau i ngā kōrero a te Minita e pā ana ki tēnei pire me te kī atu ki a Ngāti Hei ki te kāinga, e haere tonu ana tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare kia whakatutuki ai i ngā mahi i tīmatahia ai e ō rātou mātua, e ō rātou tūpuna i roto i ngā tau kua pahure ake nei. Mai i te taima i hainatia ai te Tīti ki runga i te marae, arā, e Hōnore Christopher Finlayson, tae noa mai ki tēnei wā. Me te kī atu ki tēnei Whare ehara i te mea māmā kia whakawhiti atu tēnei kaupapa mai i tōna orokohanga i te tau 2017, ki roto i ngā nohoanga a te Pāremata 2020-2023, haere tonu nei.

Nō reira, e tautoko ana mātou o te Rōpū Reipa i tēnei pire me te hiahia kia tino tere ake te taenga mai o tēnei pire ki tōna pānuitanga tuatoru ki roto i te Whare. Engari e tika ana me mihi atu ki te Komiti Whiriwhiri Take Māori nā rātou tēnei pire i kōkiri ki mua i te aroaro o te iwi o Ngāti Hei, me ngā āpiha i tautoko ake i a rātou. I kite atu ahau i ngā pepa nei, i hui tahi te komiti me ētahi rōpū. 11 te rahi o ngā rōpū i tae mai ki mua i te komiti me te nuinga o ngā kōrero e whakaae ana ki te mahi e kōrerohia nei ki roto i te pire.

Nō reira, ki a Ngāti Hei kei te kāinga e mātakitaki ana, koinā tāku e mea atu ana, e haere tonu ana tēnei pire me te tautoko i te kōrero a te Minita, ā taihoa ake nei, i tōna pānuitanga tuatoru. Kāre e kore ka kī mai tō tātou marae i te uri o Ngāti Hei. Ko reira ka whakawhānui ake i ngā kōrero ka kitea ki roto i tēnei pire. Nō reira, mai i a mātou o tēnei taha o te Whare, e mea atu ana, e tautoko ana.

[Māori, please, Madam Speaker. First, I support what the Minister said with regard to this bill and I say to Ngāti Hei at home, this bill continues in the House with the aspiration to fulfil the work that was started by their predecessors, by their ancestors in the years that have passed. From the time that deed was signed on the marae by the Hon Christopher Finlayson, right to this time. And I’d like to say to this House that it has not been an easy task to get this over the line from its inception in 2017, and in the sittings of Parliament in 2020-2023, and it is still going.

So we of the Labour Party are supporting this bill and hope that this bill arrives speedily to its third reading in this House. However, it is only right to acknowledge the Māori Affairs Committee that presented before Ngāti Hei, and the officers that supported them. I saw in the papers that the committee met with interested groups. Eleven groups presented before the committee with the majority agreeing with the actions discussed in the bill.

So, to Ngāti Hei at home watching, I want to reiterate this bill continues with the support of the Minister, and soon, will be read a third time. I have no doubt that our marae will be inundated with descendants of Ngāti Hei. There, we will be able to elaborate upon the discussion included in this bill. And so, from us on this side of the House, we say, we support.]

STEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Reading the deed of settlement for Ngāti Hei is sober reading, indeed. Between 1859 and 1865, the Crown acquired 20,000 acres. Back in the 1830s, 7,000 acres of land was given over to European claimants. Between 1870 and 1890, 93,000 acres were permanently alienated from Ngāti Hei, so that, as has been said by the Minister, “By the end of the 20th century, Ngāti Hei were virtually landless. The resulting marginalisation of Ngāti Hei, including loss of te reo Māori, educational underachievement, sickness, and socioeconomic deprivation, caused the iwi much suffering.”

Can we be surprised at that? If you’ve lost all your land, can we be surprised at that degree of marginalisation? “along with the fragmentation of Ngāti Hei tribal structures and the migration from ancestral lands, severely affected Ngāti Hei’s ability to pass mātauranga Māori on to their mokopuna.”

This notion of full and final Treaty settlements troubles us greatly because, like all settlements, the redress in these settlement bills will reflect only a fraction of the economic and social losses suffered by iwi because of Crown actions—perhaps 1 to 2 percent reparation; a tiny fraction and yet we stamp an obligation that that must mean the end of future claims prior to 1992. We, as te Pāti Kākāriki do not accept the principle of full and final Treaty settlement. We do, however, recognise that Ngāti Hei have determined that they wish to partake in this deed of settlement.

One of the things that I mentioned earlier today was that one impact of colonisation is the destruction of nature. The scars of lost nature across the landscape are a clear sign of colonisation. In here, Ngāti Hei, we read again in the deed of settlement, “There has been a history of extractive industry in [their] rohe, including kauri logging, kauri gum digging, flax milling, gold mining, and fishing. [And they’ve] derived little long-term benefit from these industries, and the damage done to the environment in their rohe is a source of grievance”. It should be a source of grievance to all of us in Aotearoa New Zealand, what has been destroyed of our natural environment.

I, as a young child, spent time at Cooks Beach, in the Ngāti Hei rohe, and the Hikuwai, and I can tell you that the regenerating native forests that you can see in various parts of the Coromandel are magnificent. But what has been lost, we can barely imagine. The logging industry, by the 1830s, was at a massive scale in the Coromandel. There were sawmills throughout the Coromandel. There were over 200 logging dams for shifting logs down to the ocean, and perhaps only 20 percent of the milled logs made it to the ocean. In 1888, a Melbourne company bought all the cutting rights to standing kauri on the peninsula, and its production peaked in 1902. By the turn of the century, the kauri industry had declined significantly, as had the once vast expanse of mature kauri trees. This is a loss that is irreplaceable, these trees that lived for hundreds and thousands of years. This is but one of the losses of Ngāti Hei, in their region.

When we think of how we address the harm done to iwi and Ngāti Hei, in this instance, we have to think about the full expanse of what has been lost. This settlement, in monetary terms and land terms, deals with a material loss, but it cannot deal with a cultural loss or the spiritual loss—the loss of life, the loss of health, the loss of opportunity over 180 years. These are things that it is impossible for us to make amends for, and we understand that—we understand that—but it is a further, to my earlier point, insult to injury to say that these must be full and final settlements. It’s such a fraction of what has been lost.

We as a nation, if we are to be serious about a principle of meaningful relationship, must take the view that that relationship is an ongoing process, that that upholding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi—which it is acknowledged has been breached here in this claim, in this deed of settlement—is a perpetual upholding; it is not something that has an end. I believe that it will be a serious improvement—the process around recognition of loss of land and impacts of colonisation—when we are able, as a House of Parliament, as a nation, to do away with this idea of finality. That will be an expression, truly, of good faith. Here the Crown negotiates hard to make sure that the minimum is returned.

I notice, with the resource and minerals, that “Ownership of any Crown-owned minerals in land transferred to Ngāti Hei under the Deed will also transfer to Ngāti Hei. This does not include nationalised minerals (petroleum, gold, silver and uranium) or affect other lawful rights to subsurface minerals.” So, to be clear, even the land which has been returned, and that of which may be conservation estate, could still be mined for gold, and we know there’s a lot of gold mined in the Coromandel. That is one of the other impacts that has hit Ngāti Hei, along with the loss of kauri.

So this is an example of where I feel a kind of heartache, a sickness of what it must feel like for iwi when they come to sign one of these deeds of settlement, and the question at the back which says “Do Ngāti Hei have the right to come back and make further claims about the behaviour of the Crown in the 19th and 20th centuries?”, there is a one-word answer at the top of that: “No”—with a full stop. It must make people feel sick in the stomach to have to sign up to that. It would make me feel like that if it was my people.

We will support this, as it is the will of Ngāti Hei. But we believe there must be a time in the maturation of our nation where we do away with this idea of full and final settlements. Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the second reading and take a short call on the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill. As previously canvassed in the House, the bill was formerly part of the Māori Affairs Committee and, as a matter of course, I don’t sit on that committee as a permanent member. The Māori Affairs Committee called for submissions which closed on 2 August 2023, with 11 groups and individuals submitting. I’m told two of those submissions were heard orally. No significant amendments were proposed in the bill by those that submitted.

I have some time this evening to digest what I’ve heard and what was presented in the bill, and the importance of redress and what it has meant to the whānau and iwi and members of Ngāti Hei today. The process began almost 200 years ago in the 1830s with lands lost and confiscated. This is beyond debate. Subsequently, over the preceding years, further land was moved across as part of European claimants’ interests. The Crown at the time continued to purchase the land, even though boundaries of those transactional arrangements remained unclear. This continued from the late 1850s all the way through to the 1890s, and was previously canvassed by the other speaker Steve Abel beyond.

I noted in some of the literature presented to the Māori Affairs Committee that as part of the transactional agreements in the 1850s, certain Hauraki iwi were consulted on the sale. That was well canvassed in some of the literature, but it came to light that Ngāti Hei was not consulted at the time. By the 1890s, a significant land area was permanently alienated from Ngāti Hei totalling 93,000 hectares. Just, if I can, for the sake of the House, contextualise that in a physical area: when we’re looking at a place like the Chatham Islands, which is 192,000 acres. This is almost half, if my mathematics is correct, of the Chathams by physical area.

As we’ve heard post this period, which involved several periods involving timber-harvesting leases—previous members mentioned fishing, gold mining, and even gum digging and flex weaving of which Ngāti Hei received little fiscal benefit from. Litigation, claim, and counterclaim—Ngāti Hei were ultimately left landless, which was transgressed previously by other speakers. The 1920s, much of the natural fabric and known whenua of Ngāti Hei was irreversibly changed in this process. We all here accept the important, genuine redress that needs to happen for iwi Māori and those affected by these historical decisions. This deed of settlement has been years in its delivery and development, and I wish to acknowledge those that will ultimately be here in the third reading to hear this passage of the bill. As witness, they can see their deeds made right with and have them finally addressed.

This bill was agreed to progress by the Māori Affairs Committee to restore and bring about final settlement and acknowledgment of the historical account by the Crown and its previous actions, and offer the needed cultural and commercial redress to Ngāti Hei. This bill, effectually, will pass into law in a third reading—I think we’re all of that determination—and final reading which is due in the coming weeks and months, and create a comprehensive settlement agreement of significance to both Ngāti Hei and the Crown.

Hon SHANE JONES (NZ First): Tēnā nō tātou katoa. Mō tētahi wā poto, reo Māori. Ahau e tū ana ki te tautoko i tēnei ture tā te mea ko Ngāti Hei tētahi iwi i tata te ngaro i roto i te huringa o te wā, te whakaekenga mai o Ngāi Pākehā ki Aotearoa. Otirā me mōhio tātou he nui noa atu ngā pakiaka o te ao Māori e ngoto ana ki roto i te whenua ki tērā pito i Aotearoa. Arā noa atu te takotoranga kei tēnā rohe o te waka o Te Arawa. Arā noa atu te maunga—tōna ingoa ko Moehau—nui noa atu ngā kōrero kei roto i te ao Māori mō tērā tihi, he īngoa i kawea mai i Hawaiki noa atu. Ahakoa te tokoiti o ēnei tāngata, i maemae roa i waenga tonu i ō rātou mātua, ā, heke iho ki tēnei rangi i te korenga o rātou e tino puta i te kapa whakamua i roto te tatau o ngā iwi kei roto i a Hauraki. Nā reira e tika ana kia tautokotia tēnei pire.

[Greetings to us all. For a short time, I speak in reo Māori. I stand to support this bill because Ngāti Hei was a nation that almost perished at the turn of the century, and the arrival of Pākehā to Aotearoa. Also, we must understand that there are many roots of the Māori people that stretch to that part of Aotearoa. There are the origins of the Arawa nation that lie within that area. There yonder is the mountain summit—its name is Moehau—which holds rich history within the Māori people. A name that was brought here from Hawaiki afar. Despite the small numbers of these people, there was a lot of unjust done to their ancestors. Now, fast forward to this day, they don’t get out much and aren’t too recognised within the statistics in Hauraki. And so it is my honour to support this bill.]

I stand to make a brief speech, and, as I said in our language, there is a proud—and, sadly, overlooked—history associated with this small group called Ngāti Hei. But within their rohe, as my Māori colleagues on the other side of the House know, small may their number be, but rich is the history in their rohe, not the least of which is the ancestor Tamatekapua, the history of the Arawa waka, and, indeed, one of the maunga in that area called Moehau that, in their background, they regard as a guardian spirit—things that aren’t captured in the full ebb and flow of today’s commercial life, but it should go on the record that these are some of the elements that define who these people are.

We hope to see all of the other elements that comprise Hauraki join this group and bring to closure—at another time I’ll talk about the outstanding issues between Ngāi Te Rangi in the Tauranga area, and part of the Hauraki Collective; there are some outstanding issues.

Repanga is a well-known fishing ground. In fact, I’ve been there myself, to help myself of the customary entitlement of the Tainui people, although my roots are further north. Not only is that area well-known in terms of Māori history and recreational fisheries, this is an opportunity for us, the Crown, on our side of the House, and, indeed, Parliament, to connect the descendants of the original tangata whenua with those historic landmarks.

The relationship agreements with the Department of Conversation need careful stewardship to ensure that they don’t grow into something that actually has the perverse effect of hobbling the ability of Ngāti Hei to expand their interests beyond conservation.

The pūtea, whilst it may not be large in size, I’m sure that it will be dedicated to a very important purpose. For those reasons, I stand with the other speakers this evening—that this bill reflects a desire to fulfil the Crown’s obligations to reach a durable settlement. The people who have worked on—obviously, we should acknowledge them. We in New Zealand First, despite a lot of white water and falsehoods that flow in the media from time to time, are conscious that the honour of the Crown and the respect for property rights should be something that’s uppermost in our mind. For those reasons and the obvious ones, we support this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This is a split call. Five minutes—Hannah-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke.

HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato): Hana-Rawhiti, kia ora.

Kuīni Wikitōria, ha aha taku hē i muia ai aku whenua tupuna ki te riri o te Pākehā? Ka hoki te mana o tō kupu mokopuna waru ana i te ahiahi ki runga i te huarahi nō Tāmaki roa.

This maioha translates to: “Queen Victoria, what have I done wrong for you to confiscate my ancestral lands to the greed and anger of the settler? I hold you to your word for my generations and grandchildren to come.”

Koinei te reo maioha, te reo tuatahi e karanga e au ki roto i tēnei Whare, arā ko taku oati ki ōku tūpuna. E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā kārangarangatanga maha, Ngāti Hei whenua, Ngāti Hei tangata, Pare Hauraki, Pare Waikato. Inā te hōnore nui mōku ki te tū ki te waha i ēnei kōrero mā Te Pāti Māori i te pō nei.

[This is the voice of welcome, the first voice with which I call out within this House—i.e., my oath to my ancestors. To the authorities, the voices, and the relatives of Ngāti Hei lands, and Ngāti Hei people, of Pare Hauraki and Pare Waikato. It is a huge honour for me to stand and speak on behalf of Te Pāti Māori tonight.]

It’s an absolute privilege, to be speaking on my first ever Treaty settlement, which is within my rohe of Hauraki-Waikato. I have been absolutely dreading this time, when it would become time for me to address the Treaty settlement claim. Why? Because it is one of the most heartbreaking and sensitive issues we face as mokopuna of raupatu. Being a descendant of raupatu doesn’t mean just giving it a five-minute speech; it is weaved into our DNA. We sing about it. We cry about it. We haka about it. We are about it 24/7.

I want to acknowledge and reflect on the journey Ngāti Hei have taken, who flourished before the arrival of Captain Cook. Ā, kua ngaro haere te whenua, ngā uri, tō koutou reo kāmehameha, tō koutou whenua. [Land, descendants, and your beautiful language have been lost, your land has been lost.] The loss of language and ancestral knowledge is devastating, and it must be addressed and redressed. And today is a step moving into that direction.

Ko ngā wāhi o [The places known as] Opūrangi, Rangihau, Kohuamuri, Opou, Pukeumu, Opoua. For some of these may be just names on paper, but they hold a story of whakapapa that must not be lost.

Ā, ko taku urupare ki ngā mokopuna o Ngāti Hei, [And my response to the descendants of Ngāti Hei] what would your tupuna Ngawhira Tanui dream for her mokopuna? This has been 24 years in the making, but 180 years in the waiting. One of my first ever jobs was transcribing our Waikato Tainui original claimant interviews. And, oh, what a privilege, what an honour, to listen to a whole generation in their era, with their insights and visions for their mokopuna.

I want to acknowledge how hard the Treaty settlement process can be; it can be so exhausting that people die to get Treaty settlements across the line. Nō reira, ki ngā hapū maha, ngā āritaritatanga a Kupe, ngā mangainga o Ngāti Hei, tēnei te reo owha, te reo whakamiha ki a koutou kua tūpara i te hoe ki te whakawhiti, ki te koke whakamua ki tō koutou Hawaiki hou.

[So, to the tribes, to the descendants of Kupe, our relatives of Ngāti Hei, this is the voice of acknowledgment that is extended to you who have strived to progress and move towards your own utopia.]

In the wise words of Moana Jackson, treaties are not settled; they are honoured. Te Tiriti is a document that is a foundation of a living, evolving relationship between tangata whenua and the Crown. Both parties of Te Tiriti must continually strive to meet those obligations it sets out and implements in the three articles and everything we do. Treaty settlements are not full and final, they are just the beginning. They stand to honour the mamae, loss, and grievances. However, they are a stepping stone in moving forward for the future generations.

Nō reira, tēnei te reo mihi ki a koutou Ngāti Hei, nō Te Pāti Māori, nō tō koutou kaitiaki o Hauraki-Waikato. Tēnā rā tātou katoa.

[So I acknowledge you, Ngāti Hei, as Te Pāti Māori and as your MP of Hauraki-Waikato. Thank you.]

HŪHANA LYNDON (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. He tū tēnei ki te tautoko i tēnei pire, mō ōku whanaunga o Ngāti Hei. Ki roto o Pare Hauraki, e mihi nei tēnei uri o Ngāti Koroua, Ngāti Whanaunga, Marutuahu ki ēnei iwi kua pēhia nei e te Kāwanatanga mō tēnei kotahi rau tau. I stand here me te taimaha o taku ngākau i te pānui i tēnei pire, me te iti o te pūtea hei koha ki te iwi mō te rirotanga nui o ō rātou whenua. Ēnei whenua taurikura o tātou, ēngari kei konei te Rōpū Kākāriki te tautoko.

[I stand to support this bill, for my kin of Ngāti Hei. Of the Pare Hauraki, I am a descendant of Ngāti Koroua, of Ngāti Whanaunga, of Marutuahi, whom have all been supressed by this Government for the last 100 years. My heart is heavy reading this bill and how little money will be given as compensation for the confiscation of their lands. These sacred lands of ours, however, the Green Party is here to support.]

The Waitangi Tribunal found that the people of Hauraki, Ngāti Hei, only retain 2.6 percent of their tribal territories, e tātou mā, being one of the largest groups in Aotearoa to have such grave land loss within their tribal territories. It bites at my heart, and I stand here heavy with dread having to support this settlement, because the Treaty settlement process is a process which is unjust. The proviso of “full and final settlement” makes it unjust for the people of Ngāti Hei and Pare Hauraki to accept—to accept—$8.5 million in commercial redress; $8.5 million, e tātou mā, for 184 years of losses. If we reflect, as my colleague Steve Abel has shared, the immense loss between 1859 and 1865, 20,000 hectares; 1870 to 1890, 15 large blocks—1,000 acres—93,000 in total, and then Crown purchases. The people of the North are very familiar with Crown purchases, that made us landless in the North. This is something that was experienced by the people of Ngāti Hei, with over 81,000 acres of land lost through Crown purchases.

Nō reira, ko te hara nui ki runga i ngā pokowhiwhi o te Kāwanatanga, mō tō rātou whakaaro nui ki tō tātou iwi o Ngāti Hei: waru miriona tāra te nui.

[And so the responsibility is on the Government, and their sincere considerations for our people of Ngāti Hei: $8 million.]

Ngāti Hei is worth $150,000 for cultural revitalisation, e tātou mā—$150,000 for the loss of 184 years of dislocation, of raupatu, of the beating of a language out of their people. That’s what this Crown is offering them. Toko Renata, rangatira of Pare Hauraki, occupied Whenuakite Station in 2007, and John McEnteer shared, “Landcorp are money-grabbing squatters. [It’s] always been our land. They have been in temporary possession and we are repossessing it.”, e tātou mā.

So Whenuakite Station, a Landcorp farm, is now a part of the redress for 85 percent—85 percent available for Ngāti Hei, and acknowledging Ngāti Tamaterā—but these whenua, they have to buy it back. They have to buy it back, and yet it was taken. Through the acts and omissions of the Crown, the people of Ngāti Hei were left virtually landless. Tairua and Coroglen schools: Ngāti Hei have to purchase those back, too. Where is the justice, and where is the fairness in the process for Ngāti Hei? As an uri of Pare Hauraki, I ask the question: where is the justice for our people?

I raise this because this is a part of a wider dialogue that we as members of this House really need to consider, the 1 to 2 percent in the dollar that is offered back to the tribes as we see them roll out this week. I acknowledge Te Kāhui Tupua of Taranaki, I acknowledge the tribes that will gather on Thursday, but, e tātou mā, where is the justice for Ngāti Hei? Te Rōpū Kākāriki support, because our people are here and they tautoko this, but, ultimately, the question is: Treaty settlement, full and final? Kahore, kahore, kahore. Nōreira e te whānau, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa. [No, no, no. And so, family, thank you once, thank you twice, thank you once again.]

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It’s my pleasure to rise in the second reading of the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill. I’d just like to touch on the previous speaker Hūhana Lyndon’s key point about justice. My experience is that no Treaty settlement really provides for full justice for the actions that the Crown had done in the past. These redresses and settlements are in part to acknowledge the injustice, but we know and acknowledge that it doesn’t go the full way to giving back all the land that was lost. But this is a start. And that’s something that, actually, both sides of this House have signed up to, and iwi have also signed up to this process. And some iwi have done very well and also prospered as well. So I’d just like to acknowledge that it is really small amounts that are part of this process, and it cannot go any way to fully offset the pain and the resources that were taken away as part of that.

But I turn our attention to the bill itself, because we are in the second reading, and this has been through a thorough select committee process. I’d like to acknowledge the previous Māori Affairs Committee in the previous Parliament. We were the benefactors of this bill in the new Parliament, but the mahi really goes to the previous select committee, so I’d like to start out by acknowledging them. I’d also like to start out by acknowledging the Ministers involved: Chris Finlayson was the lead Minister who led the negotiations, as did Andrew Little. Also the negotiators, and I’d like to pay a special tribute to them and the work that they do.

But what is this kaupapa that we’re here to discuss about? Well, it is about the Ngāti Hei iwi, which is one of, I believe, 12 iwi in the Hauraki area. I’d like to just say to any of you who are tuning in today from the Coromandel, nau mai, haere mai. We’re sorry that you can’t be here with us today.

This is a relatively small iwi. They’ve been going through this process, as was mentioned, for the last 24 years in the making. So it’s a long time coming. In fact, 180 years since the pain and the actions of the Crown led to such emotive and physical destruction.

The provisions of the bill are in four parts. Part 1 provides a Crown apology, because, as has been traversed in this House, this iwi was left virtually landless. I think the previous speaker mentioned 2.6 percent of total land that they now occupy. So that is the key part of Part 1 is to acknowledge that and to apologise for the land that was taken and the damage to the environment as well.

Part 2 lists 22 cultural sites that are given back to Ngāti Hei as part of the cultural redress. That includes areas near and dear to my heart like the Hot Water Beach, and aspects of the Hot Water Beach there, which is just fantastic.

Part 3 talks about the commercial redress, which is about $8.5 million, plus contractual memorandums of understanding to enter into relationships with the Department of Conservation and to facilitate relationships with local authorities as well.

And then there is a little bit more in Part 4. But, as I said, this is the second reading of the bill, so it has been through a select committee process. That select committee process yielded 11 submissions, and we only heard evidence of two submissions. As a result of those submissions, there were no changes that were recommended. So it is really our privilege to be receiving the bill that was drafted in its entirety from first reading, with the addition of some minor technical amendments, which we’re all familiar with in this House.

So it is my privilege then to not take too much more time of the House, but to say that this has been a good process and I commend this bill to the House. No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): Kia ora tātou. He hōnore nui ki te tautoko tēnei pire. He kaupapa tino whakahirahira ki a tātou te iwi Māori. Nō reira tika me mihi ki a Ngāti Hei i tēnei wā.

[Greetings all. It is an honour to speak to this bill. It is a very prestigious matter to all the Māori people. And so it is important to acknowledge Ngāti Hei at this time.]

I just wanted also to respond to some of the kōrero that’s gone down tonight with regards to the justice element. I certainly felt encouraged when I listened to the speaker over there—Mr Dan Bidois over there—who gives full tautoko for this sort of kaupapa. So it does give us heart, on this side of the House, when we see that type of unity in the House.

I was listening to Mr Abel earlier and to young Hana over there, and I remember, I was invited to be a guest speaker at an annual general Māori Party meeting in 2006, I think, when the Māori Party first started.

Shanan Halbert: Oh, that’s ages ago.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: It’s a long while ago. I think you were about four or something at the time, eh, Hana? At the time, Te Ururoa Flavell was running the line that the Māori Party should be opposing all these settlements in the House. It was actually a Māori Party policy back in 2006. He wasn’t the leader then; Tariana and Pita Sharples were the leadership at the time. So they invited me in to give a whakaaro and a view in terms of the strategy. I said to him then that I thought he was 100 percent wrong, not because the Treaty settlement process was a just process. It’s one of the most unjust processes that we’ve ever had to engage in, but I said to him then—and I don’t know if he ever forgave me, actually, because my view was that we had no right to tell people not to take these types of settlements.

You know, if our people decide to take the settlements, and they may well be peanuts, then they have that right. That’s their choice to take a settlement, even though we have all worked out, in te ao Māori, that those settlements are only worth about 2 percent. But when you have the choice of 2 percent or nothing, 2 percent becomes quite appealing, and that’s the problem. As I said to Te Ururoa at the time, our people are not stupid. Tipene O’Regan was not stupid when he decided to take a $170 million deal with regards to Ngāi Tahu. Economists had worked out that the Ngāi Tahu deal was worth $15 billion—that was what the loss was, somewhere between $12 and $15 billion. It might have been a little bit more. I think Tainui came in at about $15 billion too.

But Sir Tipene O’Regan and Sir Robert Mahuta, who did the Tainui settlement, were not stupid people. They realised that it’s better to take something than nothing, and so they settled on $170 million—they settled on $170 million. As upsetting as that was to a number of my relations, who were the main activists in the Māori movement—Hūhana Lyndon’s relations, too, and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s relations. They’re all our relations—Tama Potaka’s relations, too. They labelled our leaders as sell-outs, might I add. They went ahead and did these settlements, because better something than nothing.

So I remember telling my old mate Te Ururoa that I just don’t think we have the right to say to a people, “No, you can’t take it.”, because our people took the opportunity in 1996 in terms of Ngāi Tahu and Tainui, and we have had iwi making settlements like that every year since till now. So, as much as we find it appalling, Steve, and it’s unjust and everything else, in a choice between nothing and something, you’ll always take something. We know what Ngāi Tahu is worth today, which is well in excess of it might be $1.5 billion, $2 billion—you know, over there, our young hero from the media. No, you know, Mr Meager. You know what Ngāi Tahu’s worth today. Tainui might be worth $1.5, $2 billion. It’s amazing.

So I always say that we’re used to taking peanuts, because from peanuts you can build gold mines, and that’s what we’ve done in te ao Māori. We did that in Tainui. We did that in Ngāi Tahu. We did that in the kōhanga reo movement, where they took minimal settlements. Iwi have done that everywhere and built huge, huge gold mines along the way, and the challenge, of course, is: can we get the flow back and the comeback from the iwi back to our people on the ground? So that’s one of the big challenges for us.

So, Ngāti Hei, I mean, obviously, there’s not a huge amount of money there for Ngāti Hei. We’re not talking $170 million or anything like that, but they still have an opportunity. They still have—you know, we talked about their negotiators. Toko Renata—we knew Toko really, really well; one of our true-gun kaumātua from that area. John McEnteer—long-time negotiator for the area. We know these people well. We trust in them. I trust in them, that they will be able to make something from these settlements.

But I’ve always wondered, from the very first time I came into Parliament, was there something else we could do? Would we have Governments brave enough to change the process? These are the challenges in front of Mr Goldsmith right now, particularly with Peeni Henare’s relations in the North, and Shane Jones’ relations in the North. Huge challenges in terms of how we try and work that settlement. It’s going to be fascinating to see what happens there. But I’ve always wondered, from the time I first entered Parliament 25 years ago, was there an opportunity where we might be able to tweak the system, look at it again, ask ourselves if 2 percent of the compensation is really just, or, really, could we lift that up?

Because, in my view, our people have done this country a favour: they have subsidised so much in this country, when you look at the worth of what our people could have claimed, what our people could have asked for in compensation. We have subsidised so much in this country, and yet we still get people who are resentful in terms of the settlement process. They talk about us getting all this money, but that is money that has been owed to our people. And I’m very proud of our people, and I’ve seen them come through here over the years, and they’re so grateful to a process that, in the end, has only really delivered them crumbs, but has given them opportunities.

So, as much as it pains us, as much as we look at the injustice of those settlements, we can’t take away the rights of our people to assert their tino rangatiratanga—that’s how it’s always been; that’s how it aways should be. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to also add my whakaaro on the second reading of this bill that we’re speaking about tonight, the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill. As I rise, I would also like to add my voice to the voices of some that went before me and the lovely contributions that they gave, just recognising and acknowledging our predecessors, in terms of the Ministers that were in charge of this settlement bill and settlement process. I’d like to acknowledge the Hon Chris Finlayson, and I’d also like to acknowledge the Hon Andrew Little.

I have no shame in saying that I’m one of the newbies here. And, as part of a group of newbies, it’s astounding how much I’m learning very quickly—not only that but how much my eyes are being opened and my heart is being opened with the different bills that come before us and the challenges, the history that comes with those bills. Before I go on to that, I would like to, just for the benefit of people listening—and ever since I became a newbie here, we’ve got people around the world that tune into Parliament TV. Thank you to the people that organise that for us. For the benefit of those at home that are not very familiar with our processes here in New Zealand, I’d just like to give a brief overview about the stages of settlement, so that those listening at home can kind of get a picture of where we’re at right now.

The main stages to reach a settlement of a claim are that first we’ve got to establish the nature of a Treaty breach. That might involve detailed research, hearings before the Waitangi Tribunal. We’ve also got to establish the claimant group, and that’s usually an iwi—or a tribe, for those of you overseas—and this claimant has to have a mandate from the members to negotiate on their behalf for this settlement. Then one of the next stages is negotiating an agreement in principle, and that’s when endorsement is needed from this claimant community, the aforementioned community. And then a deed of settlement is drafted, agreed upon. It sets out the details of the settlement, the terms of the settlement, and the claims against the Crown. And then, when this is agreed and it’s signed, the next stage is where we’re at now, the legislation stage, when it comes to Parliament and it becomes law. Here in New Zealand, there’s the first reading and it goes to the select committee stage. And, with this settlement bill, it went, rightfully so, to the Māori Affairs Committee. That’s when we hear submissions. And there’s the second reading and third reading before the settlement bill is implemented finally. And so, as I said, for the benefit of our listeners at home, we are at the second reading stage.

Now, as my colleague and friend and the great chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, Dan Bidois, MP for Northcote, said earlier, we’ve inherited this bill—inherited, bequeathed. You can call it what you will. So I didn’t go through the stage of listening to submissions. However, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve been a short time in Parliament and I’ve learnt so much. Just recently, we listened to submissions with respect to another settlement bill that’s taking place, and that’s the Whakatōhea settlement. And, truth be told, that tore at my heartstrings quite deeply. When one, again, allows themselves to listen, not necessarily with their ears but with their hearts, and when one makes the effort of visiting these important sites, these sites that are important to the members of this iwi and the various hapū, that’s when one can really get a sense of this term of grievance. I’m not Māori, but I hear the term “mamae” spoken of, and one can really get a clear sense of that. And with my colleagues in the House—Dana Kirkpatrick, Greg Fleming, Dan Bidois, and members across the House—we recently went to Ōpōtiki and we listened to just a fragment of the major grievances that they rightfully have.

What I love about te ao Māori is that everything has a meaning, everything has a significance, and when I read through these bills and what we went through to get to this stage—I’ve learnt for many years, in particular hanging around my beautiful friend Anne Kendall, the deputy chair of the New Zealand Māori Council, how everything does have a significance and a meaning when it comes to te ao Māori. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting my new EA, and I took her around to the Māori Affairs select committee room, and as we were sitting there conversing about certain things, a tour group came in, and that was made up of people from the States and from England, and what have you. One of them asked me the question—because I said, “Ask me whatever questions you want.”—is there a significance to the carvings at the threshold of the entry to the Māori Affairs Committee room?

And I said the answer is this: “Yes, but when it comes to our beautiful Māori culture, there’s a meaning behind everything.” And I said, “From the smallest patterns, from words that are being said, there’s a meaning and there’s a deeper meaning.” And I reiterated—our colleague in the House the Hon Peeni Henare was mentioning recently in that Māori Affairs select committee room—I can’t recall if it was his aunty or someone from his close family took part in those panels that are there in that room as well—oh, his mother—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Ms Nakhle, you’ve done an excellent job of going seven minutes explaining the processes, but I don’t think I’ve heard you mention the bill yet. Just let’s—three minutes—have a crack, shall we?

RIMA NAKHLE: I’m glad you said it was excellent. So what’s important is that we acknowledge what’s important to the people to whom this bill relates. And this is where I’m getting at, and I’m glad that it was referred to as excellent.

What I’d also like to bring attention to is, in essence, just the key information that’s in this settlement bill. If we’re going to make it like a kind of synopsis, firstly, the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill settles all historical grievances claims, Treaty of Waitangi claims, for Ngāti Hei. And I know that it’s been expressed in the House—you know, the fairness behind this. But as the member—who’s not here anymore—alluded to, sometimes you’ve got to start somewhere and you’ve got to accept something so that you can go forward. And that’s no doubt what I’ve been hearing when I’ve been listening to submissions when it comes to the Whakatōhea settlement.

The second part of the key information is that there are an estimated 650 members of Ngāti Hei, and the area of interest covers the eastern seaboard of the Coromandel Peninsula. Yes, absolutely breathtaking areas in New Zealand, and it includes significant offshore islands. And the third point, if we can put this synopsis to this bill, is that the settlement acknowledges the Crown’s failure to protect Ngāti Hei’s land, resources, and traditional tribal structures. And this acknowledgment and recognition is extremely important.

In closing, I’d like to also acknowledge what my colleague across the House, Hana-Rawhiti—well, first, her beautiful voice, but, second, how she said she recalled how hard it is to reach settlement and what it does to people in the process to reach settlement. Settlement bills are not perfect, but in this second reading, I commend the bill to the House with the hope that this will be a step towards improving the lives of many within Ngāti Hei. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This is a five-minute split call—Camilla Belich.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Tēnā koe. Ko te mihi tuatahi ki te Whare e tū nei, ki a Papatūānuku kei raro, ki a Ranginui ki runga, ki te mana whenua o tēnei rohe. Ko Te Atiawa whānui, tēnā koutou. Engari ko te mea nui te mihi tūturu ki tēnei rā, he mihi ki a Ngāti Hei.

[Firstly, acknowledgments to this House standing, to Papatūānuku down below, to Ranginui above and to the nation who hold mana over this region. Te Atiawa people, acknowledgments to you. However, the most important acknowledgment today is to Ngāti Hei.]

I would like to acknowledge Ngāti Hei for their participation in this process, and also just to acknowledge what an honour it is to be able to speak in a Treaty settlement debate. It’s the first time I’ve been able to do this in my almost four years in Parliament now, and it is really an honour to be able to participate in what is part of a very long historical process that has been alluded to by many members of the House so far today.

This is an extremely important document and, for those people who may be watching who haven’t had the chance to read a Treaty settlement bill, it really does contain a lot more information and history about the particular iwi or hapū that we are discussing than a usual bill of Parliament. I just want to touch briefly on some of the main points in the bill that I feel deserve extra attention. Of course, this is a bill which implements an agreement that was reached between Ngāti Hei and the Government on 17 August 2017. We’ve heard acknowledgments from the various speakers, from both the National Party and the Labour Party, who have been Ministers who have shepherded this particular process through the House, and this is not unusual. We often have different political parties taking leadership on these Treaty settlement bills, and it is a moment where the House stands unified towards going part way to addressing some of the very significant historical wrongs that have occurred for particular hapū and iwi.

So the main parts that I wanted to highlight was, in this bill, there is a significant amount of history of what happened to Ngāti Hei, and it can be found in clause 8. Just to go over a tiny amount of some of the history there, there’s acknowledgment of the history of the extractive industry in the Ngāti Hei rohe including kauri logging, kauri gum digging—which I have to admit my ancestors from Croatia would have taken part in, so I acknowledge and apologise for that; for my own family’s history in that—and also goldmining and fishing. Also, the fact that—and I wanted to note this—that Ngāti Hei derived very little long-term benefit from that extraction, so that is something that we should all be sorry for and acknowledge.

As many have mentioned, Ngāti Hei was left virtually landless and, if you read clause 8 of the bill, you’ll see that there was a marginalisation of Ngāti Hei, loss of te reo Māori, educational underachievement, sickness, and socio-economic deprivation for the iwi—significant, significant impacts. The apology is also in here. I would encourage members to read that; I won’t have time to go over all of that, and it is outlined but the Crown does apologise in this bill, and we as members of Parliament will help to enact this as a formal apology for the actions that harm Ngāti Hei and for the breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its principles, and the Crown unreservedly apologises.

So I don’t have long to participate in this debate but I want to acknowledge the significance of that apology. Many members have commented that Treaty settlements are part of a long process, that they’re not final, that they are not significant enough to redress the wrongs that were committed against iwi like Ngāti Hei. I think most of us in this House, if not all of us, would agree with that, and we’re just pleased that Ngāti Hei decided that there was some way that we could go some part into acknowledging this. I acknowledge their mana and the mana of this bill, and I commend it to the House.

GREG FLEMING (National—Maungakiekie): Tēnei taku tino hōnore anō i tēnei rā te tautoko tēnei pire.

[It is my absolute honour again to support this bill.]

Mr Speaker, when I was first elected to Parliament and was asked what select committees I would like to serve on, the one that I asked for was the Māori Affairs Committee, and, obviously, also the Petitions Committee in order to serve under your chairmanship, sir—such a fun committee, that one.

E rua ngā take o taku pātai e pā ana ki te tono mō te pire ki te Māori Affairs Committee. Tuatahi, te rongo te tangi o te reo o te whenua i ngā wā katoa, kāore he mea anō, kāore he mea reka ki te reo taketake. 

[There are two questions regarding the bill to be considered by the Māori Affairs Committee. Firstly, it’s the continuous hearing of the language of the land, there is nothing like it, nothing as soothing as the indigenous language.]

And that is what we hear all the time in our work. So to have heard so much of the reo of the whenua and of the rangi today has been an incredible joy, and that is perhaps the most sweet part of the joy of serving in this House.

The second one was that the primary work of the Māori Affairs Committee is whai atu te whakapūāwaitanga o ia iwi, ia hapū. E maha ngā tūranga mō tērā momo whai atu. [for every tribe and subtribe to thrive. There is a lot of opportunities for that pursuit.] One of those pathways is settlements.

In preparation for this work, and as I’ve continued to want to improve and to expand my understanding of it, I’ve read extensively and I take every opportunity that I have to meet and talk to everyone and anyone who has experience in this area. Last week, I had the opportunity to visit with Whakarewa, outside of Motueka, which was one of the first areas to settle, of sorts. It was in the mid-1980s, and what was $8 million worth is now $300 million worth of assets, including owning Tohu Wines, a most excellent acquisition. On Saturday, I was with a couple of the other members from the House as we celebrated the opening of another Tauhara housing project in Auckland by several of the Tāmaki-based iwi. My first direct encounter was the one that my colleague Rima Nakhle detailed, and that was with Whakatōhea.

In all of these, it was an incredible honour, and incredibly instructive and incredibly sobering. It reminds me of what several members have made clear tonight, which is that these settlements are in no way an equal return for the mamae and the hōhā that was inflicted. What they are, rather, is a starting point, and we have seen that so many times in recent years in this country. Again, previous speakers have spoken to some of the financial and the asset returns from that, and that is what gives me great hope for this bill.

Again, as has been noted eloquently by members on both sides of the House, this is the will of Ngāti Hei, as it has been the will of each of the iwi that have settled. They want to look forward, they want to take the settlement that they have negotiated in good faith, and they want to build their future from it. They want to pursue the development and the whānuitanga o tō rātou mana Motuhake. Koirā te ngako o te ture tuarua o te Tiriti o Waitangi, ko te tino rangatiratanga o ia iwi, ia hapū. Ki ōku whakaaro tēnei huarahi o te whai atu o te treaty settlement process that is te tino whāinga. [the full approach of their sovereignty. That is the true essence of the second article of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, it is true sovereignty of every tribe, every subtribe. I believe this pathway of the Treaty settlement process supports that notion.] Nā reira, it is my pleasure and my honour to commend this bill to the House.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai. Ko te mihi tuatahi ki te atua, nāna nei ngā mea katoa. Ko te mihi tuarua ki te Whare e tū nei, tēnā koe. Ko tēnei te mihi Ngāti Hei. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge our God, to whom everything belongs. Secondly, I’d like to acknowledge this standing House, salutations. Ngāti Hei, I acknowledge you. Greetings, greetings, greetings.]

Ngāti Hei are one of 12 iwi and hapū in the Hauraki region, and, in 2009, Ngāti Hei formed part of a collective. They didn’t do this just because they wanted to; this was due to the fact that, at the time, the Crown had a policy that if iwi were to negotiate their Treaty grievances with the Crown, they were required to be part of a large natural group. Ngāti Hei, which is around 700, would be too small to form a group on their own so they came and formed part of a collective. So this is an example of smaller groups of Māori within New Zealand, who have legitimate Treaty claims, having to come together not at their own requirement or view, but because of the framework of the Treaty negotiations settlement process.

In 2018, Ngāti Hei signed the Pare Hauraki Collective Redress Deed, and this is part of that. When we look through the history of Ngāti Hei, it is a good example of the direct impact of colonisation on Māori in New Zealand, and over the years to see how land has been stripped away, and also the impacts not only on the wellbeing and hauora of a people but also of their financial independence and ability to look after their own.

It was early as 1836 when we saw deals being done with traders that resulted in the Land Claims Commission making inquiries as to whether those were legitimate deals or not. The Crown, after investigating back in 1837, awarded 7,000 acres of land in which Ngāti Hei had interests to European claimants. As a result, much of the coastal lands that were originally in the possession of Ngāti Hei were lost. It was between 1858 and 1865 that Ahuahu was purchased from Hauraki iwi. There is no evidence that Ngāti Hei were consulted about this purchase, and furthermore there’s been no evidence that they even received payment for that land.

Between 1859 and 1865, there was a Crown policy that for every, say, 10 acres purchased, 1 acre would be held in reserve. That was the case in many instances around the country. But over that time, the Crown bought 20,000 acres from Ngāti Hei and it did not provide any reserves for Ngāti Hei, nor did it require any assessment as to whether the people had retained adequate land for their own needs. In 1870, right up to 1890, this is when the significant purchases happened: 15 large blocks of 1,000 acres or more—totalling over 93,000 acres—were permanently taken from Ngāti Hei. The Crown purchased 12 of those blocks with over 81,000 acres in total.

I think one of the interesting things that we see, and one of the sad things that we see, is those iwi that have been most affected by loss of land are often those who are sitting on the land which has the most value. We can think of some of our prime dairying land; we can think of some other areas. Ngāti Hei was no different in this, with the kauri logging, kauri gum digging, flax milling, and gold mining all areas that were heavily jumped in upon and exploited for those resources. One of the lasting grievances from Ngāti Hei is that the damage was done to their own rohe but there was very little financial or empowerment of their iwi as a result of that.

As we’ve heard, the last point I’ll make is that it was back in 1923 where Ngāti Hei wrote to the Crown and they asked for a particular island to be surveyed—Ohinau Island—for the purpose of taking claims of that ownership of that island to the Native Land Court. The Crown reacted by delaying that process while it surveyed the island and then it subsequently took the whole island for the purpose of a lighthouse when not the whole island was needed for that lighthouse—it acquired the whole 72-acre island.

So, as a result of those losses of land and others I haven’t mentioned, by the end of the 20th century, Ngāti Hei were left landless. It’s important to note that as a direct result of having been alienated from their land, there’s been a loss of te reo Māori, a loss of tribal structures, and a loss of ability to pass on knowledge, mātauranga, and understanding to the next generation. So it is that separation of land and place to be together and have traditional structures in place that when that land is removed from a people, it also removes the ability for the next generation to benefit from everything that kaumātua have to benefit and pass on.

For all of that loss, Ngāti Hei have received three things specified in the bill: an apology for the Crown for the wrongs and the breaches of the Treaty; cultural redress which has vested several properties back at with Ngāti Hei; and a financial redress of $8.5 million. I’m always in two minds when I speak on Treaty bills or when we discuss these. I feel pleased for Ngāti Hei to be able to take this and move on and to create a better future for the next generation of those uri of Ngāti Hei—and I really hope that this provides an opportunity for that to happen. But, at the same time, I feel sad in my heart when we read back on those losses and we think of what has been taken away and we see what is being given in compensation, and it is a mere drop in the bucket from what has been lost. Nō reira he mihi mahana ki a koutou Ngāti Hei, tēnā koutou. [Therefore, a warm convivial greeting to you Ngāti Hei, thank you all.]

DANA KIRKPATRICK (National—East Coast): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak as the last speaker in the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill today in the second reading. It is a privilege to do so. As a new member of this Parliament and sitting on the Māori Affairs Committee with my colleagues who are in the House this evening, it means a lot to be able to do so. It’s always a little difficult when you are faced with the prospect of speaking on a Treaty settlement bill when clearly you are possibly a little ill-equipped to do so, having not sat through the select committee and the hearings to understand the full picture. But I think, throughout listening to my colleagues, the members from across the House, it’s very clear how this feels for the Ngāti Hei people.

The Coromandel, which is where Ngāti Hei comes from, is a beautiful, remote part of the world. In some parts of it, productive and historically extremely significant. So we understand full well why they are seeking redress. We understand from the papers that we’ve seen what that looks like. National has always supported this bill, and we’re delighted to continue supporting it and, hopefully, to bring some clarity and some closure to this.

In the submissions, there is a bit of a historical account of Ngāti Hei, and there’s a piece of it that I’d just like to address. It says, “Considering all that has happened since 1769 the resilient Ngāti Hei has been a reasonable Iwi in terms of developing relationships with its Treaty partner and its subsidiaries. Ngāti Hei has been both active and reactive … both with the Crown and the private sector. Whether establishing a Marine Reserve to monitoring developers or working alongside scientists on Islands - this is all part of our fundamental duty as responsible Kaitiaki. The burdens of these responsibilities [come] at great cost. The lack of resources and professional approach has resulted in our roles being reduced diminutively to only a figurehead status. Our true potential as contributors to our own prosperity and societal growth still seems too far away and improbable as we watch our young seek better opportunities abroad. The Treaty Claims process is critically important to Ngāti Hei as we move into the future. This will be our only chance to participate in social and economic opportunities that has eluded us since 1840. However we look ahead with in trepidation and brace ourselves to new challenges coming.” It goes on to say, “The apology”—that comes as part of the settlement process—“cannot change the past, but with the support of the Crown its an opportunity to reset our future. The apology stands front and center for Nga Hei.” I read that because I think that’s significant for them and obviously meant a lot in the submissions process.

I sat on my first Treaty settlement submissions hearing this year when we addressed the Whakatōhea settlement claims. We did that in Ōpōtiki, which was great. It was also part of my electorate, so it’s something that was quite close to my part.

Hon Tama Potaka: Great electorate.

DANA KIRKPATRICK: A wonderful electorate where I spent a few days with the Hon Tama Potaka last week.

Look, I think, for the first time there, I had my firsthand understanding of the sorrow and the pain endured by iwi through raupatu and through the confiscation of land and the way they were treated. It takes time to understand the journey, the history, and the evolution of a Treaty settlement. The pain, the negotiation, and bringing it to a point that sets the iwi or hapū on a new journey. There is nothing, no money, no prosperity, no property, no apology will ever be enough for those who have gone before. The people who started this process, and many of whom will have moved on and will not be able to see this come to a conclusion—for the tūpuna, the mamae will always be a part of their lives. Many have died with no redress, as outlined.

Now the opportunity exists for Ngāti Hei to move forward and address its future in a new way for the sake of their tamariki and mokopuna. There is a part in one of the former speeches from the first reading, from the Minister for Māori Development, the Hon Tama Potaka, who said, “The kaupapa of Ngāti Hei is set out on [their] website: [and it says] ‘From our tūpuna we have inherited our moana, whenua, and cultural taonga. We will protect and enhance them to build a bright future for Ngāti Hei.’ ”. If this settlement, as it stands—which we understand is not enormous in terms of its monetary value—can bring some kind of closure, some clarity, and a way forward for Ngāti Hei, then that will just go some way to addressing that for them.

On the East Coast, where I come from, I have seen what happens and the opportunities that come from Treaty settlement closure and how iwi and hapū on the East Coast have developed a wonderful way of facing their challenges, of owning the problems that they face, and of using their settlement claims and their redress to find new ways of supporting whānau and communities in the way that matters to them most. It brings empowerment. It brings the ability for them to embrace their challenges, as I said, and some of them developed great plans in terms of social housing, in terms of training for their whānau and providing jobs and doing a great deal of other things in terms of commercial and social arms working alongside each other. So, look, I hope that we will be able to reach some of that.

It’s important to remember that “By the end of the 20th century, Ngāti Hei [was left] virtually landless. The resulting marginalisation … including loss of te reo … educational underachievement, sickness, and socioeconomic deprivation, caused … [great] suffering. … [and] the fragmentation of Ngāti Hei tribal structures and the migration from ancestral lands, severely affected [their] ability to pass [on] mātauranga … to their [children or their tamariki]”, and, therefore, to their mokopuna going forward.

This settlement started on the—well, you know, in the time line here, “On 29 June 2011, the Crown recognised the mandate of the Ngāti Hei negotiators to negotiate a comprehensive settlement of the historical Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi claims of Ngāti Hei with the Crown. The mandated negotiators and the Crown entered into an agreement in principle equivalent on 22 July 2011. On 31 May 2017, Ngāti Hei and the Crown initialled a Deed of Settlement … [and] The Deed was ratified and then signed on 13 August 2017. The settlement will be implemented following the [finalisation] of [this] legislation. On settlement, the trustees of the Ngāti Hei Post Settlement Governance Entity will manage the settlement assets.”, as is common practice with these things.

It’s also important to remember that “Ngāti Hei is a member of the Pare Hauraki Collective and will receive collective redress through that [as well]. The collective approach recognises that the iwi of Hauraki have various overlapping customary interests which cannot be considered separately from each other.” So that will come as well.

It takes a lot to get a settlement through. It takes huge commitment, courage, and drive, and when we look through the submissions that were presented to the Māori Affairs Committee, I think it’s worth just noting a couple of them. The Hauraki Collective submission strongly supported the Ngāti Hei Claims Settlement Bill, acknowledging the persistent efforts of the negotiators and the historical wrongs faced by the iwi. They criticised the Crown’s insufficient Treaty redress and asserted their opposition to any changes to the bill not endorsed by Ngāti Hei. The Ngāti Paoa Iwi Trust aligned with Ngāti Hei in supporting the claims settlement bill, acknowledging the history and struggles of the iwi, and they stressed the importance of their settlement, whilst the Thames-Coromandel District Council’s submission backed the bill, recognising its significance for both Ngāti Hei and the wider Hauraki community. The council highlighted its ongoing relationship with Ngāti Hei and emphasised the settlement’s role in fostering joint development and addressing historical grievances.

It takes a lot to get the settlement through, as I’ve said, but we pay tribute to the dedication of Ngāti Hei, the leadership, and the patience; to the negotiators and the whānau support that will have been required to assist and support the negotiators and the people involved in this.

The first kōrero over the claims was handled by Tā Doug Graham, and they have traversed many Governments since, but it was Andrew Little who separated the omnibus bills and decided to get this finalised by splitting this out and setting Ngāti Hei on a path for a quicker resolution. Thanks to Minister Andrew Little for the work that he did to progress this claim for the iwi.

As previous speakers have said, the redress will never be enough, and I sincerely hope a new future can be envisaged and that Ngāti Hei can be set on a journey of improvement and opportunity for their people. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Good evening.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.